Why Embodied Knowledge Still Matters in the Digital Age with Aled Maclean-Jones

- Today is March 18th, 2026, and my guest is the writer Aled Maclean-Jones. His substack is rakes. Digress or digress. Alled was last year in February, 2026, talking about Swiss watches. Alled, welcome back to EconTalk.

- Thank you Russ. It's a real pleasure to pleasure to be back.

- I wanna say our topic for today is Tom Cruise, but don't leave listeners don't, don't, don't switch. 'cause that's not really the topic, but it's related to an essay that UL had wrote in the Metropolitan Review that we'll link to called The Last Useful Man. What we're really gonna be talking about is our sense of ourself in the modern world, given the extraordinary technological advances and how we think about our mind versus our body, the nature and knowledge, the nature of really reality. So let's get started. Why did you think about Tom Cruise at all? What does the last useful band mean?

- Yeah, so I think there were two things that sort of led into writing the essay. So the first was, I was thinking a lot about this kind of question of usefulness and the fact that over the last sort of two to three years, there's been a lot of discussion about how useful can humans be. And I think particularly humans who are doing mainly things with their kind of, their minds and their brains. And so I was kind of in, I've always, I sort of was quite atuned to this kind of, this kind of thing. And then secondly, the other thing that's sort happened to me was I sort of started to have kids and a family. And it's very interesting, you know, because when you have young kids and our, our eldest daughter is like just very embodied, you know, she's very, very good at like picking up sports. She's very, very physical and so on and so forth. And as someone who's always been like kind of a professional, clever person in some kind of aspect, it was kind of like a bit like, I don't really know what to do with this. And so I was sort of mulling over, I was on holiday with him, rest of my family on the Isle of White, which is a small little island off the kind of sife coast of Britain. And I was sort of mulling over this kind of question of embodiment whilst watching her on the play, on play on the beach. And then, and then I sort of went to the, I think it was the, the, the sort of the, the only real cinema on the ILE of White, which is in Newport and watched this kind of mission Impossible, the, the final film and this the Mission Impossible franchise, mission Impossible final Reckoning. And it all kind of came together. And then there was like a frenzied evening where I sort of began to pull it all together. And so that's kind of it, it was a combination of technology, my own daughter's physical attributes compared to mine when they were her age, which were dire. And then Tom Cruise was a sort of the spark that kind of list lit everything together.

- It's a really beautiful image of your daughter on the beach. I have, one of my favorite photographs is a photograph of two of my sons playing Frisbee on the beach. And they're in stop motion. One of them is thrown the Frisbee. He is just watching 'em, the Frisbee's, you know, it's frozen, it's, you can see it in the sky, but the other son is, is in motion and it's a beautiful sight. The, the human body in motion about to do something, he's going to, he's gonna catch the Frisbee. There, there's no, there's no uncertainty about this. 'cause he is really good at it. And he moves gracefully. And that's, again, like you, I I don't move Grace so gracefully. So, and in fact I would, I would put it in bold. I I'm not a very useful man. I I I'm not good with tools. We recently had Stuart brand on the program. It hasn't aired yet. So Ally do you haven't heard it, but he talks about maintenance as his last book. And in the course of the book he discussed in our conversation, he talks about sailing around the world by yourself. A contest from the late 1960s that a handful of insane people competed in. And I can't, it's hard for me to even think about it because I can't do anything useful on a boat. I've, I've never sailed. If you said we're going sailing, I'd be, my first response would be a little bit of fear. 'cause I'm be on the water, I can swim, but not particularly well. And it's fascinating of course in this age of AI that we're all about to plunge into and to some extent already have to think about really how useless I am. I I I am not good at the physical world. I live in this weird mental state of thinking, reading conversation. It that's like the most useful thing I do. It's this program. What the heck is that? And Tom Cruise is of course in his movies, the ones we're talking about, not all of them. I happen to be a huge fan of Tom Cruise's, non useful movies, A few Good Men Minority Report and Night and Day. Although Night and Day, he's very useful. We may, we might come back and talk to that about that. But, but in general, in his action films Top Gun, the Mission Impossible series, he's handy. Now why is that interesting?

- Yes, I

- Suppose and, and make fun of me if you want along the way, what I just said. No,

- No, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. 'cause I was also, I mean I, because yeah, it's, it's, I also feel, I remember like one of the first interactions I had. So I I I think about that Stewart brand so that the, you know, the particularly essay when he's talking about the around the world race and the idea of sailing in particular. And sailing is always, and it's interesting 'cause a lot of the, the books I'll read in my spare time are from the kind of 1950s is quite a, there was a very famous British author called Neville Shoot who was kind of, who's kind of forgotten that he would always write about useful people. And one of the main, he was obsessed of airplanes and so on, so forth. And I think we will circle back to this in a roundabout way. Trust me, trust me listeners at some point. But, and back to shoot himself actually. But, 'cause he was obsessed with airplanes. He was a very famous airplane engineer, but he always loved boats as well and boats and messing around with boats. And the idea of being alone on the water and having to be sort of self-sufficient is very attractive. I saw recently there was like a, I think it was a post that went viral on, on Twitter and it was of someone who's just sailing on their own. They were talking about what they do to make sure that they avoid, make sure that they avoid kind of big, large ships, you know, so they're going to sleep and they're waking up every half an hour and checking it. And it was such a, it was interesting seeing the comments and stuff because I think that, you know, the act of kind of the body in action is still something that really enthralls us. You know, it's always fascinating with, you know, the Winter Olympics have just been, and to see the kind of figure skaters do so well and become so famous and That in a world where so much is kind of fake, there are these few things that you can't really fake anymore and they still hold the ability to kind of captivate us. And so just to situate the listener in terms of the cruise, so what I really was talking about in this essay was this kind of like 10 to 15 year period, I would say over of the last of cruise's work that I would probably begin in the early 2010s when he kind of moves and sort of situates himself to the UK and starts to work in particular with, with Chris Macquarie. And they, they do the, the first film was called Edge of to I think it's called Edge of Tomorrow, in which Cruz basically keeps on like, so he keeps on living the same day again and again and again. And it's really a film essentially about embodied knowledge. So they have to figure out how to defeat these, these aliens. And every day he has to learn a little bit more about the world he's in and kind of figure out how to navigate the world and be a little bit more useful in the world, right? He starts, he's like a kind of army like PR guy basically. And then, so he starts and he lasts about two minutes, you know, he gets, he, he just goes over the planes, the channel and then the aliens kill him. And then, you know, over hundreds and thousands of, of cycles, he gets better and better and more useful in this world. And, and then ends up being able to basically, you know, sort of use that and knowledge that he remembers every day that no one else knows, no one else understands, only he knows inside him to be able to kind of solve the problem and defeat the defeat, the alien menace. And I think that kind of stayed with them crew certainly, and Macquarie and their collaborators. And then that infected, I think in particular the Mission Impossible franchise.

- So because of you, I'm gonna blame you or honor you, I, I watched Edge of Tomorrow. It's, it's it's day, but with technology and it, and it's making a deep philosophical point as you point out. But it's not obvious to the viewer. I, I'm gonna state it like an economist. It, it's about what economists call learning by doing. So we think about learning is book learning, studying, reading a textbook, listening to a lecture, taking notes, answering an exam, proving your capability, your mastery of the knowledge. And that's a really narrow kind of knowledge. Will, will along the way I'm sure. Talk more about Michael Palani, who, who talks about tacit knowledge. Knowledge that we can't always describe this idea that you know, more than you can tell. So, so Cruz in this movie, he gets killed hundreds of times, maybe thousands. Yeah. And each time he remembers something about the nature of the world he's about to encounter when he reawakens and has to, to go through it again. Which sounds quite boring. And some of it is, there's a key point in the movie where they have to ratchet up the tension. And of course that's the point. Where're not, no spoilers there, but there is a point where suddenly he, if he gets killed, it's over. He will not get a new opportunity. And that's clever, makes the movie more interesting. But the point is, is that through the experience he learns there's no manual. 'cause the nature of the knowledge is, I I would say it's, it's multi multifaceted. It's the complexity of this world that he's in of warfare, the complexity of the tools he has access to, which have to be mastered. And then the interface between those, the mastery of the tools within that environment. And of course you can call that life, right? Life is about learning how to do things in the real world with skills you have acquired or under come to understand. And the, the point of the philosophical side of this that you mentioned in the in passing that I've now to a little shallow dive into of philosophers, rile, Marlo Ponti and others, is what is the nature of this experience that we have of the world around us? Is it intellectual? Is it our minds at work that teach us stuff that we then apply or is it something else? And it's clear on edge of tomorrow, it's something else. He doesn't come home in the middle of this experience. He doesn't take notes, he doesn't study up. He's not Yeah, there's no cramming for the exam of life. It's a different kind of knowledge.

- Yeah, that's true. That's true. I imagine if it's me and you Russ, in the situation, we, we would try. There's not, there's no writing in it, you know what I mean? Like I would be, I would be trying to create aid memoirs and stash them in places and journal and all of, and I write on my own body and all that sort of stuff, you know what I mean? But it's very much like it is, it's it is the ultimate example of like learning. Yeah. Like learning by doing, you know what I mean? And I think that was certainly, and I think it's interesting as well because, so he goes on from doing Edge of Tomorrow cruise, then you then then get basically the kind of like the first really embodiment inflected I'd say like mission impossible film, which is, which is Rogue nation, which is the British one. It's like a love letter to Britain. And it's a very funny, it's a very, very funny film in lots of ways as a bri it has a very fantastic ending at Churchill's birthplace. And there's a very English, I think Tom Hollander plays the British Prime Minister. And he has like a, a digital red box that's going to the blow up. And the password is Kipling, the password is Kipling. I remember that the password is Kipling. But it's very interesting to see the, the, the first scene in that and compare it to the earlier films. So if I think about the opening of Mission Impossible two, which is quite famous opening where he's, he, he's rock climbing up, up in, up, up stack in Utah and it just looks effortless. And he looks like the coolest, the coolest guy alive that he's kind of just, just doing it. It's very, very easy. And so when, and the opening of GNA Nation, I think he, he basically is, he has to get onto a Russian cargo plane essentially. And what I love about it is he gets onto, so he gets on this cargo plane, he's actually filmed in somewhere in Cambridgeshire or Suffolk or something, and they make it, they turn it into Belarus. I think Minsk not entirely convincingly. 'cause at this point as well, I think we're, they're beginning to understand people are starting to watch these less for the plot and more for the kind of insane acts of Tom Cruise embodiment. And so, but what I, what I love about it is he, he gets onto the plane and then he takes off and instead there's no style to it at all. It doesn't look stylized at all. He, his hair is like flushing back and he looks like a skeleton and then it's coming forward. He looks like he's got a bowl cut. And what I really always really enjoy about that film in particular, and I suppose what's really going on is that he, he, it's, it's the effort that is being shown and it's the, it's the fact that that this is all happening within the body. That he is just learning how to, how to hold onto a plane on the fly. You know? 'cause he, he doesn't jump onto it and he's perfect. His feet are like scrambling about for the first 10 seconds before he finds the right purchase. There's no kind of jenning up beforehand. There's no idea that he's done this before. The idea is entirely that he's kind of learning as he's doing. And also interestingly with the help of technology, you know, one thing that's very interesting is sets that drew me to cruise and sets him apart a little bit from other kind of writers who talk about tacit knowledge is they're often, they love a, they love a craftsman. They love kind of getting away from the technology and, and retreating into electronic cottages or you know, or kind of like into the woods and learning to do things through your hands. What I love about these films and kind of the way the cruise approaches it in particular is that he's like, actually technology can be pretty good and, and just 'cause it has batteries and electric circuits, that's not kind of necessarily a problem.

- But it's a weird thing because there's a different level of knowledge we haven't talked about yet, which is the ability to apply knowledge you've accumulated before to a situation you've never seen. And and I think, again, I think in the modern world, most of us have very little experience of that. I have a friend who's extremely competent. If anything is broken, I know he can fix it and he's gonna fix things in my life that he's never seen before. But, you know, he'll fi quote figure it out. And that's one of the themes of the, one of the characters in the real life character in the sailing race is that the, the one who wins, he's gotta fix a thousand things he's never fixed before on his boat. And he takes a whole bunch of stuff that he doesn't know if he's gonna need or not. At one point he realizes he has to solder something, solder meaning to apply heat to like metal and turn it molten and attach things to, I, I know what it is. I did it once in shop class in ninth grade probably. But I'd be in trouble if I had to solder something to save my life. And this guy on the boat, you know, he finds some solder inside a few light bulbs. He doesn't, you know, I forget exactly what he does, but he figures it out. And that that's a whole other level. And, and it, the human condition for most of our history is human beings. That's what we did all the time and right. And now what do we do right now I go to YouTube and I look for a step-by-step solution to some, if I have to do something with my hands or I ask Claude, how do I fix this? Tell me what to do. But the idea that you would sort of muddle through, figure it out on the fly, either the purchase on an airplane, you probably don't do that often. It is just so alien to us in the modern world.

- No, totally. And it's always, you know, going back to that, the kind of, to Melo Ponti and that kind of classic quote of his, you know, our, our body is the, you know, it's, it is the general medium for having a world. And the, and then I always love the the formulation. I think the plan formulation, isn't it, it takes it a little bit further. And the idea that we know more than we can tell, you know, there are situations where we are, we are extremely in, you know, we are behaving instinctively and kind of applying things that we know, but almost can't explain. You know, there's another, there's a psycho psychologist bol. And of course the, the unknown thought, the thing that we just can, that that we know, but we don't really, we can never verbalize or never kind of understand. And you know, I think about this in a few, a few aspects of my own life, you know what I mean? Because I'm trying to be more, more useful. So the first is, I remember, you know, I had this period where I was like, you know, I'm gonna stop using a sat nav. 'cause I kind of had this head with, this is kind of a muscle, you know what I mean? And I was like, okay, well I'll do is I, I was doing some research at the National Arc, the British National Archives, which are down in like in southwest London. And so what I would try and do is I would drive every day and learn the route, right? So instead of using the sat nav, I would try and figure out how do I get from my place in northwest London all the way down to kind of queue basically

- By Sat nav you mean ways?

- Yeah, well yes. Well I Google Maps, I was thinking Yeah, yeah, yeah. Google Maps. Google Maps. Yeah. I am, yeah. I'm meeting Google Maps. Yeah. 'cause I was sort of just, you know, we were just following this route kind of lively. I was like, what, what if I can try and learn this in myself? And, you know, and, and what happens, and it's very interesting of course. 'cause there is a little bit of a collective actions thing here because you know, I always loved how, and this is like, certainly this is like, maybe me, I'm like 30, 32. So, but certainly my dad would've had like very strong views. And this happens in the UK in particular where the roads are old and they're, you know, you've got bits of, bits of old Roman road, you've got bits of kinda windy, windy B roads and stuff. People would always have very, very strong views about, about directions, right? Oh, you know, the best way to get from, from, from where I grew up to London. I only go this way, you go that way. And that, that's completely gone. And so I was trying to bring it back, you know what I mean? And it was very interesting 'cause you also need the world to be slightly receptive to this 'cause it's not something that we really value. 'cause the thing that was very interesting was I found a video of the nineties of someone doing a similar route. And the signage, there's so much more signage to help you along the way. There's so many more markings. But of course now people don't really use the markings. So the markings kind of eroded away. And it's difficult because this is, this is something that we can't really explain or we can't really, we don't really value in our every day. And so when we're thinking about signage and stuff, we're not really prioritizing it. The world has to be slightly hospitable to this kind of like, style of, okay, I know this, but I don't really know. Let me, let me learn. The world has to be kind of able to let you, let you learn. It has to be a bit more of a playground than perhaps it is if we're to take driving as example, just using kind of Google maps and ways.

- So it's a great example because when I'm in London, I like taking a cab and the cabbies have to have passed this absurd test, at least historically and know their way around London, which is a very large and complicated city. And that knowledge in some sense is obsolete. There's, there's no reason anymore to know it. And I find it very annoying when they don't use Google Maps or ways and they navigate because quote, they always have done it this way. And I realize listening to you that I should not be annoyed that there's something quite beautiful about it, and it's gonna take me four more minutes to get from A to B. And what I'm seeing is mastery, right? I'm seeing a a, a person's knowledge. It's embodied in the sense that he knows how to drive and he knows certain routes and he knows he's got a map in his head. I he can't explain it. Of course it's not, it's not. He knows more than he can tell for sure. He also knows, by the way, you know, when certain routes are crowded and not crowded, even though he doesn't have ways and he is not always right. But in a way it's a sad thing that it doesn't matter anymore. And maybe I should honor it and, and let him do his own thing. Be happy with it.

- Yeah. And I suppose it's interesting as well how it's used as like a marketing tool that's always interesting to me is this, this like return, like you see this a lot, particularly in, in marketing and stuff. Like, I, one bit I think I mentioned in the essay is Sinners obviously, you know, did extraordinary, extraordinarily popular movie last year. And one of the pieces of marketing around it very early on that kind of did really well was just Ryan Coogler talking about film formats, right? So instead of kind of saying, oh, you know, here's the, here's here's what you're gonna see in the film. Like there was a, you know, it was a really clever bit of marketing genius of kind of talking about, okay, here are all of the kind of things that have gone, I'm gonna trust you that you are in a safe pair of hands when you're watching this film and I'm gonna do that, but I'm gonna show you how much I know about the different types of formats and how they kind of work. And they're kind of instructive and it's all, 'cause obviously it, it, it's a counter to this idea that we have now that everything's being dumbed down. And actually, like, if you look particularly in films, you know, they are like extremely kind of like, there is a lot, a lot of the marketing now is, it is around the kind of mind behind, you know, the mind behind the film and the idea that Christopher Nolan doesn't allow phones on sets, you know, is a good example. Or like, I remember for the Barbie movie, you know, there was a 15 minute video of Greta Gerwig talking about, you know, the influences of Powell and Press Burger and so on so forth and all of these kind of workings and stuff. And I think we do want to, you know, I think it's very interesting with with, with the, with the, with with black cabs in particular, you know, there is a bit of a kind of, you just feel like this, that's how they get their trust. That's what elevates a cabbie above someone in Uber. And they've, they've really latched onto and like led into it. And I can see you see that across the board now because ultimately these FETs of Embodi knowledge still wrote wow. Us I, I felt myself being wowed watching Kogler. Why Kogler talk about all of these formats, you know what I mean? Because people, you know, we like learning these things, don't we?

- But it's a weird thing with the movie is I remember when one of the, I can't remember what movie it was, but they showed us, you know, how some illusion was created using a green screen and personal really wasn't jumping out the window and whatever it was. And I'm thinking, but no, no, no, no, no, I don't wanna see the man behind the curtain. Don't do that to me. And yet it's a certain, it's a part of modern life. And I think what's weird about Tom Cruise is he's famous for quote, doing his own stunts. And I don't know what that means exactly. I think you know better than I do and you can tell me, but there's a cer when you're watching him do that thing, you wanna have the illusion that you're not watching an actor that you're watching, you've lost yourself in the character and he's in danger. And, and yet when it's Tom Cruise, you're kind of thinking, wow, this is so cool. He probably did this himself. And so there's this constant back and forth between the suspension of disbelief that requires you to forget that you're watching a movie and you wanna immerse yourself or in a novel. And at the same time, kind of Ima realizing at the same time that how amazing it is that they can make it look this realistic. Right. Which is, which is a weird paradox.

- Totally. And I think that's for me where the, where the interest in those, the, the more recent Mission Impossible films came from, right? Where, because you know, I sort of quite liked them early on, you know, and I've always liked, but there was for me when they, when they decided to take this moment, they were like, we're going to do, you've got the film itself you're watching and then there's this kind of meta film that's going on as well, which is just, you know, we're just going to do like spectacles of skill and you're going to enjoy and watch the spectacles of skill and you're kind of gonna be, oh, it's amazing that kind of Ethan Hunt, this kind of character is doing that. But ultimately when we're watching it, we're really like, I can't believe, how did Tom, how did Tom Cruise do that? And obviously in a sense it kind of makes for worse films. You know, the film that I focused on, which is the final film and it's predecessor are the most spectacular films in terms of cruise's embodiment. But that comes at the kind of, at the kind of sense of the loss of a plot, I would probably say particularly the penultimate one, which was kind of dead reckoning, which is just essentially several set pieces pulled together with the loosest of threads. And that's why the best, the best ones are the ones before that. The, the, the best one is, is called Fallout, where it is Tom Cruise versus kind of Henry Caval. And that I think has the best blend of an actual plot that they've actually bothered with. But then these incredible, okay, we're gonna fly helicopters in, in kind of New Zealand and stuff. And so, but yeah, it's very interesting and it's interesting with Cruz as well and kind of his approach to stunting and you know, he essentially is kind of the stunt coordinator for these for certainly in the later films. He's the one who is kind of holding the pen on these stunts and also the kind of safety, he has a lovely phrase, catchphrase that he uses there wasn't in the essay and it's like, don't be safe, be competent. Which is what he sort of says to the, the team basically of, of, of, of stunt performers he has. And I think that's a kind of very good example of the way he's thinking about the way he's thinking about these, these kind of, these films, but also his role within them.

- When you talk about a, a scene that, that he had, he had to film like 19 times and he wasn't done. He wanted do it again. And the director just said, you shouldn't tempt the gods. It was dangerous. And, and Cruz just wanted to do it until it was perfect.

- Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. And I think it's interesting as well because you know, there's the, there's the underlying story. Maybe we could talk about the, the, the, the last film itself in a minute. But the, there's an underlying story here where, and you see this a lot with lots of where he, he's clearly kind of taken a step back and thought a lot about the kind of craft of acting. So there is, it was interesting 'cause I got a few actors literally Instagram post dm me my on Instagram after seeing the essay and asking me kind of like, was there anything about incorporating it into their own work? And it was very interesting because, you know, I, the, the two bits I point them to. So yeah, there's, there's like, I think Timothy Chana basically sort of says what, what happened when he basically, you know, he, I think it was after June, I think he got in touch with Tom Cruise and Tom Cruise just sent him essentially this email and was like, you know, you basically just need to learn all of these attributes if you want to be a lead, if you want to be like a star, right? So he sent him like a Rolodex of his, his go-to experts in every field. So he basically said, in old Hollywood, you'd be getting dance training and fighting and no one's gonna hold you that standard standard today. So it's up to you. So he sent him like a motorcycle coach, a helicopter, helicopter coach, can you be a helicopter coach? I dunno. And all of those kind of, and all of those kind of things. And I think one of the things that he clearly sees his role as in, in like as a, the sort of elder statesman in Hollywood is like teaching all of these younger actors the kind of importance of craft in a world where I suppose you are able to do all of this stuff within a kind of hermetically sealed studio with like a kind of very advanced green, green screen around you, if that makes sense.

- But this really highlights what a strange world these people inhabit again, in that in the modern world. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about, you know, before we started recording you, you and I talked a little bit about Formula one, the, the cinematic treatments and also the, the real experience itself. So little of modern life is that level of competence. You know, when a, when a a serious race car comes into a pit stop and you know, it's absurdly unimaginable, it looks fake, the time in which it takes to change, change the tires, fill up the gas tank, and do a bunch of other things. The level of competence, the be safe, be don't be safe, be competent, is off the charts. And so little of our daily life as moderns I is that we're not, I would suggest that part of the reason these things were appealing to us in the way that they are is because they harken back to an older world where, where physical skills, embodied knowledge mattered. Not just that's kind of cool, but were life saving and, and desperately important whether you're on a sea voyage or a hunting or, you know, so there's, until recently, most of life was peril. It was, it was avoiding death. And, and we don't have anymore, most of us most of the time. And so these cinematic representations of peril where competence isn't just applauded, but essential is they're deeply appealing to us.

- No, totally, totally. Yeah. So maybe that's a good way. Talk first maybe about Top Gun Maverick. So this is obviously outside of the Mission Impossible franchise, but cruises like, I think probably the most embodiment heavy, like the most sort of like, we're gonna blunt you over a cudgel with this kind of embodiment question. You know, the motto of the film, they keep saying it's like, don't think just do, it's like often it sounds like an like, I like you're reading Ani off the pages, but the opening scene is very interesting. So the opening scene is Cruz is a test pilot, so Maverick is 30 years and hasn't sort of, you know, he hasn't sort of ascended to be like, you know, a senator or something, isn't it?

- He hasn't gotten a raise, he hasn't gotten promoted, he is just a Yeah,

- He's just, he's just part, isn't he? And so again, a, a good example of like how I think he's living in a ga in a, in a, in a, he's living literally in like a, in like an air aircraft hangar with, and, and it's Tom Cruise's personal, I think P 51 Mustang. There is again the idea that the, the line between Cruise the actor and cruiser character's complete collapse at this point. And even it even inflexed this film. So, and then he's, he's sent to I presume like Groom Lake or somewhere to test out this, this sort of sort of like a highly experimental plane that can go to Mac Mac 10. And he's, he's set to do Mac 10 isn't. And then what happens is he then goes up and he, and he tests it before the Evil Admiral that loves drones played by Ed Harris could sort of stop and, and gut the project. And it's this classic thing where you've got Cruz who's this, you know, stick jockey who has this kind of a, you know, who's, there's something about, you know, they, they wanna get rid of humans, but the Cruz wants to make the argument, you know, and that's the, the film makes the argument the first 10 minutes for, for humans being useful. And it's very interesting to think about that scene and the history of that scene. Going to your point Russ, about peril. So that scene is a copy of it's inspired by a scene in the Right Stuff, right? Which is a film based on the Tom Wolf, Tom Wolf book about kind of, you know, pilots test like testing to be astronauts. And of course the right stuff is the ultimate example of things that we, you know, the whole point with the right stuff is you can't write it down that, that you know it and you have to learn it, right? And the way Wolf talks about it is a, it's a pyramid for the, for the, it's a pyramid isn't it, for the pilot. So that they just have to do all of these tests to be able to see what, whether they have the right stuff, but they can never know it or write it down because it's simply implicit knowledge. And then that is, that scene is based on an earlier scene, which is a David lean film called The Sound Barrier, which is from like 1946, which is about pilots, test pilots at that point who were trying to break the sound barrier. And, and the reason this kind of Mack 10 in the Tom Cruise film is because it's always 10 because it was 10 was what you was, was what the gauge was when you were, when you were going supersonic. And you know, that was an incredibly lethal period of, of history, right? Yeah.

- So - I think it was something like 42 test pilots died trying to reach the sound barrier basically in, in the period af directly after World War ii. 'cause it's kinda dangerous, you know, they essentially were flying in Britain anyway, I think in America they were a little bit more enlightened. But in Britain certainly they were just taking Spitfires World War II planes and you would fly them very high and they'd dive them down. And the idea was that you would be able to dive at a CA certain speed, you could go supersonic, but of course the plane would sort of shake itself apart. So the original story, the original pilot who did this and died fa, was very famous, was a guy called Jeffrey de Haveland Jr. Who was the son of the, the, the main kind of aerospace engineer who's called Jeffrey to have Alan. And he, his son was the test pilot and his son died. Yeah. He just, like, literally the plane broke apart, they found his body a couple of days later in one of the estuaries. And that was what inspired lean to lean to basically create these sequences in the sound barrier that then that sequence then became the sequence where Chuck Yeager breaks the, the supersonic barrier in the right stuff. And then that becomes a sequence in the beginning of this film. But we've got Tom Cruise, but it's almost, it's, it's going back to your point about peril. It's like Jeffrey to Haveland Junior's death, it's kind of reverberating and being relived again and again and again. And what we, and it's updated for every generation, you know, the right, you know, in the same barrier it's for the World War II generation, post-World wari generation in in the Right stuff. It's for the kind of like success seventies, eighties crowd. And now for a whole new generation to have Alan's death is being recreated again by Cruz in order to kind of show that, you know Yeah. In order to thrill us because it's that sense of peril that happened to Jeffrey Havel and Duke Jr. When he got his cockpit that I think Cruz is trying to recreate. And of course at the end of that scene at the beginning of Top Gun Maverick, the plane breaks apart, right? And we think he's gonna die, but he doesn't die because he's Tom Cruise obviously. And it would kind of ruin the entire film. But, you know, that idea, linking it to the idea apparel and how much that FRAs us, I think is definitely, is definitely at the heart of these kind of films

- You app perils out of fashion. We live in a very, you know, economists would say is, you know, as we get wealthier, we have a demand for security. It's, the jargon is security is a normal good and normal in this case doesn't mean every day. It means we want more of it when we get wealthier. So, 'cause you could argue it's 'cause we have more to lose, life's a little more pleasant. So it's, it matters more that we live longer, which in the times of say the Middle Ages wasn't so crucial because life was hard. But what's interesting of course is that most of our lives are very safe. Now figure skating's a little bit dangerous. You, you can crack your head, you can get, when you're in the pairs figure skating, you slice your partners head open with your skate. But it's mostly just you can fall down. It is not a life or death situation. There's not much of that. The same would be true of, you know, when you watch, say the luge in the Winter Olympics, where it looks like or death it would be, might be for me, right? But, but the people who do it obviously have a, a minimal level of confidence that of competence where there's not a risk of death. But most of what we're talking about is war. Where life and death is everywhere, death is everywhere. And, and people died all the time trying to hone tools like flight and so on, especially at high, you know, door level speeds. And you know, there's an, I don't know if this is universal, but there's an incredible romance about that because of what's at stake, right? And you know, when we think, when you're describing the Valand or Chuck Yeager or Tom Cruise who's fictional in, in the, in Maverick, but it wasn't fictional actually. 'cause in June some B two bomber pilot did something very similar to the end of Maverick dropping a bomb in a very, very precise way on Iran's nuclear facility at Fordo. There's a, a romance about this that I think is very attractive to some people, which makes Cruz iconic for many people. And there's a disgust on the part of others who look at this and think this is the dark side of, of humanity. So you can comment on that if you want, but I I I think that the, the main thing I wanna come back to and I want your reaction to is, is there anything else in life even remotely like this, I guess, you know, some level of, of heart surgery would have this life and death competence at play. It's usually robotic, right? It's not intuitive. Probably. I don't, I don't know, maybe a great surgeon still is intuitive. Probably is actually, but that's, it's the only one I can think of where competence is, is life or death.

- Yeah, I suppose it's interesting. I mean I think that's definitely right. There are these two sides of it, right? There's the kind of like the, the romanticization of it and then, and that can go in several directions I think then that kind of like begin to cause problems, right? Like one is a sort of, you know, one of the reasons why I'm very attracted to, to kind of the more recent PR films is their treatment of technology, right? So one way is kind of like a rejection of, you see a rejection of technology entirely and kinda like the idea that it would all be better if we were, you know, back, you know, if the industrial revolution hadn't happened. That's kind of one way that I think you see, you know, you you see kind of like a more negative side of it and then yeah. And then kind of lionization of essentially, you know, kind of like slightly ridiculous situations and sort of, and yeah. And you see where that, and you can see where that sort of leads. I think for me, what I, what I always find really interesting is, is that, you know, ultimately what's really going on, I suppose in these films is, is, is is that they're taking embodied competence to kind of the nth degree, aren't they? So in the the, in the Mission impossible film I wrote about, you know, you essentially have, you know, there's this a evil AI called the entity very enjoyably, very enjoyably named that is it's taking over all of the kind of, you know, the kind of nuclear arsenals of the world. And crews and company have to kind of go offline in order to basically defeat the ai and its kind of cronies who are all completely useless. 'cause all they basically do is they kind of like, you know, they just point guns at people and tell 'em what to do. And then you have this kind of incredible sort of like fantasia of competence where, you know, they're flying, I think it's like a Douglas DC's three, they're flying a very old, you know, they're kind of playing the Indiana Jones flies and they are doing navigating by Compass and they're using like sort of secret codes and, and all of this sort of stuff. And I think they've mean the most ridiculous this at the beginning is I think V rames is like soldiering a kind of hard drive. There's, there is, there's some good soldiering. Tom Cruise loves a sold, they, they, they love soldiering in mis they're always soldiering. No, everyone's got a soldiering iron somewhere. And so, and he sold as a pen, you know, pen drive and kind of hacks and kind of figures out this way to defeat it in a a in know himself in his own brain in an underground sort of like hospital room in, in London. And I suppose, you know, the, the point I think is it is all done with a bit of a wink and a urge, isn't it, in a sense that it's, it's taken to the, the nth degree to kind of start to start to make us think a little bit more about what are the small, like what's the equivalent of like the kind of sat nav, you know, like the being without ways and so on so forth. Because we, by showing us like the most, the most embodied person Of all time playing the most embodied kind of figure as well, you begin to see some of the softer sides of what makes it good as well. So, you know, the ones I think about one is like, you know, e it is interesting isn't it? E Ethan Hunt Cruz's character is very different to action heroes because the films always begin with something going wrong and he never knows, there's never any plan. So it's not like we're James Bond where, where things go wrong, but it's normally 'cause people haven't listened to Bond, bond kind of knows what's going on. He kind of, he's seen the source code, know what's going on. You know, hunter's got what kind of someone like, you know what, like what like Keith call negative cap, he's got loads of negative capability, right? He's got the, this feeling inside him that no matter what happens, it'll all turn out for the best. And so this obviously goes through a ridiculous scene where he goes to see the president of the United States and they're like, well we we're gonna basically just like, do you know nuclear rest of the world in order to, you know, to to stop, to stop the new speed user ourselves. And he's like, oh, well no, or you can just, you know, hand the key that does it to me. What's your plan? I don't, I don't have a plan, you can just trust me. You know what I mean? And, and that obviously is sort of like, kind of that that sense of negative capability obviously is, is is we can't all have that like, that sense of negative capability. I would definitely be be the first in that situation to be like, yeah, I wouldn't trust me, I'd probably just, I'd probably just, yeah, I probably just because the rest of the world. But I think that that's one element of, of what what does kind of usefulness give you, because in it it's not really, and in itself I think one thing is it, it is it gives you, is it give, it does give you a sense of kind of like, alright, it makes you less neurotic or whatever will happen. Things are kind of gonna be all right. So that's the one thing I think about the second as well is like, you know, we don't actually see in our, if in our own lives we don't see many, many embodied acts of, of of skill or fe or feats or anything, then like we and ourselves kind of will forget them. So, you know, I always love kind of JG Ballard because you know, often in his, in his works, in his short stories, you have these characters who are so at one with the machine or at one with the image or the representation, they forget, they in themselves have their own bodies. And it was interesting 'cause when you were talking about those moments when life and death happens, you know, like I always, when I think about embodiment, I actually think only about one thing really. I don't think about war or anything. I think about like, like having children, like the act of childbirth, right? Like for me, like that is the, the ultimate bodily act. Like it's, it's, you know, and and it's interesting when you think about when there's life and death. Like, you know, our, my wife just had our, her third child like last week and we live a our lives. So at the moment there's a one in gazillion chance of me dying on this zoom call. Right? But you know, when you go into a, a labor ward that, that number, those odds change. Yeah. You know, and, and you feel it, you really feel it in the i you know, you feel it, okay fine. We're, we're to a several thousand. And you think that that, that's a big, that's a job that you feel and the fact that, you know, we're, we are able to see these feats of embodiment then makes you much more used to kind of like these things that are to come because it's such a strange and alien and incredibly embodying thing to witness something like childbirth and stuff. To see that on any scale, someone doing something amazing with their body, I think makes us more used to these things. You know what I mean?

- Yeah, I like that. I, I just, just a couple comments. First of all, I've been on a DC three on a commercial DC three flight. I think it was 1958 maybe, maybe 1960. I'd have to, I was gonna say, I'd have to check. I have no way to check. Both my parents are now gone and I can't even check. But I, I've been on a DC three and when you got on the DC three, the plane at rest was at about a 40 degree, 30 degree angle, 25 degree angle. See when you walked up the aisle, you're going uphill, you would enter, if I remember correctly, I don't remember this literally myself, but I've seen it. You'd walk, you go in the back, you'd walk uphill 'cause the plane at rest was sitting at, at, at an angle. I think the childbirth thing's really important. Interesting. It's very important also, obviously, but you know, a couple things come to mind. One is my wife had four natural childbirths and she didn't get an epidural, which is a lot of people thought she was insane. You'd have to talk to her about why she didn't want one. There's a lot, I think more than one reason. But that was an example of where she did it in a very old fashioned, primitive, non-technological way. And then the other extremes, surrogate birth, right, you know, we're gonna general, that sounds horrible and dangerous. I'm not gonna do that. Or it's, it is though, whether with an epidural or not still one of the most primitive things we can do. And I think that's another part of the romance of this is that the way technology insulates us from physical harm, physical danger, physical discomfort, physical unpleasantness, you know, going back to the original strategies for achieving these things are is the only word is primitive. 'cause those are pre-technology, not just lesser technology. You know, I, you can comment on that if you want, but also I, I'd like, I'd like to turn to this whole question of more of the philosophical question of how we should think about our minds versus our bodies and how AI is in, and our screens generally are increasingly making us experience life as a non-physical thing, as an internal mental state rather than out in the world. And I, I think if you look at the last hundred years or so of, of human technology and the human experience, it's the use of technology to insulate us from the elements, from danger. Everything's turned into something like a movie. Real life is becoming more cinematic in many, many ways. So react to any of that if you want.

- Yeah, no, totally. I think that, yeah. Yeah. And I think that was kind of what was so interesting to me about, about like childbirth. It's like no matter how it's how it's done, right? As like a, as like a man, someone who can't do it and experience it, you know, it's just, and in a world where you know it, because in sense it doesn't, you know, if you are, if it's, if it's, if it's natural, if you, if it's pe you know, however it happens in a sense, you know, if it's zeroed however it happens, it's this incredible, incredibly bodily thing. You know what I mean? That as a man, you just kind of watch it and you're just like, ah, this, my body can't do, you know, my, it's something that you, you know, you are confronted with the limits your own body instantly, you know what I mean? Like, you're like, well there we are, you know, and like, you know, you can sort of understand how like, you know, you know, it's something that's slightly beyond the, the, you know, the, the rational. I, I find it anyway, it's sort of like, I definitely understand how 300, 400 years ago if you were a bloke and you were outside and whatever, you could hear all that going on and see that and just, it's beyond rational explanation. You, you'd just be like, yeah, I can't remember who, who it was who said it, but you know, yeah. But you know, the idea that okay, might be Sheila, he or somebody, but you know, the idea, you know, if, if, if it was, you know, if you sort of, if if, if it was kind of, it wasn't such patriarch society, the kind of the dominant philoso question would be would be essentially kind of like whether or not to have a child, you know, that would be the dominant physical rather than to be or not to be or anything like that. That was kind of the stuff that meant that we kind of made up to kind of like make up for our inability to do this sort of stuff. And I think, you know, that goes into the broader point of, yeah, this question of alienation, you know, I think the question around screens and so on, so is generally framed in terms of like attentiveness and questions of, you know, and, and our concentration spans and so on so forth. And it's always interesting to me when I'm kind of very deeply in a scroll, you know, on something or like, you know, monitoring the situation, how quickly I forget my own body exists. Yeah. And you know, that for me is like, kind of, that for me is kind of like almost the, the thing I always, I personally in my own life worry about is that question of kind of alienation is that I, is that I'm just less and less kind of in touch with my own body. And I'm just personally as someone who Could talk a good game on royal and kind of burlow ponti and sort of, you know, really I could stick it to Car ts in dualism any day of the week, but the way I actually live my life and I've lived my life majorly is kind of like as a brain on a vat. You know what I mean? Where I'm just kind of fueling the brain with content and writing and reading and stuff, and I'm not like paying that much tension to my own body and stuff. And so, you know, I, I think that that's the, that for me was that question of alienation. And I think in a sense that also begins to move us towards a slightly more nuanced view of AI as well. Because, you know, the one thing I have really enjoyed doing that has been quite embodying in my own life over the last six months, been doing a lot more around the house. And that has kind of been, because I've had kind of, AI is a very good tool when it comes to helping you about being like handyman, like being a handyman in instruction. Sure. So I, you know, I, it was like, you know, I, I was holding seat broke and I was like, Iit, I'm gonna fix the toilet seat. You know what I mean? And it was kind of like, there was just all of this trial and error and it was very, like, it was very cr it was a bit like cruise getting on the, the air, air say 400. Just like, I think I got, I got through two or three toilet seats. 'cause I ordered the wrong one every time. 'cause I was like, I don't want someone to come in and tell me I to do this. So I ordered the wrong, I ordered two wrong toilet seats, two wrong, the wrong screws twice as well. It turns out the people who lived in the flat forest had some very niche Italian toilet manufacturer. So, and you know, I did it myself and I, I want to do it myself. And I find AI very helpful there. And I think it's, that's what's I, you know, very important as well, is it's not a situation where AI instinctively means turning your brain off. It, it really is. It's not so much about the technology for me anyway, it's about the way that you use it. You know, you can use any technology to, in the same way there's a difference between going, you know, I've got TV by here, you know, going and watching like, I dunno, you know, like, oh yeah, Paul and Pressburger film or something. And watching, you know, like, you know, something completely mindless on YouTube. The same way with ai, you know, if, if I get it to write an essay for me, then that's opposite, gonna be dis embodying. But if I, if I ask it to be a little, my handyman friend and tell me how to, what, what, how to put this plug into the toilet, so the toilet seat fixes, that's kind of a good thing, you know? And I think that beginning to think, that's why I like why I like embodiment so much, is it allows us to start to think in a more textured way about technology.

- I hope this doesn't embarrass you too much, or me, but one of the few things I can do around the house is fix the toilet when it's running. So when the toilet's running and the water keeps going and cycling, you have to replace the mechanism inside the toilet. And I know how to do that. There's different kinds. It's like you say, you have to order the right kind and certain there's a certain set of techniques you have to do. They're really not so advanced. It's like you have to dry out the inside of the, the back part before you put in the new one. And, you know, this is a trivial thing, but what's fascinating to me is how when I try to go on to other areas of my home of home repair, which I have had, I've had some success, I wanna suggest I'm horrible at it. I do occasionally do fix things around the house, but many things I fail at, and I find it disproportionately unnerving that I can't do certain things. Now it turns out my father couldn't do them either. So it's not that part of it's just feel I feeling like I'm not living up to my set of standards. I, I would have in other areas for myself. I, I'm clearly a failure. The economist to me says, well, there's divisional labor and it, it makes sense to hire someone to come fix this for me. Why would I learn how to do it myself?

- Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'm just like comparative. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You

- Went

- Using Exactly.

- But at the same time, I, I, I wanna come back to this example of navigation and I think it was Michael Easter, Easter on the program I make that make, this might be wrong. So I apologize to the guest who actually talked about it. But we talked about the, the idea of not navigating you, you talked about it ongoing, you know, on a c on a certain journey to, to the, to the archives. You know, in my case, if I'm on a hike, I get very nervous if I can't see on my phone that I'm on the trail. And, and that's a weird embarrassing neurosis of sorts. An example of alienation. And the idea that I I won't be able to find my way home is, is, is is frightening to me. I don't want to have that feeling. So I just, I cheat, I use the phone. But it's interesting whether in going forward in our lives and, and as AI gets more prominent and we do spend more and more time, I think inside our heads and less time out in the physical world. I mean, the things, the things that we do out in the physical world are, are fake. We go to the gym, you know, I'm really, I'm, I'm good at the, some of the gym equipment, but oh my gosh, what, you know, I'm not doing real things that require strength. So, you know, I just wonder if as we get further and further away from our primitive uses, uses of our body to achieve things in the physical world, you know, what's gonna happen? I think we're going to look for ways to use ourselves, our physicalness. And I also assume, I don't know, maybe they're gonna get less important. I don't know. Even even less important.

- Yeah, it's interesting. I think they just, it seems to me the trend is towards like this kind of almost symbolism, isn't it? You know what I mean? They become they become symbolic. And I suppose that's what, that's what's so interesting, isn't it? It goes, it really goes back to your point about the linking it to peril. You know what I mean? And that like, cruise is like learning to, you know, like these people be learning to do these, these things with planes and so on and so forth, because it was very, very dangerous. You know? And you have, and they were trying to push the frontiers and so and so, and now essentially it's, it's, it's symbolic. It's Tom Tom Cruise is an extraordinarily accomplished, you know, pilot and, and stuntman. But it's, it's to, it's to kind of, it's the kind of entertain, you know, it's almost the concept of the stunt in that going from, okay, we're in a position where I'm going to, I'm going to physically fight because I have to be good at physically fighting to, I'm going to be, I'm going to physically fight in order to entertain people. And I think that there's this, you know, it's this kind of idea of stunt culture and you can see it as well, you know, sports is obviously the other arena of this, isn't it? You know, where you have these extraordinarily talented physical athletes and you know that that's what's, you know, that's what's, and and, and what is being gone on now is that you have the athletes who are doing physical acts in order and you know, the reason they get paid so much and so, and forth is for entertainment. And so the question I suppose is whether where people can kind of differ on it is, is this kind of world of where all, where all physical movement is almost, in a sense a stunt is, is it basically like, is is, is it one where we can do without it or, or is it one where there is something valuable in it? Is it, is, is is there a value to cruise doing these things on the screen or, you know, or you know, Josh Allen throwing a, a football for 70 yards, or, you know, or, or, or, or is it just something that we, that we will lose and kind of that we're, that we can just wave goodbye to? I think I, I think that it's this, there's a value to it, even on the symbolic level because it, it shows us the virtues of it and we can apply it to our everyday lives, I suppose. But I can see how people could argue the other way as well.

- And I don't, the franchise, I've never seen Survivor, but of course Survivor is is the same idea that that physical skills matter and it makes you wonder where there's gonna be, you know, camps for adults. Certainly summer camp is an attempt to get away from the digital world and to, I assume summer camps still have archery and still have, I remember I went to a, a summer camp, it was a day camp. I didn't, it wasn't sleepaway, but we boxed, I'd never boxed in my life. And they strapped on gloves and they were enormous because they, they have to be large and, and mushy. And after three minutes, which is the length of a round, I was 10 years old, 12 years old, I can't remember. I was exhausted from holding the gloves up. The gloves were so heavy. But those kind of experiences, I guess people will pay now increasingly pay for, to to remind themselves that they're alive and that they, that they have potentially crafts, they could learn that were out, that are out in the physical world. It's really, it, it, it makes you suspect that that movies will continue in this direction, right? The the useful man. And it's usually a man who, and it's 'cause it's usually about, about warfare and more. Although actually to be, to be careful, increasingly women have, are stars of movies where they can do incredible physical things that used to be for men, right? That it's aircraft, la aircraft and others who, who now have these, who can do these great, you know, physical warfare, hand-to-hand combat stuff.

- Yeah. And I suppose as well also it's like about thinking about our, our definition being different about what is a spectacle skill. You know, so a, a good example here is like cruise So Cru in, when they were filming Top Gun Mavericks set up this kind of school, right? And, you know, that they, they were all taught how to, you know, do all of these kind of, you know, and like how useful it was that they could do all of this stuff. But they were, you know, you know, around not flying a fighter jet, but around being able to kind of, you know, being able to, being able to, you know, sort of just behave whilst they're flying and know what they're doing and so on and so forth. And one of the people of course in the film is Monica Baro, who plays one of, who plays one of the pilots. And she is interesting 'cause she sort of then went on to to play, she was in the, the Bob, the Bob Dylan film I think. I can't watch when it was, but yeah. Yes. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. The, the Bob Dylan film with Timothy Chalamet in it essentially. And she had never played guitar or sung in her life before. And I, I'm, I might be, this might be apocryphal, but I think what happens is, of course she then sort of gets off of the roll and I think she goes to cruise. I think she, I I think she may go to cruise something and he, he's like, well just learn. And then she learns and, and you know, watching her sing as Joe Byers in that film is absolutely incredible. It's, it's, it's, it's an amazing spectacle of skill and one that you are like, oh my God, how has she done that? You know what I mean? And so I think also it's about expanding our definition as to what, as to what sort of spectacles of skill are, you know what I mean? Like it's, 'cause obviously there is, the act of acting in itself is a spectacle still. When people are watching Hamnet and enjoying Hamnet so much, they're enjoying Jesse. But yeah, just Jesse Buckley's ability to, to do, to just, just to act the things she's asked to act again, it's almost like Cruz in it, in a, isn't it, in a sense in that, in that often when we are seeing actors do really amazing things, we are also marveling at the acting. And I certainly felt I was doing that at some points in Hamnet, for example. I was like, okay, I'm just like the film's film, I, I, I know Shakespeare, whatever, the film's gone. I'm just like watching this person act on screen and being completely blown away by it. So I think that, yeah, I think probably for men it's kind of just that we have this massive neurosis about it. You know, I always, I do really love that Arnold Schwarzenegger book being called Be Useful. 'cause I think he sort of, he doesn't realize, but he's kind of like, sort of stumbled upon the kind of the nature of the male condition rather than, you know, you know, it's less kind of like a self-help guide, more just kind of like a rumination on the male on, you know, the male condition and the kind of desire that we all have to try and be useful as, as men and stuff. But, but also, you know, it doesn't have to be, be warfare based as as well. You know, like my other favorite spectacle skill last year was the rehearsal, which was a comedy show in which Nathan Fielder, who's a comedian, it's about kind of flying, it's about the act of flying and the act of flight and so on so forth. And then it's all building up to the climax. Russ, have you seen it?

- No, but you're right about it. So describe what it is. It's quite ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. So

- The climax is that he basically reveals that he's been secretly learning to, to pilot a 7, 4 7, and he can do this. And again, it's just like so discombobulated. 'cause the idea, we put people in boxes, the idea you can be a comedian and also an airline pilot, like, what is going on there? And then he flies like a, a a packed plane of people, right? He takes off and he flies and goes back down. And obviously it has the whole kind of strange level of it. But again, the fact is simply that you, you have to watch this because it's, it's some, it's somebody doing something, you know, this, this kind of spectacle still in a way that, and it's not really about war, you know, warfare or anything like that. It's just like a simply active embodied knowledge. Whether it's, you know, like I, Alyssa Lou, Alyssa Lou, you know, the, the, the figure skater who's just gone completely stratospheric because of the, because of the Winter Olympics. Like I think that, yeah, men I think agonize over it, but I think spectacles of spectacle of skill is a kind of equal, an equal game. I think both women and men go, you know, it's everybody, everybody is impressive in, in, in different ways. But what has stayed the same is how attracted and all lured we are to them, even more so. 'cause they're rarer now. They're rarer now because we don't, we don't see these incredible spectacles on every day in our everyday life, you know? And, and so they, they are, they are so enthralling and I think they will just carry on being more and more enthralling to us.

- You know, my wife recently showed me that a clip I've always liked of, it's from the movie chef where he makes his kid a grilled cheese sandwich. It's fantastic, right? It's a beautiful, it's a thing. It would take me like my wife can make a soup in 23 minutes effortlessly. That's phenomenal. It's simmer for a while to make it really delicious. But the other day I made a soup. It took me, I don't know, three hours. It was really embarrassing. It tasted good, but it was not an, an exhilarating display of skill. My wife can do the whole range of things it takes to make a soup at a very, very short period of time. And it's a beautiful thing. Craft craft is fantastic. And I, it is tempting to say that in the world of AI and in our world of doom, scrolling and monitoring the situation that craft will, you know, there'll be, it'll have a comeback. It's possible.

- Yeah, it's true. It's true. I think you can be completely agnostic as to, as to whether it will or, you know, yeah. Or, or or not without sort of, without sort of delegating the value of it in its own right. I suppose it's, you know, it's what drew me to, to watchmaking as well. But it's, it's just very interesting to see how that plays out. You know? 'cause it, it could go in any direction, you know, it's very striking. My my wife's family are all, you know, very like very clever people. Big big podcast listeners and stuff. Professional, clever people. And her youngest brother, you know, just became a mechanic, never went to university and stuff. And like, you know, if you think about the anxieties that that, that the, that that the rest of my wife's family are facing, you know what I mean about kind of like, will knowledge will completely automate as the way are we gonna become very useful, useless. I mean, like, I think to Toby wanted to move to another garage and he just, you know, it took him back two, two days, got five job offers, off you go. You know what I mean? And so whether, whether it ends up being this kind of sting in the tail and we end up with this return to the body, which is, I don't, I'm not really arguing in favor of because I think it's duty to tell, but some people would certainly are. But you know, whatever it is, I think it's, you know, I just, I just think that there's, there's something in each of us that's very useful. I, I found it anyway, you know, from whether it's being able to live, you know, thinking about driving rather than just lively follow Google maps or fix toilets or, you know, drill or again yeah, drill my wife out of the toilet when the door the the door bought got seized. And I remember, I remember obviously is the most pathetic male thing ever. But yeah, pulling it out and feeling so proud. And I think I've still got the door bolt somewhere. It's actually like next to the wedding wing, which is, which kind of makes me sound like a fictional character. So yeah. That, that, that kind of line writes itself basically. But some, yeah, I think, you know, I think where I was coming from, it was just sort of with my own struggles and watching it done on that kind of cosmically, comically overblown scale and then thinking about, okay, well I'm never gonna be able to ride a motorbike. I'm gonna be able to jump out of a plane. I've never wa never wanted to jump out of a plane, but how can I take some of this stuff for myself?

- It does suggest that people will always like to have a, a physical part of their life that they're good at. And in a way it's nice that it's useful, but doesn't have to always be useful. It could just be entertaining or comforting, like making a grilled cheese sandwich. My wife's really good at that too, by the way. That just doesn't do it quite as artfully as the character and chef. But these are beautiful things. These are not small things. I think they'll grow in stature as time passes.

- No, no, totally, totally. Yeah. No, totally. So I think it's, yeah, yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, I think about, there's like a Norwegian writer called Karl over Can Guard who always like, who just did this, this, this, this series of books about his own life and his life is completely mundane as they come. It's nappies and going to kind of rhythm time and stuff. And, and like Jeremy Strong, the act is a big disciple disciple of him. You know what I mean? And I think there's, I think he was once, he once did GQ asked him to do this thing where celebrities, you know, they, they come out and they do their, and they do their like, you know, things I can't live without. And they're meant to say like, you know, like my phone and like my lip balm and Jerry Strong gets out this copy of kind of, can I scar that? He looks very serious at the camera. And he says, you know, ultimately, like, you know what, what, what can I scar reminds us by, by, by showing his life in kind of so much detail is that, you know, there are, there are no small moments. And so, and I think that's, I think that's definitely, that's definitely true. You know, I think it's not sort, sort of, Cruz is thinking about when he is jumping out of a plane on fi on fire or something and, and, and plummeting to earth and being beckoned by shepherds in the, probably one of the, one of the many religious overtones in that film. But it's something I, you know, something I think about. Anyway,

- My guest today has been Alled McLean Jones. All thanks for being part of e-comm talk.

- Russ, thanks so much. Absolute pleasure as always.