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Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to announce a new mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, as well as new smart glasses made by Ray-Ban that let the wearer livestream videos and interact with an AI-powered voice chatbot. Meta also showed off an array of celebrity-infused AI chatbots that can mimic big-name folks like Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner. You'd be forgiven for thinking all this feels a little bit like an episode of Black Mirror.
This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior AI writer Khari Johnson about the mixed reality hardware Meta announced this week, its voice-controlled smart glasses, its weird new AI chatbots, and where the company sits in the great AI arms race.
Show Notes
Read Khari’s story about Meta’s many AI chatbots. Read Lauren’s story about the upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset and chatbot-enabled Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
Recommendations
Khari recommends the new movie The Creator. Lauren recommends the ‘90s movie Sliding Doors. Mike also recommends a ‘90s movie, Dazed and Confused.
Khari Johnson can be found on social media @kharijohnson. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
How to Listen
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Michael Calore: Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Mike.
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Michael Calore: Are you live streaming this podcast on Instagram from your new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses?
Lauren Goode: I'm starting to get a sense of what you think about me. No, I do not have a pair of the new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. I'm sorry to disappoint you.
Michael Calore: Can you ask the Meta AI assistant for good ramen recipe for me?
Lauren Goode: I have in fact used some voice assistant on Meta glasses, which is a weird thing to say. But no, I don't have access to any of this stuff right now. No smart glasses, no brand new VR headsets and currently no chatbots.
Michael Calore: Well, I thought Mark Zuckerberg said that we're already living in the future?
Lauren Goode: If it's his vision of the future, yes. We're not currently all living in it, but we should probably talk about what that future might hold.
Michael Calore: I am down.
Lauren Goode: Let's do it.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
Michael Calore: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Michael Calore. I'm a senior editor at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED, not yet replaced by AI.
Michael Calore: We are also joined today by WIRED senior writer Khari Johnson. Hi, Khari. Welcome back to the show.
Khari Johnson: Hi, thanks for having me back.
Lauren Goode: Welcome back to studio.
Khari Johnson: Thank you.
Lauren Goode: Our AI reporter.
Khari Johnson: Mm-hmm.
Lauren Goode: Also not yet replaced by AI.
Khari Johnson: Not yet.
Michael Calore: Not yet. That's all we can ever say. This week, Meta held its big developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, which is right in the heart of Silicon Valley. The show is called Meta Connect, and it was hosted by of course the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Developer conferences like these are where companies talk about all the hardware and the software stuff they've got coming in the near future. At Meta Connect, the company announced two new pieces of hardware, the Meta Quest 3 VR headset and a new pair of smart glasses from Ray-Ban. It also announced some artificial intelligence tools, including its own voice chatbot, some text-based chatbots modeled on celebrities and some image-generation tools. So, we're going to get into all these things one by one on today's show. But first, Lauren, since you attended Connect in person, I want to hear about your experience there. How are the vibes?
Lauren Goode: If I had to sum up the vibes succinctly, I would say it was like hot, sunny, black mirror.
Michael Calore: Say more.
Lauren Goode: Well, it was indeed hot and sunny. This is down in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley on the company's campus, and they decided to host us all outside. And for those who aren't familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area microclimates, it's often much hotter down in the valley than it is, say, in San Francisco. Mark Zuckerberg did kick things off with a keynote. He showed off the new hardware, then a series of executives came after him and expounded upon what he said in their specific areas or verticals of tech. And then, afterwards, we were just roaming the campus, and by we I mean there were a lot of developers and Facebook employees there, but also press. And so, as a member of the press, I had a couple of meetings, but I was roaming the campus, and it's a really interesting place. It is a relatively new campus. It's beautifully designed and there are emoji on the walls type vibes. One of the things that really struck me, if I can just open a reporter's notebook a little bit here for the listeners on the other end, is that typically when I go to meet with a big tech company or I'm covering an event, as the press you're shepherded around and you're contained. You have a public relations person who's with you, and they're taking you everywhere. And if you have to use the restroom, they hover. I was just a free-range chicken yesterday. I just wandered around the Meta campus and ate in their cafeteria and was like, "This is really interesting." It was interesting seeing the vibes on a big Meta Connect Day. The hardware itself… Wait, what should we talk about first? Should we talk about the mixed reality headset?
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Michael Calore: I'm interested in the glasses.
Lauren Goode: The glasses.
Michael Calore: Mostly because when the Ray-Ban glasses first came out, they were called what Ray-Ban stories, and you could capture video and you could capture photos, but they didn't stream live video, and I felt like that was a pretty big limitation. The new version does stream live video, so I think people might actually buy them.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. There are probably four new things worth pointing out quickly about these. One is that you can get them with transparent frames. They look like regular glasses, and there are more styles to choose from. Two is that they're water resistant, and Meta was emphasizing some sports use cases with these. Three is the AI, the voice assistant that's embedded in them, which we'll talk about. Khari, I want to hear your thoughts on this. And then, the live streaming part. I think that when they first came out in 2021, the initial reaction was, "This is creepy. You're going to be walking around capturing video and photos of people around you, and they're not going to realize it." Despite the LED indicator light, I think they are still a little bit creepy, but by enabling the live stream and the voice control, they're maybe repositioning them a little bit more as a thing for creators and creators to turn the camera back on themselves sometimes by also using their Instagram phone app in conjunction with the glasses. So, it's a slightly more advanced version of these creepy camera glasses. Would you use them for that?
Michael Calore: No, I would not.
Lauren Goode: You're like, "I'm intrigued by them but not that intrigued."
Michael Calore: I mean, I am. Mostly because of how they change the way that Meta is talking about the Metaverse, right? These are not like an immersive experience. This is about sharing content. This is about walking around in the world and putting your vision of the real world into their apps. I think that's interesting.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, it's probably more closely aligned with what they already make and do and what the whole value proposition of being on Meta apps is. Khari, what did you make of them?
Khari Johnson: I think when I saw them initially, I think I'm with you, Mike, I'm like, "Intriguing. No, thank you."
Lauren Goode: Now, we have our podcast title.
Khari Johnson: I think when I saw them initially, my first question was to friends in sharing piece in social was, "Would you use these?" I found it interesting that you can do a hands-free sharing of a photo and really quickly share, "Hey, Meta AI, send this photo to mom and on WhatsApp," or something like that. I'm interested in hearing if that actually increases how much people use the glasses. The ability to share a photo hands-free in a chat seems a lot closer to what I would actually be willing to do than put this in my feet or something.
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Lauren Goode: Yeah, and it seems like with these glasses, they're inching ever so closer to smart glasses. Smart glasses when we think of eventually these may have augmented reality too.
Michael Calore: Yeah, when we think of smart glasses, we usually think of Google Glass, right?
Lauren Goode: Yeah.
Michael Calore: The OG smart glasses. We think of a heads-up display information being put in front of your eyes. These are entirely different. But to your point, Khari, the fact that these have the voice interaction in them, and that's the thing that makes them more useful, says a lot about the evolution of voice control in devices. And companies keep putting more voice interactions into our devices. They put it in our phones, they put it in our smart speakers, they're putting it in wearables, and it's actually proving useful for some people. As much as we tend to pooh-pooh these things like, "What we have is fine, what we have is fine," we tend to close our minds to the fact that talking is very natural. And if companies can crack very natural voice interactions and make them useful, then that's actually a net win for everybody.
Lauren Goode: Yeah.
Khari Johnson: Yeah. And I think when you look at something like Google Assistant or Alexa and the history of those types of products, there were pie in the sky visions of all the different things it could do for us. And I think, ultimately, it's pretty clear now that there's like five things that people actually do with this thing. I check the weather, play the music-
Michael Calore: Set a timer.
Khari Johnson: … set a timer.
Lauren Goode: Set the timers.
Khari Johnson: Yeah. So, share the photo with mom. Maybe that works.
Lauren Goode: Right.
Khari Johnson: Maybe people actually do that.
Lauren Goode: Or if you're a hype beast and you are a "content creator," then you're responding to your comments while you're live streaming from your glasses, I guess.
Michael Calore: Before we take a break, we do have to talk about the other headset. The one that fully straps over your eyes that you saw, Lauren. Tell us about the Meta Quest 3.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, the most interesting thing about the Meta Quest 3 is that this is, it's mixed reality. And that's something that we saw last year with the introduction of the Meta Quest Pro, which is Meta's thousand dollars super high end with very advanced optics headset. It has something called Color Passthrough, which if you haven't tried VR or MR headsets before, basically means that there are cameras on the device that let you see the real world around you, even as your eyes are fully covered by this computing device. So, that's the difference between virtual reality and mixed reality. When you're in virtual reality, you are looking at a totally computerized world. You look around, you look up, you look down, everything is a digital environment. When you're in mixed reality, you have some digital assets in front of you that you're interacting with. Maybe you're playing a game, maybe you're like, I did a Netflix Stranger Things portal world, but you can still see the sharp edges of the coffee table and the person next to you and light streaming through the windows and that kind of thing. Now, with the Meta Quest 3, Meta has taken some of the stuff, the tech that was in the Pro and applied that to the 3 and given a Color Passthrough. They also say they redesigned it to be slimmer and lighter and things like that. It's running on a new Qualcomm Snapdragon chip that's designed specifically for these mixed reality experiences. The hand controllers are slightly redesigned. I think the biggest news here is that when you look at something like what Apple has done with the Apple Vision Pro, which we saw and I tried at WWDC in June, not coming out until next year, $3,500. And that is a mixed reality device as well. You experience some of the virtual world and some of the real world, and there's a dial that lets you tune that up, tune that down. Meta has done this with a $500 device, and the optics are different and the tech is different, and they're not doing everything exactly the same. Apple does include some pretty advanced optics and it's Apple, and they tend to price things at a premium. But Meta, I think has a vision that the Meta Quest VR thing that they sell, which they've sold a reported 20 million units of since they launched it four years ago, that they can sell hundreds of millions. That's what they think. And I don't know if I buy that, but I don't think Apple's going to do that with a $3,500 Vision Pro device.
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Khari Johnson: Right. Probably not.
Lauren Goode: Have you guys tried any of the Meta Quest headsets?
Khari Johnson: Yeah. And just to go back to the keynote, I did notice Mark Zuckerberg taking a dig at the Vision Pro. There's no wire, there's no battery pack mentioned. Yeah, but not one of the more recent ones, not the Quest Pro yet.
Lauren Goode: Have you tried the Quest 2?
Khari Johnson: I think so.
Lauren Goode: A few of us at WIRED did a thing for a while. I think for three nights. We didn't beat Saber, me and Adrian and Cyra, and we had a good old time with it. And then, we were like, "This is a pain. We can just keep up our text chat."
Michael Calore: Speaking of pain, as a person who wears glasses, it's difficult for me to really feel immersed. My glasses are… I have a big head, so those devices are a little bit snug already, and you add glasses into the mix and it gets painful.
Lauren Goode: And that's going to be one of the biggest differences between Meta and Apple too, is that Apple is going to require you, as a prescription glasses wearer, to get fitted for the device. I mean, assuming Mike, you are the person who wants to spend $3,500 in a Vision Pro headset.
Michael Calore: Of course.
Lauren Goode: And then, you won't wear your glasses, you'll just have prescription lenses in your very fancy headsets. Whereas Meta says they've designed it so that their headset fits around your glasses.
Michael Calore: All right, well I'm looking forward to that.
Khari Johnson: You get it.
Lauren Goode: We'll have to… Wait, the forward or the looking?
Michael Calore: Both.
Lauren Goode: OK. That was pretty good.
Michael Calore: Thank you. All right, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to chat about the chatbots.
[Break]
Michael Calore: Meta Connect wasn't all about hardware. There were, of course, also a number of AI announcements, so many AI announcements. We were expecting this. Everyone in the tech industry is currently scrambling to show off how they're using generative AI to make all of their products faster and smarter and more human-like. Out of all the AI announcements at Connect, maybe the one that got the most stage time was the voice-powered chatbot. Now, Khari, I have to ask, are you excited for Metalexa Face Siri, whatever you call it?
Khari Johnson: I'm ready to give it a shot. It's interesting to see it across the chat apps and then also in the glasses and possibly in the Quest headsets in the future.
Lauren Goode: So, there were a few different announcements, right?
Khari Johnson: Mm-hmm.
Lauren Goode: Because we should probably establish that Facebook has this foundational model that's called LLaMA. The latest one is LLaMA 2, but then at the event they announced products, which is IMU, and then the, I don't know, simply named Meta AI. What are the differences between all these?
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Khari Johnson: Well, IMU, the new model that was introduced yesterday is a text image generator. And so, you can use any text prompt or command to make a photo, and so that will be included in the text only version of Meta AI, which is based on LLaMA to begin all that.
Lauren Goode: OK. So, the Meta AI is an app that is based on the LLaMA to foundational model?
Khari Johnson: Foundational text model, yes.
Lauren Goode: Foundational text model. And IMU is its own model because it's an image generator?
Khari Johnson: Yes, yes. And so, IMU will be available through LLaMA. And when you're chatting on-
Lauren Goode: Through Meta AI?
Khari Johnson: … Instagram.
Lauren Goode: Oh, OK.
Khari Johnson: Yeah, you can talk with… This is funny. Who's on first? Meta AI is the assistant that is currently text only and will be available in voice in the Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. It is based on LLaMA, which is a large language model that is currently text only, and it's able to answer questions that you might have through a connection with the Bing search engine. I'm astonished how many times I've said the word Bing this year.
Lauren Goode: I think Steven wrote something about that in his big interview with Satya Nadella, something about how the words I never thought I'd write Microsoft being really excited about its search engine.
Khari Johnson: Yeah. Amazing. So yeah, it'll be able to do things like that. And as we mentioned earlier, it'll be able to respond to a voice query with the Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, like send a photo to a friend, and this is interesting, suggest what sort of language I should use when posting a photo online, for example.
Lauren Goode: Oh, fascinating.
Khari Johnson: Yeah.
Michael Calore: And so, when you go to post something on Facebook or on Instagram, it can tell you what type of language you should like, whether it should be happy or sad. Does it help you compose posts?
Lauren Goode: Does it give you hashtags?
Khari Johnson: It does give hashtags, yeah. From the demo we saw yesterday, it was suggestions based on a cat on a wheel. So, that's a happy, happier post. We didn't get a lot of details about the extent to which the Ray-Ban Smart Glasses with Meta AI would be able to make suggestions for the language that you use, but adopting generative AI in this way is interesting. It's certainly a big part of the conversations about generative AI and how it changes people's perceptions of reality is that you're going to have watermarks on imagery that's created with generative AI like IMU, and that is what Facebook has plans to do with IMU. But if you're generating text about your social media post, there's no watermark there, so it'll be interesting to see how that develops.
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Lauren Goode: So IMU, and that is image generator, trained on billions of Instagram photos. Those are our Instagram photos?
Khari Johnson: 1.1 billion images and accompanying taxpayers were used to train IMU. The number of those image and taxpayers that came from Facebook and Instagram is not yet clear, but it is certainly trained on publicly shared Facebook and Instagram photos.
Michael Calore: So, I can assume that all of my cut picks and all of Lauren's cut picks are on IMU's brain now?
Khari Johnson: I hope so.
Lauren Goode: Are you verified on Instagram?
Khari Johnson: No, I'm not.
Lauren Goode: Oh, OK. I am. Sorry.
Michael Calore: Sorry, she says.
Lauren Goode: But I think that means I can't actually go private. I think once you have a check, you can't make your account private. The best I can do is just delete all my photos. But…
Michael Calore: That really is the best you can do.
Lauren Goode: The best I can do is just go nuclear. But the thing is that, it's weird because when you go on social media these days anyway and you put something out there that is not private, there's this assumption that you're leaving a digital footprint, you're putting it out there into the world that's going to be captured and reshared, it's in perpetuity pretty much. If you'd asked me two years ago like, "What would these images potentially be used for?" I don't know if I ever would've said, "Oh, eventually it's going to power artificial general intelligence that's going to take over the world." Cool.
Michael Calore: Cool. Speaking of artificial intelligence, I do want to ask about the text-based chatbots that we saw-
Lauren Goode: The celebs.
Michael Calore: … that are based on celebs.
Lauren Goode: Oh, man.
Michael Calore: Mildly interesting that they have people like Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton, simulacra of them, in these chatbots. But also interesting that they are conjurable within Facebook group chats, WhatsApp group chats, and text-based group chats across all the platforms. So, you can have one-on-one conversations with these chatbots or you can summon them to join your chat and spice it up.
Khari Johnson: Yup. I think the first thought that I had watching that presentation was it brought me back to when Facebook was focused on creating a developer ecosystem for a Facebook Messenger. And so, there were so many demonstrations that in those years, like 2016, 2017 or so, there was a lot of demonstrations that didn't feel like they were for the rest of us. They were just for the corporate sponsors that they hoped to attract someday. And so, to the extent that we had our moment with MrBeast and Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady yesterday, Naomi Osaka, lots of people in there, I think I look right past what they're presenting there with the celebs and toward this idea of creating an AI studio offering where businesses or individuals might be able to come and create their own variations of chatbots and models.
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Lauren Goode: Yeah, that's exactly right because Meta Connect, at the end of the day, is a developer's conference. And so, what the executives at Meta are presenting on stage is really meant to entice developers to get people to build stuff for these apps or these headsets, which keeps people in the Facebook world of applications. And with the celebrity personas in particular I thought was interesting, I initially mistook them as a replication of the celebrity themselves, like that's Kendall Jenner or it's Snoop. But actually, in a follow-up meeting, I had a better understanding of how it's like that person playing a character. The celebrity presumably is just licensing their image and likeness, so this is where it gets very Black Mirror for those who have seen Jonas is awful. They're licensing their likeness but they, I guess, are released from the concern that it is an AI purporting to be them and could say something untoward or go off the rails. Right?
Khari Johnson: Mm-hmm.
Lauren Goode: It's like Snoop playing a Dungeon Master or it's… I don't remember what Kendall's character was but-
Khari Johnson: I don't know. They all have a second name, so it's not Snoop, it's Dungeon Master.
Lauren Goode: Exactly, right, but it's just in their image and likeness. And so, it's a little bit of a liability-free version of doing a celebrity AI, and I don't know if that's actually legally true, because I don't know the terms of the contracts they have with them, but this to me feels the most like them throwing a bunch of AI spaghetti at the wall just to see what sticks. I would not be surprised if a year from now, to Khari's point, we're not talking about these celeb AI personas in the same way. But some of the other stuff that was announced at Meta Connect, we still will be talking about. This seems like the Messenger bots totally. And a lot of it's going to depend on how developers take them up.
Khari Johnson: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Lauren Goode: Would you want to chat with… There was one about a physical fitness coach too. Would you want to chat with an AI persona and ask, get advice, or…?
Khari Johnson: Dwyane Wade, my physical fitness coach?
Lauren Goode: Yeah.
Khari Johnson: Boy. I mean, he's a charming guy. I'll give him that. I can't imagine I would. I don't want to sound like a total Luddite throughout this whole conversation, but maybe, I don't know.
Michael Calore: All right. Well, let me ask you this, Khari, before we take a break. You cover a lot of these moves that are happening in Silicon Valley right now, and after this week's announcements, where do you think Meta sits in the current AI arms race?
Khari Johnson: I think we learned a couple of interesting things about LLaMA and LLaMA 2 yesterday. Among them that LLaMA has been downloaded more than 30 million times since it was released. The initial release was in February, then there was a leak, and then LLaMA 2 came out in July. And so, it's been downloaded more than 10 million times in the last 30 days. It's sort of an apples and oranges thing when you're talking about Google Bard use or OpenAI, but that's a pretty good indication that Meta choosing to release this model in the way that they did, allowing people to download it and make their own variations, seems to be getting a response.
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Lauren Goode: And one of the differences between something like LLaMA 2 and OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google Bard is that LLaMA 2 is considered open… it's open source. What does that mean exactly for the listeners?
Khari Johnson: There are differences between, let's say, you can't get an open source-licensed version of LLaMA, but you can download it and make your own variations, and I think that's the distinction to draw. You can fine-tune versions of ChatGPT, I believe, with your own data, but this allows a developer to a bit more liberty, I think. And so, we learned that there are 7,000 variations of LLaMA that are out in the world today. Code LLaMA came out last month, I believe, for programming languages. So, it's in an apples and oranges comparison I think place between the other major makers of these models. We don't really have anything to compare LLaMA 2 when it comes to Apple. They haven't really shared much on the work that they're doing on generative models just yet, but it certainly seems like to go from releasing this model quietly to a set list of invite-only release in February to putting in all your apps and services roughly six months later.
Michael Calore: It's astonishing.
Khari Johnson: It's pretty quick. It's pretty quick.
Michael Calore: All right. I can't wait to see what happens in the next six months.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, I look forward to having you back on the show for an update in approximately three days.
Khari Johnson: Yeah.
Michael Calore: Before that, we're going to put you through our recommendations ringer.
Khari Johnson: Oh.
Michael Calore: OK, so-
Lauren Goode: Our recommendations engine.
Michael Calore: Our recommendations engine. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll come right back.
[Break]
Michael Calore: OK Khari, you are our guest. You go first. What is your recommendation?
Khari Johnson: I got to see the movie The Creator earlier this week, went to a screening for that, and so that's out on Friday. And I thought it was really interesting. It's from the director of Rogue One, which is, in my opinion, the best Star Wars movie maybe ever.
Michael Calore: Controversial opinion, but I'm with you.
Khari Johnson: Whole lot of robot rebellion stuff going on, whole lot of robot messiah, robot savior stuff going on, but I think it raises lots of questions about what a good AI use case looks like and the design of AI in ways that benefits humanity and how to preserve our humanity in an age of automation being ubiquitous. So, writing a review on that. You can go on the website and check out.
Lauren Goode: Nice.
Michael Calore: Nice.
Lauren Goode: Who stars in it?
Khari Johnson: Oh, man. I don't know.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: Humans? Robots?
Lauren Goode: Not a lot of people.
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Michael Calore: There's no big star power in the movie is what you're saying?
Khari Johnson: I feel like Denzel Washington's son is in it, but I haven't verified that, so I can't… His last name's Washington, but I didn't check, so that's a common name.
Lauren Goode: This could very well be hallucination-
Khari Johnson: Oh, yes.
Lauren Goode: … to borrow the AI term.
Khari Johnson: Very good.
Michael Calore: Nice. The Creator. OK, good rec.
Khari Johnson: Yeah.
Michael Calore: Lauren-
Lauren Goode: Thanks.
Michael Calore: … what would you like to recommend?
Lauren Goode: First, I want to note that The Morning Show is back on Apple TV+. I've recommended that in the past. Have not been able to watch the full season yet because it's being trickled out, but I've watched the first three episodes, and I'm enjoying it. Also got to give a shout-out to our producer, Boone Ashworth, who, going forward, I will be calling Charlie Chip Black again, after the Jay Duplass character… no, Mark Duplass, one of the Duplasses. Anyway, my actual recommendation is a '90s movie. Do you guys like '90s movies?
Khari Johnson: Love them.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: Do you like pencil-thin eyebrows?
Michael Calore: Sure.
Lauren Goode: Mad cow disease?
Michael Calore: No.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Khari Johnson: Keep going.
Lauren Goode: Jokes about cellulite that's didn't age well?
Michael Calore: Love them.
Lauren Goode: Dramatic freeze frames?
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: Shagging? Dido?
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Khari Johnson: Check, check.
Lauren Goode: I got perfect, perfect… Oh, bad British accents. Perfect '90s movie for you. Sliding Doors with Ms. Goop herself, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Michael Calore: Oh, boy.
Lauren Goode: I know, I know. It came up in conversation at a dinner party last weekend, and I was like, "I haven't seen that in a really, really long time." And then, I was sitting on my couch doing some work this past Sunday, and I was reading a script for another podcast. I just put it on in the background, and I thought, "What an epic '90s movie, Sliding Doors." For those who don't know the concept, the idea is that this young woman in London, there's a version of her life where she makes it to a train that she's trying to catch, and her life unfolds one way. And another version of her life happening concurrently, where she misses the train and her life unfolds another way. And it's a fun little concept.
Michael Calore: So, the Sliding Doors in the title refers to the sliding doors of the train-
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Michael Calore: … that either she makes it through or does not make it through?
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Lauren Goode: That's correct. And the way that the… also very '90s. Do you remember that there were these TV shows and films in the '90s where women would cut their hair, and it would be very dramatic?
Michael Calore: Yup.
Lauren Goode: I'm thinking of the Felicity moment. The way that they decided to create a visual representation of the cleaving of the stories here is Gwyneth Paltrow gets a haircut. One of the Gwyneth's gets a haircut, and it's like this very short, very blonde '90s shag. I keep using the word shag. And another one is this just plain old brown shoulder-length hair, and that's how you know the two characters apart. It's so '90s.
Michael Calore: For all the kids at the back of the class.
Lauren Goode: For the… yeah, exactly. Anyway, I can't wholeheartedly recommend it, but I would say put it on in the background when you're doing something else.
Michael Calore: Check it out.
Lauren Goode: Why not?
Khari Johnson: I'm excited to refer to Gwyneth Paltrow now as Ms. Goop.
Lauren Goode: Ms. Goop herself.
Michael Calore: Gwyneth.
Lauren Goode: That's right.
Michael Calore: Also Khari, I do want to point out that Lauren had both the names of the principal actor in the movie and the director.
Khari Johnson: Next time.
Lauren Goode: And Gwyn, it's a pretty easy one. She's very recognizable. Mike, what's your recommendation?
Michael Calore: OK. You know what? I'm going to keep this train going.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: I'm also going… You get it? I'm also going to recommend-
Khari Johnson: Clever.
Michael Calore: I'm also going to recommend a '90s movie.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Michael Calore: In fact, I'm going to recommend probably my all-time favorite movie, which this week is celebrating its 30th anniversary. It came out the last week of September 1993. It's called Dazed and Confused. Maybe you've heard of it.
Lauren Goode: Have in fact heard of it, yes.
Michael Calore: This is a movie written and directed by Richard Linklater, who is a great American director. This is one of his early works. The thing that put him on the map, other than his very early independent work, his first big studio movie. The list of the people that are in the movie, none of whom were really famous at the time and now are famous, includes Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Jason London, Parker Posey, Wiley Wiggins, Joey Lauren Adams, Rory Cochrane playing Slater, one of the great characters of all time, Mila Jovovich. It's an ensemble cast. It's an ensemble movie. Like most Richard Linklater movies, it takes place during a very specific set period of time, which is the last day of school in 1976. It's a movie about kids getting out of school in April, in May I guess, looking forward to their summer and what next year is going to bring. So, for all of them, this is big moment. Some of them are going off to college. Some of them are moving from junior high school into high school. Some of them are trying to decide what they want to do with the rest of their summer. It's a movie that has a glimpse of a world with zero real consequences, which is what makes it so delightful. Nobody in the movie is worried about student debt. Nobody is worried about existential AI stuff. Nobody's worried about the climate crisis. Nobody talks to their glasses in the movie. It's a trip through time in more ways than one, because it's a movie about the '70s, and it's very much a '90s movie. If you have not seen it, watch it. If you haven't seen it in a while, celebrate its 30th birthday properly. Maybe get an adult beverage, maybe indulge in some fruits and vegetables and enjoy the glory hang movie that is Dazed and Confused.
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Lauren Goode: Wait, I'm confused by your recommendation of fruits and vegetables.
Michael Calore: Maybe I'm talking about the kind of fruits and vegetables that make you dazed.
Lauren Goode: OK, got it.
Khari Johnson: Well, McConaughey's character in that movie is pretty classic.
Michael Calore: Oh, yeah.
Khari Johnson: I feel like that put him on the map.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Khari Johnson: My map at least.
Michael Calore: Sure. Keep on livin'.
Khari Johnson: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: Can you do your McConaughey impression here, Mike?
Michael Calore: All right, all right, all right.
Lauren Goode: That's pretty good.
Michael Calore: Thank you. I rehearsed that so much before the show.
Lauren Goode: We all recommended movies.
Khari Johnson: Yeah.
Michael Calore: We did.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. But some definitely better than others. I think mine's probably at the low end of the quality scale.
Michael Calore: Does The Morning Show make you feel… is that too close to home sometimes? Does it have newsroom vibes? Does it…?
Lauren Goode: Yeah, it does. Yeah. I worked in morning television for three years, a very long time ago, as a production assistant. And I think The Morning Show hits pretty close to home. Gets a lot of things right, I think. I love the characters though. OK. That's a series. That's not a film. It's high up the scale, but no Sliding Doors, just…
Michael Calore: All right. Well, we just gave-
Lauren Goode: Well, Mike, I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life. Just to be with you, it's given me the best day of my life.
Michael Calore: Is this a reference to the song that's in-
Lauren Goode: It's Dido. Dido. Oh, my God, remember?
Michael Calore: Oh, yes. Very much so. I have strong memories of Dido. The ones that were not erased by the fruits and vegetables. All right. Well, that is our show for this week. Khari Johnson, thank you for joining us.
Khari Johnson: Thank you for having me.
Lauren Goode: So great having you on, Khari. And you really do have to come back in studio again soon to tell us more about all these chatbots.
Khari Johnson: I'm sure there will be more news.
Lauren Goode: There really will be.
Michael Calore: And thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on social media. Just check the show notes. Our producer is Boone Ashworth, and we will be back next week.
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