The Salt Path Controversy - Explained

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osmond.

Good day to you, Marina.

Good day to you, Richard.

Now, how are you?

Yeah, I'm not bad.

You have a slight cold.

I do.

You'll have an extreme cold, but you know, thanks for watching.

Of course, you're only extreme cold.

Yeah,

only extremes.

But other than that, very well.

And how about you?

Yes, I'm not bad at all.

It's an interesting week this week.

We've got some fun stuff to talk about.

we're talking about um if people have seen the story over the weekend the book the salt path if you don't know that story i shan't uh give you any spoilers we're gonna be talking i will tell you why i'm transfixed by it yes it it is it is quite a tale i'll say that we're also talking about one of the great format successes of all time uh which is nowhere near any terrestrial TV channel.

It's on YouTube and it's called Hot Ones.

We'll be talking about the history of that and the future of that and the money that it's making.

And we're also going to be talking about the Velvet Sundown, an AI band, and

the absolute sort of wild story around AI music and how an AI slop and how it's coming for absolutely all of us.

I mean, all three of these stories I think are fascinating.

Genuinely, I'm excited to talk about all three of them.

I'm often excited to get your take on things.

All three of these, very exciting.

Well, I am always excited to get your take on this.

Perhaps I shouldn't say I'm often excited to get your take on this.

I am always excited to get on.

Occasionally, I think, yeah,

occasionally, you don't me by surprise well both of us are gripped by the tale of the saltpath path now if you haven't heard of the salt path let me take you through it it's a true story of a couple from wales who through no fault of their own lose their house and become homeless not only that the husband in this couple and they're called rainer win and moth win the husband has a degenerative disease something akin to parkinson's find themselves homeless and they embark on a 630 mile walk around the southwest coast of England called the salt path.

So it's a memoir.

it's a true story, it became a massive phenomenon.

Book clubs all around the country love it.

It's such an incredibly inspirational story.

People have really, really bought into it.

It means a great deal to a huge amount of people.

So much so that a movie came out a few weeks ago with Gillian Anderson playing Rainer Wynn, Jason Isaacs playing Moth Wynn.

And it's just one of those incredibly rare success stories where a publisher picks up a small story, a true story, something that speaks to our time, something that speaks about humanity, something that speaks about human beings, and readers really, really jumped on board.

This book means a great deal to a great deal of people.

So just this incredible true story, strength, adversity,

bad luck, just everything about life.

But it turns out perhaps it was not true.

And then this weekend, an a fantastic investigation in The Observer came out by the journalist Chloe Hadimate, but also some additional reporting violence on them.

There's often quite a few people involved in a big team effort like this, saying that their names aren't really Rayner and Mothwyn.

Their names are Sally and Tim Walker.

Walker.

Yeah, Walker.

I mean, it was right there.

They turned walking into wins, that's for sure.

Yeah.

That those were not the circumstances of how they lost their home.

In fact, it's quite a convoluted tale, but it suggests that

Sally Walker embezzled money to start with.

And then, as I say, it's quite unconvoluted.

There's a loan.

There's all sorts of other things.

But the embezzlement is the key part of it.

And it also contains

commentary from various sort of consultant neurologists who say that this diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, you would normally expect, in fact.

nobody really lives beyond eight years and it's an awful, awful condition.

And

18 years on to be flourishing is essentially unheard of.

And of course,

occasionally, medical,

I mean, in a blue moon, a medical miracle occurs, but there is a considerable doubt cost on the nature of that aspect of the story as well.

So it's pretty much all of it.

I mean, I think they did the walk.

Yes, I think, yeah.

I don't even know if they did all of that.

So it is this incredibly inspirational, true story, which turns out it may well not be true.

Can we not have nice things?

This is like Captain Tom's family all all over again.

Could she not have a spa complex, Richard?

No, she couldn't.

She had to have it knocked down.

I bet she has got one.

I bet the Walkers have got one.

But

I cannot overestimate how much this has gone off like a bomb in the world of publishing because this is a huge, huge, huge lead item for everyone.

This has been one of the massive success stories.

And, you know, publishing, you know, you don't have all that money and they pay for everything, these big success stories.

And the Salt Path is one of those books that has paid for so many other books over the last eight years.

It is massive, and everyone in publishing is absolutely reeling this week.

All of this has been put to Rainer and Moth Wynne and in significant detail and they've issued the following statement which is not very detailed.

They've said, the sought path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives.

This is the true story.

of our journey.

Well, thanks for the blub, but that does not respond even vaguely to any of the material allegations in this particular investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Winds has said that the allegations made in a Sunday newspaper were highly misleading.

They are consulting lawyers.

Yet they are consulting lawyers.

Clearly,

this is published by Penguin Random House.

I mean,

they'll have a lot.

Well, I mean, let's start talking about it.

Well, yeah, no, absolutely.

I'm published by Penguin Random House, and, you know, a bomb would have gone off there this week.

Would you have gone on?

And you see, see, now, I have another theory,

which is that I actually think, you know, we've all heard the expression, and it means lots of different things, where there's a hit, there's a writ.

Yes.

People often come out of the woodwork when something becomes successful.

Rather like those consultant neurologists, I'd be surprised if this was the very, very first that after a book has been that successful, that...

Penguin Random House have heard that maybe the circumstances at the start of it, certainly, that lead to the whole story taking place, don't necessarily add up.

I would be surprised if that's the first because there has been online commentary, which I actually wasn't aware of, but I've gone back and I can see.

I haven't.

I keep like so often in these things,

you read people going, Oh, this is an open secret.

And I definitely don't think it was an open secret.

I'd never heard before that this was fakery.

I hadn't really got involved in the salt path world.

I can sort of feel that's that book is not for me.

But you know, people say, Oh, no, we knew, and we'd be at festivals.

Gillian Anderson, when she said, they said, Oh, how did you find Raina Wynne when you met her?

And she went, I found she was quite guarded.

And you think, Yeah, really?

The two central tenets that are heart of this book, the things that make it sell a huge amount of money, the things that make it really resonate with Middle Britain and with readers across the world, are they lost their house through no fault of their own.

These allegations suggest that is not the case.

They lost their house because

Sally Walker had embezzled money.

They then borrowed from somebody else, and that person had called in the loan, and so had the house no longer belonged to them.

And also, the ability somehow to turn back the course of an illness through communing with nature.

I mean, you have a huge responsibility.

Everyone who writes about anything medical and any form of,

even in the broadest terms, alternative treatment has a huge responsibility to bear.

Well, I suppose that's a good thing.

And if you're publishing anything that suggests that, then you also have a huge responsibility to bear.

As I say, I mean...

I saw a woman saying that my husband's got CBD and I've lost count of the times in the last five years that people have said, you must read this book, and perhaps he should go for a long walk.

And the despair that I had of understanding that's not something that he was able to do, and not quite understanding what it was that must be in this book.

If you're talking about, you know, medical things and you're talking about what nature can do, and you're talking about, you know, medicinal effects of things, that is a big issue, not only for the wins, by the way, and that's their business.

That's their business.

But for the publisher.

Yes, for the publisher, it is the medical aspect is...

the probably the most serious aspect of it.

It's interesting.

I kept thinking back, and as I say, I don't know the origin story of this,

obviously she's a first-time writer.

And I wonder if she perhaps glossed over, as you might do, the circumstances of the loss of the house, because it's much better to get through the walk.

Of course you would.

And they've said, and your editor would say, well, hang on, I think we really want to delve more into this because

the payoff is not so satisfying.

Yeah, and also we don't see the tragedy.

You know, we've got to go really down and then we can go up.

Raina Wynne's version of the book, there is a bad guy who is an old colleague of Moth Wynn's who sort of asks him to invest in something and then pulls the rug rug from under them and takes their house.

So there's a proper bad guy at the start of the book who we're like, oh my god, you're so unlucky that that happened to you.

And yeah, you would think that an editor might be saying, oh,

let's find out a little bit more about that person.

I think that person

who is Ross Hemming's husband passed away.

Yes.

A few years ago.

And she said, Ross Heming said, in a way, I'm sort of glad he didn't see this book ever come out because it would have absolutely, it would have hurt him so much, the lies in it.

Well, I think it's, yeah, I I think it's interesting, but I do nonetheless think, what's the editing procedure there when you're saying,

okay, this person did this thing to us?

You're still thinking, if you're the lawyer, okay, can this person be identified?

If this person can be identified, are they still alive?

You're going through all of those different processes.

You know, you have to be so careful with all of these things, as we say.

And you can get away with things in books that you might not be able to on TV or whatever.

But

if that person is dead, then even so, I think you'd have to produce.

I would be, if I was publishing this book, I would require these people to produce some forms of evidence.

And maybe they just said, well, we don't have anything left because we put what we had in our backpacks and we weren't on our wall.

Oh, it's too painful for us.

Yeah.

If over the next few days, weeks, whatever, the amount of people coming out of the woodwork, because they're emboldened by this and it's gone public to speak out, and the claims become sort of, are able to be sort of fairly

incontrovertibly proved to be false,

what do you then do if you're Penguin Random House?

Gosh, it's a very interesting question.

I think that probably you try and claw back some of the money that you've passed over.

I don't know this particular contract.

The contract would normally be that they have guaranteed that everything in this piece is truthful.

And again, the thing's going to be highly misleading, but if something is a deliberate lie, then you know, Penguin Random House, I guess,

would have some sort of recourse.

Obviously, any money you do get back in, that's got to go straight to some sort of charity.

I mean, that has to, because Penguin and Random House will know also that you know they've they've been remiss here.

You know, you know, when you're involved in a book and you have that sort of fan groups around the book, you know how much these books mean to people.

And especially with this, when it's to do with illness, you know what this means to people.

So you know that people are going to be very, very hurt.

I suggest that there would be on one hand there'll be some legal issues if these things do turn out to be not true, and on the other hand, some reputational work that would need doing.

Someone's getting a a new neurology wing, aren't they?

Yeah, exactly.

We'll get on to more

other instances of disputed memoirs or memoirs that have been proved to be false in a minute.

But as we've talked about so many times, and we're going to probably talk about in another item on this podcast, people are obsessed with authenticity in this age.

They are totally obsessed.

As we've said, people feel that Instagram influencers or the Beckhams or whoever are misselling them something when it's really not that big of a deal.

This, I have a lot of sympathy with anyone who feels lied to by this book,

if the allegations in that article are correct.

And by the way, the Wynns slash Walkers have not said they're not correct.

They've just said this is a lovely uplifting of story.

This is our truth.

Now, to some extent, all memoirs, I was thinking about this on the way in to talk to you, and I was thinking, to some extent, all memoirs are reality bending.

you're writing them at a point and

you're not writing them contemporaneously.

And usually you want to be the hero of your own memoir one way or another.

Well, I mean, that's that, yes, that is the tricky element of lots of them.

And as the reader, you're thinking, Am I getting, is this the, you know, what is truth?

Am I getting the kind of recovered feeling as it occurred at the time?

Or am I, like most things in human life, you know, that I'm getting order is being imposed on this kind of tide of experience that happened back in the day and a narrative is being created.

So to some extent, all memoirs have those sort of things.

And, you know, you leave out lots of things and you, you know, you shape a narrative but this is likely to send you know the mums netters the tattle lifers the all the people who um might go nuts about things like this off this off the dial especially as they've loved it it's meant meant such a lot that it's become this film it's one of those um inspirational stories of you know boomers going walking somewhere which is a which is actually a genre i mean it really is about there's been so many of these sort of films and books over the last yeah you know something something happens to a boomer, maybe health-related, or maybe something else.

Then they meet a baby tiger and everything's okay.

And if they walk, yeah, they need to walk.

So it's worth thinking, so if I'd take you through the publishing process and where Penguin Random House, which my publishers would have been, so it's Michael Joseph, which is one of the imprints of Penguin Random House.

When this came in on submission, you would buy it, I think, because of the story.

Or you would certainly take a meeting.

You kind of go, oh, this is really, you know, there's not a lot that gets sent into publishers where they go, I haven't read this before.

And she can clearly write Raina Wynn.

I mean, it's not my cup of tea, but

no markets that it's uplifting and all of those things.

So Rainer and Moth will come in.

You will chat away.

It will not be an enormous book.

You're not thinking, oh my God, this is going to be the Salt Path.

This is going to sell 2 million copies.

This is going to be a movie with Jillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

You are definitely, definitely not thinking that.

You're thinking, is this worth?

a £30,000 advance and some marketing money is probably what you're thinking at that stage.

I don't think you'd even need to pay 30 to be quite honest.

But that would be if you really like it

and you're thinking other publishers are going to look at this, other publishers are going to see that there's something in this.

Now, the contract you sign or the contract that the Wins would have signed, they take on all the indemnity for any lies that are in their account.

So, Penguin Randon House, same with Pachette, HarperCollins, all of these companies.

If you sign something like this, the onus is on the author to be telling the truth.

There is nothing

beholden on the publishers to have fact-checked this stuff.

Okay, I mean one imagines you would and you'll certainly do some of your due diligence, but they do not have any legal issues because Rayner and

Moth or however they sign their contracts, one assumes by the way that the checks got sent to Tim and Sally Walker, but that's another

thing.

So one assume they would have signed their contract, therefore everything is on them.

They have said to Penguin Random House, to Michael Joseph, everything we've told you is true.

And in the same way when the movie rights are bought, and normally movie companies do quite a lot more due diligence because they're not paying £30,000 for something, you know, they're paying.

And as I said, it's so weird.

Something being on the screen is so different.

I mean, I was, I'm thinking, I'm adapting something at the moment and it would be so different.

Even though in the book, if you can vaguely identify people, it doesn't matter.

You've got to create completely new characters because it's too close.

So making a movie, you're spending millions.

So you're spending three, four million, probably.

So, at that point, you think maybe we do our due diligence.

But also, the place I'd like to be is inside the heads of

Sally and Tim Walker when the movie deal gets made.

Because I think they probably got away with it, with the book.

They've done two follow-up books, which are Wild Silence and Landlines.

You know, Raynor Winn's got a very, very nice career.

You know, she's made millions.

You know, they've got a nice house down in Cornwall.

In fact, in the second book, it's based on the fact that a city trader read the first book, felt so sorry for them.

He gave them a property in Cornwall to live in.

If they could rewild it for him, I'd love to chat to him.

Oh, you may well be hearing from

me.

We're going to be hearing from lots more people.

I'd like to have been in the head of Rainer Wynne, where they go,

all this money, and you think, okay, this is going to be on the screen.

We have got Jillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

This is suddenly...

going to, it's interesting when you do a movie, you know, it weirdly gets a lot more publicity than a book.

So a book can have sold forever and ever and ever and is much more lucrative than movies for an author.

But when a movie comes out, there's a weird thing where you get elevated in traditional media.

Okay, but I'm not saying she has done this, but maybe if this isn't true, by this stage, the truth, you know how the truth, reality bending, that's what I'm talking about.

The truth has sort of become that for you.

And you think that that's exactly what happened.

I think you think you sit still and safe.

And I don't think you're worried because if a person were to have got away with something or got away with not the whole truth, truth, then I don't think you suddenly think, oh, this is going to become so much more exposing because you're not really au fait with that whole world and the fact that it is going to become so exposed.

And also

you have convinced yourself that you are telling your truth.

And so whatever comes out, oh no, they could actually say, oh, is this true?

And you go, no, it was, I was sort of, it's very vibes-based, my truth, which some people's truth is these days.

But the second that it came out on screen, you could tell that...

the observer who'd done this amazing piece.

I think, well, this is a much bigger story now.

This was previously like a seven-year-old book, which had sold a load of copies, which had made a lot of book groups very, very, very happy, but was sort of passing into the ether.

But now, bang, it's on the front pages again.

And boy, is it on the front pages now with

these revelations?

Well, it's only just starting as the week goes on.

And I was, it was amazing.

Okay, you think that because you're thinking, how will it play out?

And obviously, probably the most famous one in the

recent decades has been James Frey's Million Little Pieces memoir, which

that was famous.

It went on Oprah's book club and he was, you know, and then it was found out to be mostly rubbish.

Yeah.

Some readers sued Random.

I think that was Random House in America.

Readers sued them.

I mean, I know you can sue anyone in America, but it's interesting because that's a different

that there was there were other ones, but they haven't resulted in legal.

Not all of them have resulted in sometimes there's counter memoirs, obviously.

Oh, by the way, the next book, if I was Dillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, I'd be thinking, I know the movie I want to be in now.

Yeah, for definitely.

I mean, and so the question is, what you do at this stage, I mean, they're consulting lawyers, it's pretty difficult.

There may be a sort of fudge where they say,

we never want,

we look forward and not back, and we don't want to go into the full details.

Like everyone, we've made mistakes and we made financial mistakes and what have you.

And

they could do that.

But I think people are now just going to want to find out absolutely everything.

And

they want to have other people on the sofa.

Because right now, you've seen, you know, Rainer and Moth win many times, I've seen over the last few weeks because this film came out.

And I think people are now just going to say, well, I don't understand.

How could this possibly have been published?

How could

all sort of, they're going to say lots of things like that.

And I'm going to speak now to people who are, we're talking about the Salt Path, and they'll say, I've literally never heard of this.

And I think there's two interesting things about that.

Firstly, we're talking about it because in publishing terms, it is a proper phenomenon.

I mean, one of the big sort of 10 books of the last five years or so.

It's like, you know, this huge thing that came from nowhere.

It's made a huge amount of money for everybody.

So in publishing, it's massive.

And I'm fascinated by the amount of people when you go online who say, oh, so this is the first I've heard of this book.

And I say this in publishing all the time, publishing meetings.

I said, it doesn't matter how much publicity you do.

Nobody has heard of...

any books.

They just haven't.

It's a thing.

People who love books, it's like, you know, professional golf.

If you know about golf, you know all the players.

If you don't know about golf, you don't know any of them.

You go, I'll tie your woods.

And it's the same with books.

So there's a huge amount of people who have never heard of this book.

Wouldn't dream of knowing it existed.

Might know, oh, yeah, wasn't there a film with that title?

There's a Jillian Anderson thing.

But even that, mainly not, because publicity doesn't cut through.

And it will be fascinating to see the sales figures next week.

for this book.

Well, I've now bought it.

I thought I might have to have a look at it.

And by the way, every penny of that is still going to rein a win and moth win.

You know,

it's very, very hard to give up.

Maybe their creditors?

Yeah, maybe their creditors eventually.

It's very, very hard to give upticks to books that are five or six years old.

A movie is one way of doing it.

They give you a couple of months of real kind of uplifting sales.

But if you have a movie and then after the movie, a massive controversy where people are saying, oh my God, everything in this book is mental, then who doesn't want to read that?

It suddenly becomes a very different reading experience.

But the money is still the same.

The money is still going to go go to them.

Well, we'll catch up at some length, unspecified lengths,

if only with the sales figures on that one next week.

But as I say, that's going to be a really big story.

And

watch how it plays out and who gets, who first makes comment, who's first on the sofa.

And

we'll take a look back at that next week.

But it's amazing as well how the phrases fact check and fact check sound so similar and yet are the exact opposite of each other.

And on that, I think we should should go to a break.

We should, by the way, afterwards we're talking about more fakery but we're also talking about a rare good old-fashioned success story.

A real hit.

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After those unfortunately honest adverts,

the world of music and the world of AI is a fascinating one, and it's been thrown into focus by this band, The Velvet Sundown, who are Gabe Farrow, Lenny West, Milo Rains, and Orion Rio Del Mar.

Good-looking guys.

You've seen pictures of them.

It's entirely fake.

So that's not a real human being.

None of those people are real.

The Velvet Sundown are not a real group.

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AI music making machines.

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a simple prompt.

They've got more than 800,000 streams on Spotify.

So over a million now.

They've put out

two or three albums in the last month.

Their artist blurb on Spotify, which was verified, used to say their sound mixes textures of 1970s psychedelic alt rock and folk rock, yet it blends effortlessly with modern alt pop and indie structures.

Hmm.

There was a quote from Billboard on there, which by the way wasn't a quote from Billboard.

This Billboard article never really existed, that said, they sound like the memory of something you never lived and somehow make it feel real.

Now,

in terms of like who they are or what it is, rather, because it's not,

there is no they.

Yes.

But I feel like my own reactions to this are sort of like part of the story in some ways.

You sort of want it to be an art hoax.

And that to me feels, I'm part of a generation that wants someone to say, I've done this to say, and there was someone who came out and said, I'm their publicist.

And then it turns out he's been debunked.

Lots of people, by the way, are claiming credit for this, which is the only funny bit of the story, which is everyone's going, oh, no, this is me.

I did this.

And the real people are going, no, we faked it.

There's something about me that I want someone to say,

there's a point to all of this.

Um, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, you know, make a point about this or that.

But why does it have to be anything?

Other people are saying, you know, it's fine.

It's good enough.

I like listening to it.

I played it to your husband.

We didn't tell him it was AI.

And he was like, yeah, this is absolutely a piece of me.

This is absolutely.

But exactly it is because it said all the things that you like into an algorithm.

And that's the music that it's come up with.

It's interesting.

If you listen to one of the songs, which then I think it's much less, you really can't tell.

And the mixing is so good That's what I really noticed about this just the advances from stuff that I heard of AI music honestly about three months ago and what you can hear now Yeah, is that so quickly all of these things are being ironed out and I really felt that all those little clues really they have had ironed out very very well yesterday then I listened to the whole album and at that point you were like this is there's something weird and it's hard to know maybe it's because you know but there is something odd about it lyrically certainly yeah actually John Oliver did a thing on last week tonight.

His AI band he kept talking about was The Devil Inside.

But again, they talk a lot about dust and wind.

And I'm trying to work out whether are they sort of slightly copying each other, these two AI bands.

There are certainly already AI copies of The Velvet Sundown.

I mean, geez.

Where do we go?

People are becoming angry because it's showing up on their Spotify playlist.

They don't really know why.

In the same way that

Google are trying to sort of say, oh, we're going to try and find a way of watermarking images that we've discovered to be AI.

People are saying, well, why shouldn't you just do this?

You've got to find a way to do this with music.

And then there are other people who think, well, I mean, why?

Why do you have to?

Why can't you just have, you know, ever since sort of Brian Eno or whoever came up with the idea of ambient music saying, oh, this is just, you don't have to sort of actively listen.

In fact, there were composers, there was one composer,

sort of 19th-century composer who talked about

making furniture music.

Like you didn't have to sort of sit, it wasn't sit-up music, it was lean back music.

So at the moment, the Velvet Sundown are on Spotify and they're not labeled as AI and they're verified.

Deezer have said, who are streaming rivals to Spotify, have said, we've put it through our algorithm.

We are confident it's 100% AI generated.

And certainly nothing that's happened in the real world would suggest that it isn't.

Their latest figures say 18% of the music that people try to upload to it is entirely AI generated.

The other thing I was thinking about when I was listening to this on Spotify was how much of this is like bots listening to this AI thing and it just becomes a sort of weird advertising transaction?

Well, that's the thing.

So there's money to be made on Spotify.

We know it's a very, very small amount of money that you make on advertising services if you're a band.

If you're a record company, you're making a fortune from these places.

But not bands.

And we'll get on to the record company question in a minute because that's an interesting one.

So if lots of us were going to Spotify or whatever streaming service and you'll have those Discover playlists, which will be, you know, a mix of new music, old music, stuff that we know the algorithm tells us you like already, a really useful way of hearing old music and finding new music as well.

Now the Velvet Sundown are on a number of those playlists and

some other big playlists as well.

So to get onto a Discover playlist, it does actually cost you money.

So if you're a band or if you're a record company, you want to promote something, you can get placed on one of these playlists and you get a smaller royalty, smaller than you're getting already, to go on a Discover playlist.

Spotify are very open as well.

You know,

it's all there in the terms and conditions.

They'll say, look, people have to like it as well.

people have to engage with it and enjoy it and then it will you know go further and further up our various charts but if you want to be on this um these discover playlists this is something that that will cost you and that's something that velvet sundown have clearly done and people have liked this uh this music as well but the interesting thing of course is if you are say shed seven Okay, and you've shed seven have got all their music on Spotify and a lot of their stuff will get on Discover playlist because it's popular.

So they wouldn't necessarily have to be paying to be on these things.

But if you're Shed 7 and you're getting your very, very small amount of money per song, per stream, then your management company is going to have to pay all of you from that.

And your management company is going to have to take their bit and the record company is going to have to take their bit.

If you have sat down and made an AI thing, then nobody is getting paid apart from you.

So what if I say to you, you know, you can get a smaller royalty on this, you think, great, I haven't done it.

I literally done nothing.

These things, you can make these songs in 30 seconds.

Velvet Sundown feels like it's something that they've spent a little bit longer, perhaps on.

But you can make these things incredibly quickly and sit back and watch the money come in.

You can have things, and again, Spotify absolutely say we...

we have our eye on this stream farms, which are these depressing sheds all around the world, which are just hundreds, thousands of tablets and phones all streaming the same thing at the same time to bump your numbers up.

Because, you know, even if you're getting 0.01 pence per stream, you know, it adds up eventually.

So there are ways of grifting this system.

There are ways of using that system.

And there are certainly ways if you can sit at home, come up with a new song, put it on Spotify, put it on at other streaming things and have a thousand phones listening to it at the same time, there's money to be made there.

Again, if we go back to Deezer, they are suggesting that in this sort of feedback loop of AI made for AI, sometimes up to 70% of those streams are bots listening to bots.

We talk a lot about can AI make movies?

Can AI write books?

And those slightly longer form things, it feels harder.

But there is a lot about music, especially especially as you say, sit-back music, that is a vibe.

And the one thing AI is very, very, very good at is a vibe.

It's going, I know the sort of thing you mean, this sort of thing.

And you go, yes, yes, it is that sort of thing.

And unless somebody takes a stand at some point and labels every single one of these things when it comes through, we are going to be awash with it.

It is going to be absolute.

slop and I'd be interested to know your view about where that takes us.

Let's just take music because the films and novels, I suspect, are going to come to this this place in about 18 months' time.

But music as a test case for AI just absolutely flooding the market.

What does that mean for us as consumers?

And what does it mean for a 22-year-old in a band right now working your socks off to write music?

Are you just another job that's getting replaced by AI?

Because

humans are annoying.

I mean, people in bands are definitely annoying.

That's not the whole point of them.

Listen,

I grew up with one and I love him, but yeah.

Eliminating those pesky humans from that particular money-making opportunity is you can see the appeal immediately, but you can also see just the volume of it and how it's really easy for the whole tide of that.

And how it obviously takes a long time to create things.

Well, sometimes everyone says, oh, you know, I wrote this song in 15 minutes, it finally just came out.

But there are not that many songs that are like that, and there's certainly not careers that happen like that.

And we also know that, you know, people, this idea that,

oh, no, humans will find you out and

humans can find meaning in

a piece of toast that looks like it's got the face of Jesus on it.

We are designed to find meaning in anything.

In any old thing.

To see faces on trees,

to find meaning in the velvet sun.

To see ourselves in all sorts of things, and they can definitely see themselves in the velvet sundown.

As always, with these sort of things where it's a bit of a crapshoot and maybe people like it, maybe they won't, is the flooding of it.

People will flood the marketplace.

It's not like some things will try, some will work, they might be quite good, doesn't really matter.

And we're all debating whether or not it's a pastiche or a satire on ourselves or whatever it is.

It's actually just the sheer volume.

In a funny kind of way, it reminds me of that, you know, that's that idea that most of the traffic on the world's internet now is whatever the percentage, it's gone way over 60%.

It's just things like, you know, vending machines talking to each other.

And like, have you got a smart coffee cup?

Why is my coffee cup smart?

You know, why is my toaster smart?

I like the idea of vending machines talking to each other.

I like that idea.

I'd like to think about what their problems are.

But But you know, if we're talking about vending machines, we're like, I hate it when the thing gets stuck.

But from the vending machine's perspective, that'd be very different.

Because they'd be like, I hate it when something gets stuck because I can see someone's frustrated, but also

it itches.

Yeah.

You know, I can feel it is there and I can't do anything.

So actually, I'm interested in what vending machines say.

That's a novel.

Yeah.

I mean.

You've made something rather beautiful out of that.

But I think actually what the vending machines talk to each other is.

But we will find meaning in anything.

Yeah.

Yeah, we will.

And I will anthropomorphize it as them talking to each other.

They're not talking to each other, okay?

But yes, I think that the sheer volume that floods things means it's harder and harder to find things.

And it's harder to find connections with those things that you say that take a long

period of time to make,

that are faltering, that require refinement or anything like that.

If you can refine in a millisecond, some people are saying, I'm really angry with Spotify about this because they don't make it clear.

I think there will be some kind of premium to be had for people who really, you know, feel that they would be being lied to if they if this sort of thing wasn't clearly labeled as such.

But actually, the majority of people, just as the majority of people get the news app that's on their phone and are quite happy with which everyone comes bundle free with whichever type of phone they've got, they're quite happy to listen to lots of this stuff.

And again, it's odd because, as I said when we were talking about the sort path, people are obsessed with authenticity, but they are and they aren't.

So they're obsessed with it, but they're actually going to be quite happy, you know,

AI has an authenticity, which is this is AI.

this is this is the machine, and so not so long as you're not pretending it's real human beings and people that that has an authenticity.

If I can strike a positive note, um, it would be this: which is, I do think, in the same way, listen, I don't want to hark on about the industrial revolution all the time, but in the same way that if you can mechanize the production of something, then 50 to 100 years later, someone who can actually do it with their bare hands becomes incredibly valuable.

There's a premium on artisans, and I do think there comes a point where people who properly love music, proper music fans, you know,

I'm a sidelines music fan, but proper music fans, there will be a huge premium on human-made music, I think.

And there will be a huge premium on going to see human-made music.

And I think that people will start to appreciate human-made music.

It's a huge premium.

It's very expensive.

Yeah.

So bands, even now, the way they make the money is touring.

So they're no longer making music, but sending records.

And it is harder for an AI band to tour.

Absolutely doable, completely possible, but less fun because you know it's okay listening to the Velvet Sundown if it's in the background and everyone's chatting.

If you actually happen to sit on the stadium, you are kind of going, oh, this is sort of awful, isn't it?

So I do hope and I think that for bands who play live and make and write their own music, there will be a huge premium for that.

I think the really interesting thing is the people who are trying to sue are the record companies.

Because the real story of the Spotify years and the streaming years is that the record companies have not lost a penny the record companies are still making an absolute fortune it's just they're not giving as much money of that money to the bands that they sign so the record companies are in a nice place now where they're going oh we're still getting all of this money we've done all these deals we're not having to pay our workers as much as we used to and the record companies are now seeing oh wait a minute spotify are now putting these songs on where no one gets paid.

It doesn't go through a record company.

So we are completely taken out of that equation equation because what we do is manage talent and this we don't manage computers, which is what's happening.

So the record companies are launching lawsuits against a lot of these AI streamers and things like that.

So it feels like if I was 21 and in a band,

you're like kind of banging your head against a wall.

You hope that this whole thing, and I think this in lots of areas, this whole thing, the market becomes so saturated so quickly with slop, which is what we've seen in a lot of journalism and things like that that actually this desire to find some truth and to find some human connection will become more and more powerful so in the same way that new york times and uh guardian and the observe that we talked about um earlier you know they see numbers go up and up and up because people are desperate for a genuine human connection and desperate for something that hasn't been written by a machine you hope that that's what happens in music as well but it's going to be a bumpy ride for the next few years will happen and you hope it happens with enough people but you but you also sort of have to acknowledge that many, perhaps the majority,

really would be quite happy to read an AI generated article about an AI band and listen to the AI music.

Most of the money in the world has just been part of an advertising transaction.

But most of the money in the world, most of the cultural money in the world doesn't come from those people.

Most of the cultural money in the world

comes from early adopters who love something, comes from fans.

And those fans, you can, you know, will still seek a human connection.

That's not something that bands have ever massively been able to monetize anyway.

You know, they want people who genuinely genuinely like what they do and like them as human beings you know look at this massive oasis tour they're making you know hundreds of millions now oasis is i love oasis oasis and lyrics could be written by ai you know they've never said look we're the greatest lyricists in the world um some of the you know the the chord sequences and stuff that could be written by ai but you could not invent Oasis in AI.

You couldn't invent the history of that group.

You couldn't invent those guys and how they interact with each other.

That is something you can't invent.

And that is something that people will pay for forever and ever and ever.

You just hope that there are enough people still willing to pay for things and who

just take the love of human beings do something extraordinary that they don't need to do but are doing just to entertain you.

That would be where I would err on the side of optimism.

But my God, there's going to be an awful lot of this coming on.

At the very beginning, we played the Velvet Sundown.

Now, if you're listening to this and go, oh, you didn't play The Velvet Sundown, we are currently talking about whether we can or not, which seems ridiculous because it's made up.

You know, it's just a machine, but you know, it has publishers and this, that, the other, and, you know, putting music on things.

We have done our own just to show what can be done.

I just said, I literally just went into Suno.

I said, I want a landfill indie band from the 2000s.

I asked ChatGPT what they should be called, and ChatGPT said they should be called the Quiet Alibi.

And I said, give me the sort of song that the Kooks would have written.

And they said, how about Rewind the Summer?

So this is, and this took, I'm going to say, 45 seconds.

This is the quiet alibi with Rewind the Summer.

Your silhouette burned in the porchlight.

Let's rewind the summer,

slow and rough.

Trace every curve we couldn't get enough.

Back to the night,

your hand's no mine.

Let's rewind the summer.

One more lie.

Listen, it's terrible, but you know, so is almost all music I liked when I was 16.

One thing we did discover is that it just can't handle a British accent.

Doesn't like British accents, probably.

Well, it do well.

But, you know, a lot of British singers in the 2000s liked to have a slight transatlantic accent anyway.

So I think we got away with it.

But, you know, you can can sort of make it do anything.

And it's, listen, it's profoundly awful.

There's going to be an awful lot more of it to come.

But I do think it places a premium on people who can really do it.

And

let's hope it does anyway.

And perhaps we'll put the whole of that on after the final adverts on this thing.

We'll put the whole of Rewind the Summer by the quiet alibi.

Yes.

But for now, let's just accept that humans are becoming a prestige product.

And yeah.

I mean, that's sort of a good way of thinking about it.

And also, let's pitch the vending machines

meat cubes.

That was lovely.

Yeah, I'm all out of revels.

Oh, I have plenty of revels.

Can you get revels still in a vending machine?

Oh, sure.

If you can't.

I don't think I've seen revels in a vending machine.

For many, that sounds like an AI reminiscence.

I don't think I have seen revels in a vending machine for many years.

If you have seen revels in a vending machine at home, please send on a picture.

See, that's human interaction.

Via the internet.

AI wouldn't do that.

Yeah, via the internet.

Talking of humans as a premium product, can we talk about hot ones?

Oh, please.

Let's talk about hot ones, which is a YouTube interview series.

And the premise of it is it was created by a guy called Chris Schumberger, but it's presented by a guy called Sean Evans.

And he interviews a celebrity.

And the questions are fantastic.

We'll come to that in a minute.

But celebrities have to answer questions while eating progressively spicier chicken wings with various hot sauces.

And that is it.

It's a very, very basic set.

It's two black tables with some jugs of water and milk or whatever, you know, you can bring along various things.

And Sean Evans asks the guests questions.

And it started, you know, they used to get not very good people on.

And now they get huge stars.

They get anyone they want, really.

They've had in the last six months, they have Lady Gargo, Selena Gomez.

They can get anyone they want.

Bill Ferrells, Dunair, Billy Eilish.

I mean, it is for every PR.

This is the stop.

This is one of the ones.

Absolutely.

Whenever you do any sort of PR thing, there's like a list of places to hit.

This is number one on every A-list celebrities, PR-list, wish list.

They turned down Kamala Harris in the presidential election campaign because they just thought, oh, no, we don't really want to get into politics.

And it's just become a huge thing.

And the moments from it go viral all the time.

And we can perhaps come to

why that is in a bit.

But why are we talking about them this week?

Well, we're talking about it because, you know, I grew up in the format business and, you know, grew up in a world where, you know, who wants to be a millionaire and we can think and all these things travel the world.

And something had to be on a terrestrial television channel.

And the hot one started somewhere very differently.

So 2015, as you'll know, anyone who worked in sort of publishing or magazines or newspapers, everyone decided they had to pivot to video.

This was the thing.

Everyone wants video.

We have to pivot to video and we have to set up our own little studio and do this, that, or the other.

And it came from a site called First We Feast.

Chris Schumberg, as you say, so why don't we do like a thing where people have to eat hot wings of increasing strength?

Sean Evans, who's working there, said, oh, I love that.

Let's do it.

Did a couple of series where it was mainly sort of rappers and sports stars.

Sean Evans would always wanted to be a sports reporter.

So they did this for a while.

The episode that made them really big, and you can see that, find this on YouTube, it's very good, is Key and Peel, the American Comics.

They did one.

It was very, very, very funny.

And people immediately, you know,

the discomfort and eating the hot wings.

You know, you can always tell with an episode of Hot Ones when people have trouble with the first one.

You know, it's going to be a good episode because by the time you're on the 10th one, I mean, it's absolutely crazy.

So it is now this format that's had, I think, 370-odd episodes, had billions upon billions of views, 2.6 billion views, I think.

And they have three seasons a year with about 10 to 15 episodes.

What does it tell us about television?

Well, I think it tells us that format, you know, the one thing people always said is there's nothing, yeah, but there's no formats on YouTube.

It's just it's just people, you know, talking and, you know, playing FIFA and, you know, unboxing things.

And actually, this is a thing.

Sean Evans, I find a very interesting guy.

Firstly, he's a very, very good interviewer.

So the research is actually, by the way, his brother does the research

they do it they do a lot of it together but his brother Gavin does a lot of the research and the questions are really really good sometimes quite left field but they do make the people go deep as well and I mean it people really like being on the show despite the physical discomfort and I think of when you know when people hear about format they go oh god who wants to watch that just people eating 10 hot wings and of course that is not what it is about that just drags you in because it's quite an interesting thing but actually sitting there and doing something else while you're being interviewed makes you a more interesting interviewee and allows Sean Evans to go to breakfast.

We're in a physical challenge kind of culture era.

Yeah.

And there's something about that and there's something about the silliness of it that people like.

But it is also a producer of endless reaction

memes

and everything.

10 second clips.

But Sean Evans is a lover of broadcast television.

So Sean Evans talks a lot.

He talks about growing up watching TV and growing up watching late-night television and growing up watching those hosts and saying how at home they made him feel and how safe they made him feel and how happy he made they made him feel and families watching TV and stuff like that.

And he said right from the beginning, I wasn't thinking, oh yeah, I'm going to do a sort of wacky YouTube thing.

I wanted to do something that really, really connected with people.

Yeah.

It goes through YouTube because that's where he was and it goes through, you know, First We Feast.

And the very fact that he'll do three seasons a year and there'll be like 10 to 13 episodes a year.

He does it like broadcast TV.

It comes out on a Thursday in a 20 to 30 minute segment.

Releases them every Thursday, exactly that.

And he's spoken in the last few years about, you know, why am I not up for Emmys?

He hasn't said exactly that.

He said, but I feel I should be a, you know, I should be competing

on the same level with these guys.

He's talking about the money.

He has been now nominated for an Emmy, and the show has been nominated for an Emmy as well.

Yeah, they've been nominated for a couple of daytime Emmys.

Off your daytime.

Yeah, I mean, come on.

I mean, I've been nominated for daytime Emmys.

Yeah.

So it's a really, really lovely show made by someone who loves making it with a funny format and with great interviews as well.

And recently, BuzzFeed bought First We Feast, but Sean Evans and Chris Schoenberg and various other people, including the Pod Save America people and George Soros, have recently bought it back.

So they bought it for $82.5 million.

So Sean Evans now sort of has a lot more control over it.

And I just think it's, you know, in a changing media landscape, and you know, I work in a business where

lots of people are finding work difficult to come by.

And to to have a show like this that really is reaching family audiences, that is reaching big audiences, that is made with skill, that is lit properly, presented properly, researched properly, it feels like

that's a new frontier.

They recently sold the format to Germany.

So there's a German comic that's now doing the German hot ones.

And you know what?

That's the business I understand.

That's the business I recognize.

So this is the first time I really, really can see something that's come from YouTube that is doing exactly what

equally you mentioned the lighting, whatever.

But actually, what I would also say is the business that you recognized when you were talking about selling formats, you know, maybe it had a shiny floor, maybe it was high production values.

What's funny about their set is that it's, as I say, these two black tables.

And what was great about that was that they could go to where the stars were.

You didn't have to say, we need to have you onto our set, unfortunately.

It's like, yeah, because then they can't do it.

But that's the most lo-fi thing in the whole world.

You know, just this very basic thing that they can set up anywhere.

And therefore, you are much more likely to get guests on different tours and what have you.

But I think that's really interesting that we've, when I think of like selling a format, you did think of those, you know, whether it was Love Island or Millionaire or whatever those kind of things, those big things and they kind of look the same with a couple of little local things, but they were expensive.

And now you're just selling...

kind of almost like you're selling a meme.

A table with a black.

Yeah, it's like it's a sort of cultural IP, really.

Yeah, when we sold Total Wipeout around the world, we literally had to send everyone to Argentina because we could only afford to build the course once.

So every country was like a timeshare and people go out for two weeks at a time.

Whereas this, I just wanted to talk about it because I just think it's really well made.

It is amazing made.

The questions are absolutely brilliant.

That vibe that you said, that he wants it to be kind of warm and whatever, he said he wants it to feel like, you know, to feel like watching friends, just in terms of the warmth and what have you.

But equally, there's lots of very modern things to it that it's kind of very live stream friendly and you can obviously talk about things at the time you know it welcomes on interactivity it welcomes spin-off obviously there's a huge amount of sources that have come off this i mean that's the thing is is immediately they've got these massive selling sources like the the first source in every the first chicken ring in every single episode is the classic one and they can sell that and the last one in every episode number 10 which i mean the amount of people who have to walk out of this show crying at various points or the amount of people who cuss him out because of the pain the sheer physical pain they're in is extraordinary the last one is called the last dab And again, that's something you can buy as well.

So

I just feel like it's a creative person.

Well, and Chris Schumberger and Sean Evans, I think it's some creative people who've done something brilliant and are being rewarded for it.

And I wouldn't see any reason why he would not be up for the big Emmys against the big late-night hosts because this feels like it has something to do.

I agree.

Even a few months ago, even only a few months ago, when this show is already a complete phenomenon and what have you, though, he said, I'm really tired of explaining to advertisers that an eyeball on YouTube is just the same as an eyeball on TV.

And he said, and I think that's really interesting that there is still a sort of

on linear TV, I'm talking about, that there is still a kind of reticence on behalf of many, many advertisers to see this for what it is.

Whereas the ones who've gone ahead are actually doing very well out of it.

If you've not watched it, you can watch it with your kids, you know, pick a celebrity you like or pick a celebrity you don't know.

That's one of the other fun things about it is it's very American.

So sometimes there are people on, you go, I don't know who you are, but I like you.

And it's just, you'll see a very smart presenter and a very smart producer doing a format that's funny, doing a format that just delivers time and time again and is an interview show that you haven't quite.

seen before.

And this doesn't replace what we're watching on linear TV.

It doesn't replace all these brilliant formats that are going around the world, but it absolutely has its place at the top table.

And I just think it's impressive given where it came from and where it is now.

And it'll be the first of many, I think.

It's got a lot in common, actually, with some of those kind of late-night sections that are designed for virality, like, you know, day drinking with Seth Myers or Carpool Karaoke as was.

Those sort of things that are designed to sort of be almost standalone, although they come in the format of traditional linear television.

This is like one of those just on its own.

Well, that's the funny thing is all of those late night shows realized a while ago they had to have these big viral moments.

So let's do our carpool karaoke day drinking, whatever it is.

And our culture is such that people are like, what if you did something that was just that?

Because actually, that's the best bit.

So why don't you just, let's just do that?

So Hot Ones is just the viral bit from someone else's show.

And they go, no, but we'll just do that.

It's like, it's just.

Well, that's what people talk about on YouTube, isn't it?

It's like frameworks rather than formats.

And that you'll say, okay, like a get ready with me video is a framework.

And anyone you can say, so that as soon as you see it, you think, oh, I know the roughly the sort of thing I'm watching.

And something that could be like

Hot Ones, which is you're thinking, okay, there's an element of physical challenge.

It's a step.

It's progressively gets harder and harder.

And either

they're being interviewed or something, you can see in the same way that sort of chicken shot bait, which isn't the same thing, but you roughly know what you're dealing with.

And you're thinking, oh, okay,

and they're becoming the new genres.

As the great Swedish philosopher's Roxette said, don't bore us, get to the chorus.

And

that's one of the things I like about our accelerated culture these days is we get to the good bits very, very quickly.

And YouTube has just gone, no, we are cutting immediately into the good bit.

And the second the good bit is finished, we're cutting out.

Any recommendations, Richard?

Yes, we've talked a lot about fakery, haven't we?

So let's continue to celebrate human beings.

I want to recommend Death Valley, the new BBC One murder mystery thing with Gwyneth Keyworth and Tim Spool, who are both absolutely brilliant.

And

it's a, and the BBC On a run of form of these after Ludwig as well, but it's a very, very charming murder mystery, you know, detective duo thing.

And it's, yeah, it's, if you like Ludwig and you like that sort of thing, you'll absolutely love it.

And honestly, Gwyneth Keyworth and Tim Spaulder are incredible in it.

Oh, I've got to watch this.

Okay.

Thank you.

Oh, human beings.

Thank you, human beings, for everything you do.

Yeah.

Everything you continue to do.

Now, we are back on Thursday with a questions and answers episode.

We are indeed.

We have an interesting bonus episode this week as well, which is I just finished filming 110 episodes of House of Games.

So our producer Joey.

That's a lot of service.

That's a pleasure.

Our producer Joey came up and interviewed everyone on the show about what a day in the life of House of Games is like.

So it's how a show like that is put together, all the different people in all the different departments, and what they do.

So, that will be our bonus episode.

I love that episode for it.

It's terrific.

If you want to sign up for our club, it's therestisentertainment.com.

Otherwise, we will be back as completely as normal with our questions and answers on Thursday.

On Thursday, all human-made.

secrets go.

Your voice was heat in a motel room.

Vinyl slow, dancing under the moon.

Time pulled the thread, but I still feel tight.

Your silhouette burned in the porchlight.

Let's rewind the summer,

slow and rough.

Trace every curve we couldn't get enough.

Back to the light,

your hands no mind.

Whiskey and sweat, hearts are a tire.

Let's rewind the summer.

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