2025.12.05: Getting Some Data Back

My name is Bernie Burns sitting right over there. You know what? You don't get a pithy intro today.
Ashley Burns, say hi to Ashley everybody. How do you like that? Ashley.

Well, that sounds like a Friday. Negging you a little bit.
Is it working? Nah. Nah, probably not.

I don't do a lot of nagging in this relationship. You tried yesterday.
Did I? You, well, we

tried really hard to be mean to each other yesterday, and it didn't work out great. We sometimes walk in there and go, What's up, ding-dong? Yeah.
Or you're like, hey, dummy.

What are you doing over there, brain dead, or whatever? You know what I mean? Just like silly little insults. And I walked in.
Let's see if I can recreate this.

I walked in,

I walked in, you were on the treadmill. And I go, I go, hey, what's going on?

Stupid.

The lamest insult of all time.

Stupid.

It works great. It works great.
I feel fully negged. Does that make you feel better? Good, good, good.
I got to keep you on your toes. What's your phrase you use? Keep them.

Treat them mean, keep them keen. Treat them mean.

Keep them keen. All right.
All right. Have you liked my Spotify? Should we talk about Spotify rapt? We should, because everyone's Spotify wrapped is hitting.

And a big thank you to everyone who has sent us photos of Morning Somewhere is your number one podcast. It means a lot.
Yeah, that's really cool. Thank you.
Thank you very much.

What I need to do this weekend, we'll do a

sponsor chat where we'll break down. I'm sorry, my Spotify is playing here in the background, where we'll talk about some of the numbers from our

wrapped for creators. They actually do one for people who actually put out content as well.
So I can actually see, like, you know, how many people watch.

There's even a really interesting one, which is, what was the top audiobook from your listeners? Oh, interesting.

Which we don't have audiobooks, but it's like, it just shared this data with us, you know, because we thought we might like it.

And then we'll make that sponsor chat. What the hell? Let's just make that available to everyone this weekend.
First taste is free. Yeah.

But I got to point out before we talk about this stuff, there's a lot of reason to be kind of iffy about Spotify in general these days because of some of the ads they're placing.

We don't have those ads because we don't run ads on Spotify.

But

whenever we talk about wrapped, I do have to point out

putting a pretty wrapper on all of the data that these big companies collect for you, you know, is it shouldn't be something that we should be so happy to share, right?

But people like it, so we do it. It's like, oh, we're going to give you back some of the data that we've collected on you.

Right, but it's like they package it up and make it so exciting and so pretty that we're like, yay.

Yeah, and then

as a result, like Spotify was the first one to do this, right? And now, kind of everyone does these end-of-year recaps. Like, I saw one, I'm sure a lot of people use it.

I saw one that was, it looked just like Spotify wrapped, but it had a better design.

I felt like, like, I appreciate the design of this year's, but I just, it's not my taste, you know, of this particular one. I did a little avant-garde.

And I thought, oh, what's this skin they have on their Spotify wrapped? It was not Spotify. It was iHeartRadio.
All right.

Yeah. So everyone's sort of doing that now.
But it is, it is kind of like fun to see what your trends are. But in order to see that, you have to have given this company all of your information.

And they're like, we shall show you what we have.

on you or in our case like as a creator it's be like we'll show you all the other stuff that people who listen to you also do and we're like i don't feel like we should have that but thank you yeah there's a lot of services i would not want that for like google

Your most searched term this year is.

You were really worried about warts this year.

Here's some other people that were worried about warts. How to talk

is how to talk like a Gen Z.

Things to look forward to in 2026. Your wife is leaving you.

Stupid. I hate to tell you that, dummy.

What was any revealing stats from your Spotify rapt? Oh, my fun one was my top genres,

which it wasn't really all that surprising, but it was like, oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Do you have a guess of my top genres, Bernie?

Let me think. Bardcore would be one.
Okay. And then what was the

I'm trying to think. No, I can't.
Tell me what your top genres are. All right, so my top genres this year, K-pop, Goblin Core, that's the first time.

Oh, yeah, there's like Goblin Core, like mushroom core.

K-pop, dance pop, folk pop, indie, and medieval. So I'm going to give you the bardcore.

What is medieval?

I'm going to give you the bardcore with medieval. I feel like that was probably filed under there.

K-pop, that's probably mostly K-pop demon hunters doing the heavy lifting there because I had that soundtrack on repeat for a while. It's a really good soundtrack.

And dance pop, I'm going to give to the kids because I'm going to assume that's a lot of like

the Chapel Roan Pink Pony Club or like Apata, things like that. I'm going to assume that that was like dance party music for the kids.

Well, now, that's interesting that you were listening to the K-pop Demon Hunters soundtrack and that counted as K-pop.

Were they all original songs that were for this show? Yes, they absolutely were.

And, buddy, you're opening a can of worms here because that is something that a lot of the K-pop fandom is very upset about because K-pop Demon Hunters has been like winning a lot of awards and they win them like under the group name in the movie of Huntrix.

Uh-huh. And so, a lot of group like fans of like real life K-pop groups are really upset that this fake K-pop group from this movie is winning all these awards.
Fake K-pop groups. Well,

it's not a real group, right? Like this, the vocalist. I'm not as exposed to the totally organic music genre of K-pop.
Look, Bernie, I think you should stop right there.

You're going to be getting a lot of salty messages. Let me bring, yeah, at the risk of,

you know, drawing the ire of the K-pop fandom. Like, if I said, like, a fake boy band, like, what's the difference between a fake boy band and a boy band? Well, in this case, they're all manufactured.

Yeah, but in this case, they're not real people. I mean, they're vocalized by real people, but they're played by animated characters.
The characters are winning awards and not the artists?

Yeah, I mean, it is like the artists are, you know, getting their flowers as well, right? But the group Huntrix is like winning the awards.

And it's also like the singers of Huntrix in the real world is like EJ and Audrey Numa and Ray Ami. So it's these, it is the singers, but they're not in a real group.
Under the name of

it. So it's a very confusing thing, and K-pop fans are very upset about this group winning all these awards and everything.
But also, you know what?

It's been great ambassadorship for K-pop around the world. Okay.

Lots of people getting into it via this vector. Am I wrong to think, though, that the K-pop world kind of leans into drama?

Like if they're really upset about something, should that be something we should be really worried about?

No, I mean, it's just another thing to be excited about. That is, it's like, don't people in K-pop like regularly have to go into hiding and things like that?

Yeah, or like apologize because they had like the wrong brand of soft drink in the background of a live video that they were doing. They're not sponsored by that brand.

Yeah, it's a whole thing. It's an interesting world.
So, my genres, apparently, I listened to 301 different genres of music. I'm not

sure how that even happens, but my top genres were pop rap. Okay.

Bubblegum pop. Okay.
Indie rock soundtrack, which that makes me wonder, soundtrack, right? That's its own category. Yeah.
It's a genre. Uh-huh.

So if I was listening to the K-pop soundtrack, why wouldn't I be listening to soundtracks, not to K-pop? And also, my last one was hip-hop. I feel like I'm the last three in my head.

That's what you are. Indie rock, soundtrack, and hip-hop, but clearly I'm pop rap and bubblegum pop.
I don't know. Whatever the fuck that is.

Let's break this down a little bit because, once again, I feel like the kids skew this a little bit.

I'm going to give you the bubblegum pop as that's like the Apata, and that's the you know, that's the chapel run, and that's like a lot of the stuff that you put on to get the kids bouncing around.

Yeah, right. Um,

we literally we put it on for our kids, yes, for our kids. Um, but for the pop rap, is that gonna be

baby no money for you? So, the most revealing stat for me is I was in the 0.1%

of listeners for baby no money. That That actually doesn't surprise me.
You listen to that a lot.

But 0.1%?

Wow, I was shocked by that.

No shame in my game over here. I love Baby No Money.
I know. It's great.

And so I get that. But here's the other question, Pernie.

What was your listening age? I don't even want to. I'm so embarrassed by it.

I'm legitimately embarrassed by this, even though most people would take it as a badge of honor. Mine is 23.
Mine is 21.

It's because you're in the top 0.1% of pay me no money. I guess so.
I guess so. I get to see that bubblegum pop also.
I got to know what that is. It should show me what's driving that.

So it would be nice if you could like, you know, tap on things and dive down into them, right? Like it's nice to get these stats, but now I want to like, I want to, I want to dive in.

I want to like get into like the meat of what that means. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess it would be nice if you could just like export everything they have on you. Like there are some,

there are some social media sites.

Is it a law in the EU eu where you can like write to them and say tell me all the data you have on me and they have to provide it i think so i think there are some places where that's a requirement right so it'd be it'd be nice to get but they're probably going to give you like an excel spreadsheet right not like this pretty fun interactive format right right you know so uh you know but i like i like being 23.

Like my music is 23. Who says that like I'm too old to discover new music? I can do it.

Spotify has officially age verified her as being 23 years old

i wonder if they're gonna use that i'm gonna i'm gonna start getting oh right i'm gonna start getting like kicked off if i uh listen to too much more hip stuff i'm gonna get kicked off all the websites in the uk yeah in the uk now when they ask for our age verification i'm sending them a screenshot

spotify says i'm 23 i'm 21.

that matters to you so that if you you can show that when you roll up to a bar it would be funny if that was my listening age was uh 21 but then spotify suddenly started having to do age verification.

Could I use their own information against them?

Like, you're the one who told me I was 21. We're making jokes here, but actually that is a method by which some of these big platforms are trying to get around that.

YouTube specifically has said that they are going to use an algorithm to determine the age of viewers based on their viewing habits.

So mine would think I'm 21 based on my listening habits. I guess so, and maybe then would not ask you to verify your age.

But it's not going to tell you how it knows that. It shows how easy it is to skew that, right? I guess so.
So that's less than half my age. Yeah.
So

basically, if you want to fool any age verification, just listen to Baby No Money.

Let's have an adult conversation, Ashley. You know what I tried to do before you got back from dropping the kids off at school? What? I tried to book us for

flu vaccinations. In the UK.
You take me the nicest place.

I do.

I'm always looking out for you.

They have a problem with marketing with vaccinations in the UK because a lot of times you're trying to convince little kids to go with you for this kind of thing or kids get a lot of vaccinations.

They don't call them shots. They don't call them vaccinations.
They call them jabs. Yeah, you need to get your flu jab.
It sounds like someone's going to run at you with the needle. It sounds cutie.

It sounds like, have you seen that game on Steam where it's like you just fight with swords in the middle of an arena now? It's getting bigger. Yeah.
They have like a demo. It's called a half sword.

It's horrifying. It showed up in my Instagram algorithm for some reason, people playing this game, but it's absolutely ridiculous.
It's because it thinks you're 21. Yeah, right.
Exactly.

It's like, enough with the bubble gum pop, buddy. Let's get some violence in there.
But I could not get an appointment for us to get a flu jab because we have to go private. You would think the NHS

would have vaccines for all the seasonal stuff for everybody. That would just be an investment, right?

To prevent people from having serious complications from the flu, which is really bad this year, apparently.

Yeah, I saw that there's been a massive increase in flu cases. And so there's been a lot more hospitalizations.
And also the flu season is starting early this year.

Last year, flu season was also really severe.

Yeah, and there's also, I read this in comments and I couldn't find news articles about it, but everyone was decrying the changes in who qualifies for an NHS jab. So I looked it up.

All I could do was go to the NHS site and see if we we qualified. We do not.
You have to be 65 or older.

You have to have a suppressed immune system, or you have to be a primary caregiver for one of those other categories. Someone over 65 or someone with a suppressed immune system.

Yeah, they are good about it with the kids at least. The kids get it as part of their school program.
You just, we had to sign a permission slip that they sent home with Finn.

And then he got his up the nose, thank goodness, at school. So they can do these like nasal delivery vaccinations now.

now so he doesn't have to get an actual jab with a needle which is nice because it means that he's not afraid of getting the the vaccination uh you know and so it is nice that they take care of that because the kids are going to be our main vector the kids at school are going to be the main vector by which we would get the flu starting to think about that now you're like a side-eyeing and like scrubbing them down and everything else when they come in the house.

I was thinking about installing just around the door frame,

just like a sanitizing spray. So the second like you walk through the door, just

full body shower and sanitizer. Look at some of those big hamster balls for Christmas.
We run around the house inside of those things. The return of Bubble Boy.
Hermetically sealed them up.

But yeah, so we, I can't find an appointment not within, you know, 60 miles of us where we could get one of these things. And I know, by the way, I know we're late.
I'm fully aware of this.

I've been reading articles about how terrible this flu season is now in full effect. I figure better late than never, right?

Right.

right, if we can get it, but it might be that a lot of other people have also had to go private to get them, uh, and they are all trying to get them now as well, given how severe the flu season might be ahead and how early it's starting.

So, we'll keep an eye out for appointments. We'll keep an eye out, see if we can get it, especially if it's going to get worse and worse over time.

Also, it didn't help that in the comments, people were

relaying their horrible flu stories from last year. And I was like, Jesus, yeah.
It makes you want to go get the jab. It absolutely worked the needle.
But

we got to keep you healthy, Bernie, because

today is also the draw for the World Cup, where we're going to find out if Scotland is playing in one of the cities in Texas for the World Cup. Find out if you and the lads are invading America.

Moving into sports news. Yeah, the World Cup draw takes place today at 12 o'clock Eastern Time.
So that's

5 p.m. here.
It'll be 5 p.m. GMT.
Right, or two hours past sunset. Right.
It'll be two hours past sunset.

Man, it's funny because we're getting in that time of year where it just gets darker and darker. And it's just like the sun is like, it's completely to the south now.
It is.

It's like the so the sun is setting very early. It's coming up very late, but it's not, it's not just how short the days are getting.

And I'll see if we can find, you had a photo of the last winter solstice of basically what the sun's trajectory looks like when it comes up. It's like, it's like up at 9.30 and it's down at 3.

But

it's not just that, which we will post that in the link dump if we can. It's that when it comes up, it barely comes up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
It breaks the horizon.

As soon as sun rises over, sunset has begun. Imagine if you could, if the sun had a hangover.
That's how it acts. Basically, it's like, I don't want to be here today.
I'm not feeling great.

I didn't get my flu jet.

I had to describe it to Finn and I told him that this is the time of the year when the sun's very tired. Yeah, the sun is, it feels tired, right? It does.
It feels tired.

I totally, I never understood the seasonal depression thing. I completely get it now.
I get it. Absolutely get it.
I'm like, I'm mainlining vitamin D. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Are you upping your vitamin D supplement? Yeah, just trying to like stay above water, right? No, I get it.

And making sure that I get like, I take magnesium so that I can improve the absorption of the, you know, vitamin D. It's like this whole, this whole web of attempts to stay happy in the winter.

I would like to see the signs behind that. Like I have this turmeric thing that I drink, and they tell me that I have to have black pepper in the turmeric thing because it activates the turmeric.

It helps you absorb it better. I have seen that.
What does that mean? I have seen that. What is pepper doing that helps me absorb turmeric? Makes it spicy.
Right? I mean,

listen, I shouldn't turn my nose up so quickly, but I do take that at face value. And I'm like, oh, I add black pepper.
And I'm like, wait, why am I doing this?

For what it's worth, every time I've ever heard anyone recommend turmeric as a supplement to reduce inflammation, et cetera,

every single one says, and have some black pepper. So, why can't I buy a mixture of turmeric and black pepper off the shelf? I mean, if it's so critical to do it, you probably can.

Actually, if you have one of those, like a pressed turmeric tablet, like a pill that you take as your supplement, it probably does have something like that in it. No, okay.
All right.

I mean, I would assume so. Like, if you're going to do it, do it right.
Make it spicy. Yeah,

in addition to this photo, which I'll give to you, I'll send it to you so you can put in the link dump for the

what the sun's trajectory looks like at the winter solstice, which is coming up in 20 days. 15 days? Yeah, 15 days away from now.

I also sent you a photo of two snapshots from my weather app.

One is Rochester, New York, where I was born, because the northeast of the U.S., and I assume Canada, is going through a brutal winter storm right now. Like some of these temperatures are so low.

And then I sent you a second one, which is Edmonton, Alberta. Is it? Yeah, why did you see it? Do you know why? It's like Edmonton.
Here's why I sent that.

There's a story going around, which is really fucking funny, I think, which is a story about a disastrous Dave Chappelle show. And when I read the headline, I was like, oh, shit.

What did Dave Chappelle say now? You know, what did he double down on this time? Not at all. He went to Edmonton, Alberta.

And Edmonton is a really interesting town because have you ever heard the stat that something like 90% of the population of Canada lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Edmonton is like one of the exceptions to that. Yeah, in fact, I think they call it the 100-mile belt.
Yeah, they're all like stacked down there, like right down there.

There's a lot of reasons for it, but mild temperatures is one of those reasons. And look at the temperatures that I sent you for Edmonton for the next week.
Yeah, so I have a question about this.

Are these temperatures, are these Celsius? Are they Fahrenheit? I'm actually not sure it matters because they're so low. It looks like they have a low of negative 22.

These are Celsius, but they're getting in the territory where Fahrenheit and Celsius cross back over.

And at no point in the next 10 days is it going to even come up to freezing. Yes, they are sub-freezing for the foreseeable future.

When they have the low of negative 22, they're going to have a high of negative 16. Right.
They've like shut the gates at Winterfell is what they've done.

So

I bring all this up because we live in a rural area. And so when someone comes here to have a show, it's kind of a big deal.
Like

one time we saw that poster for the red hot chili peppers. Oh, yeah.
I was like, what are they doing up here? That's crazy.

Like, we should absolutely go to this show because it's not like, you know, we have a lot of opportunities to go to shows, especially with like the red hot chili peppers up here. Wow.

And we're not even fans, really, but we should support someone who's going to come up here and have a show. Right, because no one's going to come up here.
So if someone does, we've got to go.

And that was

and then we went home and looked it up to buy tickets and found out it was the Red Hot Chili Pipers.

It's an all-bagpipe. Bagpipe man.
Bagpipe. And I think does covers a red hot chili peppers.
And I was still like, I don't know, this might still count. That did not temper my enthusiasm at all.

It did not.

But it is like when someone comes up to this area and wants to do something, we try to support it.

Like there was even one of the distilleries in the region had a Cirque de Soleil show and it was very expensive. But we were like, we gotta go.
Like, Cirque de Soleil? Right, like here?

When else are we gonna get to Cirque de Soleil here?

So, the whole thing was, I was reading about this, it was not a disastrous Dave Chappelle show because he said anything, it was because the audience would not get under control.

Oh, no, they think they were like a wicked screening or something, right? Right, right.

That's what it reminded me of: they were like taking selfies and stuff with the flash on, like you're mean girls. But I'll read this here: Dave Chappelle, uh, this is from uh

Culture Alberta. Dave Chappelle came to Rogers' place on Tuesday night.
By most accounts, he will not be back.

The legendary comedian's December 3rd performance quickly turned sour as hecklers derailed the set, with some attendees reporting the comic was literally counting down the minutes until he could get off the stage.

Oh, man, that's rough. One of the fans wrote on X, more than once he mentioned how much time he had left because the audience would not shut the fuck up.

When he said he had 10 minutes left and couldn't finish a joke, we figured it was time for us to go.

oh man that's tough that's tough so that that does sound like that one's not necessarily on him maybe

maybe though it's this whole thing because it's like it's so cold there maybe they have to heckle just to bring their body temperature up right they need to say they're just staying alive at that point right this is they're they're trying to intentionally um uh break into like the fight or flight mode, right?

Like you get like the blood pumping just to get keep the circulation in their fingers. The comments I read about were other people from Edmonton were like, oh my God, no one's ever going to come.

what was you doing there in december well that's a good question why not that's you book that in july right

did you ever when we went down to australia did you ever go over to perth with us because we would go over to promote like red versus blue demon no no i didn't go to perth so perth australia basically if you think about the demographic layout of australia imagine you took canada and turned it on its side because everyone correct me if i'm wrong everyone in australia australia lives on the east coast, north to south, but all on the east side of Australia.

Yeah, basically. And then there's like all the way on the other side, there's Perth.
A whole bunch of nothing. And then Perth on the west side.
Yeah, just the one. Right.
And so we went out to Perth.

I think I went out there twice, but I remember the first time we went to Perth,

everyone,

almost without exception, was like, thank you so much. No one ever comes out here for anything.
It was almost like self-deprecation. They're like, thank you for coming to our terrible city.

It's like, this place is beautiful. You know, it's wonderful.
They go, nobody comes here ever. So I think about that when I think about this Edmonton discussion.
Right.

Dave Chappelle was probably expecting like the red carpet, right? Or, you know, the blue, slightly frozen carpet.

You know, they roll it out and they're like, thank you so much for coming. And instead, he just got heckled until he was counting down the minutes till he could leave.

All these redneck Canadians, like, pack it up, buddy.

I had a friend who, there's some big studio up there.

Is it Bioware? It's Bioware. Bioware sounds right.
It actually makes a lot of sense to have something like a game studio like all the way out there, right?

Especially if you have these kinds of temperatures.

Because one, you're going to save loads of money on, like, you're not going to just have to buy a bunch of fans for cooling for all your computers and everything.

You're just going to open a window and the PCs are basically, they're going to run better than anything else in the world because

they're super cooled by the Arctic. Can you imagine a discussion in an office? How do I keep my computer warm?

Throw a blanket on it.

But also, if you, you know, if you're in an industry like video games where there's, you know, often a bit of crunch,

people want to be inside, right? They're like,

how can I get indoors where like the warm computers are running? You're right. Outside is where the polar bears are.
Right. People are like signing up.
They're like, they're like, can I crunch today?

Right. Can I get 90 hours this week?

Yeah, I heard there's actually a law up there that they have to leave game studios unlocked so that people can hide from polar bears if they need to.

It's so bad up there.

But my buddy, he moved from New York and he had that New York attitude. He says, I'm from New York.
I can do it all.

And people are like, oh, it's really cold up here. Like,

if you're going out, you should wear a scarf. He's like, a scarf? I don't need a scarf.
I'm from New York. I know what harsh winters are like.

He said he walked across the street to get coffee and he froze his nasal passages. Like, it scared him.
He didn't know if he had done permanent damage.

Couldn't figure out what was wrong with his nose. And somebody goes, yeah, bud,

you froze your mucous membranes. Hey, buddy, do you forget your scarf? It's crazy.
And he even said, I'm sure they have this other places. I'd never heard of it.

He said the parking meters at parking spaces have plugs, outlets on them so that you can plug in your car to heat up your engine block so that you can start your car.

Because otherwise, you're just never going to get a running head. Right, right.

It's like I think in like New York, where I grew up in Rochester, they have a lot of lake effect snow, which is just, it comes across the lake and just dumps a shitload of snow uh these massive fronts that come across the great lakes and uh all the fire hydrants have like poles on them that go up above five or six feet what so you know the where they are under the snow so that they can find the fire hydrants if they're in like a seven-foot snow drift or something like that you're like why do why do all the uh fire hydrants have radio antennas

that's why it makes a lot of sense so yeah so it's uh so dave chappelle got basically run out of edmonton by these

homework. And they weren't even heckling, I think, over like some of the stuff you said.
They were just rowdy and shitty.

Sounds like they were just trying to stay alive. That was awesome.
Speaking of rowdy and shitty, there's been some

actually there's been some terse letters written in Hollywood. You heard about the development of Warner Brothers.
I did.

So Netflix has basically won the bidding war for Warner Brothers Discovery, and they're now entering exclusive talks to close a deal.

So there was bidding from Paramount Skydance, Netflix, and Comcast.

And basically, Warner Brothers Discovery has decided that they want to go steady with Netflix. Right, right.
Netflix,

they beat Paramount in head-to-head play, but then they were beaten by Comcast.

It was a very complex system.

But now it's Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery going to the next round.

Which honestly, I kind of thought Netflix was the dark horse here because obviously they, well, they haven't expressed a lot of interest in buying studios before, right?

They've licensed a lot of libraries and things like that, but they haven't ever expressed interest in acquiring studios previously. So this is kind of a big change for them.

And I don't know if this signals that they're going to be

entering sort of a new business model, if they're going to have like this arm that does more traditional production

or if they're going to just keep the library and sell off assets or like what it is they're going to do because it's a big change for them.

Right. But as a result of them winning this bidding war,

Paramount wrote a very sternly worded letter, basically. Oh, I read that too.
So

what does that mean?

I'm not even sure. Basically, they were saying that actually they were the best and that and that Discovery, Warner Brothers really should be talking to them and only them.
And

it was illegal thinking.

I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure what this was, but they basically sent in this letter of protest that the Warner Brothers discovery didn't go with them.

And so I'm not sure what they're hoping to accomplish with that. But the thing is, they're not the only ones who sent in a letter.
Right, I have that here. Can I read this?

Yes, please, because I don't understand this at all. No, no, this makes sense to me.
This is an exclusive from Variety. This is Matt Donnelly reporting.
So I'm just going to read this verbatim.

The headline is: anonymous A-listers lobby Congress against Netflix WBD acquisition. Streamer would, quote, hold a noose around the theatrical marketplace.

A consortium of top industry players have sent an open letter full of alarm to Congress describing a potential economic and institutional meltdown in Hollywood if Netflix succeeds in its efforts to acquire Warner Bros.

Discovery. The letter was sent via email to members of Congress from both parties on Thursday from an anonymous collective identifying themselves only as, quote, concerned feature film producers.

The group explained it was leaving the letter unsigned, quote, not out of cowardice, but fear of retaliation, given Netflix considerable power as a buyer and distributor.

Netflix and Warner Brothers declined to comment. So basically they also sent a sternly worded letter complaining that this could possibly go through.

So there's like a lot of letters flying around complaining about it. Well, that was sent to Congress by anonymous A-listers.

It's weird to be like say they're A-listers, but not actually put their name on it. Yeah, I don't know how you have like an open letter from, but don't sign it.
That's true. Yeah.

It's like, I could write that letter. Right.
Like, and like, what qualifies as an A-lister? Is Paul Dano an A-lister? Right. Right.
You know what I'm saying about it? It depends on who you're asking.

You know, you know what I was thinking about.

I don't want to pile on because it's like one thing that one person said, and like everyone seems to be piling on to the negativity of Tarantino's comments about Paul Dano.

But I made the joke yesterday that, hey, I'm a member of SAG. So he said I'm a better actor than Paul Dano.

Also, the weird thing about this comment is Quentin Tarantino is also also a member of SAG, I assume, because he's an actor. So you think he's trying to like climb the ranks in SAG by just like

throwing other actors on me? I'll just say it opened him up to a lot of criticism as well for that particular part of his career. It's a tough world out there for criticism.

But yeah, this letter, I don't understand the letter from Paramount. That sounds weird.
That sounds like a weird, almost like a breakup letter, like, you know, like a threatening breakup.

Like, if you don't love me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best or whatever.

But this anonymous A-lister thing, I get it they're they're just worried about theaters they're worried about movie theaters i think it's a totally legitimate thing to worry about yeah and it makes sense because netflix in the past has not been all that bullish on theaters they've they've released

they've released some movies in theaters um you know but then

like only for like the minimum amount of time required to maybe qualify for awards to the point that going back to my beloved K-pop demon hunters, it didn't qualify for a BAFTA this year because it didn't meet the theatrical requirements.

Well, there you go. You know, I guess the sing-along version just didn't cut it.

With Disney having a major streaming service, Warner Brothers does as well with HBO Max. Is that what it is? HBO Max now?

I legitimately don't know. I have to check myself every time I go to say it.

You know, they have it as well, but there's always been, you know, theatrical releases for their movies and stuff like that. Netflix, I feel like, has done it begrudgingly.

Disney seems on the cusp, right? Of always like saying, like, there was even the lawsuit with Black Widow. That was a COVID-related thing.
But I do feel like, yeah, if you can,

if these things continue, it's going to be a steady decline for the movie theater experience. I care about that.
I don't know how many other people care about that anymore.

Can I make an interesting prediction? Go ahead.

And that's that a lot of the streamers are tightening their belts because they're having trouble turning a profit with their, like with the way they're producing series and all this at the moment.

Maybe, I'm just saying, maybe they could consider keeping their series budgets in control because I feel like every headline I see now is about how enormous the budget for some streaming series is.

And I'm like, well, yeah, no wonder you're going to struggle to turn a profit. I remember that and/or season two cost more than any Star Wars movie ever.
Right.

And I get that, like, and/or season two was like 20 hours as opposed to a two-hour movie. So it makes sense that it would cost more.
But traditionally speaking,

studios don't spend as much on series as they do on like big movies and things like that. So maybe they're just trying to like hedge their bets on where they can turn profits on productions.

And they're like, maybe if we have a mix, we need to keep theatrical and we need to keep this so that we have it to offset our

series spending losses. Can I ask you a couple of questions here really quickly? Please do, go ahead.
First is, I'm available for interview. Is preserving the theatrical experience important to you?

Depends on the movie, but yes. Okay, so somewhat, yes, that's a normal qualification, I think the answer there is yes.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's some genres that have gone away because the theatrical experience isn't really necessary for them.

Like a lot of the raunchy comedies and the rom-coms and things like that, they don't need the big screen to get the point across. You know,

I was a bit bummed that we weren't even able to get to a Tron Aries screening in the theater because it left the theaters in our area so quickly

after it came out because those like big visual movies, I feel like they do well on the big screen with all the big surround sound and all that.

And it's nice to have that experience sometimes, but it's not necessary for every movie. And

we probably mentioned this at the time, but like Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, which comes out next summer, they were selling tickets a year in advance and they've already sold out most of their IMAX tickets.

Yeah, it's insane. So some movies seem to demand it, but you need every movie in order to sustain it, right?

That vector of distribution. My other question is, as a former employee of Rooster Teeth Productions, which was a former subsidiary of Warner Brothers Discovery,

how would you feel about having Netflix as a boss? Oh, that's an interesting question. Like, I mean, you were there and this was all going on.
How would you feel about that?

I guess I would be worried because I would be trying to figure out what Netflix wants with the company, right? Like, what do they want it for? What are they planning on doing with it?

Well, just gut level, like working for Netflix. How would you, do you have an opinion about that one way or the other? I don't have an opinion.

I don't really. I mean, I guess it could be cool.
It could be a problem. It could be opportunities or it could not be.
You know,

am I going to be in charge of making all the Yule logs for next year?

Well, here's the here's right. We have to make ours.
Here's an interesting thing: is that Achievement Hunter is left in Warner Brothers. So now Achievement Hunter could end up being a Netflix product.

A Netflix

product, yeah, property. That's interesting.
If I see Achievement Hunter pop up on Finn's kids' profile, well, do you know?

It's funny you say that because last I heard, do you know where Achievement Hunter was within Warner Brothers?

I don't know, digital group. Last I heard, it was with Warner Brothers Kids.
WB Kids was the division that was in charge of, it fell under them. Well, it's because it's video games.

It's got to be appropriate for the kids. It's got to be.
It's got to be. That's a good fit for it.
Yeah. I mean, they got to put things somewhere, and I guess it makes sense.

And the people managing it, that would be the place for it to be. Just like, that's not where I would have expected Achievement Hunter to end up.
No, I mean, and I don't know that that's the case.

That's just what I heard. Right.
Well, and it may also, like, if it ends up as part of Netflix, maybe they'll like watch it and then go, perhaps not. Perhaps not.

Perhaps we move this to the adult profiles. We'll see.
Now it'll be in

Netflix. Maybe, who knows? Maybe Netflix will turn it around and they'll do a theatrical release of Achievement Hunter.

That would be like

for two weeks only. 20,000 hours of content.
It's going to qualify for a BAFTA. They'll have to build all new theaters.

Just show it around the clock for 12 years.

All right, Ashley, who do we have to thank for reserving tickets with us to Odyssey a year in advance? All right.

Big thanks to Murray Thompson and Alex Luzhau for going to the theater with us and for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com slash morningsummer and roosterteeth.com.

Okay, that does it for us this week ending December 5th. The World Cup announcements, drawings will be within the next five hours, so check those out.

Or if you're listening to this later today, you might want to immediately stop playing this now and go listen to it.

And we'll be doing a sponsor chat this weekend that'll be available to everybody. All right, that does it for us.
We will be back to talk to you on Monday. We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.