The Rest Is Entertainment - Kylie Jenner's Pervert Glasses

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Why has Kylie Jenner made a pair of glasses with 'Earth's Most Malevolant Dweeb' Mark Zuckerberg? How has Love Island become America's favourite show? And has Michael Barrymore made a comeback via TikTok? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discuss the enormous success of dating reality show Love Island, and why audiences are preferring TV lotharios over Hollywood stars. Kylie Jenner has partnered with Meta to sell AI powered 'smart-glasses'. Are celebrities finally buying into Silicon Valley, and what does it mean for the world's privacy? Recommendations: Regime Change - Maggie Haberman & Johnathan Swan The Widow - John Grisham The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Lending is subject to status. You could lose your home if you don't keep up your mortgage repayments. Conditions apply.1996 average first-time buyer deposit based on Office National Statistics House Price Index data. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton & Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Sam Psyk Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Resters Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, fan mail is one of entertainment's strangest bargains. You send total devotion one way and the understanding that nothing may come back. Certainly in our day you would write to a film star or a singer. I wrote to Howard Jones. And maybe three months later, a sort of signed photo comes back that's clearly pro forma, you know, that you know Howard's never really looked at. Steve Martin used to have the performer sort of thing,

which we just leave blanks, like insert, like small detail, to make a joke about how completely impersonal, his personal reply to you was. It was just like a standard thing. Impersonal is interest. That's why we're talking about this, because with Octopus Energy, you always can reply to their emails. And not only can you reply to them, they will go to the same small group of people who always deal with you.

That's like unbelievable. It's almost unprecedented that a company you're giving your money to will actually respond to you. Yeah. Are contactable in some way. This episode is brought to you by EasyTen. You must have had that moment when you're watching a film, but you completely tune out the plot and start daydreaming about the location instead. The bright Mediterranean colours on screen suddenly make the British weather look even greyer.

And sometimes it doesn't even take the technicolor. Put on a black and white thriller set on the Italian coast and I'll enjoy the mystery. But part of me is already working out which flight gets me nearest, preferably with less identity theft and bluer skies. For me, it is Greece. Once the rumours started that a certain star-star did musical was returning to the islands, that was all I needed. I was thinking about departures. With EasyJet, you can travel to over 100 destinations across Europe, with flights from just £32 one way,

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Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm not too bad. It's been too hot. I like it. I know that. But this hot? But yeah, no, you're right. There were moments when even I was whelting.

Try being six foot seven in this heat. I'd love to. I'd love to be six and seven. Yes, I would. You are much near the sun. It is much, much hotter, I promise that. We've sort of got a summer special this week, funnily enough. Yeah.

We're going to talk about Love Island, becoming literally the biggest show in the entire world, how that happened and where it leads us. Yes. And we're also going to talk about Kylie Jenner is advertising Mehta's new smart glasses. We're going to talk about smart glasses. Also, what the kind of move towards celebrities means for Silicon Valley and celebrities. Okay. Let's get to Love Island. Yes. Let's journey to Love Island, which is now an enormous hit. In the US, it is the biggest show on US TV. Generates kind of huge stars, like lots of reality shows. We're going to talk about reality shows and how I think reality stars. have a much sort of bigger cultural cachet now than movie stars. Now, in the past 24 hours, there have been a couple of stories about Love Island contestants. One's been removed from the UK version and one from the US version of the show. But for Thursday's Q&A episode, I can see we've had questions about TV participant vetting.

So why do we leave those aspects of contestant screening until then? And today we're talking about it as a sort of broader cultural phenomenon. So the origin story of Love Island is a fascinating one. So the last three seasons, in fact, moved to Peacock in the States and a new host, Ariana Maddox, who's also worth talking about, because she's an interesting one. And three seasons ago started really, really, really climbing the ratings. Last season almost doubled its audience. This season has almost doubled it again. So it's uber massive.

It's beyond massive. It's absolutely huge. I mean, it's a phenomenon. and it's making an insane amount of money. A lot of that money going to the UK, which is nice, because it's a UK format, an ITV format. But to speak to your point about ordinary people becoming celebrities and that being more interesting to people than film stars and what have you,

of course, Love Island started in 2005 as Celebrity Love Island. In the UK. In the UK. I watch that series. Whenever you have a successful regular show, and the thing you do is you say oh why don't we do a celebrity version of this and you know that's a very familiar

path to tread. In the case of Celebrity Love Island they did two seasons of it. It was sort of an attempt to take on Big Brother. It sort of worked, sort of didn't work, you know, got a lot of column inches back when columns were measured in inches but it didn't really take off

and 10 years later they said I think it was Angela Jane at E4 said well why don't we bring back Celebrity Love Island but without the celebrities? Why don't we make ordinary people? And from that moment this franchise was born. And it's been through a few dips, but it's currently, it's never ever been bigger. They ditch celebrities. They put ordinary people in there. And more than any other show pretty much, they turn them into characters and personalities incredibly quickly. People come in with sort of 20K follow accounts. They leave

with a million plus. They get all, you know, sponsorship bonanzas, all of these sorts of things. It's like being a goalkeeper for Cape Verdi. I was about to say. I mean, everybody wants to sign him. That's the history of the thing. And I say it was big in the UK as Love Island, then moved over to the States. Quiet start, but now has become definitively the biggest show in the world. So I think it's definitely worth us talking about it.

And talking about what this reverse pivot of going from a celebrity show into a regular show, why that made it the biggest show in the world. and interesting sidebar, traitors in the US, which as you know is celebrity based. In the sense that they are all, because as we've talked about on the podcast before, reality TV is now a sort of professional class within entertainment and people hop from show to show. And if you've, you know, one big brother, you might get onto traitors or whatever it is. But traitors now in the States is going to do a regular version. Yeah.

You know, in the same way in the UK, we went from a regular version to a celebrity version. In America, they're going from a celebrity version to a regular version. And that's when you know you've really made it. When your format is big enough and strong enough, you can put ordinary people in it. So talk to me about Love Island and how it became this phenomenon. It's hard to say how it becomes a phenomenon because it's a regular television show. And it became a phenomenon because people kept believing in it. And, you know, so the team behind it is quite hard to work out exactly who came up with Love Island.

Because really it's sort of just putting couples in a villa and letting them swap. And back in 2005, there were a billion of those formats. Every single format was, sex on the beach, sex with my ex, just a load of things where, you know, there were these shifting sands. But this is one. Firstly, it was owned by ITV studios, so people like Rachel Arnold and the Talca Snackas, who are still around now making great shows. They were there. So it had brilliant people behind it very, very early on. It obviously had the money of an ITV studios behind it very early on and a channel as well.

and it had a headwind and then they just started making it really, really well and we often say oh my God, what a great, great idea that was so obviously a big hit but usually with things like traitors race across the world Love Island

the ideas themselves are fairly prosaic and fairly universal they just made incredibly well and that's what ITV have done so they were doing that, doing what we would have done 25 years ago i.e. making a really good television show

as well as we possibly could But I think the key was at the same time the culture was changing and what we thought of as celebrity was changing. Yeah, I don't think people want appetites. First of all, the character types I think have changed in all of these shows is that we used to watch, you know, it's right back in those, you know, 20 years ago, like you're talking about, we watched reality TV for the train wrecks. And it was quite simplistic for messes and for things like that.

People in reality TV are now seen as heroes, which is a definite shift. Like all of these formats, it's got these kind of terrible stories and some tragedies in its kind of long history, people who aren't able to deal with the fame it brings. But then I suppose that's like movie history or any type of thing.

Yeah, and we have a hope over the years on this podcast. We've spoken quite a lot about those things, and we always will do. We know we talked about Married a First Site recently. So I think just on this occasion, we can concentrate on something else, which is there is something extraordinary about these formats. A different kind of fame and a different kind of audience.

But fame in any of its iterations brings all sorts of issues and difficulties and problems, that's for sure. There's another huge show that's just went absolutely nuts for a particular reason, which is in the US called Summer House. Have you seen this thing? It's bravo, you've done it. You can watch it here. And it's essentially some people, hot people go to the Hamptons and share a house, whatever. But there was a love triangle in it. someone found out that her best friend and a guy she had a sort of situation ship with going behind her back. Kiarra, I mean, it's become so massive.

It blew up beyond all belief. I saw this guy saying, a reality TV producer saying, oh, Kiaras this generation's Julia Roberts. There were these amazing shots of her finding out about it and then there were these pictures of her like crouched down outside the hilariously, outside the Hermes shop in Manhattan on the pavement. and like a passer-by helping her when she sort of found out about it. It's so all out there.

You're involved in all their dramas all the time. And so they have these huge social moments. She now, by the way, has got a million followers. She's going on dancing with the stars. She is presenting Love Island After Sun. That is absolute gold dust. And she's obviously got masses of red carpet and sort of sponsorship, things like that. So I think that what people want now, and our contract, later we'll come to why.

I think this is so why movie stars in a way are out of step with our kind of cultural dynamics. What they want is permanent access. Yes. They want permanent drama. They want permanent candor. They want retail opportunities. All of these things, you know, bring it. They want imperfection.

And reality TV is still about in all of these formats, even though it's about revealing who you are. And it's impossible when you're in these kind of long-term formats, particularly something like you can't really hide yourself in the Love Island. I know, and this is a sticking point with lots of people, they go, or reality TV isn't real, and you know, you can edit people to look weird and people play up to the cameras. What you're saying is right, long form stuff, which Love Island is, which Big Brother is, you cannot hide yourself. You can't edit yourself. You can't edit yourself. And, you know, you at home might be going, oh yeah, but I can see through that.

You think, yes, everyone can see through it. And that's what character is. We can tell they're not being authentic. We've either got reality stars who are exposed in these long formats and people do feel they're more real than anything. else. You've got influences, a class of people, which people are also obsessed with, but sort of actually detest and think they're lying to them, even though they are obsessed with them. So it's a kind of complicated relationship, but they do think that they're lying to them and that they're managing. And then you've got very remote movie stars who will come to that are not these type of celebrities at all. And they don't respond in real time to anything. Well, there are two,

this is the interesting thing, I think, and this is why reality TV is so powerful, is there are two types of reaction you can have to somebody on screen. So that person on screen is giving you a version of themselves and you have an opinion on that. And what you're either saying is, I love that person. They're so authentic. Even though they're messy or they're difficult or, you know, they're causing trouble. They are authentic or your, I don't believe that person is being real. And both of those things make for amazing television. They make for judgment. It's like someone started at work and you immediately start talking about them. You go, well, what are we? think of X. It's that, but for

everybody in America. They can all talk about these people and they go, are they real or are they not real? And it doesn't matter either way because there's a built-in reaction to both of those. And by the end, they do feel that they are real because they do understand that the format

will expose and eventually... But people can still be fake. People can still be fake. Yes. You can be a fake person. But at least they're really... Exactly. You can be a real fake. But that's exactly it. Everyone's being real. Some people are fakes, but they're real fakes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're not, no one's acting up for the cameras because you cannot do the, you know what, the camera is just, you cannot have that relationship.

It will weigh you out. It really, you will always blink first if you're looking into a camera. I agree. Whereas movie stars, they, they tend to be, first of all, they tend to be very guarded. And the way they deliver what they do is, I think now completely out of kilter with the dynamics of what we expect in the modern world. They on the opposite of always on. this thing that they do takes a very long time to create. The creation of it happens away and you don't see it.

And then you are presented with this sort of stone tablet as it were. And by the way, traditionally has had a prestige. Yes. And it has a prestige in the lifetime of the people who are in these films. And so they still act as if there is a prestige, which I'm sad to say, has long gone. Yes, it's definitely, definitely degraded. And there are so many fewer sort of fewer of those types of styles for this reason that the market is shifting. But nothing in their world happens in real time.

If you look at these reality shows, you look at like that girl in Summerhouse, if you look at Love Island. People can communicate with these people in real time. Reality stars, your cultural footprint is immediate. You can message them. You can about the dramas that we can see happening. There are these social media moments happening all the time where people maybe find out what's in the series behind people's back.

So they have a much closer relationship with their fans. And they are always on. They're constantly monetizing. they have a kind of direct consumer relationship. The relationship with the audience is very, very different. Both the way of selling things because they almost all end up with sponsorships or in many cases come in to Love Island

because they want that. If you look at someone like Molly May Haig or whatever, she quite obviously she targeted the show because she wanted to become a certain type of person and it has made her that type of person. And by the way, no judgment on that. That's the culture we're living. That's what I would be doing if I was in my mid-20s.

You just find your route through. But movie stars, they don't particularly open movies anymore. People are going for the IP. There are certain people like Zendaya or whatever that people will want to go and see. But there are many, many fewer, Jacob Allude. It was really interesting. The other weekend, not the weekend we've just had the one before, I was talking to her 15-year-old girl about all her cultural taste,

and I was really grateful to her. She spent a lot of time talking to me about it. And I was talking to her a bit about the pin-ups for want of a better time. And, you know, she was like, yeah, you know, Jacob All righty, all of those. But she said, one of the things she said was, there's a feeling that we need more guys, that there aren't guys.

And I said, that's so interesting, but why has the market not provided? Because, and I think it's really interesting. If you look at music, music is dominated by solo women. Reality television is a female-led medium. Books. All the biggest selling authors in the world are women currently. She said, they're just, like, there's not enough guys.

They don't have enough guys. pin-ups. And I said that's so weird that there aren't people sort of coming through. And, you know, there was absolutely no shortage of loads of movie stars, loads of TV stars. But it's, the women dominate all these things. Yeah, it can't all be Harry Styles. No, but reality TV is completely female dominated. They are the power. And my, funny enough, when I am, this isn't medium, I know absolutely next to nothing about, but I do know this about it. It's like opera. women, this is an art form in which women wield all the power. We don't care about men in reality TV in lots of these shows.

They're stooges a lot of the time, aren't they? They're like pantomime idiots or they're a plot device. You know, in the real housewives, they just sort of exist around the edge of it. And actually, when that guy was saying about this girl, Kiara from Summerhouse, oh, she's this generation's Julia Roberts, that's what, in all of their imperfection, but they're also very ambitious women in reality television. and all of these things are what make them compelling as stars in a way. And also the ambitious thing, because it works the other way around in a way,

is if you are an ambitious woman in your early to mid-20s and you do have ideas and you do want to be in the middle of the conversation, this is where you go. Yeah, you back yourself. Yeah. All these women back themselves. And this is a great, well, funny enough, Ariana Maddox, who's been the host for the last three seasons, when you look into her story, she wanted to be a Broadway performer.

You know, so she trained and did, you know, went to theatre school and, you know, not from a particularly rich background, certainly not from a connected background. Moose to New York to try and get work in the theatre in the way that one would have done 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. A hundred even, yeah. Yeah. And then moves to L.A. to try and be an actor. She is a bartender. So goes to be a bartender at the bar owned by Lisa Vanderpump from Vanderpump Rules, which is an enormous Bravo show in the States. and did 11 seasons of that was much loved and her dream of playing on Broadway came true because she's cast as Roxy Hart in Chicago

because she was a big star but also is amazing I mean she was incredible like something she would not have been able to do with her lack of connection she's not a nepo baby or anything like that so she found a route through one of these shows to do the thing that she wanted to do then she went on dancing with the stars came third now she's hosting this and the whole thing has massively taken off. I mean, she's, again, she has a brilliantly messy personal life as well because she was with Tom Sandoval and which is, there's so much to unpack.

But that's what people want. They want ambition and massive imperfection. But also she's talented. Yeah. You know, and it's quite hard if you are talented to make it in this world. Certainly if you have no connections, it is difficult to do that. And so when we keep saying, oh, all these, there's people, you know, keep getting famous. I tell you who else is getting famous, talented people.

Yes. But this is the route through that they are taken because they can't ask their mum or their dad for a job. So, you know, they'll do this instead. Well, there's a famous quote about writing, which is writing's easy. You just open a vein and bleed. But that's said by someone like Red Smith or Hemingway or whatever, and it's a sort of prestige. I also thought it was Joan Didion. Yeah, it's attributed to various different people.

But I think whoever said it, it would definitely be from the prestige category. But that idea that among certain types of writers, you know, you just lay your soul on the paper and then it's a prestige thing. Whereas people who do it in this format, you know, there's nothing in reality that's remotely prestigious. I think those are sort of false snobberies. There's something about exposing yourself and being very, very open that is sneered at still in this, but maybe by people who don't understand whether it's gone. Because it's not sneered at by the audience at all. No.

And also the audiences are sometimes sneered at by that group of people as well because they're going, oh, but can't you see X, Y, and Z? And the thing you can tell about a reality TV audience is, yes, they can see X, Y, Z. And also they're seeing a bunch of things that you don't see. And sometimes you get years ago, I'm like Big Brother, people would say, oh, that I hate all of them. And you go, if you look through those 16 people and there's no one you find a human connection with, it is on you. Yes.

That is on. The beauty of these shows is we find the person who we identify with. We find the person in whom we find some heroic characteristics. We find the person that we want to get their comeuppance. And usually in reality TV, if not in life, those are the things that happen. But viewers of these... Even with celebrities last time after the first episode, a lot of people were like, oh, I don't know whether this is going to work because they couldn't allow themselves to commit.

It's like, don't worry, this will work. And it was only towards the end when they thought, oh, this is Alan can't handle being a traitor. This is very funny. that they felt like they were coming into the format and that they could maybe give it another chart. Maybe they'll watch episode two. I mean, it genuinely has the moral nuance and sophistication of a 19th century novel.

Yes. I mean, an audience is really, really capable of keeping four or five things in their head at the same time when they watch these shows. And there was drama, drama, drama. It's like, you know, it's like something that comes out in a periodical once a week, except it comes out every day and there's cliffhangers.

It's genuine and an incredible form of television. We talked in previous times about the exploitation of people who are on these shows, and that's definitely an issue. But in terms of television and in terms of the opportunity, it provides people who are on it, it's kind of unrivaled. It's like a bullet train through culture. I agree. But the always on nature of it isn't just the format. Bit like when we were talking about when we were talking about sport and how people are starting to consume football as just one example differently, which is that instead of these kind of 90-minute things that happen relatively,

infrequently, you've got all of this plot line and social activity and everything happening all around it. And there's a whole ecosystem of stuff around it that means that if you're really into one of these shows, you can sort of get new information and new real-time drama about it every single day. Yeah. And it has a lot in common with sport, in that if you love sport, you can absolutely immerse yourself in that for your whole life.

You will never run out of things to talk about. You will never run out of new story. you will never run out of new characters. They will always be a new season. And it's the same with reality TV. It has a huge amount in common with sport. That, you know, there are definitely rules, but actually it's slightly out of your control.

You never quite know what's going to happen. But it's fan service, it's audience service, right? In the same way that recording artists have realized that they can't disappear for five years and then come back with an album and everyone still be there. We've talked about this before. People dropping things all the time and just this constant sort of, just remaining part of the culture for fear of it moving on beyond you.

So your point about movie stars, I think is interesting. I often feel in my position. So I have a profile. I do TV shows. I've got the books and this sort of the other. And I understand absolutely what I'm constantly being asked to do, which is make myself constantly publicly available to promote those things. And not to sort of go on a show and say,

you must read my book, but to constantly be present in the culture, to show who I am. I suppose so. But I get to talk about other things and not myself on this, which is what I like. Yeah.

But the idea makes me so tired. When I see the graft involved. Oh my gosh. And I can see people in the 20s. It's amazing. Of course you constantly have a camera pointed at yourself and you can do stuff. I really, really get it.

But there comes a point. If you're a movie star, if you're a TV presenter or an actor or a singer or a singer of an older generation, generation, where you just think I don't, I just don't have the energy to turn myself into the product. I really, really don't. And we have enough track left that I can write my books and that's the product and that's enough. And, you know, and I'm happy with that. But what everybody would really, really like is for me to be the product and the books to be the thing that you can

buy because you like that product. And that I cannot get on board with. But this new generation and these new generation of TV shows, that is absolutely the way around that it is. And I really get it. And I think it brings some really interesting things into our culture. And I think it brings some really interesting people into our culture who'd have had the door shut in their face before now. And so, you know, those are big conclusions to take from a reality dating show. But it's so enormous and it's so enormous for our reason,

which is our culture has absolutely changed underneath us from 2005 and Celebrity Love Island with Jane Middlemis to, you know, 2026. this behemoth. Yes, and it's above all, it is what audiences want. Yeah, and it's good. And yes, they're giving audiences what they want. I've said this before, but so many writers, people who write comedy or fiction are obsessed with reality shows because eventually, as you say, you point in a camera and eventually

people start making, you know, reveal themselves, but they also take extraordinary decisions in the moment and their impulses are so interesting to watch. and so many like real prestige writers are obsessed with these type of shows. Because it reveals character. It's a shortcut to seeing people be put in extremist situations and then having to make a choice. I would go so far as to say if you love Middle March, then you'll love below deck. Because it's the same stuff. Yeah.

You know? But yeah, in conclusion, it is the biggest show in the world. And while there are issues with that, I think it's worth sometimes going, Do you know what, this is actually not bad. There is something quite interesting about this. And there is an audience that's being super served and an audience that really, really engages and understands what it is that they're watching

in a way that if you don't watch, you don't understand. Okay, after the break, we are going to be discussing Kylie Jenner's collaboration with Silicon Valley Overlord's meta for their smart glasses. Talk about Always On. Yeah. C&MO.

This episode is brought to you by the Lloyd's 5K House Deposit. Lloyds are offering a 5K house deposit which was last seen in 1996 What are your entertainment memories Of the 1990s? I feel guilty talking about the 1990s Because you look back and it was It was such a golden era

We'd never had it so good And we didn't even realise because we were young And we just thought we were entitled to it all We absolutely took it for granted Yeah, Brit Pop was absolutely in its pomp Oasis playing to a quarter of a million people You had blur and suede and pop I'm so sorry

Squires, guys, amazing movies at the cinema, train spotting I mean, it felt a time of absolute optimism, but at the time, you just assumed that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. Yeah. But part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyd's is dealing with right now. Yeah. Last scene in 1996, Lloyds are now offering 5K deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5K, first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on O&S data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Welcome back everybody. Now before we talk about smart glasses, our bonus episode this week,

not just for members, for everyone. I'm doing a series called the World Cup of, I've done these many times before in different formats back when Twitter was at its height. The first one we're doing is the World Cup of US sitcoms. I've got John Robinson, Macy, Adam, in the studio. I am dying to hear this. And we're going through more in common,

our lovely polling friends have polled the British public. We're going to find out what the favourite US sitcom of all time is, but we're going to chat about our favourites as well. on little stories about the sitcom. So we're doing a whole series of those. But the first one, the World Cup of US sitcoms, will be out this Wednesday for everybody and then for members after that.

But it's really good fun. And we thought it was going to be a short recording. And we did a whole bunch of them. And we were arguing so much about everything in a nice way. We really, really enjoyed it. So I hope you enjoy that. Talking of enjoyment, I remember a while back when Google bought out their Google glasses,

and I was like, this is the worst thing that's ever going to happen. And then I was delighted because they absolutely failed. No one bought them. They were an absolute nightmare. And you thought, good, that's gone away. It has not gone away quite the opposite. Yeah, smart glasses. There's a new collaboration. Meta's smart glasses. And I suppose we're going to talk what it means for both Silicon Valley and celebrities who have actually stayed quite separate, interestingly, in terms of promotional activity. But Meta have got a deal with Rayban and they've had these glasses out for a while, different ones.

And you'll probably have noticed Mark Zuckerberg has been or has taken to the stage various times wearing them. We'll get to that in a second. I mean, if he's refusing to put them on, that would be bad. Kylie Jenner is the new face

of their new glasses. They've one's called Starfire. They cost about $3 or $400. Her voice is the AI assistant. She's been very hands-on, blah, blah, blah. All the things celebrities say when they do a brand collaboration. To me it's quite interesting

because Silicon Valley, first of all, it's interesting to me on the marketing. They don't sell things in this way. Think of what everyone has sort of, all of those companies, all of those tech overlords have sort of copied Steve Jobs, which is, you know, you walk on stage and you tell people about a new piece of hardware. Which I suppose is fine if it's like all software, I guess, or if it's a sort of some kind of desktop thing or a hardware thing or whatever, or even met as various other products. But the sort of corporate narcissism of Mark Zuckerberg, who would walk on. on stage wearing these glasses. It's like, yeah, like your Earth's most malevolent dweeb. No one's going to buy anything off you. You can't disrupt everything, mate, okay? Here's how you actually

sell things, okay? You get really hot people to take sexy photos, aspirational people, and then people want to buy the things. So if you'll have a look at the pictures of Kylie Jenner leaning into the camera in her smart glasses, it's like, all right, you know, whereas Zuckerberg, for a long time, I think thought he could just walk on a stage wearing these things. I think Jimmy Kimmel described Zucker as now dressing like a Chechen Molli Dealer. And, you know, he walks on the stage. Oh, Chechen, Molly, do that, okay. Yeah.

But they now have a vice president of fashion matter. So they did this whole thing totally different. You know what? I literally never heard back when I applied for that. Could they just acknowledge the CV? Just say you've had it. Because otherwise, maybe it went to junk. Yeah.

Can I just check that you received? Yeah. But, I mean, I don't, as you know, I don't like to say wearables. But in this case, these are accessories that they're trying to sell. And this is how you sell accessories. And it's interesting that celebrities have actually mostly stayed away from tech. Kylie Jenner, obviously these people are completely plugged into the platforms. They don't exist really without these platforms.

But I remember there was a point where Kylie Jenner said something like, oh, is anyone else not really feeling the new Snapchat design? And it wiped a billion off the company. That was a while back, okay. Don't worry, it's recovered. But when you think about something like fashion or jewelry, think, of how many celebrities have deals and campaigns and whatever. And actually, speaking about movie styles before the break,

that is actually one way for those people to stay always on. They're present because they are viewable in advertising campaigns. Well, you look at Beckham at the World Cup, and he's getting more minutes than any of the players. It's unbelievable. It's absolutely extraordinary. His ability to sell everything. That's the thing about the Kardashian-Gener's,

that there's nothing they won't sell. Celebrities have been very wary about doing things with Silicon Valley. If you look at the much more kind of typical Silicon Valley reaction, I think celebrities slightly feel that this thing might destroy the movie stars. I mean, they're right. And they're probably right. Scarlett Hansen obviously had a huge kind of blow up about her voice being used as an AI assistant. Witherspoon recently, who has a sort of lifestyle portal and recently said,

oh, women, we need to understand AI, all of this. She got a massive backlash. It wasn't even paid for, by the way. So celebrities are very aware of it. But the Kardashian-Jenners will sell absolutely. anything. I'm amazed. They don't have defense contracts. Amazed. They will sell anything. Any backlash is Water Offer Ducks back when they

draw their power from it. They just don't care. So, rather like Becca, there are certain people who just don't, once you've promoted a sort of emirate or whatever, you don't obviously mind. But what happened with Instagram is that that was only made into a, which is a meta product, obviously, that was only made into

a thing because fashion and celebrities thought, oh, hang on a second, I can control images of myself, I can release things. And that allowed people to be always in a different way. So celebrities and movie styles and what have you made Instagram a thing. And they're now realising, I think, they have to do these with these glasses. Well, that's the interesting thing about it. So Google Glass launched and it was a big tech product.

It was a tech play entirely. It looked like a tech play. As you say, they were just sort of worn by the tech pros and it disappeared entirely. What Meta did very, very early on is while on one hand thinking about what the smart glasses can do. And by the way, we should talk about what smart classes do, which means... Oh, we're getting to that. Yeah, okay, good. But they teamed up immediately.

They went to Esylor Luxottica, which is one of those big brands that essentially owns everything that you've ever heard of. And they are the owners of Rayban. So they actually went to the makers of Rayban and said, no, we're going to make a fashion item. We will put all of the tech inside that fashion item, but it's going to be fashion first. And, you know, we're constantly told that tech stocks, you know,

trade, you know, 10 times more than any other stock. And tech have suddenly realized that actually, fashion stocks are the ones that really trade above everything. So they have put all... They finally realised to sell it in a fashion way as well. Yeah. Don't bother doing a deal with Ray Ban if Mark Zuckerberg is going to wander out. I don't want to buy anything off him.

And so, Kylie Jenner, I think, interestingly, I think these were already a hit before she signed up with them. You know, they sold a million in a year. They reckon they've sold three million. You know, people are actually using them and wearing them. And it got to the point, I think, where she was able to say, oh, okay, this is a fashion thing. But they didn't look fashion.

I'm sorry. I would get that they were made by Rayban and whatever, but they didn't look fashion. Now, the ones she's done look fashion. Oh, they look fashion. I mean, listen, I have so much more to say about this, but, you know, since I got turned down for the VP job at the meta, yeah, I say for that.

Snap are bringing out some glasses. But they, again, Stephen Meisel's going to do the photo. You can't have glasses called Snap. That's a terrible idea. Yeah, maybe, yeah, Snap Glasses. Stephen Meisel's going to do the campaign, Ky Gerber. They've got loads of celebrities doing those. So this is becoming a different thing.

And yet they are, are they not Richard, like one of the darkest iterations of surveillance capitalism? They might be the worst thing in the world, I think. They're literally pervert glasses. So they're pervert glasses, for sure. Though it's weird, they didn't go with that name. So they are essentially glasses which are a camera, which have speakers as well, which have recording capability, both audio and visual. So you can walk around essentially either filming what is right in front of you

or live streaming what is in front of you. I mean, particularly live streaming, that's without consent. You can do all of those things. New ones have AI capability. So whenever you're looking around, it can be giving you information about what's around you. They say, oh, you can find out what sort of tree is next to you. And many of the firms have plans to integrate facial recognition into these systems. If anyone ever were to do that, there was two half of the students in 2024,

who they did a viral demonstration with Ray Ban. meta glasses. They combine it with facial recognition software, which some of the companies say they're not going to put in, but we know they would eventually some of them, and also public databases. And they could identify strangers on the street in real time. They surface names, addresses, and phone numbers within seconds. The experiment was dubbed i. X-ray, and it's sparked widespread alarm, but that was a year and a half ago, and that alarm seems to have dispersed a little bit. It'd be handy, though, when you can't remember someone's name. That actually is handy. And it will It will get rid of the embarrassment I see almost on a daily basis.

If I'm walking down the street and someone recognizes me but isn't sure where they know they know my face, so assume I'm someone from work. And so they'll give me like a really sort of slight embarrassed nod. It will solve that for them because they'll go, oh, that's that guy from... Yeah. I'll be able to run through all the hits. Yeah. Whichever show I do.

And in the same way that people will unblock phones for you, you know, you can just go shopping in the high street and someone on unblock the phone. Someone will disable the record. lighting light for you for like $100 or something. Yes, so they have a little recording. This is supposed to show that they're recording. Meta of, Meta of thought of all this.

So they've got a tiny, tiny light, which is on when someone's recording. But you can have it. You can. Obviously, you can just cover it up. It's like the easiest thing in the world. And we do recognise that meta are above everything, a data company,

an information company. So while they say, oh no, we will have pretty strong safeguards in place when these are being used. Let me tell you, I'm aware that all of our previous products, we said that and it hasn't really paid off. But these ones, you're going to be absolutely fine. So you're going to be walking around a street where everyone is going to be wearing Raybans.

They're all filming you at all times. They can capture what you're saying. There will be an AI display telling them who you are. All of that stuff is possible. All of that stuff is probable. And now they're being advertised by the most beautiful people on the planet. And built by a company with an almost endless. reserve of money.

That's scary, right? Yeah, I do. And I think it is a, I would, you know, if you were advising people, as I say, the Kardashian journalists, they literally don't care hardly what they advertise. But a lot of other people would think, do I really want to be associated with these things that the law is so far behind, as always, the law is so far behind being able to keep up with this. How do you consent?

You know, they are complete, we know that they are, people call them crepe magnets. They're pervert glasses. You can see pick-up artists filming all the time. And then just immediately posting. And you haven't obtained people's consent. There are stories about people who have fled abusive relationships. And then it's quite clear. And they're being filmed at work.

Because lots of people just do like, well, someone we might talk about. Michael Barrymore, bizarrely. Yes, Barrymore meet Zuckerberg this week. Michael Barrymore, if you don't know who he was, our younger audience. Michael Barrymore was a massive light entertainment presence on British television for a long time. He hosted loads and loads of the big shows. He was loved and funny and he was biggest, you know. He was ant plus deck.

Yeah. He came out as gay, relatively late on in his career. He, and then there was this huge scandal where somebody was found dead in his pool after a party and that person, a man had been sexually assaulted. It was not clear what happened. It's never been fully clear what has happened. Michael Barrymore was never charged with any offence, but he effectively fell completely from grace in that moment.

Yeah, he's someone who actually was cancelled. Yeah, he really was. Yeah, yeah. However, you hear a lot about, oh, Nigel Farage has got so many followers on TikTok, he's got 1.5 million. Michael Barrymore has 4.4 million. He's been reposted by people like Sabrina Carpenter. And what he does is he just basically sort of wears glasses like this.

And he goes out to the shops and buys munchies and things like that. And chats. And he puts it on TikTok. and he has got a huge following from it. He probably earns at least a quarter of a million a year from it. And it's a very, very big thing. But again, people were saying, well, hang on a second. If you're recording people in whatever, the supermarket,

none of these people have really consented. There have been stories. I'm not saying that this is true of the people he has filmed, but there have been stories of people who've fled abusive relationships or whatever. And then if you put it on a sort of mass viewership platform where it gets masses of hits and you think, oh, okay, that person works in, you know, the Astor of wherever, then you are effectively doxing people.

Yes, so this week, funny enough, at Usdor, the shop workers union came out and said, you can't do this. They're talking directly to Baramol because it's so high profile, he was filming in shops. And by the way, no one who's in those videos has personally complained, but they raised it with us door just to say, look, by the way, this stuff is going out, and I don't know who's in the background, and no one has signed a release form. If you sign any, if you film anyone in a shop and regular TV,

they have to sign a release form to say, that's fine. And by the way, of course, 99% of people are very happy with that. But if you are going around, he's sort of an interesting test case, Michael Baramogs, as you say, 4.4 million followers. And his whole stick is he would just go around and talking to people and put those interactions out. But there's something so different even. I mean, we know that the hardware, to bring it even back to the glasses, there is something so different even between holding a phone up. So people know sort of they're being filmed. And filming with glasses where people don't really know they're being filmed or don't understand.

understand it in the same way. And by the way, I'm sure that he is telling people that he's doing that. But it would be very easy to do without doing that. By the way, so many people don't tell people. And you can see on TikTok, there are massive, massive people who don't do it. Yeah. So the hardware is changing people's behavior in another even darker way than the last bit. The camera quality is now amazing. The audio quality is now amazing. It's, you know, it would have passed for broadcast quality. You know, it's just, it's incredible what you can do. There are platforms who are ready to receive this instantly. Every single time a video goes viral, that's marketing for the glasses.

Yeah. Because you know how it's been filmed. I mean, the whole thing now becomes an enormous tech snowball where it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And as I say, the law is miles away from catching up with areas. How can you, you know, there are consumer protection lawsuits, I think, pending in the US because people can, see where it's going, but it's very slow. You can't. And also, when you've got that much money, who cares?

Yeah. I mean, you know, that's the point. I mean, you know, it's like they're, you know, trying to sue them for stealing the copyright of every book ever written. Well, they'll wait a out. They'll wait a out. They get fined sort of $15 million, which is like one second's profit. Yeah, but these things are, I do genuinely think these things are insane.

I don't know what one does about that. I don't know what I would do if I were in government about it. I don't know if it's a cat that's already out of the bag. There are loads and loads of reasons why these things are great, by the way. What a lovely way to capture your child's birthday party. They have live translation in these things. There are incredible things about them. As someone visually impaired, they could genuinely be transformative.

When you put AI in that and everything can become clearer and sharper and you can explain what something is to me, absolutely transformational. All those things said, there will be some terrible things that happen because of these. There will be some awful consequences because of these. and I would bet any money that no one pays for those consequences. No, and as always, and the other thing is, as we often say with the platforms, you work for them for free. Yeah.

You pay to work for them for free. So all of these, because all of these things are training Meta's AI. All of this stuff is being fed back, and it's training meta's AI in these kind of human interactions. The things that AI is less good at, you are working for the company and you are training them. Everything that you film with these classes, all of that. People basically work for these companies now. They spend so many hours a day for these companies that effectively you spend six hours a day of working for free for a tech company.

And that is actually your real job in the economy. You have this other thing that you think is to do with it and what pays you some money and how you pay your rent. But actually, what you really do is you work for free down these people's content lines. Yeah. And a lot of those people are the same utter dullards who tell you that government is trying to track you all the time. And so you don't understand how the world works.

You go, you're wearing their glasses, man. And can I, in case people feel anxious about this, and I think sometimes when you think about technology and you think about all of these things, you know, it is quite anxiety inducing. The way I always try and think about these things. You know how I love nostalgia. So you look back at the 1950s and there's lots of things on Facebook. I go, oh my God, look at that street and the cars and we left our doors open yada, yada, yada. There's very, very monetizable accounts on Facebook that do that all the time. If you think of today as the olden days, I always find that's a really nice perspective to have.

if you look back and go oh my God it was literally was the first time that people were like wearing glasses like the first time like one of the unions just said

oh you shouldn't really wear these glasses in our shop I mean it was crazy how unsophisticated they were back then I heard a podcast and they were talking about

Love Island and it's just a thing that people would sit and watch like they would sit down in front of a screen and they would watch that so I always think and when you walk down the street

look at the fonts on the signs look at the product in the shop and look at the wrappers of chocolate bars and imagine in 40 years time how insanely old-fashioned that's going to look and sometimes I think that's quite a nice way to get rid of techno anxiety. I'm not sure that. Is that not helped you? No, I think, you know, people were right to be sort of suspicious of the robber barons and things like that. Oh, of course they

were. Yeah. But it turns out there's nothing they could have done about it. So that's where anxiety comes from. It comes from our absolute inability to do anything about this. Well, it did eventually break up some of the, you know, these companies are so much bigger than something like standard oil. which was dealt with. I think there are, no, I think they should definitely try and break up some of these. Oh, I'm not saying don't do that. I'm just saying that if you are walking down the streets, if you're walking down the street listening to this and you are not able to, you know,

be part of a class action lawsuit, then one thing you can do is at least go, oh, one day this will all be CPF photographs on whatever Facebook is at that point. Right. Probably be like an artificial dinosaur living in your house. Any recommendations? I have got a recommendation. It's only just out, and you'll be reading stories from it all week, I should think, and beyond. It's called regime change.

It's the book about the Trump presidency by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. I'm looking forward to that. It's really amazing. I'm sort of in two minds somehow about how these books works when you are reporters. They're both very, very kind of good reporters. Like, you don't necessarily produce, not all of this is produced for the outlet you work for all the time, and some of it's kept for the book. But lots of it needs to be written about.

in a way that I suppose it just works particularly well in long form. And as a reminder of, you know, we become so desensitized and we obviously have to desensitize and we obviously have to desensitize ourselves. But to remind you what you're living through in terms of the Trump presidency, it's extraordinary. And I can't, you'll be, as I say, you'll be reading highlights and low lights from it over the next weeks because, but it's a really good reminder of just how insane the times through which we're living are. And so I'd write, that's regime change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

Excellent. I'll recommend a book as well. I recommend John Grisham's new novel, The Widow. I love John Grisham. This is billed as John Grisham's first, whodunit. And in a sort of, I suppose, a very specific way it is. But, you know, there's always plenty of murders in a Grisham. But it's great, you know, it's that thing of within the first four pages, you're like, okay,

I absolutely understand what this is about. So this widow has got a huge amount of money. You don't know where it is. No one else knows she's got it. And you're her lawyer. Done. And also, by the way, you've got gambling debts. John, you have me for 350 pages.

Thanks for getting into it quickly. But it's, you know, he's just, you know, there's a reason he sold so many books. Oh, absolutely. So absolutely love that. John Grisham, the widow. Other than that, we will be back on Thursday with a Q&A. And tomorrow, for everybody, first episode free, the World Cup of US. sitcoms. Yeah, I hope you enjoy it. It was really fun to do. I know I will. I'm listening to it right after

this.