Bad things happen when we let robots decide what’s good

Why does culture feel so much less... human than it used to? Wyatt Cenac joins Ryan to discuss the “crisis of taste” — or how, in the past 10-15 years, tech companies have flipped media on its head.

People used to spend more time making things and shaping culture, and then tech responded to that culture. Now tech is using AI to try to manufacture culture so you don’t need to develop your own taste because our tech overlords will tell you what taste to have.

Ryan & Wyatt reflect on why nostalgia is more popular than ever right now, and how we can even get comfort from simply watching commercials from the ‘80s and ‘90s, because craft, human talent and ambition drove cultural tastes — rather than today where everything is a brand just trying to get a direct sale or to scrape your data and then sell that to be used in some algorithm.

Our guest Wyatt Cenac is a comedian and actor. You can find his work and subscribe to his mailing list on a good old-fashioned website: https://www.wyattcenac.com/.

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