Hello, Olly Mann here, and as it's the last Friday of the month, it's time for our

playback edition, another chance to bring you a classic story from the Modern Man Archives.

And this one is perhaps my favourite interview that we did in 2021, a conversation with someone

called Guy Babcock about being at the centre of his own online

reputation management as it was being sabotaged by a bad actor. It's a roller coaster ride.

Listening to it is like enjoying a thriller with the Hitchcockian trope of the innocent man

caught up in a grander conspiracy.

But for Guy who had to live through it, it was awful and he is particularly good at hammering

that home and really doing the thing we always ask of all our guests, which is tell your story

in the present tense, as if it's happening to you now so so that we can feel it along with you, even though

in his case, it is a tale that spans decades. It's a story that felt relevant four years ago with the

increasing tide of misinformation. But as we sit here in 2025 on the cusp of an AI revolution,

making it increasingly difficult to spot what's real from what's

a defamatory hallucination.

It is perhaps a more pertinent conversation than ever.

Keep listening to the end of the interview for an update from Guy on how the story has continued.

Don't Google me.

That's this month's Modern Man playback.

And it all starts next.

Now, in a world where everyone is just one web search away, it really matters what happens when people type your name into Google. But how easily can that information be manipulated?

That's what we're discussing today, and a warning, the conversation goes to some dark places

and includes references to child abuse. My guest today, Guy Babcock, lives in Oxfordshire and works in IT. But back in the 90s,

...