AI Slop, Gender Myths & Podcast Control

We've got James, if you've ever watched Black Outer, the ball-drick of this show, he's

here.

Oh, James, now I'm hearing myself twice.

But we are alive this morning as we would be every Friday and we haven't let you down

so far, so we're not about to start now.

The reason for the change is that the real network is no more.

We decided to can that project and it's been a long and exciting journey through all of

the different stages of this show, and this is no exception.

I will admit, the hardest part of doing anything like this is not looking at financial figures

trying to figure out whether you have sufficient audience or sufficient sponsors or any of

that stuff.

The real question is, do you have the right people, and we always did, and the only sad

thing to me is that there are a bunch of people who we no longer can keep on stuff, and

we've decided to just trim things right down to their bare essentials.

So no more real network, but the Gareth Cliff's show continues in all its glory, and we're

going to be doing this show live.

I've also got something exciting coming up, which will be launching in the second week

of April, and I'll tell you about that a little later in the show today.

We have Hanan on in a short while.

He will fill us in on what I think is going to be a very controversial topic, our men

more extreme than women, and there is data to prove that that may or may not be the case

you'll have to hang around to find out whether it's true or not.

We're also going to speak to a guy about the future guy, some dude, his name is Jonathan

Warnocker.

He is actually, he's some important representative in the world of podcasting, and we need to

check in with him because he knows what's going on with parliament and with government

and what they're trying to do.

I always get very nervous when governments start talking about regulation, and these guys

are talking about the regulation of podcasting and of digital media, which to be perfectly

on its scares the hell out of me, because so far there was even a parliamentary document

that was published online this week.

I think it was on Instagram or on X, but someone had highlighted podcasting and

digital media is one of the fastest growing and most exciting parts of the South African

media landscape.

It's also unregulated, and I thought, hmm, I wonder if those things could be related.

I wonder if things grow and they do well when government has less to do with them.

And the answer of course is, yes, they do.

So we'll find out all about that in a short while.

The comment section is open and live.

I see everybody's crazy in here already.

Sandra Mansus is Lou.

New theme looks nice.

Yeah, we're going to be changing all of that up, and as I said, some other exciting things

which I'll announce to you a little bit later on.

Got sound now.

Was there no sound?

James?

That's brilliant.

James had muted my microphone.

So how long was I talking into the void?

Jesus, James.

All right.

Don't worry.

Okay, so we got lots of that to talk about in a short while, we'll get into some of those

things.

There's plenty of news as well.

And I don't know, James seems to have thought that this is an especially busy news week,

but I don't think it has been.

Every week feels like it's an extremely busy news week this week.

I want to start though with a story that, look, I don't know if it's true because you

don't know if anything's true anymore.

You go on the internet, you see people talking about a certain thing.

It's trending, which is always usually a bad sign because if something's trending,

it usually means it's popular, but fake.

And AI is creating so much nonsense and slump and brain rights at the moment that it's

very hard for everybody to figure out whether or not what they're actually consuming is valuable.

This story I hope is true.

I really do.

The story is almost like that movie, the incredible journey or the book, the incredible journey,

the movie, Homewood Bond.

This is published this week and it was mostly on social media.

It's very hard to find attribution or references online that can tell you if it's a hoax or

not.

But the story was that there were seven dogs that were kidnapped.

Now, I don't know if these dogs were kidnapped by people who wanted to eat them because

there are people who will do that.

It was in the UK somewhere, right?

And about 17 kilometers outside of London, these dogs escaped from the truck that they

were in.

And there was an Alsacean, a Labrador.

There were two little peeking knees, dogs.

There was a corgi.

And these seven dogs somehow got out of the truck that had abducted them from their

various owners in London.

And they managed to make an escape.

Have you got that video?

Just show everybody the video because this is wild.

The corgi apparently led the way and all of these people were, all of these dogs, rather,

I mean, I talk about dogs like people.

They were found 17 kilometers.

They were on their way home from the place they'd escaped.

They had walked along roads.

They'd gone through bushes, hedges, down garden paths.

They'd found their way.

The corgi led the other dogs.

And they managed to make it back to close enough to all of their owners for someone to

find them, report them, and then the police apparently reunited all of these dogs with

their owners.

Now, I think this is the most beautiful story in the whole world.

And I really hope it's true.

You know, there's this Billy Connelly, Jokey does about a dwarf and he goes, oh god, I hope

it's true.

And I really hope that's the case with these dogs too.

Because if this is, then it is the only great story to happen on the internet for, I don't

know, five years, something like that.

There's also less good news.

I see that the president has been very, very busy this week.

Well, for him, very busy, which means he hasn't been sitting at home doing nothing.

Here's a video of Cyril.

He was talking about very sad for him and he's pretending he's not upset.

You could see from the video, he's really putting on a good show, his eyes go all big and

he's trying very hard to not let people learn that he's kind of pissed off that he wasn't

invited to the G7.

Now, before you watch this, you have to remember that the G7 is an even more exclusive club

than the G20.

And we were the hosts of the G20 last year.

Remember, they were, remember those lovely days when they fixed up Joeburg for just a

short while and the roads were being repaired and the lights all worked and they were, they

were special lanes and they were, they were advertising for the G20 all over.

They put ugly, hideous, orange pots at various intersections and all framps from the highway.

I put up a few new signs.

Signs in the worst pots of Chaotang to show people where the airport was at the opposite

end of Chaotang.

Like if you were in Krugasdorp, for example, there would have been a sign that said, Oh,

our Tambo that way.

Krugasdorp, if you are going to follow signs from Krugasdorp to our Tambo, you're going

to get lost.

Anyway, the G20 was a big, big deal as you may remember.

Everyone was told, this is the most important event South Africa's hosted since the World

Cup.

And there was no doubt if anyone was asking questions every single person in government.

There were whole departments turned into like G20 PR machines.

If there was any doubt that this government wasn't massively excited by and hugely proud

of the fact that they had the G20 here, then you just had to turn on your team.

TV and watch any of the old news channels or get on the internet and see the press releases

they were putting out, the advertising they were placing everywhere.

It was very abundantly clear to everybody that the G20 was very important to Suril.

So now, I don't know how seriously to take him when he says he's not upset that he wasn't

invited to the G7.

Watch this.

My information is that there's been no pressure from any country, the United States or any

other country, and the invitation to the G7 does not mean you're being snubbed if you

are not invited or you're being ignored.

And there are so many countries around the world that don't get invited to the G7.

And we are not a member and remember South Africa is not a member.

And when we do go, we are invited and we take a message there.

So that we haven't attended every G7.

So if we don't go to this one, it should never be a surprise to anyone.

I don't believe him.

I don't know if you do, but that doesn't sound to me like it's a thing.

Sorry, Suril.

And also when we need us, that big eye thing, you know, that's like during the headlights

territory.

I can tell that that's what's going on there.

It's not just that though, he did deploy a whole bunch of troops to the Cape flats.

So in case you thought that the president was just busy saying, ah, they didn't invite

me to the party, but I really wanted to go.

There's also this, which I think is kind of interesting.

Again, these stories are being generated by AI on the internet, but I checked this one

out and it does line up with some semblance of the truth.

So the headline is that there are troops now being deployed in various parts of the Western

Cape.

Whether or not the Western Cape, I mean, we clearly know that the Western Cape is one

of those parts of South Africa where there's a big problem, big problem with knife violence,

with gun violence, with all of that stuff.

So clearly people are concerned for the right reasons.

And the president decided that the best thing to do is to send the army and he did this

of course in, where was it in Joburg the other day, it wasn't West Dean or Coronationville.

It was in, I think, I actually can't remember which neighborhood he put them into, but

it was some dangerous neighborhood in South Africa and clearly he thought this was a good

idea.

Hey, if it helps the people of Cape town, people in those areas are usually thrilled when

they see the army because they're also sick of being abused by criminals.

These guys kind of have the run of the place.

So 800, I think, is the number 800 troops that have been deployed into the Cape Fletz around

800 of these soldiers are being sent there after 83 murders in just 11 days.

You know 83 murders in one, I suppose you could call it a geographical area because

there's not really just one suburb or neighborhood, it's a whole geographical area.

And I would say 83 murders is quite a lot.

I don't think that anyone in Israel or America in the military there has been lost yet.

I may be wrong, there may be some soldiers who were killed at a base when one of the drones

attacked.

I think it was in Katara Kuwait.

So maybe three or four people on the American side and I think the Israelis have lost a

few civilians because of indiscriminate missiles and drone attacks.

But I don't think they get even close to 83.

And that is just 11 days in the Cape Fletz.

So if you happen to live in the Cape Fletz, what can I tell you, not not a great place

and clearly somewhere that needs to be sorted out.

So they'll support the police.

This is the soldiers now with riots, with patrols, with raids, with searches and they have

no rest powers.

So the police still have to do that.

And authorities are struggling to contain escalating gang violence.

So we already know that on the list of dangerous places inside Africa, Joburg is not the leader.

Apparently Cape Town is the place you need to worry about.

Speaking of Cape Town though, I didn't think it was really, really cool to see some people

having a good time.

There's a goal.

I think she's Zimbabwean called Miracle Tadeewa.

And there was this photograph she put up of her and her soulmate in Cape Town.

Just a lovely, heartwarming photo.

We started the show with the new story of the dogs that made their way back home in their

incredible journey.

But here's Miracle Tadeewa reminding us that Cape Town is not just a gang riddled, violent

shithole.

Actually, it's a place where you take the person you really love.

Have you got that picture of Miracle and her boyfriend?

Because I think this is so sweet.

They're such attractive, lovely people.

And I want you to share in their joy with me this morning.

He's not what you expect.

When you see what he looks like, it may even give you a fright so early in the morning.

So we'll have to check that out and make absolutely sure that they're okay.

Looking at him, we're going to need to check on him pretty much every week.

Very, very long neck.

This looks like a Simpsons character.

Did you get that picture I sent you?

I'll try and find it on here because it's probably easier.

This is what Miracle and her boyfriend, can I hold it up to the camera?

Yeah.

Let me just show you that.

She's a lucky girl.

What can I tell you?

He is absolutely not the guy you're expecting to see.

That's him.

You see that?

Let me move it back a little bit.

There.

Got it?

How's that?

But you know love.

What more could you want?

A little bit of love.

And we do like a little love on a Friday morning.

In America, they have a system where you get called up for jury duty.

So let's say, for example, you were in the Western Cape and we were under the American

judicial system and legal system and you were witness to one of those 81 murders that

happened in the Western Cape.

You would probably be asked to partake in the court case as a witness.

But let's say you were someone who just lived in the neighborhood or even in Cape Town

more generally, part of your duty would be if you lived in America that they can call

you up at random and they can say to you, I need you to come and sit in court as judge

and jury.

So there will be a judge.

They'll take care of all the legal technicalities, make sure the law is followed, explain things

to the jury where necessary and eventually pass judgment.

But the jury will decide if someone's guilty or innocent.

And the cool thing about that in the opinion of people who like juries, there's a big controversy

going on at the moment in the UK because they're also having a discussion about whether

they'll abandon the jury system completely.

But in America, it's very much part of their system.

And it can happen to anybody.

It can happen to famous people.

It can happen to people who have real jobs and shit to do.

You get called up for jury duty.

You've got to explain to the court why you cannot do jury duty.

And usually the court will say, ah, your excuse is rubbish.

You say I've got to run my multi-million dollar company.

They'll say, sorry, I can't help you.

You actually have to be here and you have to spend as long as the trial takes.

You may remember famous cases like the OJ trial where they have, I think it was 12 jurors

in that case.

And these people are all subsequent to that very, very ancient story.

They've all become famous.

Some of them have already died.

They're so old because this did happen in the 90s.

And being on a jury is something that most Americans don't want.

It's going to take up time.

They're going to have to go to court every day.

They're going to have to hear all this stuff.

It could become infamous or famous because suddenly they're all over TV.

The thing that you really don't want is if you have a serious job and it's going to

take up time to end up sitting in court in America.

And it does happen to famous people.

Here's an actor called James Marsden.

What I like about this clip is that James Marsden, I suppose if you weren't a fan of his

and you thought he was like every other actor in Hollywood, you'd say, oh, this is an

arrogant guy because he's saying people know me.

And I think that that could prejudice the case.

So he tries to explain to the judge, I don't think you want me on this jury.

The judge is having none of it.

And the judge then asks one of the other people who is likely to end up on jury duty.

Do you know who this guy is?

It's kind of funny.

I like the way that James Marsden reacts to this.

I don't think he's being an egotistical nutcase or that he's particularly full of himself,

but take a look and you decide.

I mean, my expectation now is that there's going to be something like the revenge of the

humanities.

What the world is going to need are well-educated generalists with good taste, right?

Good aesthetic taste.

You know, people who have read good books and gone to good museums and had good arguments

and can make good arguments and can create companies using robots that have learned a

code that produce things that we actually want that benefit our culture.

We're going to want a beautiful culture.

We're going to want human curation.

James, that's not James Marsden.

I mean, just because his name is the same as yours doesn't mean that that's him.

That's Sam Harris.

What Sam Harris was talking about is also interesting, but that was not what I was building

up to.

Let's see if we can find the James Marsden thing.

I'll get back to Sam Harris too in a little while.

There's plenty of local news.

I don't know if you saw that there was a lion that walked into a game lodge in Botswana

and had everybody freaking out.

There was only one guy in the lodge.

He was like, he'd probably been on a game drive that afternoon, maybe had a couple of drinks.

He was sitting there, and the night vision camera picks up this lion that walks in behind

him, and he's kind of like gozing on the sofa or whatever.

But the lion comes to probably about two, three meters away from him.

For some reason, he looks back and he sees this thing.

I don't know about you, but if I ended up in a game lodge at night with all the lights

off, and I heard a lion, which is quite a silent animal, you know, it pads under their

feet and all the rest.

Then I make a huge amount of noise, and I turned around and I saw a male lion with the

mane and everything else as big, fully grown adult lion.

I think I would, there would be poo running down the inside of my leg.

I don't know how this guy must...

Alright, so funny comment here, I love this from signet saying, James is still fucking

around.

Bitcoin, but saying, Dr. Hennon needs to discuss this behavior, absolutely.

And Viassen saying, James can't find James.

Comment sections on to you.

Lowell for fuck's sake, James is Lou.

I feel trauma coming over me, help, is that, is that because of James or because of that

lion video?

So I think it's at a lodge in Botswana, that's what I found when I tried to look into

the origin of this clip, and I don't know how recent it is, but you know, it only takes

one person to be eaten for it to be too much.

And then of course, it's the lion's fault and people will take out the lion.

You know, we've always been very pro in animal attacks videos on this show.

We've always been very much on the side of the animals, and you can tell why.

Definitely, those are our friends.

Okay, so let's get back to the James Marsden clip, because here he is trying to persuade

the judge that he doesn't want to do jury duty.

I'm trying to think in South Africa what people might come up with as excuses, because

we're very good.

We think in our feet, you can imagine, just from the way our politicians lie, how quickly

a South African would be able to come up with ideas of why they shouldn't be on jury

duty.

Oh no, I've got a bachelorette party.

You know, kind of like Gen Z excuses for not being at work, that's kind of what it would

be.

That level of bullshit coming from people.

So we'll have to see what they would say in South Africa.

If we ever get it, I don't think jury duty in this country would be a good idea.

Mostly because we already know we have an education problem, we have a numeracy in literacy

problem, right?

So if the average South African votes for someone like, say, Vigil and Ballula, not that

we've ever voted for him in anything, but let's just say he was the example, right?

Vigil and Ballula, we'll talk about just now because there's been news every forum

brought some dossier against him, and they're going to prosecute him on issues of

Kremlin in Yuria, which is basically defamation.

That's more or less what it is.

But if Vigil and Ballula is the kind of guy people would vote for, can you imagine what

a jury would do when applying facts to a case in a matter of law?

I think rather, even the worst judges, and we do have a couple of terrible judges in

this country, but by and large, I don't know if you'll agree with me.

I think most South Africans would, whenever a famous court case goes on, I mean, we've

all been watching them at Lunga Commission lately.

And those three judges, all three seem to know exactly what they're doing.

They seem to be very well versed in the law.

They seem to be very smart people.

I'd rather have their making decisions like this.

If South African juries were ever instituted, I think we'd have a major problem, certainly

in terms of credibility, knowledge, expertise, even just paying attention for long enough.

I mean, they could find someone who's on tuk and make them part of the jury.

That would not be a good thing.

Here's James Marston trying to wiggle his way out.

You'll recognize him from, they go through some of the movies, by the way, and the judge

is like, I haven't heard of these movies.

I feel like there's a chance that I might be an unwelcome distraction.

Why is that?

I'm a recognizable public figure.

Respectfully, I don't recognize you.

I'm sorry.

Who are you?

That's okay.

A lot of people do.

Stand up.

Do you know who this fella is?

I do.

Yeah.

It took me a little bit to notice him yesterday, but I recognized him yesterday.

What is he done?

He's done X-Men, Sonic, he's in hairspray, 27 dresses, a death at a funeral.

Have you seen all those films?

No.

Okay.

Do you think that his sitting would be a distraction?

Not for me.

No.

With all due respect, I don't think he'd be a distraction either, so why don't you both

sit down?

And you can see the guy is just like, oh, shit.

I'm going to lose this.

I'm going to have to do jury duty.

It must be horrible.

Imagine he's got some big movie project on.

It's going to pay him like $60 million.

Some superhero movies.

He's done a couple of those before.

By the way, I didn't recognize any of those movie names either.

I don't think I've seen any of them.

So probably a good thing I wasn't the judge because he went in with the same outcome.

So Bitcoin, but it's telling us we need someone to run our socials properly.

T.R.N. was great and could have gone far with proper exposure, especially on X.

Vladimir Pello isn't seeing this well.

He's going to have things to say.

And then Zelnus says, where is Ben?

We need to talk live golf.

Ben has plenty to say about live golf.

We'll have him back on the show next week.

But he is celebrating his brother's 50th birthday season, the Cape this weekend and is out

of signal.

So he actually can't join us on the show this morning.

So we will bring James back.

Trust me.

We're not throwing him off the reserve.

And there will be plenty of the other regulars.

But excitingly, we're going to have a different format for the show too.

We're playing around with the idea and I know when I say this people are going to go crazy

in the comments section.

But things evolve, right?

So we're looking at options of maybe doing the show from seven rather than from six.

Something again that people were suggesting a while ago and then a lot of people lost

their shit.

So tell us what you think.

And as you know, you can always email me.

I'll put up James's email address too because we're going to not your old email address.

That one we're going to have to change.

But we'll put that up so you can abuse him, but it'll all be in the description of the

episode.

And you can let us know what you think we should do because I want to change this up,

make it a lot more punchy, get guests that absolutely are enthralling and interesting

and make people think laugh, smile, maybe even cry.

You know, it's never a bad thing to have guests that can make you cry occasionally, just

to remind you that you're human.

Live golf and white on white crime, that is hilarious.

I'm not going to play the video because everyone has seen it a million times, but there

are a bunch of boots who got into a fight.

The only embarrassing thing about live golf, apparently, and I'll check with Ben whether

this is true or not.

I don't see why it wouldn't be.

Apparently, live golf has signed for the next seven years, which is very good news for

South Africa.

As a massive event, they reckon over 100,000 people attended during the course of the

four days that it was on.

I went on the Thursday, the first day, and I must tell you, it was first class.

They had all the facilities you could wish for an international sporting event.

It was Ben said better than just about every golf thing he's been to, maybe just short

of the ride a cup.

People walking around, golfers having lots of fun, I bumped into Gaiton McKenzie while

I was there.

He was very, very excited, and he did quite a lot to bring it here, so well done, Gaiton.

I know people are a little bit pissed off with him half the time and thrilled with him

the rest of the time.

But Gaiton McKenzie did his bits, so I'm thrilled that he's also getting a little shine from

this.

Hey, we need events like that in South Africa.

People need something to do.

People need something to get excited about.

If we can get it for seven years in a row, that is investment.

Also, Stain City got to tell you, looking good.

Stain City is green and beautiful, and even though it's right near that shit pipe that

goes past Dane Fern, don't let that put you off.

Most people thought it was a Roman aqueduct, I kid you not, foreign visitors.

They thought, oh, that doesn't seem to me to be a shit pipe that's taking all the sewage

from the northern suburbs of Johannesburg to a treatment facility.

No, no, no, it's a Roman aqueduct.

It's very beautiful.

Let them believe that.

That's a good idea.

Karl says apparently the big names didn't want to come because they said that nobody

would come and watch it and it ended up being the second most attended globally.

Apparently, the only one that got more numbers was Adelaide in Australia.

So that is true, Karl, and hey, we can put on a good show in South Africa.

We've proven this before.

We did a World Cup.

It was probably one of the most fun World Cups, not just because we were here and I went

to a couple of games, but it had a vibe, it had an energy, it had an excitement.

I don't think you could say that for Qatar, God bless them when they hosted it the last

time.

And maybe America will do a good job this time, Ron.

I have no doubt they could put on a good show, but remember, it's America and Canada and

Mexico.

So if you were hoping to come here for sport this morning with Ben, that's about all the

sport I'm going to be able to get to.

Do we need to learn how to box if we want to go to live?

The point of that and the comment that launched this conversation is that a bunch of boots

got together and they decided to have a thought on the golf course.

Well, not on the golf course, but in the crowd area and it was a really embarrassing fight,

not because it was violent and because this is the kind of thing that you could see every

night that you go out in places like four ways.

James, for example, is from four ways, he knows it well.

You have to walk around like this, just in case shit goes down.

You do, you have to, you know, have to know which car is the getaway car.

This is how people have to operate in four ways, especially in like the pond slope center

where LSB is, you know, that's where people go and you need to know to avoid these places.

Girls get involved in the fights too and you could hear some of the chicks in the background

here shouting, go, go call, get him.

It was actually very, very exciting, not much in the way of fighting, but certainly messy

enough to pass for one of those late night bar brawls that you sometimes see in dodgy

northern suburbs parts of Johannesburg.

Hey, we got to take what we can get.

It was part of the entertainment.

For all we know, it helped to sell the idea to live.

We don't know.

They might be into that stuff, right?

Howie Hughes has some very useful, you see, this is the kind of stuff I come to the

comment section for.

Thank you, howie.

He says, seven a.m. is better, obviously for you then, howie, which is what I'm asking.

Is the cliff central app ever going to work again?

No.

It hasn't worked howie for three years, so I don't think that's going to be the way

to do things going forward.

Patrick wants to know if clippies was involved in the fight at Liv Golf.

There's a 98% chance that clippies was involved.

I have to tell you that the hospitality that I was in on Thursday, and I think it was

some kind of VIP, whatever it was.

The food was better than any wedding I've been to, with maybe one or two exceptions, restaurant

quality, five star, very, very impressive, furniture all over the place, beautiful decor,

really, a lot of it's custom built, so these guys from Liv clearly know what they were

doing, and we're spending all of that Saudi oil money, which is great according to me.

The Indian guy was the funniest, I think he was fighting for both sides.

That's again, back to the boot fight.

There was an Indian dude, he was mostly the Watts, but there was an Indian dude who was also

involved, and he probably was fighting for both sides.

A lot of South African Indians do, for example, you'll see a lot of South African Indians

who used to vote A and C now voting DA.

Hey, Helen, we've been your friends the whole time, men, and then two, three years ago,

a Cyril, we your friends, bro.

So if you want to know which way the wind blows, just follow a lot of those eggs who talk

like that about politics.

I for when need the six o'clock on the way to work says, a Jean, thank you.

We will put this, you know, we'll do, we'll put it into one of those big spinning balls

with tickets, and then we'll pull like a tumbola, we'll put it all in a tumbola, and then

we'll draw the winning number, and we'll see what we can do about the start time.

As I said, this is all open to various kinds of influence.

If you want to email us, we'll put all the details in the description.

You can let us know what you think, or just drop it in the comments section now.

The essence says, I called Gaten Graten, but he's just another politician.

James, if you would aware of skimpy dress, if we do the lotto thing, I think people would

vomit in their mouths.

We would lose tremendous numbers of audience.

It would just be very, very bad.

They slipped on the clippies, says Wade, Wade, you're being too forgiving.

I live in the US and the daylight savings is always throwing me off.

I will work with any time.

Well, thank you.

Promise.

How very kind of you to be so accommodating of our needs.

We don't have a preference, by the way.

It's probably just as well to keep it at six, but we are toying with the idea.

We can do whatever we want with this show, right?

Between me and you and you being person who watches or listens, we can figure it out.

We'll decide.

Bitcoin puts asking a very racist, but very South African question, Viasin.

What curry do you recommend for the best punch?

See again, just because Viasin is Indian, curry.

This is the kind of thing that starts a fight in the Northern suburbs, by the way.

Hey, what kind of, you must have charruee, so what curry is your favorite curry?

Hey, man, just because I'm Indian doesn't mean I'm only eating curry.

Who you calling curry?

Here's my bras.

Here's.

Sure, bras.

I got more bras.

Next thing you know, you got to fight.

This is, this is not helpful, guys, and I don't need the comment section to become like

live golf.

Richard says we are having great success showing our solar panel fire safety products at

solar and storage expert Gallagher.

That's excellent.

You see, Richard, if we didn't know about that, how would we know to go and take a look

at the fire panel safety products?

Solar fire panel safety product.

Solar panel fire.

Good God.

Okay.

I'm going to, someone called James Electric, call the Santa's in the comments.

What's the point of emailing him, but I've just displayed that I am electric too.

Bitcoin puts us, I went to Govinders on Wednesday and I felt like mooring people afterwards.

Is that because curry makes you violent?

Maybe the effect of curry on boots is that it makes them angry.

I don't know.

All right.

Let's see this too.

There's a list of countries with private jets.

This is fascinating.

We'll see where South Africa comes up on the list.

But in case you thought we were one of those sad countries that didn't make it, we were

not exactly in the top 10, but we are not doing too badly.

And I'll explain why.

South Africa, in terms of the total number of jets that we have, we come in at 160 private

jets that are registered in South Africa.

You may think that's few, or may think that's many, but let's compare us to some of the

countries that we are near, or that we have economic parity with.

So Argentina has 142, so they're underneath us on the scale.

Obviously, a country like America is right at the top with 15,347 private jets.

Brazil comes second, and they're in with 1103, so 1103.

Mexico comes next, then Canada, then Germany, then the Isle of Man.

Now, I find that fascinating.

Obviously, it's a tax haven, and the Isle of Man, you need a private jet to get to and

from the Isle of Man, must be a lot of rich people who park their jet at the Isle of

Man Airport.

And it must be an enormous airport for a shitty little place like that.

The only person I know in the Isle of Man is Richmore Holland, so the next time we talk

to him, we'll have to find out if that's true.

In Austria, then the rest of the UK with a poultry 241, we're not that far behind.

China has 203, okay?

So for the world's second biggest economy, and a place where there are rich people, but

they are few and far between, and if the government decides they don't like you and

you're rich, they may just get rid of you, but 203 for China, then Venezuela, obviously

these numbers have dwindled since this survey was conducted, probably in 2023-24, Venezuela

at that point, 168 private jets, and South Africa, 160, not bad.

I mean, we can be proud of ourselves.

I wonder how many of those belong to tender preneurs and how many of those belong to people

who don't even live in South Africa, but they rent them out.

Someone rich once said to me, so if anyone who's hankering for a private jet, it's a

little life advice.

If it flies, floats or fucks, rent it, don't buy it.

That's what rich people say.

Flies, floats or fucks, rent it, don't buy it.

And when you're talking to billionaires and they tell you something like that, you listen.

I wonder what ever happened to Sia, well Ryan, we were going to have Sia on the show this

morning, actually, because Sia was in Parliament yesterday, not yesterday, Wednesday.

Sia was in Parliament.

He was representing, I think, podcast party, and he was there to talk about the change in

the media landscape and the regulation that government seeks to impose on the podcasting

business.

I'm going to save that for later.

We've actually got a video of Sia, I can show you, just the opening gamut of what he

had to say.

But we'll get to that when we get to our guest a little later on Jonathan, because obviously

podcasting is, and maybe I should just go on a mini rant here about podcasting.

One of the reasons I'm also changing the show is I feel like there's so much AI Slop.

And podcasts where you've got two people at a table with microphones talking to each

other.

There's so much of that at the moment, there's a glut of content, I don't want to be doing

that anymore.

I feel like we need to change it up and that is part of what we're going to be doing

in the next few weeks.

So fair warning, things are going to change.

We're going to make it a lot more interesting, a lot more dynamic.

We will not just be doing interviews with one person about one topic, we're not going

to be doing the kinds of podcasts that everybody else is doing on the internet, all the kind

that you see now, thanks to AI being made by nonhumans.

And let's be fair.

There is enormous value in AI.

We've discussed this stuff over and over again, the efficiencies that can be brought in.

The kind of information that can be derived through AI is way better than the information

a human could gather, even with search engines like Google, the way that we used to do it

up to AI.

So there is value.

I don't want to throw the baby up with the bath water, but I do think if you've been

online on any social medium, or you've been watching your feed a little more than usual,

you'll have noticed that some stuff is starting to turn up.

That is purely driven by the, it's made by the algorithm.

So you can tell that this was, this was actually, there was no human involved.

They've got like an AI, it's a, it's a kind you can sometimes pick up whether it's fake

or real, but usually you can tell by the dialogue fairly quickly, this is not a human.

It's then posted on some account that has millions of followers.

So you think, okay, well, this must be legit, but the butts are joining up.

They are watching the content, they're driving up the numbers.

Then they're engaging as if they were humans.

So you've got butts that made it.

You've got butts that are watching it.

You've got butts that are engaging in it.

And you've got butts that are fighting with each other in the comments.

There's no human involved at any point in all of this conversation.

And I don't know whether that's going to be very useful to people.

It brings us back to Sam Harris, who James mistakenly played as James Marsden earlier on.

And he had some interesting things to say.

Now, Sam Harris, for those who don't know, is one of the famous atheist forehorsement

of the apocalypse.

It was him, Daniel Dennett's Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

And these four were the great public intellectuals of the 1990s, the late 90s.

Sam Harris is absolutely a smart guy.

There's no dark in my mind that he's one of the sharpest thinkers in the world.

He's written tremendously interesting books that are well researched.

He's a philosopher, he's big on meditation.

He hates Donald Trump.

But you know what?

Every now and then, Sam and I completely agree on something.

Every now and then, we completely disagree on things, most of the time I agree with him.

So take a look at this because Sam is talking about what, if you have children, they should

be studying in the next couple of years with this burgeoning world of AI and all of the

bad and good that comes with it and his answer may interest you.

So just pretend you didn't already see five seconds of this clip earlier and listen

to it in the context of Sam talking about what AI could do positively and negatively

going forward.

I mean, my expectation now is that there's going to be something like the revenge of the

humanities.

What the world is going to need are well-educated generalists with good taste, right?

Good aesthetic taste, you know, people who have read good books and gone to good museums

and had good arguments and can make good arguments and can create companies using robots that

have learned to code that produce things that we actually want that benefit our culture.

We're going to want a beautiful culture.

We're going to want human curation of increasingly powerful tools put to good purpose.

I would be much more bullish on a degree in philosophy or even, you know, English literature

quite frankly at this moment than perhaps certain STEM fields, I mean, and I would certainly

put computer science in that category.

Now I largely agree with this.

I don't think there's much reason for any of us to find fault with it.

I love the idea that the human touch is going to be what separates the good from the great.

As AI becomes better at making stuff and I see a comment here from somebody saying that

even in the architectural profession, it's jody that AI is taking over there.

We're still going to need humans and I think that that will become the magic ingredient

in whatever we do, whether it's in architecture, engineering, whether it's in media, whether

it's in the applied sciences or philosophy.

So I'm not upset or anxious or nervous like a lot of people are.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine in London this week.

He is a big investor.

He asked me out of the blue, what do I think of AI?

And I said to him, I'm mostly an optimist and I feel most of us are.

But there are things about it that are already putting me off and I think one of the things

that's putting me off is the kind of content that AI generates because it's not human.

It's not able to, even with all the data in the world, all of the human behavior it can

track, the responses, the stimulation that it can give us as humans by making us angry

or making us sad or throwing up nostalgia, which it does.

I mean, it's got so good that if I go onto my Instagram or any other social medium

now, it pretty much knows what kind of stuff I'm going to watch to the end.

The danger of that is that eventually it's going to start manufacturing stuff that is

just crap and it's already happening.

I spoke to another person this week who said to me they have had enough that friend of

mine, Greg, who's been on the show who does luxury marble circus, he used to do a trick

rage, all of that stuff.

Greg said to me, he is so put off by his social media feed at the moment that it's just not

exciting to him.

All right, so let's go to comments quickly.

Congo Chris says, welcome to the new show.

Give us your honest mapello opinion.

Oh, sorry, that's Bitcoin, but two Congo Chris.

And yes, that's what we're looking for Congo.

This isn't the real Gareth Cliff, it's AI generated.

How do I prove that I'm not AI?

Apparently the thing to do, this is a video I saw this week, you know how to check if

something's AI, is you ask the deep fake to hold three fingers up to its face and it

can't do it.

It can't do it because it'll mess up either the deep fake filter it's using or it doesn't

know how to put three fingers properly in front of its face.

So when I can't do this anymore, then you know I'm fake.

And I know the guys were actually working, they sent me a couple of videos to prove it

unlike a version of me that sounds exactly like me and looks 90% like me.

It probably to be perfectly frank was way better looking than me.

So maybe I should have gone with it, but it just didn't get the movements right.

You know when you're not dealing with a real person, have you ever had a conversation

with someone on the phone, there was this amazing clip I saw the other day of this guy

who was talking to someone on the phone and then he said, can you turn on your video because

I don't believe you're real and then they turned the video like flashed on briefly and you

could tell that this was not, it was not the person who was representing themselves that way.

So that clearly is something that's been going on for a while.

There was this dude in America this week, oh my god, what a story.

Have we got to run on by the way?

Okay, so there's this dude in America who he's like an old boomer who's he just lost his wife

sadly and he got this message on I think it was like LinkedIn or something from somebody who

was going to help him with some aspect of investing.

He clearly was a retired old man and he had all this money lying around and he was asking

on LinkedIn for advice which is something a boomer would do online and he was particularly

interested in like Bitcoin and gold and that kind of thing and so this person got hold of him

well he thought it was a person it was a scam artist and many of our alarm bells would go off

in this situation but you know some people are more gullible than others it's it's partly their fault

but it's not entirely their fault anyway this woman probably a guy said let's

rather talk on WhatsApp they got talking this person was like oh you know my childhood was really

rough and they started kind of evoking sympathy in each other telling each other each other's stories

and eventually this woman who had like a whine estate and had investments and Bitcoin said oh

I've got this thing that by the way has come up where you could put like a hundred thousand dollars

in and then you will make 50 percent every month on your on your investment is it dead or is

it still working oh shit James how are you going to fix that okay well we're going to carry on

James is going to sort out the cameras it's going on okay well let's go to her none then

sort that out I'll switch over here so that you can just get me on the on the other camera

and then we'll talk to her none still figuring this stuff out

Garrett

what you on so there we are okay are we on

so doc tell me what's what's happening in your life are you seeing some nutcases today

the day the days busy but mental health is not taking a break for nobody nobody's going away and

mental health is not taking a break for Easter that's for sure yeah holidays for some people are

harder than the normal working days but I do want to talk to you about something I read this

thing about greater male variability hypothesis this week I don't want to put people off and chase

them away but this is actually a fascinating area of research are men more extreme than women

we even put that into the the byline of the show today because we often talk about gender differences

but is it true that that men at the extremes are more likely to make up the numbers than women are

women generally more normal in the whole in the mean in the average than men and obviously I'm

asking you with respect to like mental illness here because that's something we need to figure out

yeah so I've done some background research and the reality is that many women are not

different different terms of extremes but where the direction of extremity actually goes the

women are more extreme going internally and men are more extreme externally that's not

going to come to mental ill health women suffer more with depression the internal illness anxiety

with the internal illness insecurity guilt and men suffer more extreme with the external the

externalizing of that anger suicide is way higher in men than women men express themselves more

so with ADHD any of the conditions or disorders that require external manifestation mean struggle

more with well whilst women struggle more with the internal direction of that of that entity

so is there a biological reason for this is it social or is it a mix of both

it is a mixture of both they say genetics load the gun and socializing the nurture part points

the gun at the target in other words women yeah biologically there are pre-programmed obviously

for socializing but we get rewarded women get rewarded for socializing being much more

emotionally so when you walk in you know age six years old women are socialized to

name more feelings and manage their emotions amongst their friends whilst men are much more

external pain sucker resting each other outside in the yard so men are much more awarded by being

external while women are much more awarded the teeth and the facial stands by being internal and

recognizing not just their feelings they're internal world but are there other women's internal

world as well yeah I mean women just talk about this stuff more than we do right yeah they feel

much more comfortable that they're social hierarchy that they get you know they're the badge of

honor are you able to recognize your own feelings and are you able to recognize the feelings of

the people around you men don't focus on that because they're not rewarding recognizing when your

friend is sad or anxious but there is plenty of rewards in terms of recognizing whether your

friend is a bit of soccer player than you because we get rewarded socially and on the external

game as opposed to the internal one I'm always amazed by how these these gender differences the

psychological and biological differences between people seem to upset some of kind of

more ideological people online because I don't think it's necessarily better or worse but there's

definitely a difference does this mean that men are more predisposed to for example end up homeless

or that because we know there's a there's a there's a tenuous link between homelessness

and mental illness right I mean there are videos all over the internet of these homeless people

you can tell that a lot of them are suffering from something it might not be an entire diagnosis

and you certainly can't give that from a video and social media but it does appear to me that a

lot of these people and a lot of these men especially are those people on the extremes that we

started this conversation with so two things number one there's not better or worse you want to

work with who you are your nature so it's a better to be introvert or extrovert is a better to be

or socially inclined or more withdrawn and oscillated is it better to speak more speak less

and the answer is another is good or bad but you want to use your temperament to the best of your

ability so a Ferrari belongs in its lane and a bicycle belongs in its lane and a train belongs

in its lane and if you put a train on the on the racetrack well it's going to fail and if you

put a Ferrari on the train track it's going to fail do you want to think about your temperament

and your personality which is a mixture of nature and nurture and you want to put yourself

in the right environment but I want everybody to challenge and I want to challenge the popular

view that mental health is an internal disease that kind of is lurking in the background

and is ready to come out at any moment I want you to think of mental ill health as an external

disease which means are you actualizing your life externally are you plugging into things

that add value to you are you going to the gym are you eating well are you engaging with the right

people are you disengaging from things that make you thicker yet you live a life with purpose

you wake up in the morning and feel like you have something to contribute do you contribute

would you be your best friend if you had a choice all those things contribute to mental ill health

it's not like you know I'm yet to meet a person that is anchored in every possible way and

they've got purpose and financial security and great relationships are wonderful health

and I'm mentally unhealthy and I'm yet to meet somebody that doesn't have it and it's mentally

healthy so we mustn't think and I think it's a very disempowered position you think of mental

health is something that is sitting in the background and apart at any moment you know normal

sadness that's love normal stress that's love normal anxiety that parts and parcel of living

a meaningful purposeful value valuable life that's love for mental ill health is this inability

or lack of ability to plug into things that add value to you the moment you do that the moment

you engage with healthy things and this is not my invention I mean your granny probably told you

to eat healthy and exercise and create movements in your life and engage with people that are

good for you and live a life with purpose and meaning and you know raise your kids the right way and

be raised in the right way all those things contribute to mental health so there two things I want

to get into before we let you go this morning and the first one is they're discovering more and more

you know historians and people who are digging up new evidence of you know biographical evidence

mostly of famous people in history who turn out to have probably been depressed and there

are a lot of them because some of them have left behind writings of their own so they're almost

kind of self-reporting in a way the other people who've been quoted reported on I've just recently

listened to a podcast about the famous Samuel Johnson who wrote the dictionary you know he was the

first person to bring out an English dictionary and a very very clever man very witty very smart

free popular fun jocular avancular dude and he admitted that he had what did they call it then

melancholy right and it turns out that he may well have been depressed and there are probably many

other people in history who before the word was invented were that thing so have you read any

stories about people in history who you think well while you're reading the story because you're

obviously trained in this you'd be better at catching it out than any of us would do you ever

read these things and go ah I think this person may have been suffering from depression

so set a fine line between genius and I don't know the normal whatever the sense of madness

genius and madness yeah exactly exactly because to think outside of the box you've got to live

outside the box and when you live outside the box you don't live within kind of what normal boundary

the normal containment offer you with your consistency and predictability and transparency

and today is not like tomorrow and when you get internal for too long you can you kind of walk

that fine line between genius and madness but I also want everybody to remember two things number one

is within the normal range being sad is okay but then the normal range being stressed is okay

and within the normal range being anxious is okay the moment it stops you from living a meaningful

purposeful life that's when you should go and seek advice or seek help to help you manage it

but also taken to account that there's almost like this selective attention and seeing you know all

these geniuses that have been depressed and you go well okay well depression is maybe a conduit

to genius or depression is a conduit to creating something really special you also remember that

I've been to depressed people that don't create any magical there many depressed people that are not

geniuses that you know think outside of the box so depression is not the magic pool that you

know that we take in order to help us you know reach certain level that non depressed people can't

depression is not the answer to anything you've got to just manage your life appropriately so you

don't step out of the comfort zone too much that you actually lose touch with normal working

physics or normal reality yeah manage your life appropriately so you don't actually go

mad all right so the second part of that and you've kind of tidily brought it all together for me

as you mentioned the word genius twice in in your comments now if there is an unequal

distribution of men and women if you average out where most of the men on the bell curve of

you know particular mental issues whether it's the good ones or the bad ones

what you were telling us earlier is that there are likely it to be more men at the extremes

and fewer women does that mean that if you're a woman you have less chance of being a genius

or am I extrapolating too far here so again I think the extremity is not is not the question it's

a direction of the energy so men and women express let's call the same the same level of energy but

like for example an architect woman do much better with the language areas while men do much

better with the numerical areas and that's just kind of the the extremities and what we find through

research women do much more much better in the social sciences in the caring industries men do

much better much more openly represented in the numbers industries so that's that's that's

what happens in our society but it's the direction of the extremity so women and men connect with

the same ferocity with the same intention with the same intent with the same energy but the direction

so men tend to aim it towards things that are external and women tend to aim it towards things

that are internal you know I was really hoping you'd just say something so easy to understand

that all of us could just take and use to irritate each other today I wish you would just

said for example there's more women are just more women are more balanced and normal but if you

want to be a genius so you want to be completely crazy it's likely to happen if you're a man I wish

you'd just said that but your answer is obviously correct so I can't argue with you

Garrett one of my one of the lens at which I'm walking to the show with is don't say anything that

could get you to spot just stay within your lane hey I don't think anyone has been able to trip

you up so far which must mean you're a genius and the only reason you're a genius is because you're a

guy obvious obvious obvious okay all right Dr. Hanan as I said we're going to be changing the show up

over the next couple of weeks so we're going to experimenting with a lot of different things and

I've told anybody with ideas to email us anybody watches and listens to the show and maybe they've

got some ideas for what we should do that people love you they love having you on the show so let's

figure out a way to make that happen and thanks again for your time this morning great I look forward

to that and have a good day thanks doc all right there's Dr. Hanan getting our heads right

this morning I really hope to just say something outrageous and controversial and then I could say well

you know the doctor said it but he's too sensible that's the problem um Garrett I'm so proud of

you says call the centers I know call I've been practicing call said you finally used the word

fewer rather than less appropriately well done my boy you know I'm we're never too old to learn

call I'm so proud of myself too I used it in the right place and I know that you will point out

the next time I use it in the wrong place melancholy uh according to Wade is when you put broccoli in a

millen yes Wade uh as I said earlier South Africa has very low levels of literacy

Wade is pointing that out for us there are exceptions some women can become engineers and doctors

Tinica no one was saying women cannot be doctors or engineers uh Hanan wasn't saying that I wasn't

saying that you seem to be the one who's saying that uh James is useless that's nice here Andre

fire James says goodness lots of people here who just they just hate James so we will probably have

to dress him in a sundress and spank him around the room at some point I'm just I'm not in a hurry to

do that if you don't mind I've got better things to do with my time so um Bitcoin but says I

would be disbied yesterday if I were a psychologist yeah you you Bitcoin but you have zero hope

of becoming a psychologist and anyone who went to see you for their mental health problems

would end up in massive shit all right so we were talking earlier about podcasting and South

Africa and the fact that the government want to regulate it um pop up that graphic that I sent you

about uh news 20 news 24 are so excited about this because of course they are losing

subscribers hand over fist they are not able to compete uh when they put out and and listen I

will give credit where it's due when it comes to investigative reporting and proper journalism

news 24 probably have the edge of a most podcasters there are podcasters who are much better at

than them there are also occasions when news 24 turns out to be more reliable than the podcasters

though those are becoming rarer and rarer I would say that this is just them telling everybody how

you know this is this is great news for us and it's bad news for podcasting and they seem just a

little too self-satisfied for my liking nonetheless it is actually going on at the moment there are

a couple of public hearings taking place the public has been encouraged to make submissions

to help the government understand podcasting a little bit and most of them don't know what it is

even though they've been interviewed for 15 years on podcasters they're still like we're not really

sure what this podcasting thing is so it's a parent equalssella dico is one of our ministers who's

checking this out also the minister of communications who's a DA minister so it's all the parties you

can't just blame one of the parties let's find out from someone who actually knows what's going on

here Jonathan Warnaker is the founder of ping which is a podcast led content strategy production

and marketing company now he helps brands turn podcasts into the core of their content ecosystem so

that's a very good business is allowing brands and podcasts we know podcasting is the fastest

growing medium in the world we also know that in America as of 2023 I think it was there are projected

two point five billion dollars in spending and I'm absolutely sure that that's gone up

since 2023 so this guy is perfectly placed to be able to explain to us precisely what is happening

in terms of government and this intention they have on

regulating podcasting in some way so Jonathan first of all welcome it's nice to see you and thank

you for being able to join us this morning hi guys thanks so much for having me it's wonderful to

actually speak to your own person I've a long time fan and listener thanks dude and I love the

shirt and I love the beard and I love the glasses you we need people who look interesting in the

world of podcasting not people all look the same well normally we you know traditionally work in

sound so I thought I'd have to be loud on the other side yeah yeah yeah I'm actually launching

something in the next two weeks which is going back to audio only and we're still going to do

this show so don't panic anybody and minute I say there's going to be a change people ship

themselves but this show will continue but I'm thinking of going back to doing something a daily

thing actually which will be audio only I still believe in the power audio I'm sure you do too

we could wax lyrical about this audio right um let's talk about this regulation thing because I'm

I always get a little bit nervous when I hear that government want to

regulate they want to get involved in controlling um in making laws around in restricting

and obviously there's a component of this that there no doubt there are a lot of government people

who think where there isn't regulation there's huge danger we know podcasting has been flourishing

without regulation do they need to get involved well I mean that's what the whole round table

was about and I was um they're representing the South African podcasters guild uh more than

than myself as you know producing podcasts for ping so we have about 500 plus uh podcasters mostly

independent and um I you know our position is that there are already laws in place for slander

slander and libel and a lot of the um any legalities in speech that go against the constitution

or our law they're already you can you can sue people right yeah what's kind of missing is a

complaints channel like the bccsa where you people who don't have the resources to go and sue

someone which is a long and expensive process um there's just not as many ways to get to a resolution

there so there's the platforms they have complaints mechanisms they have their own platform

standards and you can contact podcasters directly but there's no kind of like middleperson

onbud who can make a judgment and those platforms have their own rules based largely on American law

or not South African law all right but if they're going to regulate and inverted commas podcasting

then where do you draw the line because it's kind of a gray area um you would have to go after

youtube social media channels spotify apple I don't think the government have deep enough

pockets to go after those guys and I also don't think that they're going to get anywhere I don't

I don't think there's going to be any satisfaction for anyone someone who feels aggrieved by a podcast

that went wrong someone is trying to regulate and control and manipulate the medium um they're

opening up a can of worms here there's going to be it's it's going to be a pandora's box to use

another horrible um metaphor here of of really dangerous stuff um and I don't think they have the

means to do it they can't execute on any of this if you go after a youtube or a facebook or an

instagram or an x or a tiktok that's going to become a very complicated and costly business for

government yeah absolutely I think the two things on that are number one podcast aren't just audio

as they now increasingly become much more youtube and video based they also are completely multi-channel

they all have supporting social media channels so they're communicating their message on instagram

and and x tiktok and all that as well so how do you regulate how do you separate podcasts from

every other digital media I don't think you can and I think that's the solution for any kind of

responsible growth of the industry would have to include probably all digital media um I think

podcasts are just easy to um kind of go for because they're longer form and there are some there

have been some very high level kind of cases in the last couple of years where people have said

stupid things and that's drawn at focus which I'm actually glad about because at least we're talking

about it and I think that in the roundtable we did a we took a good first step in terms of educating

parliament more about what podcasts are they might have been on them but they don't fully understand

them of course so we were there to kind of um share with the members what we're doing what the

various parts of the industry are trying to do so they can understand it a bit better but

chairperson Kusella Diko in her opening statements to that roundtable you know I don't think

many people listen to them but she made a couple of points she started with this is not about

podcast regulation and fair enough you know we're in a political landscape here and I'm not an

expert of that so but I've taken it at face value everything she said made sense she said

you know we're not about we're not looking to regulate and to stifle freedom of speech here

although here's my opinion there are definitely some elements within the government and political

parties that do want to do that of course sure but they're not there to stifle they want to

empower and it to grow responsibly which is what's happened with radio the press council and other

media as well and I agree that as podcasting grows so quickly we're going to get to a point where

these edge cases of problems suddenly become a bigger problem because the industry is much bigger

so we want to prepare for that now and have the kind of structures in place so that people have

recourse and as you say a government is I don't think they're capable of regulating it I don't think

we want them to regulate it so the answer I think will lie in a self-regulatory system which is

what Madam Diko said anyway she said that although they're not starting off with any kind of like

precepts of what the solution are in her mind it's probably going to look like a self-regulation

similar to the press council or the BCCSA all right so maybe it's a storm in a tea cap how do you

feel that all the submissions went did it did any of them bring extra clarity did you feel that there

was there was any any any friction or aggression between people who wanted to see more regulation

and people who didn't and how did it all unfold because I'm sure you didn't just make your

submission and then leave yeah yeah there were quite a there were a couple of panels and to go kind

of through them on the on the members of parliament side there were some kind of different opinions

I think there were two guys are the guys who wear camo they're the MK party or yeah right okay so

there were two guys from them I can't remember their names unfortunately I'm sure they're very

nice one of them was four regulations saying you know you don't your show doesn't exist in a vacuum

and the other one is a podcaster and he said we don't want regulation so maybe there's not

like a clear party line there but everyone was concerned and of course everyone reaches for the top

shelf and goes oh danger to children and child sexual exploitation and like foreign away that is not

the problem that you're going to deal with podcasts you're going to deal with slander libel racism

that kind of thing right but everyone goes for those kind of top shelf outrageous situations

but so they expressed their their concerns we had but dr sesway and pauper welch the

is a brilliant podcast and a brilliant speaker he kind of led the beginning of the first panel

with a very very calm very measured like brilliantly expressed call for notness not regulation

but responsibility and growth and support and what the industry really needs a support and I was

sitting behind him and you'll occasionally see screenshots and then there's just this colorful

clown behind sesway and I think that he's just like I really admire the way he speaks and then our

panel which was about growth and measurements we had a meta was there and google was there and

unfortunately youtube and unfortunately spotify wasn't but they talked about basically they don't

see podcasters as different media to anything else you know it's all just content for them

and that they have their own platform rules and regulations and all that and then I spoken in

in that panel and I thought that they made sense but at the same time I do agree with the view

that the platforms are largely extractive in that they overseas we pay them a lot of money they

make a lot of ad money out of us and I would love to see some kind of support come from them

for growing the industry which serve them as well yeah um I don't know if you're also starting

to see and we mentioned I spoke about this a little earlier on in the show the rise of brain

rotten AI slump and the fact that the stuff is not making any content platform any better I also

think that the podcast format of one person talking to another person over a desk maybe nearing

its saturation point to you know put mildly and I wonder what the next evolution is going to be

I'm working on some of these things myself but what are your thoughts?

I think that there's still plenty of space in the industry and B2B areas like every kind of sector

of business industry still has a space for a leader in that industry to kind of like

own the future and thought leadership there in the B2C space it's so competitive obviously

everyone quotes direvacio or Joe Rogan or whatever it might be and there's limited listening hours

for everyone everyone can listen to maybe two or three podcasts maximum a day sure and

and I do think I mean dialogue interview shows are great um but I do kind of agree I think we're

hitting towards the era of creator TV where we now have the tools to create television level shows

with very small teams and very tight budgets and we can go into niche topics documentaries comedy

you know we can create so many things and and that podcasts as a long form we'll turn into

something that's kind of much more polished as we have the tools to do that I saw another story

and I don't know if you saw this as well about how they want to go after tax money they want to

be able to tax podcast they think they think podcasters are these rich people yeah who have like

seven holiday homes and a private jet yeah I'm wondering if they're if they're even going to

discover this after their first investigation of you know MacGee or or me or you

or any of the other people who are doing this and have been doing it for many years

and whether they think we're secretly running trusts that run out out of Mauritius and we've

got you know sugarcane plantations that we're running as side businesses what do you make of that

did they believe that there's there's hidden money and and massive money to be made here

I don't know I live in a small house and not for strunt and I have yet to see the millions

rolled in from podcasting but lies it's all hidden it's all these gold bars under the table

no and Sunday Times reporter sent me some questions exactly on that topic because I wasn't aware

that someone had made those comments but it's it's ridiculous the podcasting industry has an

incredibly short-haired and long tail and if you look at a MacGee then yes I'm sure he's making

a lot of money but 99.9% of podcasters make no money or very little maybe enough to support

production that's part of what we want to kind of change but yeah it's there my answer was there's

already laws in place for taxation as well anyone who's making money from podcasting is paying

their taxes unless they're avoiding them and so we don't need to talk about extra taxes on what's

a cent it's like taxing people who have a Twitter account that's insane like no one makes enough

money from that so yeah they I think that's a big part of the education job we need to do with

them is that like no one's getting rich on this right now um call the santa says in the comments

Caesar and Paul for Walsh is my second favorite podcast after this show he's absolutely brilliant

yeah he's terrific the tax leeches they they now the smoke nor grow to buck

well you know the the other reality is and and I think that people are starting to wise up to

this too there are probably too many podcasts um I declared a moratorium on this show ages ago

I said no more podcasts we don't have time we don't have space uh there are now more people

podcasting than there are people listening and watching the podcasts so it's time to scale back

on that I think maybe we've also reached a point where people are able to separate the wheat from

the chaff obviously we want all the talented people who have something to say and who are brilliant

to bring it on right uh we don't want to restrict any of that we'd love to have the very best

in the world competing with the very best in the world um where do you think South Africa has an edge

I think that as per the usual kind of ways South Africa works we have an incredible kind of culture

and go get our attitude and grit and determination that expresses itself in our sports in in some in

our art in many different ways and I think that like with um many industries we can show

I think someone stealing your car Jonathan that's our alarm going um okay

I don't want someone to steal your car while you're talking to me and you're sitting here going um

I'll I'll can I talk to you in a second I'd rather have my car they're taking my G wagon funded by

podcasting yeah exactly one of your G wagons yeah um uh where was I sorry uh we were talking about

the the the the the nature of South African podcasts where we are where we have an edge yeah yeah

so where we have an edge for South African podcast is is make a show about whatever topic it is

but within South Africa so if it's financial services in South Africa science in South Africa

because there's all these international shows they don't have that specific context we

are very different market with very different rules and different contexts and I think there's a

lot of opportunity there and I don't think that we have nearly enough vernacular language shows

I don't think we have enough uh uh local sports shows I think there's huge opportunity still

to unlock millions of listeners you know uh a huge industry but if it comes to another white

boy with a podcast that kind of thing then yeah we might be reaching saturation points or it there's

no saturation point there's just a highly competitive um uh it's made the strongest survive evolutionary

pool you know that's yeah I also think that um you know you may you may point to the fact that

podcasting tends to be and and I know you were you were being sarcastic and pejorative here

for for for effect but you know uh most audiences in podcasts are still heavily

slanted towards male um I think I think there are examples of very very successful

a female lead and female audience lead podcasts but you know it's always the guys that lead the way

I mean that's not fuck around you don't put me you're almost at it to the doctor before me don't

get me in trouble okay so let's talk about this quickly there is well there there are countless

examples of where government has got involved in an industry and they've ruined it they made it

worse mining the tobacco advertising legislation the rules around smoking the rules around sponsorship

of live events um many many sports examples can be brought to book here as well and I see people

making comments this morning about how everything that they touch ruins that industry are you worried

that that could happen with regard to not just podcasting but digital media in general

do you think that anything that government does here is bound to have a negative result or do you

actually see the slightest tiniest possible improvement that could be made

as I said I haven't been in parliament a lot I don't know a lot of politicians I think that

Chris one of the reasons we like having you on if you've been in parliament a lot we don't want you

on right fair enough um I think I think that is the worst case scenario any kind of government

regulation is the worst case scenario and I don't think anyone wants that I don't even think the

government necessarily wants that or at least the people who actually are going to do the hard

yards there's plenty of people who will throw mud from the sidelines and say we need to stop these

people from saying whatever they're all crazy and they're going to you know like there's an

elements and that's all politicized people with their own agendas right but as a the people that

I've met in governments seem to be wanting kind of responsible growth and we fully support that

I think that the chances of government regulation like this are impossible like they're so far

because if you get to I mean and they've said that they don't want this but if you had to register

a podcast if you had to register a YouTube channel it's never going to work you can't do that you

can't enforce that we can't even force criminal law in South Africa never mind this kind of thing

so I'm not worried about it being the where we end up the kind of more possible middle ground is

that is a self regulatory system where maybe government is providing some kind of funding to

support it but I think even that's I think you know where's that money coming from I think that

industry and the problem with the podcasting industry and the digital media industry is that

they aren't these large media companies like media 24 cookie so media who are a member of of the

guild to fund that kind of thing but we do have to find the money somewhere but yeah I'm not too

worried about government taking control they'll be in you can't control it and they'll be in

uprising well call the centers is taking none of your shit this morning he says the fact that this

dude is singing Cucillo decos praises is clear demonstration he doesn't know anything about politics

I I don't see a massive advantages I also think that it's really scourulous when

members of parliament start talking about keeping kids safe with regard to podcasts like podcasts are

the reason the children in this country aren't safe I mean we have enormous and and well reported

evidence that there's gender based violence that this child abuse none of this with even the most

experimental and imaginative mental gymnastics can be proven to lead back to politics it's like

the people used to say that gaming was the main reason that there was violence in society in America

I mean no evidence whatsoever and the minute they start claiming they're looking after the children

I feel like saying no that's because you run out of other excuses for why you want to take control

and exercise power and that's very often what people are doing yeah yeah look I mean I get you it's

the same thing when you see in in the American on the American right side of politics creating laws

based called the family act and the protection of children act and stuff that's all the thinly veiled

cloak for doing some kind of horrible injustice so I get that I'm an optimist and that I'm naive

in terms of politics but that is as the guild is a representative of kind of independence a lot of

them hobbyist podcasts is but also large shows like a Nicole English true crime essay and others

like our job is to work with everyone and and try to make something positive out of it and not come

with kind of preconceptions of oh crusader decos a monster or whatever like I don't know who well

enough I don't think that helps I don't think that helps either and I you know I know that some

call is is one of those people who will fight for the politician on any given day so don't worry

about it don't feel bad Jonathan I do see Diego saying I was in the room with John and we can only

speak on what we observed and Kusella was well spoken and very supportive of the industry cool

I don't think everybody's as interested in podcasting as a as an industry as perhaps we are

tell us about about your your show and what kind of stuff you do

well I'm I work in branded podcast production for kind of thought leadership if you if you'd like

that term and then and then brand sponsored shows so I produce a game a show called winning the

away game which is will you take a an x-spring book and a business leader and you put them together

and you talk about how life post spring book life treated them and all of this the leader we go

how they moved overseas and how that treated them so it's a it's a show about rugby and business

and and a spelling the rumor that South African expats or traitors and then as podcasting goes more

and more video I'm working on a new YouTube channel called table for two where we go and visit

great restaurants around Cape Town and we don't review them we just share that experience and then

I've got a bunch of kind of fact other kind of branded podcast clients it's a growing it's a good

growing space it's a little bit it terms selling shovels to gold miners I suppose would be the

thing because it is it is easier to support others building their stuff than it is to suddenly

become this viral sensation it's a it's a hard it's hard thing to do and personally I'm not

very good at running the five-year podcast I have like a shorter attention span than that I've never

taken a series past I think 22 episodes and I've done about five personal shows and then I just

get like okay what's the next thing well I think there's this interesting and and maybe there's

someone in in the comments section today who wants to give us their opinion on this too there's

this amazing dichotomy right you've got people who really love getting into a maybe it's a true

crime podcast or something where there's a story in it unfolds over seven episodes and those

episodes can each be an hour or more long and then there are people who want you know like

reels they want they want what TikTok delivers these very short sharp sometimes extremely clever

funny interesting all very very stupid things and it has to do with attention span but it also has

to do with what the content is trying to communicate and I don't have any problem with people who

want the shorter form in fact I'm probably one of those people too but there are occasions where

I even break that rule for myself what kind of stuff do you see being produced mostly

within the guild that you represent but in South Africa generally and in podcasting internationally

what are the what are the edge cases and the trends that you're most excited by I think obviously

the the diversity the multi-platformness of podcasting is the is the what's happening right now

everyone's moving to YouTube everyone's using video for discovery and then audio as the long

form thing within South Africa we're slightly behind America it's nice to see it's nice to have

something you can look at and go okay they're ahead of us so we can kind of see what the trends are

but let's try and do it better than them so where we are right now is that we're kind of most of our

members are still living in the 30 to 45 minutes length episode internationally I think we're

down to about 20 25 minutes is more like an average show length and there's much more diversification

like you'll find the seven minute show the three hour Joe Rogan show it's all about you know

what serves the topic and what serves at audience what they're willing to listen to what they're keen

to listen to and there's so much variety within formats that is yet to be explored as well as I

said as you said as well I think that the the dialogue show the the interview show could do with a

lot of revving up there's you know segments and and bits and like radio you know they bring

they're constantly bringing in new people to talk to a little bit more effort in terms of of

creativity in the show rather than cool we're here let's talk for 45 minutes so I think as competition

ramps up as more podcasts come online we're gonna we're gonna see more creativity in how to keep

people's attention and how to boil that content down so it's not just lazy turn the mic on and

then talk forever and then turn it off again yeah and I suppose also it needs to be a bit of

polish people need to know what they're doing they need to have a point of view but more

importantly they also actually need to add value to the audience and make sure that they're

improving their lives in some way given them information that helps them making sense of

complicated situations being able to explain stuff that is going on where some people are

absolutely agenda driven and are basically propagandists if you can do the work of researching

complex things and explaining it to an audience that they can sound like the smart people at work

or at a family dinner or whatever you're probably doing them a greater service right yeah absolutely

and also I think the question we all have to ask ourselves is what are you giving your listeners

that chat GPT can't like information is more or less free and has therefore has zero value from

now on so you either have to present it with some kind of as you say point of view or some kind of

hot take that chat GPT can't give them or or entertain them or you know you have to figure out

a new way but a personality might help I mean a lot of these podcasters especially the ones who do

very serious interviews and they're trying to like make you more efficient and and speed up your

your to max out your potential or whatever I find a lot of these people are just like the

charlatan motivational speakers that we used to have in the 90s and 2000s these guys who would

go up on stage and say yes yes yes but they've got zero going on in their own lives and nothing

to say and very little personality when the cameras are off right yeah I mean like I'd like to

to think about it in terms of if you want to have a more interesting show then you should try to

to be more interesting and I do that by outsourcing to my clothing I'm a very boring person

but I have loud clothing but for other people that's my strategy for other people though you know

do interesting stuff like photographers say if you want to take great shots put yourself in front

of great places yeah that's not bad advice um Carl says there's an episode of DOAC Diode

where Steven interviews a doctor who speaks about the dangers of shorts and how they're basically

will induce ADHD scary stuff stay away from shorts I don't think he's talking about the clothing item

just by the way because people may be confused you just mentioned clothing Jonathan I'm sure he's

talking about the shorts yeah the shorts online and and that that is something scary I wonder

I wonder how much of this stuff is affecting people's ability to pay attention and focus

when they really have to whether it's at work or at school or at varsity or if you're trying to

read a book or pay attention to a project for a specific amount of time and most people really

struggle with that now and I can't help thinking that social media is partly responsible for that

inability to pay attention massively and I mean two things out of that I think that podcasts are

in many cases an antidote to that in that you know stay on topic have a conversation see if you

can pay attention for 45 minutes 30 minutes whatever it is as long as it's not 30 seconds you know

I think that's that's healthy to have that attention span and it brings you to Netflix's theory

of repeat the plot of the movie every yeah I don't know five three times every episode or something

because everyone's on their phone watching TV and I've I've do that sometimes as well and it's

terrifying actually I don't think it's healthy yeah and we're making people dumber we're absolutely

not helping them to be smart and to and to pay attention to the things that matter in the world

and derived real joy and happiness out of being in the moment being present not thinking about

what's next or checking this feed or going on there to read a message and doing a thousand things

at once it's it's almost as if by having more we end up with less yeah it will exactly and that's

the age we're going into with AI Slop is just the tsunami of content is going to come and

the reaction will be a move away from it or tools to silence them or something's going to come

out of it in response. Konga Chris says this show has its own niche of deranged viewers yelling into

the void directed vaguely by the host yeah that's pretty much that's a very good description of the

gareth cliff shows. That's all of us. There's also an interesting point here being made by Wade

authenticity is finding a revival that is why the Vin Diesel's of the world are falling in fame.

I don't know how you feel about this Jonathan and and really wasn't my intention to pick your brain

more diverse things than the podcasting hearings but I wonder how you feel about the fact that

this this constant drive to authenticity is almost making people behave in an inauthentic way.

In other words because they want to appear to be authentic people are learning how to pretend

authenticity and this is not only a problem in the world of podcasting and in content creation

generally. I think it's also it's it's happening in the real world as well. You're seeing people

following a trend and wanting to appear as if they are interested in a certain thing

that they good at a certain thing that they're capable of a certain thing when actually the real

version of them has no interest in that at all. They're chasing clicks they're driving up

sensational numbers because they want people to they want the algorithm to serve them

an audience and and I think it's having probably a perverse effect on on their popularity

in the long run not just popularity but their effectiveness in in the long run. Would you agree

with that? Absolutely. I think I mean this is very much linked in problem, performative

authenticity and those trends you see on social media where people are crying into their

cameras and you know attempting to be authentic but you turned on a camera and then started crying

like it's insane. So yeah it's it's another way to get attention and as soon as that is identified

content creators start using that you know. So I do think that there will be a move back towards

in-person events, live communities, people getting together in in human mode.

So I think that will be a reaction to all of the online stuff but yeah it's it's you can spot

it there. We're just very very good at seeing inauthenticity even when it is authenticity

cloaked. All right well listen Jonathan it's very nice to meet you and to have you on the show and

I'm glad that you're out there fighting for podcasts because if they'd asked me to come to Parliament

which I've done before I went to argue for low-data prices many years ago. It didn't get anywhere.

I don't think I had anything to say about it in that round table. Yeah well long may that debate

continue and hopefully be solved at some point because South Africans the more info you have the

more access you have to that info the better. What we have to individually become good at I suppose

is being able to discern truth from fact good from bad and be able to curate our own lives

around what we want to achieve in a day and I think that that's where podcasting can be tremendous.

If you if you line it up if you've got the right inputs you can have the right outputs and there's

so much to choose from more is always better than less in the world of content. Would you agree with

that? Well we have talked about the tsunami of AI slubs so taking that aside I think more choice is

good it's people just have limited time and resources to choose to identify the better to identify

what more they actually need and you know that's where you know they are like for example we have

the South African pod charts which just shows you South African podcasts online it's podcast.co.z

and you can go and look at South African shows so if you want to see something local if you want to

see something that is hopefully it's good guild members tend to make good stuff you can go check it

out there but yeah identifying the good from the bad and then putting it into your system because

as you say what goes in is what comes out right so curating that feed and I hate that word you know

that's that's important. All right it looks pretty good here I see lots of podcasts that I've never

heard of in my life and I'm probably going to want to check out one or two just one or two let's not

get too excited about I think you're in there somewhere you guys won an award at the podcast awards a

couple years ago really did we I didn't know that did we okay well that's nice all right so you're

very very rich celebrity stars so you wouldn't know about that obviously not I have no idea what is

exciting is that I think there will be there will be new and innovative developments just around the

corner they always are I'm always keen to find out what's at that leading edge even if it's still

rough and has necessarily found a way to look polished and perfect yet I'm always excited to see

which people are breaking down the walls making new stuff happen so you'll keep us informed if

you see anything that that I don't yeah absolutely yeah I think it's it's going to be an exciting

time it's exciting times it's crazy scary tumultuous times but it's people will make good stuff out

of it all right listen Jonathan thank you and I appreciate your time enormously keep doing the

good work and enjoy meltposs stront I'm going to thank you so much for having me Garrett there was

awesome conversation thank you okay so on the on the subject of podcasting in the next couple of

days I'm going to be launching something new which I I feel like it's very necessary and and

based not only on months of planning this anyway and conversations like the one we just had with

Jonathan I think people are looking for a daily podcast in audio that they can listen to on the way

into work that will prepare them for the day that'll get them all the important information they

need a little bit of opinion a little bit of humor is not going to go miss but essentially a summary

of what's happening in the international world and in the local world without any clickbait

without any drive to be seen as entertainment the kind of stuff that is valuable that word keeps

coming up useful valuable practical stuff that makes people's lives better and I know we've got

a ton of people who have been very annoyed with me for having stopped doing the daily show

with this podcast we're going to keep doing this show and we're going to keep doing great things

with it but this is an entertainment show the thing that I'm proposing is more like an executive

daily briefing and I'm going to charge money for it so don't expect it to be for free maybe the

first week we'll do for free so you can get an idea of what we're going to be doing it'll be audio

there may occasionally be experts and guests on but mostly it'll be me telling you what's happening

in the world in places like Iran and the Ukraine sure but also in places like Germany where they've

just had some important provincial elections in places like the Western Cape we spoke about this

morning with these troops being deployed into the Cape flats because they've had an enormous

surge in violence we'll be talking about things like the price of oil because that does matter

and it affects us at the petrol pump we'll be talking about the things that are happening in not

just politics and economics but in culture the stories that are happening in places America

doesn't want to talk about maybe ideological battles that are taking place in states in the US

where we need to pay attention because either we are upstream or downstream from that

and that's going to be something new we'll be launching in just a few days time I'm going to call

it the Gareth Cliff daily briefing it's got me in it so you know what you're getting daily briefing

being a far more condensed version of all of that info it'll be power packed punchy relevant

important and most importantly useful so check it out I'll be giving you updates on my social media

so Bitcoin book mentioned here is that why I went off of X talking about the the slop and the AI

stuff which is also a big concern I'm not going to be doing any of that but no I'm back on X

I have been for a little while just quietly kind of having a say here or there tweeting about

things that were important to me and replying to other people's tweets I had a conversation with

Penwell in the tweets yesterday if you can still call them tweets right X's and if you talk about

your X's that's a very different thing I can't use that so I'll be giving you the info on that

going forward and I'm thinking of it costing something like a cup of coffee once a month so we're

talking like 45 bucks a month to get five episodes a week we will release it probably at seven in

the morning so it'll go live I may pre-record some of it but it'll be audio and I hope it's going

to be a game changer because I'm absolutely up to here with like entertainment based podcasts

so if there's something you want to add to that if you've got any ideas for it I'd love to hear

what you think let us know I'm super excited about this I think that it'll be an opportunity to

make smarter better more concise use of your time and of the audio medium which I've always

believed deserved its own place in the sun so let's get into it I hope you'll be joining me on

that journey I will keep you informed right here and on social media and with all of our other

channels so don't go anywhere make sure you pay attention we will catch up with you next week

here on the gareth cliff show fuck that's right james it's public holiday next week don't get

this show on a public holiday sorry but do have a good Friday because that's what it is and enjoy

today too which is also good Friday even though it's not a public holiday and we'll be back the week

after that long weekend coming up next weekend bye