Maximum Reading with Max Read

Max Read. To know him is to love him. And to read him is to know him. Editor, writer, newsletter proprietor — citizen of the internet. Max is many things, and today he's Josh's guest, covering a wide range of topics on the show including but not limited to: artificial intelligence, the media industry and its woes, the high art of the 1992 cyberpunk film Nemesis, and what it means to truly blog. Discussed: Unions, ChatGPT, Mike White, David Pogue.oll

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, and welcome to what Future.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm your host, Joshua Tapolski, and we have a Crackerjack
of a show. Do people still say that Crackerjack? Does
that even exist anymore?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Crackerjack's there like a candy, It's like a box. It's
a candy. It's a candy corn. No, no, candy. Corn
is a candy. It's like caramel corn or caramel corn
depending on who you talk to, which I guess is
corn covered in a sugary coating. And then in the
box it was like a red stripe box. Does this
even Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Lyra or Jenna? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Of course I know what Crackerjack.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
You know what Crackerjack is? Okay?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
And I had a prize in the box, and.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
At the bottom of the fucking box there'd be a prize,
like a toy or something.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's great. They don't do that anymore. They don't do it.
Maybe they do.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
They probably still sell it. It's probably very readily available.
It's probably one of the best selling products at grocery stores.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Heay, cracker Barrel, I bet you.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Cracker Barrel is a right wing establishment dedicated to the
suppression and oppression of many groups, and I can't stand
I won't stand for it. Although they do have really
good biscuits in my recollection.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
But I would bet you good money that they sell
cracker jacks in the.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
General store, crackerjack at the cracker barrel.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Probably you're probably right, An, Yeah, we have a crackerjack
show for you. We've got a wonderful man, Max Read,
a writer, an editor, a screenwriter, and also a friend,
I should say, a buddy, and he's got a great
newsletter called Read Max that I love. And we're going
to talk about all sorts of stuff. I don't want
to waste one minute, so let's get into this conversation.

(02:05):
You were editor in chief of Gawker when it was
suit out of existence?

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Is that right?

Speaker 4 (02:09):
The lawsuit was ongoing when I was editor. I left
in twenty fifteen. The following year spring, I want to
say the following year was when the judgment came down
and Gocker declared bankruptcy.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Who was the editor of Gawker at that time.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
I think Alex Parene was the editor in chief. I thought, wow, yeah,
the last and final Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
No, not the last and final of that Goker. There
were many other erbitions of Cocker.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
They just transitioned. They became h what was it called.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Splinter, splinter, splinder splinter, but splinter was Splinter was owned
by that was? When? Was it owned by Fusion? Is
that was it?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Fusion became I'm sorry, this is crazy shit to think about,
but like I know, Fusion was a thing that was
that existed. It was a new media startup. Correct me
if I'm wrong.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
It was It was new media within Telemundo.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
It was like Telemundo Star new Yes, start up, tell them.
Telemundo started a thing called Fusion dot net, which was
a a diverse millennial news operation, right that was sort
of like the overarching which like from like I get it,
like very of the moment, like very like Mashable, like
in the spectrum of like a Mashable and uh yeah,

(03:21):
I mean who else who else would it have been?
I guess BuzzFeed News, Mike whatever, This is not Mike, Yeah,
Mike's other perfect example. Actually, I would say in a
way Fusion was like a mic competitor. Probably is the
most most accurate. Anyhow, Sorry, this is not we don't
have to talk about this at all. In fact, I wasn't really
planning on talking about it, but although I do want
to talk about media because you are a member of
the media elite as we know, I don't know what

(03:43):
what is the word for a person who just has
a newsletter?

Speaker 1 (03:45):
What do you call that?

Speaker 4 (03:47):
I call myself an owner operator, a small business, small
business owner.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
You're a small business owner.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Okay, so you get some some of Biden's tax break,
tax breaks for the one percent, for the elite. So
you're in the media, right, you'd say you're in the media,
like you continue you continue to publish content that is
in the sphere of news media.

Speaker 4 (04:06):
Would you say, yeah, I mean, I I write twice
a week on my substack, do some freelance journalism still too.
I mean, it's funny the fact that you sort of
we sort of started talking about this and then immediately
started remembering some websites. It's very hard. I started my
substack not really intending to write very much about media.
But if you have been in the business for long enough,

(04:26):
and especially if you lived through the period that we're
talking about, the twenty tens, the crazy twenty tens, it's
hard not to just keep writing about it. Because it
still sticks in your mind. I don't want to say trauma,
but you know it's.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
No, no, no, no, it's trauma. It's Trauma's the right word.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I think the word trauma's overused, and I don't want
to say that people who use it don't have trauma.
But I do feel like people say trauma about things
that are like they like, you know, I don't know,
they've got they couldn't find a pair of shoes that fit,
and they're like, I have trauma from that. I'm like,
I don't think that's what the word means. Like, I
feel like it might get a little overused. But because
I had a call earlier today, I was talking to

(05:03):
a reporter and we got into a conversation about the Messenger, Yeah,
which is a the messenger is like so you actually,
I said the boom period when you're talking about what
you're talking about fusion and stuff, but actually what fusion
is in that era, which is like ten late twenty tens.
I want to say, like, right, I don't know when
fusion started or that, like what the but I want

(05:26):
to say, like twenty ten, that's probably later than twenty ten, fourteen,
around thirteen fourteen. It's actually the beginning of the end
for the new media boom. It's like Vice had matured
into this monolithic thing, and BuzzFeed news was at least
rolling probably pretty successful at that point. It was sort
of like the beginning of the end for like the

(05:47):
boom era of like blogging, which would have been which
would have been in the you know, two thousand and
four to two. I mean, obviously stuff happened aslet's say
two thousand and four to two thousand and ten something
like that is like, yeah, the biggest like boom for
like blogging, blogging, not like corporate owned blogging.

Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, there was, I mean, the way I think about
it is always like there was that early period was
very people would still go to websites. You know, you
would actually go to ngadget dot com or goal dot
com and you you would refresh it to see the feed.
And then it was sort of SEO came along and
it allowed you to maintain a relatively similar format. But
the thing that really sort of turned like the when

(06:27):
Facebook arrived as like the thing that would give you
traffic around twenty twelve, and all of a sudden, everything
you wrote didn't matter what your website looked like, didn't
matter what your website was. Everything you wrote had to
sound like it could be shared on a social feed
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (06:42):
And that's when Fusion and all these that's when all
the VC money started really coming in and the big
corporate money.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, a very dark period. I mean, I'm just trying
to think. I'm trying to think of it in personal
terms only because that's easier for me. My memory is
very bad, and so I have to go like, well,
what was I doing? What was I doing at that point?

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Right?

Speaker 2 (06:59):
So, like, yeah, Gadget Crew left to start the Verge
in like twenty ten, I think maybe to early twenty eleven.
We launched the Verge in November of twenty eleven. I'm
pretty sure that sounds wrong, but I think it's actually
right anyhow, whatever, But that that to me is like
sort of the bit that's about when you used to
kickoff of the ends. It's not to be, not to
be you know, self centric or whatever. But like, I

(07:20):
think we were legitimately doing the blogging thing where we're like,
we're going to take our team and go do a thing.
And we went to a company that wasn't it was
VC back but it wasn't like it was an NBC
or whatever. It wasn't like Telemundo wasn't wasn't backing it
or whatever you're writing. You have a sub stack? Am
I allowed to say that?

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:38):
A lot of times on the Internet somebody says substack.
That might put an asterisk in between the S and
the B because they don't know if Elon Musk is
going to block.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
It for auditor. Yeah, well, just don't put it in
the title of this of this podcast.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, let's talk. We're gonna have to end.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
As a note for Lyra and Jenna, please let's make
sure we don't add the word substack fully spelled out
in the title.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
But you have a sub stack, which is a.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Is a company that has created a platform for people
to publish newsletters which look a lot like blog posts. Yeah,
it just sought me at any point where if you
sound like this, if this sounds like this is wrong,
And also, you can charge people a subscription fee for
your newsletter and in doing so create a like a
personal media company, like a single person media brand.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
And that's what you've done.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Now you have a thing called read Max which I
have to say, as far as titles goes very unoriginal
for you, but I guess pretty clever as well. Explain
to the listener, who I'm sure are all subscribers of
read Max. By the way I have, I think the
crossover is extremely high. But just explain to them, like
what your newsletter does.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
The tagline is that it's a newsletter about the future.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Really, yeah, is that the tagline? Yeah? It is? Wow?

Speaker 4 (08:53):
Okay interesting, you know I started it. It's funny. I
was thinking about this the other day. I started it
with this, with the sort of manifesto post that people
can still go back and look at where I said.
I wanted to write a lot about the way life
in the twenty percentury had been shaped by the mega
platforms of the Internet, the way that not just sort
of economics but also culture and social formations get worked

(09:18):
through your facebooks and your Instagrams and your tiktoks. But
as it happens, you know, my editorial philosophy has all
the sort of been that readers like to feel passion
and joy. I sound like I'm giving like an upfront's
presentation to sell the advertise.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
I love that. I wish you had like a clicker
and some slides.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Exactly right, if you really could, you have a big
like a pie chart with some percentage of readers who
like the.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
Readers love imagine I'm in like a black turtle.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
There's like, yeah, it's like it's like seventy eight percent
of readers love to feel passion.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
There's a small sliver that don't like passion anyhow.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
So this is what happens when you spend any time
in editorial management, as you learn to talk like this.
That being said, yeah cliched, is it sounds It's like
not worth me finding something to say about tech every
week if it means that once a week is going
to be boring. So in practice, the tagline of newsletter
is a newsletter about the future. In practice, it's a
newsletter about things that I think are interesting, which includes AI,

(10:13):
includes crypto, includes you know, platforms like Facebook, includes media stuff.
Also includes action movies, sci fi movies. Yes, sort of
whatever is is interesting me at any given moment. So
it's hard to give the elevator pitch. But people who
are on the same wave link that I am, I
think like it because they because it gives them a

(10:33):
sort of weekly dose of interesting thinking about, you know,
whatever is going on in whatever things are interesting me
at that moment.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, I think I think the most successful publications, whether
they're a person doing a newsletter or you know, lots
of people working on something, tend to be the ones
that center not around necessarily a very hard line of
specific topics, but a kind of philosophical through line. And
I mean, I agree with you, would be boring to

(11:02):
simply write about like whatever that description is supposed to
encapsulate or could encapsulate. It probably would be very boring
every week to hear about that. But you have you
do go pretty far afield. Yeah, Like I downloaded and
started watching this film Nemesis the other day, which I
definitely saw in my youth. I mean, you might have
written more than one occasion about the movie, but it's
not a good movie. I mean, to me, just for

(11:22):
starters time, I want to be very clear, it's not
like high art or anything. It is like it was
an early nineties. Yeah, like a cyber science fiction kind
of movie. It's like it's like there were a lot
of movies in the early nineties. Another one of them
is Hardware, which I'm sure you've seen I hope you've seen,
which originally was rated triple X very like for real,
like actually it was rated ACTS or triple X is

(11:45):
whatever they called it when it was you know, like,
but there's this kind of genre of film people who
like read Neuromancer and were like, that's cool, But I
don't really have much of a budget. What could I do?
Like if I like this like a cyberpunk idea, but
I don't really have the to go all the way.
And so Nemesis is what of the because you wrote
about but you actually did a post. I want to
say it was like a ranking of the sunglasses from Nemesis,

(12:09):
the cool sunglasses from Nemesis.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah. I felt so inspired after seeing that that.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
I was like, I got to watch this movie again,
and so I h of course I went on the
Pirate Bay, which is still in existence, even though you
have to definitely get a computer.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Virus to access it. You absolutely have.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
To get a computer virus to go to the Pirate
Bay and downloaded a you know, a HD like Blu
Ray rip of Nemesis.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
Christine twenty one sixty.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
You know, no, no, no, I can't be.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
I can't be watching Nemesis in some seven twenty shit
like I need to see I need to see every
grain of sand in the extremely sandy atmosphere of the
film anyhow. But so so you're writing about like you
write about stuff that is definitely not the future. But
I am curious what is like in your mind? Like
when you say the future, what are things you've written

(12:59):
and talked about and are thinking about recently that would
fall into that category.

Speaker 4 (13:03):
I mean, I'm not any different than anybody else who's
paying attention right now in thinking that, like AI is,
the is kind of the thing that we everybody is
talking about, and therefore becomes interesting just because it is
a thing that everybody's talking about. You know, I was
over the last couple of years, I would describe myself
as a cryptoskeptic, but I still found crypto as a

(13:25):
kind of like object of interest worth writing about and
thinking about, both as a reason to criticize it, but
also you know, the communities that arise around something like crypto,
the kind of like the art work I suppose, or
the cultural formation, if you want to call it that,
I mean, between Nemesis and Bordees. Clearly I have a
real fascination with bad art at something you're.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Interesting to me here.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
I've often described the NFT boom as the Olympics of
bad art, which I would I think it's just like
an astounding quantity of just like the people competing for
the top slot and like the bad art. Yeah, I
mean just some of the worst shit ever put into
it into humanity.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
I mean, to any terrible. But isn't that But to me,
that's like it's sort of fascinating, Like there's something fascinating
about this, like weird grifter culture, like tacky grifter culture
emerging like billionaires.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, what happens when you find out that like something
that could you could scam people out of money is art,
and like you can and it's like not art, like
I had need, I have a Picasso, Right, it's not
like not that that's a scam. That's a whole different
type of scam actually, but one that is real. But
but but yeah, like what it happens. I mean, that's
an interesting place to explore it, right, Yeah, I hear

(14:36):
what you're saying, Like and.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
You know, like right now, all of the all of
that energy, all of that kind of like prenetic like
what's next, what's big? What's interesting energy is is plunged
into large language models and the AI scene in general.
And to me this is even more kind of fruitful
and interesting than crypto because the technology is much more
obviously impressive and like has applications you can think of

(14:59):
with out having to like, you know, get a lobotomy
and start talking like Mark andrieson or what.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
About slurp juice to understand like what AI could do
for you?

Speaker 4 (15:09):
Yeah, and you know it Also it's interesting to me
because for the obvious reason that, like, as a writer,
like this is this is technology that is directly overlaps
with what I am trained to and paid to do,
you know, and I try to be in general, my
approach to this stuff is to try and figure out
what excites like what excites what excites other people about

(15:30):
something that doesn't necessarily excite me, or like what is
what do people find so captivating about it. It's a
little easier to do that because, like I said, it's
sort of obviously impressive, and I try to approach it
not from like a purely critical, purely kind of negative standpoint.
Even if I think, you know, Sam Altman is not
a great guy or somebody who's got my best interests

(15:51):
in mind.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Frankly, they ever are a great guy? Are they know?

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Was the last time there was like a huge new
technology started by somebody that you're like, that is a
freat person.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
I really like him. They seem cool.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
I mean it is unusual, right, yeah. I mean people
used to love like Steve Jobs, but even Steve Jobs
and not upon further reflection, by the way, always seemed
like kind of not a great guy, like he was
sort of a dick.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
I mean, you must remember, I feel like it was.
It's just a different cultural difference between like the nineties
and two thousands is now as people used to sort
of laugh about Steve Jobs as an abuse of boss like,
which he really obviously was. Every story you'd hear, these
sort of semi heroic stories about him just completely bitching
people out, screening at them whatever, like in the in
the mac Press, in MacAddict or whatever. It was also

(16:46):
treated as this funny little thing. And now you'd be like,
if that, if that stuff had come out now, that
people would have been up in arms. I mean, because
he sounds like he was an horrible person to work
for and basically every way.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
You do, yes, and then but also you have to
wonder what is what could a Steve Jobs level creator exist?
I mean, this is the ultimate question. If the man
wasn't allowed to be a complete like rage aholic or whatever.
It's also right, he also cried. He also cried a lot, right,
That was the other thing, Like in the in the
Isaacs in books, they talked about him crying, but which
I find just like incongruous with him. I mean, it

(17:18):
makes I can see it, like in my mind's eye.
I'm like, okay, I get it. But like, imagine being
in any work scenario. Okay, you're a you're a guy.
You go into an office, your boss is berating you
or something, or like, you have to deliver bad news,
and his reactions he starts crying in the room. Forget
about forget about abuse for a second. Let's take the

(17:39):
abuse stuff out of it, just for a moment, just
put it to the side. I can't think of a
more uncomfortable situation for a person to be. I mean,
obviously there are more uncomfortable situations, but very unusual and
apparently happened on a regular basis that he would break
down in tears during a meeting or like you did
an argument or something, which is like, it's just very
like he had a lot of volid emotions.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
But that's how we got the iPhone from crying lots
of it.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Fucking raises the question because you know what happened. I
guarantee you. I guarantee you. Some people brought him a
shitty fucking touch screen like the original Android. I mean,
I don't know if you remember how Android phones were,
the first version of them, they had like the touch
screen sensitivity was all over the fucking map. They sucked
to use. Yeah, somebody brought him that shit. Yeah, and
he had a meltdown on them. He threw the fucking

(18:23):
phone in the face. He did a David Pogue. He
chucked the phone directly at their face. Remember when David
Poke threw a phone at his wife. This is oh, yeah,
it was sorry, It's just I think about it all
the time. Whenever I noticed that talk about the iPhone,
I'd be like, go to Dave. David Pogue throwing an
iPhone at his wife. Oh also horrible, by the way,
horrible abusive thing to do. But yeah, Steve Jobs, they
gave him the shitty touch screen. He threw it at somebody.

(18:44):
He was like, this is not extentually started crying, I
assume at some point, and then eventually, out of fear, right,
they brought him really good touch screen, like just out
of pure fear. They were like, all right, like we
have to do this, or like he's gonna be really upset.
We don't like want to make Steve us. You know,
would we have gotten the iPhone or would we have
a would it be a whole different future that we're

(19:05):
living in right now. Maybe there would be no social
media because when you think about it, without a great
touch screen, the iPhone's probably not a successful product. And
if it's not successful, then the whole social media boom
and all that shit really doesn't happen.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Might Yeah, I mean when you put it like that,
you're not making an argument that it was a good
thing that any else I'm not sure not if it's
without bad bosses, we wouldn't have social media. Wouldn't that
be great?

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Right?

Speaker 4 (19:26):
Better workplaces and no Facebook.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
But I've come full circle. I mean I was when
I was twelve years old. I got on the Internet
when I was like twelve, right, and it was early internet.
But now I'm like, yeah, we got to shut it down, like,
why did we ever invent any of this stuff? This
seems bad, like we made a huge mistake.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
One thing about AI that I noticed is I think
we've gone from a position I mean the sort of
capsule history which isn't which is always more complicated than this,
But the capsule history I think that people tell about themselves,
journalists tell about themselves and the tech boom is that
we were all a little bit who positive towards the
tech industry, that we were too excited that we gave
them a pass through the recite.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, we're like the touch screen on this iPhones fucking amazingly.
I mean, as a guy who reviewed most of them,
I was like, oh my god, the touch screen is
so good?

Speaker 1 (20:13):
How did they do it? Steve Jobs has done it again?

Speaker 4 (20:16):
And then and then when everything kind of fell apart
and it became clear how bad for all of us,
all of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Kind of was.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
You know, everybody hunched over and was like, we can't
let that happen again. And I think a lot of
the like media critical reaction to a lot of AI
stuff is born out of that fear that we're going
to be too. You know that we that we really
need to give these products like this and technologies like
this really rigorous and clear kind of investigations goings over
like make it make them as good as they possibly can.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Right.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
That's obviously you want journalists who are oppositional and aggressive
and critical in all these ways. But it's like creates
this very a very funny and different kind of relationship
with the tech industry than existed in say like two
thousand and five or two thousand and six.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Oh no, totally, totally.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
I hear, by the way, the sounds of New York
in the background there, it's like you gotta sir, and
I'm just creeping up. So I've been so long since
I've heard that, now that I live in out the country. No,
you're right, I mean I think there is probably in
some way an over adjustment.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
I mean, I actually, and I've probably told the story before.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
But I I had a meeting with actually it was
a fund I was fundraising for the Outline and we
met with Mark Andries and it turned into an argument
between the two of us. It was an interesting meeting
because there were like seven people there and it just
ended up with us arguing with each other. But one
of his arguments about generally about like the tech press,

(21:38):
I mean, the outline wasn't pure tech, but it was
like he was like, you guys are of all, you're
all trashing us, and you're taking shots at us, and
you're trying to like tear down all the work that
we're doing. And and I was like, one of my
things that I remember, and I think maybe struck a
course with him, I was like, we like actually have
been like nothing but like wonderful to the tech industry,

(21:59):
and we expected like that that people in tech to
be better. Yeah, and you guys have ended up being
exactly like the fucking robber barons of yester year. Like
you're supposed to be the next generation of like these
leaders who do who hold themselves to a higher standard
or are more aware of what's going on in the
world and like you know, more sensitive to like the
users and who they are and what they represent and anyhow.

(22:24):
But like, I think that's that is they've reacted very
poorly to getting bad press because they they have gotten
so much good press, and so there's a hugely defensive stance.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
I also think, I mean, I think that the other
aspect of this that is is sort of unexpected and
you wouldn't have been able to predict in two thousand
and six, is these are like the two main power
user groups on Twitter. So like suddenly all of the
media kind of got shuttled through this one single social
media feed, and it was the same feed that all
of all of tech was also on, and it just

(22:55):
was like just sort of a bad neighbors situation. Like
maybe like all of a sudden, you went from like
maybe you get the Times delivered and you see a
negative article, but you also see the positive article, and
you also get the Journal and there's a bunch of
different things. Now you're like you see every single even
the lowest level, you know, copy editors talking shit about
you or like replying to you and calling you egghead

(23:15):
or whatever, and you're freaking out, like it's too much
for you.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
That is mean you should never I don't think I
don't I think never go after people's looks.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
I think you don't you know what I mean. I
have always felt this.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I mean, especially during the Trump years, people would be
like ooh, the orange whatever. I'm like, that's not productive,
Like it just isn't like it's not a good.

Speaker 4 (23:33):
Clearly, I mean, it clearly got under marketing well, clearly
got under a bunch of people's skins, various various people.
I mean, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (23:39):
The funny thing is that Andresen then started his own
publication to much fanfare, called I think called Future.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
He's also he's also very interested in covering the future,
like what future and.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Your public is.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Then they shut it down because because if.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
He wants to read a fucking white paper from a
sixteen Z or from andres and Horwitz, like nobody wants
to read, nobody cares, nobody wants to read PR. First off,
I wish I could tell all the PR people though
I wish they could learn.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
But I mean, and the other thing is like running
an actual like publication that publishes with any kind of
regularity good things that people want to read with any
kind of regularity is much more difficult than I think
people appreciate it. I have this thing about I think
there's something real about the way people, certain kinds of
people relate to journalists and the media is because of
what we do is just write and just sort of

(24:24):
tell people what's happening in the world. There's there's there's
a sense that like anybody could kind of do it,
and so there's a there's a there's a resentment from
people like Intrisan or whomever that that sort of the
suggestion that, like, you know, I could be doing what
you're doing, I could do it better. And when you
actually try to do it, like run the whole thing
as a business, like like hit everything that you need
to hit to be a good journalist and a good

(24:46):
editor and a good publisher, you recognize that, especially in
the current environment, especially in the environment that people like
Andresen created, it's a lot of work. It takes a
lot of work and a lot of like accumulated skill
and knowledge. It's not something you can just replicate because
you've decided that today's journalists don't know how to do
it right or whatever.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
I agree with everything you just said one hundred percent,
but I will also say we have so devalued what
looks like.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Journalism and news.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
It's been so greatly terrifically devalued, and there are so
many people who truly suck doing it, like really bad.
There are like bad actors at places like Daily Wire
or whatever. There are people who are bad at it,
like that just aren't good at their job because it
has become probably there was a period where it was
easier than ever to go, hey, i'm gonna write, I'm

(25:34):
gonna make content, Like journalism became this thing called content,
not the journalism with the capital jay that you're probably
thinking about or we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Really.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
And also it's all free, yeah, right, it's free to everybody,
and everybody thinks it should be free. And so I
think it's that combination of like you've got like legitimately
bad actors, you've got legitimately like kind of people who
should never have gotten into the craft to begin with.
Like not to throw it back to the NFT thing,
but it's a good it's kind of an interesting parallel
where it's like you really aren't an artist. You didn't like,

(26:04):
you didn't train, you didn't really want to be an artist,
you kind of don't care about it that much, but
like you could get a job doing it right. You
can get a job like making an NFT and like
maybe sell some and make a quick buck. I think
there's a lot of people who kind of found their
way into like content creation that was like a machine.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
It was like it kind of like, you.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Know why we're all talking about AI a lot lately
in this in this venue is like it became a
very machine almost like a machine generated game, where it's
like you write a headline that it will get clicks,
and you put some content in the below it that's
like feels like enough information to call it a story,
and that's like what journalism is. There's actually a fair
argument to say that there is a lot of bad journalism.

(26:44):
It's just that what they're talking about isn't like is
it the Daily Wire, and it isn't like the user
generated content on BuzzFeed dot com. It's people who say
things that are true that they don't want to hear
or don't want anybody else to see.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Basic.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
The other thing I wouldn't want to say is that
it's not as though. I mean, the thing I still
love about the Internet is that you can find incredible
geniuses doing work that would otherwise never have been cover.
It's not like citizens, I like, do I believe in
citizen journalism like conceptually Circle twenty twelve, Jeff Jarvis talking
about like said citizen journalism, No, but do I believe

(27:22):
that there are like people there are incredibly talented writers, reporters,
journalists out there who would not have access to audiences
if it wasn't for the Internet.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:30):
Absolutely, I mean that those people are those.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
People one hundred percent. I mean, to be clear, we
would not be having this conversation. I would have done
nothing if it weren't for the fact. I mean I
didn't go to as you as I think. You know,
I barely even went to high school, but I definitely
didn't go to to college for journalism. Like I didn't
go to Jay's school and then leave and go intern
at the New York Times. Like there used to be
a way that people did this that was very linear, right,

(27:54):
and it was a very closed circuit.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
The Internet has has I know that everybody talks about
this is like kind of like bullshit, but I think it,
I mean, these days, but it had leveled the playing
field for if a person was eager and excited and good, yeah,
and had any bit of talent, Like there was a
place to go and go and do it and find
like hone it, you know, and like I that's real

(28:17):
and awesome. Yeah, And a lot of our best journalists,
a lot of the best journalists working today it came
from that sort of with those backgrounds, like not from
straight from Jay school.

Speaker 4 (28:28):
You know, something that I believe, like incredibly strongly, like
on a political levelist that there's all this incredible, unused,
untapped talent, creative talent, creative genius intelligence out there in
the world, in the US but around the world that
is just ill served by the political economic systems that

(28:49):
we have working right now. And the Internet at its
best is a way to level that playing field and
to like find outlets for those people, find ways for
them to make use of their incredible genius that otherwise
would and exist. And then the Internet, it's worse, is
also like a way for very rich guys to like
find those talents and then just exploit the hell out
of the stuff they're creating. I mean, I think this

(29:09):
about social media for real. It's like, what makes Facebook
valuable is not the technology, what makes or Twitter or
any or TikTok or anything. It's the people who are
creating stuff that is engaging and entertaining and funny and
weird for free for these social networks.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Right.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
The drill the drills, Yeah, exactly right, And you know
this is this is the thing that I think is
worth thinking about as AI comes into being is the
sort of sense that, like, you know, what is AI
going to be used for? Because I think it has
this possibility to give sort of production tool in the
same way that you know, like electronic production music production

(29:46):
tools gave access to all these kids in their bedrooms
the ability to make beats and to make music and
to create create stuff themselves without having to you know,
pay one thousand dollars an hour for a studio or
whatever and get that stuff together. Like, I see a
lot of gender to AI that feels like, maybe not
right now, but pretty soon, this is going to help
people create things themselves, even if they don't really have

(30:06):
access to these huge resources outside of it, right, And
what frustrates me is that it sure seems like the
business model that places like open ai are gunning for
is instead of like, let's enable people who otherwise wouldn't
be able to, you know, do these things, let's let's
find ways to replace the people who are already doing
these things with the shittier version that we can have
the boss's control or whatever.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Right, there's a lot there that I agree with and
also to unpack. But I will say that it is
interesting that. I mean, I don't want to get into
a you know, capitalism or whatever. Capitalism isn't good or not.
There's obviously some problems with it, but like there is
that you know. The history of capitalism is like these
like incredible innovations that are then like manipulated into like

(30:52):
a massive business that then like needs a bunch of
like worker bees to like go and do and it's
like owned by a very small segment. Like the thing
itself is owned by a very small segment of the population,
but the actual work to make the thing is done
by a much larger segment.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Of the population.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
And it's usually grueling and shitty, and people are underpaid
for it. And it's like is and that is like
in some way, like a Facebook is, like you said,
like all these people are Facebook or Twitter or whatever.
Is like these amazing people create for it, like that's
the engine of it or whatever. But it is, you know,
over time turned into kind of like a just like
it's a part of like a machine, Like those people

(31:29):
are a part of a machine that drives commerce. Right, Yeah,
I think that would be fine if the system of
commerce that it was built on was actually made any
fucking sense. But the system of commerce is built on
is based on a mistake, like essentially a mistake about
the value of people on the Internet. I think there's

(31:57):
like a foundational fundamental flaw and like how we monetize
content on the Internet. I've probably put this a million
times and I don't have to go into my spiel here,
but like the way that Google came up with monetizing
search is the way that we basically monetize.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Everything, and it is it's wrong. It just was wrong.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
It just was like they could do that at the
time because that was all that was available to them,
Like they had one notion of like could we make money,
and like, well, this is a way, like a billboard
on a road, Like that's one way to make money.
Like you put a billboard up and some people drive
past it, and you can sell space on the billboard.
And sometimes people who drive past it will be like, hey,
like yeah, I need a new car, Like I should

(32:35):
go check out the fucking Audi that I you know,
the sign I drove past. But like, out of the
people who drive past it, most of them never go
check out the Audi or whatever. But over time, there's
some small value that can be extracted from that billboard.
And that's but that's the entire business model of the Internet,
is that every single thing on it is like as
devalued as.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Like a billboard or whatever.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Like anyhow, I mean it's not the perfect analogy, but
you know what I'm saying, So.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
But it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
I mean, part of it too, is that it means
that when you're doing creative work, like you are also
having to think about how you're like you yourself are also
a billboard. And so like I like my job, I
like my life. I like what I do on substeck,
but like part of what I have to be part
of what my subtect is and like part of what
I have to do as a writer who isn't currently
have W two employment is sort of be my own

(33:23):
marketing team across a bunch of different platforms so that
people know they can hire me, people know they can
find me.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Right.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
It's the hustle, yeah, and it's it's not a great
way to live. And the thing that but the thing
that really I think is a problem with it is
that we know, for a fact there are a lot
of writers who are more talented than me, who are
better than me at all the things I do. For instance, well,
who don't want to let's without naming names. I don't
want to be part of that that hustle who are
not interested in that. Like, No, I'm talking about the opposite.

(33:53):
I'm talking about somebody who is not good at this
kind of this kind of thing, who doesn't want to
do it. Yes, there's like very few ways for that person. Yeah,
they're very few ways for that person to be compensated
for work they do. Whereas you have people who are
who are incredibly good at the hustle part of it,
again not naming, incredibly good to the hustle part of it,
not not particularly intelligent or whatever.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Writer. I think that's what we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
I mean, we can all imagine in our heads somebody
who fits these gat and say, for exactly, for example,
they're they're ubiquitous.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
I'm intelligent, but good at the hustle. I'm thinking, actually,
they shake.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
The right hands, they put themselves in the right names.
It's one reason why the internet can make you so
mad when you go online these days, Like the reward
is market Like you get much better rewarded for marketing
than you do for quality.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Right, of course no, yes, I mean and and and
if you're bad at or don't like or feel like
you know, some people like if you're from generation acts
like myself, you're not gen X.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Are you? You're a millennial?

Speaker 4 (34:50):
No, I'm a millennial.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, if you're if you're like a gen X person,
you you feel a kind of physical impulse to reject
self promotion. And now, I don't know, maybe people would
say that I don't. I haven't jected self promotion. I'm
not really sure, but I would tell you I would.
I think if you ask Lyra and Jenn f I
am promoting this podcast enough, I think that they would
tell you that.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
I am not. And they wish I was hustling. They
wish I was hustling more. I don't know. I don't
want to speak for them.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
All that said, you know, if you even are close
to making a living at doing what you're doing, it's
also fucking wild because you know your parents and your
grandparents and certainly every generation that is, almost every generation
that's come before us. This abstract thing that we are doing,

(35:34):
this abstract I mean, it is fucking weird, like it
is weird, like we are go on to this thing
the screen, We go into the screen and then we
do something that frankly we like. Probably for the most part,
you probably like the writing that you're doing, right, You're
not like, you don't wake up every day and you're like,
I mean, I don't know, maybe you got to do
the hustle, but you don't wake up every.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
I mean some weeks. Some weeks you're like, ah, do
I really have to do this? But for the most part, yeah,
it's good, right.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
And I mean, I'm sure there are many struggling YouTubers
you feel the same way. But like, if you can
even make if you I'm sorry, if you can even
make one dime just shooting a video of yourself and
put it on the internet, Like, it's kind of amazing
because there was no period in history before this where
such a thing was possible in really any venue. I mean,
you couldn't just put a show on and have people

(36:18):
come to your play or whatever. You couldn't just make
a movie and put it in a theater. You couldn't
just like write a newspaper and have it exist in
front of people. So there is this amazing flip side,
which is like all of this seems like there's fantasy here.
Like I think if you were to go back fifty
years and describe.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
This to somebody, they'd be like, it would just.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Be sound like such a fantastic story, like such a
total bit of fantasy. So there's a flip side to
all of it, which is like, the internet's a sass
pulling full of horrible people, and the people who own
and control most parts of the Internet are tyrants who
are working everybody to the bone and don't give us
our fair shake. And the model, the monetization model the
Internet is built on, it's a complete shit show that sucks,

(36:57):
and it's broken at at its most fun a mental level.
And yet there are more people creating interesting works of fiction,
non fiction, art, non art, like journalism, whatever, than we've
probably ever had in the history of the world. There's
probably more like journalism being done than ever before. Yeah,
am I crazy for saying that?

Speaker 4 (37:18):
No? I don't think so. I mean, I think it's
a it's a I mean for me, the question is,
how can we have that flowering of creativity and talent
and intelligence, and how can we you know, like make
sure that people are reaching their potentials without the layer
of exploitation that seems that right now seems like integral
to all this stuff, and I did like to This

(37:39):
is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately,
because so I'm in the Writer's Guild, the TV Writers
Guild and we're on strike right now, or the TV
and Film Writers Guild and we're on strike right now,
and something that is a huge contrast between being a journalist,
where you might have a workplace union but oftentimes in
general you don't, versus being in a heavily unionized industry

(38:00):
part of a pretty powerful union is seeing what can happen,
how much better a job can be. When you have
that kind of at least, you have a little bit
of leverage against the exploitation that you're not completely at
the whims of what the bosses want at any given moment.
You're not completely like, am I going to have a
job today? Am I going to have a job tomorrow?

(38:20):
Am I going to make money from this thing I'm
working on on? Spec? Am I not going to make
money from it?

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Right?

Speaker 4 (38:25):
And I think Hollywood is a really interesting example of
an industry that is a creative industry that produces a
wide range of things from total shit to like you know,
instances of surpassing genius that manages nonetheless to like adequately
up until recently, adequately reward the creative people who work
on it like and sometimes like more than just rewards,

(38:47):
sometimes make them extremely rich because they they did a
really good job at whatever it is you're supposed to
do it. And I think that like to you know,
I'm not saying like, I don't know how a content creators.
I'm not suggesting that content creators unionized, though I would
love to. I would think it would be great.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
Imagine if like everybody in YouTube unionized, like you.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
Know, there's like the German German vloggers have been trying
to do this for years now, and in fact, they're
unionizing under the steel workers union in Germany, I guess
is extremely powerful. It's maybe the biggest union there, and
so they've got a special like YouTube content creators organizing
like group that they're.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Trying to I like, I really like the idea of
like steel workers and YouTubers like you know, together, that's
like very I don't know that sounds.

Speaker 4 (39:28):
Right if I might be remembering this wrong, but I'm
pretty sure the guy behind it is this German guy
who does videos of where he like builds his own
catapults and just like it's the most YouTube thing. But
also I think I like, right at the intersection of
like steel workers YouTube and German, it's like the guy.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
It's like the guy who's like, I'm going to build
a house from like just like this mud plane. I like,
come here and I'm going to build like a mudhouse
out of like lumber, I chop down and yeah, something
like that. So, right, there is this huge strike going
on right now. Of course, Hollywood is an industry that's
been around a lot longer than the Internet, right, and
has has gone through lots of situations where there's tremendous
abuse of power by the people who are in charge

(40:03):
of like the studios. I imagine there's still a tremendous
abuse of power by the people who, yeah, the studios.
But but yeah, of course people eventually were like, hey,
we need to unionize. Of course, It's interesting the modern
narrative about unions is is very confused. I think there's
so much misinformation about about what unions are and what
they do that it has really done its job of

(40:23):
like making a lot of people very skeptical about the
power of a union.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Yeah. I mean, Hollywood unions all formed in the forties
and fifties, when union density in the US was like
three or four times what it is now. When you know,
it was like pretty common to be in a union.
There were like institutions that people knew, well, everybody knew
at least one person or a family member who was
in a union. So it wasn't crazy to be like, oh, yeah,
we're going to form a writer.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
It wasn't a political thing that like, you know, I
mean there was a wow.

Speaker 4 (40:47):
I mean, it depends on the you depends on the union.
Like some of those you know, the writers in particular
were and still are relatively left wing compared to the
other right.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
But I mean, I mean, Hollywood is generally speaking not
a I mean, I'm not saying there are no conservatives
in Hollywood, but it is obviously the owners are all
probably there's no question, but I mean, generally speaking, people
in the creative arts tend to be more left leaning,
more liberal than people in a non creative arts. I think, yeah,
I think that's fair, and so unsurprisingly that the union

(41:15):
would be you know, obviously very very liberal or i
mean socialism, you know, is directly tied to lots of
unions in their creation, and like the concept of a
union of itself.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
Is like a very socialistic idea, although you know that
being said, like if you go and you talk to
like the camera operators who work shows in New York
City who are all members of AATSI, and the teamsters
who are part of the Stage Hands Union, which is
one of the other big powerful Hollywood unions. Yeah, yeah,
I'm not saying an even vote for Trump, but you're
going to talk to guys who are very different set
set up politics than I sew on union guys, guys

(41:47):
who are showing us solidarity on the strike. But there's
like a there is a wide range of political.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
You know, but you see how those cut across.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
There's a very blue collar, white collar interception there where
you've got like like a camera operation or is a
vary or like somebody who's doing set design or or
like literally some of the labor. Like I remember when
I used to go on on Fallon and like I
remember once I tried to move a box like we
were like setting up some like gadget or whatever, and
they're like, you can't touch that, And I was like Okay,
there's only the union. People who moved the boxes could

(42:16):
touch the boxes. Like I it was like literally illegal
for me to touch the box. But it's very blue
collar work, you know, it's like not like sitting down
at your think pad and writing, you know, the next
episode of Lost.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
It's like.

Speaker 4 (42:27):
One of the things that, I mean, one of the
things that has been very inspiring and has made me
feel really optimistic and positive about the strike wear on
right now is the extent of the solidarity shown by
the teamsters to the Writer's Guild so that we've managed
especially it's supposed to work. Yeah, I mean, the idea
is that everybody that there's a there's solidarity between unions
because everybody understands the basic dynamic. And that hasn't always

(42:47):
been the case. You know, the last strike writers went
on with two thousand and eight. A lot of this
is sort of like anecdotes, and but people said, you know,
back then, people didn't think the writers need to go
on strike. You know, teamsters were worried about missing there hours.
You know, they're not productions are getting shut down. In
a lot of cases, they're not getting paid. So they
would break picket lines, they would they would walk through,
they would try to keep working, try to get paid,

(43:09):
and that just has it's been a total change from
that for this most recent one, which you can attribute
to a million things, you know, like one of it
and is just I think, like you were saying, we've
gone from a real low ebb of unions to like
the sparks. We're not yet in a place where unions
are like have the same kind of density that they
used to, but we've gone from a low ebb to
there's you know, there's a changes coming, I think, And

(43:29):
so I think people are more positive in general that
we're learning more.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
I think people maybe are starting to realize and maybe
the internet is we can thank the internet for some
of this, just of being able to visualize what happens
in non union environments and like going, hey, wait a second, like, yeah,
it makes sense that we have some leverage because if
you're not in a union, your leverage is basically niil
with the business. And by the way, have you been picketing?

(43:55):
Are you out there? Like have you you out there
with this?

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (43:58):
I pick I haven't picketed this week, but I was
getting last week in the week before.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Are there shifts. Are people doing shifts on picking?

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Yeah, so they've got big shifts that they announced the
day before. Like right now, upfronts, which are the big
ad sales events that the networks I'll put on, are
going on. So there's pickets outside all the upfronts. You know,
usually they bring on the actors for the big fall
shows or whatever. Actors, like the teamsters have been showing
a ton of solidarity with the writers. Most of them
have refused to cross. So it's like, you know, a
couple of nightly news anchors though even even some of

(44:25):
the news anchors refused to cross too. I hear so
oh really, yeah, so there's like that's interesting. Yeah, Lester
hole he won't cross crossing or he isn't. Both refused
to cross.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
That's cool.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Andrew Ross Sorkin of The Times and CNBC did cross.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Oh wow, Andrew not cool.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
Stephanie rule of MSNBC.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Stephanie rule cross She definitely crossed crossed. Yeah, okay, who
else anybody else? That's his is juiciest.

Speaker 4 (44:47):
Seacrest crossed.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Seacrest crossed. Yeah. What's going on with Fallon?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
I saw there's some He came on Blue Sky, he
joined Blue sky and people were like fucking hazing him.
I felt bad for the guy, to be honest, It's like,
I mean, I know you shouldn't feel too bad, but I.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
Mean, the thing the show is, it's always complicated because
you know, you don't want to cross the pivot line.
But if you're doing a nightly if you're doing a
nightly talk show, like you've got a huge number of
people who are that's their living, but you can shut
it down for two weeks, but at some point you
have to go back to work. Yeah, I think this

(45:25):
one's going to last a long time, and so I
would expect most of the talk show hosts to go
back on without writers and have to do something similar. Though.
I mean, we'll see, Like I don't.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
I've got Ai that's to spin up chat GBT to
do some bits. I mean, how hard can it be?

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Right?

Speaker 2 (45:38):
This is maybe this would be the first big test
of whether chat GPT can replace human beings that creative
and depth.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
I mean, this is one of the items in our negotiations.
It's very important to us because I mean, I think
one thing that one way to think about all this,
you know, just to connect it to us talking about
media before is like we lived through when we were
talking about earlier on, we lived through a huge sea
change in the way like journalism is just created and distributed,
going from print to online. They just decimated the industry.

(46:07):
That's not the same thing necessarily is what's happening with
streaming versus studios, But there's a lot of similarities. And
one of the similarities is just having these huge cash
rich companies, tech companies like Netflix and Amazon and Apple
come in and just kind of throw money around in
a way that is very hard for people to say
no to that kind of money, but often means also

(46:27):
diminishing work protections, accepting deals that you wouldn't have otherwise accepted,
of course, and now I think a lot of people
are sort of looking around and saying, hold on, like
what direction is this going in? And having lived through
that as a journalist and seeing sort of what happened
to journalism, I think it's very clear what happens when
you allow yourself to sort of buy the line that like, oh,
the technology has changed, so you have to accept that

(46:49):
you just can't get paid as much anymore. And you
know the other thing about that is that Hollywood actually
is a great example of an industry that's gone two
or three times now through major technological shifts and how
stuff created and distributed. That these unions have lasted since
before TV, they lasted before the VCR, before DVDs, And
every time there's been one of these shifts, there has
been almost like you could almost track it by the year,

(47:11):
there's been a strike because every single time the studios
trying and say, oh, well, stuff's changed, we just can't
pay as much as we used to, and writers and
actors and directors and stage hands tend to stand up
and say, hold on, that's not what's going to happen.
We're going to figure out a new system so that
we get paid what we deserve to create the content
that people want to see. And so at the end

(47:33):
of the tunnel right now you can see a place
where studios want to use AI to create content as
a way to pay writers less, as a way to
employ fewer writers. And it's really important to us to
stand up and say hold on, Like, for example, if
you come up with a idea for a story via chat,
GPT or whatever sophisticated Hollywood AI system. I'm sure Netflix

(47:56):
is developing somewhere in a dark room and they're huge complex.
You still have to pay the writer who takes that
idea and turns it into a script the same rate
that you would pay writer to write a script from
a Wikipedia article or whatever.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Up Right, I mean that just seems like a no brainer. Yeah,
the work is the same exactly right.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:14):
And you know there's another thing where it's like most
TV shows are written with writer's room, so you get
ten smart, funny writers. I mean, this is like one
of those things. I you know, because I started as
a journalist and moved into TV writing, I'd never really
experienced the TV writers' room. And now it's like, I
wish every single thing I write I could write with
the writer's room, to be able to sit down and
sayle and be like, heep's great. Here's what we're trying
to do. Let's get ten like extremely funny, smart people

(48:36):
to like like just really work on it for five
months and make it really good. And I think with
studios they want to cut down the length of the
writer's rooms. They want to cut down the number of
writers that you have to hire because they have this
idea in their heads. And you know, I don't think
any of them have announced this specifically, but this is
what everybody's sort of hearing. This is the chatter that
you have one guy, you have your Damon Lindelow or

(48:58):
JJ Abrams or Shonda Rhymes. They come up with the idea,
and then your writer's room is chat GPT or AI
or whatever else. And then not only does that make
for worse content, but it's also that means that writers
in general, when you want to have just one writer
come in, you know, a human writer coming to punch
it up, they're now not protected by the contract structures

(49:18):
that previously existed.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
So all of a.

Speaker 4 (49:20):
Sudden, it's like, you know, there's all these things that
the studios, there's ways to make it sound reasonable. Interestings
like oh yeah, sure, why why do you need to
have ten writers or whatever? And the answer is, and
not every show needs to have ten writers. But if
you don't guarantee that every show has ten writers, then
all of a sudden, all the shows that really do
need ten writers suddenly won't get right because the studios
don't want to pay for it. They're going to point
to the guy who just needed himself, like Mike White,

(49:42):
who wrote all of White Lotus by himself and say, well,
Mike White did it.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
Why can't you use a good point? That's a great point. Actually,
come on, why not? Why can't you just come in.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
The right exactly? And then you have guys who really
can't doing ten episode seasons, you're going to get a
lot more, a lot worse TV.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Well.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
I mean, it's interesting how it mirrors a lot of
the rest of what's going on in reality, Like there
is this pursuit of like massive growth and production, and
like in some way, I feel like we're starting to
see the limits of like the content mill. Like I
feel like with the streaming services, like there's just too
fucking much. Like like we know that people are starting
to watch less. We know that there's like an attention

(50:17):
sort of drift happening. I mean, I don't know about you,
but I feel like the Sunday night appointment viewing thing
has come back into focus in a big way around
the stuff that HBO is doing and some other shows
like stuff like Yellowjackets, where people are like it really
is week to week, like talking about there's like a
discourse about a show, not about the million things that
you could possibly watching. I mean, I think it is
that pursuit of that scale is a very is a

(50:40):
very tech market based fucking thinking on like all of
this can be bigger and there can be more of it,
and we can just pump this out, and like AI
is a solve I mean, yes, the soul for like
having to do Oh I don't want to deal with
these fucking creatives or I don't want to room with
ten people.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
I want one guy.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
But it's also like a solve for scale, right, You're like, oh,
I can just pump this shit out and I can
hone it and refine it to what the audience wants
and it'll be this perfect marriage of like no cost
production and content that people love, and like we'll just
make all the money for ourselves. I want to believe
there's some impossibility there. I want to believe that there's something.
I think we're all convinced there's some fear lingering out there,

(51:18):
this AI fear, you know, and listen, I see it
in art, like, I mean, the stuff that mid Journey
does is crazy.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Like I put out a song.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
The other day and I had mid Journey do the
art for it, and it is like as good as
any maybe better than any piece of art I could
have gotten from another person because it did exactly what
I wanted, exactly what I was trying to get it
to do. And that's scary. That's going to cost people jobs.
There's no question it already is costing people jobs. Like
I see it all over the place, Like I see
it on articles on news stories all the time, right

(51:45):
where the content was devalued. So also has the art
content been devalued.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Go figure.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
I want to believe that there's going to be a
point and maybe I'm wrong, And frankly, I don't know
if I'm right. That the capability of the AI won't
be as as we think it will be to deliver
the thing that we think it can deliver. Like I
feel like in technology and in life in some way,
we're always looking for this magic single solution that you
put the thing the input into and the output is

(52:13):
your solve, right like, and I think that this happens
all the time. I think pivot to video is one
of these things, right Or like newsletters is one of
those things. Not a knock on your thing, but it's
like this is it. Yeah, we found the solution to
the problem here, and if we just put that all
the our bets on that thing.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
It's going to fix it. And like, I think AI
has a lot of like.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Promise and obviously a lot of potential danger, but is
it really like can it really do the things? Is
there an AI that will be Mike White before Mike
White exists?

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Like?

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah, can AI do the White lotus? Just because it's
able to synthesize what has come before it? Yeah, and
spit something out even if it's of some quality. Have
we underestimated the randomness of the human mind? Like I
think then, I think we have a little bit to
be honest.

Speaker 4 (52:58):
You can almost talk about this in purely technical terms
right where it's like we've seen these incredible especially large
language models have advanced by leaps and pounds just by
throwing power to them, basically, But it doesn't follow from
that that just by continuing to add more computers, you know,
more chips, more more power behind those lms, that we're
going to get to you know, maybe we can get

(53:18):
to ninety percent of human capability or whatever, and maybe
for a lot of applications that's good enough. Ninety percent
is fine, and even maybe for television, But that last
ten percent, like the ten percent that is memorable and
meaningful and original and new we may never ever reach that,
we may not ever get.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
There or whatever.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
Yeah, I think that because I think the other the
flip side of the sort of dynamic you're describing is
and I can't remember who I feel like there was
an old Wired article that first kind of articulated this
idea that like the one of the things the Internet
has done is sort of allowed the rain of the
good enough. That there's just like once you realize you
can kind of penetrate into what people are actually accessing

(53:57):
and seeing and doing whatever else, that you realize that,
like you don't have to make everything perfect. You can
just make stuff good enough and people will consume it
in vast quantities. In some ways, that's incredibly freeing as
a creative that like you can allow stuff that wouldn't
necessarily hit your standards out there into the world. But
the flip side of it is that like if good
enough is good enough, then like what's the motivation to
take it to beyond good enough? Especially like on a

(54:20):
corporate level where you're trying to press shareholders and make
a profit whatever else, Like you don't get extra money
by going from good enough to truly excellent. Like the
dystopian fear about AI. I think I'm just sort of
echoing what you're saying, is like maybe a I will
never be able to write the White Lotus or Succession
or whatever to your sopran Certainly not the Sopranos, whatever
TV Shaw you love.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Definitely not the Soprido, like you're like the other one.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
Well, the Sopranos to me is like that's part that's like,
that's that's memorable, that's for it.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
I don't I don't disagree, But they'll be remaking it
in like twenty years of the new cast or not
even twenty years probably.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
Yeah, right, anyway that there's a million shows that would
be fine to write with AI, and people might notice
the difference.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
But maybe crazy atom maybe for instance.

Speaker 4 (54:58):
I mean, I don't want to again, I don't want
I have to. I have to get a job when
the strike is over. So I'm not going to say
anything out loud.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
No, I've never watched Gray's Anatomy, so I wouldn't be
able to tell you.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
But and I think, I mean, I think that's a
legitimate fear. I mean the other part of it is
I just think like, there's something about having things created
by humans that I think is really important to the
way we consume art and journalism and any other thing.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
To you, to a lot of people, it's not important
at all.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
The same people who would happily read a user generate
a piece of content on buzzfit.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
I don't know and enjoy it.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
I wonder like I do kind of. Jake Kang had
this great line and a piece he wrote for The
New York a few weeks ago where he said that, like,
it's really important to him when he reads an article
that he's getting angry at a human, like when you
and Jay is like, as a writer, I love who
who's Like one of the things he does is get
really mad.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
At people, and he's mad online.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
Yeah, and the human component, like the fact that there's
a human to be mad at, is important to him,
the fact. And I think you can transperse that to
all kinds of emotional states that you want to be.
Let's say this is a hope more than like a
thing that I absolutely know to be true. This is
but it's something that I I hope with reason that
people will feel some kind of difference between watching Let's

(56:05):
pretend some far future AI could from a single prompt
create a ten episode, not just the script, the whole thing.
That there's a difference between watching that and watching something
that somebody else made right even that, like, even there's
a difference between you, Joshua, like I really want to
watch a cyberpunk adaptation of whatever You type that into
your TV generating AI and get it that there's a

(56:28):
difference between that versus something that Mike White typed into
his thing. I want to write a thing right that,
even between those two uses of AI, there's a difference that,
like so much of what we consume, there's this social
basis to it that I think hasn't quite been worked
out by places like Netflix. That there's that that they're
betting on the other half, which is, like you say
that if we can sufficiently allow the prompt to just

(56:50):
solve all of these problems, then we're all set. But
I mean, man, I've been so wrong as I try
to get people to subscribe to my newsletter about the future.
Let me just say, I'm so wrong all the time.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
But that's good to know.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
People love to read about a guy who's predicted in
the future, but getting it wrong that's one of their favorite.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah. I mean, actually, that's it gives you a person
to hate online.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
I feel just perhaps, I mean maybe what saves humanity
is that we need to be mad online, but we
need to be mad online at someone specifically. We can't
just be mad online, Like being mad online at an
AI feels like unproductive, right, just not enough, you know.
That's that's that's really seizing the means of production, the
productive anger.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Yeah, we got to wrap up, Max.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
This was really great first off, not surprising, but really enjoyable.
And I feel like there's about twenty things we didn't
get to.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
I had.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
I know that during the time that you were talking,
several times you were saying something, I'm like, I have
a great, hilarious rebuttal to this, and I didn't get
a chance to even get there because we got it
to so many other things. So you got to come
back and do this again. Yeah, and people can find you.
You're not on Twitter. You don't You're not on Twitter.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
No, I'm on blue Sky now though I'm.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Not really uhy, but nobody else is on blue Sky.
So that's why you can't promote yourself.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
What is your name? On blue Sky. How come people
find you?

Speaker 4 (58:04):
It's just it's max read dot info. It's my it's
my personal.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Lives at r O.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
That's great dot info.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
I'm also I'm also on blue Sky, I should say,
because that's a cool thing to tell people.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Josh, wait, Tibolski dot.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Com is my this is my blue Sky day, which
is great. You obviously have this great read Max newsletter
that you can subscribe to. It's on substack.

Speaker 4 (58:23):
The U R L is Max read dot substack dot com.
And my last name is spelled R E A D
like a book.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah, we know how to spell read. Do people e
on the end a lot of the time?

Speaker 4 (58:33):
This is this R E E D sometimes?

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Yeah, sure, I guess I don't think of that read
at all. What else? Instagram? You don't do Instagram?

Speaker 4 (58:40):
Not really?

Speaker 2 (58:41):
You know, I'm a podcast No, but yeah, I think
when the I when the higher ups that I heard
here this, They're going to be like this guy.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
We got to get this guy on the air.

Speaker 4 (58:50):
One can only hope.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Or a chat GBT equivalent of this guy. No.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
I invite people. I invite people to subscribe to the newsletter.
It's free. I should mention there is a subscription fee.
You can pay for it, but I write one free
weekly column.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
So I think you can get that the Nemesis Sunglass
Post for free. And I think that if you want
to go a deeper dive on nemmesis you get that,
you have to pay a few bucks.

Speaker 4 (59:10):
That's exactly right, and you will after you read the
Sunglass post, you will want the deeper dive.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
I do think that's a big way to kind of
dangle the subscription at people.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
To get that.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
That's a glass posts. Anyhow, it's a super fun Thank
you for taking the time. Well, that is our show
for this week. I think obviously I've I've concluded the
conversation and now that I've had nothing left my all
of my essence has been drained from me. That sounds disgusting, actually,

(59:39):
but I go into a cryogenic chamber at the end
of every show and I'm there until the next show,
so I have to begin my long slumber. We'll be
back next week with more what future, and as always,
I wish you and your family the very best.

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Height