It used to seem like a joke — a prank — to get A.I. talking to A.I.

But these days:

"Students are writing essays with ChatGPT, and teachers are using A.I. to grade them. Workers are sending lengthy A.I.-generated emails to colleagues, who are responding with walls of chatbot text of their own. A.I podcast hosts are holding forth with A.I. podcast guests on topics like gas prices, the Iran war — and artificial intelligence.... In March, Meta acquired a social network designed for bots to talk to one another.... There was a telecom executive who had noticed customers sending A.I. voice agents to argue with his company’s A.I. customer service system. There was a man who used a chatbot to draft messages on a dating app to a woman who seemed to be doing the exact same thing...."

From "Chatbots Are Pushing Us Toward a Post-Human Internet/In matters of work, school and even romance, we turn to A.I. chatbots. But what happens when the bots begin talking to one another?" (NYT gift link).

"Given all the lovemaking, it’s remarkable any of them had time for painting or poetry. But each activity reinforced the next, sex flowing into art..."

"... art turning into sex, all of it transforming what was ostensibly a holiday by the sea among friends into a frenzy of erotic and creative expression — an outpouring that, as Europe girded for war, acquired a rebellious political charge. 'It’s as if the group were thumbing their noses at fascism,' Thomasson writes, their lives and work serving as a 'manifesto for an alternative world to the one that was coming into being.'"

From "Sex and Surrealism on the French Riviera/A group of artists gathered at a hotel on the Côte d’Azur in 1937. A new book by Anna Thomasson captures the art and escapades the holiday inspired" (NYT).

I'm skeptical... but envious.

Is the book readable? Sample text: "We get a powerful sense of physicality. Of bodies, of limbs and breasts and bottoms and penises, alone or entwined, still or in action. We feel the warm sun and salt water on bare skin and sand between toes, intimacy and proximity and responsiveness and desire." It's really hard to write about sex! Actually, that writing reminds me of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep." It goes on and on about how everything looks and feels and smells and sounds. 

"So, what I notice when you talk with people is you seem like a tough guy, but you're really sensitive."

"You're an incredible listener, obviously. You learn all these things and you're putting together—this is my impression—a kind of map of the world, a map of knowledge through all these different people's eyes. My question for you is: how do you see culture shifting? Because I think you're really sensitive to it, and you're kind of like one of these signal fish—you notice what's happening in the environment and you're going to guide the school of fish accordingly. Do you think the culture is shifting toward better use of these exceptional — or natural — capacities that we already have, or do you think we're shifting away from it and we're going to run away in fear?"

Says Julia Mossbridge, a cognitive neuroscientist, beginning her interview with Joe Rogan by asking him a question.

Rogan gives a good answer:

"[I]t has become nearly impossible to attend a Democratic political event without encountering a 'creator hour,' an influencer briefing or a lineup of one-on-one interviews with Substackers and independent podcasters...."

"Are Democrats on par with Republicans in the digital media space? Not yet. The gap remains wide, according to audience numbers and interviews with creators and strategists. Republicans dismiss their efforts as phony. 'What they need to stop doing is trying to copy our homework and go invent something of their own,' said CJ Pearson, a conservative influencer and podcast host. 'If they do that, it’ll be a lot more authentic than whatever they’re doing right now.'... But even the friendly confines of liberal media can turn hostile. Creators who bring strong political opinions to interviews sometimes push Democrats harder than expected, said Kyle Tharp, author of a newsletter about politics and online influence.... Tharp predicted the creator class will wield even more power in the 2028 presidential campaign. 'Some of these campaigns are going to be handing them a bag of cash for an endorsement,' he said. 'People are really going to want some of these major Democratic talkers’ endorsements in the next campaign.'"

From "How Democrats are building their own digital media army/The 2024 election spurred Democrats to seek out podcasts and social media creators to spread their message and catch up with their Republican counterparts" (WaPo)(free link).

I'm suddenly remembering the "Authenticity" trend that seems to have peaked last August.

I think good social media emerges organically. Ask Joe Rogan. These top-down efforts are not going to produce the right influencer/influencee relationship. And I've been watching the Democratic Party try to do this since the 2004 campaign, when it coddled bloggers.

Marc Maron's last podcast.

More than a decade ago, I sat down with @MarcMaron in his garage to tape something new called a podcast. This time, he came to me to record his last episode.

We talked about the power of conviction, decency in an age of division, and the true story of America. I’ll miss Marc’s… pic.twitter.com/kM3sAgtjF0

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 13, 2025

Podscribe has the full transcript with audio, so you can poke around looking for something of interest. 

For Maron's end-of-podcast thoughts, you need to listen to the second-to-last episode, here. This is his real sign off:

"I don’t have the ability to watch the entire thing through, but I do my glance downs if I hear something funny. It’s passive a little bit."

Said Zoë McDermott, "a 31-year-old title insurance producer from Pennsylvania, who said she streams video of Theo Von’s show on her phone while she works."

Quoted in "Who Is Watching All These Podcasts? An audio-only medium spawned a giant industry that is now largely focused on video" (NYT).

McDermott's approach describes what might be 30% of those who play the video version of podcasts. That leaves 70% actually watching what offers very little visually. What's up with these people? We're talking about shows that can be 4 or 5 hours long and just 2 people sitting around talking.

McDermott explains using the video: "It feels a little more personal, like somebody is there with you. I live alone with my two cats and I’m kind of in a rural area in Pennsylvania, so it’s just a little bit of company almost." Presumably, she gets that psychic need met without actually looking most of the time, just know that she can, when so moved, do a little "glance down."

But to sit there staring at it the whole time — why? The article doesn't answer that question.

"I am very happy to be a counterpoint to the current manosphere. We’ve forgotten about philosophical and spiritual wisdom. Go back and check it out — Yoda is the strongest person in 'Star Wars.' Have we forgotten the lessons of Mr. Miyagi?"

Said Steve Burns, quoted in "Can Steve From ‘Blue’s Clues’ be a ‘Counterweight’ to the Manosphere? The beloved children’s star is starting a podcast for adults. He hopes for thoughtful conversations and a lot of listening" (NYT).

I think Burns is a sweet and calming presence, the way he pauses as if he's in a personal conversation with the viewer on the other side of the screen. That's been the stuff of children's shows since the 1950s, the illusion that the person on the screen is seeing me. I remember "Romper Room":

But the NYT dream of somebody on their side to counteract the "manosphere"? It's just sad to continually display the neediness for someone to help you defeat Joe Rogan... a man who was on your side and is still trying to be on your side.

"But yeah, all of a sudden, you know, you're old and you realize you've been doing something a long time."

"And this started, you know, the old garage, the, you know, just no one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me. Brendan McDonald, my producer... and I started this thing.... And it, it slowly evolved into the show. That became what you listened to twice a week, 16 years we've been doing this, and we've decided that we, we had a, a great run. And, and now basically it's, it's time, folks. It's time. WTF is is coming to an end, and it's our decision. We will have our final episode sometime in the fall. It was not some kind of difficult decision necessarily.... And, you know, God forbid we just keep plowing along and, and something diminishes. And we wouldn't wanna just keep plugging along because we can, at the risk of our burnout or our our sort of like, you know, passion, you know, starts to, to drift or it starts to get sloppy. We're just, we're just not those kind of people...."

Said Marc Maron, at the beginning of the new episode of his "WTF" podcast.

"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

"I was open to the idea behind Gavin Newsom’s new podcast, in which the California governor has been breaking out of his political bubble..."

"... to talk at length with right-wing media stars such as Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. Democrats need to get better at speaking to people who don’t share their assumptions and at long-form conversations requiring improvisation and spontaneity.... Trying to leverage Kirk and Bannon’s notoriety to reach new audiences could have been an interesting experiment. Instead, it’s a protracted exercise in self-harm for both Newsom and any liberal who decides to listen to him. That’s because the governor frequently seems less interested in arguing than in finding common ground, assuming the good faith of people who have next to none. He leaves wild right-wing claims unchallenged and repeatedly concedes Republican premises. When Bannon described rebuilding his movement after what he claimed was the stolen 2020 election, Newsom’s response was, 'Well, I appreciate the notion of agency.'"

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "What on Earth Is Gavin Newsom Doing?" (NYT).

"But now a USC film professor says that he plays My Dinner with Andre for his undergrad classes, and his 19 year old students love it because it seems contemporary to them."

"It can be hard for them to watch old-fashioned films with characters and plots like Atlantic City or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but two fellows shooting the breeze for two hours is so 2025!"

Steve Sailer likens "My Dinner with Andre" to "The Joe Rogan Experience," in "The Film of the Future: 'My Dinner with Andre'/Who knew in 1981 that in 2025 the dominant form of entertainment would be dudes sitting around talking about far-out stuff?"

Thanks to everyone who emailed me this link. A lot of people know that "My Dinner with Andre" is my favorite movie. It's been my favorite movie since I first saw it, in a movie theater in 1981, long before before podcasting got off the ground. "The Joe Rogan Experience" began in 2009. I love "The Joe Rogan Experience," which might seem odd — I'm a 74-year-old female — but it's not at all odd that I fell in love with "My Dinner with Andre" when I was 30, so it all makes more sense now. Like those 19-year-old students, I too find it hard to watch "old-fashioned films with characters and plots." 

"Maybe God doesn't speak to us because we would (in our weakness) find Him boring."

That's the 4th prompt I gave to Grok just now. The first 3 were:

1. Summarize this article

I gave a link to the NYT article "Can God Speak to Us Through A.I.? Modern religious leaders are experimenting with A.I. just as earlier generations examined radio, television and the internet." 

2. Give me a one sentence answer to the question posed in the headline

3. So the article is incredibly boring compared to the headline

That reminds me. Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "Boredom is the root of all evil — the despairing refusal to be oneself." Blogged here in 2006.

Maybe you're one of those people who cue up "The Bible in a Year" podcast and listen to "Day 1: In the Beginning" on New Year's Day. If so, you've just listened to the story of creation and the interpretation that God "wasn't lonely":

"Trump’s Win Leaves Democrats Asking: Where Are Our Bro Whisperers?"

That's a headline at the NYT. Subhead: "Democrats have widely acknowledged that they have no answer for the online ecosystem of conservative influencers popular with Gen Z men. Some have argued for a rethink of media strategy."

Celebrity appearances and paid endorsements from influencers come across as transactional and inauthentic, [some younger Democrats] said.

“It’s last-second, ‘Let’s get Beyoncé onstage to say we support women,’ but that doesn’t move anyone who wasn’t already going to vote Democrat,” said Ayem Kpenkaan, a liberal content creator.... He suggested that Democrats needed liberal versions of media platforms that are culturally right-leaning but not inherently political — like Barstool Sports....

“We have to make entertaining, engaging content that men want to watch and care about,” Mr. Kpenkaan said. “Then, over time, you pepper in more progressive views.”

So... make something authentic, then pepper in the political propaganda. How distasteful. 

Re "Let’s get Beyoncé onstage to say we support women": 

"What happens on this show is so much more intelligent and thoughtful and deep than anything that's going on at CNN."

"You just can't... tell me that you sitting down with Elon Musk for 3 hours and then compare that to like Wolf Blitzer with all his graphics behind him talking for 30 seconds before he goes to a pharmaceutical commercial and then coming back and having the dumbest left winger yell at the dumbest right winger. Really? And you guys are going to act like you're the grownups in the room? It's just, it's too ridiculous.... So the entire young generation has, they've all turned that off.... None of them are getting their news from from CNN anymore. And look man, that's I think the most beautiful part of this election is that mainstream media's dead.... I don't think [CNN has] a show that regularly cracks a million views....."

Said Dave Smith to Joe Rogan (actually the words "mainstream media's dead" are inserted by Joe):

Compare this bit from the NYT "Daily" podcast this morning. The episode is "Inside Trump World as the Next Chapter Begins." Jonathan Swan says:

"The news media in the eyes of many Americans is discredited. More than half the country have tuned out the mainstream media. We are now in little information silos, so it's almost impossible to overstate how much Donald Trump has defeated the system and how favorable the current composition of the system is for Donald Trump."

Did Swan even consider that mainstream media could be the "little information silos" and people are breaking out?

"The hosts seem to pride themselves on making [the podcast] 'Advisory Opinions' a venue for 'abject legal nerdery,' separate from partisan politics..."

"When the Colorado Supreme Court issued a ruling, in December, that blocked Trump from the Republican primary ballot, [Sarah] Isgur and [David] French convened an 'emergency pod' to discuss the case. French argued that the court was probably correct to disqualify Trump, in light of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that former officeholders who have 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' after taking an oath of office are ineligible to serve. Isgur, by contrast, was wary. 'The whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to strip the states of power, because they had, y’know, not behaved well,' she said—the Amendment was ratified three years after the end of the Civil War. 'So the idea that we then empowered each state to decide who’s qualified to be on the ballot seems insane to me.' But both were dismayed by the idea that Republicans might be able to retaliate by disqualifying Biden, perhaps by claiming that he had failed to protect the country from invading immigrants. 'Give me an effing break,' French said during a recent episode, coming about as close as he ever does to cursing. Isgur reacted as if she had just unwrapped a thoughtful birthday gift. 'Wow,' she said. 'I got an "effing" from David!'"

Writes Kelefa Sanneh, in "Sarah Isgur’s Majority Report/On 'Advisory Opinions,' the lawyer and former Trump Administration spokesperson argues that the Supreme Court is good, even—or especially—in its current incarnation" (The New Yorker).

I have a tag already for David French. He's a NYT columnist. I'll make a tag for Sarah Isgur. I hadn't noticed her until this New Yorker profile came out, and now I've listened to a podcast and a half, and I intend to keep listening. Nice work! Listen to them here.

If not for homophobia, we could have had Utopia... through LSD.

I'm reading "Could LSD Have Achieved World Peace? Ask Margaret Mead. In 'Tripping on Utopia,' Benjamin Breen chronicles the legendary anthropologist’s doomed effort to save the world through hallucinogens" (NYT).

Here's the book: "TRIPPING ON UTOPIA: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science" (commission earned).

The the reviewer, Charlotte Shane, writes:

"In January 2022, Dr. Kershnar appeared on a respected philosophy podcast, Brain in a Vat.... The guest presents a thought experiment..."

"... and the hosts spend the rest of the episode questioning the guest about it. Dr. Kershnar’s thought experiment was... 'Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl; imagine that she’s a willing participant... A very standard, a very widely held view is there’s something deeply wrong about this. And it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that is, in fact, wrong....'... Dr. Kershnar is a 'Socratic gadfly' who goes around questioning fundamental assumptions, often quite annoyingly, to try to get at a clearer understanding of morality and why something is or is not wrong.... After LibsofTikTok posted clips of Dr. Kershnar’s podcast remarks on X..., the university was immediately deluged with demands for action.... Alumni threatened to stop giving money.... [T]he university received what officials described as threats of violence...."

From "A Professor’s Remarks on Sexual Consent Stir Controversy. Now He’s Banned From Campus. Stephen Kershnar, who teaches philosophy, is suing for the right to return to SUNY at Fredonia. The university defends its ban as necessary for safety" (NYT).

"For some people, podcasts offer constant companionship. Is around-the-clock audio a rude habit or a neurological necessity?"

I'm reading "Meet the people who listen to podcasts 24/7" (WaPo).

Some say amid what authorities are calling a national loneliness crisis, podcasts take the place of casual chatter with friends, or at least mimic the feeling.... For others, the distraction is the point. Praise Tolbert, a full-time mom in Florida, uses podcasts to combat intrusive thoughts, a difficult symptom of her bipolar disorder, the 26-year-old said. She leaves one AirPod in her ear all day long.... At night, she plays the podcast out loud on her phone while she sleeps....

Jordan Peterson and Vivek Ramaswami talk about attention span.

This is extraordinarily insightful:

Peterson observes that the idea that attention spans are shrinking fails to account for the widespread consumption of audiobooks and very long podcasts. Ramaswamy first responds by speculating that there's a kind of "low-level dyslexia," and most people are a little slower reading than listening, and that means they are really capable of absorbing more complex material than they're willing or able to read.

Ramaswamy immediately posits a second theory: There's a hunger for "human connectivity," and people want a "disintermediated relationship" that they get from hearing the voice of the person who is generating ideas. Peterson jumps on that: It's why unscripted podcasts work so well. Peterson says books can go deeper, but it's easier to deceive people with a book. You can "craft your lies." But with a podcast, you get spontaneity, tone, and demeanor. People experience Joe Rogan as "genuine." "It's the antithesis of the crafted Hillary-Clinton political-class message." It's why Donald Trump was so successful. 

I'm just summarizing (as the presence of Abraham Lincoln in my tags hints), and the conversation continues. I haven't set an end point. You'll see how long your attention span reaches.

"He starts way back at the very beginning—Episode 164, on the Velvet Underground, for instance, opens with John Cage going door to door in Santa Monica..."

"... offering to sell housewives lessons in music and art appreciation. Hickey plays no interviews—it’s just his research, painstakingly arranged to make a point. At first, these essays were of manageable length—half an hour for Episode 4, discussing 'Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,' by Louis Jordan. ('In the nineteen-forties and early fifties, the train still meant freedom, still meant escape, and even once that had vanished from people’s minds it was still enshrined in the chug of the backbeat, in the choo choo ch’boogie.') But the transcript of even that episode is four thousand words long, which, multiplied by five hundred, would give you two million words of content, and would best Gibbon by half a million. (Winston Churchill’s six-volume history of the Second World War clocks in at around 1.25 million words; the Bible barely hits three quarters of a million.) And, in any event, Hickey’s ability to control his material has begun to gloriously unravel as he has proceeded. A recent episode—No. 165—is devoted to 'Dark Star,' by the Grateful Dead, and it clocks in at well over four hours and 38,458 words. At this pace, Hickey will eclipse every literary project in history; the current plan is to reach the five hundredth song sometime late in this decade, but that presupposes he can keep writing what amounts to a book every fortnight or so. We shall see."

Writes Bill McKibben, in "A Music Podcast Unlike Any Other/Andrew Hickey has embarked on a heroic and wild effort to tell the history of rock music in five hundred songs" (The New Yorker). Much more at the link.

I'm thrilled to see a New Yorker article on "The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," which I've been recommending to you since September 2021, with this post. There are 8 more posts of mine, just click on the "Andrew Hickey" tag.