Silicon Valley finally has its “Succession”

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What were the most ridiculous tech company names you all came up with on the show? We came up with so many more, and they were all taken. They were all actual companies. Your new favorite show just dropped, The Audacity, a new series about Silicon Valley by one of the writers of Succession and Better Call Saul. Why not just call it Apple? Were you worried about a lawsuit or something? Yes. It's just a piece of fruit. You can't copyright fruit. I'm Alex Heath here with my co-host Ellis Hamburger. And today we're joined by Audacity. Audacity showrunner Jonathan Glatzer. I don't want to name names. Oh, come on. But, you know, they'd want to be named. Maybe that's why I don't want to name them. Welcome to Access, where the most influential leaders shaping tech actually say what they think. Let's do it. Wait, I'm being ambushed now by the guest? We were trying to ambush him. I'm afraid that this show has made me very paranoid. So that is my natural state right now. I had an idea of how to start the show, but I feel like we should just start with what you said, that the show is making you paranoid. What do you mean by that? The tech world is known for creating phrases like doxing. And it's a bit of a third rail, you know, when you when you step into this arena and people have very, very strong opinions. It's laced with politics and coded with all kinds of cultural. Signifiers and such. And so it's it's we knew from the start that there were going to be haters. And but we also knew that there are people who would be quite grateful to see, you know, satire about the tech world. So with, you know, terrific characters and some some some comedy, some tragedy and all of those things. So my paranoia goes away after a while. As you explored it, is tech as dumb or even dumber? Yeah. Than you thought going in as you did your research? Oh, I guess more insidious. It's not it's not it's not certainly not dumb. And I think it's important to posit that if if there's any sort of us versus them aspect to this, they won. They're ready. They have succeeded and are continuing to succeed in their ambitions. And so. We are you know, someone said, I think it was John Knowles, the writer of a separate piece, said that sarcasm is the protest of the weak. And and it might just be what we've got left. You know, it might just be what what all that's left to us is a weak protest. But thankfully, we've got a platform for it and millions of people can weekly protest with us weekly. Well, I wanted to ask about AMC plus, but we'll get to that later. But take us into the. The writer's room for season two, because my understanding is you are doing that right now. Are you on your lunch break right now? Down the hall. OK. Basically, yes, this I have my sushi waiting for me here. But amazing. I won't I won't I won't subject you to that. What's what's it like? I mean, Ellis and I live in L.A. and, you know, Hollywood surrounds us constantly. But neither of us have been in a in a writer's room, especially for a show like this. And it's obviously a rare treat to have season two greenlit as season one is going. Right. Which I think. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Testament to the show. But I assume that gives you some confidence going into this that maybe would have been different had it been a late green light. I suppose so. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm in New York now. We're not in L.A. We were in L.A. in season one. Well, this winter was a bit. It's like a 24 seven commercial for Los Angeles this winter and over here on the East Coast. You don't know how it's going to be received. Season one while you're writing season two. So it's always no matter when you where you are in the process, you have to kind of put the blinders on and just stick with your gut and what makes you happy and what makes you what you want to see these characters do. It's really the best barometer you've got and kind of, you know, it's what got you to this place, et cetera. So but the writer's room itself is a fascinating. Thing. No two are the same. It is really very much about the mix of personalities and ambitions and the references, the ages, the cultural differences between the people and how that either harmonizes or clashes. Every every room is different. It is probably the most dominant aspect of it, though, is the showrunners personality and their voice and the job of of all the other. Writers is in many ways to understand what that is and kind of imitate it, you know, try to capture what what that voice isn't, you know, again shows every show is different, you know, if we're talking about something like law and order that's been going on for 20 seasons and has a procedural component component, it is a procedural then it's, you know, it's a different thing and the personalities that you bring in are less critical to the actual. The outcome. But especially for season one, season two show, it really the voice of the showrunner kind of has to be the one constant. It helps if the voice is constant or consistent. I don't know about constant, actually consistent. What I find most fascinating about the tech people is that they set out to do something really good. And I believe that's the case. Some of them, some of them, Jonathan, some of them. But that was certainly the. That was certainly the marketing. And it was it was a good one, you know, that we're going to change the world for the better and we're going to bring people together and we're going to help them communicate with each other. And we're going to bring down barriers of tolerance and we're going to even help, you know, doctors cure cancer. And, you know, they're still talking about curing cancer. And. You know, I think that what happened was they got really rich. They got really rich, but they also put it out into the world and they and they saw that people seem to dig discord and they like being bifurcated. And they they they they gravitated towards the the course and the the things that separated us and divided us. And they made a lot of money doing that. And and it became an addiction for a lot of those people. And they made a lot of money. And they made a lot of money off of addicting us onto this this coarseness. And bit by bit, you know, I think that they all they're all very, very smart people. I think they realize that this is deleterious to to society in general. It was so fucking wonderful how much money was coming in. How are we going to turn this ship around now? I mean, look at all this this cash that's coming in. It's it's extraordinary. And the cash was coming into them in the court. In the form of of stock options. And, you know, it was valuation. It wasn't actual cash. The actual commodity that they were collecting, the actual the real commodity they were collecting was with us, was our private data. And that still is the case. And that's why our show kind of focuses in of all of the technological arenas that we could go to. Private data is an evergreen topic that. You know, obviously, when you make a show, you're about 18 months before the air date, at least 12 months. So you're always going to be a little bit behind the current events, let alone something like tech that is so fast moving. You had to kind of pick something that was going to be, you know, still relevant. And personal data, private data is going to be relevant for some time. AI is all about it. It's definitely a fascinating group. And I work with a lot of founders on their storytelling. Big and small. And one of the things I joke with them in the first meeting is, so what's your childhood trauma that led you to build this thing? And that's one of the reasons I love that you kind of have a therapist as one of the key parts of the show. There's a lot to dig into there. And how did that idea come to be? Well, it's my own personal story is I grew up in that house with a therapist and a psychiatrist. My step, my stepdad, I was sort of. bit displaced. My father was elsewhere. And I could hear the patients. So unlike in our show, the therapy sessions were incredibly boring. So I mostly didn't listen in. But there were some afternoons when all you had were Gilligan's Island or something to watch on TV. And I'd just take a bowl of honeycombs and just sit there and listen, which is a total violation. And I'm sorry to those people. I really am. But you knew your Enneagram at age eight. So it worked out for you. It worked out. I knew that the idea of a sacred space, the idea of privacy being something that can be contained within this box, this room that is the therapist's office, was a fallacy. And I knew that. It's funny because I've been through therapy before, and sometimes I've done it in the therapist's house. And my first question is, do you have any kids? And do they live here? And it's just that the idea of it, and of course, the doctor-patient confidentiality thing is another one of these things that it's like we're just sort of trusting that this is. It's a faith-based notion. And I think that that in combination with the private data that's being mined by the lead character, Duncan Park, played wonderfully by Billy Magnuson. He's so good. Isn't he? Yeah. He's incredible. I feel like I've known him my whole life. He's got that affect to him. Yeah. And feared him just a little bit. Oh, yeah. Definitely. That's my childhood trauma since that came up. Yeah. Well, and you've got the, you agreed to this billboard. You sprinkle it in throughout. And it is that nice juxtaposition of, yeah, these tech billionaires come into therapy expecting privacy, not getting it. And we're all. Kind of getting that from a user agreement perspective, these things we sign up, we don't look at. The one thing I will say, your show's very well done with like Silicon Valley wealth coding. Obviously, you had really good advisors and you met with good people on that. I will say the one thing I had qualms with is the billionaire is going to have the therapist come to their house. They're not going to go to the therapist's house. Well, there is. I don't know if it's still. Yeah, no, there is a bit of it in the pilot. But there used to be a scene. There used to be a scene where it's like, why can't you come here? Why can't you come here? And the whole thing with therapists, and it is, I will say this, a life coach will go to your house. But a true therapist, a therapist who was trained and believes in their training will understand that there are, inside that therapist office, there are boundaries. It is work. It is the idea of doing the work. So doing the work includes actually going to the therapist's office. The pandemic kind of screwed all that up. Yeah. And so we all just go to our computers and do Zoom sessions with our therapists, which the Zoom Corporation is very happy with. Oh, mine's right after this. Oh, good. Ellis likes to schedule therapy right after the pod versus before. He has more to work through. I get that. I get that. No, just that that has broken down to some extent over recent years, but the logic behind doing the work and actually going to. Somebody's house or office is part of that commitment to therapy that is kind of required. So that's how I justify it. All right. I stand corrected. Not at all. Also, one of my favorite lines from episode one is where it's being described what neighborhood that the boy is now living in. And the mother, the therapist, I believe, says, it's all normal people, but sad. Do you get the sense that people in tech are happier, or more miserable than in the world of succession, would you say? In the world of succession? Happier. Yeah, media is the worst. There's no one that hates themselves more than a media executive. But the happiness that is in Silicon Valley is also suspect. I was listening to a podcast about how AI is kind of encouraging people in Silicon Valley. There's such believers in the future to come that they are helping to create, that they've started smoking cigarettes, and they start going out, sunning themselves with that sunscreen because they are so sure that AI is going to solve all that. And these are the people who work in the industry. So call that happiness, call that delusional. Maybe happiness is a form of delusion. I don't know. Ignorance is bliss. Yeah. That's the techno-optimist drug, as it were, right? It's kind of intoxicating. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like good material for season two, Jonathan. I think you. Totally. With tech, I often feel this. I'll, you know, Ellis and I both live in LA. We do trips up to SF a lot for work. I go to tech conferences a lot. And I'll come back and I'll tell my wife, like, I feel like I'm living in a TV show sometimes. Like, I'm constantly reminded of how absurd this life is and this bubble is by being able to leave it and go back into it. I think if I lived there, I would just get used to it. But the kinds of. I mean, I was at a dinner a few weeks ago and one of the hosts was seriously talking about how his daughter's mind maps to an LLM and, like, using the same language as, like, describing an LLM to how a child thinks. And everyone else is just, like, nodding vigorously and round and, like, yeah, yeah. And it's, like, nowhere else on earth would this conversation be, like, socially acceptable except in Silicon Valley. And you have so much material. You could do dozens and dozens of seasons. And reality really is stranger than fiction, I think, a lot. There is an LLM storyline in season two. Great. It does pertain to personal data. It is something that. It is amazing. The truth is that these school tablets that are handed out for free are totally mining the students' data. And they do sell that to data brokers who do aggregate that with their socials and their shopping habits and their sexual habits and their religion. And they do sell that to data brokers who do aggregate that and everything else that could possibly exist on a person to create something that not only includes that online behavior, but also their behavior reports, their disciplinary reports, their grades, and whether this person, by all of this, this composite of information is going to be successful, is going to be a moneymaker, should we market it towards, should we market them towards that goal? Or are they going to be, as it used to be in England, there was like, you're going to be a doctor or a diplomat, you're going to be working in the coal mines. It's this, and we are not necessarily sending people into these different shoots, but we are marketing them towards that, which is encouraging the inevitability of these outcomes. Is this an ed tech scoop? Are you blowing the lid off of the ed tech industrial complex? Do I need to be chasing this? I think you should chase this. It is not, if it is a scoop, then it is, it shouldn't be. It should be, it should be well known. It is, it is easily, I mean, I, I, I did the research and, you know, got, got all this information. Now I'm getting paranoid. We literally just got a tablet for my daughter in TK from the Los Angeles Unified School District. And yeah, on top of being just kind of slimy and greasy, like iPads are, now there's another layer of that. You got to start that credit score early, guys. Well, it is, it is odd that we are given, that schools are given this, this equipment for free. And yet there are so many other things that are like, you know, teachers are paying for crayons and pencils and food, you know, out of their pockets because students don't have it. That is the age old thing though, that I come back to. It's very corny at this point, but if you're, you know, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. And that's always been the case with tech. And yeah, it's important to, I think, remember that, especially with AI these days. I think though, that is, that is perhaps somewhat. Updated because it doesn't matter whether you're paying for the product, paying for the product, actually just gives you, gives them more data. True. You're still the product. Cause then they can track your credit. Well, you, they, they got your credit card. They've got your much more information about you if you're in fact, a subscriber. So there it is. I mean, one of the things that I just realized recently was, was Zoom was that, you know, Zoom has a, an app that goes onto your computer and yet you can also use Zoom through the browser like Safari. But they don't want you to do that because it's a lot more difficult to track you on a browser than it would be if you're using the built-in, you know. It's a fuller experience, Jonathan. That's why. I, uh, for them, you, you clearly know your shit. I mean, who did you kind of consult with, learn from, uh, to get this stuff, right? So it's pretty nuanced and, and. Well, the office badges, did you collect on your Silicon Valley tour? Oh, come on, you know, they'd want to be named. You're retaining your leverage. Okay, good. Um, no, but there, there were a bunch of people that we talked to and honestly, the, the, the end result of it was like, they would say, you got to look this up. You got to check this out. You got to, and suddenly you become capable of, of searching this stuff yourself and, you know, totally destroying your search history for, uh, the um the people who are wondering if you're but what you're up to that's escort night at the rosewood when you search that for a while it gets really interesting right thursday's cougar night oh you know your shit you you really did have a good sherpa did you have someone who really unlocked this for you like the the shaman of all this or it really wasn't one person but um there there is a a person that i guess i could name his name is josh marcus and he's uh wickedly smart i worked for eric schmidt and worked on was on obama's defense uh i'm gonna screw up the name of the defense council that he was on um oh boy eric schmidt you could do a few seasons on that oh man just eric schmidt he was he was very he was very coy and cagey about eric schmidt personally but two words sex dungeon but uh john john i remember giving him my pilot and he like redlined it was like love this scene you sure you don't want to go it was like it was it was a dramaturgical uh redlining which which i thought was terrific actually and i enjoyed that but he he he was a great insight um but look you know a lot of these things really are discoverable to anyone and that's i think in many ways the fear of a lot of tech people and how much is is going to be known um i don't know i don't know how many episodes you guys have seen of of of our show the other just the first two i think ellis saw the first yeah i saw the first yeah okay well you gotta keep going i know i kind of was like do i do i have time triangulation with kids and i don't want to get into spoilers fair enough fair enough so that i won't i won't uh spoil it my own show either but um but please do keep watching it gets weirder and and and significantly more pointed as concerns private data and and the like um i think i can say that duncan our lead character does form a company called panada which stands for privacy is not a thing anymore and um and it goes on from there but uh and the tech company names are like literally that literal like i don't know if you caught this week that uh entries in horowitz started a new show called monitoring the situation no yep they sure did and uh that's all fine but i do a lot of like namings with startup founders and whatnot and always the first place they go to is the most literal name possible for their company and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good for their company and so you absolutely nailed that aspect good yeah i i wanted to actually like touch on this for a second because ellis does literally name tech companies for a living and he's had some great ones um some of those billboards that you saw around nsf ellis worked on jonathan um what were the most ridiculous tech company names you all came up with on the show and i want ellis to say if they're good or not i liked the the spookle one is is up there spookle for you agreed to this billboard yes yes but i will say well anecdotally the the the we came up with so many more it's so fun take and they were all taken i couldn't believe it but your bongo was already taken yonder fruit was one that i i really liked um there's a bunch of them i i can't i it's it's worth actually me going through it and maybe sending that yeah the list that i oh yeah maybe free i'll do it for free sounds good but but no but they were they were all taking the list will be all these crazy things that that have been taken well we did uh have a porn site uh that was also a gambling site called gamble sluts.com well a little on the nose but a little on the nose but we you needed to we didn't want to explain it too much so gamble sluts.com sort of put it in there those in the know call it g slot but okay uh yes that's right um and uh oh my gosh data ape was another one we built a whole huge ape um uh smote there's another one smote that's great that's smote being like the biblical how god punishes you you are smoted by god um though it has nothing to do with god or biblical stuff i just like the name um the the my biggest regret was that i named the first the the the company uh cupertino because i was that was early on in the pilot and it just kind of stuck it's one of these things in the a lot of things in the pilot sometimes linger or vestigial and you you're you live with them i would have changed cupertino it was too on the nose i was gonna ask about that immediately next because uh why not just call it apple were you worried about a lawsuit or something yes apple's not just come on jonathan it's just a piece of fruit you can't you can't copyright fruit uh no you're probably right but i i will say and this is a decent way to segue into you wanted to talk about amc every other network out there is either owned by a conglomerate or a tech company amc is the only independent channel independently owned channel on the dial if you can still talk about a dial um and so that did take balls on their part to green light this thing and to really get behind it and so i i will just forever be grateful for you to have stood up and said yeah no we're the network actually that can do this is cupertino going to be a consistent thing because you have a lot of rich material like tim cook just stepped down this week yeah um are you are you thinking about headlines right now as you're writing like do you see anthropic and mythos and it's like oh my god that's an episode i mean i feel like you're getting rich material every day here we try not to go from the headlines we try to get to the heart of the story and to make it clear that this and this is this is the truth uh i really i want the tech world to be the backdrop for these characters and that these characters are front and center which is why so many of the characters are not necessarily in the tech world they're in the bubble they all live in this bubble and there's no way to avoid the tech world but they're psychiatrists there's the private school there's people who enter the bubble like these two guys who come from dc rob corddry and andrew bouchelle they come in from working for veteran affairs trying to get a square deal for the veterans using some some tech money and that's very difficult for them to to find so it is it isn't just about the tech because i did feel like that was going to just become an office comedy or drama it was just going to get stuck there and i wanted it to be about more a reflection of the seven and a half billion users of tech than actually necessarily in tech there is no elon or you know steve jobs there's no we are reality adjacent in that regard so it is it's it's it's a reflection it's it's it's a um we're holding up a mirror in a lot of ways to the people who run tech but also to the users themselves and just saying is this what we want is this in fact what we want and and you know we are entrusting these these with each other and engage with one another. And it is a strange thing, given that so many of them are notoriously bad with communication. So it all is just a way of saying, let's not dehumanize anymore, if we can. Can we put a stop to the dehumanization? Because that's what we're doing. And it is, to me, a crime against humanity. And I don't know how else to put that. But yeah, I think it was smart to go beyond the office drama and tech. Because whether you want to call it a network of accomplices that are all out there saying yes, in our own way to these people, or otherwise, you know, it really does go deeper. And these people have folks around them who, you know, essentially allow this stuff to happen, including members of the media. And I think one of my favorite scenes, it almost reminded me of the scene in Billy. Madison, where they're all having a pool party. And it reveals that another thing that is included here is not just the adults, but the kids as well. And I feel like there was this omnipresent theme of like kind of alienation between the adults and the kids. And there's a moment where one kid is asking another kid, how do you have a phone? The other says, doesn't every parent here work on tech stuff? And the other says, arms dealers don't give their kids landmines. That was a banger. And you see this all the time. I mean, I used to work for Evan Spiegel at Snapchat, and he's kind of notorious for not letting his kids use devices. What did you make of that? I think it is important to put it into the context of that. If you consider this a danger to your child, then what the fuck are you doing? Giving it to mine. Think a little bit past the end of your nose, you know, or the end of, you know, or you're just your family unit. Think about others. You know, if you really think it's a danger, then what are we doing? Then put an age limit on it. Put, you know, they're just, it is an incredible thing how an industry can crop up. And it is because of the money. Let's be honest. It's because of the money that no regulations really exist that have any teeth to them. And we make fun of this a little bit as the season goes on. But in terms of the kids, they are the stakes of our show. Ultimately, they are both the object of, you know, the prime demo. of this of of tech of of of how we uh how how they gather this data is kids are the obviously the most fruitful uh source of data and also you know i'm going to be dead sooner than these kids are so my my dad is less valuable they can they i'm sorry to say this else but you know tk is a it's crazy age to start uh putting them on the map like that putting them on the grid because they will have kids born today are going to have this this data footprint that goes from birth until whenever and so all of their until the singularity that's what we say here jonathan until the singularity yeah yeah yeah here's hoping i mean look i i am definitely a bit of a luddite i always have been um i'm i'm at a age where i think i can look at what's happening to youth and i can look at what's happening where i've been in the past sort of at that crossroads and um i do recognize that there's been some extraordinary innovation innovations in tech but um i think that we are just like you know i always have this image of us backing up out of a driveway a blind driveway hoping against hope that a cyber truck doesn't come and mow us down as we pull out into the road it's just this blind hope that we have left at this point and an incredible sense of um learned helplessness as well is is is fueling this it's like what do we do i mean i've i'm doing this this show and i yeah i mean do you hope there is some message to the tech folks watching it sure yes but do i have do am i counting on anything no do i no of course not i mean it's it is it is the protest of the week right um but yes sometimes it sometimes it goes through so you just want an invite to the pool party that's right yeah why didn't i get invited i'm gonna i'm gonna do an entire show about it um no but i do think that there is uh i hope so i of humanize them for them to realize their own humanity for them to realize that they are fallible creatures that fallibility is not to be feared and not to be shunned but is it it is in fact what makes us great ultimately we learn from fallibility we are humbled by fallibility and it is something that that for too long and and now at a level that is beyond my comprehension it is it has gone into the realm of the absurd they have denied fallibility entirely they have so bought into the idea of that certainty is in fact uh the way to look at the world that that one should have a worldview and stick to it and not apologize ever and i have since i was a child since i was listening into these therapy sessions as a kid whatever whatever thing that has remained consistent for me is that i have always distrusted people who communicate through certainty because we are all prone to up we are doesn't matter how much money you have in your wallet you are just as likely to walk around with your fly down or to get hit by a city bus or to your pants from time to time we're all just corporal beings in these meat suits and with brains that betray us constantly that that that that that that that that that that that are 100 subjective that you know can cause delusions hallucinations and we have to take that into account and it's just it's not in the algorithm it's not in the calculation for a lot of these people this episode is brought to you by accenture when your advertising operations fall out of sync everything else follows spotify and accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business the result less time spent on operations more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most learn more at accenture.com spotify this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration to a new one blog or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks gemini and chrome is here for it ready to make anything online make sense there's no place like chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus well on the mirror thing and what you're saying about fallibility i think the thing that and i've seen this personally in people the thing that reinforces that um belief that they're infallible is the money and i think that's the thing in the show that you nailed honestly the the truest is how much money has crept into the motivations of all of this and how silicon valley may have used to been like the pirate thing it was you know counterculture um underground and now you know everyone's talking about insider trading and you really do hear that when you're talking to people off the record uh and it's they're always talking about their stock price it's the thing they obsess over ai researchers looking at their comp packages yes they want to change the world yes they think they're ushering agi but man that money is great and it really does tend to cloud things and i just think you nailed that frankly um and it's something that i hope i think it's the thing the industry will hopefully like look at the closest i think they may have trouble with you know tech is bad or any of these other things but i think i think the money piece is the thing that people could reflect more on yeah perhaps so i mean it is uh it's impossible to uh truly capture the the extent of the money especially i love my network i love amc but they don't have the biggest budgets and we did what we could to present a moneyed world and a moneyed ideology um and a set that uh conveys that but there's there were there there's limitations to yeah they were like uh the private island in hawaii and they're like oh yeah they're like oh yeah they're like oh yeah they're like oh yeah uh we can't really afford that this season jonathan let's see season two yeah zucks hawaii compound yeah that we all want to see we have a really great island compound uh episode five yes that uh yeah we got helicopters for that one okay all right so now you've got the budget you're good um but the helicopters it's funny because we it was one of these instances where it's like well i assume we're gonna have to vfx the show this that's going to be expensive and then we actually like all right well let's just find out how much our helicopter is going to cost us they were remarkably affordable it's like analog is still is still sitting there waiting for us it's still cheaper and it's it's just like hey does anybody want the actual thing anymore i mean on the money on the money piece i was curious if you found this out on your research i feel like silicon valley is very unusual and that everyone is so rich but it's not it's not culturally uh appropriate to flex your wealth and and it's not like media right it's not like the succession world it's not like new york or really any other industry where someone can be a billionaire and they look like you know they shop at like dillard's like it's it's very unusual yeah zach galifianakis's character is is our only billionaire in the in the cast in the story um and uh we slumped him up he slumps up nicely actually zach is a very good he's a natural slumper there he is yeah being shumpy um uh but it's it's true it's there's a it's there's a funny byproduct to to not wanting to flex your wealth which is that a lot of philanthropy has suffered too it's not like the you know andrew carnegie built all the libraries and put his name on it rockefeller's name is everywhere and universities and hospitals you don't really see that as much um with with this with this new money that's that's come through over the past few years a little bit here and there starting to but it is it is different and it is a bit more about the hawaii compound than it is about a new wing uh and the cancer hospital um a lot of it i think is probably because they feel that certainty that they are doing good they have convinced themselves of that goodness in some way it's such a strange tension isn't it i mean they say they want to make the world a better place and then they go to the data mining they make AI workplace apps that accelerate white collar workers. And I mean, I really do believe it's like a fantasy that they all tell themselves about making the world a better place when in reality, a lot of the stuff that's the biggest has arguably net net, you know, I mean, you look at the happiness scores and the research about all that stuff. So much of it has made things worse. And the average person isn't isn't really doing much better. I think it's on posters now for our show that it's a quoting a line from from, I think it's the fourth episode that, you know, sure, tech changes. the world, but so did the bubonic plague. It is a major adjustment. I know, but you got to hit hard sometimes. You wrote that in the shower and you said, God, I'm good. It was funny because it really was, it's a speech that this character Anushka gives, which is, I suppose more than anything, the summation of my philosophy on it, or my vexing feelings, which is that they set out to make it a more tolerant world. Clearly that has not happened, that we were going to be good for kids and children, provably false, that we were going to help things like climate change. A data center, the data center, has used more energy than the entire aviation industry combined. It is, yes, we can get Q-tips delivered to our door by three o'clock, and I'm sure that there's many medical advances, but they haven't exactly cured cancer either. So it is, let's call it at best, a mixed bag, being generous. You know how happy I am when I hear from an ed tech startup that wants to work with me? I'm like, please, you exist. Discount. I have a very good storyline for you for a future season that may or may not be based on a current thing that's real that I'm reporting out. A major tech company CEO becomes so AGI-pilled that he and his most senior team decide that only they will run the company in the future, and they will go through the process of having their many, many employees secretly train their replacement AIs, and then they will use the AIs to lay them off, and the company will be run by, a few dozen people. That may or may not be happening right now. I'm sure McKinsey's like, wow, great idea, Alex. Yeah, seriously. You can get right on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It always frightens me a little bit the more we think about these crazy things that these guys can do, that it has already happened on a couple of occasions, things that we wrote about for season one that are now real. And we didn't, thankfully, have anything to do with it. But it is, look, some of them are things like the VA storyline. We had certainly no idea when I wrote that part of it, did not know that Trump was going to be elected, didn't know that Doge was going to happen, didn't know that 300,000 VA employees were going to be laid off, that the entire mental health department was going to be turned into bot therapy. And as you go forward, you'll see these storylines play out. It does feel like we're responding to the headlines, but we really weren't. We were actually ahead of it. And I don't know that, to some extent, you think, yeah, yeah, we were ahead of it. But then it's an odd feeling. It's like you pump your fist and then you're like, wait. It's like, did I make this happen? That's not good. Did I will this into existence? Dude, there was a wildfire in the third episode. Duncan and Lily, Lucy Punch plays Lily. She's fucking amazing. The two of them, one of their houses burns down in the wildfire. And I wrote it, and then there were wildfires in LA, and then my house burnt down. So karma's a river in Egypt or something like that. Is that why you're in New York? Are you going to move back to LA? That is, in fact, why I'm in New York. I mean, with a lot of ping-pong, ping, what's the fucking. Ping-ponging? Ping-ponging. We'll call it ping-ponging. I was actually going for pinballing. Ah, yes. Sorry, brain. Yeah, a lot of pinballing back and forth. We shoot in Vancouver, and then we wound up in New York. That's the upshot. That brings me nicely to, I actually attended your LA premiere. We didn't get to say hi to you there, but it was very cool. Saw Bob Odenkirk. There were a lot of great people there in attendance supporting you and people from the AMC family. And yeah, AMC is just a fascinating company to me. They feel like they have this old school Hollywood approach and swag that feels increasingly out of date and refreshing, where it's betting on human beings to tell original stories and making bets, actual bets in a time when Hollywood feels like everyone is scared to make bets. And I'm sure you pitched a bunch of people. I imagine talking to the big streamers that are all owned by tech conglomerates. Made this show a little dicey to pitch. But I'm curious about that process. Yeah. Did you talk to Apple? Did you talk to Amazon? Was it always going to be AMC? It was always going to be AMC. I was in a deal with AMC. And the president of the company, Dan McDermott, he came to me. He grew up in Silicon Valley. And he came to me with the thought of maybe you should consider something in this space. And at the time, I really didn't know very much about tech. But I was very increasingly curious about the personalities around it. And as is my want, I'm more interested in the people below the top of the pyramid, the people who want to get to the top of the pyramid, the wannabes and the also-rans are more interesting to me. There's more of a desperation there. To me, as much as I loved Succession, those guys were. At the top, what made it the most interesting was that they were in a dinosaur company and were fighting for that survival. But they were very much the top of their game and had been historically. Their family was an empire. And so I liked the idea of. I think the truth is a lot of people say, I can develop an app and I can become one of these people. I can get to that top of that rung. I can have a. Three commas in my valuation. And it's obviously doesn't work out for 90. I don't know what the percentage is, a lot of them. Or they sort of fizzle. And so I like that. I mean, that is to me what the fallibility is partially about. And it may be that when those guys get to the top of that pyramid, because they've seen. So many casualties along the way, they do feel that sense of certainty and that sense of righteousness and semi-deity-ness that just their own success justifies exploiting that success. I think we have a venture capital firm name for season two, Three Commas Capital. You can see the hats with the three commas on it. I think people go apeshit for that. I believe Silicon Valley, the TV show, did. A three comma. What? No. Oh, my goodness. Yes. There had to be pressure for you, Jonathan, from the success of Silicon Valley and people wanting a reboot to that for so long. And then you doing this as kind of the next Silicon Valley show type show. Did you think about that a lot? Or did you study it? I genuinely was not aware of the desire, other than my own like, yeah, wouldn't that be fun? As a huge fan of the show, I mean, I love the show. I really, really did. I think, it was thrilling. It was thrilling to watch. It had that early Silicon Valley optimism fueling it. That was, I think, the big difference is things have curdled somewhat. And I think our show reflects that to some people's distaste, you know, that it's the characters are too, you know, quote unquote, unlikable. I can't disagree more. Yeah, I don't. I don't buy that. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, there are people that are that way. You know, my father hated Succession because of that. Did you. Have you had people in tech reach out since the show premiered and tell you their real thoughts about it? Well, we did screenings. We did a screening in San Francisco. I didn't attend it, but Billy Magnuson did and Simon Helberg. And they told me about how everybody was coming up to them saying, "Wow, you really. " "You really nailed it." And there was, you know, there's flattery in satire. You know, it's why Trump watches the late night shows. There's a. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who you are. Being satirized is like, "Oh, well, I guess I've made it now." You know, I mean, it really is a kind of a nod to the King, you know, and it goes back to whether it's Voltaire or Stephen Colbert. You know, you are making fun of the powers. That being that, by definition, you know, validates their own sense of, "I am incredibly powerful." You know, they're. "I'm worthy of satire." So I think that there is that sense of a kind of pleasure in watching your own industry, your own community be taken to task. Well, so tech is down. Tech is definitely not known for its sense of humor at all. And I'm just curious, like, a lot of times. A lot of times they just dismiss it as well, or at least in the past phases of a lot of these founders. Do you think there's anybody that can really hold these folks accountable these days? Man, I hope so. I hope so. I do think that there's no other industry that we can point to in the history of humankind that managed to place themselves in everybody's pant pocket. And that we, just in our quotidian existence, interact with a thousand times a day. I mean, nothing else is like that. And so taking that to – what was the verb you used? Was it taking down or taking to task? Called them accountable, yeah. Called them accountable. I don't know. I really hope so. Because they used to get pissed off. Yeah. And media would take them down. And now they just buy or make their own media companies. Well, that is what autocracies do. That's what dictatorships do. They don't care for truth that they don't – that are not flattering. It's upsetting to see somebody like Alex Karp, who I think clearly was a smart man and a good thinker. I haven't read through this manifesto that just came out. But it was flagged to me. And it looks quite frightening and seems to be advocating for jingoism and xenophobia and, I don't know, just tolerance being a fool's game. Empathy being a pussy thing to have. You'll see in the third episode, empathy is also a big – well, I guess in the second episode. One of them named their daughter Empathy. So, yes. No, but it's an insult. It's an insult that Duncan takes a diagnostic test to find out his own suspicion that he is neurodivergent. Because, of course, all of the big tech thinkers are neurodivergent, famously. And so, you know, being a little divergent in the neuro is what makes them so good at telling us how to shop and think and stuff is the direct quote. From the, you know, outside looking in. And then he does a diagnostic test and he's, in fact, not neurodivergent. And the test showed hallmarks of empathy. He takes that as the worst news he's heard all day, huh? Genius. Yeah. Empathy is just pathetic without the prefix. It's just, you know, it's a terrible slur. And you hadn't even read the Marc Andreessen? No, all of that. Introspection is sin interview. No, it all was written in 2024. So, or just about 20, I think that episode was still in 2024. So, yeah, it was, I guess, sort of following the logic of the psychology of where it might go. Again, I take no great pleasure in predicting that. But it just, it felt right. It felt right. It felt like, yes, no, this would be, in fact, what would be the most upsetting thing to find out is that you're an empathetic person and you work as a CEO in tech. Jonathan, did you have to create an ex-account for this show? No, I'm not online. I'm not on socials. You're not online. So, you're getting readouts of things. I mean, I'm online, but I'm not on social media. And does that extend into the writer's room? Do you have rules about the kinds of tools people can use? Yeah, I depend on them sometimes. I very often depend on them to bring me stuff that they find, but I don't encourage them to. They're bringing you printouts of tweets and you guys are workshopping them. I do try to give certain basic lessons in terms of don't accept cookies and try to get a VPN if you can and things like that. But I don't set rules about social media. What about AI? Do you set rules about AI? With those AMC budgets? It's got to be tempting. Or even just like the writing process. Like, I'm curious. I mean, are you like, no, we are raw-dogging this thing from start to completion? We raw-dog it because it's better that way. Yeah, sure. And this is a tone that I think AI is not capable and hopefully never will be of emulating or imitating. I don't know what the right verb is. But yeah. But AI can be useful in terms of how many generators does a data center require, how much power, how much water, things like that that are not always – you always have to double check with AI, especially with something like water is a controversial topic when it comes to data centers. You've got to – different sources, it depends on where it is, obviously, if it's in Arizona versus Canada. But yeah. We do – that can be useful and that can be a quick tool for that. So I will cop to using it for such things, which is what I think it's at its best. I mean, I think it's a great search engine. It's just – but it's going to get worse because it's going to need to make money and it's going to need to bring advertising into it, et cetera. It's going to be slop soon all across the board. AI slop is going to refer to the entire process sooner or later. But look, I do – I'm not against tech. I just – I think that it does need to live up to some of these standards. If you're going to say we can cure cancer – Especially if you're going to say it. If you're going to say it. If you're going to say we're going to cure cancer like this, like Sam Altman has, then show me something. Earn the right to be in my phone and in my life. Earn that job, in a sense. You don't hire somebody just because they come in and say these outrageous claims with no proof and no idea how. They're going to get there exactly, but they figure that they'll get there just on their moxie along the way. You would never hire that person. You would not invite that person into your life. Your plumber is not like, I'm going to fix your skincare routine. I'm going to make your skin glowing. Sometimes you wish they'd just be honest, like I want to be liked and for people to think I'm funny on my boat, and that's why I'm here. Well, we're about to run out of time, but I have one more question for you as a tagline writer. I just absolutely love the tagline on this poster behind you, move fast and break people. How did that come to be? That's our terrific marketing department who came up with that. Mine was, my recommendation was, we're so fucked, but maybe next season. Yeah, maybe next season. Jonathan, where can people find the show? AMC Plus, if you don't mind, if you're still listening, then you have some interest in this topic, and you should probably watch it without commercials. AMC Plus is great. I think it's on sale, $17 for the season. It's on your Amazons and Apples, but it is on AMC Linear as well. It's just you got diaper commercials interrupting some terrific acting by this terrific cast. I think there's a synergy there between tech execs and diapers. Your words. Jonathan, we really appreciate your time. We'll let you get back to your writer's room. We're looking forward to the rest of the season and season two. Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And that's it for the interview. Stay tuned after the break for Alex and I. Keep watching. Takeaways, rants, and even some ravings. See you in a minute. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. All right, man. What do we think of Jonathan? It's so good to have a non-founder on the show for once. I feel like we should be doing this more. I mean, talking to highly opinionated writers in entertainment makes for a good show. Does it not? Oh, yeah. As opposed to a scaredy cat public company founder who, who doesn't want to go off script at all. I feel like content people know that if you don't have opinions, no one's listening. Yeah, and he definitely does. And the show does. And I don't necessarily agree with all of them. I think sometimes he's a little too on the nose. But I think in general, it's an important show for people in the industry to watch, because I do think it shows where things are actually at right now in terms of how people like Jonathan feel about tech. And I think Jonathan's a good proxy for, for the outside of the bubble view that we don't often talk about. on this show that we should probably talk about more. And as we discussed, holding up a mirror in an industry where people are proudly not introspective, maybe it can make people think a little bit more about themselves and their compounds and their ayahuasca trips and their fleet of butlers and cars ferrying them to and from their therapist's house. Oh man, we didn't even talk about the ayahuasca. Have you done ayahuasca? No, I have not. I haven't either. I'm scared. No, I'm scared. I've been offered the experience and I'm scared, man. It just seems too intense. Yeah. I mean, I'm always down for interesting new experiences, but I think once you have kids, just taking any type of bodily risk just feels kind of silly. So yeah, I've been avoiding things of that sort since the kids were born. Are you going to finish the show? I think I will. I think I absolutely will. I really enjoyed the first episode. I feel like it's always a question with episode ones where are they just trying to set up all the chess pieces and nothing interesting is happening yet? That's how I felt about the new For All Mankind season. I watched episode one and I'm like, all right, let's say we're just moving the chess pieces around here, getting them into place. I'm like, that's just not enough for me anymore. And I feel like first episode of The Audacity, things actually happened and it ended with a really good, almost like cliffhanger about some little under the table quid pro quo deal insidery trading that's going to be happening. And it definitely makes you want to watch further. But yeah, I guess I liked the characters more than I expected to as like a Silicon Valley satire. And Jonathan gets into that a bit as well. I think even though they're all flawed, it's funny. And I think they're definitely more relatable than the folks on Succession, which he was. Yeah, we didn't get into this. We didn't have time, but I'd be curious to know the green lighting process. I mean, the fact that AMC gave this a second season before the first episode dropped, I think shows that they have a lot of belief in what Jonathan's doing and that they think this will be a hit. And I think it will be probably more of a hit when it's frankly off of AMC Plus, because that's a thing that if I didn't have screeners, am I getting an AMC Plus subscription for one show? I don't know. I imagine a lot of people are having that dilemma as they think about that. And that does feel kind of like a version of releasing a show from five years ago where there was a different streaming app for every new show, right? And things have kind of consolidated. And it's cool that AMC is going at it on their own and they're still trying to build their own audience and they obviously need to. But I imagine if this thing was on Netflix, it would blow up. I'm not even aware if I have AMC Plus. Is that bundled into something that I already have? They're all kind of mixing and matching and acquiring and unacquiring each other these days. I think you got to get it, man. I think it's one of those paramount plus type things. There's just no way around it. I'm also happy that the new show, while Jonathan says he loved Silicon Valley, I mean, it's also very different. It definitely feels more in the vein of something like Succession, whereas I feel like Silicon Valley felt a lot more kind of like a screwball comedy that just takes place in Silicon Valley. But I like that the one through line is that everybody's trying to make the world a better place better than anybody else. If you recall that quote from Gavin Belson in Silicon Valley. That's one of my favorite LA sightings so far, seeing Gavin Belson at the Whole Foods parking lot. Gave him a little nod several years ago. Unbelievable performance. I mean, you remember that, don't you? Of course. I mean, I want to rewatch the show now. Yeah, especially with Audacity out. Yeah, no, that was great. I guess we should acknowledge that we've changed the format of the show, right? No, not acknowledge. Not acknowledge. But yeah, we're trying something new and leading with the interview, leading with the conversation, and then chatting about stuff after. I don't know. I feel like this is going well. I mean, that's how video game reviews do it these days. They do the review, and then they have the debrief after, and they're on the cutting edge of storytelling. So yeah, I'm going to give it a go. I mean, it's interesting. Long story short, I think we both believe that we're having. Good, interesting, fresh conversations, quote unquote, on here, but in a world where when things are discovered, let's say on YouTube, if we start with the conversations about other stuff, but the thumbnail is about the person, it feels like a little bit of bait and switch. And it's just kind of inevitable. You've got to orient the show as much as you may not want to toward delivering on that thumbnail as quickly as possible. And hopefully we show more of our differentiation. Through the questions we ask, and the debates that ensue on the show. Yeah. So apologies if you really loved Ellis and I chatting at the beginning. You were one of the few, but we love you. And YouTube made us do this. So blame YouTube. Well, tweet or zeet or however you want to communicate with us. Let us know what you think. Valuable input. We're going to listen to the algorithm more, but still valuable input. It's valuable. And please also just like and subscribe and share the show. I know we say that every week, but it feels especially pertinent this week as we blow up the format. Please don't give us one star. Yeah. I guess the other thing too is that as Alex and I are discussing together, it's like we want to talk about the news, but everybody's talking about the news. It's actually more fun if we talk about the news with the guest than just amongst ourselves. And I feel like we get into it a bit on the show this week about current events with Jonathan. And it definitely was richer having his take as a part of it. And that's the kind of thing that they usually aren't talking about on a press tour, some executive. And I don't know. I mean, do you feel like most execs are going to play ball and talk about other things? I mean, as every executive loves to say, I'm not really paying attention to my competitors. I just am focusing on the product. But if they really do want to humanize themselves, increase their hiring, investor interest, showing the multi-dimensional person that they are, that is a part of the world and not above it, I think is a surefire way to do that. Yeah, I think so. I think it remains to be seen. We often talk about if we can get a public company CEO to not say one talking point during the interview, we will have succeeded. So I think it's more difficult with some, but I think we're going to try our damnedest. And I think like you said, these execs want to be humanized and you need to actually play ball. You need to be willing to. To talk about things that aren't, you know, your PR talking points. And all you need to know, as we talk about on the show, my former boss, Evan Spiegel, was always very resistant to doing social, but that egg has finally been cracked and he's doing podcasts and even Instagram reels now. It comes for everyone eventually. Yeah, it comes for everybody eventually. It's finally breaking through. But of course, and I mean, this is the same thing I talk about with clients. It's not just going on a podcast that makes you. More human and more interesting is that you actually have to be asked interesting questions and say interesting things. And I think my hope is that we're able to make that happen here. It's not just saying, oh, we're going to chit chat about whatever. It's what you think about a lot of very important topics. And I absolutely believe that that is a very, very key strategy for showing people who you really are. Versus if you're only ever talking about your product, it's like, why would you do that? It's like, why would you do that? Why would anyone believe you? Why would anyone like you? Forever underrated, I think, to just talk about your opinions. I mean, you see with the founder-led communication, it's super hot right now. But I think what's missing from that narrative is the idea that founder-led communication doesn't actually work if you're only talking about yourself. And this was the playbook that we did at the browser company that people say they're following but still don't often do, is that we talked about all sorts of things, whether it was the internet or design or the weird incentives of building a browser, internally at Google versus doing it independently, different business models, design, company building, all these things, if you have interesting takes on them, are just as likely to bring someone to you as talking about your new feature. Well, here's to more of that. And with that, I guess, yeah, I don't really know how we end this now. I think we transition, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, to the outro now. Okay, let's do it. Well, that was it for this week's show. Thanks again to Jonathan Glasser from The Audacity for coming on. Definitely going to be watching the rest of season one. Looking forward to season two. And if you like this show, don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere you get podcasts. Please do that. We are access.show online, and you can find us in video at AccessPod on YouTube. If you really like this episode, we would love a five-star review or even share with a friend or agent. Or if you just liked it a little bit, still give it five stars. That'd be great. You can find my newsletter at sources.news. And you can find me at Hamburger on Twitter and at meaning.company for your startup storytelling needs. Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and the show is produced by Hooked Creators. Bye. Bye. Booking.com is the easiest way from a day surrounded by noise to a day surrounded by noise. 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