Speaker 1: Ready to go. All right, agree to you one Happy Thursday,
Speaker 1: Happy may Day. It is what this really is. It's
Speaker 1: the one month anniversary of the Chuck podcast. So you
Speaker 1: know when you in content creator years one month, that's
Speaker 1: the equivalent of five years of service these days, I
Speaker 1: have kid, but I'm having a blast. I hope you're
Speaker 1: enjoying the content we're creating. I'm an amazing team around
Speaker 1: me that has been able to get me into some
Speaker 1: social spaces that I had not been to before, including
Speaker 1: my new and growing audience on YouTube like and subscribe.
Speaker 1: Do I say that enough?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: I appreciate that Apple podcasts Spotify. By the way, I
Speaker 1: tweeted out, we know some of you who get Apple
Speaker 1: or you know, we're fixing that and feed issue and
Speaker 1: that's that should be. That should be up and running
Speaker 1: without any problems, without you having to manually refresh very soon.
Speaker 1: But before I get to my guest, and I tell
Speaker 1: you this is going to be a fantastic interview, You're
Speaker 1: going to love it. It's Charlie Brooker. He is the
Speaker 1: creator of Black Mirror, the amazing Netflix series that's sort
Speaker 1: of you know, near term, the futuristic. Some people think
Speaker 1: it's all dystopian. What's interesting is, I will tell you this,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of thoughts of what I thought
Speaker 1: motivated Charlie Brooker on various shows. I bet you, as
Speaker 1: Black Mirror fans, you will assume some things that you
Speaker 1: will find out are not true. What motivated him, what
Speaker 1: were his what were his creative mentors? If you will,
Speaker 1: both individuals and of different movies and shows. Just trust me,
Speaker 1: you're going to love this interview. You're going to love him,
Speaker 1: and you're going to learn a lot about what it
Speaker 1: takes to create Black Mirror. In the mind of Charlie Brooker,
Speaker 1: it is just I am. I would have him on
Speaker 1: weekly if he had the time to do it, and
Speaker 1: there's no doubt, as you'll find out in this interview,
Speaker 1: this dude would be a lot of fun to be
Speaker 1: in a writer's room with, that's for sure. But before
Speaker 1: I get to there, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: this week talking about the first hundred days of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But there is an opposition party that's out there, and
Speaker 1: I thought it would be worth doing the first hundred
Speaker 1: days report card, if you will, for the Democrats, because
Speaker 1: as bad as things have gone for Donald Trump, this
Speaker 1: has not been a seesaw as Trump goes down, Democrats
Speaker 1: go up. That has not been the case. In fact,
Speaker 1: the hallmark of all of the polling you've seen is,
Speaker 1: even as Donald Trump's going down, the brand of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party has yet to improve in the minds of voters.
Speaker 1: And arguably that's a pretty honest assessment. Right what have
Speaker 1: the Democrats had done to improve their brand? They really
Speaker 1: haven't done anything yet. If anything, they're still trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out. It isn't clear where this party is headed.
Speaker 1: What is universally clear, though, is that the DC leadership
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party is not very popular at all.
Speaker 1: Whether it's aking Jeffries Chuck Schumer, they're feeling some pressure.
Speaker 1: I've talked to some donors who are very frustrated with Jeffries.
Speaker 1: Don't understand why Nancy Pelosi is still sort of lingering
Speaker 1: over the leadership of the House as much. I had
Speaker 1: one prominent donor say to me over the weekend, I'm
Speaker 1: glad Nancy Pelosi was there to do what was needed
Speaker 1: to be done with Joe Biden's candidacy, but her shadow
Speaker 1: over the party is only hurting Jeffries in the long run,
Speaker 1: and is only hurting the party's brand in the long run.
Speaker 1: If the party is going to try to gear itself
Speaker 1: to the future, it's leadership of the previous twenty years
Speaker 1: probably needs to step aside completely so that you certainly
Speaker 1: hear that. Obviously, Chuck Schumer has been feeling the heat.
Speaker 1: He's probably getting more of the arrows than most, considering
Speaker 1: he had to make a tough decision, which was whether
Speaker 1: to shut down the government or sort of let Donald
Speaker 1: Trump have a situation that wasn't going to be popular
Speaker 1: with the base of his party. I do think politically
Speaker 1: he made the right call. He just communicated the idea
Speaker 1: extraordinarily poorly, since he spent one day talking up the
Speaker 1: idea of orchestrating a shutdown and then immediately backtracking on
Speaker 1: that front. But his political calculus about what the right
Speaker 1: call was I think has turned out to be right,
Speaker 1: which is, don't get in Donald Trump's way if he's
Speaker 1: in the middle of hurting himself politically. That's been the
Speaker 1: James Carvel strategy. So I would say, if you were
Speaker 1: going to give grades, the DC leadership is not getting
Speaker 1: good grades. I don't think they're getting passing grades yet.
Speaker 1: Now the question is who individually has had a good
Speaker 1: first hundred days in the Democratic Party. Well, probably the
Speaker 1: best way to judge that as you look at it
Speaker 1: through the prism of future elections and the prism of
Speaker 1: trying to position yourself as a leader or a player
Speaker 1: at the table, trying to figure out what is the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party going to look like, what is the Democratic
Speaker 1: brand going to be? So immediately when you look at
Speaker 1: people who have made an early effort to make an impression,
Speaker 1: Corey Booker, he certainly has decided to take matters more
Speaker 1: into his own hands. He did the twenty five hour Philipbuster,
Speaker 1: which got a reasonable amount of tension. In fact when
Speaker 1: he timed it. If you recall, I thought it was
Speaker 1: fascinating when he timed it. He timed it during the
Speaker 1: election and day of that first special election in April,
Speaker 1: which had the Wisconsin election and those two specials in Florida.
Speaker 1: So it was sort of feeding the Democratic base as
Speaker 1: they were getting excited about winning some of these special elections,
Speaker 1: over performing in some of these special elections, and here
Speaker 1: he was jacking the DC message machine for a day,
Speaker 1: so I think, and over the weekend, Corey Booker and
Speaker 1: Akim Jefferies did a live stream from the Capitol steps.
Speaker 1: So I think Booker is trying to become one of,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to find his voices as a Trump resistor,
Speaker 1: another sort of DC insider that's trying that same thing
Speaker 1: as Chris Murphy, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut. He's been
Speaker 1: trying to get on more socials, trying to sort of
Speaker 1: also become more of an outside voice in pushing the party,
Speaker 1: and you know, clearly is probably somebody at least thinking
Speaker 1: about running for president. I think Corey Booker fair to
Speaker 1: say that he's thinking about running for president other Democrats
Speaker 1: in the first hundred days. So I think for the
Speaker 1: most part, both Corey Booker and Chris Murphy, as far
Speaker 1: as their own standing, I've made progress. And what they're
Speaker 1: where they're trying to get to. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they're the right answer. We're going to find out. Right.
Speaker 1: Corey Booker was not could not get traction when he
Speaker 1: ran for president in twenty twenty. Maybe that'll change this time.
Speaker 1: But some of the efforts he's making, you can see
Speaker 1: what he's doing, and it makes sense. Chris Murphy same thing,
Speaker 1: gets a little less attention than Corey Booker, but you
Speaker 1: see what he's trying to do. It may be just
Speaker 1: the Washington baggage. You know, I'm convinced that the Democratic
Speaker 1: primary electorate come twenty twenty seven to twenty twenty eight
Speaker 1: is just going to care about two things new and electable. Now,
Speaker 1: electable is going to be a debate, right, everybody has
Speaker 1: a different version of who's electable and what's electable. But new,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a big deal. Right
Speaker 1: on the other first hundred days, Bernie Sanders and AOC obviously,
Speaker 1: I think Alexandria Cassio Cortez has probably had a for
Speaker 1: her personal politics, a very strong first one hundred days. Right,
Speaker 1: She's already in line. There's no question anymore of who's
Speaker 1: the heir apparent to the Bernie movement. It is her.
Speaker 1: It is not going to be Rocanna, It is not
Speaker 1: going to be anybody else. It is going to be her.
Speaker 1: It is hers, unless somehow she decides not to run
Speaker 1: for president. Now she's got two options sitting in front
Speaker 1: of her in twenty twenty eight. If she chooses not
Speaker 1: to run for president, she could run for a Chuck
Speaker 1: Schumer Senate seat. I'd be as I told you in
Speaker 1: a previous during the Dan Goldman preview there when I
Speaker 1: said keep an eye on him for the future, I believe,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't believe Schumer ends up running for
Speaker 1: reelection by twenty twenty eight. Right, that just you sort
Speaker 1: of see where you kind of see where that's going.
Speaker 1: And I think he could be vulnerable in a primary
Speaker 1: if he's not careful on twenty twenty eight. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's the way he would want to go out. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know this, Nobody knows this. He's
Speaker 1: certainly been a very successful New York politician. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and say that he should
Speaker 1: know when the time to go is. But I would
Speaker 1: be I certainly if I were a betting man, and
Speaker 1: as many of you know, I do enjoy a FanDuel
Speaker 1: a FanDuel app every now and then, I certainly would
Speaker 1: be betting against him running for re election in twenty eight.
Speaker 1: So the question is does she want to be a constant,
Speaker 1: long term player in DC or does she want to
Speaker 1: go for it and seeing if she can win the nomination.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical she can win the nomination. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I go back to electability, will she be able to
Speaker 1: pass the electability test, which is again very subjective, but
Speaker 1: I think the perception and there's going to be we'll
Speaker 1: see what the evidence shows, but I think she starts
Speaker 1: with a perception that she's going to have a hard
Speaker 1: time winning in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to just always be careful to under I'm
Speaker 1: not going to undersell her. She is what I like
Speaker 1: to describe as a very talented political athlete. And sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, you look at the NFL draft and you'll
Speaker 1: see certain, oh, somebody's got his arms are too short,
Speaker 1: or he doesn't have big enough hands and all this stuff,
Speaker 1: but they're just so good at being a football player.
Speaker 1: They overcome whatever physical trait that that that they should
Speaker 1: have that they don't have. And so I feel the
Speaker 1: same way about politicians is that you know, they can
Speaker 1: be such a good campaigners. They can overcome maybe it's
Speaker 1: a character flaw, maybe they overcome an ideological issue, whatever
Speaker 1: it is. That you can overcome these things if you're
Speaker 1: talented enough. So I'm hesitant to assume AOC can overcome
Speaker 1: these things. I think she's proven to be a very talented,
Speaker 1: talented politician, and I'm just watching her go from activist
Speaker 1: to elected activist to start trying to have more say,
Speaker 1: you know, both figuring out how to balance inside game
Speaker 1: versus outside game. But overall, I think you could SAYOC
Speaker 1: has had a very strong first hundred days because she
Speaker 1: now is certainly the one getting in front of crowds,
Speaker 1: whether they're Bernie generated, whether how much she's in charge
Speaker 1: of that, how much it's Bernie's operation. That's still a
Speaker 1: pretty strong first hundred days. Then there's Pete Footage, his
Speaker 1: decision not to seek any office in Michigan, and he
Speaker 1: was contemplating there are two open seats in Michigan, a
Speaker 1: Senate seat and in a governor seat. Of course, he's
Speaker 1: a new resident there. He moved the changes residency to
Speaker 1: Michigan from Indiana, and his husband moved there. His husband's
Speaker 1: from Michigan. So the question was going to be whether
Speaker 1: whether he would seek state wide office in twenty six,
Speaker 1: and I think if he did, he was taking himself
Speaker 1: out of twenty eight. You're not if you're running for
Speaker 1: a new office in twenty six. I think it's hard
Speaker 1: to run in twenty eight if you're running for reelection
Speaker 1: in twenty six to set up a run in twenty eight.
Speaker 1: I think that's a different story.
Speaker 2: JB.
Speaker 1: Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, appears to be on that track.
Speaker 1: Although it's interesting to me that David Axelrod, who's an
Speaker 1: Illinois guy through and through, is a little skeptical about whether,
Speaker 1: if he wants to run for president, whether it's a
Speaker 1: good idea to also seek reelection because Illinois might not
Speaker 1: be as easy of a win for him as it
Speaker 1: has been in the past. But remember, he is a billionaire,
Speaker 1: the heir to the Higatt fortune, so there is plenty
Speaker 1: of money there for JB. Pritzker. So I don't you know,
Speaker 1: is he somebody that's had a good first hundred days.
Speaker 1: He's also somebody that wants to become the resistor on
Speaker 1: the gubernatorial side of things, more so than a Gretchen Whitmer,
Speaker 1: who's been seen working with Trumps. She gotten too close
Speaker 1: to Trump. I think she certainly had the worst photo
Speaker 1: op moment of any Democrat in the first under days,
Speaker 1: with the infamous folder over her face, and then she
Speaker 1: you know, it's look, if she wants to rise above partisanship,
Speaker 1: she can't keep apologizing for showing up at events with Republicans.
Speaker 1: That's a habit. She's got a break if she really
Speaker 1: wants to rise above and say and be willing to
Speaker 1: go to places other Democrats aren't going to go so far. Essentially,
Speaker 1: she's done that twice now with Trump, but she's apologized.
Speaker 1: I didn't plan to speak right coming across as if, like,
Speaker 1: please don't be mad at me democratic base that I'm
Speaker 1: doing this, but hey, swing voters, look what I'm doing, right,
Speaker 1: You got to sort of project more confidence in that.
Speaker 1: So I think that how I think the idea is
Speaker 1: she's pursuing are good. How she's gone about him right now,
Speaker 1: I think I think could use some work. There's Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: who started a podcast in the first hundred days to
Speaker 1: try to break out of the stereotype San Francisco liberal
Speaker 1: narrative that I do think is going to haunt him
Speaker 1: for however long he wants to be in the national spotlight.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt he has ambition to run for president.
Speaker 1: I'm somebody who believes his best shot was primary ing
Speaker 1: Biden when that talk was active and he decided not to.
Speaker 1: I think my guess is, you know, if he ever
Speaker 1: I always say this. The later in life, the more
Speaker 1: you age, you start you do start not thinking and
Speaker 1: worrying about the things that you did. You start wondering
Speaker 1: and regretting the things that you didn't do. I have
Speaker 1: a feeling gavenusom forever is going to regret not primarying
Speaker 1: Biden in twenty four, that that is that road not
Speaker 1: traveled will be one that he wonders what would have
Speaker 1: happened had he did? Would the entire party be in
Speaker 1: better shape? Would he be seen as a hero even
Speaker 1: if he didn't win? Who knows? But the extreme effort
Speaker 1: he's making to try to sort of left wing of
Speaker 1: eyes himself right deeper resivise them. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what you want to call it that he's trying to do.
Speaker 1: But he's sort of like, I'm not sure how comfortable
Speaker 1: I am being a Democrat that you know, he's sort
Speaker 1: of acknowledging the elephant in the room with people who
Speaker 1: you know. But is he also gone a little bit?
Speaker 1: Is it a little too manufactured? Right? Is it going
Speaker 1: to be? He's got to pass whatever. Authenticity is another
Speaker 1: subjective word. You got to be authentic, well, authentic to
Speaker 1: whom right? But I get I get the overall idea,
Speaker 1: if it looks like you're trying too hard, voters will
Speaker 1: punish that as well. So I give him a mixed grade.
Speaker 1: A for effort, but I don't know, if you know,
Speaker 1: just like I would with Qretchen Wimer. A for effort,
Speaker 1: but I'm not quite sure if the execution's been as
Speaker 1: good as it could be. And then there's the people
Speaker 1: that I expect to be players in twenty eight that
Speaker 1: have no have decided not yet to raise their profile.
Speaker 1: Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland, Andy Basheer, Governor of Kentucky,
Speaker 1: Rafael Warnock, Senator from Georgia, Mark Kelly, Senator from Arizona,
Speaker 1: Ruben guy Diego Center from Arizona. I was talking to
Speaker 1: a polster earlier this week who said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: when we were talking about the Wes More candidacy, because
Speaker 1: I think that's going to be assuming he runs in
Speaker 1: twenty eight. I think he will be the biggest, the
Speaker 1: biggest establishment organization on the democratic side. I think he'll
Speaker 1: have some of the biggest donors. He'll have, you know,
Speaker 1: big some of the big names around Hi, him and Buddhajic.
Speaker 1: I expect to be sort of the biggest traditional sort
Speaker 1: of campaign operations you have out there. But I had
Speaker 1: somebody ask me, it's like, if you're going to try
Speaker 1: to rerun Obama, be careful, right it may be especially
Speaker 1: now that Latino voters are the new swing voters of
Speaker 1: American politics, you know, should the Democrats be looking for
Speaker 1: a Latino leader? And so to keep an eye on
Speaker 1: Ruben Diego. He was pretty pretty liberal as a member
Speaker 1: of the House, but he really has been trying to
Speaker 1: sort of recenter himself with the with a statewide Arizona
Speaker 1: electorate he did. You know, he got a little room
Speaker 1: to run because of who his opponent was in the
Speaker 1: Senate race, so that helped him a little bit. But
Speaker 1: he's still probably you know, he's been viewing very close
Speaker 1: to Mark Kelly here. I just keep an eye on him.
Speaker 1: I just think that that there isn't a lot of
Speaker 1: Latino leaders that feel like they're on the cusp of
Speaker 1: putting together national campaigns that are not associated with an
Speaker 1: ideology of AOC. But I think she, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if she would have an automatic appeal to
Speaker 1: that swing voting, working class Latino voter that may be
Speaker 1: voting more on some cultural issues that they're uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: on the progressive side. So it's going to be it's
Speaker 1: something to watch there, and it's something that I'm curious about.
Speaker 1: So look, I think the Democratic brand is in the
Speaker 1: toilet and all the polling, even if the first hundred
Speaker 1: day shows you that it still is, voters can believe
Speaker 1: two things. At the same time, Trump's presidency is going
Speaker 1: off is going horribly, and they haven't yet seen anything
Speaker 1: out of the Democrats that's appetizing. It's pretty clear that
Speaker 1: DC leadership is getting a failing grade. The DNC is
Speaker 1: mired in its own intra party feud over David Hogg
Speaker 1: and primary individuals, all of those things. The new DNC
Speaker 1: chair I thinks had a hard time sort of sort
Speaker 1: of establishing himself frankly, yet I think bogged down a
Speaker 1: bit by this David hog controversy and the fact that
Speaker 1: both Schumer and Jeffries have their own challenges being the
Speaker 1: official leadership of the Washington class of Democrats. And it's
Speaker 1: been fascinating. You do get this sense that a lot
Speaker 1: of Democrats have decided to take this branding issue and
Speaker 1: try to deal with it themselves. And I expect more
Speaker 1: of this. This is what happened to the Democrats after
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, and this is what happened to the
Speaker 1: Democrats to a lesser extent after two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, So I expect more of this.
Speaker 1: And this is something about every you know, when we're
Speaker 1: going to check in on the status of Trump and
Speaker 1: the MAGA, we're going to do this with the Democrats
Speaker 1: as well. So with that, I'm gonna pause there again.
Speaker 1: You are gonna love this conversation with Charlie Brooker. Uh,
Speaker 1: please enjoy it. If you're I'm an obsessive Black Mirror fan.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I can't watch back to back episodes though and
Speaker 1: and and get a good night's sleep, so I do
Speaker 1: sort of limit my exposure to Black Mirror about one
Speaker 1: or two episodes a week as I digest the dystopian
Speaker 1: nature of our future. Uh, enjoy the interview and enjoy
Speaker 1: this break. Charlie Brooker, you are a guest that my
Speaker 1: wife is probably more excited about than anybody that I've
Speaker 1: booked so far. I'm excited to don't get me wrong, Okay,
Speaker 1: but you know you've made the missus really happy that
Speaker 1: you're a You're going to be a guest in the
Speaker 1: on the podcast here.
Speaker 2: That's nice tonight.
Speaker 1: So let me start with this before we get into
Speaker 1: black mirror. Do you feel like you are the twenty
Speaker 1: first century George Orwell?
Speaker 2: No, I would never. No, I mean I think that,
Speaker 2: I mean, that would be nice if somebody wants to
Speaker 2: make that comparison. I'm not going to spend four hours
Speaker 2: trying to desperately talk them out of it. But no,
Speaker 2: I think he was. He was probably a more astute
Speaker 2: political writer than in many. I mean, I could list
Speaker 2: all his qualities that I'd be very British about it,
Speaker 2: aren't I I mean very British and self deprematic. No,
Speaker 2: I've not felt a.
Speaker 1: Ful humility, right, you know, I'm kidding. I'm kidding, you know,
Speaker 1: please please don't tell me you know? No, no, no
Speaker 1: more more.
Speaker 2: I suppose it depends what do you mean in terms
Speaker 2: of what do you mean? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: In that he wrote nineteen eighty four and it was.
Speaker 1: Well when you look at when you look at Orwell,
Speaker 1: and he's probably the most prominent. Right here's somebody who
Speaker 1: wrote about a futuristic dystopia. Obviously his was political satire.
Speaker 1: Yours is cultural as well as societal and politically, I
Speaker 1: would say, but in many ways. I you know, when
Speaker 1: I try to separate those two, how many people say, well,
Speaker 1: everything's politics now, everything is all fused together, right, everything is?
Speaker 1: And I hate accepting that premise, but I understand why
Speaker 1: people think that. So that's why I mean, I look
Speaker 1: at it. If George orwell Will reincarded today, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be writing novels. He'd probably making episodic series like you're doing.
Speaker 2: I guess probably, I suppose probably. And then and I've
Speaker 2: probably been moaning that his show was doing better than
Speaker 2: mine or something. Yes, maybe maybe I suppose it's interesting
Speaker 2: because I do. It's it's an odde, it's an odd
Speaker 2: BLACKMR is a weird show in that I I don't
Speaker 2: see it as the job of the show to like
Speaker 2: be a sort of warning about nineteen eighty four. Was
Speaker 2: probably more felt like a warning, more overtly a wow.
Speaker 1: A lot of people watch you, I think, watch these
Speaker 1: episodes and view it as a warning. You don't view
Speaker 1: that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't. I suppose maybe I don't explicitly set
Speaker 2: out to be a warning because I'm I may what
Speaker 2: it probably is, and a psychologist could probably it would
Speaker 2: probably word out what it is better than me. It's
Speaker 2: probably I'm a worrier. I'm quite an anxious and neurotic person.
Speaker 2: But I've also got a background in comedy. Why often
Speaker 2: it's me kind of worrying out loud. Sometimes the episodes
Speaker 2: are kind of me worrying out loud. Sometimes I'm trying
Speaker 2: to Sometimes it's actually coming from a sort of really
Speaker 2: darkly comic place that we then play straight if you're
Speaker 2: saying in the shirt itself. So I'm sort of but
Speaker 2: predominantly I'm trying to entertain more than i'm trying to warn.
Speaker 2: And if I'm trying to warn it, I'm not always
Speaker 2: I wouldn't necessarily boil it down to a specific warning.
Speaker 2: But one thing that frustrates me is when people say
Speaker 2: it's a warning about technology, which I really don't think
Speaker 2: that the show is.
Speaker 1: Well, let's start beating around the bush. What's the show?
Speaker 2: What is it? You did say it's a cookery show. No,
Speaker 2: it's a am I talking about it? No it's no,
Speaker 2: it's well, okay, so it definitely it's it's more about people.
Speaker 2: I think. I think because I think while these show
Speaker 2: I'm actually impressed by technology in my everyday life. I
Speaker 2: think technology is amazing. And I used to be a
Speaker 2: video games journalist.
Speaker 1: One quiet, So you're not, you don't you don't have
Speaker 1: a phobia.
Speaker 2: I don't have a phobia about I'm impressed and amazed
Speaker 2: by technology, and I tend to be an early adopter
Speaker 2: of well certainly like video game consoles and things like that.
Speaker 2: So I'm sort of like a tech enthusiast in many ways.
Speaker 2: And I think but I but like I said, I
Speaker 2: am a warrior, and I think that I am often
Speaker 2: awestruck by what technology can do. And then that naturally
Speaker 2: leads you to worry about the implications of a powerful
Speaker 2: because it's a mawful tool. And we're we're amazing creatures
Speaker 2: because we create created these tools. But we're also there's
Speaker 2: loads of us, and we can be clumsy, we can
Speaker 2: be we've got faults, we've got flaws, and so we
Speaker 2: can So it's sort of so if there's any sort
Speaker 2: of parable going on, it's really usually in our stories,
Speaker 2: it's usually a sort of active human clumsiness or an
Speaker 2: active human impulsiveness or greed or jealousy or something like
Speaker 2: that actually is the downfall of the character.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting I watch Black Mirror with
Speaker 1: the following thought in mind, is that you're doing the
Speaker 1: due diligence on the impact on human beings that the
Speaker 1: tech companies themselves don't do. Right, You're sort of like,
Speaker 1: and that's what I feel. In some ways, you're the
Speaker 1: test kitchen for where there's is headed and I sit
Speaker 1: there and i'm you know, because we talk like there
Speaker 1: are no ethics boards with any of these you know,
Speaker 1: they all every once in a while open AI claims, oh,
Speaker 1: we haven't we have ethicists on staff, or we're trying
Speaker 1: to have an ethics board, but really they don't. In
Speaker 1: many ways, you're the human umbudsman for technology right now.
Speaker 1: In that I feel like you're you're the human test kitchen, Like, Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: here's this amazing tool. Like take your first episode. I
Speaker 1: feel like we can spoil episode one. I hope everybody's
Speaker 1: already seen episode one, so you take that episode. In
Speaker 1: some ways, you're optimistic, look at this, We're going to
Speaker 1: be able to cure, We're going to be able to
Speaker 1: be essentially replace pieces of the brain. That's exciting and
Speaker 1: and and in fact, that's that is the story.
Speaker 2: In the story, it's absolutely life saving.
Speaker 1: It's transferred then and then but then you sort of
Speaker 1: you go, okay, but what if it has to do
Speaker 1: what if you're sort of stuck always having to be
Speaker 1: connected to the cloud, you know.
Speaker 2: Subscription model totally they're totally crush.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I can see your your comedian side in
Speaker 1: you wouldn't that be hilarious, right, You're like, uh no, yeah, upgrade,
Speaker 1: you got to be on you know plus, you know,
Speaker 1: or premium or whatever it is. But I could watch
Speaker 1: that episode and say, you're an optimist about where we're
Speaker 1: going and to be able to like be you know,
Speaker 1: with the brain, and you're a cynic because you assume
Speaker 1: somebody is going to want to profit off of people's
Speaker 1: pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you could argue that that cynical or
Speaker 2: unfortunately true. Yeah, it's realistic. And it's it's interesting that
Speaker 2: where that story came about. That came about from me
Speaker 2: listening to a podcast.
Speaker 1: Story. I'm glad you're telling it. I find it fascinating.
Speaker 2: Explained so well, So I was listening to a podcast,
Speaker 2: you know, I listened to a lot of podcasts, and
Speaker 2: when the host has to do an immediate pivot into
Speaker 2: a sales pitch, it always it strikes me as it's
Speaker 2: really quite weird when they go for talking very naturally
Speaker 2: into a slightly more robotic kind of sales.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, is when my producers are going
Speaker 1: to when our salespeople will insert the ad that's going
Speaker 1: to do right here, right here.
Speaker 2: And I think I'd listened to like a crime true
Speaker 2: crime podcast and the guy was sort of recounting some
Speaker 2: grizzly like terrible, terrible incident and then sort of had
Speaker 2: to suddenly pivot into pitching a sort of food delivery company,
Speaker 2: like kind of seamlessly. And this struck me as darkly hilarious,
Speaker 2: and so going into that story, I thought, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: a here's a that's a very black merrory idea, because
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about, well, what if you had a
Speaker 2: service that could kind of stream part of your brain
Speaker 2: like you do me if you you lose part of
Speaker 2: your brain that was a backup and it can streame
Speaker 2: it to but you've got all these issues to do
Speaker 2: with coverage, cell coverage, and then the idea of adverts
Speaker 2: that became a funny and quite dystopian thought, and and
Speaker 2: so I approached that story thinking this is going to
Speaker 2: be a comedy, and it is a comedy until it isn't.
Speaker 2: And I think that's why it's quite I think obviously
Speaker 2: in that episode. I think it's a very powerful episode.
Speaker 2: I think Chris and Rashida and Tracy who are starring it,
Speaker 2: and Ali Panku the director, I think everybody did an
Speaker 2: amazing job. And it's like slightly wrong footsoe because it
Speaker 2: looks like it's going to be a comedic story, and
Speaker 2: then the logic of the cold logic of it gets
Speaker 2: more and more inescapable, and I think that's quite quite
Speaker 2: often that's my that's not my happy place, but that's
Speaker 2: my natural I'm trying not to say wheelhouse I don't
Speaker 2: like that phrase, but well, wheelhouse is what is a wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: Where they housed wheels? You're right, I love it. By
Speaker 1: the way, It's like it's like you know, when you're
Speaker 1: when when what is it? Uh? What is it? You
Speaker 1: know when people use undaunted and un daunted, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? There was something like that. We have
Speaker 1: these weird expressions where we never use other parts of
Speaker 1: the word so I don't know, do we go to
Speaker 1: the house to put wheels in it? Right?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: Right? You know it's where Michelin's are made. Right, You're right,
Speaker 1: we've all.
Speaker 2: Been saying, none of us know. It's like uh so
Speaker 2: so so so I quite like taking a premise that's
Speaker 2: sort of comic and then you find the sort of
Speaker 2: sometimes the horror angle. Sometimes we've done episodes that are
Speaker 2: more optimistic. But I suppose there what am I saying
Speaker 2: that I I you realize then that you've got a
Speaker 2: story that is actually commenting on on lots of things,
Speaker 2: the healthcare, health care and healthcare, general cost of living and.
Speaker 1: Of healthcare. Right, like we we all know we come
Speaker 1: up with these amazing cures or there's medicine out there,
Speaker 1: but only for those that can afford it.
Speaker 2: From perspective, I'm in the UK and I can't imagine,
Speaker 2: so I have you know, we have the NHS here,
Speaker 2: which is for the point of view, so all of that,
Speaker 2: so Breaking Bad wouldn't have really worked here as a show,
Speaker 2: like if you said it in the UK, because he
Speaker 2: Walter White would go and get treatment with like he'd
Speaker 2: now the NHS has also faults, but you would go
Speaker 2: and get life saving treatment very quickly, and you wouldn't
Speaker 2: be bankrupted for that here so so so so so
Speaker 2: sometimes you did you realize, oh, I'm commenting on that.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't realize when I when I walked
Speaker 2: into this sort of room narratively, I didn't realize that
Speaker 2: it was also full of all of this stuff. And
Speaker 2: so you kind of realize you're in quite a rich
Speaker 2: environment in a way, so you can and you can
Speaker 2: comment on lots of things. And also that episode is
Speaker 2: am I had to what what's the language like on
Speaker 2: this on this pod?
Speaker 1: We don't.
Speaker 2: We don't, but it's not it's not a massively offensive word.
Speaker 2: If you heard the word in shtification, in.
Speaker 1: Shita plication, I have, yeah, yes, So it's not my.
Speaker 2: Cory doctor Rose, this writer who coined this phrase in citification.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking all some of that, which is
Speaker 2: the process by which platforms or services the experience for
Speaker 2: the user degrades over time to cause well that's been
Speaker 2: it has to make a profit, it's the story.
Speaker 1: Well, it's well, all these tech companies right they sit
Speaker 1: there with the big tech, whether it's Facebook or let's
Speaker 1: take Facebook and X two really fun experiences when they
Speaker 1: first were rolled out and then they went became public companies,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they had to they had to convince
Speaker 1: shareholders that they could keep people on the site longer,
Speaker 1: and they were staying up the platform longer, and then
Speaker 1: they were putting more ads to them. Now, how did
Speaker 1: they do that? They cranked up the algorithms of anger
Speaker 1: and grievance and hey, right, like it is and then
Speaker 1: you have and then we then you look at what
Speaker 1: Elon must did and he took all the whatever guardrails
Speaker 1: there were on X, he took them off. And I
Speaker 1: think that guy was writing about the gentrification of Twitter
Speaker 1: if I'm mistaken, like that was one of examples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of, and well I'm kind of sort of everything,
Speaker 2: sort of everything, and it's hard to leave, as you either,
Speaker 2: it's hard to leave. So actually it's a bit like.
Speaker 1: Because you remember, you're right, because you also remember when
Speaker 1: it was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when it's like being trapped in a loveless marriage,
Speaker 2: it's sort of like it's like you're trapped in this
Speaker 2: you you you entered into it. It was fun and
Speaker 2: now and then.
Speaker 1: My wife is listening to this one very closely. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is, Charlie, I don't know what
Speaker 1: You don't know what I'm talking know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: My wife doesn't know what I'm talking about. No, But
Speaker 2: as a metaphor, it's it's like a not what you
Speaker 2: thought you were getting into at the start. And you
Speaker 2: can't see social media all sorts of platforms, you can't
Speaker 2: see away. You're addicted to it now as well. I'm
Speaker 2: smoking smoking, That's what it's like. Yeah, and it's it's Moorish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so so take me back to the to the creation,
Speaker 1: because what I love about the background you give a
Speaker 1: lot of hope to all of us recovering journalists who
Speaker 1: think that these creative ideas that we're all going to become.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all going to make some incredible effort
Speaker 1: that helps it. Yeah, but you know, how long did
Speaker 1: you have this in your head as an idea for
Speaker 1: a TV series before you actually could get it to fruition?
Speaker 2: Actually not so. I My my career path is weird,
Speaker 2: and again it sort of slightly makes sense in retrospect.
Speaker 2: So I was a I was a cartoonist. First of all,
Speaker 2: I was a cartoonist. Then I was a video games journalist.
Speaker 2: Then I was sort of doing a website. Then I
Speaker 2: was working in comedy and I was writing for The Guardian,
Speaker 2: but I was doing like TV reviews, and I never
Speaker 2: considered myself a journalist. I would write columns and I
Speaker 2: would write TV reviews, but I always considered myself a
Speaker 2: bit of a bound really like I was a or
Speaker 2: I was. I was attempting to do comedy bits. I
Speaker 2: was always okay right comedy. And then I had an
Speaker 2: idea for we did a show. I had an idea
Speaker 2: for a show in the UK which took a comic
Speaker 2: premise and then played it straight. It was a zombie show,
Speaker 2: and the premise was that there was a series of
Speaker 2: the TV show, the season of Big Brother, the reality show,
Speaker 2: which at the time was absolutely massive in the UK.
Speaker 2: And the premise was there was a season of Big Brother,
Speaker 2: and what if there was a zombie apocalypse broke out
Speaker 2: during this and the people in the Big Brother house,
Speaker 2: who had been chosen by producers to argue and fight
Speaker 2: and not get along are sort of the only people
Speaker 2: left alive in the whole of written. And then I
Speaker 2: thought the other funds that was a fan of sort
Speaker 2: of horror and zombie things. I thought, well, what if
Speaker 2: we and then what if we play it's straight? Was
Speaker 2: the other sort of the idea, and we did that
Speaker 2: and it went down really well. It was like really successful.
Speaker 2: And then so THEA it was Channel four in the UK,
Speaker 2: said well what else would you like to do? And
Speaker 2: I'd always been an admirer of the Twilight Zone, and
Speaker 2: we had a show in the UK Tales to the Unexpected,
Speaker 2: which was short Rob Dahl stories. The BBC often used
Speaker 2: to when I was growing up. They put out these
Speaker 2: really bizarre sort of one off plays, sometimes about that
Speaker 2: you couldn't kind of you'd go into school the next
Speaker 2: day and did you see that thing? Wore? A man
Speaker 2: fell in love with a tree or whatever. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like a crazy sort of avant garde place. And
Speaker 2: then really terrifying films about nuclear war and stuff like this,
Speaker 2: and so I so I sort of that was what
Speaker 2: I pitched, and it was originally the idea. It didn't
Speaker 2: have the technological focus so much the original pitch. It
Speaker 2: was more I was interested in I read about Rod Serling,
Speaker 2: who created the Twilight Zone, and I read so I
Speaker 2: read a sort of biography of about him, and I didn't.
Speaker 2: I hadn't appreciated the trial Zone was away niche in
Speaker 2: the UK. You had to see it was like on
Speaker 2: late at night, I sort of like ten thirty pm
Speaker 2: or eleven pm, like tucked away on a channel and
Speaker 2: at random times, but it would still really stand up
Speaker 2: and speak to me. And I hadn't appreciated that Rod
Speaker 2: Serling was a I'd only known him was the guy
Speaker 2: from The Twilight so that he was. When the Twilight
Speaker 2: Zen was first announced, people were going, why on earth
Speaker 2: is he debasing himself doing the show. He's a serious playwright,
Speaker 2: he's a serious writer. Why is he doing a silly
Speaker 2: show about it looks like this is going to be
Speaker 2: about UFOs and little Green men and aliens and different dimensions.
Speaker 2: And of course it was because it meant he could
Speaker 2: talk about the issues of the day without being censored,
Speaker 2: because he could he could address things as metaphor. But
Speaker 2: also to a kid watching it, it was just that's cool,
Speaker 2: a chilling sort of story, or it's got a mind
Speaker 2: mangling twist, and that's just really cool. And I kind
Speaker 2: of and so that that was the impetus was to
Speaker 2: do something that was a bit like that. But about
Speaker 2: now and then I kind of the more I thought
Speaker 2: about it, I thought, well, what would Rod be writing
Speaker 2: about now? What it would be technology? And it would
Speaker 2: be it would But again, at the time, at the time,
Speaker 2: it was so at the time the show first, at
Speaker 2: the time the show was first conceived, the view of
Speaker 2: technology was very, very positive, very positive. I think generally
Speaker 2: we thought these were these iPhones and smartphones were brilliant,
Speaker 2: and social media had helped bring about the Arab Spring,
Speaker 2: and it was going to rusher in a new era
Speaker 2: of diplomacy and democracy, and we're all going to talk
Speaker 2: to each other. And the biggest complaint anyone had about
Speaker 2: social media was that it was full of people posting
Speaker 2: photos of their breakfast and talking about my nature in
Speaker 2: their life and being a little narcissistic, not unhinged. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't this sort of unhinged vortex of anger and hatred.
Speaker 2: But because it seemed so rosy, the portrayal of it
Speaker 2: seemed so rosy, and that it made me that the anxious,
Speaker 2: neurotic person in me was immediately distrustful and scared, right
Speaker 2: if because you kind of think.
Speaker 1: Well, now we've all flipped, right now, everybody's now everybody's
Speaker 1: negative on tech, right, there's a general this is you know,
Speaker 1: there's a general concern right there. Immediately just look at
Speaker 1: just look at how I think we're all approaching AI.
Speaker 1: There's this immediate art. Yeah, sure, you know, because there's
Speaker 1: always a lot of we don't want to do what
Speaker 1: we did with social media, where we were sort of yay,
Speaker 1: this is awesome, right, like you know this we're taking
Speaker 1: down dictators and only to find out whoa dictators figured
Speaker 1: out how to use this themselves. Oh oh do you
Speaker 1: now do you think you're going to find yourself if
Speaker 1: you're a zagger and it sounds like you're a zagger, right,
Speaker 1: if everybody's going one way, you're like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: probably the time we need to show people what the
Speaker 1: what the other path might look like. Are you going
Speaker 1: to go optimist on us?
Speaker 2: I'm probably more of a boring centrist in a way
Speaker 2: in terms of like, so I can worry again, I can.
Speaker 2: I have a natural ability to worry about anything. I
Speaker 2: can leap over five linipads over to immediate destruction and
Speaker 2: the apocalypse very quickly. You could show me a spoon
Speaker 2: and I would worry about terrible things that someone could
Speaker 2: do with that spoon, and so I can totally sit
Speaker 2: with AI. It's I can absolutely understand all the terrifying
Speaker 2: implications and it's the unknown, isn't it really is?
Speaker 1: We don't know.
Speaker 2: But you can also see, Okay, there are there's meread opportunities.
Speaker 2: That is an amazing tool, and we're not going to
Speaker 2: we can't really put the genie back in the bottle.
Speaker 2: We've invented this. Yes, I worry. I worry about you know,
Speaker 2: if you've got if you're in a kind of AI
Speaker 2: arms race, then obviously there's a an impetus to like
Speaker 2: and and people start thinking that guardrails are slowing them down,
Speaker 2: then there's a this is the reason to you know,
Speaker 2: dismantle any guard rounds that there are. I think, kind
Speaker 2: of like anything, the printing press was an amazing, like
Speaker 2: one of the most amazing inventions in history. Caused all
Speaker 2: sorts of people because suddenly you had this way that
Speaker 2: ideas could be disseminated. Obviously, no one would say the
Speaker 2: printing press was a bad invention.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, my favorite you know what the second you know,
Speaker 1: if if the printing press was the single greatest invention
Speaker 1: to expand literacy to civilization. The number two most important
Speaker 1: invention were eyeglasses. So and I it's not my idea.
Speaker 1: This was a fellow journalist who I was at this.
Speaker 1: You know, we were talking about all these technological transformations,
Speaker 1: and you know, somebody was mentioned the printing press, and
Speaker 1: then somebody mentioned the internet and computers and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And it turned out like if you if you look back,
Speaker 1: the second most hot invention for essentially literacy, right eye glasses,
Speaker 1: you know, was the people would actually see Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was in front of you could read right, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those moments you were like,
Speaker 1: well duh, but you don't think sometimes we don't think
Speaker 1: of a No.
Speaker 2: Actually, that's a good example of a extremely in a way,
Speaker 2: very positively disruptive technology but probably obviously clearly did a
Speaker 2: lot more harmor good. Unless you can bet somebody put
Speaker 2: on a pair of eyeglasses and went right, I don't
Speaker 2: like that guy over there.
Speaker 1: Man, I didn't realize how much I didn't like. It
Speaker 1: ended a lot.
Speaker 2: I don't like my neighbors. Yeah so so, But like
Speaker 2: I guess, with any of these, with AI, you can
Speaker 2: see that the potential is incredible. The potential for it
Speaker 2: as a tool is incredible. The obvious worry I think
Speaker 2: that we all have is is that guy going to
Speaker 2: take my job? Is that that? Is that guy going
Speaker 2: to take my job? And then is that guy going
Speaker 2: to run things from that? Is that guy going to
Speaker 2: be my boss? Not just take my job, but going
Speaker 2: to be my boss? And how how do we manage that?
Speaker 2: If that's the case. And I don't know, Jim, I don't.
Speaker 2: I think like any writer, you you look at like
Speaker 2: something like chat GPT and you are it's worrisome. It's
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a worry, and you worry
Speaker 2: about replacing any if we end up replacing I mean
Speaker 2: I could I'm talking creatively if you end up replacing
Speaker 2: if any creative work is is one human attempting to
Speaker 2: communicate with other humans. If you take the cuman out
Speaker 2: of one end of that hype, I don't know what,
Speaker 2: You've got a different I think you've got a different form.
Speaker 2: You've got a different thing that I asked you.
Speaker 1: That is, have you used any Have you used AI
Speaker 1: to workshop or road test any of your ideas? Have
Speaker 1: you used a chat GBT as sort of like a
Speaker 1: tenth writer in your writer room.
Speaker 2: I think if you start replacing writers in your well, weirdly,
Speaker 2: we don't have a we don't actually have a writing
Speaker 2: room or black mirror.
Speaker 1: We say, what do you do? Like, tell me about
Speaker 1: like the pitch meetings, Like how does that work?
Speaker 2: Well, now it's just I'm walking around occasionally. So I've
Speaker 2: collaborated with right, so we've done there's there's two of
Speaker 2: the episodes this season are co written. But we don't
Speaker 2: have like a formal writing room where people are sort
Speaker 2: of pitching ideas and stuff. Usually what's happening is I'm
Speaker 2: wandering around thinking I've got nuggets of idea, and then
Speaker 2: they'll sort of coalesce at some point if that makes
Speaker 2: it like a sudden nature, I'll think, Oh, I know,
Speaker 2: I want to do a story about this, and I
Speaker 2: want to do a story with and here's a cool scene.
Speaker 2: I've got this. Well, here's a moment I want to do,
Speaker 2: but I don't. I don't know what the story is.
Speaker 2: And then I'll see something else or I'll think of
Speaker 2: something and that will bause me to knit those ideas together. Now,
Speaker 2: whether I could regurgitate all those ideas into an AI
Speaker 2: and go can you see connections between them. I probably
Speaker 2: could do that.
Speaker 1: Would it? Would it?
Speaker 2: That's a scary Again, there was a good roll dull
Speaker 2: story about that, about an automatous writing machine with pedals
Speaker 2: for that's a scary Are you hatening your own demise
Speaker 2: by doing that? Certainly? I can see obviously when when
Speaker 2: chat gpt first launched, the first thing I did was
Speaker 2: you say to it, com then tell me a black
Speaker 2: mirror a type idea, and it started coming out with
Speaker 2: something that initially you go, oh god, that's that's okay.
Speaker 2: That sounds plausible. It's sounded plausible, but it was also
Speaker 2: the more so you get the immediate as just watching
Speaker 2: the sentences come in. You haven't a media like Jesus Chris.
Speaker 2: You know, oh my god, this is I'm watching myself
Speaker 2: get dismantled. I'm watching the death of my career in
Speaker 2: real And then you go, actually, oh, actually, now this
Speaker 2: isn't that good. This is very this is generic, and
Speaker 2: it's for me like, oh, when I see this feels
Speaker 2: like a lukewarm, right, not very interesting pitch that actually
Speaker 2: is just bubbled together from fragments of because it's a.
Speaker 1: Bit like the it's it doesn't and I think it
Speaker 1: doesn't work if there's not a human creative elopment. I
Speaker 1: think that's what we're going to learn.
Speaker 2: I think so, but I hope so. And I think
Speaker 2: that we'll always want it. That's the other thing. I
Speaker 2: think we'll always want that.
Speaker 1: The thing is, I'm convinced we're going to have to
Speaker 1: start paying extra for human customer service, like I've been.
Speaker 1: I hate AI customer service, right. You feel like they
Speaker 1: don't know. You get the automated chats or the automated this,
Speaker 1: and then you're like representative or ah, you know, you
Speaker 1: hit your zero whatever it is, and you have to
Speaker 1: wait longer to get a human being. I actually think
Speaker 1: some business is going to say, hey, why don't we
Speaker 1: charge people as a human to talk to a human?
Speaker 2: But how will you know you're talking to a human?
Speaker 2: That's the problem, then, rates because you get well at
Speaker 2: the moment, it's because you get the equivalent of a
Speaker 2: sort of novelty be fob that impresses, that makes four
Speaker 2: sound effects. That's your like when they're rubbish and you're
Speaker 2: talking to one and it's just going I'm sorry to
Speaker 2: hear that. You feel that you're cross. Have you tried
Speaker 2: looking up on our website. It's sort of chatbot that's
Speaker 2: frustrating when you've got one, but you're within By next year,
Speaker 2: you'll probably have one that within six minutes you'll be
Speaker 2: telling it your deepest, darkest secrets and confiding in it,
Speaker 2: because I mean, they're basically like Eliza, which was the
Speaker 2: that was the first sort of AI chatbot. Was this
Speaker 2: thing Eliza, wasn't it? That was the sixties, late sixties
Speaker 2: something of that, and it was designed to be a
Speaker 2: sort of to just do what a basic psychologist would do,
Speaker 2: and it would just mirror back what you said to it.
Speaker 2: And there's a sort of famous anecdote about the guy
Speaker 2: who created Eliza asked his secretary to test it out,
Speaker 2: and within about twenty minutes she asked him to leave
Speaker 2: the room because she was telling it things that were private.
Speaker 2: And all that was was a very basic bit of
Speaker 2: code that would go hello, what's your name and you'd
Speaker 2: say my name is Charlie, So how are you feeling today?
Speaker 2: And you go quite sad and would go, oh, Charlie,
Speaker 2: why are you feeling quite sad? And then before you
Speaker 2: know it, you're regurgitating yourself. And so they'll probably get
Speaker 2: to that point where you'll pay it not to speak
Speaker 2: to a human and you'll you're being speaking to her.
Speaker 2: You'll be you'll be being psycho. You'll be sharing your
Speaker 2: deepest secrets with an AI therapist who's available twenty four
Speaker 2: hours a day.
Speaker 1: So if I didn't know you, I would assume you
Speaker 1: were a privacy nut, like you're obsessed with privacy, because
Speaker 1: a lot I would argue a lot of your episodes
Speaker 1: deal with the issue.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, but also, like people get shocked
Speaker 2: when I say I've like we've got like an Amazon
Speaker 2: Alexa device in the house.
Speaker 1: No, you're right, I am already shocked at how much
Speaker 1: of a tech advocate you are. Because you're right. If
Speaker 1: I didn't know you, you're this is what you do, and
Speaker 1: you be like, well, this guy is probably off the grid.
Speaker 1: He probably has the aluminum foil on the doors.
Speaker 2: You know. Oh, I'm like that. I'm not the unibomber. No,
Speaker 2: people often think it's like me in a yes, in
Speaker 2: a wooden shack with foil. Yeah, like you say, foil around.
Speaker 1: Always spoil, there's always boil always.
Speaker 2: But that would if I was sitting there, my computers
Speaker 2: wouldn't work, I'd be so sad and so I mean,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say. I mean the problem is I don't
Speaker 2: think that I really do worry. I really worry about
Speaker 2: obviously in the creative industries, I massively worry about what
Speaker 2: AI could do as in terms of it's already a
Speaker 2: tight time, it's already a you know, challenging environment, you
Speaker 2: might say, and it could wreak real human habit very quickly.
Speaker 2: I can also see why, why why it's going to be.
Speaker 2: I mean, someone's going to do a movie that's using
Speaker 2: this generator, Like like when Toy Story came out and
Speaker 2: it was the first CGI animated cartoon, and everyone went, oh,
Speaker 2: you can do that, Wow, okay, and it sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, we didn't lose the art of hand drawn animation,
Speaker 2: but it meant that, you know, the default the animated
Speaker 2: films became.
Speaker 1: Doesn't it? In fairness, doesn't every technological advancement put somebody's
Speaker 1: career get rid of some sort of you know, refrigeration.
Speaker 1: We used to have people that worked in the ice
Speaker 1: block industry, right, you know, literally blocks of ice. Right,
Speaker 1: we had refrigeration, and you didn't need the block of
Speaker 1: ice people anymore. Now there was probably a lot of
Speaker 1: people lamenting that those jobs were gone. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: where we automation is replacing jobs?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I'm being a I mean, I would argue this is
Speaker 1: sort of a repetitive cycle when it comes to any
Speaker 1: technological advancement.
Speaker 2: It is, I supposed to the why he comes when
Speaker 2: it's when it's when it's it's all jobs, that's the problem.
Speaker 2: But it's basically when it's when it's all careers or
Speaker 2: jobs or not not all careers or jobs, because again
Speaker 2: I don't I have no idea how this stuff will
Speaker 2: pan out. Do you know what I mean? I don't
Speaker 2: actually know. But it's how we find It's beyond even
Speaker 2: the financial obviously, the financial impact on how you run,
Speaker 2: Like purpose, just what's our how we find purpose and
Speaker 2: meaning in what we do. If a lot of what
Speaker 2: we do is replicated tirelessly by a system, I don't
Speaker 2: really know what that does to us psychologically. So it's
Speaker 2: so I think it's it's it's it's And again you
Speaker 2: could argue, well, maybe I only I am worrying about it
Speaker 2: now because you know, I'm a writer, and I feel
Speaker 2: like that's under three. And again I can see the
Speaker 2: value in it as a like you say, as a tool.
Speaker 2: I can see the value in as a tool. You know,
Speaker 2: we don't take an artist. We don't think we teach,
Speaker 2: we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't teach spelling anymore, you know. And I was
Speaker 1: like spelling test. I was, I loved and I was
Speaker 1: obsessed as a kid. I'm in my fifties now. Of
Speaker 1: course spell check happened probably after college, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, now we don't care about you can't
Speaker 1: miss spell words anymore because of autocorrect, like people, and
Speaker 1: so I don't know what to make of that, but
Speaker 1: that is something now longer is relevant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, is not an American thing because that in Britain.
Speaker 2: My kids, my kids, I remember them, they talked so
Speaker 2: much about spelling and like phrases. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: that like. They come home and go, I've got to
Speaker 2: do this work about try grass again.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks a British are smarter than we are. There
Speaker 1: you go, guys are still being todd spelling.
Speaker 2: I don't know that we are. I think we're probably
Speaker 2: not being taught all all sorts of other things from
Speaker 2: British history or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you get my boy, like spelling is no longer.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a time right if you weren't
Speaker 1: a good speller, you were uncomfortable even writing a letter
Speaker 1: you would get you know, you would worry that it
Speaker 1: would create a judgment of you, and and people would, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not a good speller, you're not educated. And now
Speaker 1: you know, we got the tools. You don't worry about it, right,
Speaker 1: And is that a have we taken away something from society?
Speaker 1: And again seems like a.
Speaker 2: No no, because you're probably it means that you can
Speaker 2: you're not. There'll be people who were held back by
Speaker 2: the fact that they were dyslexic, or they were just
Speaker 2: weren't good at one thing and they were excelled at
Speaker 2: something else. And now it levels the playing field a
Speaker 2: little more. So that's a good thing. But again, I
Speaker 2: think the problem is that we we're sort of trained,
Speaker 2: were naturally sort of analyze everything and think is this
Speaker 2: good or bad? And the answer is it's kind of both,
Speaker 2: isn't it?
Speaker 1: So it's so again, hands right, it turns out it's neutral. Right,
Speaker 1: what we don't think of it now? All technology is neutral.
Speaker 1: It's the humans that use it. Are they using using.
Speaker 2: It's a powerful, very useful tool. It can also be.
Speaker 1: Terrifying of death or a name in life.
Speaker 2: I mean we could list you could you can list
Speaker 2: every tool in the tools in that wheelhouse and the
Speaker 2: wheel you know, someone can drive around their house and
Speaker 2: pick the door in so so it is it's just
Speaker 2: that it's the pace of it, The dizzying speed with
Speaker 2: which these things are coming along, I think is the
Speaker 2: thing that makes people rightly anxious. But it's also it
Speaker 2: is exciting, but it's also terrifying.
Speaker 1: I'd say another theme. Let me ask you about another
Speaker 1: theme that does seem to come through consumer You know,
Speaker 1: consumerism is something you seem to enjoy. Is that more
Speaker 1: of a of a comedic element to you or.
Speaker 2: It's often a darkly committed because one of the I
Speaker 2: think I mentioned the Twilight Zone, I mentioned sort of
Speaker 2: weird British TV shows, and I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that and I've realized recently how much it influenced
Speaker 2: blackmir RoboCop thee eighty eighty seven. Was it like RoboCop
Speaker 2: the original?
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad you about that is a weirdly
Speaker 1: brilliant movie. People simpully appreciate it. It's a brilliant brilliant
Speaker 1: movie ahead of.
Speaker 2: Its time, way ahead of its time. It's a brilliant
Speaker 2: comedy as well. It's like a really dark comedy in
Speaker 2: a way that when I loved it, when I was
Speaker 2: like a teenager, I saw it and wore the VHS
Speaker 2: out watching it over and over again. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of the actually a lot of the comedy
Speaker 2: sailed over my head. But what I really be sort
Speaker 2: of the dystopian commodification of everything that was going on,
Speaker 2: and that was excellently done. I have to say. As
Speaker 2: a brit it was fairly, very heavily influenced by Judge Dread,
Speaker 2: which was Aish British.
Speaker 1: Coblis, which what do you mean? And they made into
Speaker 1: a movie a couple years later because of the robotcarp.
Speaker 2: Yes, so so. But but but the there's there's always
Speaker 2: been something I think at heart and again this isn't
Speaker 2: I don't. This is not what I sit down thinking
Speaker 2: when coming up with a Black Mirror story. I don't
Speaker 2: think this is what I want to write about it.
Speaker 2: Actually it's looking back, you go, Oh, that's what it's about.
Speaker 2: Almost every episode is about what's real and authentic in
Speaker 2: some way. You could argue almost every episode we do ultimately,
Speaker 2: that's it. Whether it's a story where it's people passed
Speaker 2: into a sort of VR simulation of something, or it's
Speaker 2: you know, a character who is suddenly having to spout
Speaker 2: sales pictures in their every day life. It's it's kind
Speaker 2: of always about what's authentic, and that's something that's kind
Speaker 2: of under assault all the time.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I think one of the other brilliant things
Speaker 1: you do is here you're dealing with a bunch of
Speaker 1: feu futuristic ideas, but the setting always feels right now right.
Speaker 1: You don't. You're always I feel like you're basically saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit in the future, but it's
Speaker 1: very but we're going to make sure everything else is
Speaker 1: as familiar as possible. So you have the beaten up
Speaker 1: Volvo right in episode one, and things in some ways
Speaker 1: things were the same, you know, the open place you
Speaker 1: go get a crappy burger and things like this, But
Speaker 1: then you have these little grace notes like the honeybees,
Speaker 1: which I know is a theme, and a few other things.
Speaker 1: It seemed very intentional. This is a seasonal you've always
Speaker 1: wanted to keep. You don't ever put people. You don't
Speaker 1: try to create futuristic landscapes. I've noticed, No, we don't.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's because again, it's usually even when we've
Speaker 2: done we've done stories where there's a hugely you know,
Speaker 2: we're taking huge liberties with what is. You know, we're
Speaker 2: showing things that probably will never quite be possible, showing
Speaker 2: people kind of uploading their stoles or you know. But
Speaker 2: but you kind of always want to keep one foot
Speaker 2: on the ground. I think that's just my personal taste
Speaker 2: is more the RoboCop end of sci fi than it
Speaker 2: is the Star Wars end of sci fi, which is
Speaker 2: more space opera in a far flung future, and it's
Speaker 2: it's more like it more into fantasy. So I'm more
Speaker 2: sort of that kind of, oh, this could happen at
Speaker 2: the end of my street if things go badly wrong.
Speaker 2: I tend to respond more to that, I think as
Speaker 2: a viewer, and so that's probably why that's where we
Speaker 2: probably operate most strongly.
Speaker 1: Do you do you take a Do you try to
Speaker 1: meet with innovators in in in Silicon Valley and tech
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs to try to find out what's coming in heaving?
Speaker 1: Or are you is? Are you just sort of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it's possible, we'll start replacing the pieces of
Speaker 1: the brain and this is probably how we how we'll
Speaker 1: be able to stop you know, geoblastoma or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I'll pack it out and be able to replace this.
Speaker 1: Is that just you guessing or do you just meek
Speaker 1: to experts that give you well, this could be what
Speaker 1: we do.
Speaker 2: It's predominantly me guessing. Basically, it's me guessing or extrapolating,
Speaker 2: or usually you just you're not even thinking of technology
Speaker 2: when you start thinking about it, you know, you're thinking
Speaker 2: of something else, and then you realize that you can
Speaker 2: use you can give It would almost be a supernatural story,
Speaker 2: except you can give it a sort of technological explanation.
Speaker 2: We did an episode last season. We did an episode
Speaker 2: called Joanie's Awful where it's a woman called Joan play
Speaker 2: by Annie Murphy, switches on the TV and season of
Speaker 2: the streaming platform that's showing a drama, a dramatization of
Speaker 2: her life starring Salma Hayak, And that's a very Twilight
Speaker 2: Zone story in many ways. In the Twilight Zone it
Speaker 2: would have been like magic, or it would have been
Speaker 2: the uncanny. We can sort of say, it's AI deep
Speaker 2: fake videos, it's that, So you're sort of coming at
Speaker 2: it from that angle. I probably should go and speak
Speaker 2: to more sort of tech because sometimes there's things like
Speaker 2: sometimes there's things where I've put it in the episode,
Speaker 2: thinking I'm being very clever here, and then you realize
Speaker 2: that it's actually like the honey bees. We did an
Speaker 2: episode in season three called Hated in the Nation, which
Speaker 2: is where we first have these grown autonomous drone miniature
Speaker 2: honey bees that were going around replaced because I'd read
Speaker 2: something about honeybees dying out and colony collapse and then
Speaker 2: and then I thought, oh, well, what if you had
Speaker 2: little miniature drone ones that could fly around and pollinate flowers?
Speaker 2: And I thought I was being very clever and then
Speaker 2: discovered that I think that experiment had been running for.
Speaker 1: I would just say, are there stuff that you've done?
Speaker 1: You're like, oh wow, I didn't you know that. You
Speaker 1: just either that or you foreshadowed something.
Speaker 2: But well, the most unusual one, there's definitely okay. So
Speaker 2: we did. There's an episode we did back in season
Speaker 2: two called be Right Back, where it's Hailey Atwell and
Speaker 2: Donald Gleason and and Hailey plays this woman called Martha
Speaker 2: whose husband dies in an accident. This is it's almost
Speaker 2: it's almost a companion piece to common people this season.
Speaker 2: And anyway she is off the day she's missing him,
Speaker 2: she's discovers she's pregnant. She's desperate to just be able
Speaker 2: to if only he knew this, only she could talk
Speaker 2: to him. She's offered this service which allows her to
Speaker 2: communicate with him from and it's an AI that's based
Speaker 2: on his social media output. I didn't realize at the
Speaker 2: time that that was It felt to me like something
Speaker 2: that would become possible. I didn't realize how closely that
Speaker 2: mimics what.
Speaker 1: Logic and that's you know, oh, not only that, I
Speaker 1: happen to be very involved in various ways to how
Speaker 1: do we educate people about the Holocaust and things like that,
Speaker 1: And there's a take there. What they're going to do
Speaker 1: is they've taken all of these historical oral histories and
Speaker 1: Holocaust survivors have done and they're essentially going to generate
Speaker 1: even though they've passed on, they're still going to tell
Speaker 1: you their story and then you're going to be able
Speaker 1: to interact with them and have a conversation literally speak
Speaker 1: and respond, and it's going to be a large where
Speaker 1: you have a back and forth with a Holocaust survivor,
Speaker 1: you ask questions and the AI based on I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those At first you think it's dystopient,
Speaker 1: but you know what, that's an interesting you know, are
Speaker 1: we going to well Albert Einstein, Well, forget Albert Einstein,
Speaker 1: how about this because this is probably more recent because
Speaker 1: there's well, Steve Jobs teach a computer science class AI
Speaker 1: Steve teacher, computer science class in twenty thirty five.
Speaker 2: That's difficult, isn't it? Because what you're describing that, that's what,
Speaker 2: that's the that's the that sounds like the high tech
Speaker 2: equivalent of it's almost saying. It's like when you you know,
Speaker 2: you could read the diaries of Samuel Peeps in the
Speaker 2: sort of whatever century and you get and suddenly that
Speaker 2: period of history becomes alive and you feel because you're
Speaker 2: hearing somebody's and then.
Speaker 1: What you think his voice might have looked like, and
Speaker 1: you have his image and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there you go.
Speaker 2: I can see that that he's recounting what happened to him.
Speaker 2: If you're talking about rebuilt like Steve jobs. Would you
Speaker 2: would would he have left enough information behind for you
Speaker 2: to get his how he would innovate ideas and how
Speaker 2: he would create things. I don't know God really thought
Speaker 2: about the educational uses uh of that as a platform.
Speaker 1: But it's quite mean, I guess I look at the
Speaker 1: Holocaust survivors telling their story to children who can ask questions.
Speaker 1: That feels like, Okay, that's a good thing. You could
Speaker 1: see that tool, you know where does you know?
Speaker 2: Where?
Speaker 1: Where do you say okay, that's where we use it
Speaker 1: and that's it right? Like or where does that become weird? Right?
Speaker 1: Where does especially if you actually know that person, if
Speaker 1: that's your grandmother, are you having a different reaction?
Speaker 2: How do how does it work in terms of like
Speaker 2: if somebody how does it? What's the parameters for the conversation?
Speaker 2: What happens if somebody is just sort of talking about it?
Speaker 2: If for advice in your own life? And then because
Speaker 2: what you see very quickly when the people talk to
Speaker 2: like you know, chat mots effectively, is they get attached
Speaker 2: very quickly. You mean they can become confident very quickly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we wonder why why these By the way,
Speaker 1: we wonder why these Nigerian princes are so successful at
Speaker 1: getting money out of people, right, I mean it is
Speaker 1: it is amazing. We human beings are oddly trusting ah
Speaker 1: in isolated settings.
Speaker 2: But isn't that a good thing that we trust? Isn't
Speaker 2: that nice? Amound us?
Speaker 1: Isn't ye a take advantage of ye?
Speaker 2: Well, it's the it's that you don't want to become
Speaker 2: Why am I saying? You don't want to become too cynical?
Speaker 2: But it's not so so I can Again, it's it's
Speaker 2: interesting that you can. That's interesting. That's not that's the
Speaker 2: use I haven't really thought about. But it's bringing history alive,
Speaker 2: bringing history live and bringing and making it personal in
Speaker 2: a way that that feels to me like that's yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's interesting. But again, how do there's so many
Speaker 2: things to navigate there and so many ways that could
Speaker 2: kind of vary into places you didn't anticipate. That's that's
Speaker 2: the sort of you see. That's this is why tech
Speaker 2: companies I think, like what you were saying. Sometimes when
Speaker 2: occasionally when I've like spoken at sort of events where
Speaker 2: there's a bit like my advice whenever I'm asked or
Speaker 2: what should tech companies do? I think employ comedy writers.
Speaker 2: It's my advice. Employ neurotic comedy writers who are going
Speaker 2: to horror writers or just dramatic writers. Employ them to
Speaker 2: sit in a room and work out the worst way
Speaker 2: what are.
Speaker 1: The worst ways that people?
Speaker 2: What was the worst that could happen? Because I think
Speaker 2: often people who people who just people who innovate in
Speaker 2: a different way, they probably have to blank that out
Speaker 2: when they're like on. Some inventors probably have to not
Speaker 2: think about that too.
Speaker 1: I think in order to push forward right the good,
Speaker 1: I always worry about this with Silicon Valley. I think
Speaker 1: right now there is a movement in Silicon Valley where
Speaker 1: they think we humans are standing in the way of
Speaker 1: their progress, right right where we as human beings simply
Speaker 1: you know, if we just get out of the way, right,
Speaker 1: democracy awkward.
Speaker 2: Breaks on the wonderful digital utopia that they will lusher in.
Speaker 2: If we could just shut up and lie down right,
Speaker 2: let the computery steam roller just plow all over us.
Speaker 2: That's the losing side of what the point of it
Speaker 2: all is, isn't it correct?
Speaker 1: Most of it makes us our lives better rather than
Speaker 1: essentially replacing us. But let me get one more thing,
Speaker 1: let me get you out of here. We brought back
Speaker 1: the dire Wolf, and I'll be honest with you, and
Speaker 1: that I feel like that story came out just when
Speaker 1: your season hit and there was a minute I'm like,
Speaker 1: are we making this up? Is this like sometimes like
Speaker 1: where we're headed with our abilities here and it's like, granted,
Speaker 1: this is Jurassic Park, right, this is Michael Crichton. Michael
Speaker 1: Crichton was thinking about this stuff, who I also think,
Speaker 1: weirdly is sort of underappreciated in his sort of ability
Speaker 1: to sort of see some dystopian things down there.
Speaker 2: Again, it's really yes, it's really great speculative like do
Speaker 2: me like just some great sort of yeah and tied
Speaker 2: to really actually stories.
Speaker 1: But here we are with the dire warmf and you're
Speaker 1: just said there going, yeah, there's not going to be
Speaker 1: an unintended consequence to this.
Speaker 2: Geesus. I do, I think so, But it's it's you
Speaker 2: can't again. It's like I am not a Lowe. I
Speaker 2: can't embrace the I'm not the like I said, I'm
Speaker 2: probably in a worried centrist when it comes to the
Speaker 2: tech in the future, and that I am an admirer
Speaker 2: of technology, I'm a I appreciate it, I'm awestruck by it.
Speaker 2: I like it, I stear it, and I fear the
Speaker 2: consequences of us clumsily misusing it. But that's not a
Speaker 2: reason to not It's it's just really and the problem
Speaker 2: is we are we're living in it again. It's we're
Speaker 2: living through if the printing press cause all sorts of ruptures,
Speaker 2: we're living through a sort of accelerated process of that.
Speaker 2: But again, it will feel normal, is it like it's felt?
Speaker 2: How long would you say things have felt dizzyingly futuristic?
Speaker 1: On other lines, on your age, I think we're in
Speaker 1: addle age, and I think when you're yes, I would
Speaker 1: say middle age is weirdly peak wisdom, both good and bad.
Speaker 1: Right you sort of you've learned enough life lessons to
Speaker 1: know what you shouldn't be doing. But you're not yet.
Speaker 1: You haven't lost it, like you know, at some point
Speaker 1: I always want to know what age it is. Is
Speaker 1: it's seventy two? Is it seventy where you start to
Speaker 1: you no longer are sort of grounded, right, You're.
Speaker 2: Lost that you've lost that you're not have you not?
Speaker 2: Haven't got the benefit of findsight and well you haven't
Speaker 2: got the benefit of wisdom. You're you're just you're just
Speaker 2: sort of setting your ways up and.
Speaker 1: And you because you know you're you're I know you're
Speaker 1: If you were an animal, you'd already be put up
Speaker 1: to pasture. I think that's what happens, right, That's something,
Speaker 1: it's something there you get.
Speaker 2: There's a day you wake up one day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like you right, like you know, because you
Speaker 1: know it's.
Speaker 2: Like mirror con sense, you're outlining here, it's one day,
Speaker 2: it's like you you get. But if you actually know
Speaker 2: what day you.
Speaker 1: But if you know the day, like I always say,
Speaker 1: at what point am I going to want to go
Speaker 1: to the airport four hours in advance? Like my mother
Speaker 1: never was that person and then suddenly she's she's listening. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Mom, I love you, but you always want
Speaker 1: to be at the airport way too long. Why you
Speaker 1: want to sit there so long? But I assume when
Speaker 1: I'm seventy or so, I'm going to be worried about
Speaker 1: that too.
Speaker 2: I you know what, I've always been. I am that person,
Speaker 2: and I've always been that. I'm the person who has
Speaker 2: to get to the airport really really early.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm like, I'm afraid of having any downtime at
Speaker 1: the airport. I think I'm wasting time.
Speaker 2: No you're not, No, because no, because well, I think
Speaker 2: it's because I used to be a really nervous flyer
Speaker 2: and it was the one to me. So I think
Speaker 2: it's that it's a control.
Speaker 1: The acclimator. You needed to get acclimated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one, I wanted to, yes, exactly, so I needed
Speaker 2: to feel like it wasn't suddenly sprung on me that
Speaker 2: I had to run and catch a plane. But no,
Speaker 2: So I again, I think that it's things. It feels
Speaker 2: like they're sort of Disney and pace of change, and
Speaker 2: that's incredibly destabilizing that I have no idea how it's
Speaker 2: going to pan out. But yes, my kids, I've got
Speaker 2: a thirteen year old and an eleven year old, both boys,
Speaker 2: and they it's all normal to all of this in
Speaker 2: their stride. Yeah, they totally like.
Speaker 1: Minor eighteen and twenty one, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: all very normal. And I look at some of this stuff, going, boy,
Speaker 1: this is abnormal. But they don't know my normal. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't know this stuff. You know, they didn't know
Speaker 1: the fax machine. You know whatever it is, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: So they'll be much better at you hope. Well, those
Speaker 2: are the things so obviously, because the next is that
Speaker 2: the next thing, apart from AI coming to take all
Speaker 2: odd jobs or make a super bad like, is you know,
Speaker 2: a sort of huge wave of sort of misinformation in
Speaker 2: video just dividing us even more than we are already
Speaker 2: where there's already competing versions of reality and those are
Speaker 2: both now going to have twenty four hour visuals to
Speaker 2: go with them. That would you blame places?
Speaker 1: Who's who that actor here? Is it political? Is it
Speaker 1: political leaders? Or textieos? Like? Who's who's to blame for
Speaker 1: this moment we're living in where it's been exploited like
Speaker 1: this the exploiters or the ones that make the tool
Speaker 1: for the exploitation.
Speaker 2: Is it all right to blame everyone? Or bug?
Speaker 1: I think it is?
Speaker 2: I think it's it's not, because again it wouldn't it's
Speaker 2: it's But again, will that mean that the next generation?
Speaker 2: Will it mean just that? What happens when? Because at
Speaker 2: the same time, also you're seeing videos where you know,
Speaker 2: someone could you could see a video where somebody turned
Speaker 2: into as to get your maples sort of thing, So
Speaker 2: you know that things can be like it can be
Speaker 2: surreal and strange but completely photographically convincing. But you know
Speaker 2: it couldn't have so. Well, the next generation just learned
Speaker 2: to not trust anything at all.
Speaker 1: Well, that's my great fear, is that everybody's going to
Speaker 1: turn it. You know, if you ever talk to a
Speaker 1: Russian in Moscow, they'll say, I don't know what to believe.
Speaker 1: People that live in Moscow don't believe anything, right, because
Speaker 1: they've been so and in some ways they know this
Speaker 1: though they're educated to know enough to know, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't trust anything I read. So I
Speaker 1: get that, and I worry a I don't know. And
Speaker 1: my great fear of AI is that we can actually
Speaker 1: erase history. Now you know, there was there was supposedly
Speaker 1: a bunch of Russian propagandas who were trying to infiltrate
Speaker 1: these chatbots to sort of uh uh replace Ukrainian to
Speaker 1: try to essentially alter the history of Russia's relationship with
Speaker 1: Ukraine in history, and then you create it over time.
Speaker 1: You know, if you right, is it right? Is it right?
Speaker 1: You can actually erase historical events, right, And it's whether
Speaker 1: that you know, that's the Holocaust whether that's something something
Speaker 1: else that that that distill. Yeah, that's terrifying.
Speaker 2: That's terrifying. And I don't know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: that isn't I hate to say lightly, but I don't
Speaker 2: know how that.
Speaker 1: Well, if you have the Chinese government controls information, so
Speaker 1: you know there, you know, there's no Tanum and Square,
Speaker 1: there's no history of what happened to Tianam and Square.
Speaker 1: If you live in China, well, and there's already a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people who believe we're already there and then everything
Speaker 2: is a lie and then every like so so yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't uh no, that worries me. If there's no
Speaker 2: consensus on what is real or has been real, how
Speaker 2: do we cope with giant cinmate problems that are going
Speaker 2: to them all the way? How do we cope with
Speaker 2: when there's a big when a big problem. You know, I'm,
Speaker 2: like I said, I'm an anxious sort of I could
Speaker 2: be an anxious apocalyptic warrior. When the pandemic happened, I
Speaker 2: was sort of comparatively calm because I thought we were
Speaker 2: handling it quite well well.
Speaker 1: Like I thank you for saying that. I think that too.
Speaker 1: I know we all look back and there was lots
Speaker 1: of COVID. It wasn't it wasn't like it was a laugh,
Speaker 1: but it was. Yeah, but the globe, I mean, here's this,
Speaker 1: here's this event that all nine billion people on this
Speaker 1: planet experienced together. And that's something that's unusual if you
Speaker 1: think about where we all, you know, everybody had had
Speaker 1: experienced this in some way, whether you live in a
Speaker 1: very uh in a very sort of uh frankly urban life,
Speaker 1: rural life, reclusive life, it didn't matter, right, everybody had
Speaker 1: to deal with this.
Speaker 2: Well, we may we all had a reclusive life, right
Speaker 2: we you.
Speaker 1: Know, we proved it could have been total breakdown of
Speaker 1: society and we didn't have that, and exact we should
Speaker 1: be happy with ourselves for that.
Speaker 2: It was. It was that side of things, was that
Speaker 2: we were we were all worried and we all you know,
Speaker 2: you generally speaking, people were it felt looking out for
Speaker 2: each other. You had the young staying indoors to protect
Speaker 2: the elderly. You had sort of you know, you had
Speaker 2: actually more.
Speaker 1: And there was some creaky thus all about it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: but they didn't like take matters into their own hands.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, we had bad arguments and stuff, but
Speaker 1: within a civilized guardrail.
Speaker 2: There's more arguments about it now, it's it's it's but
Speaker 2: it's it's, it's it's.
Speaker 1: So in a way, you're right, it's hopeful that it
Speaker 1: was a hopeful response.
Speaker 2: In a way, it was sort of like it wasn't
Speaker 2: that it wasn't you know what I mean, We we
Speaker 2: we So you sort of hope that we when faced
Speaker 2: because we are result Again, I'm not the voice of optimism,
Speaker 2: but you know, we are pretty incredible creatures. We do.
Speaker 1: I think we're so resilient, were good, and so so you.
Speaker 2: So we're just going to have to navigate that wild
Speaker 2: and so so how we I don't know how we counter,
Speaker 2: how we counter a sort of cynical destruction of all
Speaker 2: sort of consensus on what reality is. I don't I
Speaker 2: don't know. You sort of have to hope that we
Speaker 2: won't just end up tearing each other's flesh and fighting
Speaker 2: in the streets sort of thing. You have to hope
Speaker 2: that And again, we did we didn't do we could
Speaker 2: have done. The pandemic could have been a get load
Speaker 2: worse than we could have behaved in a much more
Speaker 2: venal way.
Speaker 1: Charlie, I have to say, I'm so happy you have
Speaker 1: this uptim stick streaking you. I was worried or I
Speaker 1: just got.
Speaker 2: To no, I think we don't get me wrong. I like,
Speaker 2: I can absolutely have total moments of complete and utter
Speaker 2: staring into the abyss sort of two and wait awake
Speaker 2: at four am, you know, the sort of carnival of
Speaker 2: horrible thoughts going through your head, and you worry desperately
Speaker 2: about your children, and you worry desperately about the future
Speaker 2: and where are things going. So I can absolutely do
Speaker 2: all of that. And and oddly the more of us
Speaker 2: who are worried, the better.
Speaker 1: I agree. That was agree.
Speaker 2: I think. I think that was the thing with the
Speaker 2: pandemic that really struck me was I was. I was.
Speaker 2: I'm one of these people who as soon as the
Speaker 2: first reports I remember I was on holiday over Christmas
Speaker 2: when that happened. There were reports of like the system, there's.
Speaker 1: There's something going around, something.
Speaker 2: On as a virus, something respiratory illness in China and
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And I thought, that's going to come in,
Speaker 2: that's going to sweep. That's good, We're going to get there.
Speaker 2: I don't like the look at that, and I was
Speaker 2: really worried about it. At the point when everyone was
Speaker 2: worried about it, I can kind of the dread in
Speaker 2: me drops a little, because there's nothing more scary than
Speaker 2: thinking everyone else is being blather and complacent about something
Speaker 2: that's worrying you. It's the wasp, but the picnic that
Speaker 2: no one else is. I'm the one who can't relax.
Speaker 2: If there's one wasp of the picnic, and if everyone's
Speaker 2: worried about the wasp, you move the bloody picnic blanket
Speaker 2: somewhere else, or or or someone catches it in a glass,
Speaker 2: And so you kind of have to hope that its
Speaker 2: survival instinct will realize that we need more of us,
Speaker 2: really as many of us as possible to survive, and
Speaker 2: that I don't know, don't I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Are you Are you going to say? Is this is
Speaker 1: this ever stop in your head? Do you think you'll always.
Speaker 2: Be the show or the I would I'd like to
Speaker 2: think it's something that can keep going, can keep morphing,
Speaker 2: can keep We've done we keep you know, I keep changing.
Speaker 2: I keep doing different types of episodes. We've done a
Speaker 2: sequel for the first time, we've done an interactive one.
Speaker 2: A few years ago. You can do a feature length
Speaker 2: ones and short ones. So I kind of think it's
Speaker 2: something that can be oddly, that can be very reactive
Speaker 2: to what's going on. It's hopefully it's a weird It's
Speaker 2: like I said, it's a very odd show to do.
Speaker 2: I'm aware that also. It's a bit like being in
Speaker 2: a band where we did a load of punk singles
Speaker 2: early on, and so you get some sort of fans
Speaker 2: who just want you to do punk singles, but we
Speaker 2: also did some that are a bit more like big
Speaker 2: love ballads or something that we're also really popular, and
Speaker 2: so now you're kind of trying to so I have
Speaker 2: to not I think my mental trick is to not
Speaker 2: think too much about what fans of the show expect
Speaker 2: and just write and write one.
Speaker 1: That audience audience capture. Right, you have to be worried
Speaker 1: that you're worried that are you making something to please
Speaker 1: the audience versus or you making something to advalance your mind,
Speaker 1: your thought.
Speaker 2: We have we have because we because it's we don't
Speaker 2: tend to have the same characters from episode to episode.
Speaker 2: We have less of that and that people don't like.
Speaker 2: Usually our characters are absolutely broken by the time the
Speaker 2: credits roll, so people don't quite it's a different dynamic,
Speaker 2: I guess from on a big you know, like Game
Speaker 2: of Thrones or or you know, like some huge show.
Speaker 1: So it just sounds like you'll always have an ambition
Speaker 1: to keep this going, and they'll always be and certainly.
Speaker 2: As long as people well, as long as that I
Speaker 2: can keep coming up with ideas and people keep wanting
Speaker 2: to look at them, and as long as I don't
Speaker 2: get out competed by some AI, as long as they're
Speaker 2: not just staring into some folographic box in a few years,
Speaker 2: like just shouting and it's just staring at them and
Speaker 2: looking at their facial expression and thinking, here's an image
Speaker 2: you'll like to see for the next two seconds. And
Speaker 2: they're just sort of seeing some kind of constant, deep fake,
Speaker 2: three dimensional TikTok that's being blasted at them, which is
Speaker 2: probably ninety five percent certain to happen. As long as.
Speaker 1: I'm worried, you're just created. I'm worried somebody is going
Speaker 1: to start dumb dumbs really soon. I mean, in some ways,
Speaker 1: only fans is kind of like that.
Speaker 2: Again, we did this thing. We did this thing, yeah,
Speaker 2: in the in the Common People episode, like Chris O'Dowd's
Speaker 2: character Mike has to pay He just to try and
Speaker 2: pay for the subscription by kind of debasing himself on
Speaker 2: this online platform. Within Again, I didn't realize that there
Speaker 2: was as soon as the episode came out at a
Speaker 2: bunch of people went, oh, that's this. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 2: remember what it was called. That's this thing where people
Speaker 2: were doing that for sort of bitcoin or something. And
Speaker 2: so nothing new under the sun.
Speaker 1: There's no new ideas. There's just better packaged ones. Right.
Speaker 2: That's very cynical but probably accurate.
Speaker 1: That's that's what chat TPT will eventually tease it. Hey,
Speaker 1: without the pandemic, we don't specialize in doing these credible
Speaker 1: zoom telecast now oh yeah, half of what it is
Speaker 1: right like, we will look back at this moment it
Speaker 1: actually created.
Speaker 2: It was a moonshot. Yes, it was like a moonshot,
Speaker 2: but it was like having to come up with ballpoint pains.
Speaker 1: And everybody had a come up.
Speaker 2: They astaurants need to be right in space. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and it made Yeah, it made all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: It was a big but also I don't think we
Speaker 2: still unpacked actually psychologically what it did to us all, oh.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I you know when we see we're seeing
Speaker 1: in schools with kids. I mean, look, there's no one
Speaker 1: saying we're saying it was great. No, no, I don't
Speaker 1: you know. I know there was bad, but it was
Speaker 1: sort of like, hey, the more important thing is we
Speaker 1: adapt it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We adapted, we survived, and we ought to at least
Speaker 1: not sell ourselves short on that.
Speaker 2: No, we're a bit better than again. It's like the
Speaker 2: thing that struck me it was how the number of
Speaker 2: times you'd see it. And I've written a zombie movie
Speaker 2: where it's like, you know, within society collapses within twenty
Speaker 2: minutes of this sort of calarity, and that isn't what happened,
Speaker 2: like in that in the pandemic scenario, that isn't what happened.
Speaker 2: We were out in Britain, we were out banging saucepans
Speaker 2: every Thursday in support of the NHS, although I did
Speaker 2: read somebody was saying I think that was actually us
Speaker 2: banging the saucepans to sort of let other people know
Speaker 2: we were still there, which made me quite sad what
Speaker 2: I read that it was probably a more accurate read.
Speaker 1: Charlie, I will have You've been very generous with your time.
Speaker 1: Black Mirror is just a you know, it's I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any aid could have come up with. This
Speaker 1: is a reminder that it takes, yes, it takes a
Speaker 1: creative brain to come up with ideas.
Speaker 2: I hope, So, I hope we'll always want messy humans
Speaker 2: in our yes creative soup. I know if that analogy
Speaker 2: makes sense, but that's what I've said.
Speaker 1: Well, it's brilliant and you mean to Whether you mean
Speaker 1: to have us think in dystopian ways or not, the
Speaker 1: point is you make everybody think, and that's awesome. That matters.
Speaker 1: That's all to me. That matters. You're making us think.
Speaker 2: Good. Thank you very much, Thank you sir. That's very kind.
Speaker 1: Well there you go. We got to end on an
Speaker 1: upbeat note. Little hope in an anas all right, thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you, a pleasure, great to talk with you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Trouble So. I told you you'd enjoy that interview with
Speaker 1: Charlie Brooker. He is fascinating. That mind is racing. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you had RoboCop and twilight Zone.
Speaker 1: I'm sure many of you assumed twilight Zone and rob
Speaker 1: Serling Rod Sterling was Serling was one of his one
Speaker 1: of his inspirations. But you bet you didn't see RoboCop coming,
Speaker 1: And the minute he said it, I knew exactly what
Speaker 1: he meant. Go check it out. The first RoboCop was
Speaker 1: was sort of more innovative than I think people gave
Speaker 1: it credit for at the time. So anyway, it was
Speaker 1: just I learned a lot, and frankly, it only makes
Speaker 1: me enjoy the show even more. I hope you got
Speaker 1: a lot out of it too. All right, let's do
Speaker 1: a little last Chuck as Chuck. All right, here's my
Speaker 1: first question. This one comes from Chaz Latore and he
Speaker 1: writes this, You advocate news in every small town community.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, But if news was generated locally, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: just turned into an echo chamber for the local community.
Speaker 1: For example, I come from a very left leaning town
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. Wouldn't their news cast just be an echo
Speaker 1: chamber where the word Trump would never even make it
Speaker 1: to a news broadcast. It seems like it would just
Speaker 1: be a lot of local Fox news channels that echo
Speaker 1: what the local community wants to hear. I would think
Speaker 1: a broader national broadcast would be more balanced. What am
Speaker 1: I missing here? Well, there is no broad cast balance
Speaker 1: right as we know. If you're looking for national news,
Speaker 1: you're going to go and you're looking for news, you're
Speaker 1: going to go where you have a where you share
Speaker 1: some intellectual whether it's some intellectual agreement. What I'm advocating
Speaker 1: is not local versions of Fox or MSNBC. That is
Speaker 1: not what I'm advocating. What I'm advocating is that we
Speaker 1: basically need a different you know, what local news was
Speaker 1: at its best, and I understand that some people probably
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's been twenty five years since we've
Speaker 1: had a healthy local news ecosystem. Arguably, so some of
Speaker 1: you may not have been around or didn't fully appreciate it.
Speaker 1: But what I would say is we need more service journalism,
Speaker 1: and local journalism was more in service of the community
Speaker 1: than national journalism. National journalism is about essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: helping you be a citizen, your civics, but local journalism
Speaker 1: at its best is about helping you live your life.
Speaker 1: And that's what I mean. What we need is revitalize
Speaker 1: community journalism that is focused more on helping you live
Speaker 1: your life, focused on how to save you money at
Speaker 1: the grocery store, how to save you money at very
Speaker 1: you know, uh, to take your kids out to eat,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's a better night of the week.
Speaker 1: It's it's being essentially almost like a community liaison. My
Speaker 1: vision for these small town and all of these community
Speaker 1: information systems is that you become the information helped ask
Speaker 1: for your community. And that could mean helping people find
Speaker 1: out when the high school game, when the high school
Speaker 1: lacrosse game starts this afternoon, helping people where to find it.
Speaker 1: I think all I want these places to be the
Speaker 1: streaming home for all of youth sports and in high
Speaker 1: school sports. This is what I believe can be the
Speaker 1: glue to bring a community together. I also see sports
Speaker 1: as a way that you can sort of cut through
Speaker 1: red and blue because most you know, a pothole isn't
Speaker 1: Republican or Democrat. It's a pothole, you know. So that's
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm that's my belief here. That's what
Speaker 1: I know people tell me that they want whenever you ask,
Speaker 1: this is what people feel like is missing. So I
Speaker 1: am a believer a little bit in the field of
Speaker 1: dreams here. If we build it, they will come. But
Speaker 1: it needs to be Journalism that is focused on helping
Speaker 1: people live their life and as always say where's the
Speaker 1: cheap food? Give me some micro forecasting for my community
Speaker 1: versus the one right next door when it comes to
Speaker 1: the weather, access to all the important youth and local
Speaker 1: sports that I that I care about, and oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, who's corrupted my city council? And so. But
Speaker 1: it's actually that part is the end part of things, right.
Speaker 1: You know, people who want to be informed are always
Speaker 1: going to get informed. It's about everybody else in the community.
Speaker 1: Those are folks that are just trying to get by,
Speaker 1: get live their life. Either they're not news junkies, or
Speaker 1: they've got other things in their life that take priority,
Speaker 1: like making a living, educating their kids, et cetera. How
Speaker 1: about coverage for that? Right, that's the missing piece of
Speaker 1: this is that it's not about creating more local political news,
Speaker 1: although I hope we get that too, but I'm starting
Speaker 1: in the places where I know there's collective agreement and
Speaker 1: when I know there's collective need. Jack, I appreciate the
Speaker 1: question and love the skepticism because it gave me a
Speaker 1: chance to push back. This comes from Josh in Ohio
Speaker 1: and Josh Wrights You've talked a lot about the possibility
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party splitting between more traditional Republicans and
Speaker 1: mega Republicans. If that were to happen, who would be
Speaker 1: in the traditional wing? It seems like MAGA is completely
Speaker 1: taken over the party, So name some names. Look, I
Speaker 1: think MAGA has taken over the sort of the organizational
Speaker 1: structure of the party, There's no doubt about it. But
Speaker 1: I mean, look, the people that are an elective office
Speaker 1: who are clearly not MAGA Republicans but essentially are trying
Speaker 1: to be MAGA adjacent, right, And I think many of
Speaker 1: the MAGA adjacent folks would prefer to be in the
Speaker 1: pre Donald Trump party, people like Tom Cotton. That's people
Speaker 1: like Tom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski for sure, right, Romney,
Speaker 1: Chris Sununu. So I think it, you know, to me,
Speaker 1: you you know, I might even say Lindsay Graham, you know,
Speaker 1: although I think he's a little more finger in the
Speaker 1: wind of where our South Carolina Republican's going to go
Speaker 1: is where he's going to go. But and I think
Speaker 1: some of these Republicans that have sort of gone back
Speaker 1: and forth with that, But I think there really is
Speaker 1: a question about is MAGA bigger than Trump? Right? That's
Speaker 1: still the basic question. Is it bigger than Trump or not?
Speaker 1: And does a Trump junior brand hold MAGA together and
Speaker 1: keep it on its I don't know, right, I think
Speaker 1: that's an open question and one we're going to find
Speaker 1: out sooner rather than later. But I think it's I think,
Speaker 1: you know, really it does split along the you know,
Speaker 1: do you believe in the in a sort of internationalist
Speaker 1: view that ultimately America is an example to set that
Speaker 1: we ought to spread our ideals of freedom, free trade, democracy,
Speaker 1: things like that, a free market, that that is something
Speaker 1: we should spread around the world, which I think is
Speaker 1: in part some of the free market intellectual thinking in
Speaker 1: this sort of more traditional sense of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: I do think that where there is alignment is in
Speaker 1: cultural conservatism. So I think that that will continue to
Speaker 1: be the through line that keeps this coalition together. But
Speaker 1: if you're asking me to name names, those are the
Speaker 1: names I would go to, all right. This one comes
Speaker 1: from Judith Workman. Her question, is it possible that the
Speaker 1: roller coaster that we have been on for the last
Speaker 1: few days, meaning the stock market, be simply a way
Speaker 1: to manipulate the economy for Trump and others in the
Speaker 1: regime to bring the market down so they can purchase
Speaker 1: more stocks, etc. And then bring the market back up
Speaker 1: to increase their personal Well, well, Judith, look, you're not
Speaker 1: the only person who thinks this. There's no doubt there
Speaker 1: are people that are making money manipulating you know, who
Speaker 1: know who may have an insider knowledge of where things
Speaker 1: are going. But no, I don't think there is a
Speaker 1: large chunk of people trying to do that, you know.
Speaker 1: I do think there's the crypto community, particularly in the
Speaker 1: in the twenty four election. I think there's quite a
Speaker 1: few people that are invest that are long on some
Speaker 1: crypto investments, that are desperately hoping that they have value
Speaker 1: and they're worried that it won't have value and are
Speaker 1: counting on Donald Trump to give them value. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I'm there on the full fledged stock market
Speaker 1: manipulation because you know it, perhaps there's some short term traders,
Speaker 1: and if we had a more functioning SEC, maybe there'd
Speaker 1: be some legitimate investigations into this, But sadly, we don't
Speaker 1: have a an SEC that is truly independent right now
Speaker 1: that I think should be looking at these things, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in the world of Donald Trump, who you know,
Speaker 1: he everybody, everybody sort of has the combination. I always
Speaker 1: joke Donald Trump is kind of like that Elaine character
Speaker 1: in Seinfeld when it comes to the vault. If you
Speaker 1: remember that, and Jerry Seinfeld used to say, Oh, everybody's
Speaker 1: got the combination. It was Hennessy, you know. I think
Speaker 1: that was the brand of liquor that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden she'd tell you everything she had. You know, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: he's made it clear if you want inside her access,
Speaker 1: pay two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and come be
Speaker 1: a member of mar Lago or come do this with
Speaker 1: crypto like, there is always access to him, and you
Speaker 1: might accidentally get a tip that can help you. But
Speaker 1: sometimes Trump's saying stuff that he wants to happen and
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen. And sometimes he says stuff that does
Speaker 1: happen and you could have made money on it. But
Speaker 1: there are so many people that get that have bought
Speaker 1: access to get close to him at his clubs in particular,
Speaker 1: that you can't rule out that possibility. I just don't
Speaker 1: think it's a full organized barras for what it's worth
Speaker 1: all right. So with that, I think I'm gonna wrap
Speaker 1: up this this episode. Hope you enjoy the enjoyed the week.
Speaker 1: If you haven't caught up on previous episodes, please do
Speaker 1: because I know we've had some issues with the automatic
Speaker 1: updating among those that subscribe to the podcast on Apple obviously,
Speaker 1: even if you subscribe on Apple, come over to the
Speaker 1: YouTube channel like and subscribe there. The check podcast has
Speaker 1: a YouTube channel. You can check us out on Spotify
Speaker 1: or wherever else serves up podcasts. So with that, I'll
Speaker 1: see you next week until we upload again