The Rest Is Entertainment - Why Paramount Merger Spells Disaster For British Film

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

What does the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger mean for you? Why are teenagers being invited to writers' rooms? Is Netflix about to re-try a disastrous 1960s psychological experiment? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions on the world of TV, film and news and discuss what THE landmark Hollywood merger means for your wallet. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Learn how to avoid scams and protect yourself. See how Darkhorse Anti-Fraud Technology helps keep you safe from fraud. Search Lloyds protect yourself from fraud. 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: Louis Mealing Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at ⁠www.westdigitalstudios.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, cinema always really wants reality to cooperate and ideally on schedule. But it often doesn't. Nature is often the biggest enemy of the filmmaker and all sorts of film sets, often out in the open, often on very tight schedules. But the weather doesn't always make things easy, right? No, filmmaking is often a negotiation with the natural world, and there's probably only going to be one winner.

My favourite story of nature is Mad Max Fury Road, which, of course, is in that incredible barren wasteland. But there had been huge rainfalls before it, and the whole place was full of vegetation. I mean, absolutely, there was just stuff growing everywhere. It's like, what? Yeah. And eventually they had to relocate to Namibia because Broken Hill was just too green, and that's nature for you. Filmmaking can be very, very persuasive, but nature often has the final word. Octopus Energy Generation is interested in wind and sunlight and weather for other reasons, of course, energy generation.

wax builds and manages renewable energy products across 435 sites in 21 countries. So this is rather more than a passing interest in the weather. Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty.

donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter and crisis prevention. Donate today at United WayGT.org. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restors Entertainment, Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Asman. Hello, everybody. And hello also to Kieran Maguire. Remember last week we were talking about when experts go on the news, do they get paid? And Kira McGuire is the football finance expert who's been talking about Manchester City for the last few weeks. and he wrote us a very, very lovely email. Thank you, Kieran. Firstly saying how many people had texted him about his appearance, but he says, we were talking about are you paid as an expert? And sometimes you are, sometimes you're not.

But Kieran says, as an aside, I've donated all the money from interviews on the Man City story, now 96, being an academic nerd, I keep a spreadsheet, to the Samaritans as Kevin Day and I do a live benefit gig for them every year. And the next one is November in Brighton. Oh, that's great. Well, that's on Kieran. Well, he's been doing an absolute shift on that story.

Hasn't he just. Lots of things to talk about this week. Shall we start with this one from Alice, who says this new, by the way, policy we have of only using people's first names for legal reasons. That's okay. Alice says...

I don't buy it, but anyway. Alice said, what the hell is... I'll give this to Alice. She's pithy. Yeah. What the hell is A.J. Pritchard doing on G.B. News. Well, staying in the arena of experts or non on news channels. He, AJ Press, let's just remind people who he is.

He was a former Strictly Pro, and a tireless celebrity reality show contestant. I think he's done hunted, master show. He's done so many. He was a drag race choreographer, I want to say at one point. His brother Curtis was on Love Island. They were both in Holly Oaks. I mean, he's toured the corridors of British entertainment. otherwise. So perhaps it's inevitable that he would eventually end up on a rolling news channel.

His first stint on this went sort of viral because he was, it seemed like he was almost doing an impression of a hard-hitting newsman. And it was about petty crime sort of shoplifting and things like that. In terms of why he's on there, I would say GB News is interesting, but it also epitomises problems with everyone that everyone has in providing news. You cannot make money out of news. Is it right in saying I was reading that no rolling news? channel in the UK has ever made a profit. You can't be profitable. You know, the idea of people saying, you know, if we didn't have the BBC and so on,

I can assure you Netflix are not getting into this. They have shown absolutely zero interest in any of the other. So BBC, of course, don't make a profit. Sky News. It's sort of a lost leader for them. And for GB News, again, if you want a certain viewpoint put, you are happy to fund it. Well, let me tell you about GB News. They have lost huge amounts, but they claim to be the biggest dedicated news

channel, but they do lose a huge amount of money. They say that they've been done over for web and app traffic by those AI summaries. Now, those AI summaries that you might just see, for some businesses, these are absolutely killing them. When you open Google and you type in something. It's the top of your Google search. It's the top of your Google search. They are 63% down because of AI summaries.

There's a way of getting rid of them, right? But it's quite a complicated way. There is. No one does it. But people don't care. People think it's good enough. Yeah. And they don't care that some of it's, a lot of it's wrong, by the way.

I always notice just how much of those are wrong. They're not as good as something like chat GPT or anything like that. They are much more off of chat GPT, which is often wrong, but they are much more wrong, I think. Again, there's an amazing line in the Aaron Salkin writes in the social reckoning that I recommended on Tuesday where the woman from Facebook goes, you're just mad at me because, you know, we destroyed journalism. And they said, no, I'm not mad at you because you destroyed journalism.

I'm mad at you because you are so bad at it. Yeah, you're doing it so bad. It's very, very good. So you're going to see a lot more of these news channels doing stunt stuff. And this is really, you know, they haven't booked him for the news value. So someone like Trevor Phillips, who's, I think, brilliant. He's left Sky, he's gone to CBS. He's in the news 60 Minutes, right?

Yeah, so Sky News. They sort of revamped their Sunday morning, and they've put lots of personality presenters in there rather than journalists. So Bruce Davidson, David Lolloshoegh, they're going to have different hosts each week. everyone is trying, whether you think it's GB News or Sky News or everyone is trying to get some kind of hook into the viral market. And so, as I say, they have tiny audiences and we have this legacy idea that these shows are important. Your competition is genuinely people producing news commentary in their bedrooms or with podcasts. And this is the real problem for these channels.

And it's happening all the time. You can't regulate these people. You can't say that they're telling you anything accurate. it doesn't, you know, anything that sticks out or makes a clippable moment for these news channels is supposed to be worth it. I think it's, I mean, I think it's all false and it's all just this, like either sort of stop providing it or find a different way to do it, but virality, things going viral, is equated with relevance. So the fact that this clip of this person doing the AJ Pritchell doing it very, very badly or whatever has gone viral, it might be regarded as something.

kind of win. It might be the most commercially useful thing that happened on GB News in 24 hours. It's in their numbers, right? Yeah, because it also, you might get a 30 second shouting match between two guests. And then it's like, great, well, we'll clip that. And it will go well on TikTok. It's a bit like the South Park Nome's where their business plan is, one, collect underpants, two, question mark, three, profit. And there is a lot of that to this, I think, which is, you know, if we, it'll go well on TikTok. Ideally, it will drive up people towards subscribing to us. Okay, profit.

But it doesn't make meaningful per view money in and of itself. Just because there's a clip that, I mean, honestly, I can't imagine, the whole world's population kind of needs to watch something before you really start making money, enough money to cover a news channel. Okay, so. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, there isn't enough money to cover a news channel because, as you say, over here, they've always been unprofitable. And what GB News want really is to stem the losses a bit.

I think they're presumably as a budget that says, I'm happy to lose this much money to have this platform. I don't really want to lose a huge amount more than that. And as you say, the business plan is really, really having to keep up with these absurd sort of movements in search and discovery and things like that. In terms of why AJ Pritchard would do it, which I think is interesting, right? So I see why G.B. News would do it. They've got a lot of time to fill. you know, as you say, why not have someone who people already recognise from someone else?

What's the worst that can happen? And even if the worst that can happen happens, which it did, actually is quite good for us. But if you're AJ Pritchard, it's always that dance between the asker and the askie in terms of talent and in terms of TV. And you have to find the sweet spot where each side needs the other one as much as they are needed.

So if you're, you know, an ITV or someone, you can have your choice of people, and BBC you can have your choice of people and then it's just a question of kind of money and access and things like that. But at this level, you know, AJ, as he said, he's done lots of reality shows. There comes a point where he's sitting in his agent's office

and saying, what is it that we do next? You know, I don't have a big, long running show. Prestige drama. But I have a, you know, he's got a skill. He's a dancer, so there's live tours, there's stuff like that that he can do. But he needs to keep himself in the shop window, like, you know, lots of talent.

So he's thinking, what is it that I want to do? What offers are coming in? to me, you know, is it celebrity handcuffed? You know, what is it that's coming in? And so, it's, is he big enough for it to be worth GB News as well? Yes, because he has an equivalence with where they are in terms of discoverability. And for him, it's, is it worth me doing this to keep myself in the shop window? Are there enough people watching? And again, it's going viral. Yeah. It's actually worked for both of them because, you know, the whole point of this. is, of course, they'd just put him on again now, because why wouldn't you?

And it'll get better at it, I'm sure. I'm just absolutely no point to do it. So, yes, I agree. The trajectory is one way. Yeah, but there's no point to watching them on a new show. No. Any more than there'd be worth watching me doing a dancing show. I mean, because I can't dance. I'd watch that. It's so hard.

I know. In the same way, but you would watch AJ Pritchard trying to be a news presenter. Yeah, very similar. So it's, it has a similar vibe to it. So it's worth it for him because he needs a shop window because he wants to be on other shows and he wants to do live things. And it's his living. It's his profession. You know, that's what he does for a job.

And there's not many people who are Pierce Morgan, who has that fame and is a journalist. And, you know, he's obviously he's made hundreds of millions. And so everyone's thinking, oh, we could do that. And it's probably not going to be A.J. Pritchard, I don't think. But, you know, I mean, listen, we're all trying, aren't we? Oh, this is an interesting one from Sophie. She says, I have a question for you regarding the new Zimbardo's Stanford Prison

Experiment reality show due to air on Netflix. as a trainee clinical psychologist and fully aware of how catastrophic the original experiment was, how can Netflix and the creators justify making something that was so famously unethical and controversial? Yeah, so the original Stanford Prison Experiment is the one where they took undergraduates, all men and put them in a prison environment, and half of them were made guards and half of them were made prisoners, and you could meet out punishments and stuff like that, and it went pretty mental almost immediately.

You know, you're trying to see what happens when you can, give power to one group and no power to another, see what that does to people. And it just went very badly wrong. And it was a deeply, psychologically unpleasant experience, especially for the prisoners. I've read so much about it over the years. It's like one of those sort of obsessions. But everyone who's ever heard of it has wanted to turn it into a reality show. Because it's already, it's like, oh, you've got 10 people, 10 people, and it's in an environment

and there's someone looking at it. And you're trying to work out something about human behaviour from it. I've genuinely seen more morally debased reality shows all the way through. But I would say from the 90s onwards, this is the single thing I've seen pitched most often in television companies. Everybody has pitched the Stanford Prison Experiment. Everyone. There has never been a single, the second you get two people in a TV office and there is a single buyer somewhere within 20 minutes, I say, why don't we do something based on the Stanford Prison Experiment? So it's been given to Netflix.

Hi, this is Netflix, your greenlit. Yes. So Netflix is doing it. And to speak to Sophie's question, what they are not going to do on Netflix is we create the Stanford Prison Experiment. Right? Because we know what happened. It went very, very badly wrong and it was awful. But it's understanding that the Stanford Prison Experiment is something that people understand and recognize

and they understand it's about power dynamics and they understand it's about will people follow orders, you know, which is a lot of what happened there. and they think for various reasons that that might be quite opposite for the times in which we live. And so what they're actually doing is redrawing the Stanford Prison Experiment and doing it in a way that it should have been done in the first place with proper oversight and proper rules and interesting psychologists involved. I know they've got like a former warden of a prison in there and they've got Harvard professors. So it's one of those things that they're doing with the proper guardrails now, which they didn't before. But so it's launching off the back of how awful and how failed the Stanford Prison Experiment was,

which is why it's famous, which is why you can launch it with a bit of buzz, but it is redrawing it for 2026. Are they sourcing it all the contestants, like because they were all hippie, you know, I mean, that was the thing. All these experiments like this, the Milgram experiment,

they're all done in these West Coast universities where everyone was a complete hippie and became an absolute Nazi on within 15 minutes of starting it. Within 15 minutes of there being no dope available. I wonder, I'll be interested to see what the contestant for. Yeah, it's been cast across genders and across ages and stuff like that, which again, the original experiment wasn't. So, yeah, so the question is they are not redoing the Stanford Prison Experiment because that would be incredibly dangerous.

They are imagining what can it tell us about the world in which we live today and the fact that it's based on Stanford Prison Experiment again is just, it's in a way that Stanford Prison Experiment has become IP that we all own. 100% it has. People know what it, not everyone knows what it is, but it would be easy to explain. And it somehow makes it sort of prestige to have a little history and some of the footage at the beginning.

You know, I'm sure they'll keep it all, they'll bring it all into the show because it's part of the story in the background. They'll talk about why it went wrong and all that kind of stuff. But it is, there is not a single thing in the history of recorded entertainment that has been pitched more often

than let's do the Stanford Prison Experiment. But if they do it well, it'll be fascinating viewing. That's for sure. Should we go to a break? Let's. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Lloyds. Now, let's talk about movie con artists. Who are your absolute favourites?

Movies, TV and book, my answer is the same. And it's Tom Ripley. I was going to say him. It's one of the greatest characters of all time. So from the Talented Mr. Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith, there's five of them. So if you like Talented Mr. Ripley, you are in luck. He's like one of the worst men in the world, but you absolutely root for him

at all times. Now, of course, deception makes for excellent entertainment on screen. In real life, when it's your bank account being targeted, the charm somewhat disappears. Yep, Lloyd's have invested 100 million pounds in Dark Horse Anti-Fraud Technology, which combines intelligent monitoring and real-time alerts to keep you safe from fraud. Click on their app or visit Lloydsbank.com to find out more. about how Lloyds protects you from fraud. AI-powered scam checks, voice biometrics, and real-time alerts are just some of the ways Lloyds are protecting you. Based on Lloyd's Banking Group data, 2023 to 2025.

Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter and crisis prevention.

Donate today at United WayGT.org. Hello everyone. Welcome back. Marina, this has been a huge story, but I want to do a version that people will kind of get back to what's important about it for us. Ian says, with Paramount Skydance finally completing his merger with Warner Brothers, combining huge brands like HBO Max and Paramount Plus, alongside major franchises like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, I was wondering how could this massive deal

actually impact the average Restors Entertainment listener from the future of films to streaming prices. So whatever's happened, this huge kind of deal and the financial implications, actually for us as consumers and people in Britain watching streaming, what will actually change? I think all the questions should just be like, what's it mean for Resters Entertainment?

I quite agree. What does AJ Pritchard mean for Russ's entertainment listeners? Well, in an ideal world, it would supposedly deliver more value to you. We have to slightly talk about it in the US to start with because, you know, that's what the Justice Department hoped that bringing two things together. But let's be honest, it's different to the UK and the US and I will do both. Whenever two competing services become one, and you can get Paramount, I have both at the moment, Paramount Plus and HBO Max, you get a smaller market because there is less competition and the players in that market have more freedom to increase their prices.

And also, this new company, Skydance, has unbelievably massive debt and they have to pay that down. So I have to be honest with you, what it will bring you is more TV and film in one place because they're going to eventually put HBO Max and Paramount Plus together. They haven't done that. They're not going to do that for a bit. So if you have one or other of those,

you're not going to have to sort of pay the extra for both. It'd be like HBO even more Max, like when Gillette add yet another blades to a razor. It's the equivalent of adding another blade or four Taylor Sheridan blades. HBO Max Plus Plus. HBO Max Plus. Yeah. That's what they called it.

Yeah, Max Plus. Yeah. It's almost certainly going to mean higher subscriptions. If you pay for both currently, like me, it might end up less. It might. But even then, because I say they've got so much debt, so it's not clear. If you pay for Paramount now just for, say,

Taylor Sheridan shows because you love them. You may now have to pay more for all, especially in the US, for all this HBO stuff, all that woke nonsense that they don't want. So, okay, that's the telly. At the cinema, I think this is probably the more significant bit. There are now four major Hollywood studios instead of five. So decision making has been consolidated and there is 20% less decision making out there. So people who had things to sell and ideas and for kind of creative richness and,

For the sort of originals we want to see, well, most people who listen to this podcast would like to see some originals in theatres, I think there will be less of that. As we saw what happened, we talked about Digger last week, and we talked about how those two executives, Mike and Pam, are out at Warner's. They were known for kind of big swing originals, and the people from Paramount coming in are not. They're known for doing lots of sequels. And so more likely, you'll be seeing more sequels.

they have guaranteed 30 films a year for the first two years. They have guaranteed that. They couldn't get the deal through without doing that. But I believe that what you will get is a smaller choice of films, ultimately. After two years, if you think they're going to be making 30 films, I have a bridge to sell you. There will be more blockbusters or attempts to have blockbusters in your cinemas than there will be kind of originals. Because they've become a very big studio, it might be possible to push the cinema change. into higher ticket prices because you could negotiate tougher terms for major releases.

And what that means is that it's harder for independent cinemas that you might go to to put on an independent kind of programme of films. For British films, I think this is very significant. It's really hard for British films to get into cinemas right now. They account for something like, they're like six or seven percent of all the films of our box office. and cinema screens are limited and independent British films

have to compete with these Hollywood films and if they are negotiating harder terms because they want them all to be blockbusters it will be I really think indie British films there's not a lot left to lose before they become almost unviable as an idea which I think is really sad

and it's you know other countries have taken very very proactive steps to allow this not to happen you look at France they have a very very strong independent cinema. I would hope that it doesn't have this effect, but I fear that it does

and I think that makes a, that's quite a big deal for me. So there might be fewer the Ballad of Wallace Island than Rye Lane's. Yeah, and they're already a tiny amount anyway. Say why that is again? Because basically they will have the power to kind of push for harder terms and to keep, I don't know, if they want things to become

blocked dust, give me more screens, give me, you know, just the thing. Just consolidating the cinema industry. Because again, Any time that you make a market smaller, you can just push for higher prices and you can make bigger demands because there are fewer players. And this is a risk for sure. So I think in summary, you know, it might make your TV subscriptions more expensive. There might be fewer originals for you to watch at the cinema and it might be very difficult for British film.

So I hope none of these things happen. But the likelihood, given what we understand about these kind of market economics, is that they will. Is there an argument that says because they are burden with such an enormous amount of debt? And even if you're the Edison's, it's a lot of debt. And the fact that they have promised to make 30 movies a year, is there an argument that says they have no other option other than to cut production costs with AI, which is something I keep reading about that the introduction of AI into the production process will be massively accelerated by this.

Well, you know, Larry Allison's a tech guy. So, I mean, I don't know what we think's happening here. But yeah, it's already spreading. throughout every layer of the production process and it's just the ship has sailed they're just going to have to start talking about it and that's not limited to Skydance Yes but I think it may speed it up

Those guys particularly are going to want to speed it up Yeah Now our next question as you know One of our sponsors is Lloyds and we said to Instead of just doing an advert we have to read out when you ask us a question and they have come up with the doozy which I have an answer to I think you do as well

and their question is this. What is the entertainment gift that keeps on giving? This is from Louise at Lloyds. I think Louise is talking about just properties that just continue to kind of pay out and expand and whatever. Well, you always say Noel Evans used to say money while you sleep. Even Noel could not have dreamt of Star Wars in terms of money as you sleep. Okay, people thought it was going to be mad, a space opera, what the hell. And before they knew how big it was going to be, it came out in 1977.

By the way, it costs them about $11 million. Imagine that. But they had made plans for it to become a sort of franchise if it just did okay. You never know. If it did okay. So if it does okay and it washes its face, they had another sequel which was called something like, it was called Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Oh, that's a ridiculous.

No, it was not the Ampar. They didn't. They weren't with the Ampastroos back in the end, which obviously became absolutely massive. Remember, he keeps the merchandising rights, Lucas. So that is certainly a gift that keeps on giving. for him. And eventually, when Disney finally bought Lucasfilm, and to one of the brands that now sits under it, they bought it for $4 billion in 2012. I still think that was a good price. Yeah, I mean, that is a gift that keeps on giving. I'm very excited about George Lucas's new museum

in L.A., which is a museum of narrative and illustrative art, which goes to show how much money he's got, because firstly, he's bought all of this art a lobby. There's Norman Rockwells and all sorts of things in there. But secondly, he's got a building massive enough to house. He's got foundation money now. Yeah. He has got GIF that keeps on giving money. I would say that. I'll go for the office.

Just because the origin stories are so, you know, Ricky and Stephen had this idea. Stephen, who was a trainee at the BBC, was given a film crew for a day. They did the sort of very, very first iteration of the office. Listen, we know what happened in. It wasn't beloved by executives, by the way, when they first got out.

I always remember someone saying that they'd effectively told them to go away and come back with something funny at its time. Yeah, but also it wasn't loved by viewers in week one. Yeah. They were like kind of sorry, what is this? And the reason that's the gift. It's on given. They did 12 episodes over here.

Then they're doing an American reboot, and American reboots never work. And it just became pretty much the biggest sitcom in the history of the world. In the last year, we've got some really proper figures for. It was streamed for 57.1 billion minutes in the US alone. It's 108,000 years of watching the American office in one year alone from that one day at the BBC and obviously the money that everyone's made involved in that

is absolutely extraordinarily through the roof. But it's lovely because it was. It was one day, it was two guys who had an idea that nobody really wanted, nobody really liked, they believed in it, they made it, they did another series, the Americans came in and made something that builds on it but is sort of different as well.

It defined a whole way of doing things culturally, you know, the sort of mockumentary thing, it became impossible really not to make everything look a little bit like it was shot like that. Even something like the thick of it comes along and it needs to look like that because otherwise it doesn't seem edgy and it doesn't seem sort of in part of the zeitguise.

Yeah. So it changed acting for, you know, in lots of ways as well, that mockumentary way of acting. So it's extraordinary from one day to 108,000 years just because, you know, two people wrote a great script. And that to me is a gift that keeps on giving. Things that really lost in entertainment, Richard, tend to acquire much more life than anyone originally planned for them.

Exactly right. There's rather more to Club Lloyds than the current account itself. Lloyd's calls it the gift horse of bank accounts. Beyond the banking, there's cashback and your choice of a lifestyle perk such as cinema tickets or Disney Plus. To find out more, search Club Lloyds or visit Lloyd'sbank.com. Five-pound monthly account fee refunded when you pay in £2,000 each month. UK residents, 18 plus, T's and Cs apply.

Thank you, Louise, from Lloyd's. We have a question. from Nellie, which I really like. Do writers ever use a young person consultant when making TV about teenagers? Well, that's funny. Well, we can talk about it a bit, but before we do that, we actually have an answer. Mike Flanagan was in town. He's just done the new Carrie for Amazon Prime. Very much about teenagers. Very much about teenagers. So I put Nellie's question to him, and this is what Mike Flanagan has to say, Nellie. Well, Nellie, that is a terrific question. And the answer is absolutely. Because I know absolutely.

nothing about what it means to be a teenager today. I thought that having been a teenager in the 90s meant that I knew something about the experience of teenagers today. I was wrong, very wrong. And I learned that because in our writers room for Carrie, we invited several teenagers to come into the writers room, to share details about their lives, their anxieties, their day-to-day experiences. And we asked them what they thought of our work, of our plot points, of our characters, of where our season was going and ask for their feedback because they know what they're talking about

and we do not. So yes, absolutely. I think writers certainly should and we absolutely did bring in the people who know what they're talking about. The things that surprised me the most about this was the fortitude that young people

have to have today just to kind of make it through their days. I was amazed by how acutely aware they are of the political, environmental, economic landscape that they're stepping into, amazed by how savvy they are about kind of the realities of the world around them, and amazed at what they have to navigate on the daily when it comes to how public their lives are. When I was in school, the mistakes I made or the torments I went through were limited to the people who are in the room or at that school. I think young people today are living lives that are not only visible in some cases to the entire world, the entire internet, but living with the

feeling that anything they do say or put out there about themselves or things that are put out there about them without their consent can live forever and follow them forever. And I think that requires an extraordinary amount of strength and fortitude and bravery on the daily. that I was so impressed by. Wow, that's a great answer. Isn't it a great answer? What a great guy. Yeah, very dispassionate and unsparing of himself.

I really feel that. I have to say, nothing has been more helpful almost for this podcast than any time I can talk to teenagers, particularly. I even mentioned it when I did my book speech saying, thank you. There's a lot of people that would let me talk to their teenagers. And I always said, and I said, teenagers are the best. teenagers have this unbelievable focus about the times that we're living through because they're just living through

I suppose we all talk about hormonal stuff or whatever but you're living through it in such a heightened way everyone is having the carry pigs blood almost every day because of the way that humiliation has just been has become a sort of tool and driver of the platforms that they are all on and through which all of their life is mediated I think teenagers have given teenagers have taught me more that I've ended up saying on this podcast

and giving me better windows into the world of all of entertainment, not just the stuff aimed at them than almost anyone else. Yeah, you have to because we come from a certain generation who consumed media in a certain way and our culture was a certain way. And as Mike was saying, there were more certainties in the world when we were growing up. And actually you can't see media and culture. We've been talking about brain rot on the main episode.

this week. You can't see culture through the lens that you grew up with. You know, you have to constantly be changing your lens and you do that by speaking to people, right? Absolutely. And it's great that they got them into the room. I love his chastened expression in all of that. Yep, they told us what they thought of our bloc, so I was like, yeah, there's a reason things have to happen like this because of television, but also I bet they took on board what they were saying. It really reminds me of the stories from the succession writers' room when they bought in like billionaire consultants. And they'd be like, sorry, why? Why is he ducking when he gets out of a helicopter?

They don't need a coat. Why would they use a coat? She doesn't know where her kitchen is. She doesn't know where the kitchen is. Why have you put a scene in it? Yeah. It's like billionaires slash teenagers. Yeah.

Yeah. We have a lot to learn from both. So I'm going to see you again tonight. We're going to watch The Traders. We're going to do a live reaction episode. Episode five. Yeah. And the same again tomorrow.

Those will be available to everyone. And again, thanks for all your feedback on those. It's been really, really, it's what a lovely thing to share with everyone. It's such fun. Yeah. All right then. See you later. See you later, everyone. Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street, then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away, then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways.

like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at United WayGT.org.