Are we in an age of necromancy?
Americano
The Spectator
4 • 714 Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Katherine Dee is the new technology correspondent for The Spectator World. She joins Freddy to discuss the phenomenon of necromancy, the practice of communicating with the dead, and how AI is fuelling it. How is technology blurring the lines between the living and the dead?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Subscribe to The Spectator in our Black Friday Flash Sale and you'll get 12 weeks of the magazine, along with full access to all of our online content, for just £12. Not only that, but we'll also send you a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Whiskey worth £30 on the shops, absolutely free. |
| 0:18.3 | Hurry though, this ridiculously good offer, ends on the 1st of December. |
| 0:22.6 | Go to www.spictator.com.ukuk forward slash Friday. |
| 0:36.3 | Hello and welcome back to The Americano Show, a series of discussions in which we talk about American politics, power and prejudices. |
| 0:45.8 | Each week, we will do at least two, possibly more episodes speaking to an American or an American expert about what is going on in America. |
| 0:56.2 | We will cover the Trump presidency, of course, but we will also be doing quite a lot of |
| 1:01.0 | non-Trump-related podcasts, because if you're anything like me, the story of Donald Trump |
| 1:06.5 | can get a bit overwhelming. Please keep listening and enjoy it. |
| 1:11.7 | I am delighted to be joined by our new technology correspondent, Kat D, who writes a brilliant |
| 1:18.5 | substack, but is now also regularly writing for The Spectator, and we're very proud to publish |
| 1:23.2 | her stuff, which is always brilliant. |
| 1:26.2 | And Kat, the good thing about your substack and your writing is that it covers the world of technology |
| 1:32.3 | in a way that means we could talk about almost anything. |
| 1:35.3 | But today we're going to talk about a new company, two-way I, it's called, that seems to be |
| 1:42.5 | doing what, I think there was a black mirror episode |
| 1:45.2 | about it in the early days of black mirror, which is creating a sort of real version of you |
| 1:51.8 | or an AI version of you after you die. Tell us a little bit more about it. So there was this |
| 1:58.2 | commercial that went viral. I think it was yesterday where this |
| 2:02.7 | pregnant woman is FaceTiming with an elderly woman who, you know, you learn as her mother. |
| 2:07.4 | And the whole conceit of the commercial is this version of this woman's deceased mother |
| 2:14.0 | is projecting through this app and gets to know her grandchildren. And her grandson |
| 2:20.9 | gets to have a relationship with his grandmother through this app, even though she died before he was |
... |
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