Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Damian Kulash (OK Go)

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Meet Damian Kulash, lead singer and guitarist of the band OK go. The band is known for their elaborate and captivating music videos, often incorporating one take shots and extensive coordination. Their video for "Here it Goes Again" won Best Music Video at the 2007 Grammys and "Upside Down & Inside Out" won the same award in 2017! Damian is also a director, who released his film The Beanie Bubble in 2023. OK Go's new album is out this April. I hope you enJOY our conversation!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canole. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. This podcast is based on my co-host Mark Seale's best selling book of the same title. Leave the Gun, Take the Canole features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert

Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Canole on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and In Your Ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices

of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife Andrea Waters King and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heart-felt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen,

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice,

and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes, or villains. Or often, somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is me, Craig Ferguson.

I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well, it's actually, it's about an hour and a half, and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now, and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout 2025 and beyond.

For a full list of dates, go to thecraigfergusonshow.com. See you on the road, my dears. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. My guest on the podcast today, I've been aware of for a long time. His band were on my old late night show when it was so...

Well, you'll hear the story. Anyway, please welcome Damien Koulash from OK Go. Damien. Hello. First of all, let me apologize. Don't get too close to your microphone because I'm feeling a bit a little poorly. I've got, I think I've got a cold, but it could be leprosy. It could be anything. I don't know. We've got many symptoms start with a cold. How are

you? Are you okay? I'm well. I'm better than that. I don't think I have leprosy. Okay. Well, that's good. Are you hypochondriac in any way? No, not particularly. Many artists are, you know. I think it's something to do with a creative mind getting bored. And you go, oh yeah. Could be. Or just the delicacy of our sensitive little souls. Ah, no. I see we're going to embark on an existential crisis.

Hey, I know that you did the old late night show like years ago, right? Yes. When I was doing late night and it was right at the, it was before This Too Shall Pass. It was before, I mean, it was really, it was quite early, right? Long time ago, yes. It was when the show was so small, the band had to play and then you guys had to go away. And then we put the late night thing in and then we shot it out of order so that the band played first. That was right, right? That was, you were doing that?

That sounds right to me. I've had kids since then, so I don't remember anything. Yeah, that's interesting. So have I. And I remember Patchy Bits, who were a great band, Patchy Bits. They were really lovely. But listen, I think that was interesting because I mean, obviously I've known of the band. And even right at the very beginning of Late Night, I always kind of like, I would either say yes or no to the bands.

So I was very familiar with OK GO very early, or I thought early on, I mean, imagine it wasn't that early on for you. But since then, the kind of performance nature of what you do, because you're not like a normal rock star. First of all, do, because you're not like a normal rock star. First of all, I can see you're in your kitchen. That's, and you have a throw blanket on your sofa. This is true. This is true.

This is not my own home. It's not? No. Wow. There's been fires in Los Angeles as you may know. Oh my God, did you get evacuated? Did you get into trouble? I did.

You know, I don't, my home is still there and is safe. Right. But my kid's school is very close to where the fires were. And while I am not a hypochondriac, I'm very cautious with their exposure to heavy metals and flying asbestos and so forth. That's exactly what I felt about it because I lived in LA for years and years

and years and years and I still have a lot of friends there who have moved out. I would be terrified now to just be there breathing that stuff in. It is nasty stuff and there's a big push towards normalcy which I completely understand. Everybody wants life to keep going. And so the faster you can open the schools,

the faster you can get everybody back into their routine, the better. But we are opting out of that for a little while. We're in Santa Barbara because it feels too toxic. Yeah, I would be totally doing that as well. I'm in London and I've just been on the tube, the London underground. That's pretty toxic too, actually.

I think that's where I might have, where am I going to go with my comb? So- But much more romantic type of toxic. It is, it's a little bit like it's toxic, but it's also a Richard Curtis movie. Uh, you can see lots of little Richard Curtis movies going on all over the subway. I think by the way, that would be a good place for an okay go video would be the subway jumping, leaping across trains instead of trebles.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know why we haven't thought of it yet. Are you still doing the super kind of complicated and like performance art videos? Yes, we just released a new video two weeks ago. Last week? The week before? Yeah, two weeks ago. Which is, it features 64 clips on 64 phones

all laid out on the floor as a mosaic. I have to say I haven't seen it yet. What's the name of the song that goes with it? It's called A Stone Only Rolls Downhill. Okay. And it is, the opening lines are, I wish I could say it would all be alright. Are you concerned about the state of the, I mean I think everybody's concerned about the state of the world.

I was going to say, are you not concerned? Well, you know, I am and I'm not. I'll tell you, I've been, I've been bored in the arse of everyone who listens to this podcast, but I've been reading a lot of historical novels, particularly the work of Gore Vidal. And it's been bad for a long time. I feel like this is not, it's always crazy. I feel like, I think like I'm getting a sense, a little bit of a sense of perspective. Of course I'm worried, but if you look at a sense of perspective. Of course, I'm worried

But if you look at it, it's it's always been pretty scary for humans on this planet Yeah, you think it's worse. I do really why I think it is. I think it is more I Think that the things we are I think we're at some tipping points into some some places We may not be able to return from as easily. I think you're right that it's always been bad and it's always been crazy. But I think that I am very worried about the governmental changes happening in the US right now. That having a president that acts more like a fe fearer is not great. And I do think that climate stuff is passing tipping points that really change the way humans live.

I don't necessarily think, like, I'm not running from a specific fire as much as I am the toxicity that comes after that and the social changes that come after that. You know, I think that a lot of what's happening, I think the, let's see what's right. I think the war in Syria is really a climate war. I think that the migration problems at

the southern border are really climate problems. That when you have, the reason you have MS-13 in taking over cities in South America is because there's an influx of people from agricultural areas that are no longer used for agriculture because they've been in drought for so long. So it seems like a social problem at the border of the US, but it's actually a climate problem globally. So that's what I'm worried about.

Well, what would you, do you have any ideas about how you think a solution may be achieved? Just write pop songs. That's the way to do it. But I think it's kind of interesting because I think everybody's worried about, I mean, any sentient being, I think it has to be worried about climate change because it's the planet on which we live. But the idea that I've had this discussion with my kids who are probably a bit older than yours, I think, but that I feel at this point, you know, all of our frothy entreaties to,

you know, get your grandma to separate her, you know, plastic bag from the, you know, the eggs is not going to work. And I think at this point we've now reached it's an engineering problem. We have to actually intervene in some way. And I think that's kind of fascinating to me because I feel that nothing's going to change until it becomes profitable. I feel like climate change has to become profitable

for someone to say, well, we'll pay you $500 billion to do some cloud seeding and bring down the temperature of the North Atlantic by three degrees. And then someone will do it because it can be done. I hope you're right. What do you think then? I think that solar is already cheaper than fossil fuels, and yet we keep opening new wells and trying to dig more. I agree it is systemic. I don't think this choice should be on the consumer. I don't think it is a consumer choice.

You can't expect everybody in the world to make the best decision for the planet. What you need to do is actually make good structural decisions for the planet. I am not super bullish on geoengineering stuff, but I'm also not a scientist. I just sort of feel like that those geoengineering stuff, but I'm also not a scientist. I just sort of feel like that those geoengineering solutions are often used as a sort of sell for like, I know it's really bad, but we can fix this and sort of like, no, the thing we

should do is stop drilling. It's like stop burning oil. That is the obvious thing to do. And yeah, I know that we could easily find, you know, someone else who could say, here's why we mustn't stop drilling oil and we must have to. Yeah, I mean, there are, it's such a, it's an argument, which is, it seems like one of those arguments where you can't persuade anyone. Do you know what I mean?

It's like people dig in and then it's like, and I feel like the nature of argument has become a little, a little difficult as well. It's like, it's not just about climate change, it's about societal change in the sense that the difficulty in argument now is that you don't really, you don't really discuss to move forward. It's not socratic. It's more about, well, what's your position? Well, here's my position and here's why your position is wrong and here's why my position is right. And it doesn't seem to move.

I think it's a real gridlock. It's, I think that's, that's, that's a systemic problem with humans as well, I think, isn't it? I believe that it is. So maybe what I'm trying to get to is maybe writing pop songs is the right way to go. Because if you can in some way through art, maybe not only pop songs, but pop songs and literature and art and entertainment and all of the things that artists do, perhaps that can help people kind of break the logjam of this is my position and I will never change from it.

Because you know, one of the great things I think, one of the great movies I think to watch for this is Dirty Dancing. You ever seen a movie Dirty? Of course you've seen a movie Dirty Dancing. And you watch that movie, if you watch that movie when you're 15 or you watch that movie when you're 50 and you have children, it's a completely different movie. You're like, wait a minute, that dad is right, you know, you know, and she should be put in the corner. At what age is Patrick Swayze with that? This

is, it's all about what's going on here. And I think perspective is, is an artist's job, right? Yeah, it is. That's what I kind of loved about the first mad, giant performance piece that I saw of yours. I saw the very famous treadmill video, which is very fun. Thank you. But the Rube Goldberg machine for This Too Shall Pass, I feel like that must have taken about four or five years

to get, I mean, it was an enormously complex. Did you actually get it in one take eventually? We did. What you actually see is it goes from take A to take B back to take A. Because there's a section of that where we're going down an elevator shaft following a bunch of fluids that sort of rise and fall on different, you know, as the machine trips itself. And the incredible, incredible cameraman, Mick Waugh, who was doing this

amazing job filming that, did in the one perfect take otherwise, did miss the level of the liquid in there for a second. So we had to sort of stitch in take B. But it's not cheating because you did get the machine to do what it set out to do. Who designed the Rube Goldberg machine? Are you part of that? Yes. Well, there was, we put, I mean, this is now, you know, 10, 15 years ago, but we put a job posting on a sort of, like, nerdy artists board saying, we're looking for an engineer who can help us build a Rube Goldberg machine.

And 12 engineers together wrote us a proposal. And we're like, guys, you're not very good engineers if you, like, you know, we asked for one. This is too many. We cannot afford you. And they said, if you like, you know, we asked for one. This is too many. We can't afford you. And they said, no, no, we'll just pay us like we're one person and we'll just split it up. And it so wound up being this sort of group art project where by the end, I think people logged hours and you only got paid if you did more than 10 hours a week or something

like that. Like, but people would just come into this giant warehouse and everybody would sort of work on it together and play and have fun. My dad built some of that machine, I built a bunch of that machine. We broke it up into a whole lot of different six-second chunks of the song. So there were discrete problems to try to solve.

We could then review things while we were on tour and come back and, you know, like the last three weeks of that build, I was there every day, but there was another like three months before that. So you would you in the, in the case of like these big videos, will you amend the music to fit the video? Will you change that? Like, you know, if you're in a, you know, that one shot looking thing in the airplane, do you change the music to? Generally, no. The one shot one in the airplane is, that's the album version of that song. And that one is, you know, we're in zero gravity and you can get 28 seconds of, sorry, you can get 28 and a half seconds of zero gravity for each time the plane dives.

So, what we did for that was we broke the song up into 21 second chunks that were, that fit the tempo of the music nicely so that every four bars there would be a pause basically. So, how do you rehearse that something like that? Do you have to rehearse it like, are you watching a clock while the plane is in the sine wave? Is that what was happening or were you? We spent six flights just bouncing off the walls doing everything, like, you know, six flights of 15 per unit each. So what is that?

300? Do I have that? 615 is six? No, Do I have that? 615 is 6... No, I'm way off. 60, 90. So we had 90 little like test segments. And then with the footage from that, we had GoPros everywhere just filming everything. With the footage from that, we put together what we thought a routine would be, you know,

just in a dance studio going kind of like we could do this thing and then that thing. And then we went back to the plane and spent another week, another six flights trying out that routine. And then finally a week of shooting those. And during the week of shooting them, each flight you have 15 periods of weightlessness. The video requires eight of them. So you do seven as a rehearsal, then reset everything and do the full video as the final eight. And in between each, like it's 30 seconds of weightlessness more or less, then five

minutes is the plane climbs back up to where it can basically drop you again. And during that we just have to sit still as we could so that we would later be able to morph over that period. It sounds fantastically expensive. Who paid for this? Did the record company pay for this? No, we are our own label. So a Russian airline, this was back before Russia and the West fell apart.

You'll see on the back of the the back of that plane I mean like in the in the back you can see it says s7 That's a Russian airline and they were there. This was their ad campaign Wow So they they donated that for an ad campaign. Hmm. That's great I'm mark seal and I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canole. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. Leave the Gun, Take the Canole is based on my co-host Mark's best-selling book of the same title.

And on this show, we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the godfather's birth from start to finish. This is really the first interview I've done in bed. Ha ha ha ha! We sift through innumerable accounts. I see 35 pages in the re-elections. Many of them conflicting. That's nonsense. There were 60 pages. And try to get to the truth of what really happened.

And they said, we're finished. This is over. They know this stuff's gonna work. You gotta get rid of those guys. This is a disaster. Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Joy here. You may know me from Therapy for for black girls where we're celebrating 400 episodes of the podcast. That's a whole lot of girl me too moments for years. We've had deep, thoughtful and inspiring conversations about black women's mental health.

And now we're celebrating this milestone in a big way. In this special episode, Peloton Yogi, Chelsea Jackson Roberts shares how yoga has taught her to stay grounded and present while balancing motherhood and self-care. I can't control my partner. I can't control my child. I can't control anyone outside the way that I govern myself in this world. And the celebration doesn't stop there.

We'll continue this milestone with Dr. Lauren Mims, who joins me to discuss the powerful yet sometimes challenging transition from girlhood to womanhood for Black Mims. Together, we explore how we navigate this transformative journey with strength and grace. Black girlhood is giggling, it's sisterhood, but it is also, I think, focusing on learning how to cope with really difficult things that are happening.

With insights like these, this 400th episode celebration is one for the books. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey y'all, it's your girl Cheekies and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are going to attack me. Why are you going to go visit your dad?

Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm going to tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no.

I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years

and the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me, not only with women, but also with men. What should I do? Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough, because if he loved you, he'd be faithful.

It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheeky's and Chill, season four, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. My name is Paola Pedroza,

a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. Join me on the Ghost Therapy Podcast. Whoa, my lights in my living room just flickered. I'm a little nervous. I'm excited.

I'm excited and nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready little nervous. I'm excited. I'm excited nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person. So I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother, my abuela, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm going to have to really think about. Wow. Okay. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate. Listen to the Ghost Therapy podcast as part of the MyCultura podcast network

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, this is Craig Ferguson. And I want to let you know I have a brand new stand-up comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy. And I would be so happy if you checked it out. To watch the special just go to my YouTube channel at The Craig Ferguson Show. And it's right there. Just click it and play it and it's free. I can't, look I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it.

If you can't do it then you can't have it. But if you can figure it out it's free. I can't look, I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it. If you can't do it, then you can't have it. But if you can figure it out, it's yours. You must have some very clever producing skills or some very clever producers that I mean, how the hell do you get in touch with a Russian airline? So do you want to do a music video and it'll get, you know, because I don't think I don't think I even watched that video and go, you know, what because I don't think I don't think I even watched that video go You know what airline I should be taken is the one I do remember thinking like how ambitious are you like it like a will and and how

Risk-averse are you because like that's not the type of airplane you want to be in but you know our root Goldberg machine was underwritten by Our Rube Goldberg machine was underwritten by State Farm Insurance, which I feel like everything that happens in that video looks like something you should be insuring again. But that's interesting because presumably they were the good guys when they were underwriting the video. But I don't know if everyone's very happy with State Farm Insurance right now, particularly in Los Angeles.

No, no, no, certainly not. I mean, again, this is many years ago, but, um, I get, you know, like we had to make this, this choice 15, 20 years ago about whether or not we were going to do the standard music industry dance or try to do it ourselves. That State Farm video was the first one where we had any brand money helping to pay for stuff. It was a difficult balance because back then,

the idea of selling out was a very real thing and it was like, people are going to hate this if it feels like we are just dancing monkeys. Now, as best I understand it, if it feels like we are just sort of dancing monkeys. Now, as best I understand it, younger millennials, definitely Gen Z and beyond, see those brand collaborations as a badge of honor. Like it's the opposite. That's right. I think they look at it a different way as well

because they also use it as their power, I think, the opposite, right? I think they look at it a different way as well, because they also use it as their power, I think the young people, when they say we will withdraw our business from Target or Starbucks or whatever, as they're angry at the time, until you fall in line with, you know, whatever we're arguing about, which is a different, it is a kind of change,

which I think is, it has, it's valid. I mean, there is a kind of like, well, I'm not buying your crap until I feel like you're a decent human being or your position aligns with mine, which I think is fair. That seems democratic to me. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that I mean, voting with your dollar is a is more effective than voting with your dollar. Yeah, I think everybody's voting with dollars. It just depends on how much dollars you have and what votes you're using to do. What is the situation then with your record company now?

Is it only your band or do you bring in other bands and do you function like a... We have occasionally released other bands. For the most part, it's more, the record company stuff isn't very fun. So it's like we don't particularly want to do it unless we're doing it for ourselves but it's mostly just that it's not like the functions of an old-fashioned record label it used to be a lot about physical distribution and now that's not part of

it anymore. There's still a lot of business I mean There's still a lot of business, I mean it's still a lot of stuff that has to happen and most of it is sort of just promotional and logistical but it is, it's not stuff I relish doing but if you're kind of a detail freak you're going to wind up wanting to oversee it all anyways, you might as well just do it. Are you a detail freak you think? Unfortunately. Yeah. I think that, you know, it's not unusual for musicians or artists to be that way.

I mean, you want your shit to be the way you want it to be. That's the whole gag, right? And you want it to be, what I always say when I'm doing anything is I don't want it to be produced, unless it's produced by me I don't I don't you know, if you say well, this is what happens here to go. I don't know what happens here I'm doing it. So I feel like it's That's why through all of it and through doing the late night show and through all the television that I've done I've ended eventually went back to doing only stand up and

Doing podcasts because I can talk to I want to on a podcast because there's no one here to tell me I can't. You know, there's like, you can't talk to like, I remember one of the early podcasts I did was with one of the senior undertakers in New York City, a lovely man. And I wanted to know about undertaking and and what I had no idea, it's fascinating world, and it's like you have to go to have a college degree to do it, and it's like a real, a real interesting thing.

And I wouldn't have been able to get that guy a three-minute interview, second guest on a Wednesday night on late night, there's no way I would have been able to do that, and I could talk to him for an hour. And that's what I think is the great gift of this world now. I know that you have talked, didn't you go in front of Congress or something about net neutrality? I did, yeah. Can you describe to me what net neutrality actually means?

Net neutrality, boy, and it has been a long time since that was the specific argument, so I hope I'm not too out of date, but that the traffic on the internet is going across lines that are owned. The actual infrastructure of the internet is owned by the same people who are generally by the same companies who are selling us that access. And so they can preference what information travels and at what speeds. And so that there was actual preferencing of corporate information over private information back then and that there was, there were basically, it was essentially internet payola and that was a nasty, nasty, nasty thing. Now we have a much

worse issue which is sort of, we have wound up asking the content networks to be the police of the content on them. We expect Facebook to be, to decide what should be on Facebook and the misinformation that flourishes is their problem. Yeah, but it's an interesting thing because then people got mad at Mark Zuckerberg recently because he said, all right, we're not going to police it. We're just going to, people can flag it. Is that neutrality? Is that better? people can flag it. Is that neutrality? Is that... I don't... This is why I was scared of being out of date, because I honestly don't know where...

We've now gotten past the point where we're worried about Comcast and AT&T throttling things so that they can serve the interests of their business partners and into the world of misinformation. And, and I honestly, I'm so overwhelmed by it myself that I don't I have not developed a position that I really trust. It's first of all, that's a very refreshing thing to hear any human being to say in this day and age. But what I think is, is fascinating though, that in the age of as we wander into every discussion I've had with everybody, at some point we end up talking about AI. And I think because it is an enormous change in how we are living and it's coming fast. But what I'm fascinated by with it is that it really is, as far as the internet goes,

as far as the digital information goes, we're in a post truth environment where you can't actually trust anything, even the video which you're watching. I mean, I'm sure there's an AI program that could make an OK Go video that would convince most people that you had done it. Yes, for sure. And it's mind-boggling. And it also, luckily, for my little band, it does put a premium on stuff that

where people try just for the sake of trying. Right. I mean, there is some trust is involved that people do on the other end of the screen. Like the thing we make winds up on the other end of the pipeline going into your eyes, you're going

into your ears and you're going into your ears, and you need to trust us in some way that this is the real thing. Luckily, we've been doing this for 20, 25 years, so we're a fairly trustworthy source of our own videos. You are trustworthy, but the machine is no longer trustworthy. That's what I think is the frightening thing,

that I trust you to make the product the way that you make it and the way you said you made it. But I don't know if I trust my phone to be giving me something that wasn't put together in a bot farm somewhere and I don't know anywhere, wherever the bot farms are. Do you ever use, are you ever, because on one side, everybody likes to, I certainly like to talk about how scary AI is and how bad it is, but it's also, you know, it could be great. You know, I've talked to a surgeon on this podcast who's like, no, this is fantastic. This is going to save so many lives in surgery because this thing

can do stuff that I just can't. You know, it can do it faster, it can do it, it can make decisions, it can analyze data that would normally take me a week, a day, two operations, three operations, I don't have to do it. I can get it instantly as soon as the patient is. Sometimes I don't even have to open them up. And I think that that is the other side of, is the technological balance, isn't it? Yeah, I know. It's incredibly, incredibly powerful.

And I think people mostly sort of jump to end points. Is this going to be a big monster that's going to come after us and try to kill us? Or is it going to make a believable version of Craig Ferguson that's not actually Craig Ferguson? make a believable version of Craig Ferguson that's not actually Craig Ferguson. I think the more realistic, in my estimation, sort of slide into the future has more to do with how many intermediary steps it cuts out and whose jobs it's replacing and what that does to the eventual product. When you think about it with respect to music, it's not just that you can have an AI replication of Taylor Swift's voice, it's

that I would be astonished if our recording programs within the next year or two didn't have a button that you could push to get a better guitar track than the one that you just recorded, right? Oh right, so it's like auto-tune almost, it's like but extrapolating that so that it gives you it realizes what you're trying to do and makes it better. Yeah. So, for instance, my wife and I directed a film for Apple the year before last. And in the mixing process, I remember you were there in a giant

mixing studio to do this very high end professional cinema mix. studio to do this very high-end professional cinema mix. And the tool that was used to clean up the audio was all AI based. And it's unbelievable what you can do. You can take a track from, you know, a musical track from the 1960s and pull out each individual instrument and remix it on the fly if you want to. And that's an unbelievably powerful tool. That's crazy. It's, and it is, you know, from a workflow perspective, why would you not do that?

But when you think about what that is capable of then, why would, like, it's that tool, anybody in the path is dumb not to use that tool, right? But now, like, pivot that to logistics, let's say. If you were running a port right now, you would be dumb not to run your logistics through an AI that can make better routing decisions than you can, right? And if you were a small local government, you would be dumb not to interface

with that AI with your own AI, you know? And like, and at some point, it's not a question of this big, evil robot coming after people, it's just that they're all black box decisions. We don't know why it's a better decision. We know that it came up with an answer that works. Right.

And that's all we know, right? You usually can't go back into an AI and actually figure out what the reasoning was, because there is no reason. It's pattern recognition and it's recursive and it feeds on itself. And it's like it can't explain to you why it has done it. So what happens when you have misalignment with the actual human goals that have gone into it, right? So when the human goals and the synthetic intelligence goals don't mash up, so the artificial intelligence makes a decision in favor of who?

Or in favor of what it believes the goals to be, which you may have said, but like the Aladdin's lamp or whatever, it's sort of like, there's always a way to achieve those goals, which actually may reveal to you that you should have had better calls. But it actually goes back to, I think, the point you were making early on about climate change effects is what's affecting the society change because it's a technological, it's like when the printing press is invented, then very quickly you lead on to the Protestant Reformation because people are starting to look at Bibles that they weren't allowed to look at before.

And then you start thinking about, we'd like to look at this in our own language. And suddenly there's a revolution. And suddenly everything changes because of a piece of technology. And I think that the AI to me, it seems to be on a par, I think, with the print and press in the sense of the changes

it will bring. Some of them are outstandingly good, but it's probably not all going to be good. No, it's hard for me to imagine an industry that won't be completely top-down, I mean top-to-bott bottom revolutionized by it. Because mostly what AI is currently good at is pattern recognition. Mostly what humans do is pattern recognition. We're in the early days. We're in the Internet of 1978, not even 1990.

We're like, this is very, very, very early days. And so I have a hard, like, in fact, the first song on our new album is written to this idea because I just realized writing a rock and roll album right now is, feels almost silly. Like a bunch of guys standing there with guitars and drums making music. Like it feels like releasing a brand new flip book the day before cinema is invented.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I get it. But I think that that's why I mean, I feel like in my reaction to it has been like all of the work now has to be live. Everything has to be live. I have to do shows which are live. I have when I started out in in my life, when I was 15, 16 years old, my job until I was about 21 was I was a drummer. I was a drummer in rock bands, in punk rock bands. And I remember saying, nothing's going to replace drummers. That was the first fucking thing to go. I mean, and I was, I should have known better. I was listening to Kraftwerk

when I was 12, but I didn't see the signs. You know what I mean? It's like, I didn't put the, I didn't make any pattern recognition, but I think you're right. There's also, you go into any town in the United States and you will see a bunch of groovy people looking for vinyl in some store, probably near the railway station. I listen to vinyl. You know, I still do. I imagine you probably have a vinyl collection as well. And I think that there is, I don't think it's just nostalgia. I think it's also, it's a different experience.

Well, I think it all points to the same slippery slope, which is that when anything is possible, nothing is special. So everybody wants to have more and more access to the stuff they love, but the more access you have to it, the less special any individual part of it becomes. And so you and I grew up summing through punk rock records stores, seven inch boxes, to find that one seven inch from that one band that nobody else had a copy of because it would, I mean, the music that was on there could change your life, but just having it was a thing. It took some work, it took some effort.

And that relationship to songs changed 20 years ago, at least, right? But it continues to change all the time. I mean, there's no, now to a 15 year old is just as easy to discover Etta James as it is to discover Taylor Swift, right? Like they're not, other than the promotional money behind one, there is no, they're both right there on your phone, right? There's no, like when I wanted to know who John Zorn was, I had to find a weird enough record store to carry John Zorn records. Now you just have to know, you have heard the name or the algorithm. But I think, is that, does that make you optimistic or pessimistic?

Cause some of it is, some of that is great. Right. It's both. I, it's just, it's just change. You know what I mean? It's just that like, it doesn't, you can't really put that genie back in the bottle and like, we buy, people buy vinyl now, but I don't even know if they buy it to listen to so much as to like, have a tactile experience again and be able to like,

engage with something, you know, that's not sort of coming from the cloud. And I would say that that's where I think that the AI universe is likely to be that expansion to every piece of human labor there is, right? Everything is possible and nothing is special. And so hopefully there's just things that are then arbitrarily special because like we're gonna put work into it, like okay, go videos, right?

There is an easier way to make this, but we're gonna do it this way because it will mean more. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli is based on my co-host Mark's best-selling book of the same title.

And on this show, we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the godfather's birth from start to finish. This is really the first interview I've done in bed. Ha ha ha ha! We sift through innumerable accounts. I see 35 pages in the real world. Many of them conflicting.

That's nonsense. There were 60 pages. And try to get to the truth of what really happened. And they said, we're finished. This is over. They know this is not gonna work. You gotta get rid of those guys. This is a disaster.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Joy here. You may know me from Therapy for Black Girls, where we're celebrating 400 episodes of the podcast. That's a whole lot of girl me too moments for years. We've had deep, thoughtful and inspiring conversations about black women's mental health. And now we're celebrating this milestone in a big way. In this special episode,

Peloton yogi Chelsea Jackson Roberts shares how yoga has taught her to stay grounded and present while balancing motherhood and self-care. I can't control my partner, I can't control my child, I can't control anyone outside the way that I govern myself in this world. And the celebration doesn't stop there. We'll continue this milestone with Dr. Lauren Mims, who joins me to discuss the powerful yet sometimes challenging transition from girlhood to womanhood for black fans. Together, we explore how we navigate

this transformative journey with strength and grace. Black girlhood is giggling, it's sisterhood, but it is also, I think, focusing on learning how to cope with really difficult things that are happening. With insights like these, this 400th episode celebration is one for the books. This is a therapy for black girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast. Whoa, my lights in my living room just flickered.

I'm a little nervous. I'm excited. I'm excited, nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother, Abuela,

and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm gonna have to really think about. Wow, okay, that's crazy. Yes, that is accurate. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Chiquis, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Chiquis and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother. And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth.

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I did a movie about, I don't know, 10, more than 10 years ago, probably like closer to 15 years ago. For the, I don't know if you've heard of the Disney Corporation. And that's right, these guys. And they decided that they wanted to make a movie of Winnie the Pooh, but they were going to do it all hand. So I did the voice of Owl, but the entire movie was hand drawn. It was done in the old style. And it was, I think, the last one they've done. And I remember asking them, why are they doing it?

And they said, because we can. Because we can, because we're Disney. And we can. We can do it. And it can be great. And it is great. It's beautiful. And it has, maybe it's because I know

that the movie was hand drawn, it feels different to me. But because I'm sure that the AI program can now make animation look like that. It can make it look exactly the same way. My oldest kid is an animator, he's 24, and he's looking at, having studied all through that time, now looking at an industry which is changing, as you say, it's like the internet in 1978.

It's like, what now? What now? What now, what now, what now? But you have children. What do you, do you have your parameters in your parenting? Is there something you think, this is what I must teach them in order to navigate this? No, I don't. They're six and a half year old twins.

And so I'm basically just hanging on for dear life, to be honest. Young kids, like being proactive is difficult. You just try to keep it from going off. Totally understand and I've been there. But it's interesting because my oldest is coming up on 24 and there were just coming in when he was a little kid, iPads and stuff like that. So there were things to do. I don't know how, when I see people at the airport with their kids have got headphones

on and they're looking at phones and that stuff, I think you don't know how lucky you are. You know, I mean, I, and I am that generation because we are total fascists about screen time. We do not let our kids have any screen time unless we're traveling like that. And then it is, and that is this incredible drug because they've never, they have no taste in it. I mean, and, but what's interesting, I noticed that my, both, both kids really, but my youngest will put it down.

It's almost like they're Tom Bombadil with it, the younger generation. They're like, yeah, it doesn't, it's a thing, but it's not the only thing. And I think that will happen. It's a thing, but it's not the only thing. And you can't have a visceral experience without viscerality, if that's even a word. You have to, I mean, the idea of you can have an AI interactive sex robot and you go, well, you can, but it's not going to be the same.

It might be all right, but. No stakes. There's no stakes. There's no stakes, you know, because when everything is possible, nothing is special. You know, it's just sort of like there's that finding the human equivalent to that person takes real risk. And also, it's a very interesting thing. I'm very glad that my romantic life reached a conclusion in terms of monogamy before the invention of the dating apps. Because I don't know how, because now it's involved.

And I know, I won't say who it is because it's a little embarrassing, I think, but I know a relative of mine who found out he was in a flirty relationship with a robot, it was not a real person. You know, that it's crazy. Or is it? Maybe it's okay to be in a flirty relationship with a robot, nobody's going to get it. Well, so you started with it's this is that it's always been crazy. It's always been bad.

It's just crazy changes, you know Yeah, I I I believe that but I also think that the the level of Let's say if you were to measure social Changes with a richter scale We are experiencing several like seven to nine, you know like We are experiencing several, really big earthquakes simultaneously right now. We've got climate change and we've got AI,

and social media I think has really dramatically changed the generation of people for the worse. All of that is either feeding or fueling or bouncing off of the rise of totalitarianism all over the world. Well, totalitarianism is not new. That's a pretty tried and tested kind of, that's been around for a while. It sure has, but there have been a whole bunch of big tentpole democracies that stabbed it off for a couple hundred years that are not doing a good job of starting off now.

You know, it's, I mean, I kind of know, I struggle with this a little bit because I mean, what, what I've, the conclusion I've kind of come around to, this isn't a personal thing, but the thing I've come around to is that I kind of messed around with all sorts of looking at religions and philosophies and theologies and basically what I seem to be zeroing in on in the past couple of years is basically the works of Epictetus, Socrates, Seneca, but people who have been dead for a couple of thousand years, but basically said the same thing. It was like, you can do very limited stuff you can actually fucking do and everything else is really not your concern.

You know, I mean, and, and I think you can drive your, I mean like S, like Seneca was Nero's school teacher. I mean, that's a dangerous fucking job, you know? But I think that the idea that we all, because, you know, I have this conversation with my wife and she's like, have you seen this in the news? And have you seen that in the news? I'm like, I've seen it, but I have a clutch mechanism, which is what the fuck am I going to do? What the fuck am I going to do? Oh, totally agreed. I'm not saying that I know what to do or that there's anything we can do, but I do think that the last hours of the Weimar Republic were probably a scarier time than the

early hours of the Weimar Republic. Right? Like that's actually- Depends on who you talk to, I suppose. You may not be able to do anything. I mean, yes, I would agree. But that's historical perspective. That's like, if you stand at a period of time and look at that time, you know, like if you stood in right here, right now,

and you were talking to the geniuses that were putting together the fucking Treaty of Versailles in 1918, you'd say, you know what, France? Maybe you should calm the fuck down and not make everybody angry to make this shit all rise up again. You know, whereas you take real geniuses like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu who say, you know what, we have to dismantle this. It's the only way we're going to move forward. Truth and reconciliation. And that to me is fascinating because I think historical, I don't think history begins until everybody's dead. So, the way that we're looking at the second world war is about to change. You know, like this kind of like all of the... that's why I think you

get these scary rise of weird kind of crypto-fascist organizations because so many people have now forgotten what was going on. They're like, well, you know, they had nice hats, you know? I mean, it's tricky. I don't think history repeats itself. I think there's been a tribute to Mark Twain who says history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. I think that that's, and speaking to someone who does part of what you do is you make things rhyme. I do often rhyme things. Yeah, I think that that's how it appears to me.

That's what it seems like. I don't know. I mean, when I look at the way things are now politically in America, I happened to be reading at the time, just when the election was going on, about Gore Vidal's biography of Aaron Burr. It was fucking crazy. I mean, but, and because he's been dead for such a long time,

highly entertaining, you know, I don't know. I mean, I wrestle with it, but mostly I seem to come down to, I don't know if this is the way you do, I come down to, I'll deal with what I can deal with and that's all I can really do. Like, I'm not, I don't feel like I'm going to change anybody's mind. I think it's folly to think that you will. Except your kids. You're right.

And that's exactly where I'm still stuck with, I'll just deal with it, but I can't, because I have no idea. How do you prepare them for all this stuff? There's no, that's what our new song, that's what the song, by the way, that A Stone Only Rolls Downhill is like, my kids, when I was writing it, there were four,

two four-year-old twins. You cannot tell a four-year-old the world is fucked no not not a good idea it might not be not it might not be I mean if you if you were to say the world is if you were in the middle of the black death you know when one in three people in europe was killing over dying when infant mortality was off the charts when antibiotics were just a fucking, nobody even thought about it. Like germ theory was like a couple of guys and you know, Pythagoras had maybe mentioned it

at some point, you would have said, well, this is the end game, clearly. You know, I mean, the, the, the. Well, but I would argue that like, yeah, that time was way worse than 100 years before 100 years after. Yeah, depending on where you were standing, you know, I mean, it's kind of like, I wrestle with it all the time myself, you know, and I think trying to find a sense of perspective in the world when perspective and maybe this is what it is, as you say social media has changed the generations

I think I think what's called legacy media I think is this has been destroyed they know the the the kind of the idea that the press will somehow keep the government in some degree of on it that's that's gone uh and it's been gone for a while, I think. Longer than we gave it credit. I mean, fucking, you know, William Randolph Hearst was not, you know, I don't think he was impartial. Do you know what I mean? I think and no, I think that on the one hand, I get as scared as everyone else. But I think on the other hand, I think ultimately it comes down to,

well, no, in about 100 years when it wouldn't matter to you and me. Well you know there's a term in biology and evolution punctuated equilibrium. I'm not familiar with that. The world doesn't change and evolve in some sort of steady and ramp like a nice even line. You have long periods of sort of things relatively in balance and then something happens and everything shifts really quickly, right? And that doesn't mean that when the dinosaurs were alive, they weren't in constant struggle

and things weren't crazy all the time. But also there was a moment when, when a comedy, right? Like, and when there's a, when there's a vacuum in a system like that, the entire system rearranges itself, you know, you think that's, that's where we are. You think we're in that, that place? I think we are.

Yes. And that's where we are. You think we're in that place? I think we are, yes. I think that just because Aaron Burr had an incredibly insane life and because World War II or World War I were utterly horrific and world transformative, they were, those are all punctuations in the equilibrium. The 50s that followed World War II were not free of strife and craziness. They were full of strife and craziness. But they also represent an equilibrium of sorts.

You can make some guesses as to what's going to happen next. They're not all right, but you can trust certain institutions and certain kind of trajectories to be more or less as you imagine they will be, you know, like, and right now I think it's incredibly hard to imagine what what the world will be like three years from now, much less ten years from now. And I think like some of that, I mean, a big part of that is technological, a big part of that is socio-economic stuff, like governmental essentially. And I do think that we are an inflection point with climate change. It's a slow, slow change, but it's starting to have these effects that people notice as

human. Like I would argue, like I said, that the conflicts in Syria and on the southern border in the US are clearly climate issues. But people don't recognize them as that, and they're not going to be publicly. People aren't going, let's fix the climate so that there won't be an immigration

issue across the Mediterranean. That's not what people are saying. But they are saying, holy shit, LA just burned down and now there's Canadian wildfires that last all year. People are noticing that the erratic climate is causing real human issues. And I think that may not be a three-year change, that might be a 10-year change or a 20-year change. But when you combine that with the other ones that are going on right now, I do think we are likely at one of those

Inflection points. I think that's a that's a fair hypothesis. I think that could be argued pretty Reasonably, what will you do? Will you go back to LA? Probably not but I'm not sure. I, that, that, mostly, I mean, I love LA, I love my house in LA, I love my life in LA, but the, but the long game for LA looks like a lot more of this. Yeah, I live in a much colder place with less fires, but other problems is what it is. It's been fascinating to talk to you. I thought we would have an interesting conversation and I've certainly been very interested in hearing what you have

to say. Thank you so much for making time for us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. This has been so much fun. And for me too. Thanks very much. Now, fuck off and deal with your kids. I will. Yeah. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canole. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. This podcast is based on my co-host Mark Seale's bestselling book of the same title. Leave the Gun, Take the Canole features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford

Kobla, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. John Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show

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I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find, because these are the stories that we need to know

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Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy.