Offline with Jon Favreau - Succession’s Creator Takes on the Tech Billionaires

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Jesse Armstrong, the Emmy Award-winning creator of HBO's "Succession," joins Offline to chat about how he made a mockery of Silicon Valley tycoons in his new movie, “Mountainhead.” He and Jon discuss why the men who run social media companies are so anti social, how hard it is to satirize people who are already parodies of themselves, and compare notes on their writing process. Then, Offline welcomes an old friend back to the show to celebrate the Musk-Trump fallout.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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In a way, you know, we're talking about the nihilism. The other flavor, which is strong in tech world, is messianic optimism, like a Panglossian, like, it's going to be so fucking great when we get there. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. And in a way, that's in some like, it's gonna be so fucking great when we get there. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. And in a way, that's, in some ways, that's more scary. I look like I get a nihilist, but somebody who's telling me it's gonna be great in ways you can't imagine and we're gonna get there in a way that I can't explain, but let's strap

in. That's, that's kind of more scary, isn't it? Yeah. That's, that's, that's a little bit French Revolution. The bad part. Yeah, the bad part, right. Welcome to Offline. I'm Jon Favreau.

Hey, everyone. I am joined here today by the two people who make this show happen every week. Hi, Jon. Our fearless producers, Austin and Emma. Hello. Hi, guys. How you doing? Uh, who are here today to help me intro the show

so that I'm not talking to myself since we no longer have Max. Yeah. We don't want to do like a boring old introduction anymore. No long written passages. This seems like it would be more fun. Yeah. Derek Thompson has quartered it anyway, so.

Yeah, that's true. I don't know. I can't do long intros anyway. So here we are. I miss Max so much. I hope we hear from him soon. I do hope we hear from Max soon. Well, stay tuned for that.

Stay tuned. John, do you want to tell us who you have on the show today? Yes. We have Jesse Armstrong. I'm very excited. The creator, writer for the show Succession, and he has a new film out, his first post-Succession project called Mountainhead. It's about four tech moguls who get together at a ridiculous looking house in Utah while

one of them owns a social media platform. It's pumping out a bunch of misinformation thanks to like a new AI feature and the world is going to shit all around them. It's almost like a play because it just takes place in this house with the four of them. And the movie is about how they react to the world

just going to shit around them. And it is hilarious. Very dystopian. It's dystopian. It's very offline. It's hilarious too. Amazing dialogue. They say things like hardcore gravy, we're all lubed up,

which is something I hope to never say again. So we just got out of the taping. Right now, it was a phenomenal conversation. Jesse was very funny as we kind of all expected as the writer's succession. But I do want to ask, to someone that hears the description of that movie and thinks it's a little bit too dystopian,

it's a little bit too offline, it's a little bit too concerning, what is your pitch on why this was worth watching and why you want to have this conversation with Jesse? Yeah, it's funny. I was on a text chain with some friends and me and another friend who had seen it, were trying to convince everyone else that that it was their time to watch and My pitches it is

And I say this to Jesse in the interview, but it's like it seems more over-the-top than Succession in a really great way and and as you start realizing in the movie that it is more of a sort of biting satire than even succession is, you really get into it. And just the dialogue and the jokes, I mean, so many, so many really great lines, as I was just saying, really funny jokes. I enjoyed every minute of it. I was like laughing out loud. On top of that, I mean, these are horrible people. And I understand like not wanting to spend two hours like locked up in a mansion with

them, which is kind of the plot of the movie. But there is a fair amount of schadenfreude. Like, I don't want to spoil the end. But there, you know, it's pretty satisfying to watch people's comeuppance. And also just to revel in how truly lame these characters are, which I think is something that is also true to life. And you just talked to Jesse about how he got in the head of those characters, how he created them, how they're kind of like built around Elon and Andreessen and Musk, all of

the above. Yeah, he said he listened to a lot of pods. He listened to a lot of the All In podcasts. And a lot of those guys as he was doing research for this. So we, you know, we have a conversation about the movie, what makes it so offline, and all that kind of good stuff. We talk about writing, and we go back and forth on that. And he's just a wonderfully funny and real genuine guy. I'm sorry.

Excited to get into it. Do you want to tell us about the other surprise that you have today? Well, you know, because any other time, if Max was here, we would be talking about- What a week. What a week. Yeah, the Elon Trump breakup,

which I guess right before we recorded, we found out that they talked, they spoke privately Tuesday night, this is Wednesday we're recording this, and then Elon said, he tweeted, I went too far in some of my posts, but we were all, in our meeting, we were all like, I cannot believe that Max Fisher,

who had been predicting the Elon Trump, the break up forever, and then left the show thinking that his prediction was wrong. It would have been so great to talk to Max about it. The first week that he was gone. The first week he was gone. Talk about shot and fry. And so we were like, you know what?

We got to bring back Max. Yes, we do. Just to talk about this. And so we did. And so we were like, you know what? We gotta bring back Max. Yes, we do. Just to talk about this. And so we did. And so we did. And you will hear my quick conversation with Max about the Elon Trump breakup right after my conversation with Jesse Armstrong. And that is all right after this.

Jesse Armstrong, welcome to Offline. Hey, welcome myself to you. Hello. What perfect timing to discuss your new movie about a falling out between billionaires while the world burns around them. Yeah, yeah, it's tough here. I'm in LA with you and I guess we're not together because of events. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot going on here. I'm in LA with you and I guess we're not together because of events.

Yeah, there's a lot going on here. So as someone who has had the great misfortune of both covering and interacting with some of these tech moguls, I thought you brilliantly satirized a group of people who are already parodies of themselves. You focused on media moguls in succession, though you wrote a great tech billionaire character there, Lucas Mattson in the final seasons. What made you want to take on these tech moguls as your first post succession project?

Was there a specific moment? Where was the inspiration? Yeah, I didn't. I was trying to write some other things. I wrote a review of the Michael Lewis book about Sam Bankman Freed for the Times Literary Supplement owned by Rupert Murdoch. And off the back of that, I did start doing a bunch of reading. Some colleagues of mine started putting a few podcasts in front of me. And what I got was the voice of the tech world in my head in a way that I couldn't really get out their philosophical way of

approaching the world, their logical way of approaching the world. And it started to seem to me scary and also funny. And after a certain point, I thought, I think there's a thing in this. I didn't think it was a show, but it felt like there's a movie in this or a play in a way, which is kind of what the film, one of its antecedents is kind of British TV plays. So yeah, it was the voices. I couldn't get the voices out of my head. And for a writer, often getting the voice in a novel or in a TV piece is what what lets you in. What podcasts did you subject yourself to get these voices in your head and is there anything in

particular that really stuck in your mind from the podcast is like an impression of these these characters? Great well yeah there's the Lex Friedman there's the BG squared all in you know, these are four guys, and then theoretically meeting up for a poker weekend. I mean, a lot of these people are into poker and game theory. So all of those and also Ted Talks. But yeah, those were some of the key ones. Yeah.

The movie came together pretty quickly. I think I saw that you pitched it sometime after the election and then shot it in just five weeks this spring. Why such a short timeline? Yeah, it was sort of fear, fear of missing the moment, fear of not being in the same cultural tech bubble as the audience, fear that someone else, you know, you, a writer, you suddenly, as soon as you've thought of an idea, it feels like it'll be obvious to everyone else and you're scared someone else is going to do

it. And I directed this and I was also scared of directing and sort of the fear of waiting too long and hesitating and trying to read every book in the library and watch every online tutorial made me think, you know, maybe you should just run at it and have a go. Yeah, I know very well that you have to, in this news environment, sort of be of the moment as fast as you can, because otherwise things change rather quickly. Tell me if you disagree,

but I thought these characters were even more over the top than most of the characters in succession, in a great way. Do you think that it's tech moguls? Do you think they're more ridiculous and maybe less self-aware than media business types? Or how were you thinking about it when you wrote this? Yeah, it's kind of a narrower piece in a way. It's just got a different tone. I guess the camera style, the visual style, some of the surroundings, because it's this billionaire milieu, are somewhat similar.

But I think people who watch the film will find it a subtly or maybe quite directly different tone. It's more satirical, I guess. Sometimes that word makes me wince because it brings to mind the sort of the worst newspaper cartoon you ever saw in your life with the Dove of Peace having its neck wrung by the bear of militarism or something. But there is an honorable tradition of satire, which can also be subtle and social satire, satire about ideas. So it's more of a satire and more of a comedy in my mind. It's a more direct comedy. I think there's more jokes per page in a really brutal way than there ever were in success.

Yeah, yeah, there's so many good lines. I'm interested... I wasn't fishing, but that's kind of interesting. No, no, I've been... I've been... Some friends who've watched the movie too, we were just texting about some of our favorite lines in the movie.

I'm interested in how you settled on sort of like the four characters, and I know you didn't base them specifically on I'm interested in how you settled on sort of like the four characters. And I know you didn't base them specifically on, on, on certain tech billionaires, at least individually, but to me, Randall felt very Mark Andreessen, Peter Thiel, uh, Venus seems like maybe Elon, Zuck, few others. Jeff has Sam Altman vibes. Uh, maybe Sam Bankman freed there too. Jeff has Sam Altman vibes, maybe Sam Bankman freed there too. Hugo seems like so many lesser known VCs and founders

that have come across. What different tech industry personality types and traits were you trying to represent with the four different characters? Yeah, good. And all those people you mentioned are hopefully put in the blender. There's less well-known people. There's Alex Karp from Palantir, who's also a sort of philosophical figure. Then there's from the UK, Hasibis, who's an AI pioneer.

There's a ton of people to draw from. I, like a lot of writers, are quite scared of other human beings. So most of my research is like secondary, but the American journalism, especially American journalism is great with profiles, books, the space tech biographies and analysis is rich. So yeah, I read tons and tons. And then I guess it's a mixture of taking characteristics, that thing which is so current, not wanting to die, and philosophical approaches, and then pouring them into quite archetypal male figures. They line up with their net worths on their chests at one point. And I've written a lot of men in my life, a lot of dysfunctional men. And there's something universal about the archetype of the philosopher daddy of the gang, the energetic guy who you're kind of, if you're on the weekend,

you're all waiting for him to arrive because you know he somehow brings that magical, this is the gangness that you don't have till he shows up. And you have the anxious guy who's worried if he's bought enough beers. And then you have, you know, Jeff who's the, in this is kind of the voice of conscience, I guess. So yeah, it's a mixture between stealing brutally from the real world and finding some comic archetypes to pour those characteristics into. In the real world, the people who have reached this level of power and success, the Zuckerbergs, the Musks, the Altmans, they are clearly exceptionally smart and talented people.

At one point, some were almost universally admired. What do you think happened to them? Do you think incredible wealth and power change them or reveal who they've always been? I've wrestled with this myself. It's a great question. In the final analysis, I don't have to answer that. I guess in a human sense, I tend to think we're just a product of our environment and the forces upon us. Sam Altman seemed to go into AI just to pick on him. Who can tell what humans' motives are? Especially in the arena of politics, you must have endlessly wrestled with this, the onion skin of ego and genuine

desire to do good and what proportion of each is in each figure. I guess in the final analysis, the answer in politics and in tech is it doesn't matter what's this fucking onion doing. Because you can peel away the layers forever and ever about why they're doing and what forces were acting upon them. I have an optimistic sense of human nature, so I try to take people at their own estimation when they say what their aims are. But looking at someone like Sam Bankman Fried, his interest in effective altruism, it seemed to be sometimes a mask he wore to make himself more palatable to the world. And other times it seemed like a real young person's grappling with how do I be in the world, the sort of central question.

So yeah, I'd take a pass on the final analysis, but we don't have to answer that, right? We just look at what the effects are in the world. I think the nihilism of tech billionaires really comes through in Mountainhead. At one point, they seriously talk about whether other people are actually real. Venus's social media platform is pumping out misinformation that's causing global conflicts and he says, quote, we're gonna show users as much shit as possible until everyone realizes that nothing's fucking serious, nothing means anything and everything's funny and cool. I mean, that is, it's funny.

It's also like one of the bleaker things I've heard. It totally rings true in terms of how tech people talk. But when said by someone with that much power, it's also terrifying. Do you think of some of them like that? Yeah, I'd really just draw a distinction, right? The sort of comment about do you believe in other people, maybe satirical and aggressive, but I think it's a genuine struggle for all of us to believe. You know, JD Vance and the Pope had this debate, didn't they, a little bit about who you pay

regard to, the people close to you or the people far from you. And it's a struggle for all of us, I think, to really believe in the complete and total exact same humanity in the person far across the world on another continent from us. So I feel some sympathy with them in that. I think the attempt is all important, right? The attempt to be able to believe you might have been born into another body of another sex or gender and race far away and how might the world look then is an important struggle to try and complete. Everything's cool and everything's funny, I have much less time for and it seems to me like a young man's vanity and the sort of thing that might have occurred to Zuckerberg when he was making Face Smash and thinking it'd be fun to compare

women in his dorm with farm animals. It's like, it's a young man's game, right? Thinking everything's funny and cool. As you get older, you start realizing maybe that's not the only ways in which the world works. Yeah. It's also, it seems from the tech moguls, particularly over the last decade, it strikes me as, the nihilism strikes me as a justification for a rationalization for what they're doing and the harm that they're causing because then they can say, okay well you know yeah this is bad but like

everything's bad and everything's it's not real and people are bad you know it's it's just very it's like you know a lot of these folks started as libertarians and then I feel like it has devolved into nihilism in a way that's like nothing really matters and so let's just have fun and it's a way to make them or make their conscience feel a little bit better about what's going on. Yeah, I mean, nihilism, I'm sure it exists in tech world and in the Valley, it definitely does.

There's a broad church, right? Some of them are genuinely philosophically engaged with how to make the world better and some of them are genuinely philosophically engaged with how to make the world better and some of them don't give a fuck. And so I wouldn't want to say there is one overriding philosophical approach. And I don't, you know, I think they're worried, lots of them are worried, right? About AI guardrails, about how the world will develop. I'm more confident about their philosophical approach and how their overweening confidence can lead to whether they're kind of zeal for something

of an optimistic view of the world. Like, you might have seen Sam Altman's, have you seen his blog post this morning? The gentle singularity he's welcoming us into. And so I wouldn't say it's all nihilism. I don't think they're all nihilists. I think they're human beings just like us, but with this incredible amount of power. And as you say, I'm sure that sometimes if your economic interests are so powerful and

you don't see any other way through intellectually where you might be taking the world, then maybe nihilism starts to blossom as a bit of a dark flower of like, and in the end we're all, you know, as US politicians said recently, you know, we're all gonna die. So.

Well, it also, it sort of reminded me of Elon Musk's, one of his favorite lines is, the most likely outcome is the most entertaining one, which is just sort of his way of dismissing like anything bad that might happen. And I'm like, all right, man, yeah, maybe when you're just sitting on your platform that has rotted your brain.

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They don't really wanna talk to the president when he calls. And to me, it really captured how these tech guys' attitude towards people in government is, you know, they're not as powerful, they're not as smart, they're kind of a nuisance that we have to deal with, and, you know, we could do their job better than they can. We just choose not to, because this is a better gig anyway. How do you think about sort of the tech view

of politics and government from what you've listened to and researched? Yeah, that's one of the strong tones of voice you hear coming through, right? This, this weariness, weariness with most of the population in the globe for not being smart enough. And sometimes as they isolate smaller and smaller, the group who are worthy of kind of proper consideration, you start feeling like it's basically a hundred of

them in Sun Valley or some other place to go to gather. And yeah, the arrogance, the confidence, which we all need to jump in and try and address problems, but transitioning at a certain point into arrogance, it was one of the strongest flavors I smell. And I started in politics, I was no good and so quickly got out again, but, and I've done satirical work about politics and have many

feelings about the ways it fails. But I'm essentially a politics person who believes lots of politicians go into it for good reasons. And anyway, it's the only fucking thing we've got. Right? How do we figure out who gets the money and where the roads go? We've just it's the only game we've got it's the only thing we have which can stop us from Sorting those things out with our fists so I'm I believe and I have to believe in politics and the arrogance with which a

certain certain type of person approaches the incredibly complex problems of forming coalitions, mobilizing support and affecting change. You think of like Musk's pathetic dabbling months. I was just about to say that. And then walks away throwing his hands up like this is all too fucking complicated. There's, or, you know, who would have thought have a look at, have a look at your Robert Caro like four volumes there.

Like, this is somebody who did something and he spent his whole fucking life doing it. And, and it's really tough and involves terrible compromises and just might destroy your life. But if you want to play that game, though, that's where you have to sit. It's not a casino that you can run into and make a quick profit off. So yeah, I really feel some strong feelings about that approach to the sort of political world. And the whole world of social policy, you often feel like the whole of these people's worldview would crumble to nothing if you took a nurse or a social worker onto one of these podcasts.

These people are making the world go round, they're making it a livable community for everyone and their economic value will not be recognized in your system. So what do we do? Do we vaporize them or do we turn them into a robot? No, we're gonna have to figure out a way to pay them and value them. No, I mean, look, I love this conversation because it drives me insane as someone

who's been in politics and then, you know, I first sensed it, you know, like in my old consulting days I would work with some before I did this, I worked with some of these tech people in the way they talked about Washington. It was just like dripping with disdain, but not the disdain that like most voters have about Washington, which is like, it's broken,

it needs to work better. It's more just like, we're smarter than them. Why can't they just be as smart as us? And what I, and I didn't enjoy much about Doge, but what I did enjoy was watching Elon and his people realize that like it's not, and maybe they didn't realize it, but it's not just like a high IQ that you need in politics and government.

It's like a good EQ, right? Like you need to be able to deal with people. It's a social endeavor and you need to be able to work with others in order to get anything done and you just can't, you can't just snap your fingers and say, oh, because I'm brilliant, I invented something and created some fucking platform. Then I'm going to be able to solve the world's biggest problems, which I guess he left realizing he couldn't solve the world's biggest problems, but I'm not sure if he knew it was because he's a bad people person.

Yeah. And I mean, listen, this is possibly the converted preaching to the converted. I'm not sure how interesting it is for other people to listen to, but yeah. And to take the brutal, but probably potentially effective approach of, the so-called zero basing, cutting everything away, seeing what you really need, fine. Social media platform, maybe it'll go down for a couple of hours.

But, you know, PEPFAR, the programs which, it's as close as evil as I can imagine to anything not really believing in the concept, you know, to take those programs away from children and it's pretty disgusting. And by the way, the Doge didn't exist when I pitched the movie and it's pretty much gone by the time it came out. So it wasn't in my mind. They're actually, they have that disdain for government.

They're not really intending to meddle in it, the characters in the film. But yeah, I share your feelings. There are also people who, and this is true in the film as well, they seem quite lonely and unable to maintain healthy relationships, even with their fellow billionaires. At one point, one of my favorite lines in the movie,

at one point, Venus says, "'I'm not very connected to my mother.'" And Randall comes back with, oh, well, studies show that's super important. How do you think we ended up with social media overlords who tend to be quite anti-social? Yeah, I mean, I hope we can engage our pity glands. Do we have pity glands? Yeah, sure.

I have plenty of pity somewhere in here. I hope some pity will get secreted from the pity gland. You know, at a certain level, they are just guys, and we all know guys who would prefer to talk about the study about why it's important to be connected to your mother rather than the difficult phone call they didn't have or did have with them. So I don't want to bring the satirical hammer too hard down on that. That also strikes me as just guys and there's been a lot written in the culture about the issues that men have with forming and maintaining relationships. And so I think hopefully that's a slightly different level if people find it there, um, in the film

to enjoy, which is just men fucking it up and not quite... The desperation for connection, for transcendence, for something real between them, which I see as something of a mini tragedy that plays out in the film. Yeah, well, look, everyone, every person has their own baggage, and we don't have to judge that. I do wonder if, I mean, I don't wonder,

because I've been arguing it on this show for a long time, if social media itself, right, and what they've, what they're involved in, what they've created is a barrier to genuine connection. Because if all you have and all you pay attention to is people that you're connecting with, some of them strangers, online, then you don't really have as much time to invest in the kind of relationships in real life that will be fulfilling. Yeah.

Yeah, I think, I guess that's true. You get into a vicious circle, especially someone with Elon Musk on Twitter, right, where he seems to find the experience of posting and getting responded to a version of connection with the world, which looks like it's become pretty unhealthy. Is it universal? I don't know. In some ways, you might say it's refreshing that they have also been caught by their own algorithms designed to increase the amount of time they spend on the platforms. The most worrying thing you sometimes hear is about those people who don't let their children, they're creating the platforms, but don't let their kids have access to any of it until they're, you know, 28. I'd write in some ways, at least they're all in the same ship.

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he supposedly has the good AI that can help fact-check all the misinformation. They also talk about the end of the nation states, uploading their consciousness. P-Doom, which is a phrase I hadn't heard before I wasn't familiar with. It's the probability of civilizational collapse caused by AI.

What is your sense from everything you've read and listened to of how the tech world sees the risks and benefits of AI, and do you think they buy their own rhetoric? It's a great question. I would slight, you have a lot of very knowledgeable people on this podcast. I'm essentially a comedy writer. I like research. I've read widely for this.

I think it has certainly the language and the philosophical approach. I would defend my knowledge of the future of AI. I mean, given that the fact that no one in the large language model seems themselves to know how they work, I would give myself a pass on predicting the future of it. This Sam Altman piece, you should read it. He ends it with something which could be a prayer, I think, which is, may we scale smoothly, exponentially and uneventfully through super intelligence. Maybe you could begin each of your podcasts with

that prayer. But, I guess what's really another onion skin problem is Sam Altman is selling in this new blog post, he's sort of saying we're already in it. It's already happening. You know, with the singularity is here, we're pretty much merging with with as soon as you're on chat GPT-4, you're pretty much merging with a machine. And it's kind of going to be, it's going to be more, it's going to be more painless than you think this trip into the AI future, because you're kind of, guess what, you're already, the anesthetic has already taken hold and you're ready, the operation is in, is in, is in train. And it's not very persuasive, I wouldn't say, uh, because there's, it doesn't

seem to have, there's often this thing of like, it's going to lead to unbelievable level of, um, affluence and ease for human beings. There's, it's not quite explained how we're going to get past the job losses to that point. Also his share price and his value to his peers and amongst his peers is related to how much we buy what he's selling. He's selling, selling, selling, selling. He's selling a worldview. He's selling his company.

He's selling a piece of technology that we can all use. So it's hard to trust any of those people who know the most because they all have a very clear economic interest. Sometimes they've been accused of even inflating their P-Doom and he has a high one, I think. I think he thinks it's like 20% chance that this stuff wipes us out. He's still willing to gamble. So it's good. Which is wild because that's what he says and that's what wipes us out. But he's still willing to gamble. Which is wild, because that's what he says publicly. And you hear rumblings that privately,

some of them are actually quite alarmed. I've heard stories of people liquidating pensions because they think in the future all the jobs are going to be wiped out and money's not going to be a thing. I'm just like, okay, well, are we heading into this and we're just doing it and you're just gonna sell us on it anyway because you think You know, you're gonna have enough money and power to escape the worst consequences. I don't know. I don't know. It's it's a little frightening Yeah, but there is the the view that the inflated P doom is just another way of swinging your AI dick around of like Look how dangerous the shit I've got is.

Listen, I have no way of knowing. I think they are scared. I mean, Elon Musk is scared. Sam Altman was scared when he got into it. Everyone who seems to get close to it seems to get pretty scared. And one of the reliefs from it is this slightly messianic, in a way, you know, we're talking about the nihilism, the other flavor which is strong in tech world is a messianic optimism, like a Panglossian, like, it's going to be so fucking great when we get there. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. And in a way, that's in some ways, that's more scary. Like I get a nihilist, but somebody who's telling me it's going to be great in ways you can't imagine and we're going to get there in a way that I can't

explain, but let's strap in. That's kind of more scary, isn't it? That's a little bit French Revolution. The bad part. Yeah, the bad part. Right. I mean, we joked about it earlier, but you know, obviously we're in LA right now and there is civil unrest that has not been fueled by AI like in the movie, but certainly been, I think, amplified by social media, a lot of disinformation, propaganda. Maybe it's because I just saw Mountain Head last week or the other week, but it does, I felt eerily, it feels eerily similar in the way that there's unrest breaking down. And you're like, well, I'm in LA, I'm looking around, things seem fine.

But then you look on our screens and it's just chaos everywhere. And then that, you know, makes more chaos in real life. When you were writing the movie, were you thinking at all? Yeah, this could definitely happen. This is me. Or were you like, nah, this is an exaggeration. Like, is this something you worry about? I know you're a comedy writer, but how much concern do you have about this?

Lots, and that was the nice thing about it in a way. I'm sad the project is over because I can no longer pour my research and anxieties into the project. It's one nice thing that artists get to do is pour their fears into their work. There's kind of a few separate elements to the film, right? There's a backdrop which is a sort of AI-fuelled, rolling international crisis. I hope, I think, there's obviously been, in particular in Myanmar with Facebook, there have been incidents where social media in particular seems to have inflamed particular

violent actions. In general, I guess in our politics, we feel, I think, right, that some of the waves of right-wing populism have been fueled in ways which we can't know but sense are amplified by the nature of social media. But that bit, in a way, the rolling international crisis is the most sort of black mirror-y, hypothetical, I think, that we learn to differentiate fake from real pretty fast and hopefully we'll be able to stay just ahead of that curve. Will there be a bubble of getting something wrong, thinking something real is not real and something fake is real?

Yeah, I'm sure that's going to happen. You know the technology is there for you. But as soon as you've seen the one really, really good fake news report, you mistrust the next one and you go and look for a secondary source. Most people. And I guess mostly the danger is it just works to reinforce your prejudices which are already there. So I don't have a super high P-Doom on that stuff going out of control.

I guess the philosophical approach and the overconfidence of the people with their hands on these incredibly powerful technologies and the way that they are outrunning democratic oversight I guess is the bit which I'm like, well, that's happening. I mean, where, where is the, the EU has, uh, attempted some, some, some work in this area, but it seems like JD Vance gave that. They gave those two really scary speeches right near the, near the beginning of the administration. And one of them was just like, have at it with AI, like we've got to beat the Chinese, whatever that means as if, as if there's going to be one, one,. As if there's going to be one computer that you can say we won.

So that's the bit that scares me is what purchase people via politics can have on the technology. Yeah. Yeah. Between Succession and Mountainhead, you clearly are very interested in focusing on the lives and motives of the most powerful people in society. What is it about power that you find so interesting to explore? Yeah, I guess it's the same reason I was first attracted by politics as a young person. Why is the world how it is?

Why is people's experiences of the world so radically different and the opportunities we get so radically different? How is power and money distributed? And so politics fascinates me for that reason. Media, how people form their own sense of the world and how that feeds back into their political choices. And then I guess this tech world has been the coming wave of my lifetime, which is most ... I'm getting older, so you have to always factor in a 15% P-Doom of being over 50, where

everything seems to be worse. So I try to not feel that. And there are exciting things about technology coming into the world. But yeah, the way in which we do seem to be in the middle of a tech revolution and the opportunities for The mass of people to have any say and whether they like what's happening to them or not it seems to be dissolving So I guess that's my fear obviously you Took on politics directly in the thick of it Would you ever be interested in sort of like taking on Washington directly and in a in a series or film? I just didn't sort of like taking on Washington directly in a series or film.

Well, yeah, the follow on from, I didn't come over, I was doing other things, although I wrote one episode. A VEEP, right, yeah. So I guess it feels like that tone, which was Armando Inucci's tone, he started to think of it, and we did In The Loop together, and then, and so I've done a little bit,

and I love doing an episode of VEEP, but yeah, I think right now it doesn't. Maybe I love politics right now. I don't feel like I have a way into Washington and in a weird way, frankly, it doesn't feel like where the key power at this moment is. It's funny because in both succession and, uh, and mountainhead politics is, I mean, it's a little more in succession, but it's a little like off screen as a character.

And it made me because I love Succession so much too and love Mountainhead, but I was like, I'd love to hear, I'd love to watch a Jesse Armstrong show or a film that is just takes on Washington directly. So I'll, if I have any pitches, I'll let you know. How's that sound? Well, please do, yeah. It sounds, so yeah, finding a new angle on politics is tough.

That is very tough, that is very tough. I'm interested in what your media diet is like since you really seem to have your finger on the pulse of the media, political, tech culture in America. Do you consume a lot of social media? Are you a screen addict? And then do you shut it all off when you write? Can you shut it all off when you write? Can you shut it all off when you write?

Yeah, I'm pretty, hopefully pretty, well, I'm not international. I'm Anglo-American. I read plenty of news from the UK and the US and listen to podcasts from all parts of the spectrum, but Pod Save America included. And since Elon's, you know, Twitter stopped feeling useful and some of the images you got just as a regular user started to become so disturbing and unpleasant, I jumped off

there. I couldn't justify being on there. I didn't want it in my head and life is nicer now I don't have some of those voices. I probably am cut off from a certain part of the discourse and maybe that's a loss to my creative engine, I don't know. But I no longer look at other social media a little bit. But I certainly, whenever I go to write, I leave my phone at home and I walk half an hour to work without any podcasts and ability to be in communication and I have a landline at my office but I write without Wi-Fi and I

think it's the only way to work to get. And it's not like I concentrate all day, I look out the window, I do other stuff, read newspapers but not having any input crucial for me. Well, that is impressive and inspiring. It's easy. Get an offer. Well, you can't probably, but for once a week to half the day, can you, and I think it's important to either take a brick phone or get a landline so you can know your family and you're not fucking anyone over by being out of contact if the kid's school needs to call or whatever. But that feeling, and you'll feel this weird anxiety

as you leave, I'm sure you've done it, but you get that little weird anxiety when you're not with your phone. And it lasts three minutes and then it goes away and it's like a little drug that's put away and you're like, oh. I know, I've had a slight experience like sometimes if I'm writing something, I'll do it at night when everyone's in bed and the news cycle is calm a little bit. And then

I can like turn my phone over and not check Twitter. And it is funny because you start I start typing. I'm like, Oh, wow, look at me. I'm thoughts are coming to my head. I'm not just scrolling and getting angry. I'm actually starting to think about some things. Yeah, it's nice. I'll try more. What about when you were speechwriting? Did you like input? Did you have to be in a quiet room?

Did you? It was really tough because on the Obama campaign, I would do very little speechwriting during the day because I wanted to be in the news cycle to help inspire whatever I was writing. And you know, in the White House, it was a little easier to sort of tune it out. But I would do most of my writing late at night and super early in the morning because I didn't I felt like I couldn't miss the news, not just because I was addicted to it because I felt like it was going to inform the speech writing. And the president was like so busy with his day.

It's not like he was, you know, paying attention to the news. So I wanted to make sure that he was responding to things that were in the news or developments that were happening. So I felt like at least that's what I told myself. I felt like I needed to, to keep paying attention, but it made it harder. It made it a lot harder to write. The other great benefit, I don't recommend it. I can't quite do it myself, but if you ever hit that 3 a.m.

spot, the little, the critical bit of your mind, which I'm sure is probably the same for a speechwriter as another kind of writer, the critical bit, which is like, oh, that's shit, that's shit, don't put that. I think that part of your brain gets a little tired as well and checks out for a little bit and you suddenly realize you've written a couple of paragraphs without the strict monitoring of the, is this definitely brilliant, which you don't need, right, for the first draft.

You need to get down that and yeah, guess what? It's a little bit shitty, but there's a few bits in there that that are gonna work and you come back and you've got that first grab. Yeah it's taken me a long time to get over that but I am you know what it actually it does happen you're right 3 a.m. is a good time for that too so Jesse Armstrong thank you so much for joining offline everyone go check out Mountain Head on are we saying max HBO. I feel like that's an HBO film. Everyone go check out Mountain Head. It is fantastic. It is hilarious. And thanks for all you do. Hey, thank you. It's a real pleasure to share.

All right. We're going to head to break when we come back. We will have our conversation with our old friend, Max Fisher. Before we get there, some quick housekeeping. You might've heard that there's a bit of commotion going on here in Los Angeles. Donald Trump has militarized our city and ICE is out there conducting large scale raids in a way they never have before. Our friends at Vote Save America are fighting back

by raising money for immigration defense groups. If you wanna help, and I would encourage everyone to help if you can, go to www.votesaveamerica.com slash support and donate what you can to help right now. This is paid for by Vote Save America, vote saveamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. When we come back, Max Fisher returns to the pod. back, Max Fisher returns to the pod. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Men today face immense pressure to perform, to provide, and keep it all together. So it's no wonder that six million men in the US suffer from depression every year, and it's often undiagnosed. It's okay to

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There you go. I really do. And look, you have a lot of pressure as a man to perform, to provide and keep it all together. I do, I lot of pressure as a man to perform, to provide, and keep it all together. I do, I feel that pressure as a man. Don't you feel that pressure? Yes, I do feel that pressure as a man. As a man, as a man.

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That's BetterHELP.com slash offline. Max, welcome back to the pod. Thanks, man. to the pod. Thanks man. I, it's, you barely left. We barely left. I don't, Elon Musk and Donald Trump waited until six seconds after I walked out the door to finally break up the long promise breakup. Well this is one of the many reasons we wanted to bring you back so soon because you had predicted for a long time

that they would break up. And then I felt like, you know, there's a little sadness because you believed your prediction wouldn't come to pass as you left the show. And then right after you left, boom. And in fact, in just the couple days since we talked about having you come back on to talk about it,

now this morning it seems like the feud is over. I don't know. What are your impressions of the whole thing? What was it like when you saw the, when you first realized this was going down? Let's talk, let's start there. I mean, it was mixed emotions because on the one hand, the Trump-Elon breakup has been on the offline calendar as an offline national holiday from the beginning. It's one of our most cherished days that we've been waiting for.

On the other hand, like you said, I was a little annoyed because I predicted it early on. Now, if there's one thing that we know about Trump and his deals that he makes, it's that he loves to riddang on them. So you can look forward to the satisfaction of him stiffing Musk very publicly. And if there's another thing we know, it's that he loves to feud with and ultimately expel people from his inner circle,

especially if they have too much power or if they're getting too much attention. So I do feel confident we can look forward to Trump publicly and nationally humiliating Elon Musk. And I am excited for that. It's going gonna be fun. You know, of course I was not the only one too, but every week I felt like I had to come on

and apologize to people for how wrong I had gotten it because they stayed together for months. And after months of eating crow, they decided to try to deprive me of my big moment of celebration. But I texted you, of course, the moment it happened to say, look at what they did to me because this is about me.

I'm the son of the story. I was so happy that day. Were you so happy? Oh my God. Amazing day. And an amazing day specifically on the Elon Musk owned platform X where everybody was making fun of Elon Musk

which was really great. It was, you know what it was like? It was like Trump. It was a mini Trump COVID day again. So many people made that reference. They were like, is this the best day since Trump got COVID? I've heard from, look, I don't, I don't wish anyone ill, but I heard that from a few people.

I heard that from a few people. It was, it was a feeling that I think came back to all of us where it was so fun to follow all the updates in real time. And there was something really nice about watching the people who have been tormenting us, seemingly for no reason other than to torment us over the last few months to finally get a little well-owed humiliation.

I don't know what it's gonna actually come to. I don't think it's gonna be good for Tesla stock price. Other than that, maybe not much. I don't know if I believe Donald Trump's threat that he's gonna like cut Elon's subsidies and all the contracts for Starlink because I don't think he knows how to do that I don't think yeah I don't think he knows what a subsidy is or had a council one I think he just knows how to post on truth social but what do you think do you think it's gonna matter? I well it feels like right now we have an uneasy détente. They talked, you know, they finally wish each other well.

It feels like they're maybe they're both a little wary of each other, of like pissing each other off too much, pissing the other one off too much. Elon, certainly, like he was the first one to start, you know, even before today he deleted the Jeffrey Epstein post, the Trump should be impeached post, classics, couple classics. So he did listen, sometimes you get in a fight with your friend and you call for them to be impeached on the national stage. That's what they were involved in a pedophilia rain. You know, that's something that you just do in public

after you worked for them in the government at the highest levels. It seems like Elon was a little afraid of pissing Trump off too much because he needs the government to be on his side, especially a government that is as authoritarian as Donald Trump's, which he knows very well. And then I can't quite make out what Trump is thinking here, because usually when he doesn't like someone, he just goes, you know, he goes, he goes,

how wild he's all in. And he has seemed like a little more reserved on this than I expected, but I don't quite know why unless he just thinks, you know, Elon Musk is not a good enemy to have because he's so rich and has such a big megaphone. I don't know. What do you think? I was really struck by that too. And there was something reported in the post, I think that he told the Trump told Vance, like let's not make too big of a thing out of this.

Let's not attack Elon too much publicly. Like, now obviously Trump surprised, lost control of himself and decided to do some angry posts anyway. It did seem really striking to me that the one thing that he was really threatening Elon Musk over was don't donate to the Democrats. There were the posts that he did.

And then he did an interview with NBC News where he said there would be serious consequences for Musk if he did that, which first of all, we should pause and just appreciate the fact that that is straight up authoritarianism to say, I am going to use the power of the state to punish someone if they donate to the opposition party. But that's just the country that we live in now, I guess. But that I feel like that spoke to if he is afraid of something, that might be the thing that he is afraid of. Because I think that he and Elon Musk both believe

that Musk's money swung the election, which there's another crazy thing that happened that we all just acknowledged and we've chosen to move on from is that Elon Musk is, and it is tweet meltdown. He was like, you know, without me, Trump never would have won and the Republicans wouldn't have taken the house.

Can you believe they're in gratitude? And it's like, oh, so we're just admitting now that we're buying elections after eight years of pretending to think that the Democrats are like after eight years of drain the swamp and stop the steal. We're just acknowledging like, no, no, we're the ones Republicans who are buying the elections. Yeah. I also think that, um, you know, if If you if you're matching these two up in a battle if we're gonna stick with a war metaphor here, you know Trump definitely

Trump has Trump has the bigger army as the the most powerful person in the world But I think Trump realized that realizes that Elon could do some damage via Gorilla warfare, right? Like he has a lot of posters, he's posting, he has a big mega, it's the money, right? But it's also the megaphone. And I do wonder if like, Elon could really sort of fuck up the mega narrative around Trump as, you know, everything's wonderful and everyone's loyal and everything's perfect. I don't think Trump wants to risk that if he can.

Right, and someone who, going back to his New York real estate days, sees the people who have a lot of money as the really important ones and the really powerful ones because that's the world he lived in. And to do a political history take on this, absolutely every single rising authoritarian regime like absolutely every single rising authoritarian regime like in history, like, you know, Pinochet, Putin, Orban, Hitler,

like every, any one that you wanted, the small ones, the big ones, the same thing happens every time, which is that some set of business elites and oligarchs think we can control this guy. So they buy in early thinking that they're gonna turn him into a pawn. And inevitably what happens is that that strong man turns on them because he sees them

as a threat in turn and as something to bring to heel. But there is, and again, you see this, like, especially with Putin and his first 10 years in office, there's this awkward early stage where Putin was like kind of going, going after the oligarchs, but kind of still needed them. And I think that what you see in Trump is that he knows he can't take on Elon now, but he can't, he can't tolerate that in his mind and in his worldview. So I know that I am just coming off of having made a prediction that was wrong for months and finally coming away from that.

But let me make another one. Yes. That's right, yes, that you can absolutely hold against me. If I'm not here, you're gonna have to remind people that it was wrong. Elon Musk, I think, has been chastened and took another dose of ketamine or whatever and is walking away from it.

But both he and Trump are thin- man babies who in any other context are used to getting their way or used to getting to be the biggest bully in the room and push people around and getting the satisfaction of having won every fight. They're both walking away from this, having not quite totally won to their standards. And I think because of that and because Trump cannot tolerate any sort of rival, and we saw this in his first term, I think that there is a very high chance that they will fight again, probably Trump going after Elon.

Yeah, all right. Mark it down, mark it down. Max, I'm sad that you left before we could talk about this on the show when it happened, but also lucky you left LA before it did become an occupied territory. I know. You have missed yet another LA crisis, which you have, since when you moved here, you know, you experienced several.

So here we are. A friend texted Julie and I after we left and was like, did it turn out that you guys were keeping ICE out of, and this National Guard out of LA the entire time? And I was like, look, we didn't make any threats, but if they, if they read something into our manner that they were afraid of, you know, the timeline does match up. Well, I would be, I know that you are,

are doing your best to provoke Soros riots. So I will be pulling for all of you in that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that you are doing your best to provoke Soros riots, so I will be polling for all of you in that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Come back and restore law and order. Thank you. Anytime. Max, good talking to you, buddy. Yeah, you too. As always, if you have comments, questions, or guest ideas,

email us at offline at crooked.com. And if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad-free episodes of Offline in Podsave America, exclusive content, and more, join our friends at the pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and the other ones for original content, community

events, and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Seglen. Dillon Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari

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