The Evolving Landscape of AI in the Arts with Simon Guerrier

My guest this week is Simon Guerrier, a writer and producer who has written numerous books related to Doctor Who, produced five documentaries for BBC radio, and more than 70 audio plays for Big Finish Productions, as well as comics and short stories. He also chairs the Books Committee for the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. Simon talks with me about how he got his start in writing and producing—including just what a producer does—the value of negotiating arrangements that work in everyone’s best interest, the impact of new tools like ChatGPT on creative careers and the creative process, his new book about television pioneer David Whitaker, and more. 

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Introduction

08:07 Simon arrived at university alone, connected with English tutor, talked sci-fi.

13:37 Received unexpected validation, leading to pursuing Doctor Who novel submission.

19:18 Advert to management led to diverse projects.

24:36 Producers oversee production, manage money, and ensure payments.

28:44 Beryl Vertue valued fair, lasting relationships over winning in negotiation.

37:09 AI has many uses, but may miss the point of creativity.

43:45 Negative atmosphere on Twitter overwhelms real conversations and connections.

49:49 Connecting with people on Twitter leads to opportunities and potential.

51:14 Choosing joy and creativity over anger and self-doubt.

01:00:41 Teaching and learning through doing and mentoring entry-level positions.

01:05:28 Fascination with AI in science fiction and cautionary tales.

01:08:25 Following the threads of the freelance life.

Read this week’s article, on what Ella Fitzgerald can teach us on rolling with what life hands us, here.

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Transcript

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck: Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. As you may know, I’ve been working on a new one on one course, and it’s here. Reignite your creative Spark is a private coaching program designed to help creative folks build momentum that lasts so they can turn their creative dreams into reality. In six private sessions, you will discover how to engage with your creative dreams with ease and joy, feeling both more confident in yourself and your work and more vibrant than you have in years. Want to learn more? Use the link in the show notes to get in touch. Talk to you soon.

My guest this week is Simon Guerrier, a writer and producer who has written numerous books related to doctor who, produced documentaries for BBC radio, and written more than 70 audio plays for big finish productions. As well as writing comics and short stories, he also chairs the books committee for the Writers Guild of Great Britain. Simon talks with me about how he got his start in writing, in producing, including just what a producer does, the value of negotiating arrangements that work in everyone’s best interest, the impact of new tools like ChatGPT on creative careers, and the creative process, his new book about television pioneer David Whitaker, and more. Here’s my conversation with Simon Guerrier.

Simon, welcome to Follow your Yuriosity.

Simon Guerrier: Thank you very much for having me. What exciting prospect this is. The questions you’ve asked me already in advance have really stretched bits of my brain. I don’t usually use.

Nancy Norbeck: Oh, good. Excellent. So I start everybody off with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?

Simon Guerrier: Oh, I was very creative. I was writing and drawing and imagining stuff all the time. I think I spent most of my childhood lost in a little world of my own. It took me a long time to get round to the idea that this is something I could do as a job. That was a big moment in my mid teens, I think, and I’d kind of be bumbling along, just amusing myself, and then suddenly it was like, oh, you could do this and get paid and not have to go and work in offices and things like that. So that, yeah, I think. But I don’t know. I think most people write and draw and cut things up and create things, and then there’s a weird process where there’s a weird kind of stage kind of preteen, where that sort of stops. I’m noticing that with my own kids and I, that kind of coincides with when I was watching things like doctor who in Star wars that. It was the same kind of age when friends of mine got out of that. Maybe I just had arrested development and didn’t because I’m still here.

Nancy Norbeck: Well, you’re certainly not the only one.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: You’re in very good company. So did your, your family and your teachers, did they encourage you or were they kind of like, eh, you’ll need to, you know, find something you want to do that’ll make actual money eventually?

Simon Guerrier: They were very supportive. I think they were for a long time. They were. My parents were very concerned about what I was doing and whether it was going to work out. And it wasn’t until I got married and they were like, oh, you know, and I could, I had money and I could afford to pay for bits of the wedding, and we were looking at buying somewhere to live and stuff. And they were like, I think they thought my wife supported me. And then they were kind of. They were kind of, oh, no, that’s not what’s going on here. And then they were fine. So they were concerned, but in a supportive parental way. But my dad’s mum, who’d been a doctor when she retired, she did an a level in art, and so was kind of creative and was always drawing. When I, when I was little, I just remember her drawing and sketching, and my sister had gone to art college and stuff, so there was a bit of a precedent there. But what was an issue for them was they just didn’t get this kind of Sci-Fi tv world that I was into, and we didn’t know anybody who was into that, so I kind of had to forge my own path. Really?

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah, yeah. I got a lot of. What’s the right word? I don’t want to overstate it. My parents did not understand, I say that I grew up with the only engineer in the world who didn’t like Star Trek, you know, I mean, and I’m sure that’s not actually true, but certainly they are rare. And he just. It did not make any sense to him. So I was sneaking in, you know, watching my stuff when, you know, always hoping that they were going to go out Saturday afternoon so I could turn on the tv for a while, you know. And I think my mom thought it was really strange because I was like, instantly, as soon as I discovered doctor who, it was just that was where I was all the time. And so it was like, okay, why is my child so obsessed with this? And what does this mean? And I’m terrified because this can’t possibly be a good thing. My mom in recent years seems to have decided that it’s not going to go away. And I will occasionally get a Christmas gift or a picture because she found something who related when she was out at a store somewhere or something like that. But, but yeah, it was, it was definitely kind of like, we don’t know what to do with this.

Simon Guerrier: I think. I mean, I think the context here is slightly different because in the UK, at least as I was feeling it, everybody watched Doctor who, right? My parents watched Doctor who. My, my uncles would tell me about Doctor who in the sixties that they’d seen that I was never going to see. You know, I can remember my uncle telling me, you know, answering for probably an entire afternoon my thousand questions about the first regeneration because he’d seen the 10th planet, part four. And he described it, you know, extremely vividly. He’s a very good storyteller. So that when I actually saw the surviving clip, it was very disappointing. And I think in retrospect he may have confused more than one thing he saw. I think he confused the ageing to death of Sarah Kingdom at the end of the Daleks master plan with the regeneration because of the way he described it. But it’s thrilling. So I lived for that kind of connection, but, yeah, but he’d watched it and was, you know, tolerant to a degree, but it wasn’t, nobody was into it and nobody was into comics and stuff. So, yeah, I kind of spent a lot of my teens looking for other people who kind of got what was going on inside my head. And that certainly informed my choice of where I went to university. I went to an open day, and it was quite a long way from where I lived. So I got the train, it was like an all day train journey. And I got off, was there for 3 hours, and then got the train all the way back. And in that journey I had time to read the whole of the crow road by Ian Banks.

Nancy Norbeck: Oh, wow.

Simon Guerrier: That’s how far it was. But I arrived at this university and I was the only person there without a parent wandering around with me. And one of the people showing us around, who turns out to be one of the english tutors, kind of noticed this and said hello, and was I alright? And was I with anyone? And we kind of got talking about what I read and I said, you know, I’m reading Ian Banks and I quite like his Sci-Fi and I’m quite into Philip K. Dick at the moment. And he asked which Philip K. Dick books I was reading and had read and what my opinions were, and he suggested some and some I’d read. And it was the first time I’d kind of had a conversation with an adult who got the kind of place I was in. And I just thought, oh, I could come here and I could talk to people like you, which, you know, I’m sure he was horrified by when I actually arrived.

Nancy Norbeck: It’s amazing, though. It makes such a difference when you find somebody who actually gets where you are, where you’re coming from, what you’re thinking, what you might do. Even if that person doesn’t fully understand the particular angle you’re coming from. It still makes such a huge difference when you find people like that who are like, yeah, yeah. What are you writing? What are you doing? Can I see it? You know what? You know, all of that kind of stuff, it’s. It’s like you’re not in the wilderness anymore. There are. There are other people like you who do the same thing. It’s.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah, very cool. It is. And you kind of find a tribe, but you also, like, you say they don’t have to agree with you, but you kind of. That’s where you kind of cut sparks, isn’t it? That’s. That’s where there’s something. And I think. I think the thing is that when I was a kid, when I was very little, everybody watched doctor who, everybody was into Star wars. You know, people had opinions about what they did and didn’t like and stuff. And then there was a kind of thing of that went away because they. They kind of drew off into different things. So that that sense of connecting to people was lost. And maybe. I don’t know. I’ve not really thought about this before, but maybe I was just trying to remake that connection, and I did, and it’s been very rewarding, you know?

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. So when you went off to school, what did you think you were going to be doing?

Simon Guerrier: What, with my life or at school?

Nancy Norbeck: Both. Either.

Simon Guerrier: Well, like a lot of kids, I didn’t really know. I, you know, I kind of had. I had elder siblings, so they were off getting jobs in, you know, they were waitering and things, and I was like, oh, well, I’ll do that because, you know, I can do that. So at age 16, I got a job in a hotel carrying bags and stuff, but didn’t really have a sense of direction. But I was writing, and I was writing all the time, but at the back of my mind was, I want to be a writer, but it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem like a thing anyone could actually do because I couldn’t see how you went from scribbling at the kitchen table to making a book that just seemed like, what’s the bit that goes in between? So it was no different from all the other things I wanted to be. I wanted to be James Bond and I wanted to go into space. None of these things were real as a thing. And I think it took a couple of things for me to kind of work that out. One was that I read an interview with Paul Cornell, who’s now quite well known for at the time, he just sold his first doctor who novel and he talked about the mechanics of it all and just made it seem like a thing you could do. And then I spoke to one of my a level teachers, so I must have been 1718, said something that really stuck with me at a parents evening thing, and you had to go with your parents and stuff and be told how you were doing. It was all a bit gruelling. And he said, simon and this other guy in the class, I always keep their essays till last when I’m marking, because most of the essays you get in are the same and they always come up with something different. And my dad, you know, went different, good. And he said, well, not always, you know, but always something a bit quirky and different, so they’re just more entertaining to read. And I thought, and that was like, that was such a, that was such a key thing, I was like, oh, okay, that’s something I need to hold on to. And, yeah, so it just, it was the first time I’d ever really, I think I’d had a age about eleven. I had a short story published in the school magazine, which is like a photocopied thing, and nobody told me it was going to happen. So the first I knew of it was one of the other mums came over and said to my mum, oh, I liked your son’s story. I was like, what? So, yeah, that kind of. It seems really silly now, but I’m, you know, those were, that was really important validation. I don’t think I’d be doing what I’d be doing now if those things happened. And then what was really important was Paul Cornell had said, if you want to write a doctor who novel, at the time, Virgin Books, who were publishing doctor who books, were open to submissions from people who didn’t have agents and stuff. So the first stage was to write off for the submission guidelines. And I did and they sent me it back pretty quickly and I was like, wow, I’ve had contact with these people.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah.

Simon Guerrier: And I read those and sent in a submission, which was dreadful. I mean, really. And it was handwritten and not long enough and didn’t do the things in the guideline, you know, just. Just dreadful rookie stuff. But one of the editorial team wrote me back a very nice three page letter.

Nancy Norbeck: Wow.

Simon Guerrier: Spell it. Spelling out what was wrong and what I needed to do and what I focused on and said at the end. And if you can address those things, we’d be very interested in what you send us next. And I was like, oh, my. You know, I hadn’t really. Again, I hadn’t really thought it was real. I was kind of almost half heartedly putting something in without really thinking it through, but suddenly that was like a real thing. I’ve met the guy who wrote me that letter since I kind of went, why on earth would you write such a long, detailed letter? And he said, well, my job was to make sure you kept on buying the books that came out everywhere. How long did you stay buying the books? I said, oh, yeah. Till the end. If you’ve been a bit snitty in your reply, I might have stopped. So. But, yes, that was a key, really key in. And I could show that letter to people. I could show that to my people, parents and stuff, and go, look, you know, I’ve had a thing from a publisher and it’s a. No, but it’s. But it’s.

Nancy Norbeck: Create evidence.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, but it’s. It’s kind of incurred. So, like, I went to a. I met somebody not too long ago, actually, and we’d been at a wedding in 1998, like, four, five years before I got published. And I’d said to him, then, I’m going to. I’m working, getting. Trying to get in the door doing doctor e books and stuff. So I met him just before Christmas and said, you know, he was like, oh, are you still doing. Are you still trying to write doctor who books? I was like, I am doing it. It didn’t work out, which, yeah, was quite nice, but I don’t really remember at the time having it as such a fixed plan. I was kind of noodling along in my little fantasy world, really. But it all works out, so, you know, it’s good.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. There’s something to be said for noodling along in your fantasy world.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: And I think that, you know, that scares people, too, right? Especially parent type people, because they think that you’re just gonna noodle in circles forever and never go anywhere sometimes.

Simon Guerrier: But, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: But it’s something to focus on, you know, it gave you a direction.

Simon Guerrier: Yes. Yeah. And kind of. And it’s never lost that kind of sense of fun as well. I think that’s the danger. You can turn your hobby or your passion into work and it leeches out the joy. I’ve seen that with a few people I know. So. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah.

Simon Guerrier: On the whole, it’s kind of keeping that noodling aspect to it.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. How do you think, starting from that point, the noodling has kept that alive? I mean, you’ve done so many things at this point. I was looking at the list and it was just overwhelming. Cause you’ve done books, you’re still doing books, doing big finish audios. I mean, so many things, not even necessarily all in the same medium. Is it like the novelty of moving between different things or how has it. How have you managed to keep it fun?

Simon Guerrier: I think. I mean, it wasn’t really my intention. It’s all kind of the result of circumstance, which is if I only did books, I couldn’t afford to live, you know, I wouldn’t make enough from it. So there’s got to be a bit of variety. Anyway, I’m also quite. Because I kind of. I didn’t know how to get into writing and I couldn’t do what some people I knew did, which was to sort of live on a floor very cheaply and write and send stuff off and finally get somewhere or, you know, stay on friends sofas or whatever they were doing. That wasn’t really an option to me. So I got jobs in offices, but my aim was to try and get jobs in offices that were publishing related in one form or another. So I did contract publishing of one sort or another. I did advertising and things and because of that I did management. And actually the first book that had my name on the COVID was the result of me having management experience because I could run a spreadsheet and that’s what got me the gig. Paul Cornell put me up for a job, but what convinced Gary Russell at big finish was that I could project manage it. And that kind of skill base, I guess all that kind of background and experience has meant that I’m able to do quite a wide variety of things. And also there’s things like, you know, my first documentary for radio three, it came out of, I was reading something to write a big finnish play and there was just a little sentence and I thought, well, that’s not relevant to this play, but there’s something in it. So I pitched this idea, it was about. So Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s was the head of state in the UK. His wife Elizabeth was therefore the most powerful woman in the country and we know almost nothing about her. And I just thought, that’s interesting. That’s kind of who was she? And we know bits. And from the bits you’d probably had enough for about an hour’s documentary was my thinking, and I pitched that to all sorts of people. I pitched it to radio, I pitched it to tv. There was talk at one point of, we won’t make one documentary, we’ll make a whole series and that will just be one episode and whatever, all of this kind of stuff. And then they ended up at radio three and basically they said, yeah, we’re very interested in it, but who would you get to produce it? Because you’re coming at it as the kind of writer researcher. And they were like, oh, what we’d have to do is buy the idea off you and then give it to a producer to make. But I had producer experience at big finnish, so I could kind of go, well, I have produced things before and they just went, oh, well, fine, then you know what you’re doing. Yes. And so actually the producing side of it became just an expansion of the writing researching thing. But what I then found is we get sort of academics and experts to come in and talk to us, whatever. But because I was the researcher and the producer, I’d done all the reading. So when they were querying things or whatever, so I had a sense of the shape of the documentary in my head, but it made all of those conversations easier because I was on top of it all. So actually that became a really good model for doing all of these things. So, you know, that’s how we did the next few. But I’m not an editor, so I’m not a sound editor. So most people who make radio documentaries, the producer does the edit, but I had to hire somebody to do the edit and then dictate what I wanted and maybe I could have done the editing myself and I did do some lessons in it, but I found it. I was too slow. And actually I found trying to explain what I wanted the editor to do was a really good way of making it clear in my own head, whereas if I did it myself, I didn’t go through that process. So all of those things, what I find is those kind of things, of those kind of challenges of trying things that you, that a bit out of your comfort zone are often the most satisfying to do creatively. They’re the things where you learn a lot, and often they’re the things where you learn things that you can use elsewhere as well. So they kind of open things up a bit as well, whereas I am a bit wary of getting stuck doing the same things. I think there’s a point at which you kind of. I don’t know, I’m not sure how much I believe in writer’s block, but I think those kind. I think it’s harder when you’ve done the same thing lots of times to keep it fresh and engaging and exciting for yourself, let alone for anybody else. So, yeah, yeah, I find the variety. So, yes, sorry, long, rambling answer to your question, but I find the variety is kind of what keeps me going.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah, I think that’s true for a lot of people. If you’re the kind of person who gets bored really easily, you need a bunch of different kinds of things to work on, or you’re just going to, you know, drive yourself crazy or start, as you said, turning out the same kind of stuff all the time, and then that just compounds the boredom and, yeah, it doesn’t work so well. So since you mentioned producing, I’m not sure how many people actually understand what it is that a producer does.

Simon Guerrier: Oh, producer gets it made. That’s basically their job and they’re usually in charge of the money. So producers get the job done and they get people paid. What that actually entails can vary a bit with, you know, sometimes it’s contracts, sometimes it’s when I started at big finish, my job. This is how long ago it was. My job was to turn up at the studio for the recording, having scheduled everybody and made sure everybody was there on the same day and book the studio. And then I would have to turn up in the studio with two copies of each contract for all the actors there with a cheque that I wasn’t able to issue cheques. So I had to get the cheques done by head office and sent to me in advance. And what you’d have is two copies of the contract for each actor with their cheques stapled to the back. And they signed both copies of the contract, gave you one back, and then they kept a contract and got paid there and then. And that was big finishes, masterstroke. When they began by asking actors and directors, whatever, what should we do? How should we set this up? But they basically said, if you pay people on the day, word will get round that you’re an amazing bunch of people to work for. Because actually, as I’m sure you know, the thing that freelancers spend far too much time on is chasing money, right, and chasing payment. So if you just, if you just pay on the day and people do the job and you’re, you know, it’s fun. You work, but it’s fun, you know, they then developed a thing of going do a good lunch as well. It’s amazing.

Nancy Norbeck: Yes, I’ve heard about lunches.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, well, they used to do sandwiches and then I think I was instrumental in the lunches, actually, a friend of mine, Manzi, was a chef and we were in the pub and I introduced her to the guy who organised the sandwiches at big finish and she said, no. And he said, oh, we’ve always got a thing that there’s an actor who’s a vegetarian and there’s an actor who’s allergic to grapes and there’s an actor who’s, you know, and she said, oh, that’s the sort of thing I love cooking for, is, you know, how do you do something that’s challenging or whatever? So he said, well, if I gave you a budget of whatever it was and told you what people’s preferences were, could you do something? She went, yeah, all right. And that started something very beautiful.

Nancy Norbeck: Wow. Yeah.

Simon Guerrier: And, yeah. Nothing to do with writing or creativity, but that kind of thing of, again, it’s the kind of way that everything interconnects.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah, yeah. And those lunches have their own reputation. They really do. But that’s also such a good point about, you know, I’ve listened to enough big finish in the behind the scenes stuff and, you know, the mention of. And you get paid, you know, and it’s amazing to me that people don’t think about that from the beginning, that if you want to create something that people want to come and do, make sure they don’t have to chase you down.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s amazing. I don’t know if you’re aware of Beryl virtue. He was a producer, she was an agent, and then she was Terry Nation’s agent. So she is the woman that crossed out the bit on the contract saying that the BBC could control marketing of the Daleks and in doing that made him quite a lot of money.

Nancy Norbeck: Yes.

Simon Guerrier: And she represented all sorts of people and then moved into film production. And her daughter sue is married to Stephen Moffat.

Nancy Norbeck: Oh, okay.

Simon Guerrier: So, but so Beryl, you know, who died a few years ago, but she was an amazing, amazing woman. But I talked to her at a thing years ago and we were talking about negotiation. When you’re in a deal and what she was talking about was this. There was something in the news about it, but it was quite a, you know, the kind of how to be a businessman type books and stuff and the art of the deal and stuff. And she said, well, I can’t get my head around is they’re all about negotiation, as if it’s combat and you’ve got to win against the person you’re negotiating with. Whereas she said, all I think is that if I feel I’ve lost a negotiation or I’ve not been treated fairly, I can’t wait to get out of that deal, and I never want to work with that person again. What you kind of want is to build lasting relationships, and a kind of growth is for all parties to feel they’ve benefited from the deal.

Nancy Norbeck: Yes.

Simon Guerrier: So that’s what the negotiation should be. And I kind of was kind of, yeah, I can see how you’ve done that in your career and whatever, but it’s really stayed with me, not just in terms of contracts, but in terms of how you work with people and who you’re working with. And if you’re working with people who want to make the project work and everybody gets something out of it, it’s a really satisfying experience. But if you’re working with people who are only focused on themselves, it’s really hard work. And so in my kind of working methods and stuff now and the projects I take on, those are the kind of things that I think about, which would never have occurred to me when I was starting out.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. And yet, when you think about it, it feels like that should just be obvious and basic.

Simon Guerrier: Well, yeah, yeah, but it’s all stuff nobody tells you, you know?

Nancy Norbeck: Right.

Simon Guerrier: It’s, it’s, it’s. You kind of. She kind of worked it out by doing it, but it’s that idea of what are you in it for? I think that’s really. I mean, these are the sorts of things that really strike me now as a tired old man who’s been in the trenches a long time.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah, but I mean, so many. I’m just thinking there were so many situations, and it’s not even just work situations, you know, it’s family situations, it’s friendships. It’s everything. You know, if everybody involved in any given situation feels like they’re making a contribution and getting something out of it, it just. What are the odds that it’s really gonna go badly wrong? You know, everybody has an incentive to do their part, to contribute, to help out, to make sure that it’s a success. Whereas if you’re just there for the paycheck or just there because you’ve known this person since you were five, but you don’t actually have anything in common or whatever, it doesn’t tend to work out like that.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah. I think. What’s the word? Yeah, that kind of mutual sense of what you’re doing and creativity. I think that’s really essential to creativity. And you can tell, I think, increasingly, I can tell when that’s not there. And it’s why I’ve been talking about this quite a bit about what AI is going to do to the industry. I think it’s going to decimate an awful lot of creative people, but it’s not going to create anything that people want to watch or want to engage with because it doesn’t have that sense of connection. And so, you know, we’re all going to be competing with AI to do our jobs, and then there’s going to be a mystery why this stuff doesn’t land with people. And, you know, why can’t we go back to the good old days when we had movies people wanted to watch, right. You know, but I think it’s fundamental to to what we make and what we respond to is that kind of sense of connection.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. And you can’t connect with chat.

Simon Guerrier: GPT well, it fakes it, but it. Right, but it doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t give you any kind of, you know, when I was a kid and everybody watched doctor who, we were all watching the same things, right? So we had this shared experience, whereas what chat, what these AI things are going to allow you to do is create your own material and content and whatever, but nobody else is going to watch it, right? Because they can just come up with their own. So we’re all going to be noodling off, doing our own things, not looking, not sharing anything, and, you know, just, just seems a bit sad, really.

Nancy Norbeck: It does, it does. And, you know, I’m thinking, like, my brain is going in multiple directions here at the same time. Like, sorry, no, no, it’s not. Not a bad thing and not your fault. Like, there there is I’m very wary of AI, but there are some things that I do find it useful for begrudgingly. And one is a tool where, like, when we’re done here, I can take this audio file and I can upload it into a service that will transcribe it and it will also generate the episode breakdown, which is something that I could never do on my own because it takes too much time and to be perfectly honest, I don’t have the patience. Sometimes it gets things wrong. I have to go in and tweak it, but I can still do that so that it’s there for people who want it. But it will also generate things like a Twitter thread or an Instagram post or whatever. And every once in a while I kind of play with one of those. But honestly, they all sound the same.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: Every single episode is a deep dive into something, you know, it is always the same. And what amazes me is how long it did not take before I was like, oh, it’s generic, it’s just, eh, you know, and so, generally speaking, I pay no attention to that, even though taking that and tweaking it might take me less time than writing something from scratch. It just feels like, no, it’s this, like it wants to just suck me into its boring blandness.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: You know, so, yeah, I mean, and of course, all of this stuff, I mean, first of all, we call chat GPT AI, and it’s not actually intelligent, it’s just a language model, you know?

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: But it’s going to get better. At some point, maybe it will actually have something that resembles intelligence, but until then, I mean, I’m just kind of imagining anything that it would produce for entertainment. It feels like it would still be that boring, bland thing underneath it, and I think you would feel it, just like I feel it when I look at what it thinks I should post on Instagram.

Simon Guerrier: I think the issue is that there was a phase in Hollywood where everybody had read McKee’s story and so you could start watching a film and know exactly where it was going and how it was going to end because it was knocking those pins down and you. And so if you knew it and if you started recognising that, you were just like, oh, okay, I know where this is. It’s not very satisfying. That’s, that’s the thing, right? And I just. Yeah, I, you know, as you say, that AI has loads of uses. It has loads of uses in number crunching. It has loads of uses in spotting stuff in your work that you can spot trends or words or phrases that you use too much. All those kinds of things, they’re very useful. But I think the problem is that there was a guy I saw on social media who said it’s fundamentally missing the point of what creativity is.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah.

Simon Guerrier: But it’s like, it’s like having a machine that can take your dog for a walk and that’s kind of missing the point of having a dog that going out, the going out with the dog is the bit that you have a dog for. If you just replace, why have a dog? Why not just have a picture of a dog? Or why not just get somebody who has a dog to tell you how their dog is doing? The AI is replacing, yes, you go out in the rain, and yes, you have to pick up dog poo, and yes, you have to do all of these things. But all of that is part of the process of the relationship you’re having. Why would you bypass that? And to achieve what? And I just, yeah, you sweat, you know, you sweat over writing stuff, and it can be miserable and it can be whatever, but that’s how you get to the good stuff that isn’t bland and average and, you know, cliche ridden and stuff and isn’t full of dead cliches. And all the. None of this is new. George Orwell was railing against this in the 1940s. And, you know, how do you make your, what you’re writing vivid and connect with people? So I think language models are just the latest iteration of a long trend of, you know, how can we make writing as boring as possible?

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. Well, and to your point, with the dog example, the way that I’ve seen a couple of people put it recently is we want AI to come in and do the laundry and wash the dishes and vacuum the floor so that we can do art. And instead the AI is doing art and we’re still stuck doing the laundry and washing the dishes and all of that. And I think that’s really true, too. I mean, what’s the point of all of this stuff if it’s not going to free us up to do more creative things? Why are we using something that is inherently not able to replicate human creativity, to try to do that when we could be using it more effectively? And I think the cynical answer is, because it makes the tech bros lots of money. But beyond that, I think we need to think about.

Simon Guerrier: But does it, does it make them loads of money? I don’t see any evidence of that. There’s a lot of investment, but that’s not the same as making them a lot of money.

Nancy Norbeck: True.

Simon Guerrier: And I think with social media, you were talking about AI being used to create social media. It was an amazing, absolutely amazing thing. I was thinking about this recently. A few years ago, Frank Oz, who I’m sure you don’t need explaining who that is, but for your listeners, was the voice of Miss Piggy and Yoda in Star wars, and he was also one of Bert and Ernie in Sesame street, and he was on, I think it was Twitter, but something social media, and kind of made an offhand remark that he couldn’t understand why there was a thing that Bert and Ernie were a couple, because that had never been in his and Jim Henson’s heads when they’d done it. So he just didn’t kind of get it because he was like, but that’s not what we had in mind. And some people responded and kind of talked him through it and what it meant to them and what representation meant, and. But, yeah, it does. And in some of these, you know, what your intention was is not necessary the way it’s read or the way it’s whatever. And we had, you know, people have just as much right to interpret stuff and whatever. Really interesting. Took quite a while, but he got it and was then kind of like, oh, I’m rather proud of that. I had no idea we’d done that, but I’m rather proud that we did. And it was a really nice conversation. Really interesting. Loads of people were involved, and every now and again, it veered towards uncomfortable, you know, is this gonna. Is he, is he okay with this? Is he defensive about this? Where’s this going? But it was fine. It was. And so it was a really nice sort of thing to experience. And that’s because that’s real people being able to connect. And the weird thing of going, there’s that guy. He was the voice of the Muppets and Miss Piggy and Yoda and stuff, chatting to just ordinary schmucks like me, or I wasn’t really involved other than reading it, but, you know, just, you have that sense of connection and that sense of thing, and then we all kind of grow from it.

Nancy Norbeck: Yes.

Simon Guerrier: If you automate your tweets or automate your social media messaging, you don’t get that.

Nancy Norbeck: No.

Simon Guerrier: What you get is a kind of thing of people going, oh, I haven’t really connected with. I’m just being sold something. So it’s all one way, and so it’s just a lesser experience. It’s just not as good and also an awful lot. This stuff seems to respond in a way because they want to, because they think engagement means, like, an emotional response. Well, what’s the easiest emotional response to do? Is to annoy people.

Nancy Norbeck: Right.

Simon Guerrier: So you ramp up the tension, and that increases engagement. That seems to be the model. Intentionally or just. That’s a consequence of how they’ve done things. So everybody has a less enjoyable experience.

Nancy Norbeck: Yes.

Simon Guerrier: I don’t know that just seems not the way to go.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. Yeah. Which, as a side note, also mystifies me about the way Twitter is now, because it’s such a, I mean, it’s always kind of been a cesspool, but it’s really, there’s so much in any given random conversation I’ve seen that is people seeming to just want to troll people or annoy people if they’re people I don’t even know, a lot of them probably aren’t. You know, it’s like if you have a platform that can connect you to people in a way like that from all over the world, I would want it to be a place where I could actually have a real conversation and have that kind of connection and learn something, maybe teach somebody something else, all of that. And I feel like that’s kind of where social media started, but it is less and less that over time, which is why I’m enjoying blue sky for as long as it lasts there. But to have an actual real conversation, and there have been some where I either have said something to somebody, I think maybe you’re missing this point about this other thing, and they’re like, oh, yeah, I didn’t see that before, or somebody’s done that with me where I said something and like, oh, okay, okay. I get what you’re saying now. And it’s like, it’s pleasant. You know, I think that, like, we think of online interaction anymore, whether it’s social media or just the comments section of any given article on any given website, as something contentious, you know, don’t. Don’t read the comments, don’t engage. You know, and it’s a shame because we have this thing that can make connections, can educate, can encourage people’s creativity. And it’s an awful lot of the time. That’s not what’s happening with it sometimes, though, and sometimes it’s great when it does.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, I don’t think it’s exclusively Twitter and x. I think social media generally has forums, and I’m old enough to have been on mailing lists and things, and people did not always behave very well. And. But I think there were, there were, and there were definitely challenges that were being faced. But the direction of, I think I had a feeling that the direction of travel was we’re trying to improve things and deal with the issues here and now. My sense is that’s it doesn’t feel like that’s the case anymore. And so people are engaging less. And what you have is actually what happens is people just drop out. They don’t necessarily fight or protest or whatever. They just stop using it or using it less and engaging it with it less. And I think I generally, across social media, I feel that’s a thing even, you know, I’m aware of it myself. I just. I just don’t look as often.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah, I definitely have. Have heard more people saying, you know, I’m sick of social media or, you know, Instagram lately has been getting a lot of hate that I’ve heard. And I will admit that, you know, I kind of have a love hate relationship with it myself. You know, it’s kind of like, yeah.

Simon Guerrier: Okay, I don’t really understand Instagram. I’ve got an Instagram and I have to be reminded to put something on it or to cheque that people have. You know, I met somebody in, when we were at Gallifrey in February. It was a slightly embarrassing thing where somebody had sent me a message to say, can we meet up? And would that be okay? And then, because I had just completely not looked at Instagram, they thought I was kind of blackballing them or just whatever. No, no. I’m just an old man who doesn’t really understand computers.

Nancy Norbeck: Isn’t it great to have that to fall back on? Yeah. Every once in a while, a friend will send me something on Instagram and it’s usually a story that has disappeared long before I ever even saw that the message was there. So, yeah, not the best way to find me. Yeah. But it is interesting, though, because, you know, there, like I said, there are so many creative connections to be made with all of this stuff. And, you know, I’d like to see us do more of that.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there was a time, I think. I think in the early days of Twitter, I went to see a screening of the first episode of the tv series being human just before it was broadcast. And I wrote a little thing about that on my blog, which, you know, like, six people would read, but I tweeted a link to it. And within about a week, one of the editors at BBC books said, I like your post. We’re thinking of doing books. Do you want to do a being human book? Yes, I do. And I went to a meeting where one of the producers on being human had read what I’d written because it got a bit of. A few people had tracked it on Twitter and stuff. So I got a job off it, off a tweet, which hasn’t really happened in a long time. That’s what I miss.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ve found guests on Twitter and had great conversations both on Twitter and on the podcast, which isn’t quite the same thing, but sort of in the same vein. I mean, I think there are so many people doing so many cool things in the world, and you can’t possibly keep up with all of them, know all of them, anything like that. But you can meet some of them. You know, you can connect with some of them. Whether it’s somebody calling you, saying, do you wanna write a book? Or it’s somebody who just says, hey, you know what? I really like this art that you did, and I’m writing a book and I don’t have a publisher, and I’m probably gonna self publish it. But can we talk about maybe what you think and how it might work and brainstorm off of each other or whatever like that? There’s so much potential for that kind of thing if we can all stop arguing with each other long enough to do it.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to get too down on it. But, yeah, it. Something does seem to have changed quite significantly, and it’s just a shame, really. Anyway, sorry. Sorry, but what a tangent that was.

Nancy Norbeck: It’s okay. I mean, I think it’s an interesting thing to discuss, especially because it does sort of seem like, you know, you have this choice in your life. I mean, you’ve got a million choices, but fundamentally, you have a choice between spending your time getting angry about stuff or spending your time deciding you’re going to do stuff that you love, that lights you up, that may or may not ever be seen by somebody else. And I think maybe we shouldn’t be making the second choice a whole lot more. You know, I think there are so many people who are like, I’m not creative. Like, when was the last time you gave yourself a chance to be, you know, when was the last time you sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a poem or drew a sketch or something, and it gets lost?

Simon Guerrier: I also think. I don’t know. Anybody who finds it easy is the thing, but also, it’s because the whole point is that you’re trying to make it good, right? So, you know, it’s not that it’s difficult to put anything on the page. It’s putting something on the page that you’re happy with. That takes effort, but, you know, when you’ve done it and. Yeah, so that’s. That’s the. You know, that’s. That’s the thing. You should all be kind of focused on, and maybe it should be hard. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t really know how else you kind of, as I say, all the things that I do it for, all the things that I write and I’m involved in, I do, because they’re creatively satisfying. And putting a instruction into a bot just doesn’t, you know, I’m not very satisfied by the things.

Nancy Norbeck: Too easy.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, well, it’s not even that. It’s just, it’s just, there’s nothing to it. There’s no, it just doesn’t, I can’t, it kind of isn’t nourishing enough, I think.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah.

Simon Guerrier: And, um, you know, there’s lot, there’s lots of things like researching. If you can use an online archive of one, sort of another, um, digital archives, you know, like newspaper archives, and you’re looking stuff up, you, you have to be quite creative to find stuff. And I’m sure that algorithms and stuff can be improved so that you can find things more easily and that will help research stuff. But even that, you feel quite clever when you follow the thread and come up with some goals and stuff. All of those things, you know, I just, I just miss if they were gone. Right.

Nancy Norbeck: There’s something, it takes effort, and it takes courage, especially to face a blank page, especially if you’re telling yourself that everything that you put on that blank page has to be brilliant, which it almost never is on the first go. But also, there’s just such a sense of satisfaction, even if you don’t show it to anybody else. It’s like, hey, I did this thing, I drew this bird, I wrote this poem, I took this photo, whatever it was, you had to put some effort and some imagination and some thought and some of you into it. And even if your bird is terrible, you’re still ahead of the person who didn’t draw a bird.

Simon Guerrier: I think it’s. Yes. I kind of start out going, well, this is terrible, what do I do? And then there comes a point where I’m happy to show it to someone, and that’s the kind of level that I feel that I reach. And then there are times when you kind of where you can kind of take pride in something you’ve done and you feel that you’ve got it. And I don’t understand why you want to buy, it’s just not how I work. Why would you want to bypass that?

Nancy Norbeck: Um, right. There’s no satisfaction in giving chat GPT a prompt and watching it spit stuff out at you.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: I mean, unless you’re deliberately doing it to laugh at what it produces. Maybe, but you didn’t actually write that. You know, you gave it a prompt, but you didn’t do anything to make it happen.

Simon Guerrier: My suspicion is that the technology is very exciting when you first use it, but loses its lustre very quickly. And that’s the problem for investors. I mean, I’m not the first person to say this, but these products have been around for months for what, a year?

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah, roughly.

Simon Guerrier: Have we seen anything that’s considered game changing come out of them? All of these people experimenting with them, nothing of it really resonates, whereas, you know, you see a World Cup trailer for something or a poster for a film or something that gets your heart racing, and you’re like, oh, a book cover or, you know, some artwork or something, and it just, and it, it reaches through. That’s. That’s the kind of. Yeah, I I think, um. And that’s, that’s the issue for the investors, is how do you, how do you show the value of it? And I’m. I think it’s kind of fundamentally missing what the relationships are within the creative process.

Nancy Norbeck: Well, and it’s missing the authenticity that comes from a human being sitting down and making something that they like, you know, I mean, it’s what I write, and what you write from the same prompt are never going to be the same thing, you know, and that’s also true. You could probably give chat GPT the same prompt five times and get five different things, but I’ll bet you a lot of it would be the same, but it doesn’t have that. I’m not even sure what the right word is. Like, the spark, the energy, the human ness. There’s something under something that’s created by a human that the machine just can’t replicate, even if its sentences are perfect.

Simon Guerrier: It’s just, I also think. I also think there’s, you know, if you see a bit of artwork that you really like, my immediate response is that is go, who is this person? What else have they done?

Nancy Norbeck: Right?

Simon Guerrier: And you kind of further engage, or, you know, I like this film. Is there anything else? What’s like this or something? But what you’re actually hoping for is something that creates the same kind of feeling inside you to relive that experience. And, yeah, I don’t see how that’s going to, how that’s going to be replicated, but maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe we’ll all be amazed by what it can do. I just don’t see it there now. And I don’t see I don’t really see how we get from where we are now to what’s being promised, because it’s not there. And it doesn’t seem part of what they’re interested in. I think, you know, what I am seeing is things like AI created book covers and things, and they’re putting people I know out of work. So that’s a concern. I’m seeing pitches with writing. The big problem is how much commissioning editors are getting a slew of AI generated stuff. And my sense is that what the proponents of AI want is one of these things to get through the editorial process. And that will be proof of concept that, you know, look, we fooled an editor, but what it means is the editors are just wading through loads and loads of this stuff, and it’s and it’s just really time consuming. So what it actually does is it makes the logistics of doing a magazine much harder, or, you know, whatever, a publication much harder. So basically it makes the mechanics of actually producing this stuff as a whole harder. And, you know, again, I find that very difficult because it’s what is your what is the goal of this technology?

Nancy Norbeck: Right?

Simon Guerrier: Surely not to surely not to shut down these creative outlets? That’s that’s yeah, so it’s having so it’s the effect of it is having these these side effects, which are just. Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: And I think it’s devaluing the art too, because they can get it for free, right? I mean, I was told a couple of months ago that entry level writing jobs are drying up because companies are just saying, why do we need to pay somebody if we can just put it into chat?

Simon Guerrier: GPT yeah, yeah, I’ve seen some of that. I think also there’s things like entry level jobs. I used to work for a company quite a long time ago, but they paid, effectively, interns and recently graduated students to come in and do odd jobs. And one of the odd jobs they would do is if you did an interview, you would hand over the recording to the interns and they would type it up and they would transcribe it. But then you would go through with them their transcription to point out things that they’d missed or misunderstood or whatever. And then also, once you’ve written up whatever the feature or whatever you’re using it for, you’d kind of show them what you’d done and how you swapped the order around or what the kind of process was. So they learned, and they learn on the job by doing this job by doing the kind of menial bit of transcribing. What I found in doing that process was it made me think about the things I’d been doing kind of subconsciously in terms of editing and, yeah, making a story out of something that people had said, and how when you’re going through the transcript, what somebody said to you in person comes across very differently on the page. So how you retain their voice, but how you also retain the meaning of what they said, even if the words don’t quite connect to that. So I learned by having somebody else involved in the process. Now, you know, AI generated transcripts and stuff. I do use them because I can’t afford an intern, and it takes me a long time. But you do miss that, those bits of process and stuff. So it’s by squeezing the way these things are done, something is lost. And as you say, these are entry level jobs, so there’s fewer people who are learning to do these things.

Nancy Norbeck: Who’s going to fill the next level when there’s nobody below them to, yeah. Come up and do it.

Simon Guerrier: And, you know, and so what has been suggested to me is that maybe the material, the sort of raw material, will be submitted by AI, but then you’ll have editors, human editors, who give it a pass and get it out. But how are the editors being trained to do that? What is their experience in dealing with copy and these things? And then there’s legal things about what happens if you put out something that’s not true.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah.

Simon Guerrier: What happens if. What happens if you put out something that’s libellous? Who, who is responsible for that?

Nancy Norbeck: I don’t know if you’ve heard about the story that the city of New York created a chatbot to. I don’t know exactly what kind of information it was supposed to offer, but it was telling people that they could do things that were illegal.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: You know, so we’re already seeing that. And so how, how did that happen?

Simon Guerrier: Well, you know, when I was starting out as a journalist, this stuff used to come up when people were talking about cost cutting in newsroom, that if you cut the editorial process, things went out, and then it was much more expensive for the publications because they had to pay damages.

Nancy Norbeck: Right.

Simon Guerrier: These are the same kind of conversations. These are the same kind of issues. It’s not, it’s not a new phenomena. It’s just a new way of doing it.

Nancy Norbeck: Yeah. Which is interesting, because does that mean that we’re just being alarmist about AI? If all of this has always been a question, or does it mean that it’s just a longstanding issue that nobody’s really addressed.

Simon Guerrier: I think the problem is that there’s definitely a sense of technology can solve things, but you kind of have to understand what the problems are and what the issues are. And actually, there’s quite a lot of precedent for an awful lot of things that are being discussed, but they’re not technology, you know, because those issues aren’t framed within technology. They’re not kind of part of the conversation, I think. But, yeah, I mean, really, you should be designing these things with the people who work in the industry about how do you make things work better. But I’m not necessarily sure that’s what’s.

Nancy Norbeck: Happening and what do they need and how do they want to use it, all of that kind of stuff. And it also fascinates me, you know, as someone like you who has spent a lot of time reading and watching a lot of science fiction, you know, there is definitely that part of me that’s like, I don’t know, did you guys watch Battlestar Galactica and see what happened with the silos? You know, it’s like, generally speaking, science fiction does not have a great view of what happens when artificial intelligence takes over. And maybe it’s, you know, not predicting the future, but maybe it’s a cautionary tale that gives us things to think about. And, I don’t know, it does make me wonder, though, because that is where my brain defaults. You know, I kind of go back to, there’s a million stories that tell you why this is a bad idea or why it might.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah. It’s also bureaucracy, isn’t it? It’s just that kind of faceless bureaucracy and everything to be decided by the numbers. That’s not, it’s not very good for people. It dehumanises people. Yeah, it’s never good, but, yeah. And yet, on the other hand, technology means that we could be having this conversation.

Nancy Norbeck: Yes. It’s such an interesting contrast. It really is. Yeah. There’s no way I could do this podcast without the level of technology that we have now. Yeah, there’s just no way. So it’s going to be interesting to see where it goes.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. We’re kind of meandered into a. I know. Science fiction place now.

Nancy Norbeck: We have. And I’m just wondering before we go, you know, what are you up to next? I know you have a book that is pretty recent, the David Whittaker book.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah. So I wrote a biography of David Whittaker. He was the first story editor of Doctor who, was a man who commissioned the Daleks. He wrote more Doctor who in the 1960s than anybody else and also did the first books and annuals and stage play and stuff. So he’s all over everything. And I originally planned that to be a 5000 word article for Dotsu magazine and it got madly out of hand and ended up as a 180,000 word book. And it’s been amazing because I’ve worked on it for six years and it’s come out and is doing very well, which is very gratifying. But off the back of it I’ve discovered all sorts of things about obscure television from the 1950s and sixties and I’ve been talking to people who, I’ve just been in contact with a guy whose mother was one of David Whittaker’s early girlfriends. Wow. So he could tell me a bit about that, including that there’s a photo of his mum in my book which is amazing. And so following some threads from that and kind of continuing with research on some things, I’ve got a few things that might lead to something. I’m kind of in that early stage of following some threads and seeing if there’s a story to be told, which is exciting. And then I’ve got a regular gig on Doctor who magazine. So I am talking to a lot of the cast and crew about how things are done and behind the scenes stuff, which is really fun and then various other bits just keeping me going, writing about stuff and whatever. It’s weird. I don’t know how it is for you, but my freelance life is feast or famine. You know, it goes at two speeds, which is everything all at once or nothing. And this time last year I was in a nothing stage kind of going how am I going to make everything work out? And then since about September, it has been crazy busy, which is good, but yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck: Well that’s great though. I’m always curious to see what everybody’s coming up with and what comes next after that. So, yeah, I will have to, I don’t know, is the David Whitaker book out in the US or is it just in the UK?

Simon Guerrier: Well, so it’s a UK publisher, but it has been available in the, okay. Us. It was, it was, it was available. There’s a, is there a who North America distributor? Is that what it’s called?

Nancy Norbeck: There’s a company called Who North America?

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, yeah. I think, I think, I think I might. It’s not really my apartment. I just do the typing. It’s somebody else’s job to send it out, but that has been available there. It’s available for mail order things. The trouble is, I am aware it is a big, heavy book and it costs quite I have sent some copies to the US and I think it cost as much to buy the book as it did to post it.

Nancy Norbeck: Oh, I can see that.

Simon Guerrier: Yeah, I’m not quite sure. There have been conversations about what we could do about that, but I’m not sure that anybody solved it yet. But they took loads of copies out to the Gallifrey One convention in February and it sold out, which was amazing.

Nancy Norbeck: That’s fantastic. I’m not surprised. I’ll have to keep an eye out for it. So in any case, thanks so much. This has been a really interesting conversation.

Simon Guerrier: Thank you.

Nancy Norbeck: That’s our show. Thanks so much to Simon Guerrier for joining me and to you for listening. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, so it’s really easy and will only take a minute. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programmes for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow your curious follow curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like follow your curiosity. Please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.