667: This Show Was Weird, Right?

The Incomparable Mothership

Jason Snell

Arts, Tv & Film, Leisure

4.8 • 694 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2023

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We go 20 minutes into the future and 36 years into the past to discuss ABC’s cyberpunk drama “Max Headroom.” For a show with an 80s pop-culture icon as its title character, it’s actually a prescient satire about where our culture was (and still is?) headed. Even more than three decades later, its discussions of data security, the right to privacy in a technological age, artificial intelligence, and even deepfakes are still state of the art. (Non-American viewers who thought this was the show where Max Headroom introduced various music videos… uh, no.) Catch the wave and join us, won’t...

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Incomparable, number 667, May 23.
0:10.0	Welcome back everybody to The Incomparable.
0:11.8	I'm your host, Jason Snell, and this is one of those episodes.
0:14.4	You know, we've done almost 700 episodes.
0:18.2	And since the beginning, this has been one of the ones.
0:20.6	I'm like, one of these days.
0:21.7	I'm going to do that episode.
0:23.2	I have, for decades, listed the 14 episode, two season, barely, ABC, mid-80s television series,
0:33.2	Max Headroom among my top, all-time top-five TV series series and haven't done a podcast episode about it until now.
0:42.1	Joining me to talk about Max Headroom, all of us live and direct from 20 minutes into the future are the following wonderful people.
0:50.1	Monty Ashley.
0:51.3	Hello.
0:52.8	Hi, Jason.
0:53.9	I love this show. I do too, Monty. I do too. Hello. Hi, Jason. I love this show.
0:55.7	I do too, Monty. I do too. Moises Chiyan is here. Hi, Moises.
1:01.0	Jason, you wouldn't to download an education.
1:05.6	Warren Frye joins us. Warren, welcome. Hello. Hello. This is kind of weird to admit, and I'll probably refute it a little
1:13.0	later, but this is one of the reasons I became a journalist to this show. The other one is
1:16.9	Kermit the Frog and his reporter outfit, so I don't know what that tells you about me, but...
1:20.6	Lipp a coin on that, but no, no, it's very meaningful. Cicero Holmes joins us as well. Hi, Cicero. I'm here to make sure that the ratings stay up.
1:28.4	Yeah, that's right. I mean, what about the people? What about the damage? What about the loss of
1:33.1	democracy? Forget all that. What about the ratings? Clunk, clunk, clunk, clung. And our special
	...

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