Episode 175: Transcript
Episode: 175: Too Bad About the Internet (with Anil Dash)
Transcription by Alexander
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Annalee, if you could be one Doctor Who character, who would you be?
Annalee: [00:00:04] Okay, so I feel like this is cheesy, but I would just be the Doctor, because obviously I’m very Doctor-identified. Although, I’m not identified with all the Doctors. So, I would be willing to be David Tennant Doctor, the Jodie Whittaker Doctor, or the Ncuti Gatwa Doctor. So those are my favorites.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:23] Good choices.
Annalee: [00:00:24] Not that the other ones are bad, but those are my faves. Those are the ones that I feel really, truly represent me. But if I had to pick a companion, it would be Yaz Khan. And that's it. That's all I will say. So who would you be?
Charlie Jane: [00:00:36] Man, you know, I could also be the Jodie Whittaker Doctor. I really love her. I feel like, you know, because she's the only like major lady Doctor we've had. And, you know, I wouldn't want to be a guy Doctor at this point. I used to sort of feel very identified with Tom Baker's Doctor, but that was a long time ago before I transitioned.
[00:00:56] I feel like I'd either be the Jodie Whittaker Doctor or in my dreams, I would love to be Romana. Romana was a companion that the Doctor traveled with in the like late 70s into the like early 80s, who was another Time Lord who was like very sophisticated and witty and would wear these like very cute, silly outfits. It was just like very goofy. But, you know, I probably I want to be Romana. I probably would be Osgood, who is this, you know, scientist at UNIT who's like kind of an embarrassing Doctor Who fan, who's like kind of like the fan stand-in who just like wears little Doctor Who swag and is like kind of overly impressed to see the Doctor.
[00:01:38] Also Osgood is kind of somewhat there's two Osgoods and one of them is a shapeshifter and one of them is not. And we're not sure which one of them is alive and which one is dead and all that confusion about like which Osgood we're dealing with and whether she's still a shapeshifter or not. That feels very real to me. That feels like kind of like where I'm at right now. Like I don't know if I'm still a shapeshifter or not. I don't know which me I am.
Annalee: [00:02:01] It's hard.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:02] It's confusing.
Annalee: [00:02:03] Yeah, when your body is just changing all the time. Like…
Charlie Jane: [00:02:06] I know.
Annalee: [00:02:07] Are you a shapeshifter? Are you just moving through linear time?
Charlie Jane: [00:02:10] But am I allowed to change anymore? Am I even allowed to be a shapeshifter anymore? Like…
Annalee: [00:02:15] The laws are so complicated.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:16] Yeah, and I feel like, you know, I'm still kind of like I'm pissed that Missy killed off one of the Osgoods. That was not cool. Sorry, spoilers for an old Doctor Who episode.
Annalee: [00:02:26] Wait, what was the name of that one companion who was like a punk rock lady?
Charlie Jane: [00:02:31] Ace. That was Ace. Ace was like the best.
Annalee: [00:02:34] Ace is another great companion.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:35] You could totally be an Ace, I feel like. One of Ace's main character traits was that she carried explosives around her with her.
Annalee: [00:02:43] Just like me.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:44] And like she would just blow things up randomly.
Annalee: [00:02:46] Yeah, no, very relatable.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:47] There's a bit in one of those stories where the Doctor turns to Ace and is like, because the Doctor of course hates violence and weapons and is always telling Ace not to carry explosives because it's bad. And then one time the Doctor turns to Ace and is like, “I told you not to carry explosives, but I know you have some. You know, can you give me some of those explosives you're not carrying?” And Ace is like, “Sure, coming right up. I set the fuse to be kind of random, so we'll hopefully get away in time.” And they just blow, like pretty much Ace blows things up in a lot of the episodes.
Annalee: [00:03:16] Yeah, I love that.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:18] Anything with Ace in it is generally a good time.
Annalee: [00:03:21] I feel like that's why I liked Yaz's character, even though she wasn't a blow things up person, but like I liked her for the same reason that….
Charlie Jane: [00:03:28] She was like physically very competent.
Annalee: [00:03:30] Yeah, and like, I mean, mentally competent, too, but I just mean like she had a very physical presence and we knew that she had, you know, that she could kick ass. I liked that a lot.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:39] Yeah, you know, I'm always going to be salty about the fact that we never got to just see Jodie Whittaker and Yaz travel together, like just the two of them. Like the show kept denying us that by like, oh, here's another white guy. Oh, yeah, well, we lost our white guy. Here's a new one. He's just like here.
Annalee: [00:03:55] I know. You can't possibly like survive in the Doctor Who universe without a white guy. Like, geez, we can't like completely lose our colonial roots.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:05] That brings us to today's topic, which is the current state of Doctor Who, where possibly, I think for the first time ever, there are no white guys in the TARDIS. There are no white people in the TARDIS.
Annalee: [00:04:16] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:17] Only people of color in the TARDIS. OK, so today we're going to be talking about Doctor Who.
Annalee: [00:04:23] Yes, we are.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:23] I’ve loved Doctor Who for my entire life. My earliest memories of being a human being are of loving Doctor Who. I kind of like connected to it very early in life. You know, I've been a Doctor Who fan my entire life, and I'm loving it more right now than I've ever loved it before. I'm just loving it so much with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and just like everything that's happening. I love the new companion Belinda Chandra. So we're going to get into it.
[00:04:50] So it's been 20 years since Doctor Who came back from like oblivion. And so this is a good time to talk about how much we love it, how the past 20 years have been and why we hope it continues for another 20 years.
[00:05:02] And later in the episode, we'll be talking to the incredible Anil Dash about the concept of the digital public square.
[00:05:10] And you're listening to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast that travels backwards and forwards in time simultaneously. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I have a book coming out this August called Lessons in Magic and Disaster. It's about a young trans woman who teaches her mother how to be a witch.
Annalee: [00:05:29] It is so good. And I've been thinking about it a lot, especially in these times. I am Annalee Newitz. I am a science journalist who also writes science fiction. And my latest book is a nonfiction book about propaganda in the United States and culture war. And it's called Stories Are Weapons, also a book for our time.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:52] Yeah. And on our mini episode next week for our Patreon subscribers, we'll be talking about why right now, this exact moment, might be the best time we've ever had for television science fiction straight up, just like best ever. So stay tuned for that. So let's get timey wimey.
[00:06:10] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]
Charlie Jane: [00:06:41] Yeah, so like I said, it's been 20 years since Doctor Who came back. And, you know, it just suddenly became this huge institution again. It's better than ever. And Ncuti Gatwa is incredible. And we're recording this on April 16th. We've only seen one episode of the new season, “The Robot Revolution”. And by the time this episode's come out, you'll have all seen a couple more episodes. So we won't be talking about those, but there will be spoilers for everything that’s aired till now.
Annalee: [00:07:07] So, OK, let's start with some rumors that have been going around, which is that Doctor Who might be canceled. Is that real? Charlie, tell me everything. What's happening?
Charlie Jane: [00:07:22] So it's a bit of a confusing situation. Like normally, ever since Doctor Who came back, they've just already committed to make a new season before the current season starts airing. It's just been like, “well, of course, we're just going to keep making it.” And right now, as we're recording this, the situation is that they have said they will not make a decision about making a third season with Ncuti Gatwa and Russell T. Davies until after the current season is finished airing because they want to see how it's doing, which is a little worrying.
[00:07:51] And part of the problem is that, like, the BBC made this deal with Disney and Disney put a lot of money into the show. And, you know, this time last year, you walk around San Francisco, there were like giant ads on bus stops and like billboards for Doctor Who, especially in the gay neighborhood, because they knew their audience. And we're not seeing that this time. So it's like, is Disney going to want to invest in the show again? What happens if Disney doesn't want to invest? So everybody's a little bit concerned.
[00:08:19] Russell T. Davies has been making these vague statements recently about how, yeah, there might be some time off and we're hoping it continues. It just seems a little bit precarious. And so if you are in the UK, please watch it on the BBC iPlayer. Get all your friends to watch it on the BBC's official streaming platform. And if you're in the US, please watch it on Disney Plus.
Annalee: [00:08:43] Yeah, seriously. Really, I don't like to hear about Doctor Who possibly being on the bubble. And I can't help but think that part of the reason why is that, you know, Disney is involved. And right around the time that Doctor Who got really queer, you know, Disney decided that it would be no longer supporting the idea of queer people existing in any of its fictional universes or non-fictional universes. And that that might be motivating some of this, which kind of brings me to thinking about how Doctor Who has changed in the 21st century, because this queerness, the queer elements of Doctor Who really are something that we only saw explicitly in the 21st century. I think in the 20th century, there was a lot of subtext.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:37] There was so much subtext.
Annalee: [00:09:38] Yeah, and particularly among the fans who now run the show. So…
Charlie Jane: [00:09:44] There were always queer people involved with Doctor Who behind the scenes. But yeah, it is currently definitely the gayest thing on Disney Plus. That's for sure.
Annalee: [00:09:51] Yeah. And in some ways, the gayest thing in science fiction television, too.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:56] I would agree with that.
Annalee: [00:09:57] Yeah. So I wonder if we could just you could start by talking a little bit about how you see the show having changed, because I know that you grew up with it. You were really immersed in the 20th century version in a way that I wasn't. And probably a lot of American listeners weren't. So what is different? Everything from like the TARDIS to the actual characters.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:19] Yeah. I mean, I am an OG Doctor Who fan. And it's super fascinating because superficially, it's the same show it's always been. All of the elements look the same. Like there's the TARDIS, there's the sonic screwdriver. All the old stuff is there. But under the hood, it's a very different show. It's kind of like a complete reinvention of Doctor Who.
[00:10:41] And I feel like one thing I think about is that Doctor Who has always been a bit of a portal fantasy. Like you're in the everyday world and you go inside this blue phone booth and then you're in another world, basically. But the new show makes that much more explicit. And part of this is the determination that Russell T. Davies and other creators have had to kind of keep that link alive between the real world and the fantastic world of the show. Much more than they used to. Companions will go back and forth. They will return to their ordinary lives. They'll have families and jobs that they keep going back to.
Annalee: [00:11:14] And that wasn't really the case in the 20th century.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:16] I mean, a little bit here and there. Like in the 70s, they would be, you know, the Doctor had this life with UNIT in present day Earth. And the TARDIS would be parked and occasionally would go off on adventures. But it wouldn't be the same as now where it just feels like the kind of going back and forth is much more regular. And there's like a personal life, which there never was in the 20th century.
[00:11:37] But also technology has advanced to the point where now the inside of the TARDIS and the outside of the TARDIS feel connected in a way that they couldn't before. Like just watching “The Robot Revolution”, there are bits where they're standing inside the TARDIS control room and you can see through the front doors of the TARDIS to what's outside the TARDIS. You can see the robots and the people standing outside the TARDIS. And you can you can look from inside the TARDIS and see outside. And also you can stand outside the TARDIS and like you'll see some of what's going on inside.
[00:12:08] So it's just like that's a little bit wonky. But it feels like there was a little bit of an imaginative leap in the past of like the TARDIS interior and exterior did not really feel. They were in different sets and they couldn't actually be connected. There's this one shot from like “The Sensorites” from like 1964 where they walk out of the TARDIS into it and into a spaceship. And it's this incredible technical feat of like one continuous what feels like a continuous take. And that's like the one time they really did it in the 20th century. It was like this huge accomplishment.
Annalee: [00:12:38] Yeah, I was going to say like on that tip, the technology and the show has changed, too, it seems like, because when the show first came back, one of the things that happened was that Rose, the companion, has like a special mobile phone that lets her call anytime, call back to her home on Earth or her time on Earth. And I was like, yeah, I mean, she's constantly in contact with her mom if she wants to be.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:03] That's huge. Yeah.
Annalee: [00:13:05] That immediately set the tone for like the reboot of the show in the 21st century, I think.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:10] That is so true. Yeah, I was just doing a rewatch and there's this one episode in the Martha Jones era where she has to answer trivia questions on a spaceship in the distant future. And she's calling her mom and her mom is like trying to talk to her about like something that happened the previous day on Earth. And it's like, it's so interesting.
[00:13:28] Part of that is that the companions are allowed to like have lives when families and romances, the companions are allowed to have character arcs. Which, you know, in the 20th century show, you occasionally saw companions getting to grow and change. But for the most part, they had to be static. The show had to cut. It was like a lot of television back then. People couldn't really grow and change because you didn't want to confuse people who were just like dipping in and out or syndicated or whatever.
Annalee: [00:13:54] Yeah. And Star Trek, same in the States, right? Like I think earlier Star Trek series, you didn't really see character development or like the character development would be like somebody grew a beard or a like, you know, somebody is now like a slightly different role on the ship, but it wouldn't really change who they were.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:14] Yeah, it was very, that's very true. You know, and the other thing about 21st century Doctor Who is, you know, there's this quote that Christopher Eccleston was quoted in like press releases as saying when the show relaunched us to in 2005, where he said, “the Doctor having two hearts means that the Doctor's heart could be broken twice as often” or words to that effect. And I 100% guarantee that was something that the show's creators came up with for him to be quoted as saying in these press releases.
[00:14:42] That feels like a mission statement of the show and like the Doctor being heartbroken. And like, you know, Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor, they've kind of literalized that because he actually, we see him cry sometimes. And like there's a famous scene from like 1973 from a show called “The Green Death” where the Doctor sheds a single tear. And that's like a thing that like people were obsessed with for years that like, “oh my God, the Doctor shed a single tear. One time in 1973. And like, never again.” And like, you know.
Annalee: [00:15:13] Yeah, you know, I feel like that masculinity got an upgrade.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:16] Yeah. And it just changed how we think about the Doctor's heroism because the Doctor's allowed to feel the weight of things. The Doctor's allowed to feel trauma and sadness. And like when they brought back David Tennant briefly in 2023, it was for kind of a storyline about how David Tennant was kind of burned out and Ncuti Gatwa had to sit him down and was like, “you need to take a break. You need to stop. You need to have therapy.” And like the Doctor needs therapy. That's like a thing that the show can talk about now.
Annalee: [00:15:45] Mm hmm. That is super interesting. And as I sort of quipped earlier, like I do think that that's about the show, but it's also about the expectations we have.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:54] Oh, yeah.
Annalee: [00:15:55] Just for men in the West in the, I guess, the Anglophone world, really. Yeah. I mean, anything where a man cried, you know, really before kind of the millennial generation, it was just like, “oh, my God, the world must be ending if a man is crying.” And now I feel like there's a lot more acceptance that men are also humans and they are permitted to have the same exact range of emotions as all other humans. And that is normal.
[00:16:25] So I guess like you were sort of talking a little bit about the show's mission statement. You were saying, like, you feel like now the mission statement is much more empathetic and caring and you know, we see character arcs. And I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about over the course of the last 20 years with the new Doctor Who, which is really now not even new anymore, what the mission statement is for this show.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:53] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:16:54] And has it changed even over this 20 year arc?
Charlie Jane: [00:16:56] Yeah. It's interesting because one of the clever things that Russell T. Davies did when he brought the show back in 2005 was create this whole backstory of the Time War. And like, that gave the Doctor some trauma to kind of work through, but it also gave like the Time War was finished, but it was kind of not really finished. And it kept kind of bubbling back up and like people were trying to restart the Time War.
[00:17:18] The Daleks would come back every now and then and kind of try to get the Time War going again. And David Tennant's whole era, like the Tenth Doctor's era, ends with, are we going to bring back the Time War or not? And like, is there a way to avoid that? Can we just finally put it to rest?
[00:17:34] And you know, it kept being like a focus of the show until 2013 when Steven Moffat basically did kind of finally put the Time War to bed with that one storyline with John Hurt's Doctor where they're like, “okay, now Gallifrey retroactively was not destroyed. You know, we're like undoing the end of the Time War. We're revamping the whole mythos.”
[00:17:58] And since then, it's been interesting because it feels like one thing Doctor Who has been doing since 2013 is kind of trying on different ideas of like an overarching storyline for size. Like Matt Smith's Doctor had the Silence. They tried to kill the Doctor, that he wouldn't say his name and somehow bring the Time Lords back. And then that kind of was over.
[00:18:20] And then there's this whole mythos about the hHybrid from the Peter Capaldi era, which if you put a gun to my head, I couldn't fully explain what that was about. And then, you know, and then Jodie Whittaker's Doctor had the Timeless Child storyline, which is huge and all-encompassing, but I'm not sure if it's still a thing anymore. And more recently, we've had this thing of like gods from outside the universe or gods from outside reality coming into our universe. And it's unclear if that's still going on.
[00:18:46] It feels like one thing that's been happening with Doctor Who is that it's been kind of searching for something to replace the Time War, kind of.
Annalee: [00:18:54] That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, the show grows out of kind of the Cold War era, at least in the States, which of course, you know, the UK did get swept up in that as well. I mean, they're part of the Five Eyes group.
[00:19:10] So I want to return to the burning question that I started with about the sort of future of the show, given that it's like trying to find its feet and figure out what the next Time War is going to be. So we know there's a spinoff coming, which is called The War Between the Land and the Sea.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:24] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:19:29] And is that going to be about the Time War?
Charlie Jane: [00:19:32] No, that's I think already been filmed and it's about UNIT, which is this organization that the Doctor often works with, and they're going to be fighting undersea creatures called the Sea Devils.
Annalee: [00:19:45] That's a very Doctor Who villain, the Sea Devils. I love it. So that's a little bit like Torchwood in a way. Like we're kind of spinning off into like a specialized unit on Earth that deals with strange anomalies. Love that.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:58] Yeah, it's a hundred percent like a return to Torchwood in a lot of ways.
Annalee: [00:20:02] Plus I love the cast at UNIT now. Like, I hope they’re gonna use that cast because I'm really loving whenever we go to UNIT, I'm like, oh, “I like all these people. I want to hang out with them.” So that's great.
Charlie Jane: [00:20:13] It's a great group of people.
Annalee: [00:20:15] There have been a number of times in the past when there have been Doctor Who spinoffs like Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures.
Charlie Jane: [00:20:22] Class. Yeah.
Annalee: [00:20:23] And then there's also been all these previous moments when Doctor Who was almost canceled, right?
Charlie Jane: [00:20:30] Yeah. A couple of times in the 20th century, like 1969 is a big one where like the show almost went off the air, but then they were like, “we're going to bring it back in color. And it's going to be a completely new and different show.”
Annalee: [00:20:42] Amazing.
Charlie Jane: [00:20:43] And that actually was a huge roaring success, obviously. And then in 85, the show was almost canceled.
Annalee: [00:20:51] And then it was canceled.
Charlie Jane: [00:20:51] The attempts to revamp it after that were, yeah, like it actually came back for a few years when we were talking about Ace earlier. The period with Ace was like actually some of the best stuff Doctor Who's ever done, but it was too late to save the show.
[00:21:05] And so what I want to come back to is just that it's been 20 years and like, I just feel like in general, the past 20 years of Doctor Who have been largely just pretty great.
Annalee: [00:21:16] I agree.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:17] Yeah. I mean, there's some stuff that I've liked better than others, but it's never felt like that moment with early 2000s Star Trek, where it was just like, maybe this does need a rest. There was a point with Star Trek where I was like, “yeah, I'm okay with Star Trek going away for a while when like,” you know, Enterprise was on. Out of the later Voyager stuff, but it just, it felt like Star Trek was kind of like, maybe we do need a rest.
Annalee: [00:21:41] Yeah. I mean, and Star Trek has always been much more kind of a paramilitary show in many ways, even though of course, as you know, Guinan, AKA Whoopi Goldberg says at one point to Picard, you know, “Captain, this is a ship of peace.” In fact, it is part of a military organization that does engage in war.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:06] So true. So that does limit the format a little bit.
Annalee: [00:22:09] It limits the format. It also, it means that their missions always have this kind of massive institution behind them that they're serving and that they're interacting with. And the thing that's so wonderful about the Doctor is that he's a trickster or she's a trickster. The Doctor doesn't answer to anyone. Of course, yes, there's exceptions. There's moments when we see the Doctor engaging with, you know, the power system in Gallifrey and like minor exceptions.
[00:22:41] But overall, the Doctor is basically just a silly person who happens to be brilliant, who also wants to just help people and go around and have adventures and joy.
[00:22:55] And Star Trek has that sometimes, it has some joy, but like in Star Trek, there's a heavy emphasis on doing the work and like put aside your personal stuff and do the work, be part of the crew, get things done. And there's never a moment when like the Doctor is like, you know, “we must focus on our work” unless they're like in a jam and the Doctor is like telling the companion like, all right, we have to concentrate on like fixing the TARDIS or whatever. But it's never portrayed as like, this is our job. It's just like, we have to work on getting out of this scrape that we're in.
Charlie Jane: [00:23:30] Hundred percent.
Annalee: [00:23:31] And I think that that's part of what is so necessary about Doctor Who right now is we need an example of someone who's doing good out of the kindness of their hearts, not because they're being paid or bribed or like they're amassing power or whatever.
[00:23:49] And this kind of brings me to something I really want us to talk about, which is how much Doctor Who is progressive, queer, feminist, positive, all of these things that really go against the kind of dystopian thrust of so much science fiction right now. So let's just talk about that. Like, what's going on with, you know, how people are responding to Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and like this whole new TARDIS with no white people on it vibe.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:23] I mean, you know, I've been trying to avoid some of the fan conversations, especially some of the more toxic fan conversations about Doctor Who lately. I mean, watching “The Robot Revolution”… “The Robot Revolution” felt like it was kind of like, in some ways, like a preemptive response to people who were going to be mad about the current configuration of the TARDIS because there is Alan, the creepy incel boyfriend who turns out to be the episode's main villain. And it's just like, “if you don't like what the show is doing right now, this is you.” That was basically, I feel like what the show was saying. And I kind of endorse that message.
[00:24:57] I feel like, yeah, I mean, the thing is in its hearts, you know, Doctor Who is a show that's always kind of trying to be progressive. And it has fallen short so many times, especially in the 20th century. And like, you know, this kind of got lost in the shuffle.
[00:25:13] But there was that moment right when Russell T Davies came back when they brought back Davros for like a five to ten minute like little mini episode. And Davros suddenly was no longer a guy in a wheelchair who is like visibly disfigured. And Russell T Davies talked in interviews about like, “yeah, in the 20th century with or even in the 21st century, we thought it was cool to have a villain who is disabled. And we don't think that's cool anymore because it's the message it sends about disabled people.”
[00:25:42] That's the kind of thing that Doctor Who is really good at is just it reinvents itself in so many ways. You know, there were moments in the Peter Capaldi era where I was like, this is a breath of fresh air. The show is doing something it's never done before.
[00:25:54] You know, Jodie Whittaker's Doctor felt like a huge breath of fresh air. And now Ncuti Gatwa feels like just a giant like, oh, my gosh, the show is brand new again. The show is just full of all this energy and charm and wit and just joyousness.
[00:26:07] But part of that constant process of reinvention is this feeling of we're going to keep reinventing ourselves in ways that are more progressive, more queer friendly, more kind of like positive, joyous and fun and uplifting.
[00:26:25] The fact that like part of what's going on with Doctor Who, which I wonder if this is part of what's going on with the behind the scenes stuff, is that Russell T Davies negotiated a thing when he came back where his production company is making Doctor Who for the BBC, which effectively means that the BBC, which is increasingly a very right wing, correct me if I'm wrong, listeners, but I think it's becoming more conservative overall. The BBC has no creative control over Doctor Who right now. They just pay Russell T Davies to make it and they can't tell them not to include trans people as like major supporting characters or to like, you know.
Annalee: [00:26:58] And thank goodness because given the direction that JK Rowling is taking British policy on trans kids, I can only imagine what they would be doing.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:10] Yeah, I mean, we're recording this on April 16th, like I said, and this happens to be the day when the British Supreme Court said that trans women are not women and that trans people are not valid in UK law. And that feels apocalyptic to me. And so I'm hoping that Rose, the major trans character, comes back on Doctor Who soon. I suspect she will because she's often there in the UNIT scenes and we know UNIT is coming back. So we really need to see her right now in Doctor Who.
[00:27:39] I just want to finish by saying that my nightmare scenario is not that Doctor Who goes away forever. I don't think that will ever happen, both because Doctor Who is at this point a huge institution, especially in British culture. There's no longer a thing like there was in the 1980s where the BBC is kind of embarrassed by Doctor Who or people think it's just, you know, a little bit, you know, tawdry or “oh, we can't have that.”
Annalee: [00:28:03] It's a national treasure. Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:04] It's a national treasure, but also, we are now in the era where IP never dies. So like no IP will ever go away, which means Doctor Who will never go away. So I'm not worried about us losing Doctor Who forever. I am worried about Doctor Who losing that progressive queer kind of forward looking spark that it has that I feel like has always been part of what's animated the show from the beginning.
[00:28:28] I think that, you know, there is a world in which we get like a more reactionary Doctor Who, which tries to just take us back to the 1970s version of the show in some way and tries to like drag us kicking and screaming back to some imagined former glory of the show. And that's my nightmare scenario. Not that we lose Doctor Who.
Annalee: [00:28:46] Yeah. Like a conservative capture of the Doctor's character.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:50] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:28:52] I mean, it's happened before. It was funny because the times when the show has been more conservative were at a point in history when actually politics were becoming more progressive, which was the 1970s.
[00:29:07] I mean, politics were becoming more contentious, but there was much more of a voice for progressives in party politics. And that was when the Doctor was basically stuck on earth working with UNIT back when UNIT was much more of a kind of elite military unit or whatever.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:24] That was interesting because those episodes frequently are about the Doctor trying to explain to UNIT that violence isn't the solution. And you know, we should try to understand things before we shoot at them.
[00:29:36] It's weird because it's such a conundrum. That era of the show is when it was being run by a pacifist Buddhist being Barry Letts. And he would sneak all these Buddhist messages into the show. I think that there is a greater truth to what you're saying that like it was a time when the show definitely seemed more comfortable with authority and with militarism than it usually is.
Annalee: [00:29:55] Yeah. Obviously my knowledge of that period is much more spotty. And so I didn't actually know about the kind of Buddhist interventions. I just, I saw episodes where it was like, okay, the Doctor is like working with UNIT and UNIT is problematic.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:10] It was full of contradictions.
Annalee: [00:30:12] It's amazing that he was like, “this is actually not okay.” And that's what we need the Doctor for, right? Like we need the Doctor here telling us overall, this systemic issue is not solvable with violence and cruelty and war. And that's why we love the Doctor and why we need, you know, a whimsical progressive force instead of, you know, trying to reimagine some kind of paramilitary figure who's going to come in and rescue us. Like I'd rather be rescued by the Doctor.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:44] Same.
Annalee: [00:30:45] Also the Doctor wouldn't even think of it that way. The Doctor wouldn't be like, “I'm rescuing you.” He'd be like, “Hey, come along on an adventure. You can rescue yourself.” And that's the glory of, of Doctor Who to me. It's a show that like believes that I can rescue myself.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:59] Hell yeah. So we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll be talking to possibly not a time Lord – we don’t know, the incredible Anil Dash.
[00:31:08] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:11] Hey, so we want to tell you all about a special event that's coming up for anybody who loves science fiction, especially any readers or aspiring writers out there in our audience.
[00:31:20] Clarion West Writers Workshop is having a high tea. I love a high tea and author talk on May 10th. It's a fundraiser. It's a celebration of early career and underrepresented writers, especially women who write speculative fiction or, you know, sci-fi and fantasy.
Annalee: [00:31:39] So this is the third year for Steamy in Seattle, which is the name of this event. And it raises money for Clarion West writing workshops, creating things like sliding scale tuition and scholarships for writers who are just starting out and want to take a class. Steamy in Seattle also broadcasts the author talk portion for free. And if you're in the Seattle area, you can purchase tickets and enjoy the tea and treats at Seattle's beautiful Nordic Heritage Museum.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:10] Oh, my God. So great. Yeah, we can't wait for this. And we think that you'll all, you know, enjoy hearing from their authors, Anna Aguirre and Elizabeth Stevens, who both write romantic science fiction. The event is moderated by urban fantasy author Jasmine Silvera. And, you know, Annelee and I both were Clarion West instructors not too long ago. We had a wonderful time.
Annalee: [00:32:31] Yeah, it was just a great experience. Our students were incredible. We learned a lot from them. Hopefully we shopped them a little bit. But for those of you who don't know, Clarion West is a long running science fiction writers workshop. It happens every summer.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:47] It's so good.
Annalee: [00:32:47] It's a six week residential program. Sometimes it's partly virtual. But the idea is that you spend six weeks with a group of people just writing stories, spending the time that you need to just get inside your head and like create stuff and then also workshop it with other people. And with the guest instructors who you get a new instructor or pair of instructors every week. So you get exposed to lots of different points of view on how fantasy and science fiction and horror work.
[00:33:18] This program just churns out some of our favorite writers. Like it's such a great way to launch your career. So some of their amazing graduates include Cadwell Turnbull, Daniel Abraham, who is one half of James S.A. Corey. Ann Leckie, Cat Rambo, Betsy Aoki, Nisi Shawl, Sheree Renee Thomas. Like huge, amazing, great folks. And you could just be sitting in class with them.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:48] So tickets for Steamy in Seattle are going fast. Grab yours right now and support early career writers. Go to clarionwest.org. And you know, you can also just donate to Clarion West while you're there. And you can also find links to their classes and workshops and other programs to sign up for.
[00:34:05] And while we're talking about stuff that you could support, also the podcast you are currently listening to happens to be entirely independent. And apart from occasionally when we get sponsorship from lovely folks from Clarion West, we are entirely funded by you, our listeners through Patreon.
[00:34:21] And you know, if you become a patron, just like with Clarion West, you're becoming part of a whole community and you're helping to make this podcast happen and you become like part of our crew. You can hang out with us on Discord where we're just like hanging out and chatting about everything.
Annalee: [00:34:37] Yeah. And we get mini episodes every other week where we just kind of like share some of our most correct opinions on some of the most important topics. And you know, all of that can be yours for just a few bucks a month. And you know, anything you give us goes right back into making our opinions even more correct. So find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
[00:34:59] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:02] And now, we’re so lucky to be joined by the amazing Anil Dash, who is an entrepreneur, activist, and writer who just thinks a lot about digital spaces and like how to make them better. And we’ve recorded him on the show before, so we’re really happy to have him here, now. He founded Glitch, which was acquired by Fastly in 2022, and now he’s running Fastly’s developer experience team. He also won a Webby Award for lifetime achievement in 2022. And most importantly, he is a giant Prince fan, and we’re super excited to talk to him about that, so we're so glad that he's here.
Annalee: [00:35:38] Thanks for joining us, Anil.
Anil: [00:35:39] Happy to. Thanks for having me.
Annalee: [00:35:41] Yeah. So we've been hearing for years about this idea of the digital public square. I want to say we started hearing about it in the 1990s. And I'm wondering, what do you think it means? And was it ever a good metaphor for online community?
Anil: [00:35:57] I think yes and no, like all metaphors, right? It has some utility. They catch on because it explains an idea in a way that is resonant to us. And then of course it has its shortcomings where there's these gaps. And I think the part that connects for people is we love the idea of the public square, right? We're having the conversation there and we know it represents an idea that there's a place we can express ourselves and we can discover other people.
[00:36:26] And it's really imperfect, right? Because one of the parts of this magical about the internet is we can connect with people that aren't in that physical space with us or that aren't in that small town with us. The public squares, the limitations are exactly why we went online in the first place. So I think it is that double-edged sword. It is an imperfect analogy, but I think it was especially useful in the 90s when so many people were discovering the internet for the first time and it was entering the public imagination, certainly for the first time.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:56] Yeah. I mean, I remember going on AOL and I was on BBSs and things like that before that. And I was actually on Usenet before AOL, but AOL just had random people wander again and being like, “hi, you know, ASL.” It was just wild. I feel like the notion of a digital public square is kind of like a science fiction story about technology kind of creating something brand new that we all exist inside of. So how do you trace the evolution of this concept from like comment sections like on just like a blog has a comment section or a website has a comment section to something more sprawling and kind of encompassing like Twitter or other kinds of social media things?
Anil: [00:37:40] Oh, gosh.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:42] Is there a clean line of like evolution from like comment sections to Twitter or is it more complicated than that?
Anil: [00:37:48] Yeah, I mean, it depends how nerdy you want to get, right? Like hypertext theory goes back to the 60s and 70s and you have, you know, conceptualizations of online spaces all the way back into the 40s and 50s and arguably before, right? And so you have, you know, JCR Licklider talking about this stuff in the 40s and 50s and some of these sort of earlier writers and whether it's in, you know, science fiction or in academia.
[00:38:15] And, you know, and I think that's like heady stuff, but I do think there's a reason that people were talking about this in whether it's creative spaces or in academic spaces because those really inform... those are people who care deeply about public space and public knowledge and there being, you know, sort of public constructs and so I think... and also like, you know, universities have a quad, right? And so like there are... there's people that are just familiar with the idea of there being shared space and public space.
[00:38:46] So I think that's just like a real core fluency that's there. And then yeah, you get to like the regular internet and people are coming online, whether it is in the 90s AOL era or the early 2000s, like sort of, you know, Live Journal, Black Planet era or Friendster or whatever it was. And then, you know, certainly the, you know, the 2010s like sort of Twitter era.
[00:39:10] All of those things, I think each brought a new generation or half generation of people in and taught people, you know, here's a place that you can type in a box and some people are going to see you and you're going to find a new way of defining yourself to others and expressing yourself. And you kind of rediscover that set of norms.
[00:39:30] And I think each of those times, everyone's like, “I'm the first person in the world who's ever interacted with strangers online and we're going to have to invent the rules from first principles and nobody's ever thought of this before.” And so they all have this epiphany every time about how are we going to make a set of rules? And we're the first people to ever have a society. And I think they sort of all independently rediscover the metaphor of the public square because that's sort of the, really the defining archetype or articulation of it. And like I said, it is a useful metaphor, but it also language constrains our imagination too.
Annalee: [00:40:10] Yeah. I mean, I feel like one of the issues with the metaphor, especially now that we're kind of in almost like the post social media era is that a public square is small. Like it's intended for a local group, right? It's the people in my town, it's the people in my city or my neighborhood. Whereas something like what Twitter was or what Facebook was, that was not local, right? Everybody was sort of like, let's invent new norms every time we find a new platform. And I'm wondering if you think there was an inflection point somewhere in that history between the nineties and now where things started to go wrong. Like, was there a moment when we could have created something inclusive and constructive and then...
Anil: [00:40:55] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:40:55] Yeah. So what, where is that? Where do you see that?
Anil: [00:40:57] The passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act in America, that's when it went wrong.
Annalee: [00:41:02] Well my colleagues at EFF would agree with you.
Anil: [00:41:07] There's a moment, you know, you flip the switch. I am on the board of EFF, so I've definitely been around people who feel that way and maybe have been, you know, polluted by the extreme of thought. No, I think, I mean, obviously it's never as reductive as one moment, but boy, that was one moment.
Annalee: [00:41:23] Why do you think so?
Anil: [00:41:24] One of the reasons I'd say that there's sort of that argument is prior to this, and in the U.S. obviously, this is a very U.S. centric argument, but I think it illustrates the point. You know, in the early nineties, up until the early nineties, so in the eighties and nineties, you know, online culture really was defined by calling into BBSs and local internet service providers, and they were deeply local. So they were very grounded in place. They were named after sort of local tropes in local neighborhoods. And also a thing that people may not be familiar with, depending on their age, long distance calling out of your region cost money. So people had to call into a local exchange, which was a phone number that was close to you. People knew intuitively from the numbers in the phone number, whether it was close to them or not.
[00:42:10] And so just the sheer cost factors made people, you know, call these service providers that were near them. And also that was kind of your local provider in the same way that you knew your butcher or your, you know, your shoe shine, shoe repair person, your cobbler, you knew your internet provider person in a way.
[00:42:31] And then many of them were community run, whether that was, you know, de facto or de jure. And so that was local in the way that at that time, newspapers and radio were local. And so when, you know, deregulation happens and in the same way that all the radio stations get bought up by big companies and newspapers get bought up by big companies, you know, the internet gets rolled up into big companies, first AOL and then later others.
[00:42:57] And I think that change, you know, does fundamentally change the reckoning of how do we get online? Because another factor of those local companies is they would give you a little bit of space for your email address and a little bit of space for your website and a little bit of space for yourself to be online and to fill our communities with others. And your norms were defined by that local community you were in and they were in some senses, your neighbors.
Annalee: [00:43:26] Yeah, it's a real public square. Not real, but you know what, it's closer to the original idea of the public square.
Anil: [00:43:33] Well, certainly they were in range where like, if you made them mad enough, they might come over.
Annalee: [00:43:40] In good ways or bad ways. Like it could also be like, if you're like, “hey, I'm feeling really sick.” They'll come over with some soup.
Anil: [00:43:47] For sure. Yeah. They were in soup range.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:48] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:43:49] Soup range.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:51] So Anil, my kind of experience of digital public spaces was shaped in large part by being a Prince fan in the 90’s and 2000’s. And you know, what I saw happening was this, I feel like this is a larger issue that I'm trying to like encapsulate. Prince was trying to monetize his fan base, right? He started...
Anil: [00:44:09] I don't think he ever would have said it that way, just to be clear.
Charlie Jane: [00:44:12] I mean, he definitely would not have, but that's what he was trying to do. He created this thing called 1-800-NEWFUNK, which was a phone number, but people mostly found out about it through the internet where you could order stuff and get like merch and get like whatever. There was a CD you could buy. And then later he had the NPG music club in the early 2000’s, which was completely online. And again, it was like, he was trying to get people to subscribe to his thing and like pay extra for a good seating at his concerts and stuff. But at the same time, he was fighting with his fans on the internet. He was suing them. He was like going after them for using...
Anil: [00:44:45] That's how you know he's a real poster.
Charlie Jane: [00:44:47] I mean…
Anil: [00:44:49] He's arguing online.
Annalee: [00:44:50] He knew what he was doing.
Charlie Jane: [00:44:51] What is Prince's inability to kind of like his attempts to build online community, but then also what does that tell us about the difficulties of...
Anil: [00:44:59] You know, I could rant about this for hours. I think there's a few things. I think the first is, you know, he was deeply technically fluent. This is the sort of public imagination of this. This is one of the most popular musical artists of certainly the 1980s and later. And he was seen in the imagination as being sort of sitting alongside Michael Jackson or Madonna.
[00:45:20] But he was also like a nerd in a lot of deep ways. And he had a Mac in his studio and would be on AOL talking to fans in the chat room that was for Prince fans, right? And I think that's a very hard thing for people to conceptualize. Now it's very common. You know, the celebrities will be on social media talking to their fans. But to think of that, you know, 30 or almost 35 years ago is extremely hard to understand like how rare it was and to be that accessible. So I think that's one part.
[00:46:01] The other part, talking about the localness of the internet online, the first major internet service provider in the Twin Cities in Minneapolis is Bitstream Underground. And the guys who started that were engineers at Paisley Park, Prince's studio.
Charlie Jane: [00:46:22] Right.
Anil: [00:46:22] And so like he's a digital pioneer, but his people around him are too. Like part of what draws them together is these people being innovators and pioneers to digital technology. And so just in this analogy, it's something I draw a lot. You know, everybody knows that a town will have a local music scene, right? Obviously the Minneapolis scene is one of the famous ones, just like there's a, you know, a blues scene in a town or whatever, like the Minneapolis music scene famously sort of supported it and brought each other up. And there would be a local technology scene of people that would bring each other up and have a, you know, a tradition. And so, you know, or foodways, right? So, so you'll have your local style of barbecue.
[00:47:00] And what we have lost is the idea that, you know, Oh, well, this is how we did HTML in my neighborhood. Or, you know, this is the way I learned to make apps in my church growing up, right? Like those are things that, that were an alternate history that we've sort of been denied because of the way that the internet has evolved. But, but those are things that could have happened and still could happen again.
[00:47:22] If, if the public square imagination of what the internet was meant to be, it had been almost for a while, you know, had happened. And so I think that's sort of the thing I think about is that there were people that were living the dream of I was in a town that had a music scene that was very grounded in our geography and in our history and in our culture and had an internet that was very grounded in the local scene. And so I think that's sort of the, you know, the, the sliding doors, alternate history thing that we can almost see is that's a town that had that.
[00:47:58] And I live in New York city and we had the same thing here. You know, I see people who have a Panic email here, which was the beloved local ISP here. They still use it, right? If you're one of those people that's still on, you're in your email signature.
Charlie Jane: [00:48:12] I know people who still have Panic’s email addresses.
Anil: [00:48:14] It's your identity.
Annalee: [00:48:15] It’s like The Well here in San Francisco. Yeah. Was another great example. Yeah. That is, I love that alternate history. I love that vision of how things might've gone differently. And I'm wondering, you know, are there any new communities online, apps or platforms that kind of give you hope or make you curious about where we're going next? You know, now I feel like the classic, like web 2.0 platforms, like Facebook and Twitter are either dying or dead or really morphing into something completely different.
Anil: [00:48:49] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:48:49] Yeah. Where do we come out? The other side, I guess.
Anil: [00:48:52] They're too zombified to ever die. Right. I think, you know, we're all going to be stuck in that one Facebook group to the rest of our days, because you can't, you can't like extract yourself. Right.
[00:49:02] But it's actually, you know, it's funny too, because I even resist calling them web 2.0, because the one thing I will say is there was a community of people that believed in the open web. There was a conception of web 2.0. And we, and I think that cohort saw Facebook as the, almost the enemy of it, right? Is the thing that killed it. And it's sort of very epitomizing the, um, you know, the victors write history that they got to be the ones that got seen as web 2.0.
[00:49:26] So, but the thing that catalyzed people talking about web 2.0 was Flickr, right? If you remember that. And that's an interesting example of the unkillability of a healthy community. Which is that, um, you know, after Yahoo had his way with that community, um, it got bought up by SmugMug, which is a family owned business and has been all along and they've been good stewards of it. They've preserved the Flickr commons, which is where all the open photos of that era live. Even though like, you know, public institutions that have to actually publicly archive their work, still keep them on Flickr.
[00:49:59] So if you have a local municipality that's keeping open records and storing their photos publicly, they'll have it there. And that's, you know, 20 plus years into the life of that site, they are doing that. And, um, you know, I think that's sort of at the one end of that spectrum.
[00:50:16] You know, at the other end, I look at something that gives me hope. I was talking to Steve Krouse here in town, here in New York city, who founded Val Town, which is this one like weird, quirky little, make your own weird stuff on the internet site. Um, and it's a great little community. It's very nerdy. Like it's coding kind of, but it's coding in the way that a Commodore 64 felt in the 1980s, which is that that's just what you do with it.
[00:50:45] Like the reason that I learned to code on a, it was actually a predecessor to that called a Commodore Vic 20. The reason I learned to code on that computer is because it's the only thing you could do with it. If you didn't code it, you were just staring at a blinking cursor, right? And so, you know, the Val Town ethos or vibe is like this very creative space. So you're not, um, reveling in, uh, you know, learn to code because this is your way to become a, you know, a software engineer. It's just like a way of expressing yourself and sharing with others and doing so.
[00:51:18] I think that's something very appealing to me for, for years. I, you know, led a Glitch, which is a startup found around a lot of the same ideas. And this feels like a, they'd evolved into the next generation of that. And so to see that baton being passed, I think has been kind of good for my heart because you, you always want to hope that somebody's going to take it, you know, to the place that you couldn't imagine. And we see that. And so that's been nice and very inspiring.
[00:51:43] I think there was another one. Oh gosh. And the name is eluding me right now that it was called, I think it's like, MM Town, like MMM Town, something like that. I'm going to, I'm going to get the name wrong and somebody's going to correct me on the line and it'll be great. Uh, but, but there's a lot of these, like they all have these like really great, like impossible to say out loud names, which again, as a Prince fan is very appealing to me.
[00:52:09] And that's sort of it. I mean, I think the weirdness and, and, and, and accessibility and, and insularity of it is like, it's not designed to scale. And I think that's actually a big part of it is, um, any, any community that it would be nearly impossible to have a billion users is probably on the right track. I think that's one of those things is that it's, it's, uh, it was never meant to be that like the internet is meant to be, you know, almost everybody having their own little domain name. And their own site. And, and I think even like one of the examples, you know, we sort of talked about Twitter in passing along the way the, the way you can tell people hadn't sort of known the old internet was the impulse. People had to say, what's going to be the Twitter killer? What's the replacement?
[00:52:53] And, and, you know, it's a, it's a category error. There's not meant to be one, you know, the question is wrong. There's meant to be a thousand and we're supposed to return to the idea of having lots of options and, and, and to come back to the, you know, obviously I love food, the food analogy. When we say that it's not healthy to eat fast food for every meal and you shouldn't have McDonald's for every meal, the alternative is not to say, well, instead you should have Burger King for every meal. The alternative is to say, sometimes you should have a wonderful home cooked meal. Sometimes you have a meal cooked with your friends in the tradition of your family and the recipes handed down a local restaurant. By people that are bringing, you know, ingredients that are nearby to you, it should be a thousand different answers. And it should be the meals that you remember for the rest of your life. And it should be, you know, the cuisine of the neighborhood that you live in. And it should be all of those answers, right?
[00:53:49] It is that multiplicity of answers. It is that, that, that breadth of traditions, it is that locality and that, that community that is, you know, all of those tables situated around the public square.
Charlie Jane: [00:54:02] Yeah. So final question, uh, what is the future of like online communities and like, can we come up with a new metaphor that isn't like digital public square? Like how, how should we kind of think of like online communities going forward?
Anil: [00:54:15] You know, I think it's a little bit of a question of, you know, what people's imaginations are. I think one of the biggest things I keep trying to beseech people is to not be nostalgic and not look back. Those of us, you know, we've got so many examples here. We're talking about the 80’s all the time and the 90’s all the time.
[00:54:37] And, you know, there is no good old days. They were bad and exclusionary and broken in so many ways, right? I don't idealize, oh yeah, the Telecom Act destroyed everything, but it doesn't mean it was good, you know, and, and, and talking about a computer that you had to code to be able to use, that is not better. You know, that's worse in a lot of ways. And so, um, I think one of the first steps is to, to make sure we are looking forward. You know, what are we joyously running towards? Not what are we fearfully running away from? You know, or with rose tinted glasses, looking backwards towards nostalgia. I think that's the thing I sort of caution.
[00:55:14] And so I think part of it for me is like, I'm, you know, I'm a washed old middle-aged dad. Like we should be asking, you know, that sort of excited young person or that, you know, elder who has learned lessons and, and hasn't had a chance to share them. Like those are the people that will define what that new place looks like.
[00:55:36] But I do think, um, you know, where have we learned the great lessons of how you convene people together? And, and it is a lot of times to sit at the knee of that elder and listen to a story of a lesson that you can't learn that quickly, or to, to be following this young, excited person who is not cynical and is not afraid. And they're going to show you, this is where we're gathering now. And I think either of those is a place that I'm very excited to follow them.
Annalee: [00:56:03] That's so cool. I love that so much. Thank you for joining us. This was really awesome. And we love sitting at your knee. And even though I guess we're all elders, we're still learning from each other. Is there any place, um, that people can find you online that you want to recommend?
Anil: [00:56:18] Oh, for sure. anildash.com. That is my website. I've been blogging there for more than 25 years. Every once in a while, I get scared or skeptical that people are still going to read somebody's personal website. And then every once in a while I get an email from somebody and they say they read something that I wrote and they liked it and it just rejuvenates me for the next, I don't know, 10 years of writing.
Annalee: [00:56:42] Incredible. Okay. Well everyone send Anil an email.
Charlie Jane: [00:56:46] Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. Oh my God. This was amazing.
Anil: [00:56:50] Thank you.
[00:56:50] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:56:53] Yeah. So you've been listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. If you just somehow stumbled on us, you could find us wherever you find your podcasts, like literally anywhere. Please leave like a review. It really helps. And please tell your friends and subscribe and everything.
[00:57:09] We have a website at our ouropinionsarecorrect.com. Also, we have a patreon at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. And you can find us on Bluesky, Instagram, Mastodon, everywhere. All those places. We are either Our Opinions or Our Opinions Are Correct.
[00:57:28] Thank you so much to our phenomenal producer and engineer, Niah Harmon, who just is like the hero who holds us up with their brilliance and thanks so much to Chris Palmer and Katya Lopez Nichols for our music. And you know, thanks to you for listening. If you're a patron, we'll be seeing you on Discord and we'll have a mini episode next week. Otherwise, we'll be back in two weeks with another new episode.
Both: [00:57:52] Bye!
[00:57:54] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]