Fast Company at SXSW and Netflix's 3 Body Problem
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies. ♪

On today's episode, Max Uffberg on this past weekend at South by Southwest. Guardrails. And the reason you keep beating the drum is because nothing's happening as far as like real game-changing guardrails. The showrunners of Game of Thrones on their new Netflix series, Three-Body Problem. We love these books and yeah, there are a lot of hardcore fans, but part of the reason for that is because the books are fucking great. And as always, keeping tabs. Take a class in Canva, Kate Middleton. But first, here's the download.

the news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation.

Just about every major social media platform had an outage last week. Meta Platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads went out for two hours on Tuesday. Devastating. Yeah, devastating that we lost Threads. It was on an election day, no less. And Reddit was also down on Wednesday, and Truth Social went down on Thursday, right in the middle of a truth storm. I don't even know what... A truthing storm from...

Trump about the State of the Union still makes no sense. Democracy dies in darkness. Democracy dies in darkness, of course. I mean, just really shocking that the infrastructure of truth couldn't withstand. Russian hackers. Yet somehow X was not affected. Yeah, you'd think Russian hackers owned X and Truth Social. Anyway.

Anyways, the outages, of course, sparked a wide array of conspiracy theories, although they had to wait a little bit on certain platforms while they were out. But there is no evidence of anything nefarious. The same can't be said for what's going on with the royal family at the moment.

No, it cannot. Maybe we'll get into that in Keeping Tabs. Speaking of nefarious actions against tech companies, we got an update on the Microsoft hack from a couple months ago. To remind you what happened, two months ago, Microsoft announced that Russian-backed hackers managed to get into their corporate emails.

Now Microsoft is saying that the hackers who call themselves Midnight Blizzard also successfully stole from Microsoft's source code. This only makes future attacks easier. Such a cool name for those hacker groups. Such a cool name. Next up, Wagovi has been approved for more uses beyond weight loss.

On Friday, the FDA cleared the drug to be used in reducing the risk of stroke, heart attack, and other cardiovascular issues for people who are overweight. So that's pretty cool. I passed a Wigovic Clinic like on my way here today. Yeah. I thought that was like a broken brain New York thing. Yeah, you would think so, but it's a broken brain Austin thing too.

TikTok sent push notifications last Thursday to users urging them to call Congress and push back against a new bill introduced last week. Welcome to the resistance, TikTok. The bipartisan bill would ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, doesn't divest itself from the app.

And finally, the 96th annual Academy Awards were held on Sunday night. Oppenheimer was, unsurprisingly, the big winner of the night, taking home the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and two others I cannot remember and did not bother to write down. Bradley Cooper was robbed, am I right? Meister did not win a single thing. I know, you were so happy. But at what cost? A guest from last week, Ali Carrieri, texted me and asked...

Is Josh so happy this morning? I am. I am. I thought we all know my feelings on Maestro and Bradley Cooper. But anyways, my favorite film from this last cycle, Poor Things, did have one good win. Poor Things was really good. Emma Stone won Best Actress, which is great.

But I can't stop thinking about Ryan Gosling's performing of I'm Just Ken. I need to go watch it now. It's really, like, I want to be, like, cynical about things, but it's just really delightful and joyful. And, like, the choreography is amazing. Well, he can sing and dance. Oh, yeah. He really brought it. I mean, it's not like he's not Pavarotti, but, like...

He's not a power. He can sell. Ryan Gosling is no power. Listen, hey, I've said hot take. Ryan Gosling's no Pavarotti or Andrea Bocelli. Although I would see him do the prayer with Margot Robbie. I don't know. Him and Emma Stone in the biopic of Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. You're such a Broadway nerd. That's the news you need to know today.

This past weekend, Fast Company hosted a three-day event as part of South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. I moderated a bunch of panels. Josh was down here producing podcasts. And best friend of the pod, wow, Jeff Beer Erasure. Jeff Beer Erasure. Max Upberg also moderated a number of panels, notably my personal favorite, AI in the Workplace.

And he's here to recap our weekend at the Fast Company Grill. Hey, Max. Hey, Yaz. Hey, Josh. And we're all here in person, by the way. Hey. Here at the JW Marriott. I know. This mic. Down in Austin. It's amazing. Do you have a mic at home? No. Are you like breathing extra because you're excited? I think I am. I'm like...

I'm like a small dog. Okay, so this is going to be a little different from how we normally do our shows. The majority of this episode will be my panel from this past Saturday with David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Alexander Wu, and Derek Tsang. But let's spend a few minutes talking about our favorite moments from South By, or at least the most interesting moments.

Max, I want to start with your panel on tech regulation. Who is on your panel and what did you discuss? We had Francis Haugen, we had A.V. Philly, who is the Global Policy Director at Credo AI, and we had Philip Martin, who is Coinbase's Chief Security Officer. Did they say anything beyond the fact that AI might be dangerous?

Is AI bad? I mean, we talked about the need for AI regulation on a federal level. I mean, there is, you know, and we talked about this, there have been a bunch of early attempts on a state level to regulate AI. So like 12 states or so have tried to enact laws regulating like AI in hiring to sort

sort of combat bias, whether that's working. I'm going to sidetrack us on all of this state regulation stuff because I'm going to ask a dumb question about it. But is it even remotely possible at this point to expect state or federal regulators to, with nuance, regulate AI? I mean, I just remember the Facebook panels from years ago with Orrin Hatch. If everyone remembers those, maybe we drop in the...

It's an ad. We sell ads, sir. Or like Chuck Schumer is like the majority leader and he famously doesn't use a smartphone. I think to your point, the average age – I don't know why I know this off the top of my head. The average age of a member of the Senate is 65.

Yeah, it's a gerontocracy out there. Yeah, even beyond just like the age, like just it's such a weedy thing. Well, I will say... We're just like very fast moving. I mean, there are two ways to look at it. One is that they're still not doing enough to regulate AI to match the speed at which the tech is progressing. That's true. It is also true it's

been better than social media. The AI Bill of Rights, President Biden's executive order on AI, those things aren't going to really move the needle, but it is a start, I think, in a way that we hadn't seen even prior. So there's the lawmakers, but then there are also the kind of like rank and file staffers. So look at like the FTC, right, where Alina Khan, the FTC chair, has been pretty eager to regulate AI. The problem is, and we didn't

quite get into it at this level on the panel, but there just aren't enough bodies at the FTC to do this. You would need new staffing. You might need a whole new division, some kind of whole new regulatory body. It did seem like AI was the dominant topic of conversation out there. Is that fair to say? Yeah, and actually a panelist who I spoke with on a different panel, also on AI, Anish Rahman, who is at LinkedIn,

We talked about how it's almost like Web 3 a couple years ago where AI is the topic of the day at South by Southwest, but there's a lot of fluff out there now in terms of the conversations. It's kind of repetitive. We're sort of having the same conversation now

at least on some of these stages that we had last year. Yeah, it's like, oh, there are upsides to AI and downsides. Yeah. And we must develop best practices. And even, I mean, just talking about guardrails. I mean, I moderated a panel that talked about this stuff. And the reason you keep beating the drum is because nothing's happening as far as like,

real game-changing guardrails, but it does have the effect of like we're all just screaming into the wind here. Josh, what were some highlights for you aside from the AI in the workplace panel? Oh,

Well, yeah, AI in the workplace panel. Hard to talk. You know what? I did not see it in real time, actually. Let me just say that after our panel wrapped... Did somebody tell you good job? No. Yes. Well, no, no. But the sound guy came over and said to Anish, actually, and I overheard, he said, I've listened to every single panel and that was the best one at South By. Oh, okay.

at your- - That's very nice. - So, Yazd. - Shots fired at Yazd's four panels. - There's always next year. - I'm not getting invited again. - I do have to say, literally the conversation being about AI, it's not even just on stage. I swear to God, I've overheard just dozens of conversations about AI. I was at the fairgrounds getting lunch earlier today and I heard someone say, "I showed a client ChatGPT and it was like they saw the face of God."

But compare it to prior South by South or whatever conference, at least AI... It's not the metaverse. I was going to say, it's actually tangible in the sense that it really is changing the workplace really quickly. It is, yeah. We're about to lose our jobs. Oh, for sure. We'll be on the panel circuit. I've been told. The sound guy would love to have me back. Not in charge of booking. Yeah.

Compared to when everybody had a Web3 play. At least this is like, okay, there's money, there's action. This is, I mean, at the risk of sounding like another annoying tech person. This is the most seismic shift we've seen, I think. It's annoying, but it makes more sense to me. No, the shouting in the wind is warranted.

You know what I mean? Like in the same, not in the same way, but in the same potential like seismic and possibly cataclysmic events is like climate change. Right. And that sort of shit. It's going to change the way our day-to-day lives work for better and for worse. And there needs to be guardrails, guys. That's why I'm glad we have this podcast.

Exactly. Spread the message.

to a full extent but it's like so hard to get your arms around for any one journalist any one publication um or institution it's really it's overwhelming it really is it's also so

ubiquitous and varied. Yeah, like machine learning has been around forever, but that's actually AI too. You know what I mean? It's such like a broad term for smart computers. Yeah, I mean, I guess what specifically we're talking about is generative AI.

in this case. Yeah, is that, am I wrong? I don't know. What is this? Language models, generative AI. But I think beyond that. Semi-glute high. Josh, what were some of the highlights for you? I saw Cybertruck in this.

Okay. Cybertruck and the Chili's and the famous Chili's. My first time in Austin saw a Cybertruck for the first time. Max has been touting that like they're actually cooler than- I better chime in here to clear the record. I don't think they're cool.

All I'm saying is when you go, like when you're, I live in Austin, when you're driving down the street and you see like a Ford Focus and then something from Tron, that's crazy. And it's kind of cool. It is crazy. I don't know if it's kind of cool. I think it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I really want, I'm dying to meet a guy who owns a Cybertruck and just be like, big dick. Because you know it's a guy. Oh yeah. You throwing down, bro. Yeah.

But I did show you guys a cool side of Austin. We got great tacos. You did? Great tacos in Austin. Shout out to Nixta. That place was great. That was great. Yeah, we went to a taqueria here. So thanks for showing us the lay of the land. Yeah, I mean, we talked about the AI panels. Yaz, I'll let you talk about some of your panels I saw. Jose Andres was here and did a little video with us, which will come out on Fast Company and Tease, and also was on stage for a fireside chat for a panel. And he was terrific. He was on his feet screaming at the crowd.

It was very intense, but very rousing and talking about his humanitarian work and all of that stuff. So that was a good highlight. Yeah, I mean, it's my first time being at South by Southwest ever. So I was kind of struck with how,

energized the city is in a way I wasn't completely expecting. I gotta say it's way cooler than Web Summit or CES. I was gonna say I was just at CES no offense but I do think South by is as far as like these conferences go I think it's actually a really good one. Yeah. It is it is pretty cool over there right on par with Fast Company Innovation Festival. Hey honestly well I think to me

Like so much of it is navigability. Yeah. You can walk around the city. You can walk around Austin. And like CES, I mean, you just can't walk around downtown Vegas. You have to go through the casinos. And it's like. That's kind of fun. That is kind of interesting. It gets so, like what should be a six minute walk will take, and I'm not exaggerating, it'll take a half hour. That's because you stopped to gamble. That is true. Lose everything. That is true. You have to call your wife. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I do want to, it's just speaking of festivals, I do want to check out Sundance though. That would be the other one that I think would be really fun. Sundance is so fun also because you can ski and see movies. Yeah. See, that would be. And I'm like a horrible skier. Oh, I've skied once in my entire life, but I want to get into it. I've skied twice. Anyways, coming to Sundance. But anyways, yeah, it was overall just big picture. Very impressed by the event. And I really like this city.

Yeah. And I didn't think I would. I really like Austin. It's cool. I had to lighten the mood from the AI talk. So Cybertruck, dumb but striking. Okay. And South by Southwest, good time. Good time. Great. Yeah. What about you? What were some highlights? You did a number of panels. Yeah. You'll listen to the three body problem panel soon. But I really appreciated the panelist candor.

I love it when you interview somebody who's just able to really answer things head on. You know, this morning, the day we're recording this, I interviewed the CEO of Beyond Meat. I would say... I don't know if they're going to be on the show anytime soon. I will just say that. No, it was a good interview. I do want to couch that with there. But you asked some pushback. Didn't love answering questions head on. No. Didn't like talking about the protein in his meat. This is kind of a thing at events. Like if you go to events and you see panels on stage...

I'm going to be honest, our events included. People kind of say what they want to say regardless of what the question is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. And it's tougher for panelists to push back on that in real time because we don't really have the benefit of editing live.

Like we have the, like on this podcast, we have the benefit of like being able to kind of like regroup and maybe come back at a question or not in a way that is like removing the spirit of what someone said. But like we have the, because we know we're gonna edit, we can like pause and

stop and gather our thoughts as interviewers and talking to people and edit out those pauses. We kind of have technical issues. My go-to always when I get a little flustered and I'm on the road is I say, oh, there was a microphone issue or oh, I have to change the batteries on my recorder. So it's hard. So a lot of the time you get really kind of like

conversations on stage at panels, but I was really impressed that you kind of didn't let Ethan Brown just fall back into his sales pitch. I don't know that I would give myself too much credit there. I just felt irritated when he was like, you asked the question. I was like, that is not the question I asked. Yeah. You know, I was like, don't put that on me. Look, it was a highlight for me. I would say possibly not a highlight for... He was a little annoyed. Are you a beyond or impossible? I...

I'm a beyond girl because I haven't eaten meat in, you know, 15 years. Like I ate chicken and fish, but not red meat. And then when you have Impossible, it tastes so much like red meat that it like, like I feel ill, like it feels freaky. But Impossible is the bigger brand, right? Of the two? I think they're neck and neck. They're pretty close. Yeah. Oh, here I was thinking you were a beyond girl in an impossible world, but far from it.

How about... Wait, are you a Beyond guy? Honestly, I'd rather just have vegetables than have any meat alternative. I can get down with an Impossible Burger. I mean, it's not like an all-the-time thing, but like...

Like, because I am like a red meat person, like I do crave like a burger sometimes. But like I do like worry about the, you know, climate implications of beef industry overall. So I'll try to like switch out. But it's like then half the time I end up being like, well, I'll just get a turkey burger or something like that or there. But I try to, I like it.

Impossible burger every once in a while. I'm not a big Beyond Meat fan, actually. When it's grilled, it's pretty good. Otherwise... I don't think I can tell a difference between the two. Impossible tastes more like red meat to me. Yeah. Interesting. Which is why I prefer it. I mean, I do think both of them... There was a time where I was eating Impossible or Beyond, like, maybe not every meal, but a lot. And then you... I mean, they're not healthy. Healthy.

Like, they're loaded with... Well, Ethan may beg to differ, but yeah. I don't think they're any less healthy than, like, a red meat burger, but they're not somehow... Yeah, but they're not, like, more healthy. Yeah. Which is not really the point, I guess, but they kind of walk that line.

To me, it's like if you present, and this was actually a lesson from the sustainability panel I hosted yesterday with some people from Backmarket and Unify, which is the value proposition for something like for an alternative product has to be, this product actually tastes just as good or better as meat, is competitively priced, and like happens to be good for the environment. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think they're not quite there yet. The pricing is...

Going up? Their latest earnings report said they were going to, they were like, oh, our company's not doing well, but don't worry, we're going to fire a bunch of people and increase the price of our product. It was like, good. Godspeed. Once we actually get commercially available lab-grown meat. Like lab-grown meat? Yeah, that could cause, but I mean, lab-grown meat from like a scalability standpoint

standpoint is tough. I mean, but the approvals are coming through, which is great. But I know like at least when these are stats from a while ago when I did a report for WNYC on lab-grown meat in like 2017, 2018,

They're supposed to be able to produce the same amount of meat lab-grown with 2% of the land use as traditional meat and poultry farming. But the biggest problem right now is just getting the textural composition right.

of the meats there. Yeah. So it's not like smooth. Um, it's gotten a lot better. Like back, back when I first started like covering lab grown meat, it was just meat goo. Like that's basically what it was. Have either before, you know,

You know, before we get to it. I don't know. This is exactly what the people want to hear. Before, you know, we're going to get to my conversation with Throne Showrunners talking about Three-Body Problem. I wanted to ask you, have you read the book? Three-Body Problem? I have not. Wow. Disappointing. Yeah, I know. Well, after watching the panel, I want to. I mean, I've been aware of the book for a while because I do like sci-fi. Like, it is a go-to thing. I read the first book.

I need to read the second and third. David Benioff told me they only get better. I had screeners for the series though. I've started it and I am enjoying it. I think it's, you know, they changed not the spirit of the book, but they changed the plot of the book in pretty substantial ways. And I'm really curious how people are going to react. You know, I'm for that though, because I mean, one, I guess I am happy that more like books are getting adapted into series versus being adapted into movies because that's such a medium shift.

But it's still like a very big shift in medium. What you can do in books is going to be, and not better or worse, but it's just going to be different in a series. So I think it's almost better to go

strictly adaptation versus completely like it's thinking we're going to do a page to page to screen I think there's actually a Chinese page to screen version I tried watching it's like 30 episodes long they talk about it in the conversation a little bit and it's too faithful to the book it makes very little sense yeah it's just it doesn't quite work music

We're going to take a quick break, followed by my conversation with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, True Blood executive producer Alexander Wu, and director Derrit Tsang about their new show, The Three-Body Problem. ♪

First of all, I hope you know where you are. This is our panel about Netflix's The Three-Body Problem. And before I get the guests to introduce themselves, I do have a couple questions for the audience. Who here has read the book or the trilogy? Okay. And was anyone at the premiere last night? Okay, we got one. I hope you're recovering okay. Okay.

I hate talking for people, so I'm going to get you all to introduce yourselves. And David, why don't we go with you first? I am David Benioff. I'm Dan Weiss. Well, that was loud. I'm Alex Wu. I am Derek Zhang. So I made a joke backstage about asking these guys to summarize Three Body Problem in a minute or less. And Alex, I heard that you can summarize it. It's got to be Alex. If I do it, we'll be here all day.

in one sentence. - I think the three body problem series is the story of humanity from the point of first contact with an alien civilization all the way to the end of the universe. - All right, cool. So not too much to tackle, right?

Alex, let's stick with you first. I want to talk about how you decided to interpret the source material. You shuffled some of it around, changed some of the characters. Tell me about that decision. Well, this is a decision we all came to simultaneously from the same angle, which is we wanted to preserve the most important thing, the feeling and the spirit of what it's like to read that novel. And when you read those novels, it is this feeling of wonder and awe.

that comes across you, you have no idea what's coming next. It starts off as historical fiction and then sometimes it's a mystery and then where's the science fiction come in? And then it hits you and then all comes together in this really satisfying way and surprises you at all turns. So that to us was the most important core thing to keep at the center of it. When we met with Sishin Liu,

He had the same idea, which was great. It was very, you know, it was heartening to hear from him. He said, I understand that television is not books. These are two different mediums and you're going to have to make some changes. And he gave us his blessing, which was a wonderful thing to hear. But the experience of reading a novel and watching a television series are two very, very different things. And when you adapt from one medium to another, it's not as easy as just cutting and pasting. Yeah.

Dan, tell me about working with the author. How much input did he have? This all happened during the pandemic and he was in China.

Right. So we sadly didn't get to spend nearly as much time with him as we would have liked. I mean, part of the thing we were really looking forward to was being able to go over there and really put in some quality time with him. The meeting that Alex talked about on Zoom, where he was like this big because it was in a big conference room with a translator. That was the only time we ever really got to sit down with him.

David, the books have some pretty hardcore fans online. I'm curious how you thought about fan reaction or how you think about it, how it factored into your adaptation. I mean, we've survived, you know. We've gone through some shit and we're still here and we learned that Twitter might...

hurt but it's not going to kill you so uh we love these books and yeah there are a lot of hardcore fans but part of the reason for that is because the books are great and they're unlike anything else we'd ever read and that was what really excited i think all three of us was we're living in an era where there are 800 different tv shows on and in every genre there are 45 different examples and these books we read and we're like it's going to be really hard to adapt these it's going to be a really difficult uh thing to accomplish but if we get there

we're pretty confident this show won't look like anything else. And so that was the motivation behind it, and we can live with the hate. I like that. Derek, I'll turn to you for this one. Throughout the book, there's a lot of Chinese characters, but the cast of this series is more international. Tell me how you thought about that. I felt it was very natural because we're doing an international show, so...

there needs to be a lot of adaptation and revision to the original characters in the story. So it was never an issue for me because I felt like David, Dan and Alex, they already did their best in keeping the most essential Chinese element in the story and the most important characters. So for me, it came from very natural. Yeah.

Derek, I want to stick with you. It's obvious to me that there were a lot of writing challenges adapting these books, but I imagine there were some pretty hard set pieces to film. I'm thinking about getting the lighting right on three different sunsets. What were some of the most difficult elements of production? The game is definitely difficult, but I think the hardest thing for us that we pulled through was recreating China in the 60s in London. So...

In a parking lot. In a parking lot, yes. So I think that was the hardest part, but we really threw our mind and heart into it, and then I think it really shows in the show that we spent a lot of time and effort into making it as authentic as possible. Alex has a story. I was just thinking about when you showed that scene. Oh, God. To both my mother and my daughter? Mostly of your mother, since she lived through it. You could leave the daughter part out as well. The show starts...

at the same place that the English language translation of the first novel starts, which is during the Cultural Revolution. And that is a brutal scene. You know, Derek gets really all the credit for this because he was so meticulous in bringing that back to life because, you know, you felt the responsibility of filming something that has not been shown on film very much at all.

and certainly not in this level of detail. We had people, since we were shooting in England, not everyone, not all the extras were native Mandarin speakers. And we had people leading the chants and phonetically so that it would sound like...

huge crowd of tens of thousands of people chanting. When we finally cut it all together and had a finished sequence there, I showed it to my mother who lived through the Cultural Revolution. She watched it, she was very still and a chill came over her and she said, "That's real, that's what really happened." And then she said, "Why would you show anyone that? Why would you make people want to watch that?"

At least I took away from the first part that that was something that we got right if my mother approved of it. Dan, there's another Chinese production of Three-Body Problem that I'll be honest is fantastic.

a little too faithful to the books or very confusing to me. We were thinking about this. We knew from the beginning going into this that we only had the rights to the English language adaptation because they were doing a simultaneous Chinese language adaptation. That's all we knew. And thinking about it, we were talking the other day that it's

It's a pretty rare, it's like almost if you're a film student or if you're a film enthusiast, like the same source material is being adapted at the same time and is out there on the air at the same time.

with two completely in two different languages with two totally different approaches to the material. One of them, the Chinese language version is very faithful to the book. It's a chapter and verse adaptation of the first book. I think it's probably about 30 episodes long. It goes very deep into the details of the book. And ours, by definition,

had to be and wanted to be a much more, a more adapted version for a global international show. I would actually be really interested to hear, and I'm sure it'll get out there once our show comes out, I'll be interested to hear, like,

like how people who watch them both, what they think about the experience of watching them both, because in my memory, I can't think of anything that's quite like this that's ever happened where the same thing has come out twice at the same time. It's like Top Chef.

You can give the same ingredients to two different chefs and see what comes out. Yeah, or Olympic sailing, right? You have to sail the same boat, and that's the way they gauge how good a sailor you are. You sound like a guy who grew up in Manhattan. I've never actually sailed. I just happen to know. Because it's always intriguing to me. They give an Academy Award for editing.

But people are generally voting on the movie they like the best because, you know, if you gave five editors the same footage and see who came out with the best movie, that would be a better gauge of who's the best editor. They should do that. I think they should, right? I would watch that show. You and me and like five other people. So, David, I'll stick with you. I've made the mistake of watching both True Blood and Game of Thrones with my parents or in-laws. Wow. That's on you.

By that I mean, in case people who don't know, there's a lot of sex. There's really not that much in three body problem. Why? We ran out. Yeah. Yeah. I watched one episode of Game of Thrones with my mom and it was it happened to be an episode where Joffrey does something terrible with. Yes, that was my reaction.

But that never happened again. When we were adapting Game of Thrones, those books are sexy. I mean, I don't know if you've read the books, but they're way sexier. There are things in George's books where he has naked dancers and the women are balanced on...

Am I going to go there? Because it's really out there. And there's a lot of stuff we did not do. But those are very sexy books. I wouldn't say Three-Body Problem is a particularly sexy book. So we were trying to be faithful to the spirit and not add gratuitous. Not that we're against it necessarily, but just didn't seem like the right adaptation for all that. But maybe there should have been more. It sounds like you're saying there should have been more. I don't know. Some people think physics is sexy. Yeah.

We do have one sequence in the show with mass nudity, but it's the possibly least sexy. No, just leave it there. Mass nudity. Don't get done. Period. Mass nudity. Check it out. There's mass nudity. I was thinking to myself, I had never seen a hundred naked, screaming, terrified Chinese people since the buffet line at my wedding. LAUGHTER

Yeah, my coworker was like, three body problem. Is that like a polyamory thing? It does make it sound like a very sexy show. It does. So, Dan, some creators with big deals like yours produce a ton of shows. I'm thinking of like a Ryan Murphy. You've kind of staked...

a lot and devoted all your energy to this project. Why is that? Is it something about the way you work that sort of makes sense to do that? Because we're slow. No, we going in when we were talking to those guys at the beginning, we made it really clear. We're just there are a lot of people like Ryan and Greg Berlanti is another person who I have a tremendous amount of admiration for it because I have no idea how they keep

all of what they're doing straight in their minds at the same time, we would we could never do that. We don't have those kinds of brains where our strategy is more devote an overwhelming amount of your time, like all day, every day, pretty much to one thing and see that through to the end, be there all day, every day. And there's no way to do that and produce many, many other things. That said,

Things come your way and they're just like we're doing. This is not a panel's not about what we're what else we're doing. But there's a show called Death by Lightning that a guy named Mike Makowski wrote. And we read this guy's scripts.

And we wanted to say no, but we couldn't say no because they were just so damn good that there are opportunities, offers you can't refuse and if you infer between, you'll say yes to those. But we have more of a, it's more like the elephant strategy where you have like one baby every like three or four years and you guard it with your life and then there are the people who kind of

have sea turtle strategy where they have lots of babies and they point them at the water and they know that some are going to make it and some aren't. And they're both like completely valid ways of going about it. We just were, we're elephants. Alex, how did you come on to join? Benioff and Weiss are kind of a sort of legendary as a duo. You know, how do you all work together? The credit goes to Peter Friedlander, who's the executive at Netflix.

who brought us all together thinking that we would get along. And I'd known Peter for almost 20 years.

And I trusted him because he said, we have a project we think you might really like and David and Dan are involved. But I can't tell you what it is because I hadn't signed a contract or anything. So it was a bit of a leap of faith. And it turned out he was right. The joke is that I only got this job because...

I've maintained the relationship with Peter Friedlander because my wife's last name is Friedlander. They're not related at all, but it's been a running joke that Peter Friedlander was Cousin Pete in the family. And throughout that really tenuous, tiny, kind of stupid little joke has kept me in touch with Peter for 20 years. So I think that's probably what made him think of me. Yeah.

He was like, meet my cousin Alex. Derek, how did you get involved with the project? Why did you feel like you were the right director for this kind of... Well, David and Dan and Alex reached out and I was very grateful. I mean, I heard that they acquired the rights for the book and I was already very happy because I felt like finally it's in good hands. But I never in my mind...

that I thought I would be involved in production. But then until, I think it was in the beginning of 2021, my agent told me that David and Dan and Alex, they wanted to meet me. And of course I was over the moon. What was it about Three Body Problem, David, that made you think this was going to be your next big epic?

I think a lot of it was just I'd never read anything like it before. You've read the book. There's so much out there. And then we read this thing. We read the books about the same time. And we were on a flight home from Japan. And Dan came over to my seat and he said, did you finish the last book yet? And I just finished it a minute earlier. And the last page for people who have read the books...

I saw people's hands go up back there. Yeah, we've got a few. We've got a few. There's some people out there, people who know that that last page to me is so beautiful and so perfect. And somehow he does this magic trick where he, you know, this is one of the most mind-blowing sagas in science fiction history. And he somehow brings it around to this final image that's so perfect and beautiful and amazing.

and almost simple and human. And it's really like a magic trick. So I read that ending and I was just like, yeah, that's... And Dan was like, yep, we're doing it. And so a lot of it's not even... It's hard to articulate because it's just something you feel. You feel like...

If you're going to devote five, it's now been about five years of our lives, but it's got to be something you're obsessed with. And we just got that obsession from reading Shishan Liu's books. Now, Dan, a couple of projects you two were working on. There's a Star Wars movie didn't pan out. One project Confederacy did receive a pretty swift amount of backlash online.

What did you learn from that experience? Or was there something about the project you think people maybe didn't understand? There's a long version of that answer. There's a short version of that answer. You can give us the long version. I will give the short version of that answer. No. Because it's just not what we're really here for. But I think that...

We learned a lot about how to present things and how not to present things because like we've made mistakes were made in the presentation of what we still feel was a completely excellent and valid idea. But I also understand because of the way it was presented and put out there, looking at it, having had time to step away from it, look at it from outside myself and having talked to like lots of people who are very, very close

friends and become even closer friends about what it looked like. Yeah, I get it. It was not a well presented idea. I still think our trilogy about the founding of the Jedi Order would have been fucking awesome. That I would still stand behind if anybody's listening. Thank you.

You know, the ending of Game of Thrones was controversial. And obviously you're wading into another sort of very beloved series. Do you Google yourself? What are you planning on doing for the next few weeks? I don't, but Dan told me everyone loved it. So what are you talking about? I really liked it. I really liked it.

I sometime in like season two or three, I was really stressed and I wandered over. I saw Dan sitting somewhere like all relaxed and looking happy. And I'm like, well, why are you so fucking happy? And he said, I stopped Googling our show. And I was like, what do you mean you stopped Googling? How do you do that? How is that possible? Like we make a show and you want to know what people are saying. He's like, no, I just stopped. I went cold turkey and I'm so much happier.

And so I stopped. And so you start to realize, and that was like, everything was overwhelmingly positive at that point. And it's just, when you start to realize that even the good things are making you feel bad in a weird way, and it may give you kind of a, it was almost like a bad drug feeling where you're grinding your teeth and like clicking and waiting for the next. It's just, at first it makes sense. Like you're so excited that anybody gives a shit enough to be like writing words about what you're making. Yeah.

That you want to hear what they have to say because you care what people have to say. It's you're evolved to want to know what people think of you and what you're doing. But at a certain point, there's so much information all the time, constantly about everything that once you get thrown into that stream, it becomes very hard to focus on anything but that. And it was almost like a sobriety experience, maybe.

maybe the only sobriety experience in the past 15 years for us. But your mind cleared up in such a way and made it such an amazing way. It made it so much easier and more possible to focus on what your actual job was that, yeah, we never looked back after that. That's it. Like when the hatred gets extreme enough, you feel it like just in the air. You might be offline. You're just like walking down the road and you're like, wow, this is...

People are really hating on it. You just feel it. So, you know, you can't really escape it. I've gotten hate online. I find people rarely come up to you and say it to your face, though. You know what I mean? Or has that happened? No, it's like the world's bathroom wall. You know, it's like it's easy to scrawl something, whatever you want, about somebody when...

You're never going to see them. There's no having to look people in the face. Looking people in the face, it's always, even if it's somebody who may have an issue with something you did, it's just a much different and much better experience 99% of the time. We were at a restaurant and I don't even know if you saw this guy came up and said, I love the first six seasons of Game of Thrones.

And I was like, all right. And he walked off. And then as he's walking out, he tripped. And I was like, fuck yeah, karma. So, you know, what are you going to do? Yes, there have been some people. And, you know, it's fine. It is what it is. It was a popular show. And a lot of people hated it. Alex, do you also go cold turkey? How do you think about this? I guess I'm a little bit lucky that my name is fairly common. There's a lot of Alex Wu's in the world.

So there's one who was a jewelry designer. There's a guy named Alexander Wu who's an animator who works at Pixar. I've gotten some of his royalty checks, which hopefully have gotten back to him.

But our director of one of the episodes is Andrew Stanton from Pixar, who did Toy Story and WALL-E and so many amazing things. And he knows both of us now, which is, I think... His cousin, he's cousin Alex. Which I kind of find delightful. But the last time I actually put my name into Google was about three years ago. And there was... This is going to take a dark turn. There was a strange spate of people named Alexander Wu who had gone missing.

There were like three of them within a span of a few months. A little bit like Terminator. I think you found your next project. I'd watch that show. I'm still here, so it wasn't me, and I didn't do it either. It's like you saying, I'm not a murderer. Which is exactly what a murderer would say. So that's why I decided to stop. Maybe that's not such a good idea anymore. So, David...

I want to talk about your move from HBO to Netflix. I read reports that some executives wondered whether Game of Thrones could be shot vertically for sort of TikTok content or mini episodes. Tell me all about that. To be fair, those weren't HBO executives. Those were AT&T. So when the phone company bought HBO, they had all sorts of bright ideas about how to make it...

Better. But so that wasn't actual HBO people. Got it. But why did you move then? Well, because Netflix came to us and they said, do you guys want to read the three body problem books? They were the ones who brought us the books. And that was what we wanted to do as our next project. So it was all kind of part and parcel of making the show. You two also walked away from guaranteed producer slots on any Game of Thrones production HBO makes. Yeah.

Now, I would never walk away from that amount of money. But Dan, tell me what the reasoning was. There are a lot of reasons. We didn't want to do more. We'd spent 13 of the best years of our lives doing this. And it's important to know when you've hit diminishing returns and not try to grasp onto something that isn't what it was for you and never will be what it was for you. First of all, it's presented as a fait accompli.

which was not ideal. But it was also presented as kind of a free money situation. But there is no... No such thing as free money? Corporations are not in the business of handing out free money. That's not how you become a successful company. And I think that there's always... If your name is on something and that means anything to you at all, it means that you need to engage people

like emotionally and creatively with what your name is on. And we, we just, we had had an amazing time in that world, like cannot overstate how great it was, but, uh, it was just, it was time to not do it anymore. And there was no way to be involved in it and walk away from it at the same time. Alex, what's it going to take for a second season of three body problem? Um,

enough people to watch, I hope, all of you and all of your friends. You guys all watch it like half a million times each. Right, it's the number of views. I think we'll be good. So, yeah, if all of you weren't able to watch it, you know, 500,000 times, we're good. So,

So I want to end on a speed round here. What content, aside from what you're working on, and I hate calling projects content because it's a little hollow, but here we are. Yeah, exactly. What is some of the content that excites you right now that you're really enjoying? And Derek, why don't we start with you? I'm

I'm currently developing a project that I myself am very excited about. It's about Chinese gangster in Tokyo. It's based on true stories. During the 90s, there was a gang in Tokyo that was very notorious. It's formed by a bunch of Japanese-Chinese mixed kids. It's a really fascinating story, so we're developing that at the moment. Is that going to be a...

Series? Series. Series, yeah. That's exciting. Alex, what about you? When I think of content, the only time I have because I have two young children is just between putting my son to sleep and me going to sleep myself. I thought you were going to say it's Bluey. It's pretty amazing. I took my kids to the Bluey experience, and Bluey was there at the end, and they hugged Bluey. So there's a lot of kids...

But YouTube is where I often go for short, brief experiences before I fall asleep. And it varies. Sometimes it's long ramen-making videos, just watching a ramen machine just make ramen.

That puts me to sleep. I've been watching Rick Bayless teaching me Mexican cuisine, and that kind of puts me to sleep. You mentioned Food Network earlier. There's a lot of food stuff. But then there's another thing that I also am compelled to, and I don't know why I watch it before I go to sleep. It's a series of things called Disturbing Things from Around the Internet. Oh, yeah. I love it, too. My husband really likes that. Yeah, so that...

Maybe that's not the wisest thing to watch before you go to bed. Dan, what about you? Content. Well, my youngest... By content, you mean TV. Oh, you mean TV? I was going to say a record. My youngest son told me that the new Schoolboy Q record is fantastic. So I look forward to consuming that content on the plane ride home. Remember a podcast that I listened to? There's a guy named Tony Walker in England who reads classic ghost stories. Who?

who just has the best reading voice I've ever heard on earth. I would listen to him read menus. He's amazing. But he's also reading, it's called classic ghost stories. And I listened to it like compulsively. When I think of schoolboy Q, I think of when we went to that UFC fight and he sat down in front of us. I was like, oh, this is okay. He's short. And then his bodyguard came.

Now I'm all excited to see Derek's show. That sounds awesome. Yeah. I really want to see that. I'm excited for Arcane Season 2. I have a 13-year-old daughter who's really into anime, and even though this is an American show, we love that. I had one last...

speed around and I don't know if you'll be willing to answer this or not. We have 41 seconds left. We have 41 seconds left. Is there any IP that you think you are like dying to adapt or you just think someone should be working on this that you can share? I've been trying to adapt for Who in the Bell Tolls for about 25 years because it's my favorite American novel. It's mine too. Really? So help me get it made because I'm like shit out of luck.

I can't think of anything. Alex? It's my favorite movie. I can't say it because it's currently, the IP is owned by a company that's not Netflix. But if at some point I can get my hands on it, that would be the dream thing to do. What about you, Derek? I've always wanted to make a film based on the manga Slam Dunk.

It's a manga about basketball. It's one of my favorite mangas. So it's always been my dream to make that into a live action film. I love that. I think that's a good place to end. Look at that. We just made it. Oh, perfect. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. Thank you.

Okay, we're back with Max and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each of us shares a story, trend, or piece of pop culture we're following right now. And Max, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? I am keeping tabs on the TikTok ban, which you alluded to in the intro. Yeah, we talked about this in the intro, if you remember that far back, listeners.

Well, a refresher, Congress is moving forward with legislation to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or else the app would be banned from app stores in the U.S.,

I think Biden has indicated that he would sign legislation if it passes the Senate. It's set for a House floor vote this week. A lot of people love content on TikTok. I think there are reasons to be skeptical of a TikTok ban. It is a, as a lot of internet activists have pointed out, it's a pretty big infringement on free speech.

That doesn't mean, you know, there aren't sort of dangerous implications with the app and with China's draconian, you know, policies. But it also, I think some people would say it's like a distraction from what our elected officials should be doing, which is to protect us from government manipulation and commercial surveillance. So, like, getting back to my panel from earlier... Regulate AI. Well, it's like...

You don't have to ban TikTok, but you should be mandating content moderation, for example, right? So that you can't actually post misinformation, which right now, I mean, pretty much do on any platform without any consequences. I spread rumors about Josh all the time. It's true. On threads all the time. The misinformation about this season of Love is Blind that's flying around TikTok is wild. I don't know what's what. Josh, we need to sidebar about that show. Let me tell you. Yeah, as you're listening to this,

The reunion is maybe just a few hours away or already happened this Wednesday. So don't spoil it for me. Well, I'll tell you what. There's been little misinformation on my 4chan lately. 4chan? Oh, God. What a beta over here. Get on 8chan, man. I know. 4chan is awesome. Yeah.

I'm dating myself. No, you know you aren't dating yourself. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? I'm keeping tabs on NFL free agency. Is that a fair one to look into? It fascinates me every single year because, like, I don't know why. We can ice out, yes. Yeah, let's get out of here. I know this is, like, my sports guy thing, but, like, I love NFL free agency because, like, I actually find the NFL's, like, the economics of...

the salary cap really interesting in the NFL because it's way more strenuous than any other sports league. So like the moves and why they happen and how they happen are so...

And how those things interplay. Like, I feel like Russell Wilson getting signed to the Steelers. For $1.2 million on a one-year deal, that's a veteran minimum for Russell Wilson. But the reason why one... Didn't he get dropped? He got cut. So this is exactly it. Very good, yes.

He got cut by the Denver Broncos, who he was not good on, although better last year than he was before. But he, because he had so much guaranteed money from that deal, he's getting paid $30 million next year from the Denver Broncos. If Fast Company wants to cut me and keep paying me.

Yeah, well, that's why I don't think you're getting that guaranteed money contract. Yes. But so they're basically paying him, which allowed then from the economic standpoint, I guess, Russell Wilson to take this deal. It doesn't change his position.

It's kind of a prove-it deal on one year to try to regain his value, but he's got that safety net of $38 million there. And he's got Sierra sitting at home. What are you doing on the field? Yes, what are you keeping tabs on? So I actually have two. The first is, what the hell is going on with the UK royal family right now? The drama around that photo is crazy. Take a look.

A class in Canva, Kate Middleton. Something that I'm obsessed with when it comes to the royal family is like, every family is messy, but they're so messy in public. Like, just constant. Like, Princess Diana, Meghan Markle, now Kate. It's like, guys, just get it together. Fergie. So I'm kind of...

not super well versed in the royal family beyond the basics but like do they manufacture controversy in the way that like the Kardashians might or something I think they just strice and affect themselves all the time I think they desperately try to stay out of drama but as a result as a result there's not like a publicist in the background being like like pulling the strings I think if there were we wouldn't be here you know but also

But I'll say this, you know what this has proven to me? And I'm not a big like royal nerd, but you know, Harry and Meghan, when they left the royal family and like every appearance were like, the palace was leaking rumors about us to the Daily Mail. The palace was like spreading rumors about Meghan Markle. Palace was placing whatever. And like the fact that this stuff is happening with Kate and there's been zero leaks from the palace. Yeah.

You know, like we're all just like, what the hell is going on? Sort of implies that what they were saying is true, right?

I guess so. Like they, you know, because everybody, or at least I at some point was just like, stop talking about it. But now I'm like, yeah, I think that's right. Like you did get fucked over by your own family. It seems like it. I don't know. But file this away for a story who belongs in Who Gives a Fuck magazine. Rest in peace, David Litsky. If anyone wants to leak details to me. Yeah, I'm open for leaks. DMs open. Yeah.

I've gone down the biggest rabbit hole on this whole issue. Oh, my God. It's wild. What's your second keeping tab? Yeah. So I wanted to come back to the very first episode of this podcast that we all recorded together, actually. Oh, my God. I was there? Wow. No, the first one we recorded together. No, no, no. You were also there. Were you the guest on the first episode? Wow. I'm honored. God, I produced this podcast and I don't remember that.

We had a debate about Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro. We did. Oh, my God. I remember this now. So Al Pacino is releasing a very intimate memoir, according to the Daily Mail, called Sunny Boy, which is confusing because he did not play Sonny Corleone. But I've been thinking about that title for a while and I still don't really know what to make of it. That's my...

That was my last one. Sonny Boy, an intimate memoir from Al, but that doesn't make any... It's gonna be crazy. Any sense. Who's his ghostwriter? I need to know. You're looking at him. Yeah. Where did we land in that first episode? I think we landed on Pacino, but said, like, you know, it's very close. I think I was into Young De Niro. Did they both just have kids? Yes. Yeah. And on that note...

That's it for Most Innovative Companies. Max, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, as always. Thank you for showing us around Austin. Come back anytime, guys. Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom, mixed and sound designed by Nicholas Torres, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we will see you next week.