Do Not Think This At Home

Summary

Podcast Summary: TRASHFUTURE – "Do Not Think This At Home"

Date: December 23, 2025
Hosts: Nova, Matt, Guest(s)
Description: Wry, irreverent analysis of year-end scandals, the empty promises of corporate AI, the performative cruelty of British politics, and the pursuit of holding onto empathy under capitalism.

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Episode Overview

This special year-end episode of TRASHFUTURE blends notes of dark humor and weariness as the hosts reflect on a tumultuous 2025, major “cancellations,” hollow “AI revolutions,” and the political landscape’s encouragement of cruelty over empathy. Alongside classic run-downs of UK tabloid pathology and business snake oil, they grapple deeply with the British state’s response to pro-Palestine activism, especially ongoing hunger strikes by imprisoned activists. The episode’s core message: in a world run by grifters and algorithms, holding onto empathy and practical solidarity is a radical act worth treasuring.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Year-End Scandal Roundup & "Cancellations"

[00:18 – 02:40]

• Hosts jokingly suggest a somber "in memoriam"–style segment for everyone "canceled" in 2025.
• Lampooning the idea of culture war indignities: “Kevin Spacey tap dancing in Tel Aviv” as a recurring image.
  • (Matt, 00:32): “A segment on TF where it's like the in memoriam thing, but it's like who got canceled this year? Be really good. Do some like slowed down footage of Kevin Spacey tap dancing in Tel Aviv.”
• The dynamic of celebrities using cancellation as a springboard for a comeback is skewered, with mentions of David Walliams and Tom Skinner as right-wing grifters playing the “fired for truth” victim.
  • (Nova, 02:56): “He is continuing his, I would say long and storied career as ... one of the best right wing whiners on social media.”

2. Tom Skinner, Media Victimhood & Right-Wing Grift

[02:40 – 11:24]

• The panel dissects Tom Skinner’s manufactured sense of persecution after being voted off "Strictly Come Dancing," highlighting the performative tantrums as a career move.
  • (Matt, 05:15): “I do wonder, right... how quickly does this just become its own punishment? ... You've got to be this guy forever now.”
• The group riffs on right-wing figures (Charlie Kirk, JD Vance), noting their ability to turn personal grievance into permanent public persona.
  • (Nova, 04:16): “If Charlie Kirk taught us anything, it's that if you're willing to sacrifice everything you can give your wife an amazing career...”
• Satirical plans for "Challengers 2," starring JD Vance and Erica Kirk, poking fun at the idea of manufacturing new culture war celebrities through AI.

3. AI: Empty Hype, Workplace Uselessness & Economic Froth

[13:00 – 37:32]

• Nova introduces a review of who’s actually gaining value from generative AI; the answer: almost no one.
• Multiple surveys show that only a tiny minority of executives and companies see real profit or value from AI investments (e.g. just 5% according to BCG).
  • (Nova, 24:18): “Consulting firm BCG found that only 5% of just over 1250 executives surveyed saw any value from AI at all.”
• Corporate AI deployment is derided as performative and often more trouble than it’s worth.
  • (Matt, 19:49): “You talk to anyone with a corporate job ... at some point a push to use AI more. And then everyone tries it ... figures out that it takes longer to fix its output than it does to just do your own job.”
• Discussion of Oracle’s risky “Wework”-style leasing model for AI data centers, suggesting the entire AI hype train is built atop precarious, financialized short cons.
• Anecdote about an AI chatbot unable to parse a 100-page railway safety document, underscoring how far the technology lags behind the sales pitch.
  • (Nova, 33:56): “No model could consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly hundred page document... Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules, other times they invented new ones.”

4. British Politics, Cruelty, & the Suppression of Empathy

[37:37 – 58:32]

• Shift to coverage of the hunger strikes by Palestine Action activists imprisoned in the UK—an “ongoing national shame.”
  • (Nova, 37:52): “...there is a hunger strike going on in British prisons. These are people who have been arrested for either association with Palestine action...”
• “Performative bemusement”: British press framing these activists as privileged or unserious, reminiscent of coverage of IRA hunger strikes, Extinction Rebellion, etc.
  • (Matt, 39:51): “...the one that really ... gets under my skin is the kind of performative bemusement, which is something that the British press has a great line in. ... 'Oh, these sort of privileged kids who are sort of attaching themselves to something that seemed trendy and a conflict thousands of thousands of miles away.'”
• State officials, e.g., James Timson, refuse engagement with hunger strikers to avoid appearing to “negotiate with terrorists” or give “special treatment.”
• The persistent theme: British society “fetishizes” cruelty, punishes empathy, and ridicules—then pathologizes—those who feel moral urgency.
  • (Matt, 41:02): “I think is something that indicts our entire society ... not only do we really try to punish empathy, but we really make a fetish of cruelty as well.”
• The media’s intentional ignorance, selective reporting (“hunger strikers demand touchscreen phones” [42:18]), and refusal to assign moral responsibility is critiqued as a calculated effort to “further break these people.”
• The hunger strike as a rare act capable of shaming power structures—though increasingly, the state and media simply refuse to feel any shame at all.
  • (Matt, 49:28): “I think there's a recurring pattern ... of ... never feeling like we should ever be allowed to feel shamed for anything that we do...”

5. Reflections, Hope, and the Value of Empathy

[58:32 – episode end]

• Hosts urge listeners to treasure empathy and to continue organizing and responding morally, even as cynicism becomes the default.
  • (Matt, 59:31): “...if you're going to try and find meaning in it, then it's going to have to be in your own ... moral and practical response to these things. ... And it requires your involvement. If nothing else, it requires you to feel empathy. And that is something I think you have to absolutely treasure.”
• Closing thoughts: solidarity, community, and the podcast itself as one way to keep “the horrors bearable.” Thanks and love for their community.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On manufactured victimhood:
  “Man whose entire career, entire life... has been kicking off for attention.”
  — Matt, [09:15]
• On the AI bubble:
  “So what I'm looking at here, when I'm looking at the kind of AI bubble such as it is, is it's a million sort of short cons built on top of each other. Built on top of a soufflé.”
  — Matt, [29:37]
• On the state of British empathy:
  “The whole just genocide has done, but this is sort of like an acute example of it in that not only do we sort of really try to punish empathy, but we really make a fetish of cruelty as well.”
  — Matt, [41:02]
• On the hunger strike’s moral function:
  “Part of the shaming function of a hunger strike... is partially to sort of indict, as in put on trial the whole system...”
  — Matt, [57:00]
• On hope and resistance:
  “There are people who organize against these things and there always will be. ... It requires your involvement. If nothing else, it requires you to feel empathy. And that is something I think you have to absolutely treasure.”
  — Matt, [59:31]

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Important Timestamps

• Year-end scandal & cancellation roundup: [00:16–02:40]
• Tom Skinner, right-wing media cycles: [02:40–11:24]
• Satirical AI resistance, corporate AI skepticism: [13:00–37:32]
• Hunger strikes, prison, empathy vs. cruelty: [37:37–58:32]
• Reflections, solidarity, end-of-year thoughts: [58:32–61:23]

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Tone & Style

True to TRASHFUTURE’s reputation, the conversation is mordantly witty, sharply cynical, and consistently irreverent—no horror or absurdity is too bleak for a sick joke or a bleakly hopeful digression. The hosts juggle heavy subject matter with surreal corporate-bro jests, meme references, and frequent moments of cathartic laughter.

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Conclusion

"Do Not Think This At Home" encapsulates 2025’s blend of malaise, moral challenge, and resistance. The episode weaves together media critiques, AI industry skepticism, and urgent calls to defend empathy and solidarity against the culture’s accelerating descent into cruelty. As the hosts conclude: the only way out is through—and it’s empathy, not resignation, that needs defending most of all.

Transcript

[Nova]

So I think we're, we're ending the year this year.

[Matt]

Thank God. You know, I know it was in doubt, but Jesus Christ, we got there.

[Nova]

Yeah, but you know, we didn't get there without a lot of scandal. And I think the most recent, doing.

[Matt]

A segment on TF where it's like the in memoriam thing, but it's like who got canceled this year? Be really good. Do some like slowed down footage of Kevin Spacey tap dancing in Tel Aviv.

[Nova]

Been a long day.

[Guest]

Yeah. I just want to say that while you, while many people, while the ordinary liberals are like looking forward to the end of the year, I. The Alpha Chat. I'm actually, you know, I'm using this period of time between the 22nd to the 31st to really grind. So 2025 is still going to be my year. I can feel it, feel it in my bones. Yeah, we're going to start a business. We're going to start a rock band. It's going to be crazy.

[Matt]

The most inconvenient possible time starting a rock band as a New Year's resolution. I'm the sort of designated representative for that segment of the TF listener base that gets suicidally depressed around Christmas. So obviously that's going to be taking up most of my time. And the one thing that's kind of clawing me through is thinking about, you know, in cancellation segment this year. That's life.

[Nova]

I was gonna say can we get a slowed down see you again.

[Matt]

It's been a long baby. Well, I think. No, I think what you do is you slow down. That's Life by Frank Sinatra. Because that was the thing that Kevin Spacey was tap dancing to. And in the course of this I learned that that song towards the end of it contains what is now a really funny bit where Frank Sinatra is like, well, if I can't get everything I want, I'll. So it seems Abs.

[Nova]

You know, I was gonna say actually, you know, there is this scandalous revelations now come in. Some new information that has been revealed of course about a.

[Matt]

It turns out Jeffrey Epstein had been a pedophile the whole time.

[Nova]

Yeah. And he was only the intervention of White Hat Chomo Donald Trump probably stopped him from going for a while.

[Matt]

He's going undercover trying to save him from himself. Yeah. I also appreciate this sort of last minute entrance from David Walliams in the. This year in cancellation seg. Know it's like really good timing just in right under the wire.

[Nova]

Well, I was going to say, you know, the. The other thing is. And I Think this is not getting enough attention? Is, of course, it looks as though Tom Skinner, who you may recall is one of the two men in Britain that eats a big meal and then says bosh. Yeah, the right wing.

[Matt]

The evil one.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bad one. It turns out he is continuing his, I would say long and storied career as a someone is like one of the best right wing whiners on social media by suggesting that in fact his, his.

[Matt]

He was, he was hashtag fired for truth from Strictly come dancing to BBC's Celebrity Dancing Show.

[Nova]

Correct.

[Guest]

Okay, so. So I've been like, really just plugged out of everything, partly out of choice and partly just because of, like, having a kid sort of means that you're sort of, you know, you don't really pay attention to much else. Especially around about this time. I. So he didn't, so he didn't just get knocked out. He got like, got. He got eradicated for, by, like, for social reason. Like, for political reasons.

[Matt]

Like that one, like, woodwork show Channel 4 had where they had to remove the guy who won because of his tattoos.

[Guest]

Oh, yeah. But, like, we never really heard from him again. That was like, so interesting because, like, I'm really fascinated by the kind of cancel culture. Like the people who, like, are trying to sort of, try to sort of do the cancel culture stuff as like a kind of like, springboard to kind of get some sort of semblance of a career back and are either like, too early for it or who decide not to. So, like a guy who was too early for it, was that that fired for truth guy? I think.

[Matt]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. You got to pick your moment.

[Guest]

You know, he overplayed his hand.

[Matt]

Charlie Kirk taught us anything, you know, that's right.

[Guest]

You got to choose your moment.

[Nova]

If I would say if Charlie Kirk taught us anything, it's that if you're willing to sacrifice everything you can give your wife an amazing career, you can.

[Matt]

You can make your wife much happier at the hands of another man. Vice President of the United States, J.D. vance.

[Nova]

Here's the thing, he asks everyone, how much do you really love your wife? Do you have any idea the fire that you could light within this wife?

[Matt]

Counting or not counting years of engagement? I mean, I guess the thing is, I think about Charlie Kirk when he was alive, like, talking to his wife, hanging out to his wife. Do you think she was doing the eyes thing to him then too? She's like, oh, what do you want to get for dinner tonight? And she just kind of like, stares through his fucking soul.

[Nova]

I think the problem is they, they didn't upgrade the, the large language model that runs her. No. In the, in the case of, of Tom SK though, what happened is he was fired for political reasons by the extremely left wing and politicized Strictly Come Dancing viewership who apparently gave him one of the lowest vote totals in the history of the show.

[Matt]

Yeah, well, it turns out people don't like it when you say your pronouns are bosh, bosh.

[Nova]

Yeah. But like what I've always loved about, about this guy is that he's been desperate to be famous for his entire life.

[Matt]

Yeah, he was the Apprentice, much like Donald Trump in that way.

[Nova]

Yeah, exactly. And he's desperate to be famous, but anytime he gets anything other than ador, his like, almost like a reflex as though he's been hit in the knee with a small hammer is just to do like a 10,000 word large language model generated whiny post about how unfair the world is to him.

[Matt]

I have an audio clip of him.

[Nova]

I don't get nervous, but I'm starting to get a bit shaky. You know, I'm a little bit.

[Matt]

I feel like that's kind of where he's been at for the last three months or so.

[Nova]

Of course, he said, I'll give you the background. I'll give you the background here. So he, he got voted off with. And again, because he went public with this, of course everyone else had to go public with all their information, which is the BBC was like, no, we don't release vote totals, but you did get 1.4% of the vote, which is definitely the lowest. But he said, oh no. He got an anonymous email claiming to be from a BBC executive with stats that showed he actually referred far more votes than it appeared. And he says he asked to see the official voting tallies. But there were other things that added to the feeling that I was being discriminated against.

[Matt]

I demand, I demand a, you know, on the basis of anti white boy discrimination.

[Guest]

Yeah, he's gonna do, try to do January 6th for outside of like New Broadcasting House. Yeah.

[Matt]

A bunch of people occupying the Strictly Set with a like papier mache guillotine chanting hang. Claudia Winkelman. Is that Claudia Winkelman? I don't, I don't watch tv.

[Guest]

I'm sorry, I think it's Tess Daily.

[Matt]

Fine, fine. Sure. Fuck Test Daily. Okay. I mean, to be honest, the level of political confusion, it amounts to the same sort of thing in these people. Right? Like, is Claudia Winkle common part of the Blob? Did the traitors discriminate against Thomas Skinner? We may never know, but the only option is to conclude that they must have done.

[Nova]

To be honest, it does, it does feel a little bit like it's the kind of political valence swapped version of that liberal question of, you know, is, is Chase bank an ally thing?

[Matt]

Is Alan Cumming off the Celebrity Traitors my enemy?

[Nova]

Yeah. Is this brand my enemy?

[Guest]

Basically? Yeah, that's a good point. That is actually genuinely a good point.

[Matt]

It's sort of. It's just our luck, right, that the one in our lifetimes we get like a properly adversarial relationship to the capital, to the media, all of that, and it's because they think they're too woke. God, like, you actually have the brands running scared. The BBC is sort of bending over backwards like nobody's doing the fucking, like Deloitte Pride floats anymore. And it's like, well, of course we know that these things can only sort of bend in favor of the right, but Jesus Christ, it's weird to see them bending, you know?

[Nova]

So he says there were other smaller things that added to the feeling. Everyone received a welcome gift from the show. Skincare, face mask, that sort of thing. Apparently mine got stolen.

[Matt]

Applying skincare to Tom Skinner's face is a little bit like, sort of. You might as well throw that little test tube of Lancome or whatever into the fucking ocean, dude.

[Guest]

I mean, also bearing in mind, you know, not to sort of dig too far into his past, but, like, didn't he also kind of get into trouble for selling stolen goods?

[Matt]

He did get convicted for handling stolen goods, yeah.

[Guest]

So maybe, like, instead of it being stolen, it was just sort of taken by one of. One of his disciples who was just like, yeah, I want to be. I want to be like the new Tom Skinner.

[Matt]

Cool. That is.

[Nova]

I have to, you know, BBC then said, we have never given welcome gifts to anyone who comes on Strictly Come Dancing.

[Matt]

Does. Does this guy seeing someone else using moisturizer for the first time ever? And it's like, someone must have given you that for not being white, I guess.

[Nova]

Oh, well, I guess I'm an asshole then. Of course he says, I'm not kicking off for attention. I'm not saying I should have won. I was rubbish kicking off for attention.

[Matt]

Man whose entire career, entire life, I would say, at this point has been kicking off for attention. I do wonder, right, because I was thinking about this, I was thinking about Erica Kirk, and I was thinking, to what extent and how quickly does this just become its own punishment? Right. Like you've got to, you've got to sort of like be this guy forever now. And it's like some people can kind of like inhabit that better than others, but at a certain point you've got to have some sort of contempt. The situation in which you find yourself, right, like this grift. It's got to be unsustainable eventually. It's, it's like, it's, it's terrifying. Yeah.

[Nova]

And it's like he is, Is Tom Skinner going to be what, six? Because he's like roughly our age.

[Matt]

Jesus fucking Christ.

[Nova]

Yeah, I know, I know. I, I, I, I sort of get a, a jump scare at that myself.

[Matt]

Should have used that moisturizer, man. I'm sorry. They stole it.

[Nova]

Okay. It's bad that someone stole that from you. I agree. He's now stuck, sort of having to pretend to be mad for the rest of his life, as is Erica Kirk.

[Matt]

You know, you're only like, this is the sort of trap, right? Is you're allowed to feel good, but only still performatively, like where you've got the like grilling or whatever, or, you know, you're hanging out with Tommy Robinson or something like that. Like, either way, it's got to be fucking exhausting.

[Guest]

There is a connection as well because Tom Skinner hung out of J.D. vance when J.D. came to Cotswolds, right?

[Matt]

He did.

[Guest]

So there is a non zero chance of at some point in the future when Erica Kirk becomes, I don't know, like get, you know, ends up sort of getting married to J.D. which, you know, could happen.

[Matt]

Oh yeah, probably will happen.

[Guest]

Yeah, that, yeah. But she will have to meet Tom Skinner and I am very excited for that to happen.

[Matt]

JD Vans texting Tom Skinner on advice on how to date Erica Kirk.

[Guest]

You just gotta give her a special cuddle, boss. What did he say? Like, yeah, wait, that's the wrong Bosch.

[Matt]

That's the good Bosch. I'm sorry.

[Nova]

I can't wait for them to make challengers too. About JD Vance, Erica Kirk and Tom.

[Matt]

Skinner, you know, I keep going back to the lack of moisturization, right? Like it's just two deserts rubbing together. It's going to look like the like mask for mask fucking cat person. So it's going to, it's rough.

[Nova]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. Well, you know what? When all content in the world, when Warner Brothers and Netflix all come together, we'll be able to use the inbuilt Netflix AI customization tools to use SORA to create A trailer for Challengers 2 starring Steve Erica Kirk.

[Matt]

Sounds like a winner. Use of electricity.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I don't. I shouldn't be doing this. Type it in, hit enter and then just like a home near Phoenix, Arizona, Patrick Wyman's home just goes without the power shuts off.

[Matt]

It's like, well, I hope fucks up that Patrick Wyman and Graham Linehan live probably in like driving distance of each other. Something is up in Arizona.

[Nova]

Yeah, I wonder if they've ever walked by each other at the top.

[Matt]

Seeing each other at the like supermarket and doing the meme from the umbrella Academy. Man with massive biceps. Man with massive.

[Nova]

Seeing each other at the diner and then just do. Recreating the conversation from heat.

[Matt]

Patrick Wyman is kind of like Graham Linehan's nightmare in that he's like a normal guy who is woke and is also like extremely sort of physically like large. So yeah, maybe. I guess the answer is keep watching the substack and we'll find out whether he's going to be like I saw in sort of like in the woke Arizona supermarket. I encountered some kind of like pro trans monster.

[Nova]

I encountered the space marine that the trans people have invented the primarch that they just.

[Matt]

I sort of support conscripting Patrick Wyman to be our ultramarine. I think he could do it.

[Nova]

All right, Wyman, you're on notice. But before we do sort of jarring shifts in tone, I wanted to read one more article. It's a little more of the AI news thing before we talk a little bit about the ongoing hunger strikes in UK prisons and some of the new fronts that have been opened up in the sort of homophobic campaigns. Yeah, of course, all the bad stuff. Yeah, the bad things. But I wanted to read another article. This is a combination of a few places. But you know, I keep my ear to the ground on stuff, on really important questions to me. Like for example, we know AI is going to be a sort of trillion zillion quintillion dollar opportunity and it's going to, you know, any day now.

[Matt]

Any day now.

[Nova]

And that depends on not it being like a thing that, you know, you can use to make Challengers 2 starring J.D. vance, Dustin Gremlin.

[Guest]

Ahead.

[Matt]

Anyone might say that by sort of doing that or by entering into a sort of manic episode, you like AI generate a bunch of sort of Folgers coffee branded incest bombs or something that you're wasting their compute and their electricity, their electrons. Excuse me.

[Nova]

Yeah, so basically the question, as always.

[Matt]

Is, oh, God, I just thought of a horrible take. I just thought of a really heterodox take. The take is you have to use AI, image generation and text generation as much as possible because you are sort of like, you are the hole in the bucket that they're trying to fill to create God. And so you're siphoning off their God. They're not going to be able. Able to do it and therefore sort of rule over all of us for as long as you are using AI to do the stupidest, most insulting bullshit possible. That's a defensible take, and I hate that it is. It's like, AI is unprofitable for the, like, nth year running. I'm doing my part, says person who is like plugging in the dumbest prompt you've ever heard in your life.

[Nova]

Now render Patrick Wyman as another primarch. Make him Perturabo. Now it's like, please, my $3 trillion company is U.S. against your nonsense.

[Matt]

Yeah. It's like, with the force of our slop and our stupidity, we can beat these companies into submission and bankruptcy.

[Nova]

All you need to do is harness ADHD more than you have ever before.

[Matt]

Oh, God. This is. This isn't what I actually believe, but the fact that I've sort of been able to comprehend it has really wounded me.

[Nova]

Yeah, you open the arc a little.

[Guest]

Bit on that one.

[Nova]

You open the arc a little bit. Yeah. Bits of you have melted off, but not much.

[Matt]

Just the disclaimer that they use use on, like, some video games now where it's like, yes, we use AI, but we only use it for, like, prototyping or, like, concept art or whatever, whatever kind of weasel word shit you want to do for that. But instead of that, it's, we use AI, but only for the express purpose of harming Sam Altman and his finances.

[Nova]

Look, we made Pac Man. We made a Pac man where he's packing, right? And now you can't see it, but we have generated 1 million images of PAC man who's packing heat. And we helped that. We thought that would inspire us to make a better game.

[Matt]

Really?

[Nova]

This is not in the final product.

[Matt]

The OpenAI, sort of token medal thing that they gave, what was it, Ernst and young or KPM? No, it was McKinsey, which is the.

[Nova]

Funniest possible person to take it.

[Matt]

That means that McKinsey really deserves a medal as a kind of hero of the Soviet union in making AI unprofitable.

[Nova]

I love that. Bob Sternfels McKinsey, CEO, Most Confused Order of Lenin Recipient ever. Like, what do you mean to send me? I mean, to be fair, to be fair. What is Bob Sternfels done? He has overseen the, like, his industry is overseeing the collapse of the entire American industrial base. It has completely scuppered the sort of main American ally in the region that isn't Israel by like pouring all of its money into fucking Neom and changing the sun.

[Matt]

Sort of directing all American sort of like foreign policy into its most unpopular colonial outpost and ally, Israel.

[Nova]

This is.

[Matt]

Yeah, if you're doing like, the purpose of a system is what it does, then the purpose of McKinsey is to usher in the Chinese century and defeat the Great Satan. Thank you, Comrade McKinsey. The purpose of 1920s robber barons was to crash the stock market.

[Nova]

Yeah. If you could say that they created the conditions for the New Deal. No, I mean, you could really make a plausible case that the CEO of General Electric throughout the 1990s actually does deserve the Order of Lenin.

[Matt]

Well, this is, this is just. We've reasoned our way back to like historically progressive forces. Right. At this point. Point. So then you get the horrible Marxist argument that using AI is historically progressive because it's going to destroy AI.

[Nova]

Don't worry, we are professional idea havers. Do not attempt to have this idea yourself.

[Matt]

No, no. This idea has been had in a sort of safe, secure, contained environment of this podcast episode and can never be transported outside of it. This is the firewall.

[Nova]

It's so not contained.

[Matt]

This is the opposite in many ways. It's going the opposite. Yeah, it's sort of disseminated. It's the opposite of a firewall. It's a fire gate so the fire can get out.

[Nova]

Look, all I'm saying is November may have looked like she had that idea very easily and safely, but she was wearing protective gear. She's wearing a lot of fireproof. She's wearing a lot of fireproof robes.

[Matt]

I think there's so much harm in the course of having this idea that it would kill an ordinary non podcaster human being.

[Nova]

We have built up immunity to such things.

[Matt]

Yeah, it's only us and Patrick Wyman that are like physiologically adapted to be able to hold these kinds of ideas in our minds.

[Nova]

Yeah, that's just because Patrick Wyman has like a second heart in a Laramin's organ and stuff. It sucks that they gave him the primaris surgery before they gave everyone in the UK gender surgery. This is so. This is so specific. This is some fucking Christmas vacation content.

[Matt]

Yeah, this is it. It's the last Lesson of the year. And what I've done is I've. I've identified the teacher's special interests and gone, hey, can we talk about that instead of the seg you prepared?

[Nova]

Look, I do want to talk about a little bit about this segment I prepared, though, because you've now reminded me that that's what you've done. So this is from Reuters, and it is a review of who is actually using generative AI at a corporate level. Not a ton of people.

[Matt]

Still, McKinsey stalwarts, you know, they are. They are the sort of like God's divisions at Stalingrad, you know, they will not break, they will not falter, not.

[Nova]

One step backward, waving the blue flag. So that Reuters says, Since ChatGPT exploded three years ago, companies big and small have leapt at the chance to adjoin gen AI and stuff into as many products as possible. But so far, the vast majority of businesses are struggling to realize a meaningful return on any AI investment, according to company executives, advisors, and the result of seven independent recent executive and worker surveys.

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, just anecdotally, you talk to anyone with a corporate job and you hear that there has been sort of like at some point a push to use AI more. And then everyone tries it and everyone's like, kind of slowly figures out that it takes longer to fix its output than it does to just do your own job yourself.

[Guest]

I spoke to someone the other day who works at a consulting firm, and they're trying to get people to use some type of AI software that big kind of big company bought for quite a lot of money, or they really want people to use it. And they were like, yeah, we spent a week. They emailed us basically saying, this is so funny, I don't know much about the consulting world, but whenever I see those Day in the Life videos of consultants, my question is always just, when do you actually do work? Because half of the video is about you grabbing, like, Matcha, right? And then when you come back to the office, like, you're sort of just drinking the Matcha and not doing much else.

[Matt]

The purpose of a consultant is to turn Matcha into piss and shit.

[Guest]

That's right. Yeah. My buddy was saying that, like, they told, like, people on his desk that, okay, you basically don't have to do any work for a week because what we want you to do is we want you to go into these workshops to, like, learn how to use vai, right? With the idea being that, like, once you learn how to use it, you'll really enjoy it. You'll find it really useful for your work. And they were just like. And like, his summary was sort of. Of like you didn't need a week to learn it. It only took a doubt, maybe a couple of hours at most to actually learn how to use it. But like the actual remainder of the week was them sort of kind of these constant reminders of, like, you need to use this, you need to use this. Hey, here's like this kind of thing that you can use the AI for. It can manage your emails and look how it can basically write half of your email for you. But like, it kept getting, like, as with lots of these types of LLMs, like, they can be key. It kept getting really key information. Wrong. Right. Or like it used to be to write. It would say, it would like give out these very generic sentences. But, you know, which is like, fine on a certain level, but if you're working with a client and they need more specific things, then like, obviously this is not going to be effective. The point being that, like, it feels like a lot of time is invested into trying to convince them that, like, this is something that will help their workflow.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Guest]

But rather than actually teaching them how to use it, like, the actual, like, learning how to use the AI software is like, so, so minor, but you can basically learn it in your own in time. But actually, like, the investment is more in to do with, like, trying to get employees or like their employees to be like you. Here is why you need to use this world. We're employing this.

[Matt]

It's ideological. It's like you have the McKinsey sort of political officer lecturing you on the sort of benefits of it. I mean, a friend of mine in a corporate job, again, very similar thing. Something that kind of required a lot of accountability. And I don't know whether it was chat, GBC or like Copilot or whatever, it was hallucinated something and then attributed it to two employees who did not exist, which is just a beautiful thing. That's a. That's a really hysterical thing and something that's like high consequence. And did that mean that the sort of. The company stopped pushing, using this thing? Of course not. Absolutely not. It just means you have more arguments over it.

[Nova]

Well, I can give you some of the results here. By the way. I like the idea of a McKinsey consultant having to do a battlefield execution on someone who's unwilling to open up the chat.

[Matt]

Welcome. Welcome to McKenzie Kinsey. Congratulations on sort of passing the graduate scheme. Here is your revolver. I know we didn't sort of mention that you were going to need one of those. But it does tend to alienate people and they tend to go to like APMG or something. So.

[Nova]

Yeah, I mean, most consultants don't get to do battlefield executions. This is why we have such a difficult craft.

[Matt]

Follow me on my work day thing. And it's like I get the matcher. I shoot a guy in the back of the head, then maybe I think about where I want to go for lunch.

[Nova]

Hey, do you want. Does anyone want to get a ball? Should we go for balls?

[Matt]

So my partner told me a story about getting the train from London up to Glasgow and sitting opposite a guy who locked in for that journey with an Itzu Pokeball and season one of SAS Rogue Heroes. And I'm just like, for the whole journey. And I'm like, that's the guy, that's the protagonist of Britain. That's who it's all for.

[Nova]

You know, it's all for you. So the survey is sick. So one survey of just over one and a half thousand executives conducted this year by Forrester, who's like a very reputable research and advisory firm, show that 15% of respondents attributed profit margin rises due to AI over the last year. BCG, another battlefield execution type type consulting firm. That's kind of a battlefield. Capital Gun Ishman bcg. Thank you. Thank you.

[Matt]

Yeah, Capital Gun. That's wonderful.

[Nova]

Yeah, thank you again, do not have that idea yourself. Consulting firm BCG found that only 5% of just over 1250 executives surveyed saw any value from AI at all. Executives say they still believe AI will transform businesses. But for. Forrester says that companies are now planning to delay 25% of their planned AI spending by a year.

[Matt]

Which is the thing, right? Like a lot of this stuff is. Well, yeah, because as we know, AI is financed on and sort of the GPUs have lifespans of measurable in short numbers of years. Right. So this is all sort of like an industry that's lurching from one year to the next. And so this is hugely consequential. But also there's this thing with AI where it's always much easier to convince yourself that it's useful to someone else than it is to you. It's. It's just. I don't know, it's a cognitive bias thing. It's the same thing as like. Well, it's weird. Whenever I ask it about something I don't know about, it seems extremely knowledgeable. But whenever I ask it about something I know about, it just Makes up and lies.

[Nova]

I have the perfect stat for that. 87% of executives use it on the job conferred with. Compared to 27% of frontline employees. Yeah, exactly like, yeah, you have to be using.

[Matt]

This isn't to. Isn't to know about specific things, but when my job is management, then it all seems plausible to me.

[Guest]

Yeah, because you get. We get more time to dick around than the computer. Obviously you're going to be like, you know, you're obviously going to be like. The first thing you're going to put in is like, what if I was with Erica Koch? I want to see what that looks like, right? Well, what, what if she was staring at me so intensely with her.

[Matt]

This is. This is such a perfect, like, mind virus, right? Not to sort of adopt that terminology, but it's something that's like, so sort of targeted at managers, you know, at sort of people who don't need to know things, to people who are sort of like extraneous beyond the requ. Requirements for sort of like planning and administration. And it's just, I don't know, again, the purpose of the system is apparently what it does because the guy with a beard said that one time. And so the purpose of AI maybe is just to, I don't know, destroy civilization.

[Guest]

My theory about also why executives love it so much is because the way that these AI tools are sold are often just like, oh, it will make your job a lot easier to do all those tedious emails and stuff. You can just get the AI to do it. But if you step back a little bit, you can just ask a question. Why do we need to send the emails in the first place? Right?

[Matt]

This email could have been nothing.

[Guest]

Why do we need to do any of this? What is like. And you know, we've talked about this so many times in different ways, which is like the way in which these sort of corporate environments and industries, like, sort of set, like, create work in which, you know, to create people to actually, like, do the work that they themselves have created. Like, none of this is like, necessary. None of it kind of, you know, and especially like, as of late, like, most of this tends to sort of hinder any sort of productive work that's done, right? That's very basic knowledge. But my thinking is like, well, the executives know this as well and they fucking hate their jobs, right? So like going to them being like, hey, here is something where like all the annoying parts of your job, a machine can do it. And you just get to have like the title, right? You get to like have your swivel chair and you can swivel on your chair even more because the AI is going to do all those things that prevented you from spending an hour swiveling on your chat.

[Matt]

Well, you know why that is, right? It's because the thing we keep coming back to of elite overproduction, right? Like all of the stuff about like all of those, those TikToks about, like, you know, have a day at the office with me where I do kind of appreciably nothing. All of the jokes about, like adult dayc. Because we kind of like, as a kind of doomed liberal attempt at social mobility, we promised a bunch of people that sort of executive standard of living. And all of those people are already kind of definitionally kind of surplus to requirements, right? But even more so now until it just stacks up and stacks up and stacks up until you have a bunch of people with a lot of sort of managerial experience or a lot of advanced degrees who end up having to become podcasters.

[Nova]

And another thing to add to this fire here as well is, is that like Microsoft, even though it got an early lead selling AI to businesses because it just bundled it in, it bundled Copilot in with other stuff, which is what they love to do, they're concerned that the company's AI is not delivering on its promise to meaningfully automate anything with. Most large customers report that they just don't use it at all. Even if they're paying for it, they don't use it. It's just. Every important person agrees that it's necessary, but anyone doing anything agrees that it's completely useless. I have a train example here as well. And I mean all of this. Just take that together with one other fact, right, which is Oracle's leasing arrangements with the data centers that it works with, which sounds quite dry, but when we put. I'm going to put it this way.

[Matt]

Oh, is this one of the other sort of bombs under the industry then?

[Nova]

Yeah, 100%. This is.

[Matt]

It's just like built on like Jenga blocks made of suet.

[Nova]

Of C4.

[Matt]

I would say if I just put this kind of structural steel beam under this nice rigid souffle.

[Nova]

Perfect. Look, look, look. The souffle hasn't collapsed yet and it's delicious. Everyone loves it. So it should be a great building material. That's not just insightful, that's also thoughtful. So the thing is right now is that Oracle's. Oracle's relationships with its data centers are that they don't own data centers. What they do is a lot of the cases they've built up or they own some, but not tons. And they've built up their capacity by getting long leases and then subletting those long leases. They're we will working it. They have a wework relationship.

[Matt]

Oh, okay. It's financialized all the way down.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Guest]

So.

[Matt]

So what I'm looking at here, when I'm looking at the kind of AI bubble such as it is, is it's a million sort of short cons built on top of each other. Built on top of a souffle.

[Nova]

Yeah, because this is. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Customers renting AI chips from Oracles generally sign up for shorter term contracts than the leases that it has with data centers. 75% of its $523 billion of contracted revenue backlog is expected to be booked in the next 60 months. With Oracle effectively being paid for taking on leases on behalf of shorter term clients. Which is exactly what we work did. That was its whole thing is it just it wholesaled leases and then retailed them out. And that works and everything's growing.

[Matt]

If the infinite growth ever stops, Oracle, big company, important company, is left holding the bag for a lot of data centers full of useless GPUs.

[Nova]

And this is what I wanted to do is I wanted to basically take this segment and connect a bunch of this stuff together, which is that because the Reuters article doesn't connect these things together, just like the article about Oracle and its relationships to the data centers doesn't connect it back.

[Matt]

It's crazy how these things don't get connected together. Almost as if you did connect these things together too loudly, someone might notice. And then Wile E. Coyote looks down and sees he's already gone over the cliff.

[Nova]

Yeah. So, for example, right, If Oracle has half a trillion dollars of revenue that's supposed to come in in the next 60 or so months from data centers that it has taken on expensive LE anticipation of that revenue happening. But companies are delaying 25% of their planned AI spending. Right. By another year.

[Matt]

It's really funny to happen to a company named Oracle as well. Didn't see that one coming, did you?

[Nova]

Yeah, Again, this is one survey. That's one company. It's not saying that these things match.

[Matt]

Up perfectly, but we're not necessarily saying that, you know, AI is washed. It is though. And whenever that sort of gets noticed enough, that's. Ooh, that's gonna be really bad.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Guest]

I mean it may not be washed, it may be chopped, it may be unk.

[Nova]

Who Knows we finally automated being an unk.

[Matt]

I was prepping sprouts for an early Christmas dinner the other day, and I was unable to get the thought out of my head that things are often chopped and washed before they're serving. And so the Internet has ruined my brain. I look forward to death.

[Guest]

Yeah, when you go to a supermarket, my God, it's really hard, really hard. It's really hard to look at, like, labels without laughing.

[Matt]

Here's an example, by the way, finest chopped unks.

[Nova]

Here's an example of. God damn it, Chris.

[Matt]

I laughed at a fucking 6, 7 thing the other day. It's over for me.

[Guest]

Like, yeah, we're done, we're done.

[Nova]

I always liked you as the teacher being like, hey, kids, six, seven, let's talk about the World War II.

[Matt]

But the thing is, our role in this ecosystem of absolute garbage and nonsense, it seems, is to poison our brains so that you, the listener, with your Itzu pokeball and your sort of SAS rogue heroes that you're looking forward to, we suffer it for you. And then you pay us to experience that brain Ross, on your behalf, you know? Oh, that's kind of funny because we transform it into. We refine the sort of memes into sort of bits that are comprehensible for people in their 30s.

[Guest]

Rory Stewart and Alison Campbell are not going to do that for you.

[Matt]

That's true. That is true.

[Nova]

Roy Stewart has never said six' seven unless he's looking at something being weighed on a scale during his walk Afghanistan.

[Matt]

I have a question for you. If you said to Rory Stewart there is a meme called 6, 7 that has an associated, like, hand movement with it, and I'd like you to do the hand movement that you think is associated with that meme. What do you think he would come out with? Do you think he's hitting, like a fortnight, like, dance? Or do you think. Do you think he's got something else in there?

[Guest]

I think he's going to do. I think he's doing gunfingers.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah.

[Guest]

I don't know why, but I think he's doing gun fingers.

[Matt]

No, that's. That's solid. Big thumbs up.

[Nova]

Oh, no. I think he's doing the special secret handshake that he developed with Abdul Dostem. I think he's like, oh, yeah, Dostum and I used to do that all the time when I was visiting him as a friend. Not professionally. So I wanted to talk about this, though. It's a train example, right? We like a train example.

[Matt]

We do.

[Nova]

We do this is from Reuters again. So I'm done connecting all that other stuff together. This is back to Reuters. Jeremy Nielsen, general manager at North American railroad service provider Kando Rail, Rail and Terminals, said the company recently tested an AI chatbot for employees to study internal safety reports and training materials. But Kando ran into a surprising stumbling block. No model could consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly hundred page document that laid out safety standards for the industry. Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules, other times they invented new ones. AI researchers say that models often struggle to recall what happens in the middle of a long document. And it's like, okay, same, but I'm not being paid a trailer billion.

[Matt]

The other thing is we can prescribe you ADHD medications, right? Whereas the sort of AI solution is we have to make ram like impossibly expensive to consumers because we're buying all of it to just sort of throw loose at those data centers owned by Oracle in the hope that eventually, with enough of it, AI will be able to read 100 page document.

[Nova]

Yeah, we're trying to get AI on chapter books.

[Matt]

Yeah. Well, also it's because the AI's like sort of window of attention is quite small, but it's also. But it's not like persistent in that way because of the same thing. So you can't go back in the same way that you can. If I forget what happens in the middle of the Canadian Rail operating Rules, I can pull a copy of them out and go Back to page 55 and look up what I want to look up and still be on the same train of thought, so to speak, that I was on to start with. Whereas, you know, with AI, it can't do that. It can't hold all of that at once.

[Nova]

And the other thing is, you'll know if you've forgotten. Yeah, right.

[Matt]

Yeah. I will instinctively lie to be like, you should never touch the fifth rail. That very confidently and confidently.

[Nova]

Yeah, Rails one through four, touch away, fucking DJ on them. It doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

If you, if you feel tired, have a nap, just lie down, cross the rails, you know, make sure you get your neck on one of them so you get the neck support.

[Nova]

You know what, trains have brakes for a reason and people aren't really in a rush. So just feel free to lie down. Hey, you know what? A mustachioed man might practice some shibari with you while you're lying down on the rails. Yeah, that's what they called old Western shibari. Anyway, so Nielsen the general manager said, we thought it would be this easy button, but that's not. Just not what happened. Dutch technology investment group Process as one of its in house agents is meant to answer questions about its portfolio, similar to the group's data analysts on staff already do. Theoretically, an employee could ask how often a process backed food delivery firm was late to deliver sushi orders in Berlin last week. But the tool doesn't understand what neighborhoods are part of Berlin, what or what last week means or what's necessarily sushi said. And this is the best name award of the year. Euro Baynat guy called Euro.

[Matt]

Eurobaynat sounds like the name of a kind of like lib inflected combat formation in the early stages of the Ukraine war. It was like 100% software developers and it got wiped out by the Russians at Bakhmut.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah. So Euro, Mr. European Head of AI for Process.

[Matt]

I mean this is the thing makes me nostalgic for like an actual European employee because okay, they might, might not understand what last week means or what neighborhoods are part of Berlin because they're from a different part of Europe and also they're out of the office for three months. But that's again way preferable to something just being like Barcelona. Oh, that's part of. That's part of Berlin. It's part of Berlin, famously. So.

[Nova]

Huh. This AI sure does think a lot of stuff is part of Berlin. Oh, it's Grok. I see.

[Matt]

I get that last week will last for a thousand years.

[Nova]

So eurobaynet said people thought the AI was magic, but it's not magic.

[Matt]

Oh, we really wanted it to be magic. I am a serious businessman and I wanted the magic.

[Nova]

You know, I was hoping. Anyway, I wanted to talk now about a jarring change in tone.

[Matt]

Okay, let's talk about a bad stuff here.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah. Which is of course, oh, my knuckles. It's something that we haven't spoken about that much, but I think it's definitely worth talking about, which is of course at the moment in the UK there is a hunger strike going on in British prisons. These are people who have been arrested for either association with Palestine action or actions Palestine action took with either Elbit Systems or RAF Bryce Norton. And I would say, you know, that one of our. This is definitely, certainly the way we're treating the Palestinian Palestinians. And the Palestinian cause generally is a matter of ongoing national shame.

[Matt]

Yeah. But in particular this is how we are treating the bravest people. To attempt to sort of do anything about it extralegally, let's say, is to not just criminalize them, which is sort of expected. And so sort of, you know, I don't want to say fair game, because nothing about this is fair, but it's, you know, sort of part of the understood repercussions of doing that. But specifically tracing them as terrorists, which they aren't.

[Nova]

And in this case, there are now a number of. Number of. For example, Kesar Zura is a Palestine Action Action activist on hunger strike who's been hospitalized due to seriously deteriorating health to. To. Hoxha has been on remand for over a year. Her trial's not in April next year, and her bail keeps getting denied. And the families of people like Azura and Hoxha are warning that these, you know, young British citizens, again, it shouldn't matter if they're British citizens or not. But from the, from the legal perspective of who the liberal state considers to have rights. Right, that does matter.

[Matt]

Oh, not these people.

[Guest]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nova]

Oh, certainly not. Well, essentially die in prison on the basis that James Timson, who was, I thought, was supposed to be like the, the woke prison like leader. What happened to that promise that this guy was going to be like, oh, that sort of crazy, weird.

[Matt]

Does that say something about, like, the prison system, maybe? Oh, this thing.

[Nova]

Nah, couldn't. Couldn't possibly. Is basically saying no. Negotiating with any kind of hunger strike is of course going to be giving in to demands of terrorists or is going to be negotiating with prisoners or will be tantamount to special treatment.

[Matt]

The thing that sort of gets me about this isn't the, I mean, we'll talk about the kind of press reaction to this, but the one that really sort of like gets under my skin is the kind of performative bemusement, which is something that, you know, the British press has a great line in. I mean, it's something that it did to IRA hunger strikers back in the day, but very much of like, oh, these sort of privileged kids who are sort of attaching themselves to something that seemed trendy and a conflict thousands of thousands of miles away. And I don't see why anyone could possibly feel strongly about it. And it's like either you are sort of so cosseted that you haven't seen or have chosen not to see sort of like all of the sort of horrifying crimes that all of us have seen or, you know, about those, and you're just kind of lying, you know.

[Nova]

Yeah, of course. And, you know, it's that the, that's consistently. They'll say that I started doing this because I kept on seeing images of, you know, children being brutally murdered or I have family there or, you know, similar feelings. And again, it's, again, it's like, oh, why not start a petition or whatever, right? It's usual.

[Matt]

It's something that I think more broadly than this, I think is something that indicts our entire society. I mean, the whole just genocide has done, but this is sort of like an acute example of it in that not only do we sort of really try to punish empathy, but we really make a fetish of cruelty as well.

[Guest]

Right.

[Matt]

And really there's no daylight between, you know, James Timson sort of woke prisons minister and sort of like, I don't know, Stephen Miller. So in the sense that they're all on that same continuum of, well, this kind of empathy is something that's kind of impermissible all the way through to, well, the cruelty is good actually. And it feels to me like the kind of defining sort of moral question of our times is are you allowed to have empathy? Are you allowed to sort of not just sort of feel badly that the cruelty is happening, but actually attempt to like end it or at least fight it with whatever means you have available?

[Nova]

And how this is of course being reported on, right, is either, you know, like, as you say, you know, of bemusement or you know, the, the Times is running with a lot of the, a lot of the same stuff they, when they talk about, you know, the extinction rebellion campaigners, right, which is, oh, hunger strikers demand access to touch screen phones.

[Matt]

Let me just. One second. So I mean, if you want to get radicalized on that instantly, you just like, literally, you don't even have to go off of the Times website or sort of put down the copy of it you're holding. You just have to flip through to Life and Style and see any of the kind of like, I have a billion pounds a second to spend. What do I get? All of my horrible family who I hate articles, you know, or anything that tells you like, oh, you know, here' a winter edit of like phones you can buy or whatever to be like. I suspect that maybe the Times critique of these, these sort of prisoners as being like over privileged and oblivious is not coming from a wholly sincere place.

[Nova]

I literally just was like, hey, I wonder if there's something on the Times Life and Style section we can use to illustrate this point. Want to customize your Lamborghini with diamond dust? Here's how to do it.

[Matt]

Wow. I mean, I should be, why not?

[Guest]

But it's something I do want to do.

[Nova]

Yeah, true.

[Guest]

So thank you. So thank you for asking the question.

[Matt]

As opposed to what was it? Hunger strikers demand access to touchscreen phones, which is basically just like the kind of phone that you use now.

[Guest]

It is basically, it is the phone because it is the only phone you can use.

[Matt]

Yeah, it's kind of like I would sort of believe that the prison service and sort of like the government in a sort of fit of performativity would be like, oh, you're in prison for sort of terrorist defenses there. All you get is this like old rotary phone from the 1960s. Good luck texting your WhatsApp groups on that.

[Guest]

Yeah. And then when they do end up doing it, it's like prisoners demand like tactile phone or something. Like, it's a real. It's one of those things where it's really, really hard not to kind of lose your mind at what is like a very obvious and very transparent way of like. I mean, what's very obvious is like the concerted effort. Because this is, to me, this isn't just about ignorance. It's not just about, like, pretending that it doesn't exist. It's also about using the apparatus of. And the media to, like, further break these people right. To like, you know, there's this whole, like, the campaigns are kind of going around are just like, you know, if something doesn't happen soon, like, you know, the hungers, like some of the hunger strikers, like, may die. And, you know, the UK government is ignoring it. And my thinking is, well, no actions, but not ignoring it. They would very much like this to happen because we are aware of, like, their appetite for, like, punitive punishment, particularly punitive punishment for any sort of perceived, you know, dissent, especially for young people.

[Matt]

Right.

[Guest]

And especially for. And especially for young people, especially for young non white people, especially for young leftists. Like, this is very much like, you know, I would not be surprised if there were sort of hushed conversations about how this would kind of show that they're like a tough government that are willing to crack on, crack, crack down, both on criminals and on antisemitism. Like, it feels like it's one of those things where the ignorance kind of really, at least in their kind of version of things. I don't know whether or whether it will happen in real life. I do. Like, I do think there is this part of me that does wonder, like, are they going to sort of, if one of them does, if one of them like dies. And I hope none of them do. I hope, like, you know, you know, full solidarity of them and everything. But if one of them dies, I do wonder whether any sort of sense of, like, oh, this will play well with, like, this imaginary base that hate us and actually will kind of. You know, I wonder if we kind of like, implicitly kill someone, whether, like, this will sort of show that, like, our kind of crackdowns on whatever sort of crime that we're kind of presenting will work. Actually, I don't think that's true. I do. I do think nothing is ever enough. Well, it will be this mixture of, like, it was never enough, but. But also just like, you know, I imagine some voters who are kind of. Some of like, some of their very lukewarm supporters might just draw a line on, like, killing someone.

[Matt]

You know, you'd like.

[Guest]

They might just be like, look, I could. I can. Like, yeah, and then this is it. So it's sort of broadly speculation, but, like, even if you think about it logically, it's like, whatever happens, like, you are fucked, right? You are completely fucked. And so, like, on a political level, this doesn't really make much sense. And so my. My conclusion then is I can only draw to. Is like, no, they just want this to happen because they would want. They want these people to die. And, you know, I think it's kind of. I think the other aspect of, like, what's. What seems to be very interesting as like, a broader kind of cultural moment is also like, the place that hunger has, like, politics and culture generally. Like, so you have, like, hunger strikers who are putting them, you know, who are sort of like, on the brink of death, like, having not eaten for, like, such a historic, like, long amount of time. And a government that is either. Is like, pretending to either like, just not see it or to kind of be like, well, actually, like, you know, our responsibility is just to sort of give them food. We don't have to engage with them. If they don't want to eat the food, then, like, you know, it's their responsibility to kind of like, manage their bodies. But also a government that is very much like, is pushing, you know, weight loss medication, possibly on the basis of like, oh, like, you know, people who are. Who are like, above a certain BMI are burdens to the state and therefore, like, their choices even to, like, take this drug with side effects that, like, we don't.

[Nova]

We all.

[Guest]

We're not quite sure of just yet or, like, you know, to die. Right. But it does kind of feel as if it's like we had this line where it's like, you know, there were certain kind of points where it was like, well, once you sort of let this happen, like you open the gates of hell and there's not really any kind of turning back from that. And like hunger, like death from starvation and hunger was like one of them. And now it does definitely does feel like, okay, well, not only is like a permanent sense of hunger like very much embedded into the political culture of this country, but it's something that actually like the state will either like encourage people to do or will kind of admonish responsibility from.

[Nova]

I mean, going on. I mean there's obviously been a great deal of writing about this. I mean the, the Telegraph and the Times sort of and GB News and Rest are leading the, the David Lammy position, which is this is from Nicole Lampert in the Telegraph, which is if Mariella Frostup and Greta Thunberg truly cared about the hunger strikers, they would do them the courtesy of simply telling the truth. You should just eat. Nothing you do will make a difference. It feels similar to those pro Palestine advocates who keep pushing for more resistance.

[Matt]

That's so self incriminating, right? Of like, you must share my nihilism, right? Like, because, because I experience your, your outrage, your sense that this is intolerable as a personal insult to me who is, you know, like if you can, if you can do something, then that means that I'm choosing not to do something. And, and that really kind of assaults my feeling that nothing can be done by anyone, which is the point of doing this. Right. Like it's, you can say that this is like emotional blackmail, right? Because it is. And the reason why it works, the reason why it's worth doing is because something shameful is being done. Like it's, it is meant to be shame people. And I think there's a recurring pattern in this country of the media and politicians in particular, but a whole lot of people otherwise. And to an extent this indicts all of us really never feeling like we should ever be allowed to feel shamed for anything that we do and responding to that with this kind of again, very performative cruelty and nihilism of like, well, it doesn't matter what I think. You know, would that we lived in a perfect world, but ultimately there's, there's kind of, there's nothing we can do. I can't, I can't stop the thing from happening. It's like, well, maybe not, but your, your sort of choice of response is still a moral one, right? And, and the response that you're choosing is to go, it's tough, I guess.

[Nova]

Yeah. Or in this case Lampert's view is like, oh, it's, it's regrettable that so there's so much violence, but you know, it's, you know, it's. Israel obviously must defend itself, etc. Etc. Etc. You shouldn't have. And even if you do have empathy, it have some kind of empathy or even if you do want to force someone like David Lammy to try to feel shame, it's very hard. Or if you want to, if you want to force the sort of commentariat, the politicians who push this agenda to feel shame. Right. This is, as you say, nova. This is what hunger strikes are for. Then you, who does have this kind of empathy, which we want to make into a sin, we should feel shame for having the empathy. Don't even bother. Don't even bother.

[Matt]

I mean, listen, listen, what is, I ask you this. What does offering yourself as a kind of, as you know, sacrifice to suffer immensely, to kind of take on and reflect the injustice of the world have to do with the spirit of Christmas?

[Nova]

Well, you know, I certainly couldn't think of it.

[Matt]

No, no, I think it's more to do with this kind of diamond Lamborghini thing. Right.

[Nova]

Well, it's the Coca Cola advertisement, you know, with the Santa. Lampert goes on to write the outlandish demands, these hunger strikers, which include being given bail, which again, that's not outlandish.

[Matt]

No, it's a pretty normal demand, like.

[Nova]

The de Prescription of Palestine action that also is like, that's currently working its way through the courts.

[Matt]

Right.

[Nova]

I wouldn't think that's outlandish. Now she's of course saying, right, well, if the British government were to give in to this sort of blackmail every time they had someone in prison, there would be even more dangerous people walking our streets. Which basically sort of also says, well, everyone who breaks the law is a criminal, which is a type of person who is the same. So of course, like, I don't know any, anyone in jail could in theory go on hunger strike to like decriminalize. Fucking robbing a bank.

[Matt]

I guess at this rate we might have to empathize with like other criminals.

[Nova]

Wait for Tom.

[Matt]

Jesus, can you imagine that?

[Nova]

Oh yeah. And perishing.

[Matt]

You might have to empathize with people who, you know, aren't actually right about political cause and instead might have done bad things. And God only knows where that would lead us. You're only supposed to empathize with people doing bad things when they're wearing IDF uniforms.

[Nova]

These are the heartstrings these hunger strikers are attempting to yank on. But the British public doesn't have much empathy for a group such as Palestine Action.

[Matt]

You could have just stopped that sentence at empathy, I think.

[Nova]

Yeah. And even still, it's like the prescription is, remains relatively unpopular as I'm given to understand it.

[Matt]

Yeah. And it is, it is obviously farcical. Right. Like, and like this thing is also in the courts. So, you know, it kind of limits what we can say about it. But for a long time we had ministers being like, oh, once you find out what they did, once you find out what they did, you're going to be, you're going to be thinking very differently about prescribing Palestine Action. And then what they are alleged, alleged to have done. And this is, you know, still, you know, the trial is still ongoing for this is one of them hit a cop in the back with a hammer. That's terrible. Big frowny face. Obviously that's bad. Right. I sort of, I disavow, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think I've seen worse things than that about five times a day, every day for months, just like on social media, like. So that's my kind of perspective on it as a, as a kind of moral question. So that didn't change how I felt about the prescription. And it still doesn't even had they convicted anyone for that, which they haven't.

[Nova]

Yet, you know, so this, this, this idea that, you know, you could, I guess you can. I don't know how to, what to make of this. Whether this is, you know, there's the like political and media class trying to put some toothpaste back into a tube or whether this is just, you know, the, the sort of almost reflexive derision for displacement.

[Matt]

I think this is all a kind of, of subconscious sort of impulse because the point of, of a hunger strike is to kind of like prick the conscience. And I think if there is a conscience in there, then you have this kind of autonomic sort of jerk back reflex of like phones, touchscreen phones.

[Nova]

Yeah, well, it's a little bit, I take it all the way back to Tom Skinner. It's a little, it's a little bit like, you know, everyone didn't vote for me because they're all. Just because the British public is discriminatory against apolitical conservatives. You know, you can't be a white man anymore.

[Matt]

And it's like, surely, surely there's a white man to triangulate and be a moderate centrist. On this, which is that we offer the Palestine Action hunger strikers the welcome pack that Tom Skinner would have got on Strictly Come Dancing.

[Nova]

So to conclude Lampert's article, she says instead of egging on this dangerous martyrdom, the most empathetic of their supporters, the ones who think they're good people, should now be demanding that they stop putting themselves in danger and just eat.

[Matt]

So again, what does this have to do with the spirit of Christmas?

[Nova]

Yeah, I don't know. Stockings maybe?

[Matt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest]

But there is also like this kind of very like one thing that's very evident from what it sounds like also is like if some, if like one of them were to die, if something really bad were to happen, and again, like, you know, I hope not. I really, really hope not. But if something were to happen, they'd have to reckon with like kind of being participant, like being a participant in someone's death. Right. I think like the whole point about like the discouragement of empathy is such an important one because it, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is that like it does kind of feel like again we're like political cult culture is currently at is one that sort of discourages empathy because it then does require you to sort of ask deeper questions and follow up questions to like what is happening and for these guys is like their job is not to do that. Their job is to sort of like tell you either the sasquo is fine or that like in order for the sasquatch to be fine, things need to be crawler. And well, like, and this is it because like, well, you know, you've imprisoned these activists, you've imprisoned Palestine Action. Like, you know, the envisioning that you have is that like they're going to have such a horrible time in prison but like, you know, you can get some sad satisfaction from their misery. But what they've done, what the Palestine Action guys have done is put themselves through something so much worse. And it's not to sort of say that this is like a political action or one that is strategic. I can't really speak to that and nor do I want to. But what is very interesting is like, oh, this is what happens when the cruelty that is being administered, when they don't administer the cruelty, there is a sort of sense of like, oh, we don't want them to starve to death. Not because they don't want them to starve to death, but it's because I imagine mer thing is like no, we do want you to starve to death, but we we want to be the one that enforces the starvation. And the fact that you're doing this by your own sort of will, by your own sense of agency is a real disruption to the moral calculations that I have made in my head. To say that you should die of starvation, but you shouldn't die of starvation in a way where you get the agency.

[Matt]

Yeah. I think the point you made about being responsible for their deaths is a really important one because I think part of the shaming function, function of a hunger strike, right. Is to.

[Guest]

It's also not something. Yeah, sorry, I was just going to say it's also something that they're not going to accept because again, it's very much just like, you know, the fact that like media is still referring to like the breaking of, breaking in of like Albert Systems is like attacks on Jewish businesses and stuff. Right? Like this real, like this real sort of like deeply, deeply insulting stuff that is also factually incorrect. Yeah. And you know, but also like the point being made is also just like, well, once you start to ask the follow up question, I, hey, what business was sabotaged and how was it sabotaged and why did they target that place? And like what is their sort of thinking behind this? You end up having to sort of reach the conclusion that they've already reached and we've already reached as well, which is like, yes, the British state is involved in facilitating war crimes and sometimes and in some cases directly kind of administering them, concealing it and punishing people who make that point or try to stop it. Right. And then by extension, if you are supporting this of kind government, then you are also a participant in that.

[Matt]

But I mean, so just to come back to what I was saying, I think the sort of shaming function of a hunger strike, right. Is partially to sort of indict, as in put on trial the whole system for. Okay, well, you kind of clearly are comfortable with the idea that Palestinians being killed in Palestine don't matter and aren't sort of like, you know, anything for you to feel sort of concerned about. What about like the death of a British person in Britain written on the basis of the same kind of cause. Right. Is that something that you, is that a responsibility that you're sort of as eager to deny to which I don't know the answer? You know, the point of doing this is to find out. I suppose.

[Nova]

Yeah. And I mean this is obviously something that is going to be going on for a while because clearly there's no one in government is willing to sort of see what's going on is willing to sort of.

[Matt]

I have to give her her roses. As much as the. The sort of your Parsi stuff has been a disaster. This is something that Zahra Sultan has been very good on. Is the kind of on the ground organizing about this.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Guest]

Well.

[Nova]

And again, just trying to say, hey, this. Trying to make that prick of shame unavoidable, you know. Right. There is, I suppose it's a bit of a down message to leave the year on, that that's all that there really is. Right. Is can you make David Lammy ashamed enough that he will say, no, we won't participate? You know, and I'm not counting the sort of fake statements of we won't participate. That's like, oh, we've suspended like some percent of the arms import license and so on.

[Matt]

You want to kind of button to end the year on. Right. That we are looking at a sort of world of sort of injustice and horror everywhere, all over stuff we didn't get the time to talk about. I mean, like, you name it, whether it's Palestine, whether it's any of the turf shit, whether it's any of the migration shit, whether it's Ukraine, whatever it is. Right. I think there is a lot to be depressed about, but if you're going to try and find meaning in it, then it's going to have to be in your own kind of moral and practical response to these things. Right. Like, and I sort of am hopeful in the sort of idea that, you know, courage calls to courage or whatever. Right. Like there are. There are people who organize against these things and there always will be. And it's just, I don't know, it sort of. It requires your involvement. If nothing else, it requires you to feel empathy. And that is something I think you have to absolutely treasure. Because. Because right now there are a lot of people in power who really want to take that away from you.

[Nova]

Well, I think that's. That's probably the note I think I'm going to suggest we end the year on. So a little bit of housekeeping before we go. The next couple of weeks we're going to be doing is we're going to be unlocking stuff from the 10 to the $5 tier, from the $5 tier to the free tier. And then we're going to publish a new Left Unread, which Nova and I have recorded. It is actually recorded. We're no longer promising.

[Matt]

We read a book. We read a book. I promise.

[Guest]

Yep.

[Nova]

We finally read a goddamn book. Okay.

[Matt]

It did have pictures, but the pictures.

[Nova]

So, yeah, the pictures are good. We did interview the author, who is our good friend Matty Lipchansky. So look. But we did it. And so that's going to be going up. So basically that's what's going to what, what it's going to be for the next little while. And then normal service will resume, I want to say, on probably January 5th. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

So this sounds about right. So you're going to get sort of Christmas and New Year covered.

[Nova]

Yeah, exactly. So. But also I want to say not just to my co host, but to our, our listeners out there, our producer. Everybody, thank you very much for another. Another year of certainly having its ups and downs.

[Matt]

Absolutely. It makes, it makes the horrors bearable. Sometimes I worry that, like, all it does is make the horrors bearable, but it does make the horrors bearable. So thank you.

[Nova]

And you know, obviously it's a, it's a privilege to get to do this as a.

[Matt]

As a job for all of you immensely.

[Nova]

So thank you.

[Guest]

Thank you so much.

[Nova]

Thank you for a wonderful, terrible year. And here's to 2026. God knows how, but being less wonderful, terrible, a little less good, bad and more just good good.

[Matt]

Hey, listen, the only, the only way out is through. You know, it's like. It's like the BR poem, All of us or none.

[Nova]

Yeah. So with that in mind, thank you very much for this year and we will see you, and we will see you in again in a couple of weeks, but you're going to have different versions of us unlocked all kinds of things. So you're going to have more of us. Don't worry about it. All right. All right. So happy holidays, happy New Year and we'll see you soon. Bye, everyone.

[Matt]

Bye.

[Guest]

Bye.

[Nova]

That's life, that's life. That's what all the people say. You're riding high in April Shut down.

[Matt]

In May But I know I'm gonna.

[Nova]

Change that tune when I'm back on top Back on top of June.