Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.

Today it's the fifth film in our Films of Ideas series, the episodes recorded live in front of an audience at

the Regent Street Cinema in London. Today I'm talking with the film director and campaigner

B-Ban-Kidron about eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. A much-loved film, also a film that is full

of really interesting ideas. It's about memory,

it's about identity, it's about loss, it's about technology. And I'm going to be talking

to B-Ban-Kidron about all of that. As with the other episodes in this series, I'm going to say a little bit about the film before we start for people who don't know it.

I'm guessing more people know this film than the others we've done so far.

But many people will have seen it a long time ago.

And as you'll hear in this conversation with B-Ban Kidron,

it's a very different film seen in 2025 than when it first came out in 2004.

It's a film essentially about a couple, played by Jim Carrey, his character is called Joel,

and Kate Winslet, her character is called Clementine. Both of them in a way. Both actors are playing against type. Jim Carrey, a comic actor, plays this one pretty straight. Kate Winslet, who's often pretty serious, plays this one a bit more comedically than Jim Carrey does. The film begins with us meeting the couple, meeting each other, seemingly

for the first time. It starts, as they say in romantic comedy circles, with a meet cute.

We see them bump into each other first on a beach, then on a train, and we see them in a pretty

cute way, getting to know each other, embarking on what looks like it's potentially going to be a real

relationship. But we soon discover that these two people already know each other. In fact, we discover

they have had a relationship before, and they have forgotten it. They have forgotten each other,

and they have forgotten the relationship.

They believe they're meeting for the first time. And the reason they have forgotten is that each of

them separately has chosen to have that memory erased. The service is available through a technology

company run by a character played by the British actor, though, with an American accent in this film,

...