Recommendations and Closing Remarks

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Planning an escape from the city, a catch up with friends, or a work social that doesn't involve awkward karaoke? Well why not swap the office banter for something with a bit more gallop? A day at the races, perhaps? With fifty-nine race courses across the UK, you can enjoy racing all year round, from world famous festivals to casual evening events, and yes, even family fun days with the kids, there really is something for everyone. Think fresh air, thrilling finishes and, the occasional hat that deserves its own postcode. You know, the kind of stuff you'll be talking about for years to come. Over five million memories are made every year. So whether you're there for the excitement, the people watching, or just a proper day out, why not make some memories yourself? Search horse racing near me to find your nearest race course and discover your next great day out. The going is good . Hello and welcome to this episode of the restless entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm quite hot. Yeah, but we're in a new studio. We are in a new studio. And it's fancy. And it's air conditioned. Yeah, and it's yeah, so I mean all's right with the world. Although it's easier to get to. This is not anyone else's concern but ours. No. But it is. The reason you're looking a little bit upset is because our producer Joey has just shown us that more of our audience had heard of phenotypes than had heard Yeah, so we polled our members. That's correct, right? I'm gonna we're gonna do some re pol polling on that just to see how. It's not family fortunes, I'm saying that would've been the case on the high street, but among our Sixty-three percent of people have heard of uh you say phenotypes, I say phenotypes. Let's call the whole thing off. And just over fifty percent have heard of big break. I don't buy that. No one's you know what members love you though I do, define No. But all of those fifty three percent of people could define what big break is . Could those sixty odd percent of people define what a few They heard it because then this is basically entertainment format. Did you hear it because they listened to the episode? Listen, I knew what both were, so you should be glad. Anyway, lovely to be in any studio. We got a lot to talk about this week. We are we are talking about Married at First Sight, which ever as everyone knows has been We're gonna talk about uh there was a big event this weekend which combines a number of our um bugbears on this show, which is the enhanced games, which is essentially tech bros meets abuse of sport. Um we're also gonna talk it's Stephen Colbert's final show. Um we're uh a little bit of a goodbye to all that and uh what's next for both him and perhaps even late night. Exactly that. Uh and also we are looking for your questions please for following our Paul McCartney interview and uh the Tom Hanks one coming up, we're talking to Steven Spielberg. That's fun, isn't it? Spielbach. Mr. Spielberg and Spielberg. We don't come up with the questions, you do, you know how that works, so please send any questions you have to the rest of the entertainment at goalhanger.com, anything you've ever wanted to ask Steven Spielberg, and we will put your questions to you. I am dying for it so much. So excited about that one Shall we start with Married at First Sight? Married at First Sight, um, which is uh a channel four show here. It's uh made by CPL Productions. Channel 4's biggest show. Oh by quite some ways. It's enormous. I mean even things like Bake Off, if you look up what the streaming figures, it's unbelievable, it's a million miles ahead of it. The panorama e investigation, former contestants, two women say they were raped by their on screen partners, another said there was a non consensual sex act. Some ha say the actual violence has taken place. The men who have been at the centre of the allegations so far deny the allegations. CPL have pushed back and say that they have sort of higher standards of welfare on this programme. Channel for have removed every single episode of it from their service. Tui have ended their sponsorship of it, having initially paused it. This is a show that has is created by the sort of high priest of modern reality dating shows, a guy called Chris Col on in the US and there's a lot of stuff of him talking about the show which I think will will be interesting and we will get to. But they even have a new series in the UK that's l yet to be aired. There is and in the same way we talked a while ago about the um the bachelor in the states th that that they they've had to can. I wonder if this is where that's going to end up with this being canned. I can't see a world in which that isn't where this ends up. Well let's talk a little bit 'Cause uh also Noor Nanji, who did the BBC Panorama investigations, talked a bit about how the investigation it was always interesting when people sort of take you a bit behind the scenes and that's become quite a feature of the She also did the the Greg Wallace investigation. In fact, she talks about it. She says I think 'cause she's a a culture correspondent. She says I sometimes think people think that that's it's it's sort of quite a lightweight area. And she says I hope I hope I'm sort of proving that it isn't that actually a lot of what's going on in this world you know you can you can um look at via culture . So I I I think um four marks to Nor and Angie, what an incredible job. The premise of married at first sight, sorry, if if if anyone isn't aware of it, um you are matched with someone, you meet them for the first time on your wedding day, actually, as you know my for a long time, which was my anxiety dream, you meet the person you're getting married to on the wedding day and then um you sort of live together and see where it goes. Um it's sort of like a marriage backwards. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, a woman who'd been a bri a bridesmaid at what at one of these sort of confected weddings at the beginning, um, came into the BBC and she sort of said there's made a allegations of sexual misconduct and and raised welfare concern. Noor Nanji says that one of that when they started approaching the men, one of the men's legal firms told the BBC that their fees were being paid by CPL, which is the production company, which she thought was odd because the women felt somewhat unsupported f for obvious reasons. The morning of the Panorama Board broadcast, Nor Nanji says, C PL, the production company, email participants warning against talking to the press. Well I think even the week before they they they were essentially they were calling the allegations wholly uncorroborated and disputed. At first she didn't apologize and she said she felt sympathy. She has now apologized. Um Channel four have said that based on the knowledge they had at the time, they made the right decisions in proceeding with the welfare and they di in the way that they did and with broadcast in the way that they did . Which s to me suggests that the strategy for this is uh evolving quite erratically, or they would probably say pragmatically, but they haven't been aware of these allegations since April, because that's when the BBC first went to them. And we are in late May. So I would say it's quite interesting how they're handling it. What they have hastily now announced, now it's all c become public channel four, is that they've commissioned a review in two halves. So there's one in which a legal firm will look at at how Channel Four handles the allegations and allegations within the show, and one which will look at welfare provisions and protocols. Which is the key. Duty of care, we would always have called it on TV reality shows, which is the responsibility you have to anyone who's a participant in a program that you've created and you've uh uh essentially put them on. Yes. So that's that's the background. And I think it's interesting because there is a sort of sense that reality TV had sort of reformed after what is popularly regarded as the kind of wild west of you know 20 years or a bit more ago. Um and for me, I think reality has become very sort of class demarcated. That you've got the ul the biggest shows and the most prestigious shows on television are reality TV and their celebrity reality and they're things like traitors or st strictly or whatever it is. Well it depends what you mean by reality T V but essentially we're talking we're talking about that kind of unscripted , yeah. Game shows that have members of the public slash celebrities taking part in some form of artificial reality. Yes, and you look at it and or a bubbled world or whatever it may be and which will I think is relevant here. What happens with those sort of shows is that you'll get like some of the biggest stars in the world saying, Oh yeah, I'll do it for forty grand, you know, I'll go to a carlston Scotland for for 40 grand. So you've got that. Then you've got a sort of middle class, things like Bake Off and things like that. But then there is this giant underclass of shows that are very, very popular. Um Married Persia, I would include Love Island, you know, there's Love Is Blind, another Chris Colin, format. Yeah, and by the way, those three shows for their respective broadcasters and in lots of territories are three of the biggest shows in the world. They are huge money makers. So Love Is Blind, Love Island, Married at F irst Sight, enormous franchises. The money they are minting for the people behind them is absolutely off the scale. It's just worth remembering that. I think thirty-three countries, maybe it's definitely above thirty. I mean all of them are, and they are hugely successful. I definitely think this will be the first of a lot of stories in this area. And so does I saw one of the lawyers for one of them saying, Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots more people, once they see people coming forward about these things, will come forward for all those shows. I mean, we already know that there are always concerns about those things. You know, the there have been a number of suicides in the wake of Love Island. There have been all sorts of things, and people we know there in the US, which we'll get on to, I mean, there are numbers of complaints against these shows, particularly against these Chris Colon reality dating formats. If you're a UK production company and a UK public service broadcaster as Channel Four is running one of these things, you must be expecting this to happen because you can look around the world and see that it happens everywhere that people eventually start complaining. And I think this is a bit like TV fake or we're gonna see lots of stuff coming out now. I think that's right. And it's interesting to think what CPL are thinking, what Channel Four are thinking and it's very, very easy to get swept along on a tide of what's new in television and to understand that something like Married a First Sight is a phenomenon around the world and to kind of say, oh though there's a new generation who grew up with reality TV and when you put them on it they really understand what it is they are doing. It's not like, you know, the first series B ofig Brother when everyone was w walking into a situation they they didn't understand. I think people think oh no it's they think this generation are cool. I think they understand it more than we do. Uh I think you know you know, so I think that's handy. Yeah, th isn't it handy? And I think that when reality T V started, duty of care is a very interesting thing 'cause as you say, it it has it's always been there. There's always psych tests, everyone that w always undergoes y you know, criminal records checks and all those types of things and it's been tightened and tightened and tightened over the years and you know follow up uh kind of interviews with people have uh got more and more and more. But what has really changed is the the form that reality TV is taking. When you look at that early reality TV, um Big Brother, even you know the early series of uh Love Island Survivor, it is a closed world. It's a closed set and as producers, which also includes, by the way, psychologists and people that you know involved in the duty of care, you have some at least illusion of control over what's happening because you have an entire world and every single inch of that world is covered because you have a camera on every single thing. The only time it's something isn't covered is if someone is under a sheet. But every single thing, you've got every single bit of footage, every single interaction between everybody throughout. So there's a world in which you can spot things very, very quickly. There's a world in which you can kind of convince yourself that you can be the master of that world. However, now reality shows are far more out in the real world. And married at first sight is it's much less of a of a precinct, you The sense you're in a bubble for the participants absolutely does, but the sense they are in a bubble for the producers does not, and that's the worst combination of all, because people that still have that Stockholm syndrome. People still think they have to do what the cameras want. People still understand that there is fame to be got from either being lovable on a show or being dramatic on a show. All those things still exist. Um but the producers have less control over the real world aspects of it. And I think that um that's what's playing out here. And I think the avalanche begins now. I wanna talk about Chris Cole's shows particularly because I think he's for interesting. He's talked a lot about this type of thing because they have had lots of lawsuits against their shows in the US. He's created these shows where you can't quite believe the premise, like married at first sight, obviously in Well you can't believe the premise because it's not real. No. Because they're not really getting married. But it's sort of so extreme compared to what we used to see on in and it he does all about it's all dating. You know, there's um love is blind, you know, when they're sort of dating through a wall, perfect match, which is I don't think anyone's looking for long-term love there, but that's quite interesting. He calls it the summer fling to those other these other shows. Then the ultimatum, the spouse has um all of these things. The reason he says he's really obsessed with dating shows is because he thinks the stakes are so high. And he says that uh married at first sight is not format driven, it is um story driven. Yeah. He says, you know, what the shows are sort of asking is how does attraction work? How can you tell if people are really in love? Can you fake can can you manage it? Can you create it? Chris Coleman will always say, Oh, it's all a choice. You know, I'm making a documentary. That's what he loves to say. It's not a format. No, you're not making You're aware of the um febrility, is that a word? S something as febrile of the situation you're putting people in and you are rat cheting that up time and time and time again because that gets ratings and ratings equals money. So we this and which by the way is that's the age old story of television you want ratings and you want money and that's what he's doing. But it's disingenuous to say anything other than that. He's not turning a camera on and just seeing what happens. You know, he he''s nots uh not David Appenberg. The the producers have always had an unbelievable amount of control within these environments. And by the way, when people say that because people sometimes say, just to be clear, oh all these things are scripted, the you know the edit is X, Y, and Z. Really, what the technique is to throw in a mechanic that changes everything and then sit back and see what happens. It's not oh, we're gonna do this and then we're gonna do that, and then we're gonna do that, and then we'll film that, and that's gonna make that story . Genuinely the idea is like like on any TV show, like on a panel show, is we have this structure, we do this, we ask this question, we press, we pull this lever, and then we just see what happens. That's the thing that they want to do. Until the point where that runs out of steam and then we put another lever. Which by the way they don't really do in documentaries. No. What's gone wrong here is really a function of the idea itself in a way. Because it is all so unreal. You are may you may be married, but you are divorced from reality by design. Any welfare is reactive. As I've read a lot of people this week talking about it, former contestants in these types of shows, there's an interesting article by someone who was in Love Island who said all the welfare and duty of care stuff is reactive and not proactive. And the fact is that when you are removed from everything and you're a bubble, as I you know, it's a bit like Karen and Goodfellas saying, after a while it gets to feel normal. And a lot of people don't underst when you're in a big immersive world and you're isolated from your friends, your families, maybe even your phones, from all sorts of things, it's often that we already know this about sexual assault or alleged sexual assault or anything. It's only afterwards that you realise what really happened and how undesirable a situation was. And it's that happens anyway in case of sexual assault. We understand far more about it than we ever did before. Never mind when you're in a sort of bubble and you really have almost all of your kind of normal checks and balances removed from you. You then also have a welfare team who work for and are paid by the production. Trevor Burrus would not accuse a single one of them by the way of entering into this with any sort of ill intent. I think people are trying to make a great television programme. And this is the so you know there's a big hit around the world, I think started in Denmark, but us you know Australia was the one where Britain really fell in love with this format. So of course you're gonna make it and Channel Four excited and they go, We'll make it, but we do have to understand that there are lots of issues here and we have to be very careful with it and the producers would have taken that very, very seriously. It got so huge such a huge show so the um you know, in a m the marriage is sort of m meaningless in a way, it's what it leads to and the fame it leads to and the the Instagram followers that it leads to. And it becomes such a juggernaut that the people I think who commission it and produce it do not have the capability, and these are very capable people, they do not have the capability to control the thing that has been unleashed. They have created something that feels like a the sort of cutesy reality experience we used to do um and becomes a real world thing and becomes an incredibly complex and difficult real world thing. And it's not appropriate for that to be run by the people who are running it. Yeah. There is something else that Chris Colin says that he is spars for his shows to teach empathy and so on. But also that the conversations around the shows evolve with and reflect the culture. And one thing it that I've just been thinking about this all week and because I've been thinking about it before and I know I've talked to you about this before but it uh there's a sort of wider point about how toxic dating is in contemporary culture and obviously the premise is absolutely crazy what you get married to someone and you've never met them. Only in a world where already everyone is being sort of matched by machines. Yes. Um, and people are completely exhausted and twisted by the apps. How much you hear about app fatigue and all of this? What used to be an organic human connection has become a sort of algorithmically controlled market. Um it's an aspect of platform capitalism. It's twisted in its best sense, you know, as in not in its best sense, but it you know, y your real world if you're not on one of these shows and not on anything, even that experience for people is kind of miserable and awful. Why not get married to someone I've never met before on TV? Because everything else has failed. Well, only against that general w real world backdrop that everyone is going through can these kind of bizarre, weird, artificial premises if seem somehow maybe it's more real, maybe it's more desirable than just many of the kind of tech-mediated alternatives. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And it's you know sitting around a table thinking up TV shows is something I did for many, many years and it's it's a it's a fun thing to do. And it seems that we're at stage now where you think well just because you can doesn't mean you should. But it's you know, it's hard not to when people it uh this we have to talk about the complicity of everyone here, which is the program makers, which are the channels and the viewers. It is one of those things where it is built and built and built. Uh and you know we've seen different versions of this, different iterations of it. We love the drama watching the drama of it. And it is very easy as a broadcaster, as a program maker and as a viewer to step away from the reality of the thing. You think, no , hold on, we're in a very, very, very toxic culture at the moment . We are putting young people on television who absolutely are digital natives but perhaps they're not, you know, uh emotional natives, perhaps they you know, they they don't have absolute control over um uh their place in the world and the moment something like this happens you have to stop and go, Yeah, do you know what? That's probably too far. That was probably enough. And I think that that's why I can't imagine they're gonna show the Knit series of Merried at First Sight. I just can't see it because it I just it I just don't think it feels an appropriate thing to put people through with the knowledge we now all definitely have. That was always at the back of our brains, but wasn't at the pleasure center at the front of our brains. One thing it does tell you about our culture is we do at least take these things seriously. Firstly, brilliant work from Noah Nanji for putting this um whole thing together. And the real measure of our culture is what happens next. Yes. I think. It's uh yeah, it's it's a it's a horrific story and it's not just on the channels and the producers, it's on the us viewers as well. Uh but so we all have to I think kind of get around the table and just go what is okay and what isn't okay. And um this feels like maybe it's on the other side of the line of what is okay. And here's the real issue that's gonna happen is you know, we're in a situation now where CPL have duty of care and Channel Four have duty of care and we as viewers are you know part of a a a long lineage of reality TV shows. But if we think it's the Wild West now, all of this stuff is now starting on YouTube. All of these new formats are starting on YouTube where there is not that oversight. The money you can get for making a reality show on YouTube now is absolutely immense, the sort of personalities you can run these sort of shows are as well. So we are going to get an awful lot of experiments in the next two, three, five years along these lines, which we have almost no oversight over whatever. So the whole situation is going to get much, much, much, much worse because all of these protocols that broadcast television has had to um develop over the years, they do not apply to this new generation of programmers. And they will make new mistakes. Talking about the fall of civilization, after these adverts, we're going to be talking about the enhanced games which uh was on on Sunday and I would say it's quite a spectacle, but perhaps not in the way that uh the organisers were hoping. This is the athletic competition where all competitors are allowed and in fact encouraged to take performance in hours in drugs. Yeah . This episode is brought to you by Lloyd. Now I love it when characters are part of a club. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Richard? The Thursday Murder Club in some ways reminds me of the A-Team. I would now like to map each of those characters onto the A-Team and feel I probably could. I mean Elizabeth is Hannibal and it's not even close. That's exactly right, and Ron is howling mad murdoch. Well, there are definite perks to being in a c lub. Just ask the members of Club Lloyds, because with Club Lloyds, you can bank on Lloyds to give you more wherever you are. If you join Club Lloyds, there's all sorts of benefits you can choose between. There's for example six free cinema tickets. They've got an annual coffee club and gourmet society membership, which would be mine. And also something that uh the Thursday Murder Club would enjoy very, very much indeed. 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Yes, in a crossover nobody saw coming, the worlds of reality TV and historical high society collide live on the South Bank Centre stage. Yeah, the real housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV real ity show eye onto the women of the early 19th century. And when we say the women of the early 19th century, we are talking about some of the most extraordinary , most charismatic, most scandalous women in the whole of British history. Exactly. Think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen, and my chaotic queen, Caroline Lamb. Yeah, so Marina and I are planning to pull out all the stops for a reality tv tour of Regency London, complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting, a special celebrity guest from the world of the real, real housewives. The Rest is Fest is running from the 4th to 6th of September at London's South Bank Centre. Members of The Rest is History and The Rest is Entertainment can get tickets on the 12 8th of May. 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Please drink responsibly. co. uk Welcome back everybody. Now the enhanced games, Richard. Swimming, sprinting and weight lifting, I believe. 42 athletes. I was gonna say not as you know it, but maybe as you know it, because everyone's on drugs. Um described as the Olympics on steroids, but uh in this case literally. And it happened on Sunday, you'll be shocked to learn where it happened. Actually there's two places it might have happened. One was Riyadh, it wasn't. The other was Las Vegas and it was there. Perhaps next year it'll be in Riyadh. And it is a competition where athletes, some of whom are genuine Olympians in the uh swimming sprints and in weightlifting attempt to break world records by using performance enhancing drugs. It's run by a guy called Christian Angermeyer, who made a fortune from cyber cybin tablets, magic mushrooms. He's like AI , psychedelics, and crypto. Yes. Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capitalist firm are investors as well. Now it's called the Enhanced Games and not because oh it's you know games but it's enhanced, it's called Enhanced because it is sponsored by a company called Enhanced. And that is Christian Angermeyer's company. And they will essentially sell you mm peptides and testosterone and and all of these things, all of these things that we're we're you know we've spoken about before when we talked about looks maxing and all that stuff. This world in America that seems to be getting less and less regul ated, especially with the rise of RFK, where you can improve who you are. All the biohacking, all the self optimization, all the longevity particularly that these guys are so heavily invested in and the event was connected to a platform where you can the event was connected to a shop. Yeah. Let's call it what it is. I mean when it first came up, Sebco, he was chairman of World Athletics at the time, said, Oh, this is all bollocks. I don't get sleepless nights over it. No one's gonna watch it no, one's gonna uh people thought it no one would screen it. It's like, mm, have you lived in the media over the last few years? Don't worry, someone will. And it was actually on Roku's YouTube channel. Yes. Which is not nothing by the way. No, no, no, no, not at all. We live in a r completely different media landscape and such as we've just talked about before the break, don't think that no one will screen it 'cause someone will always screen it. They had it last night, but they had a training camp a few months ago in Abu Dhabi. That was in Abu Dhabi, yeah. And they and again, it's all like I don't know where the stage of this is, but it will obviously because it hasn't come out yet because it will obviously have to take in the games itself. But really Scott's company was going to make a documentary about it and it was going to be produced by Rob McElhane. He'd obviously welcome to Brex and it's all it's all just content, isn't it? It's all yeah. Well it's not even just content, it's an advert. And so it's it and it's fascinating. And 'cause you have to watch it live and because it has this sort of um genuine drama. But you know, if you look at so In Enhanced, which had had an IPO and is worth over a billion dollars, this company that would will sell you peptides and all sorts of things. You know, in their entry to the securities exchange when they had their IPO, they described the enhanced games as simply a marketing tool. This is this this this this is not their company. They're not building this thing, you know, this is literally a a marketing thing. And you know they've encouraged um all these sports people to come and do it and they put it on on Sunday and lots of people watched it. Now, the interesting thing about it is the sports people who were doing it, and there's all sorts of people who did it, Fred Curley, he was an Olympic hundred meter medalist. He did it. He did it clean weirdly. There's a few athletes in this, Hunter Armstrong, the swimmer as well, who competed clean. I saw him beat everyone clean. Which we will get to literally the only clean athlete You've ruined the advert. Yeah, you've ruined our advert, Hunter. Whether they are clean or not, I don't because they can't dope test them. That would be uh that would be a good to get to the basics of for how many years have people have said about the Olympics, oh I don't know why they' dont just let them all take drugs and get on with it. Well b okay, firstly because it's dangerous and also it's ethically bankrupt, etcetera. This is a more interesting thing than it first seems 'cause at first sight it seems like a circus and you think, oh great, the tech bros, of course are pumping people full of drugs and then you know winding them up like toys and look looking to see if they can break world records. But actually, you look at someone like Ben Proud, who's the the British swimmer, who's a silver medalist in the Olympics, I mean that's a about as good as you can get in any you know, lots of people swim, it's really difficult and he's one of the very, very best in the entire world. And you know, he says, I don't make any money out of it. So I don't make any money out of it. Someone has said to me, I'll give you Yeah, that that's the prizes at this games were extraordinary, really like really big money. Someone has also said I'll give you two hundred and fifty thousand pounds if you win the race and there's only four people in the race, by the way. I saw forty six percent of elite athletes earn under fifteen thousand dollars a year. Weightlifting they've chosen very, very wisely because these things are high profile, but you don't make an awful lot of money if you use same bolt, you make a lot of money. Most people do not make a lot of money. So there is a this group of people who are incredible athletes who, by the way, throughout their entire career have been at the absolute cutting edge of how to train. You know, the cutting edge of this is a new way to do it, the cutting edge of perhaps you can take this powder, the cutting edge of seeing people who they're in a dorm with taking something illegal and not getting caught. This is the world that they've grown up with. They have grown up in a world where they absolutely are sort of put through the ringer uh physically and mentally for the entertainment of other people, but for not very much money. So when someone says to them, What we will do, we will take you to Abidabi, we will give you a series of uh chemical interventions, all of which are legal in the real world. Yeah. And then you come to Vegas, and if you win a race against three other people, I'll give you £250,000. And if you break the world record, I'll give you a million pounds. Very, very hard to imagine what other than some internal mor als would stop you doing that as an athlete? Because h how else are you making the money? Ben Proud would have been training since he was a child. Every day, putting his body through extraordinary things. Now, Ben Proud will be aware that there will be children watching this happening and they might be tempted to follow him, and that's for on his conscience. But everything else involved, you think, well, I s I sort of get it. How long how much longer have you got in this sport? Five years, six years? You want to finally make some money. And so that's that's what he's doing. So I understand why the athletes are doing it. And Wada quite rightly is saying that we don't know what these drugs do. And he said, yeah, but these people they're like Formula One cars. You know they've been put through like unbelievable training regimes which are absolutely not natural and which bodies are not. You know, what if the col from the Coliseum and probably and before we've always got to less voluntary than Coliseum. But we've watched people harm themselves for our sporting entertainment. What about boxing? What about what we know now about contact sports and degenerative disease . I mean, we know all these things and in some cases people are trying really slowly to find out because they don't want to stop watching those contact sports or they don't want to have to change the rules of those contact sports because maybe it's just a blip or maybe it's this or that. We know this. We already know that people are being made to do extraordinary and awful things to their bodies in the cause of our sporting entertainment. Yeah, that Usick fight over the weekend which ended very controversially. Do you think so that' sports ? So that's sport, that's okay. And this thing in Vegas is not okay. All I'm saying is morally is a very, very thin line between the enhanced games and what sport is anyway. The one thing you definitely don't want is to encourage the massive amounts of putting drugs together in untested ways, you know, and so all all all the doctors are saying we don't know what's gonna happen. And of course you you don't know what's gonna happen but is it like that scorpion fight in Jahead where they just sit like you'll watch anything and you'll bet an on anything and it's just sport attainment and I think you know s most sport, most sports governing bodies, the absolute key thing they understand and really know is people want what they're watching to be fair. That's But also most sports governing bodies are some of the worst people out of the thing. But now other opportunities are suggesting themselves. I'm not saying that that's necessarily this, but many, many other things. And you can see like all sorts of breakaway things will happen because people will feel like I'm sick of this. You run it badly, and I get no cut of it. And there's all sorts of different ways in which these kind of hegemonies and monopolies are going to break up. Yeah. Now that you won't ever say, Oh well who'd screen it. Yeah. Now that m you know there's there's there's so many sporting billionaires now that there are people in lots and lots of sports who are going to start saying, I mean, I can I might just do this myself. I might just find a way to make this slightly more interesting for me because the sports people are the ones who were who are drawing the crowds, not the sports administrators. And I think that if I was an administrator in pretty much any sport, I I think people have got a lot better. I think that's definitely true. But um this feels like when you look at it at first sight it it looks absolutely appalling. And when you actually pull back the covers you go, this is sort of what's always been happening, but they are being very they're sort of telling the truth about it. That's their narrative. And if James Magnuson, the Australian swimmer, I'm sure that his body can probably take more than, say, mine. And if I was on the same regime as James Magnuson, who by the way came fourth in both of his races, I think you can take two lessons. One, sport has always been very, very, very dodgy. And this is almost no less dodgy than most sport has always been. But on the other side, the reason that sport makes so much money is people love it. And when people love it, you have that phrase again, a duty of care to the people who are watching. And if you're enhanced this company, then you sell these products anyway. And so obviously you belong RFK is about to is is is is about to sanction that more and more peptides and more and more of these things. So that you know lots of these things are going to be legal in America. Doesn't mean they should be legal. And this is an advert for that. So sport on this side, I think it's fascinating what this says about sport and how actually as a sporting thing I I kind of get we've always done that. On the other side, it's my God, what sort of a society are we becoming. I agree. The one thing I would say as a positive was I don't think it played that well for them in some ways because the thing that you and I adore almost above all things in sport is its complete unpredictability. And the fact that some of the people who taken the most drugs were far behind and clean athletes. One, you can never fully control this thing. And I sort of loved that. Yeah. It did it it didn't work the way they want it to. The first thing they had was um the one of the women's weightlifting. They they had two events they they f were fairly sure they were going to get a world record in so I think they must have done in and in training. One one was the women's weightlifting, which w didn't quite come down to a world record, and the other was Christian uh Colin Mayf in the swingimm 'cause he'd already broken a world record on drugs. He'd already been given a million dollars last year as part of their marketing push. And he was the only one who broke a world record. So he's he's now made two million dollars out of this, which is quite something. But you know, Ben Proud won one of his races, so it's got a quarter quarter of a million dollars. You know, I I I you know, I I sort of get it. But as you say, Hunter Armstrong wasn't on drugs, he was winning. Fred Curley, the sprinter, he wasn't on drugs, he won the hundred meters in I was gonna say a slow time, like like like I can run nine seven. But you know, he ran n nine point nine seven or something like that, which which is I mean it's it's competitive. It would would have put him last in the Olympic final. But you know, he beat But they reminded me of advertisers, p particularly the organizers, because beforehand they kept saying, Oh, you're gonna see so many world records broken. A bit like when I look at a advert for some face cream, you're going to X Rise. It's like, yeah, no, you're not. Okay. It's all a big load. I'm going to buy it anyway. But it's all a big load of hype and when it actually happens, I'm not seeing exact I'm not seeing the thing you told me, which is really what happens with all of these th Yeah. And also, you know, a lot of the swimmers are wearing the speed suits which are illegal as well. I mean is th the they show the interesting thing is w the regime they have been on had made very, very, very little difference to their performance. I don't know if that's always going to be the case. Because what we want to think is, oh my god, if you did take all of these things, then suddenly you know you 'd be running nine point four years younger or something. where it's not Beauties states. In five years' time if they keep doing them surely they're going to beat world records. Because also more and more and more people are going to do it. Because as I say, if you are an athlete and suddenly this happened this first time and you know the world didn't end and you haven't made very much money in your career, but you do feel that your body has been abused and you've been pushed to do things you don't really want to do and you've feel like you've been running against people who are doped up and uh all of those things through your career. I I don't know why athletes in their kind of early thirties wouldn't be going, Oh, do you know what next year I'll do enhanced games, you know, we'll go to Abu Dhabi, there's doctors there, I get it, it's all supervised. It feels like more and more athletes would do it. It feels like where you go I can't name the particular football club, but it feels like where you go where they have the special medicine and the special doctors. There's a there's a football not in our country. Where people used to go towards in their twilights and and do very well sometimes. And maybe th it will be a sort of twilight staging post. Yes, like the senior snooker. Which would I want to say is clean. It's drug free. There's no drugs in that sport. There are no beta blockers. They used to have beta blockers. Before a match because he wasn't allowed beta blockers. Now the organizers they had they they didn't see individual athletes' regimens, but they revealed that ninety one percent of the athletes used testosterone, seventy nine percent used human growth hormone, sixty two percent used stimulants such as adderall, fifty percent used metabolic modulations. Great banned. Forty one percent used EPO and twenty nine percent used an adabolic steroid agent such as uh deco durobolin. So these are all the things that people have been banned for over the years. Lots of which are perfectly legal in lots of places. But they've they've sort of finding different combinations of these things. And that's what we don't know what happens when you combine all of these things. I thought it's listen, as a spectacle it wasn't amazing. They didn't break any record s. I think it's a fascinating sign of things to come, though. But as parents or as you know, just human beings, be wary of the huge amounts of money that are going in now to market ing peptides to you and marketing things to make you look younger, train harder. Essentially that whole thing in Vegas was an advert treated as such. Right. Well, the last episode of the late show with Stephen Colbert, and indeed the late show at all, has gone out. Remember that CBS axed it in the midst of the Paramount Sky Dance deal, which they needed approval from the Trump administration from and ended up getting it. Stephen Colbert said it was an honour and a privilege, you know, the honour of my life to be here as in that sort of very goodbye to all that way. Um, the president Trump, needless to say, posted about it in very, very derogatory ways, like he's talentless, he's whatever. I mean, and it's all gone. The end of a huge era, not just his era. So, in some ways, I can't really say the sun is setting on late night, but you know what I mean. Yeah, but I think the the the really interesting thing about it is is when this first happened and Colbert was taken off air, it was absolutely seen as a as a harbinger of oh okay, now we have state controlled media and this is s straight out of a of a of a playbook that we're very familiar with. And then you know when Kimmel was suspended as well, we think, oh here we go, the whole of late night is being dismantled, satire is being dismantled. We know this playbook, we've seen this a million times be fore. But actually, in the time between them announcing that Colbert is coming off air and now Kimball is still there, if anything he's you know m got more powerful, Seth Myers is still there, you know, everything else is still going. It feels like uh you know, the FCC who who were Trump's lapdogs in the in this as as as in so many other things seem to have lost some of their bite. You know, they tr they tried to have a go at the view and the view bit back. So it feels like it's unfortunate for Stephen Colbert, of course, but it feels like this was the wake up call perhaps that the um American media industry needed. Yeah, it's interesting. The last ser ies I saw got three times its normal audience because you know if you say to people you're not gonna have this thing anymore and and this is why, people actually showed up for it. In the way that after Kimmel came back off his susp suspension , there was a huge sort of surge of viewers. But we have to accept equ equally, by the way, you I don't think you can stop any of these things because as we said earlier in this very episode, there are many, many places that will screen things nowadays, and we will definitely get to that in a minute. We have to say that late night itself used to be massive and even though it was incredibly expensive to produce. You've got huge writing stuff, you've got big production, you've got all sorts of other things like that. It was profitable and you had sponsors and you had lots of ad revenue because people watched it in a linear s way. And when you look at all the wars, the late night wars of the 80s, but most particularly the 90s. Even then though, these shows were mega expensive and it's a little bit like buying sporting right or something like that. It's you kind of want to have it going through your pipes or you want to sh have it showing your channels . But it it it does because it's and it's also it's something that's always been there. You know, some people will say now to you, about comedy commissioning. Why am I commissioning comedy? I mean, just because we always commission comedies, why am I doing that? Because actually, people aren't watching them. And definitely the point at which I think the late show had got to, it cost $100 million a year to make, and it made 60 million. So you can see that it is there for lost leaders. And also it's there because we've always had things like this. Um it's interesting all the other rival shows ran reruns sort of out of respect against this last episode. Against this last episode. You know, you can see what's happened. The clips are bigger than the shows. I mean the clips get huge amounts of the of the opening monologue or some funny sort of moment or vignette from them that night show. But they are also part of the old monoculture that is dead. In the old days, obviously, you know, you would to put it in the most crude terms, red and blue state or, you know, Republicans, Democrats, all watch these shows. They were part of the shared monoculture. Now all of these shows are seen to be kind of hotbeds of kind of democratic degeneracy or whatever it is. And all of them they are part of one complete siloed side of things. Yeah. Which was extraordinary. And never existed in the old days. There there is not a shared monoculture anymore that these shows sat at a sort of broad center of. It doesn't exist anymore. Um and it yeah, as I say, yeah, it was hallowed and whatever. It's interesting what he did next, Stephen Colbert. And I find this really interesting because he did this, he popped up on public access TV, which as you know is like mega lo-fi. And back in the old days, we thought, Oh my gosh, I can't believe America has this thing where like almost anyone can make TV in Wainsworld. And it's not like, all right, we live in a culture where almost everyone makes TV all the time, you know, whether you're putting on TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And he hosted Only in Monroe, which is a community access programme. I it's a town of Monroe, Michigan is a town of I think twenty thousand people. And he did this actually the night before or or just before he took up the reig atns the late show back in 2015. And on his last night in um the in the actual late show chair, he said, The last thing I did before I took up this job was I hosted this public access TV show called Only in Monroe and 12 people watched and to show business being what it is, I'll pro that's probably where you'll next see me. Indeed, 23 hours later, he was hosting ONIA Munro. He made it really incredible. He interviewed the two women who are the usual hosts. This is a town of 20,000 people, Munro. It's a tiny and when you see that I mean, this is very sophisticated. They don't have a sophisticated setup as this that we're sitting in our podcast studio. They have some of the sort of chairs and a little pot plant in the middle. But you got Jack White to do the music off a stereo and a reel to reel. He got um Eminem came on and it's kind of like, you know, um that they called Byron Allen and talked about, you know, what he was doing. Jeff Daniels was there, Steve Bushemi, they happened to find it there was somewhere in Monroe called Buscemi's Pizza or something like that. Steve Bishemmy, no zero relation, did an advert for them. So they had all sorts of fun things, and obviously he can create something wonderful. But it is the first thing that's on his new YouTube channel. There is now one thing on Stephen Colbert's newly minted YouTube channel and it is his appearance hosting only in Monroe. It's sort of interesting. Lots of people are wondering what he'll do. We do know he will be writing with his son, a Lord of the Rings movie. Yes, that's crazy . That is nuts. Yeah, some sort of like small section of something from the Fellowship of the Rings. So I'm sort of imagining something a bit like Rogue One. It's kind of a Star Wars story and it sits within the whole lore. But anyway. But then why would you not go and do a show if you felt like it on YouTube? Leaving aside the political side of it for now. And that's you know why I prestige this by saying that all these other shows are still on. I'm the and there's quite a lot of them. They don't really need that many, is is the truth. But as you say, that's the thing. But it's still a lot. Yeah. Yeah. This was is didn't make any money at all for CBS. Stephen Colbert was obviously paid. Now there is zero way that Stephen Colbert is gonna earn less money next year than he earned on that CBS contract. Because of his name and because of YouTube and because he can c directly get paid you know, the advertising money, he will be making more money. He will be making much more money. But the show itself will be profitable. If you 'cause because everything has become we're on one now. You're on a form of T V chat show now. So he he will make a fortune in the same way that Conan makes a fortune from his show. CBS are not only saving that forty million dollars'.re The makying a lot more. Because the thing that's replacing Colbert in the Daily Show I think is very, very interesting, which is Byron Allen, who's this amazing guy. He started as a gag writer for stand-ups at 14, Byron Allen, and then he did a bit of um stand up and he just he absolutely loved TV. He's now a multi multis a billionaire, his company, which is uh entertainment studios is worth over four billion dollars. He has always run this show called Comics Unleashed, which to us would be like a panel show, really. But it's it's comics doing a monologue and it's is it's is sort of l lightly kind of tied together. He also does another show called Funny You Should Ask, which is uh very similar to Celebrity Squares. So he's run those two shows for years and years and years, Byron Allen, with loads of different comics. Um and if you want to know by the way how satirical they are they are, Norm Macdonald uh once said uh about Comics Unleashed, I think it would be impossible to be more leashed . Uh so you know and Byron Alan will always say, don't do anything topical because I want these to run and run and run, I want to be able to repeat these whenever whenever I want to do them. So he does these two shows and they've been going out after um the late show, funnily enough. And now he said to CBS, I will pay you for that slot. I will give you money for that slot. I will buy that slot from you if you let me keep the advertising. Which he was doing years ago, Byron Anna. He's he's really fascinating. He's made a load of money by always having smarter ideas than anyone else. So now instead of Colbert, you will have comics unleashed, or comics leashed, and funny you should ask just all day, every day. CBS are saying we're doing this until we can work out how to replace the late show, but I don't know why you would not just keep doing it because they're getting paid for it. You know, Byron Allen is taking all the risk, he's keeping the um the advertising money he thinks he can find a way of of of doing it. He can run that without making a $40 million loss that CBS was was making. So that's what's replacing it, which is hugely more vanilla. For sure it is hugely more vanilla. But But does America really, really need another show that's costing an absolute fortune and not paying its way that does the same thing as other shows? Because Stephen Colbert can go and do that because he will be doing that elsewhere. It feels like everyone wins. Every yes. He can make a show for I don't know, for tr for twenty million dollars a year and h literally fifteen of that will be profit. And he can take ten people or whatever it is from the late show, and they can do it, and we already know that fun viral TV does not have to be as we've always thought of it. But the other thing is that show can't be controlled by anybody. Yeah. Even if Brendan Carr and the FCC, and all these people want to play sort of whack-a-mole with you know people getting out of line or people speaking against the great dictator. So what? Okay, there is a massive democratized thing out there that anyone can be a hit on, and you can be sure if he decides to be a hit, Stephen Colbert on it, he will be. Yeah. And really good people will come back and then no one will control them. And they won't get to YouTube and they won't stop because if w he can't possibly control any of that because otherwise I mean it's impossible for him to do that. So against legacy old fashioned things, he might be able to exact a you know a measure of revenge or whatever, but you are just growing a whole load of other rebels and as well as dispatching a rebel to someone we you just can't be controlled Yeah, that's the irony of the thing. They're shooting themselves in the foot by releasing these people from late night, because late night they do they have levers that they can pull. Right. And YouTube, they don't have those. Um they they don't have the levers. So I think I think Col bert is going to make more money from it, CBS is going to make more money from it. The shows that are competitors to the Daily Show are stronger than they were at the time when Colbert was taken off the air. So you know, watch this space, but we Colbert is going no more. You won't be able to keep these people down. Of course you can't. And that I that I think is very, very positive. Conan has never been bigger or richer than he is now. Your reminder that uh we'll be talking to Stephen Spielberg soon, any questions you've ever wanted to ask Stephen Spielberg if you send them to the rest of Entertainment at goalhanger.com and we will ask him the best or the most interesting Any recommendations I really want to recommend Dear England , which is the new James Graham show. Um it's based on his play, but it's expanded beyond the Garris Southgate verse into the Thomas Tuchel era. And I actually appeared on uh in front of a select committee We haven't talked about it. We haven't talked about it, I know. Well I was it. It was it was it was really interesting in lots of ways, but I it was an absolute privilege to sit next to James. I think it's so fascinating. He's so interested in we talked a lot about local stories and he talked a lot about doing stuff in in in Nottingham and doing stuff with Sherwood. But he's also interested in these kind of very popular, populist kind of national stories and to write something about the England football manager just as when he, you know, did that play quiz which became a brilliant TV series about the millionaire coughing scandal. He just does things that people are really interested in and I think he is a most um fascinating and interesting person and it was a privilege to sit next to him, dear England, about the Gareth Southgate era and beyond, uh as part of you know the start of World Cup program ming. Can I say because I w I watched the whole of that committee. I thought you were terrific. But all the way through and he was great. He was made lots of very, very good good points. But he did keep saying and as uh dearing them, which is on BBC on Sunday, you never once um plugged the podcast. I couldn't believe it. You could have just said and by the way we're talking to Stephen Spielberg if you have. Okay, I don't want to talk about only on in Monroe and what it normally gets as public access television, but I can assure you that committee hearing would have got considerably fewer viewers than that. So I'm sorry I didn't plug the podcast on. You save your ammunition. Okay . I I actually didn't think it was necessary to do that. If they always And I didn't want to use any of my time that I could have been giving them useful statistics to to plug our podcast, Richard. And I have to say that I don't think it is a huge audience, the uh that that that particular live stream. A, B, C always be closing. Always be closing. Um I'm gonna recommend three different documentaries because they're all on Netflix and two of them have something in common. The Jamie Vardy documentary, um which is part of the Untold story that I watch all of the American Untold, which are just sort of smaller stories from sport. Anyway. The'vey told the um Jamie Vardy's career. It's it's not, you know, Waikatha Christie or anything like that. It's just this extraordinary story of him going from non-league and, you know, really becoming a pro at like twenty-five and what happened and then Leicester City is is is really, really great. And also the Miracle of Istanbul, which is about the um the Liverpool Champions League triumph as well, uh is in the same series, that's great. And the Kylie documentary which is wonderful. It's so great. Both that though, actually, the Vardy one and the Kylie one, again, how many times we have to see this? The tabloid press were scum. They were scum. They were the worst of the worst. Every time you look into what they did , you're like, wow. There must have been people there. You think, How on earth are you sleeping? Oh yeah. I mean the Jamie Vardy one, they do something so unnecessary and so cruel that it's j uh it boggles the mind and Kide as well. I mean it's it boggles the mind. Anyway, that aside, those three documents I enjoyed them all very much. They're all um Netflix. Now for our members, Marina, you've just started this um incredible series I'm talking to the brilliant pollster James Kanningasorium who's plugged into masses of currents in a much more technical way of our times than I am, just doing it all on vibes. And this one is talking about, you know, was Chalamet Timothy Chalamet right about ballet and opera and he we to get him to highlight his classical music a dead art form where actually people listen to it but they don't really realise they're listening to it. And stats based really I know stats it's really inter it's so fascinating. Anyway, so that is for our members if you want to join for ad free listening and bonus m episodes. It's the rest isentertainment.com. Otherwise, we will see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.