The Rest Is Entertainment - Euphoria: Exploitation or Empowerment?

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Does Euphoria have the most star-studded cast in TV history? Why is Sam Altman buying a tiny podcast for almost $200m? Are film sets safe from drone attacks by YouTubers? HBO's racy cult teen drama Euphoria returned to our screens this week. Why did the A-List cast of Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and Colman Domingo return to the super-controversial show? Warner Bros are taking legal action against a drone pilot who flew over the set of the new Harry Potter series - but can they defeat the spoilers? OpenAI has bought a niche business podcast for a small fortune, we ask why its embattled founder Sam Altman is struggling for a new narrative. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton & Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest of entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Admin tends to require a little bit of encouragement. So submitting your meter reading now earns you a spin and the prospect of being quietly rewarded for it. Yeah, you can spin, you can win octopoints, which you can spend in the shoptopus. The shoptipus. I mean, fair play.

Well, whoever refuses a wheel and the opportunity to get something for nothing. Well, it's absolutely one of the mainstays of game shows wheels because it has a randomness to it. And I've spent like weeks and weeks, just working out, and the wheel just go, okay, that's an extra 1,000, that would be 2,000. And then you work at how many bad squares there are. By the way, there's no bad squares on the octopus one. But it's a mesmerizing thing.

So addictive. I know. Watching it, you want to keep doing it. They slow it down slightly. And then when you watch the contestants like leaning in like it's going to make a difference. And like lots of things with octopus energy, they're very good at gamifying, lots of the sort of just normal stuff that you have to do with your energy provider and getting a free spin and winning octa points.

It's a very good example of that. With octopus, you submit your meter reading. you get a spin and a chance at octo points for money off your bill or to spend in the most aptly named Shoptipus. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello, listeners, hello Marina. Hello, Richard, how are you?

Very well, got a glass of water, got a cup of tea. I've got my podcast partner with me. Yeah. What else could I ask for? Very little, very little. In this world. What should we talk about this week? What shall we talk about?

What are we going to talk about? Like we haven't planned it. Well, we've planned what we're going to talk about. We are going to talk about the return after, even by the standards of peak TV, quite a long hiatus. Euphoria. And Euphoria is one of those shows that lots of people over here have never seen, but they can now see because of HBO Max. And it launched the careers of some of the biggest stars in the entire world. And there's beef.

There's plenty of beef. So we felt that ticked a number of boxes. There's beef and binfire. So we'll get there. Beef and binfire. Yeah. No, that's one of that's like a pub in Hoxton. The beef and Bimpa.

I'd actually love to go there. Yeah, set up by four Eton venture capitalists. Speaking of Venture Capitalists, we're also going to talk about a podcast which I've actually been listening to has not got a big audience, has just been sold for low hundreds of millions of dollars. It's only been going 18 months. We'll talk about what it is and who bought it. And how we could get our hands on low hundreds of millions of dollars.

Absolutely. And we're going to talk about set security. There's all sorts of trouble on the Harry Potter set with. drones kind of taking images of things, but the world of set security and script security and what companies do to protect their IP before it comes out. Talking of IP before it comes out, no, because it came out last night. See, that's what you have turned into that, you can do a link and I can't. I've lost my linkability. You've taken it from me. There's only a fine amount of linkability that can't be created or destroyed. It can only be passed from one host

to the other. So every time you do a good link, I have to do a bad one straight afterwards. Euphoria is one of those zeit guys shows, well, when it started, it's one of those zeit guys shows that are kind of a long tradition of kind of transgressive shows about, hey, this is what teenagers are actually doing. And what being a teenager is really like, when they come out, they instantly sort of make all the other mainstream shows look incredibly vanilla and kind of twee inscripted. They're always darker and grittier, which always means there's lots of drugs and sex. And it comes in that, I mean, I suppose like the early ones like that. things like de Grassy, but then get more into something like skins or 13 reasons why. It's in the tradition of those shows that's... And one of the things about Euphoria, firstly, is massive, but secondly, it launched the

careers, but it really crystallised the careers of three friends of the podcast. Three great friends of the podcast, who are... Who are Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, and Jacob Alordi. I mean, come on. All of whom are now big stars. And the interesting thing there is, when it started out Zendaya, she was well-known. known, the other two less well known, but now as this new season comes out, essentially it's a new season of a TV show, which was a scrappy little underdog, and now it's the new season of a TV

show starring three of the biggest stars in the entire world. What's the basic premise behind euphoria for people who know nothing about it? Well, without, I'll just do the very basic so that you can get into the story. But, you know, at the very start when we meet her, she is centered on Zendaya, who plays a character called Roo. She's a drug addict and it sort of follows her journey, her friendship group, things with her family, and I won't say anymore because otherwise you're spoiling the stories. But it's teens and their troubles. Teens and their troubles. In a gritty, honest, open way. Euphoria is based on an Israeli series of the same name. And they got, Sam Levinson, he created it for the US and in large part, it has directed a lot

of it, certainly directed a lot of the new series. And wrote a lot of it. And wrote it, and wrote it, Yes. And he is the son of Barry Levinson, so he's a sort of Hollywood legacy person. Barry Levinson, who directed Rayman, Good Morning, Vietnam, Bugsy, all sorts of things like that. So weird in Hollywood to have father and son in the same business. Very strange. Yeah. Yeah.

Co-incidence, isn't it? It broke a lot of boundaries, not always positive, I would say, because there was a huge amount of kind of nudity and shock value scenes. I remember, I mean, I think there's one. You have to sign something called a nudity waiver or nudity rider when you're doing these seats. A nudity rider? It's a hell of a job. I know. And I think there's one episode where they were literally in the hundreds these things. There's more riders than the Grand National.

Very many more and somehow less safe in some ways. No, I'm joking. Not less safe. It's very well run as a production. Although there have always been rumours of people feeling they were made to either go too far. And some of the cast have explicitly said, oh, I was actually, Sydney Sweeney started saying, you know, I started asking for my shirt to be put back on at a certain point because it was unnecessary. So it started last night. Can I ask a question? This I think is the interesting thing about it. Because often you have these shows that launch big stars. Why they all come back to it, would be my question.

You've got three people there, Jacob Aller, Sydney, Sweeney, and Zendaya who could do anything, literally anything. And yet they've gone back to this show, which does have occasionally a reputation that it can be a difficult set to be on. And yet they've all come back, can that just be money? Or is it, do they feel they owe it something? Okay. Well, I think it's both to some degree. I think it was such a ground-breaking show and it was such a big sort of deal and the reason why lots of those things have been tolerated as it were

and there'll be a lot of people who will talk about Sam Levinson and I don't think he's the most particularly beloved person however what it did is it brought in an audience that HBO just didn't have or hadn't seen or they brought in a whole new young, very engaged audience and people, there's a lot that can be forgiven for that. The third season of anything

is where suddenly the money becomes very different. If you sign on and you do, and you'll sign on and you'll sign on for a season of something and your next season will effectively be on the same terms or maybe there's a slight uplift, but it's kind of built into the initial contract. You usually do a two-season contract, yeah. The third one is where they get your paydays.

But these guys have big paydays anyway. So I think there is partly some of that. But I also think that, I think, they probably think it's iconic and they probably do feel they owe it something. And either HBO or Sam Levinson himself has been very persuasive. I mean, you might want to do lots of other things on HBO. You might, you know, you might want to, there's lots of reasons why you'd come back for season three.

And maybe they get on with each other and they have happy memories of doing it. Some of them do. Some of them don't. The red carpet for this show was a, okay. Zendaya and Sydney, Sweeney, you're not going to see those two in a picture. The red carpet, just reading about the red carpet made me laugh so much because I, When you're reading between the lines and you know how it works, you're thinking, I can't actually believe what military position this must have been planned by all of their individual teams. So you've got the show was supposed to start at seven, as in everyone's supposed to be in their seats and they were supposed to have the screening.

I don't think Zendaya turned up until 8, which is the ultimate power move. Everyone else was long in their seats. There are two shots of some of them, but there's supposed to be a big, big beef between Zendaya. and Sydney's Winnie, who knows where that's true, but they're certainly not in any pictures together. And when you look at it all, you can see, oh, okay, so those two like each other, those two, yeah. And there were so many angles and plot lines just on that,

and who will arrive and in what order. It made a sort of Paris fashion show where eventually, Rihanna will turn up like two hours later, and then the show can start. Do they all like Jacob a Lordy, though? I haven't heard anything specifically about him, I must say. I haven't heard anything specifically about the, you know, so when this started, Sydney Sweeney had been in a few things,

were not really, this was her proper big breaks. And Ayer, as we said, had been Disney Club and had done Greatest Sherman. So she was just breaking through, but I think she's talked about Euphoria and said, I found I was in a place where I could only really go in one direction, and it was a direction they didn't want to go in. And so she jumped at the chance of doing this. But Jacob Allardy was, I mean, he was a sort of Australian heartthrob,

and he'd been in a couple of things, but he was out in Hollywood trying to make it. He was just about to go home. I think his visa was about to run out. He was helping a friend doing a self-tape for, euphoria and then he said, I wonder if I can send in my own self-take for this. So did, and Just Before he's about to go back to Australia, gets this part and, you know, now is an Oscar nominee. So it was really, really the making of him. Something else would have made him because he's terrific. But this was the show that really saw him through. The skins comparison you made

is very, very interesting because occasionally a show will come along that will make a generation of actors. And this really, really did in the States, particularly with those three. But skins in UK, which as you said, is a similar proposition, which is this is what teens are really like. And suddenly, everything else about teens looks ridiculous. And on that show, you had Dev Patel, who was a non-actor before that, you know, so that was his first thing. You had Daniel Kaluya who had actually done all sorts of things, but was writing on skins as well. You had Nicholas Holt, who had been in about a boy, but, you know, was a child actor. Yeah, and was a nerdy little boy in that. And then was like, Tony, it was like, that's such a remember.

minute. Jack O'Connell was in it, again, and made an absolute generation of actors. So anything where you have to cast teens to try and be teens seems to be, that seems to be the sweet spot for creating a generation of Oscar nominees. But they do grow up. And the gap, they've done a time jump for obvious reasons because there has been. There has been a time jump. But even the sort of indulgence of peak TV where you had three-year gaps between seasons,

actually the last season of Euphoria wrapped shooting not transmission but wrapped shooting almost five years ago and certain key actors have died Eric Dane Angus Cloud died and again he was someone he was street auditioned Angus Cloud which is something they tried to do for this

in Fathersendaya's part was originally they'd found someone on the street who they thought could play that part yeah he passed away so it's there's a lot of behind the scenes drama as well that ties into all of this. Tell me a bit about Sam Levinson then because you know, I keep reading, I keep reading like allusions to this being a troubled set and we know what he went on to do next which we've talked about before which was... Oh well, I'll have to talk about it within the context because I think this is quite interesting.

Great. Great. So Sam Levinson I think, you know, as I say, his son of Hollywood royalty, I think he effectively kind of dropped out of normal, not completely out of normal education, but sort of sat around watching a lot of movies. Sam Leverson, I said, I had a childhood where he'd been through various, you know, substance abuse issues.

And so he was writing that sort of thing anyway. And in a meeting, someone said, oh, we got this show, Euphoria from Israel. Would you like to adapt it? And he said, yes,

and essentially just wrote the thing that he wanted to do. But that's the way the TV works sometimes. Yeah. So when Euphoria premiered and came out and it was shocking and it struck a chord completely and it brought in this audience.

It felt real. Yeah. And it brings in an audience. that they don't have. And that is something that you can't really put a price on because there were regular stories of things would come out of the set and say it was difficult.

You could see what was up there on the screen, which was that it trod a very fine line. I mean, I find it pretty bleak, actually, and I don't know. And a lot of the time, I just think this is actually, I think this is actually quite exploitative. Do you know stories about Sam Levinson that you would never be able to say in public?

I think lots of people have heard lots of stories about Sam Levinson that they can't necessarily say in part. But again, I would say that it's not necessarily well-loved Richard. Okay. I will say that look at what's on the screen. A lot of it's up there on the screen. And you can decide whether that comes from a place of, you know, love and understanding or whether it comes from a place that seeks shock value at almost all costs.

It's often the case that if you are looking at a scene to go, okay, step outside of this, step behind the camera, think about that morning, think about all of those actors. think about how they were asked to do what they're going to do, how they felt during it, and how they felt after it, and then ask yourself whether you would be comfortable doing that. And the actors themselves would say an interview, yeah, I know I've pushed back on certain things. I think because even your actors are saying, I push back on this, and even Sidney Sweeney's saying, I'm actually asked if I could put my shirt back on in a few scenes, there's something about they are aware that there's a perception that they're being exploited and they don't want to show

that they are, they want to say, I own this. I own this. I do this on purpose. I mean, I am empowered. In the new season, she's trying to be an only fan's girl and there's a lot of, I mean, there's, she's done up as a dog at certain points. I don't know, you know, I'm sure she's a strong, independent woman. And anyway, so, but Sam Levinson, I think it's fair to say from a lot, many, many people would tell you that he's not particularly well loved. However, because he brought in this audience, he then wanted to do this other thing, which was the idol, which he did with the weekend. That's the one that stars Lily Rose Depp and the weekend. And I'm sort of about a cult thing.

I have to say, if that was set out to satirize, not satirize, or to critique exploitation and cultish behavior, I think it was the thing it was trying to critique. If you've listened to this podcast before, you may well have heard me say that episode three of that is potentially the worst episode of television I've ever seen. But whatever. So I don't think people within the cast were thrilled. By the way, as I say... The people in the Euphoria cast is sort of in the same universe. Sort of, yeah. And also, if they are going to do season three and wrap up this story

that they maybe feel they owe something to... I mean, Sendea's done like June challenges, the drama, lots of things like that. Sydney Sweeney's done anyone but you, since it wrapped, the housemaid, immaculate. Okay, I'm madame, Webb, but, you know, it's a movie. at Jacob Alludes on Saltburn, Frankstein, Wuthering Heights. So what you're saying is we've got the three of them who've done this incredible show that they owe an awful lot to

and before the next one comes out, they're all massive superstars. In the meantime, the director and writer of this show has done a massive dump right in the middle of Hollywood. Yeah, and I think everyone involved in that was just hoping they would just get out of life of that. It didn't, unlike a massive dump, it did not hang around for long. Did it?

It didn't. But, you know, you can find it all. You can still go and watch it. But I, but during... Don't. But you can. But anyway, so during that time, all of those people became not just, you know, they didn't just have good roles.

They became proper bankable. You can open a movie, movie stars. And so it's very, very odd to see people of that, that heft, I suppose, as in people who can get money for films, which somehow is still... The benchmark, even though, you know, we might say that television has been much more successful or much more reliably successful in recent years. But if you can get money and you can open a film, then you are still huge. And to see all of those, particularly those three on the red carpet is odd now because it seems almost like it's top heavy. Like, how can all these people be in this show?

Because each one of those is now a lead in whatever they're in. It's sort of happened all around us. So we know it already that television, especially for a younger generation, of actors has equal, if not more prestige, the movies. And this is an object case and it is the three of them are happy to co-star in this thing on television because they're not thinking I could be making a movie instead. They're thinking, no, this is an enormous worldwide. I'm not sure I think that.

I actually think, isn't it interesting that they could all be leading TV series, but maybe they want, don't forget, TV is a massive commitment as this more than anything shows. I think it's the commitment that they are less interested in. Are you really going to sign away potentially seven seasons of something or however many years, rather than doing lots of high profile potentially great film projects? And I think that's still why it's interesting that none of these particularly have been doing TV series. They've been all doing films because not just because it remains perhaps undeservedly the prestige thing, but because actually you don't have to commit to seven years or whatever and wait around

while someone goes and makes the idol. You're much more master of your own destiny. And I wouldn't want to imply that, by the way, they weren't because I think Casey Blois, who's the CEO of HBO, stood up and said, you know, thank you all for being here. And I've just been shouted at so many times over the last few years by your agents and managers and public, you know, because getting to just try and get the schedule to make it happen. But I think that's why. do you really want to commit to something that lasts for years and years and years or do you want to get in and out in four months plus promotion?

Well, that's why this is perfect. This is like a movie to them, isn't it? You think? This is all the advantages of the scale of television with none of the disadvantages, which is you're going to be tied up for years and years and years. This is a one and done because they've already done the first two seasons. So this one, they can just go in, do a thing they know is going to absolutely explode everywhere around the world and get out and back into the $10 million dollars a movie. I also wonder whether it will explode because it will get masses of traction. But I wonder whether people will think, oh gosh, that was such a sort of COVID-era, you know, that sort of thing.

And somehow now when I look at it, I just see, I'm not quite sure what the purpose of some of this shock value stuff is. It really felt much clearer in earlier season. Not always, by the way, but I thought most of the shocking stuff landed. you understood the substance beneath it and you understood why it was in the narrative. The danger when you have this much time has passed and things have moved on a bit and actually the culture's moved on is... And everyone involved has got so much money. Do you actually think this is quite exploitative?

Or does every single thing for me will need to land without there being a big backlash as to, you know, why is this any of this happening? Would you recommend season one to our podcast? Absolutely. I would recommend anything that... Don't watch with your kids. No, it's not a kid show. Or I should say don't watch with your parents. Yes. Depending on your age.

Just don't watch, yeah. Fifth biggest show in the history of HBO as well. It's interesting. As you say, HBO had these huge hits, but they did not have a really, really young skewing hit. And this was absolutely that bigger show in HBO history, of course, Game of Thrones by quite some way. And then the last of us, fun enough. And there's slightly different ways of measuring what shows are big. But, you know, Sopranos is number four.

This is number five. Succession is number six. Sex in the City, number seven. they've had some good shows, HBO, to be fair, haven't they? White Lotus must be creeping up there. White Lotus is number nine as well, which of course is what Sydney Sweeney sort of went on to do next. It's first time lots of people there. You haven't seen Euphoria, would have seen Sydney Sweeney.

Yes. Okay, let's go for a break, shall we? And after that, we're going to talk about this insane, genuinely insane podcast story. This episode is brought to you by Bumble. Now, there's a modern phenomenon when someone says they're on the apps. But what they actually mean is they downloaded them, opened them once, and then immediately felt tired. So technically on the apps, but nowhere near them.

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big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Welcome back, everybody. Now, we are going to talk about the sale of a podcast. It started 18 months ago, less than 18 months ago, actually. It's called TBPN. By chance, I have been listening to it for the last six months. I'll say what it is. It's two finance bros, well, technology finance bros, originally the Technology Brothers, TB, called John Coogan and Jordy Hayes. A year ago, they rebranded it to TBPN. And they started this. So it's now technology business programming network rather than tech pros, which was what the TV are at the start. A year ago only, they started this with no outside investment, which is going to become relevant. And they started.

doing a three-hour daily live stream, which is cut down, which I don't, you know, watch. But I watch the 30-minute podcast it's cut down into. But I'm so not the typical audience. It's a daily show and it covers the business world and particularly the tech business world. So it covers a lot of AI. It covers all of the movements in that industry. And there are a lot of movements in the industry. Also business defence, for obvious reasons last week, they did stuff about space travel and

space travel companies and all of that sort of stuff. And I would say, to describe them, I would say they're 100% they are techno optimists. They are sort of good looking in a kind of benign Patrick Bateman style way. Anyway, we're talking about them because this podcast that started less than 18 months ago. Which has 70,000 viewers. And to put 70,000 into context, there are podcasts in this country that you'll get a million listens an episode. I mean, that's not beyond the realm. You know, for stuff in the top 10, this is getting 70,000.

and that's in America. And America is big. It averages 50,000 viewers per episode per live stream, has been bought by OpenAI, a company they cover all the time, for some in the low hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think you would definitely expect a significant percentage of that to be in OpenAI stock options, which we know that it's almost a trillion-dollar company,

and it's probably may go to IPO later this year. By the way, it's a good product. I'll say that. I mean, it depends on your view. with them and the world and that, but they put it together nicely. And I don't know about it. The reason I started to listen to it is because I don't really know about this world. They're a good hang.

Yeah. Okay. And that is crucial. They are a good, you know, you don't mind spending time with them. But they have turned like a text message from one to the other in October 2024 into, let's say, $200 million. Minimum. And if it's of open AI stock, then.

With just 70,000 viewers slash listeners. Less than 70. That is their peak, I think. 11 people work on this show, by the way, 11. And SportsCenter is a US show where there's a desk. On ESPN. Yeah, it's on ESPN. And they talk about sports news. It's like Sky Sports News would be how I'd see it.

Yeah, exactly. But they wanted to be like that for tech. The jump to always on, as in they have made it daily, and they've made as much of it available as they can sort of humanly do. So they do a three-hour live stream, but they now cut it down to a 30-minute episode that you can, which is the bit I listen to. There's an amazing part very early on in this story.

And I think it's useful for all and any creators is these two guys had done a couple of episodes and sent them off to a friend who was in the business. And this is any advice you got at all. And his one piece of advice, and this is such a great piece of advice for anyone, is you need to take this 100 times more seriously. Yeah. Which isn't be 100 times more serious on air. You've got to be yourself, but you've got to take the business of what you're doing

and your idea 100 times more seriously. And they said, we never look back from that moment. And I think that's unbelievably great creative advice. Always. And some people say, oh, it's like sort of CNBC, like a rolling news channels business desk, but for Gen Z. And they've got sort of little details they do.

They've got a good sort of studio. They've got a gong that they bang. They film it properly. It's lit properly. Yeah. They dress properly. I mean, to all intents and purposes, it looks broadcast. It looks broadcast.

It's a desk with two guys. Yeah. As I say, why did I listen to it? They had an easy and appealing style. They covered an area. I just feel like it feels like it's the defining issue of our times and I don't really know that much about it. And they were good to hang out with. But I am not the typical audience and I am absolutely none of the value in that audience.

The point is Silicon Valley is obsessed with it. And, you know, if you look at their sponsors, it's absolutely well, I think they've got $5 million sponsors, $5 million off sponsors in first year. This year they're on track for $30 million. dollars. They're all sort of things like ramp, which is charge cards, plaid, which is a fintech thing, Google Gemini, the New York Stock Exchange. I mean, it's wild, you know. But the point about that audience, while small, is that it is incredibly influenced dense, I suppose. So it's venture capitalists, it's engineers. It's all the people who work in the businesses about which they're talking. And as I say, they do primarily talk about AI, not exclusively. And they've had guests, you know, Sam Altman's been on it. Sirrberg's been on it. Yeah, Satcheladda has been on it, the Microsoft CEO. So if I'm John Coogan and Jordie Hayes, I absolutely see what I get out of the deal of somebody giving me $200 million. I see my upside.

As you say, look, it's on course to have revenue of $30 million this year, but that's not a valuation where you would pay $200 million for it. So Sam Altman must be getting some extra value out of his $200 million. Well, this is the most interesting part of all of this, and that's probably why we're talking about it, is because the head of strategy at OpenAI said, you know, when this deal was announced, I've been thinking about the future of how we communicate at OpenAI. And one thing that's become clear is that the standard communications playbook

just doesn't apply to us. We're not a typical company. Sure. And then they also said, with the mission of bringing AGI to the world, comes a responsibility to help create a space for a real constructive conversation about the changes AI creates. By the way, in my opinion, the best way to have a real constructed conversation

about something is to pay somebody $200 million to have that conversation. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because until this point, whilst they obviously are incredibly well connected, they're both angel investors, tech, angel investors, they have a lot of, you know, these two guys, even before this started, they're not, they weren't poor,

they weren't starving. No. They've been involved, I think John Coogan had been involved in Soylent, that meal replacement thing. They've both been around, and worked for people to think. Tobacco Patches Company.

Yes, called Lucy. Yeah. They are very well connected. They've done very well from the sales anyway. The reason people are watching them is they know what they're talking about. Not just a couple of dudes turning up and saying nonsense. Well, they are, but nonsense that they understand. Yes.

Yeah. So they've said, oh, this will not interfere with our editorial output. Sure. Okay, sure. Sam Altman says, I don't expect them to go any easier on us. So you just paid $200 million. dollars and you don't expect them to go any easier on you. Listen, okay. I get this. I get it. Okay. They're trying to say this isn't compromising because we are not a news organization.

We would prefer other people went and broke their scoop somewhere else and then we got people on our show to talk about context. They said, yes, they have said, look, we're not journalists. We are literally, we are personalities talking about this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But you now are owned by Open AI. So whatever. But what has happened there is that Open AI feel that they need, I suppose if you're a nearly a trillion dollar company and you're thinking, what is my communication strategy? We didn't need one. Now we do need one.

I mean, 200 million is nothing to get some, to get, and if you're giving it partly in stock or whatever, to get people to push your story all the time. And as I said, they are techno optimist. They're not sitting there like me thinking, oh my God. I mean, Sam Al-Oorman only this weekend, he, at the, he, he was. was a subject of a New Yorker article by Ronan Farrow last week. He, this weekend said that Sam Morton said a Molotov cocktail had been thrown at his house. Obviously, that is abysmal. You know, I deplore anything like that. But saying that it was effectively saying it was because

of this New Yorker article. Okay, did people do that because of New York? I don't know. Yeah, what's the Venn diagram? Yeah. I mean, yeah, a Molotov cocktail throws. And people who find New Yorker cartoon is funny. So, I don't know. Is it, I think it might just be me. So, and then he wrote this enormous long post over the weekend at about three in the morning. And I honestly, I read this post. Go and look at it. Of course you did. That's why I love doing this podcast with you.

Because I know if Sam Altman has written an enormously long post. At 3 a.m. I'll have read it at four. But you would have read it. And I just read it. And I just thought, I literally can't believe this mega liability is in charge of this civilizational altering, destroying technology. I don't know. It's so mad that we're allowing him to be this person.

But anyway. They do need a narrative. But a lot of what people talk about, this word has been revived. If you heard this, people keep talking about moats in the text space now. This is like a phrase, a word that originally Warren Buffett came up with.

And it's the thing that gives your company a sustainable competitive advantage. It's hard to replicate in other ways, blah, blah, all this sort of thing. In the revived era of this word, recently people are saying, oh, it's taste and actually that's the thing that sets my company apart.

A lot of people are saying that distribution is the moat now. It's the new moat and it's this thing that if you can control your story and this would be a really good way of doing it. It doesn't matter like you have some huge audience. So it's that they are influenced dense. All the important people are listening to your thing

and it doesn't matter that, you know, not millions of people like Roeghan or something like that. It's the people who are listening to this and you're speaking via these people directly to them. So that is being able to sort of communicate in that way is very interesting. And there has been a whole sort of rush to acquire podcast. Even Goalhanger has taken investment from the churning group.

What they're trying to buy into more and more is networks of podcasts or podcasts that have some specific reach that it's beyond one person stands or falls on this. What they want to buy into is community and the idea that they've got very, very, very engaged. However, it doesn't have to be enormous, but if they're significant, that community is becoming the most desirable asset. Yeah, and this is the second wave of podcast booms. There was a podcast boom about four or five years ago, which was, wow, what's this new industry? Everyone's listening to audio. This is amazing.

And so there was a lot of money spent on a lot of money lost at that point. And there was some thinking afoot that maybe the multiples you could get for a podcast company might have disappeared. However, I think since the pivot where now most podcasts are watched, and people have come to understand, certainly people in the venture capitalist world have come to understand that this is the new television, that just by default, everyone is suddenly watching this stuff. But somehow it's more intimate and more engaged than television ever was. And the production is cheaper and all of those things. So there is now suddenly a second much, much, much bigger boom because what they're buying into is the future of television. They're buying into the future of audio and making a small bet on that.

They're now buying into the future of television and making a huge bet on that. They think they can sell the audience things. That's what ultimately they want. They want to sell a very engaged community things. Yeah. And the key thing is it's not scale anymore. It's depth. So it's not can you reach 5 million people?

It's can you reach 70,000 people who are. really count. Exactly. But, you know, can we get maximum value out of that? Funnly enough, this TBPN thing, I think slightly is set aside from that narrative. So that narrative, there are lots of podcast deals going on at the moment for the reason I'm talking about, which is suddenly you're owning these brands that people are watching and people don't mind being sold to buy, all that kind of stuff.

Whereas TBPN, I think what it comes down to, as you say, so we're very used to AI now. It's got to the point where as a technology, it no longer can trade off its novelty. It can no longer trade off. oh my God, have you seen this chat GBT thing? You can put this into it. You know, that's all gone and it's now understood as a more mature industry. And so it does have to slightly control its narrative. And I think there's an understanding, open AI, certainly,

that the narrative is not going great for them culturally, that there are doubts about AI. I suspect it's going very well in business terms. Yeah. But culturally, it's not going great. And so it'd be nice to do something about that. But I think it's a really age, like an old-fashioned version of, Like when your local butcher would go and buy a northern football club because he loves the club

and he knows he's not going to make money about it, but he just wants to be involved. I think that Sam Altman just loved this show. And he thought, well, what would it take to get it? And the money, and he doesn't know that $200 million is a lot of money. He doesn't know that. But what do you think is worse than Elon? He's worse than Elon and Zuckerberg. I just think he's becoming my worst one.

It's so competitively for the worst type bro and he's it. Can I say something about Sam Altman? Yeah. Like the guy. I like the guy. I like his technology. I think that AI is a force for good. I think, Sam, I think if you're listening, I think that Marina is a naysay.

I get it. There's people like that. We have to jettison them at some point. You could just want me out if you want to get bought by him. But, you know, I just think Gary Lineker and I both love what it is that you do. That's what I think. No, I listen, I bow to your. No.

I think he's a bad hat. He's a bad hat. Anyway, this is like us being bought by a consortium of lots, I don't know, someone or, I don't know, one person, it's like being bought by Netflix, just owned by Netflix. And I find it, it's interesting that they can say that they can be. But who, but also slightly, who cares if you started something 18 months ago and open eye, you've just got 200 million dollars plus of open AI stock. And also, I suspect that they will be able to say what they want because the second that

you know, they say something bad and, you know, Sam Walton responds, what are you going to do? Because Sam Orton loses control of the narrative again. You know, that's the point. I think they're in a very, very strong position these guys. Because firstly, they are, as you say, tech evangelists anyway. You know, they are not naturally inclined to disparage AI or Open AI. So that's, you know, they have to be going out of their way to do it. And, yeah, the consequences for Open AI, if they were seen to censor them would be very, very damaging. I think, my God, these guys, and as I say, it would be an even better story if these guys weren't already rich.

I get that if they were like a couple of plucky young upstarts who suddenly had $200 million for something that they built 18 months ago. But my God, they must be high-fiving each other. One thing I would say is that I wonder if it's part of a sort of general shift, which worries me, for sure, that people don't really care quite so much about journalism or whatever, and people being held to account, they kind of just want someone who feels insidery and is a good hang.

You know, it's interesting the way the audiences are going and you look at what's happening with short-form video and you look at the decline of people reading print articles. When I said about print articles, I don't mean in the newspaper,

I mean on newspaper websites or whatever and that they're shifting much more towards things coming to them via video that are not held to the same journalistic standards remotely. I mean, they wouldn't even claim to be journalism. Because it's opinion. Yeah.

People prefer opinion to journalism. I agree. Always have done, always will do. And we've had enough gatekeepers over the years that actually there has always been journalism at large scale, certainly in this country and in the States. And now those gatekeepers don't have control over it anymore. And if you want to know about sport or if you want to know about technology or if you want to know about politics, you can and lots of people now do just listen to two people giving their opinion on it. And you hope somewhere in the middle that those people are good actors. And those people have, you know,

hold themselves to a certain ethical standard and try and be fair. But yeah, it's just hope. You just hope. There's no industry code. Yeah, exactly. Now, shall we finish talking about security, the strange world of TV and film set and script security and the breaches thereof?

Yes. And this is sort of in the news because some, drone shots have been obtained by a drone operator and were put on the internet. I think Chardotay should release a song called drone operator. Yeah. Anyway, that's by the bye. That would be good. And the drone operator got shots that they said were of the new Harry Potter show,

which is filming at Leaveston, apart from the bits that are on location, put them on the internet and Warner Brothers have now reacted in a way which we'll get to. To put it in context, there is so much high-end film and TV now shot in the UK and I actually think that we have either were just about to overtake or we have overtaken that the amount of studio space there is is more than there is in Hollywood now in the UK which is I know it's incredible and they're booked out for a long time and by the way absolute testament to the to the crafts people in the UK and just the incredible crew that you get any time you want to do listen I know this tax breaks to unionise in the same way

because they have much more attractive labour laws and incentives but also they're unbelievably good at their job. But it's a great success story and we have a huge amount of it being made here. And anyway, this drone incursion happened at Leavston, a place I know very well because I've shot various things there and they have a huge collection of sound stages. Like all studios, they're kind of this Dijon mustard colour. They've currently got more than 20. Some of them are 50,000 square foot. They're really enormous. It's been constantly expanding ever since I went there, which I think must have been in 2018. You constantly go there. Is it because of you?

No, but you're shocked. If you have six months away and they've built another load of stuff, the back lot is enormous. That alone is about, I think, of 100 acres or something. And that's where you would build. The backlots are interesting and relevant to the story because it's where you'd build. A back lot is. A back lot is the bit that's not covered. So say you've got these big kind of like almost like corrugated iron buildings.

Those are the stages and you can't see what's happening in there for obvious reasons. They've got a roof. But if you need to build, I don't know, some arena from house. the dragon or you need to build privet drive for harry potum. There's there's there's a quidditch stadium which I think the drone took a shot off which is sort of two halves of a quidditch stadium and then enormous blue screens for you know filling in in in post. So that yes.

They're all in the back. The drone operator said you can tell he was not a television fan because he identified a large amount of the house of the dragon set as being a Harry Potter set and then also said the blue screens you can see they're trying to hide it. It's like no mate that's not what blue screens are for but anyway. That drone operator is an idiot. Well, he actually is, and we'll get to it. Oh, really?

Oh, no God, they're so horrible the people. Yeah, I'll get to this. I agree. But anyway, it is amazing, but there's incredibly tight security on the set, on the lot of leaves in. You know, House of the Dragon had a code name on the, which I don't think I'd better say because even within the studio. Rent a Ghost, if you hear the word renter ghost.

It wasn't Renter Ghost. It was. I was thinking about you and Renter Ghost at the weekend for some reason. Anyway, it had a code name. And you can't really see. I remember one time when, obviously, finishing a day on, I think it was on Avenue 5, which was a show that I worked on there. And Will Smith, the writer and I came out. And you couldn't even tell what had been built

because they're so secure even on the set. But it was an exterior set. And it was actually slightly raining. And so the mist was coming off all the lights. And therefore, you could see in the darkness. They were just starting a night shoot what it was. And we were like, oh my God, it's Winterfell. Because they were still making Game of Thro's set. And there is a sort of thing. It is amazing. The sets are just beyond. You try and do as much on the studio property as you ever can because it's the most secure. You'll have seen, if you look in paparazzi pictures of, there's a scene of Dumbled or walking across the beach. Obviously, they can't build a beach. They've had to go to a real beach and do that. And then you are

open to paparazzi, to local, you can't control it. So you try and do as much as possible on the lot. And they've clearly built Privet Drive. They've done all these sorts of things. Diagon Alley is there. Diagonally, yeah. But you are terrified of drones. I think even when we were doing the franchise, I think we considered definitely having a plot about a sort of drone terror, you know, like that one, a gap where there wasn't actually a drone. Yeah. I can't remember, but we didn't do it. But people think about drones all the time because the thing is, in the UK, under UK aviation law,

you do not own the airspace above whatever you have. So these drone operators can, you can ask them to stop filming. But the person who shot this is a guy called DJ Audit. Well, his real name is Nigel Dix. No way. And he is an auditor. Now, I'll tell you what an auditor is. Auditors are drone operators who use their drones to supposedly inspect and monitor on or report on assets or compliance things, you know, railways, construction sites, kind of seeing our people are obeying health and safety.

That's a slightly, that's a theory in me. That's a legitimate part. Are they, like, like, vigilante versions? No, that's not a job. That's the proper version of that job. That's a job. There is a sort of vigilante version, which is YouTube auditors. Audit YouTube, as they call themselves.

Oh my God, they film police stations, private property, other buildings, and it's all for content. And what they do is that they film it and they try and get a security guard to come up to them and say, sorry, what are you doing? As someone, you know, did at Leaston saying, I'm afraid you're not allowed, could you please take the drone? And they then have a massive argument, which is their content. And they're deliberately provocative. They wait to be challenged. and you need the argument or you won't go viral. And actually, you know, you're talking to people

who are just really ordinary security guards. They have them all sorts of different sites. They're not. And people have now had to be trained everywhere. By the way, I spoke to someone at a railway station the other day because I was just missed my train and like an outlying railway station. And then one of these guys was doing it.

The guard had to say, I'm sorry, could you? And this guy tried to argue him. The guard was so polite. And I said to the guard afterwards, what was all that about? Because I had like for half an hour to wait for my train. And he said, these are auditors. all the time we're trained now to be really, really polite because they just want the argument

and then they put you on the internet. You don't want to be on the internet. Anyway, if someone said to me at a party, they're an auditor, I would have had a very different view before this conversation. So that is good to know. But now, what if an actual auditor tells me they're an auditor? And I'll be going, do you know what? What you do is a disgrace? Yeah, it does feel to me very much, it feels like men's work, if I can euphemise. Do you think there are any women auditors? It's very, to me, it's very, you know, like that and me, There won't be a second date, but at least she now understands the finer points of UK aviation law. And I just, it's just a very, very, it's man's work.

Debate me. You've never. No, listen, I've got, I'm literally thinking of a friend of mine's husband who loves his drone. He is not an order to say he's a very nice man. No, no, just, yeah. And I think actually lots of women love their drones, but doing this particular thing with your drone, it seems to me, anyway. Auditing via drone. So Warner Brothers know this is a recurring problem.

And obviously, for years, this series is just going to be, as I don't know, I see, say that you do as much as possible as you can on the stages that you Leavton and on the lot. But you can put a roof on everything. But you can sometimes actually, the law is quite interesting. You can sometimes not over Leavton, but you could say it's illegal. First of all, it's illegal to, you can detect a drone, but it's illegal to jam it or shoot it down, which is obviously quite tempting. Although they did do that on an Avengers movie.

Samuel L. Jackson says he was on an Avengers set when when a drone came into their airspace. That is illegal. and they will have had to do something about that afterwards. I'm afraid, because of civil aviation law. They all have to bring in the auditor's auditor. Yeah. You can block the airspace temporarily in some places, and you can say that you're doing that for safety or whatever it is,

but you can't permanently enforce a no-fly zone over Leaveson. That's never going to happen. They know these people that there's a legal precedent for them being allowed. So it's quite interesting what Warner Brothers have done. They've gone to court about this now, but they've gone a different way because a lot of people try to do it, the way that this is trespass. You're not going to get anywhere on trespass.

What they've said is that he is infringing their intellectual property rights. That's what I was wondering. So it feels like a bit like you might be. Yes. And that is probably the best way. He's immediately kind of counter-counter-filed in some way saying, you know, I've got the right to do this. But I actually think this is the best. That's a good counter-file.

Yeah. Well, they know they're right. I mean, these guys really know their rights. Yeah. And they think they're involved in rights-based work, but they're not. They're just involved in, you know, the content mill. I mean, it's all content mills, isn't it? At least it's a content mill.

But in America they've got totally different rules. But in our country, when so much stuff is being made here, whether they will be able to get some sort of precedent and say, you can't ever fly a drone over a studio. I think in the very first Thursday medical book, I intimated that Elizabeth had been behind the drone at Catwick. Yes, that's true. Yes, of course I remember that now.

Just in an aside. God, there's so many great articles about that. And it was just like a sort of, was it a mass hysteria? did it happen at all. Yeah, it wasn't anything, right? I don't think it was. There was a really good Guardian article about a long read of asset that's really, that was, you know, sometime after the event.

And, yeah, that is very interesting. But anyway. And that, by the way, is why I think sometimes there should be a channel that just repeats the news from five years ago because it put everything into perspective. And also you just go, oh, yeah, the drone. Oh, what happened with that? Also, there's been so much. It's quite hard to catch up on it.

Maybe they should do box sets of it. It's a really, really good idea. So that's drones. Maybe another time we'll talk about script security. which is insane. You never get a script now that doesn't have your name plastered all over it,

that doesn't have a watermark just so at any time, because, you know, Game of Thrones got leaked. There's all sorts of things that are leaked. But I'll just say now that that's also the whole security around scripts also goes back

to Samuel R. Jackson on the very first Avengers movie when his assistant printed out copy of the script for Sam, accidentally printed out two copies, left one of them on the printer. A production assistant came,

got it, sold it, made a load of money, and the whole First Avengers script was leaked. And now, oh my God, when Ingrid gets pages through, sometimes there are scripts where you cannot see anyone else's scenes. Like, nothing, everything is redacted, apart from the scene that you're doing. And just every single show now, the security around scripts, they'll do fake scripts. They'll do scripts with fake scenes.

So if that gets leaked, they know exactly who leaked it. It's like Colleen Rooney. They'll have fake cruise go places. Yeah. as a decoy thing. And yes, when you first get to read the script to see whether they're going to offer you the part, it will expire within an hour.

So you can have a quick look and then it's kind of burnt itself after reading. Yeah, and it's Samuel L. Jackson's assistant's fault. Yeah. Any recommendations this week? I have been away, as you know, last week, and I went with the most beloved family, many of whom are listeners to this podcast. And we played so much of a game called The Chameleon,

which is a version of imposter. It's so good. absolutely loved it. You know, one person's the imposter and you've got to work it all out, but it comes in cards. It is really, I thoroughly recommend. The chameleon. The chameleon. And it's just like a little card game.

Yeah, it's a car game. I'll recommend Bait, which is the Riz Ahmed Guss Khan show where there's rumors that Riz Ahmed is going to be James Bond and what happens to the Becker. But it's really interestingly written. It's really interestingly shot Gers and Riz are fantastic together. But anyway, it's much darker than you'd think. Yeah. But the jokes are very, very, very funny. Yeah, I thought Hymish Patel, who I know was in the franchise, he's just turned up as well.

He's so awful in a good way. Yeah, as a he acts someone who's so awful. But yeah, I'm really, really enjoying bait. And that's on Prime, right? That is on Amazon Prime, yeah. And the interesting thing there, of course, is because Amazon Prime now own the James Bond franchise, Riz Ahmed is able to make a show which talks about James Bond,

which talks about him becoming James Bond, which uses that universe. Expect much more Bond adjacent content in the coming years. But if this is their first bit of Bond adjacent content, then it is surprisingly good. Right. We'll be back on Thursday with a Q&A. And on Friday with the next part of our Spice Girls series,

Jerry may not stay with the band. No. Spoiler. Listen, so long as Zane stays in, direction, I'm happy. Then it's fine. And if you want to join for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at Restorsentatement.com, otherwise, see you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.