Transcript
A (0:08)
Hello and welcome to the next Cove Julius episode of Sleep Money Succession. We are back, people. Succession is back. Succession season three is coming next week on hbo and of course I, Felix Salmon of Axios, will be watching every episode, as will be Emily Peck of Fundrise.
B (0:35)
Hello.
C (0:35)
I'm so excited. I can't wait.
A (0:38)
We are going to be watching every episode. We're going to be talking about it right here on Slate Money. And to set the scene, we have the most insightful succession observer that I think probably exists outside the walls of the Succession writing room itself. Rebecca Mead from the New Yorker. Welcome.
B (1:01)
Thank you. Delighted to be here.
A (1:03)
You wrote a fantastic piece about Jesse Armstrong and calling him the real CEO of Succession. He runs this show. He runs a really tight ship, controls more or less everything about the show. This is normal in television, by the way. This showrunner does this on shows, but you had some amazing insights. So we're going to talk to you about season one, season two, and although none of us have actually seen any of the episodes, season three of the best show on tv, all coming up on Slate Money Succession. Rebecca, there has been, I believe the technical term is a fuck ton written about succession in every single publication that I submit, subscribe to. But you win the prize for the best Succession article. It's amazing. In the New Yorker. So we needed to have you on to kick off this season of Slate Money Succession. I know nothing about season three. I have no idea what to expect. I haven't seen a single episode. Neither has Emily. But what we wanted to talk to you about is just like where we're at right now after the first two seasons. And I think the place I would love to start because the thing that really you changed my mind about with this show is that I went into it with season one thinking this is a kind of satire of media moguls. And we had like Ed Leon from the New York Times and all of these people talking about, you know, how much is it Rupert, how much is it Sumner? How much is it Barry Diller? You know, and trying to sort of work out what the subtweets were. And then after reading your article, I started thinking, well, maybe it's not actually a media show at all. It's actually a rich people show. It's much more about wealth than it is about media.
B (2:56)
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because. Because you might think of it as also as a business show or, yeah, a finance show. But I mean, for me, what was fascinating about writing about it was the way in which the writers and Jesse and his team do this meticulous research into the world, and it's not just made up, but it's all the interviewing of consultants to very rich people, or the sort of digging into this kind of background detail and, you know, which is very much like the kind of thing that a reporter does. So there was sort of an admiration for the verisimilitude of it. But, yeah, I. Yeah, you know, the kind of oblivious rich people element of it is one of the things that I particularly like about it, I must say.
