July 07, 2026 · Episode 74
1 Hr, 04 Min, 16 Sec 

Summary

A short story wins a major literary prize. Everything looks normal – until it doesn’t.

We’re getting into the AI literary scandals shaking up publishing this year. A magazine cutting ties with its own award, a bookstore chain’s controversial new shelving policy and a Nobel laureate’s confession about her writing process that’s got us talking.

Plus: our assistance dog Lacey, a notebook obsession reaching disturbing new heights, and a question we can’t quite shake — what gets lost when a machine can pass as the author?

You might want to listen if:

• You like your publishing gossip served with a side of dog stories
• You’ve wondered whether AI could actually write a novel worth reading
• You’re curious what a Nobel Prize winner really thinks about authors using AI

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Transcript

Japan Package Unboxing

Lyndon: Let’s talk about the package that arrived from Japan.

Breallyn: Ooh.

Lyndon: I’ve gotta get used to not keeping it pristine and neat. Okay. So basically this is—

Breallyn: So what are they listening to, Lyndon?

Lyndon: Remember we were talking about, it was a few weeks ago—

Breallyn: Yeah… it’s a good episode. Go and have a listen. It’s about—

Lyndon: Journaling, isn’t it? I think it’s titled… I can’t remember. I don’t. Anyway.

Bullet Journal Burnout

Breallyn: Lyndon got very deep into why bullet journaling hadn’t been successful for him over the past eight or so years, and how he’s now discovered a new method that he’s really gonna give a good go at.

Lyndon: All right. Now, I don’t wanna sidetrack us too much, but on my phone — okay, so in that episode I was talking about systems and how I’m really… I don’t wanna say I’m really good at setting up systems, but I do set them up.

Breallyn: You set them up really well.

Lyndon: I do set them up really well. Yep. Okay, I do.

Breallyn: The problem—

Lyndon: is when— Very deliberate and a lot of contemplation, and a lot of—

Breallyn: like— everything has to be right… just—

Lyndon: Yeah… you know— Gets done well. I’m taking lots of meds just to get through the whole setup. And anyway, so part of that whole bullet journaling setup was I also put reminders on my phone. So in the morning a reminder will come up that I’ve gotta do my stretches, exercise, and my — do my bullet journaling. And I know I don’t have to spend hours on bullet journaling.

Just a few minutes, that’s all you need to do. That’s the whole point. And then I have another reminder at night, ’cause at night you have to migrate your entries to the following day. Can I just say never did it? The reminders. Now, even that episode was quite liberating—

Breallyn: Good.

Lyndon: In a way. And liberating and disappointing… to know that I’d put all this work into setting up what ultimately was gonna change my life, and then never doing it. And realizing that there’s a through line there… my whole life. Anyway, but so since then, these reminders keep coming up.

Oh. As they have been—

Breallyn: You haven’t taken them out?

Lyndon: For years.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: No. No, I haven’t yet.

Breallyn: Oh. Because — so every morning and every night you’re getting a reminder about bullet journaling, which you’ve really never done, and now you’ve also officially given up trying.

Lyndon: I don’t wanna use the words “give it up.” I would like to say — Retired.

Breallyn: Try.

Lyndon: Anyway, so I found — so I was very particular about the kind of notebook I needed once I’d discovered the Grail method. Look it up. I actually put a link to — is his name Sean Penney? I’ve forgotten. Anyway, so — the link is on — the link is in the episode notes. If you go to our website, I think it was episode 71. On the episodes page, you see the whole transcript there, the audio’s there, and the link to the guy who was talking about the Grail method.

Midori Notebook Deep Dive

Lyndon: And so I decided, in my new approach… which is an anti-method, ’cause Brea, your advice was — and I understand this and I respect it, and part of me knows that I should just do this. But also, as we were saying last week, I have an eye for detail and aesthetic, and things really do annoy me. So I had to find a notebook that lays flat. I had three criteria.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: And I did abandon — the leather cover. Because I didn’t know what kind of animal it would’ve come from, and how much tanning of the hide may have been done, and how much getting rid of the smell. Anyway, so this had to lay flat. It lays flat.

Breallyn: My advice had been just get anything. Just write on whatever. Just start writing. Like — okay… don’t worry about it. Just any old notebook will do.

Lyndon: I get it.

Breallyn: Yeah. Because you don’t wanna put the pressure of—

Lyndon: Yes…

Breallyn: the perfect notebook — yes, that’s right — onto yourself. ‘Cause it was all about friction and removing—

Breallyn: friction. Yeah. Yeah, so don’t make that something else.

Lyndon: But do you think now I’ve created more friction for myself with this?

Breallyn: I don’t know. You’ve got this beautiful notebook. It—

Lyndon: Mind you, it just arrived yesterday.

Breallyn: It arrived yesterday. We had a grand opening.

Lyndon: I tried to, yeah.

Breallyn: And we looked at the newer notebooks, and you’d been very kind and ordered one for me as well. So we’ve got a new one each.

Lyndon: So these are from…

Breallyn: Just go through the features as well real quick, ’cause — you’ve started with, that it opens flat. Yeah.

Lyndon: So it’s Midori. It’s Japanese paper.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I think there must be people either like me or they’re professionals — in terms of their artistic needs, they needed—

Breallyn: Proper artists.

Lyndon: They like to write with different pens on paper that rewards their writing. Doesn’t bleed, doesn’t smear. Won’t smudge, all that kind of stuff, right? So this company, Midori, they’ve brought out this, which is the same as their regular A5. Is it even called Midori? It sounds like… Isn’t that an alcohol drink? Yeah. All right, but this is thicker, so we’re gonna try these ones.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And then we’re gonna try their regular—

Breallyn: Paper. Paper feels beautiful. It’s—

Lyndon: Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s — I’m touching it now and I’m loving it. It does open completely flat.

Breallyn: I can’t remember how many grams per page. What is it, 80?

Lyndon: I think these are 140.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And their regular is 80.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So it’s — which doesn’t sound like a lot, but—

Breallyn: Nice and—

Lyndon: It’s enough. It’s 96 pages. All right, it’s—

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: It’s not stark white. Remember I said that?

Breallyn: Yes, that’s right.

Lyndon: It’s a cream or an off-white.

Breallyn: It’s a nice colour, restful for the eyes.

Lyndon: Yeah. And—

Breallyn: And smooth…

Lyndon: It’s A5. Mm-hmm. What was my other criteria? Had to open flat, couldn’t be white. This obviously meets all the criteria.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: It’s not lined.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm. You’ve done all your research. It’s completely plain. How many hours of research do you reckon you spent—

Lyndon: I don’t know…

Breallyn: before you clicked buy now?

Lyndon: And the other thing too is I’ve gotta say, this is no dearer to get than if you just went into Officeworks and got one of their Moleskine journals or something like that. It’s not—

Breallyn: Moleskine?

Lyndon: Yeah. You know — a literal — from dirty old moles.

Breallyn: Mole.

Lyndon: Are they not called Moleskines?

Breallyn: I think they are. Yeah.

Lyndon: Are—

Breallyn: They made from moles?

Lyndon: So you’ve got — mol— but like — what are you pointing to your nose? Moley, moley, moley, moley. No, not — Guacamole.

Breallyn: I was thinking more like—

Lyndon: That’s so childish.

Breallyn: the people who used to—

Lyndon: Call moles.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Mol— that’s an animal… who—

Breallyn: grew up in the outer suburbs. Yeah, I know it’s an animal. Is it literally made from that animal?

Lyndon: I doubt that highly. Wow. I think it’s just a name.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: Anyway, so — well, there you go. We’ve spoken about these. When you look at this too, the front and back cover is just essentially the same paper. It’s actually — it looks like it’s—

Breallyn: Thicker… doesn’t have a cover.

Lyndon: Yeah, it looks like it doesn’t have—

Breallyn: A cover. Which would be nice ’cause I was able to put it into my little bundle of journals that does have a leather cover with my name—

Lyndon: Embossed. Oh yeah, I got that for you as a present—

Breallyn: Yeah, you did.

Lyndon: A couple of years ago.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I don’t think you’ve used them.

Breallyn: It’s too good—

Lyndon: to use. You broke your own rule. I gave it to you.

Breallyn: I know.

Lyndon: Yeah. It’s got your name in the leather. Yeah. And that is leather.

Breallyn: And some different little — you can put different books inside it… little—

Lyndon: Books—

Breallyn: inside. One’s — I’ve got a gardening one, a cooking one, and I’ve actually got a — the journals — bullet journal one. Yeah.

Lyndon: Oh, have you really?

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s got the dot point — dot — dot grids, yeah. But yeah.

Lyndon: But you—

Breallyn: could use all those… they are lovely. And I am — I won’t use them… I’ve left it — now I’ve taken it from its sacred spot on the shelf and put it on my desk.

Lyndon: Anyway.

Breallyn: There you go. My new journal.

Lyndon: I’m gonna look at this. I’ve stacked it up with some of the other ones ’cause I had to organise the studio.

Breallyn: Yeah. You’ve got a nice stack of journals there. One that I’d be proud of too.

Lyndon: One, two, three, four, and that’s not all of them. I know there’s another couple somewhere.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: None of them have been used to their full capacity, but it’s all gonna change with this MD paper.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So there you go.

Breallyn: It’s good to know your progress on that challenge that you set us both.

Lyndon: Now to find a suitable pen.

Breallyn: Oh, dear.

Lyndon: I have guidelines.

Breallyn: I feel for your journaling.

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain in the Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life, and where one of us finds out today’s topic the same moment that you do. You’re listening to Lyndon.

Breallyn: And Breallyn. Welcome today.

Lacey the Assistance Dog

Breallyn: The other little update we’ve got for listeners is that we’ve now had Birdie’s assistance dog for a few weeks — Lacey, who is absolutely gorgeous. What an incredible dog. She’s just so high-performing and—

Lyndon: I don’t know if she’s gorgeous ’cause we’re not allowed to look at her.

Breallyn: We are allowed to look, but then that tempts us to—

Lyndon: Look but don’t touch.

Breallyn: Pat. Yeah. We—

Lyndon: Look, don’t touch.

Breallyn: Yeah, we’re not allowed to pat her, give her—

Lyndon: Affection — but we keep finding loopholes… and love. Remember the loophole we found this morning?

Breallyn: We were practising some of her instructions.

Lyndon: No, hang on. We were role-playing. Remember? I was, “Look, imagine I’m Birdie.” “Get Lacey to do her over so that she sits across my lap and then I’d…” you did that for a bit, and then I was like, “Shall we swap?” So we swapped so that you could be Birdie — yeah… and I could be the one — giving the instructions.

Breallyn: Because we have to practise. We don’t want it to be an awkward transition when we’re trying to get Lacey to assist Birdie in feeling deep pressure—

Lyndon: Yes…

Breallyn: comfort and having that kind of therapy. That’s exactly what the—

Lyndon: Head trainers said. “Please, when we leave—”

Breallyn: Pretty sure…

Lyndon: practise.” That’s why when I took a photo of you with Lacey on your lap, that you were like, “Do not…” You were like, “Delete that photo.”

Breallyn: Delete the evidence.

Lyndon: And here you are trying to — Oh, my gosh… every little thing you’ve done, you’ve tried to justify, every loophole. But anyway, go on. What were you gonna say?

Breallyn: Anyway, we’re enjoying having Lacey in the—

Lyndon: Home.

Breallyn: She’s definitely building a connection with Birdie, and we’ve just gotta be careful that she doesn’t build as strong a connection with us. That’s why we can’t — it’s a different connection — touch her and give her — with us — affection. Yeah. Yeah. She has to see us as handlers and authority figures, and she — and the alphas. Yeah. She needs to see Birdie as her person that she just loves on and gets her affection from. So different roles, but it’s excruciating that we cannot love her.

But what’s been really nice, what we can do — we’ve been observing her. We’ve been just enjoying having a dog in our lives again, ’cause for both of us, we hadn’t had a dog since we were children. So just watching their ways, getting used to their physical presence, and just the way their bodies move and how springy their legs are and how snuffly they are, and just how incredible they are.

Dogs are amazing. The—

Lyndon: Expressions — yeah… in their eyes, all the different things they can tell you just by tilting their head and—

Breallyn: I know… when she puts her little ears up, when she tilts her head—

Lyndon: Up — oh, and ’cause she’s super well-trained — oh, she’s gorgeous… tricks and things that she does. So she can get your attention by putting her leg up on your knee or all this sort of stuff. And so she’s craving attention.

Breallyn: Yeah. One other thing that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago in your episode about journaling and getting back into some of the habits or practices that we haven’t done for a while or that we wanted to get into. One of the things I think I’d mentioned was like nature observing and then that being an inspiration for writing—

Lyndon: Oh, yep.

Breallyn: or perhaps some watercolours, just some different things.

But I was going through some of the latest controversies that AI has brought to the world of art, particularly to writing. And in my mind it was just juxtaposing with enjoying, watching Lacey and watching how her muscles move under her skin and things like that. Like seeing how her body works, her capabilities, her personality, all of that. So it was just these two quite opposing things that sat in my mind.

And so we’re gonna go on a little bit of a wander today in our episode, but stick with it ’cause we’re gonna do full circle with those two ideas.

Let me tell you about a couple of AI scandals — can I say — that have come up in the literary world in recent weeks. Yeah, and it’s funny that this is something that we keep coming back to in Pain in the Arts because, obviously, it’s a moving and growing new technology that impacts a lot on art.

It just still blows my mind that we’ve all been looking forward to the robots doing all the housework and — yet here they are doing all the artwork whilst we’re still washing dishes and clothes. Anyway.

Lyndon: Yeah. What happened to The Jetsons? I know. Did you ever see that cartoon? Yeah. Meet George Jetson.

Breallyn: His wife, Judy.

Lyndon: I liked all the—

Breallyn: His son, Elroy. Whatever. I—

Lyndon: I liked all the contraptions and the futuristic things and—

Breallyn: Yeah… maybe — like the arm that picks your clothes up off the floor and then quickly washes, dries them and hangs them back in your cupboard.

Lyndon: Ooh, what? I think even watching that as a kid, I didn’t think that we’d ever be, like, living in space or have these spaceships and that, but there were all those other aspects where you went, “Why couldn’t that be?”

Breallyn: Gadgets. Yeah.

Lyndon: All the gadgets. Yeah. Love a—

Breallyn: Make our lives pretty easy.

Lyndon: Love a gadget.

Breallyn: Yeah. Meanwhile, AI, instead of washing our clothes and—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Breallyn: All that, it’s winning literary prizes.

Lyndon: Yeah. This—

Breallyn: Can you believe it?

Lyndon: You said this and I was like, “This can’t — this can’t—”

Breallyn: Be true… this—

Lyndon: Can’t be true.” And then I thought, hang on a minute. It’s like when you see people say that they’re award-winning, or they’ve won this or they’ve won that — like wines for instance, and you go, “Oh, it’s a gold medal-winning wine,” and then you look and it’s, yeah, like in their small country town.

Breallyn: Yeah. Or — or a cheese — or—

Lyndon: They’ve—

Breallyn: Won it in their own winery. It’s been given their own gold medal.

Lyndon: Yeah, so this is the thing, ’cause when you told me about this, I thought, “Oh, I’m not researching this to see where the truth is or isn’t.” Well — I thought, “You’ll probably do that.” But I suspect, and please let this be true, that it’s not a real — it’s like not a… I feel like this is gonna be so wrong. I don’t even wanna look at you. But it can’t be surely by a respected publisher.

Breallyn: Let me dash your hopes.

Lyndon: Don’t… Okay…

Breallyn: As all of our hopes have been dashed… Penguin.

Lyndon: I don’t even know what all the publishers are.

Breallyn: No. Let me — let me let you know.

Lyndon: And there’s probably subsidiaries, aren’t there, as well?

AI Wins the Commonwealth Prize

Breallyn: This is — there’s a prestigious prize called the Commonwealth Prize. So it’s a short—

Lyndon: Did they not know it was AI?

Breallyn: So it’s a regional section — that it was the winner of this Commonwealth Prize. So verified, published in Granta Magazine. It’s still up there — you can still look it up — and it’s a story called “The Serpent in the Grove” by Jamia Nazia.

Lyndon: Are you gonna read some of it?

Breallyn: I’m gonna read you some sentences from it.

Lyndon: Oh, no.

Breallyn: I’m gonna read you some sentences from it. So it got through, obviously, the board who was deciding the winners. And then readers started to say, “Hang on a minute. This sounds AI-ish.” And then readers started to put it through an AI detector, and it came back as incredibly likely to be written by, or at least partially written by, an AI.

Lyndon: Oh, okay. Yeah. So — so is the author a real person?

Breallyn: The author’s a real person. They haven’t been very prolific, and they haven’t put out a statement as to whether it’s AI or not.

Lyndon: Well—

Breallyn: So yeah, it’s—

Lyndon: I guess they’re not legally bound to, are they?

Breallyn: They don’t have to, no. But—

Lyndon: So you’re saying that the people that judged it didn’t know it was AI and didn’t have any reason to check — or arguably maybe should have had many reasons to check.

Breallyn: I feel like they had reasons to check — okay… and they obviously either didn’t, or didn’t think it was relevant. I don’t know. I don’t know whether they were happy with feeling like this is probably AI written.

Lyndon: Oh.

Breallyn: Yeah, they—

Lyndon: And would they put their hand up now and go, “Actually, we see what you’re saying, and we withdraw it now”?

Breallyn: Let me just see what they did say, ’cause they did put a—

Lyndon: So they put out a statement. Should we crack open another gin? Do we need something to put us in good stead for whatever is about to follow?

Breallyn: So this is the statement from Granta Magazine prefacing “The Serpent in the Grove” short story.

It says, “The 2026 selection of the regional winners of the Commonwealth Prize caused a great deal of controversy based on the speculation that one or more of the stories may have been at least partially AI generated, accusations that were strongly rejected by the authors.” Okay, so the author has rejected that suggestion. “Granta editors were not involved in the Commonwealth Regional Prize juries or the selection of authors for their shortlist.”

So the magazine’s distancing themselves from the selectors. “For the sake of our own editorial integrity, the Granta Trust Board has now taken the decision that we will no longer engage in external publishing partnerships where we have no editorial control. We will keep the Commonwealth Prize shortlisted stories on our website in the public interest and wish our former partner, the Commonwealth Foundation, all the best in its work.” So they’ve literally broken that relationship with the Commonwealth—

Lyndon: Fair enough…

Breallyn: Foundation, yeah.

Lyndon: That sounds fair enough to me. James Na— Jamia—

Breallyn: Nazir’s story is the winning entry from the Caribbean in the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. So I’m not gonna read you the whole short story, obviously, but let me read you out some sentences that literally were a prize-winning story. This is a sentence: “She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.”

Lyndon: Hang on a minute. Before you said that, there was a little — a little part of me that went — a little part of me that was bothered by that. If I didn’t recognize… that it might be AI, there’d be some sort of misuse of grammar or a term… or a pronoun that I would miss, and you’d—

Breallyn: But — you’d go, “Ho, ho, ho.”

Lyndon: But instead—

Breallyn: If you were literary, you would understand that it was—”

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah, yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: No. No, let me read you another one.

Lyndon: No, read that one again.

Breallyn: Let me — I’ve got two others to read. Okay. This is the second one.

Lyndon: Oh, my gosh.

Breallyn: “The girl smiled sunrise over a sink.” Sounds like — even in context, I’ve read the whole short story, which doesn’t really have — it doesn’t seem to actually have much of a plot. And so the whole strength of the piece is the voice, and yet these are some of the sentences written in the voice of the story. It’s, yeah, it’s a very strange thing.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: It’s very strange. All right, this is the third example. “Once in the road she told Sita good morning without expecting a reply. Sita returned it and felt as if she’d put down a pan she had no business carrying.”

Lyndon: A pan.

Breallyn: A pan she had no business carrying. So it’s, yeah, like no wonder readers have gone, “Hang on a minute. What?”

Lyndon: Yeah. “What is this?” Yeah. And there’s other sort of—

Breallyn: Is this the literary equivalent—

Lyndon: Things — of Joaquin Phoenix going on The Tonight Show—

Breallyn: Mm-hmm…

Lyndon: in character, but not being recognized that he’s in character? You remember that? And he was, like, just the most — the worst guest you could imagine—

Breallyn: He was so obnoxious—

Lyndon: And being on—

Breallyn: Rude, yeah…

Lyndon: Rude. Yeah. And Letterman didn’t even know. Yeah… he had no… And the first time I watched it I was like, “This guy has lost his mind.” Yeah. And I think most people did as well. So is this the literary equivalent of that—

Breallyn: I don’t think it is because—

Lyndon: Where people have gone — whoever it was, the Commonwealth — who was it that—

Breallyn: Yeah, Commonwealth Prize — the — yeah…

Lyndon: Is this some sort of experiment?

Breallyn: I don’t think it is. No. I think that the… yeah. Because that’s so — if the author’s said, “No, it’s not AI,” but, yeah. It’s — ’cause it — it’s all a bit dodgy. I don’t think it’s some grand point-making thing.

Barnes & Noble and the AI Shelf Space Problem

The other — another thing that’s happened recently is that the Barnes & Noble CEO — so Barnes & Noble is a massive US retailer that has a big bookstore — they’ve recently announced that they would happily stock AI-generated books. So they’re happy to just put ’em on the shelves alongside books written by authors.

Lyndon: So would — let’s say I sat in front of a computer and I gave a prompt for a book, and it all got written within, I don’t know, 20 seconds.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Would Barnes & Noble be happy with me to say I was the author? Or would I have to say I was the prompter?

Breallyn: The prompter. I think that’s something that the literary world is still discussing. There’s a lot of push for human authorship to be acknowledged. Yeah, and if it’s an AI thing, then that’s said up front — like that’s literally on the cover. So I don’t know how it’s gonna play out on the covers and on the shelves.

The publishing industry has a bit of a history of that. There’s some books that are put out that are not necessarily authored, but mostly that would be things like a children’s book where the publisher’s gone, “We need one that’s really educational about colour,” for instance. So then it’s a book that’s put together with a lot of imagery, a lot of photos taken from here, there, and their sort of source material that they’ve already collated as a publishing house, and they put it out, and it might not have an author on the front because it’s a collation.

It’s the work of several editors getting the work out because they have to reach their deadlines, obviously. So I’m just saying there is a bit of a history of no authorship in the publishing industry, but this is a completely different thing.

But having a massive retailer saying, “Hey” — already authors are really competitive for space on those shelves. You’ve gotta compete with celebrities, you’ve gotta compete with cookbooks and travel books and classics from the 1800s, and all of that — there’s very short, small, competitive shelf space, especially for a new author, someone that isn’t established. You’ve gotta compete with the authors that have been around for a long, long time, that have got their crime series or whatever.

So there’s hardly any space as it is. It churns through fairly regularly. It’s like any creative industry. Like, you have your launch and see whether this book does well, whether it’s gonna be nominated for any prizes, whether retailers are gonna take to it, whether readers are gonna buy it, all of that. You don’t have long to kinda make an impression. It’s already tough — and now that shelf space is gonna literally be probably halved or more.

Lyndon: Halved.

Breallyn: Probably. So what—

Lyndon: It’s not just—

Breallyn: I would say—

Lyndon: It’s not gonna be like, you walk into somewhere and it goes, “World War whatever — shelf.” Yeah, and depending on the size of the store will depend on how much — like you’re saying — shelf space they can dedicate to a genre or a theme or something. So are they not just trying to create another genre, or are they just sorta going—

Breallyn: “We’ll accept it in every genre.” It’s in—

Lyndon: Like across the whole—

Breallyn: It’s gonna be in your crime, it’s gonna be in your romance, it’s gonna be in your—

Lyndon: So I couldn’t walk into a Barnes & Noble. I couldn’t ’cause they’re not here. Are they here?

Breallyn: I don’t think so. They don’t have any physical stores in Australia.

Lyndon: But, yeah. But I couldn’t walk into one and then go, “I’m just gonna go straight to the AI section because I’m just curious.”

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: And I’m just gonna get a book that’s written completely by Grok.

Breallyn: No. It’ll… I think it’s gonna be more like it’ll look the same — it’ll have an attractive cover. It’ll be written specifically. When you’re writing something, you’ll have an audience in mind. You’ll have a certain way that it should go in mind, and then along the process that doesn’t always happen or it doesn’t quite land the same as you envisaged it. There’s all sorts of things that happen in a human author’s brain, and then we end up with this amazing multiplicity of stories.

Lyndon: So will the bad—

Breallyn: But AI can just stick to the script. It can stick to what you’ve asked it to do. And it can fill that shelf space and that hole with its borrowed, churned out, recycled material and, yeah, fill that hole.

Lyndon: It is recycled too. Yeah. And from day one, however many years ago that was, I’ve hated the term “intelligence.”

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: Because I’m like, “Can we please use the right term?” Yeah. Maybe one day there will be some sort of artificial intelligence, but at the moment that’s not what it is.

Breallyn: It’s not.

Lyndon: Yeah. So can we just say what it is?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And there were some way better descriptors for what it is. ‘Cause it’s really — it’s like when something’s being marketed to you. There’s so many products that get marketed in a way so that you’re more accepting of them.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or so that you’re more like, kinda go, “Oh wow, this magic whatever — this is the thing I’ve been looking for. It’s really gonna work. It’s gonna remove the smells.” And it feels a bit like that—

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: as well. So but — so hang on. Is the danger in — there’s so many dangers — but like, from a reader’s point of view, is one of the things gonna be that you start reading a story that whether you suspect or you don’t suspect AI wrote it, or at least was involved somehow in it, that you’d be reading and it’s like watching a movie that starts off quite promising and then it takes a turn for the worst and you go, “Oh, that’s disappointing.” And then you maybe or maybe don’t find out that, yeah, it all fell apart there because it actually wasn’t written by a person.

Breallyn: Weirdly, there’s even already been cases where readers have been reading a novel by an actual person. But they’ll get to halfway through the book, and there’ll be a—

Lyndon: The author had given up and just used the prompt…

Breallyn: No, there’s literally a couple — like prompt sentences in there.

Lyndon: Oh, geez.

Editing Meets AI Slop

Breallyn: Like sentences that are clearly from an AI going — yeah… “The direction of this is great. What we can do in this next section—”

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right.

Breallyn: “is make it yada, yada.” So not only has the author not pulled it out, it’s been through the entire editing process, and the editor hasn’t pulled it out and noticed it.

Lyndon: This is something that—

Breallyn: And yeah, it just speaks about — the process is changing, the integrity is diminishing and—

Lyndon: But see, when we were talking to Skye Cusack — when she was here, and she was saying about she’s working on a novel, and then she gave it to an editor, and we were like, “Oh, that’s earlier than we would’ve expected that you would give it to an editor.” And that’s when we realized the point at which an author can get an editor in — right? And surely that would be the job of the editor at that stage.

Obviously there’s the work that we know an editor is gonna be doing in tightening up things and making suggestions and so on. But if there was any plagiarism in there, that’s the role of the editor, you would think.

Breallyn: The editor should check. It’s always on an author to have the integrity not to plagiarize. So there’s definitely—

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Been cases in the past, like outrages where there has been plagiarism. Yeah, which is—

Lyndon: Yeah, in—

Breallyn: the art world… really bad. Yeah. I mean — in the art world, yeah.

Lyndon: In the music world.

Breallyn: All—

Lyndon: Kinds of things.

Breallyn: There’s several different layers of editing. So I think what Skye was having was somebody she trusted look at her work in terms of a structural edit — like, how’s the flow of this book? How’s the pacing? How’s… like, where is it going? That kind of thing.

So then once all that’s worked out, once the book has got a beginning, middle, and an end, and it’s all done, and it’s ready to pretty much move on into production, it then goes to a line editor, which is a different editor. Yeah. And their job is literally to go line by line and make sure that the commas are in the right place. There’s no spelling errors and all that kind of thing. Obviously, all that’s been made easier with computers over the years.

Lyndon: Exactly.

Breallyn: But yeah. It would be weird to get to — and maybe a line editor would skip over the fact that all of a sudden it’s written in a different voice and it sounds exactly like an AI prompt and it’s—

Lyndon: What? ‘Cause they go, “That’s not my job.”

Breallyn: Because, no, because they’re looking at the structure of the sentences, and they’re looking at the punctuation and whatnot. They’re not necessarily reading it. Yeah. They’re looking at the words as a structural function.

Competitions Need AI Rules

Lyndon: See, this is what I was thinking when you said that magazine had distanced itself. Mm-hmm. And I was like, “Yeah, fair enough.” Because they’re saying they had nothing to do with — they didn’t have anything to do with the judging of it, did they?

Breallyn: No. No.

Lyndon: And so you’d think if you’re gonna hold — like, maybe not in years gone by, but now, surely, because of the climate that we’re in — yeah — that you would go, “Okay, if we’re gonna be having a competition then we need to be…” do we want AI or do we not want AI? You know what I mean?

And go, it has to go through a process then, including editors. And if it’s not the line editor’s job, then we have to bring in other editors that literally their job is to run it through a program and see if it’s got AI.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And go, “If it’s got even 0.5% of AI…” Oh, no, that might be hard because—

Breallyn: What’s getting harder is—

Lyndon: But there’s gotta be some sort of — yeah… there’s gotta be some sort of parameters that they go—

Breallyn: Definitely.

Lyndon: We’re not even gonna bother reading this. It’s not going any further. That would be the first step. It’s not gonna go any further in the competition if it doesn’t meet blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then the controversies then would be of a different nature. They would be like someone going, “I literally didn’t use any AI.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And — but that’s a better problem to have, I would’ve thought.

Breallyn: I guess so. And some authors would probably go, “It’s just part of my process, so too bad.” There’s been — oh—

Lyndon: Like re— ’cause you might research something—

Breallyn: and give you an error — yeah. Yeah, and there was one recently — and I’m not gonna remember the name of the author — but basically I think her book was one of these ones that have come out with AI prompts clearly in it, and she’s put out a statement saying, “I’m devastated.

I had given it to an editor that I trusted,” who was making some editorial changes, “and it’s obviously been placed into it during that process,” which, yeah, to me seems strange, ’cause whenever I’m editing, and the all the editors I know — the way that they work, they’re not changing authors’ lines. They’re flagging things to be changed or to be questioned or to be looked at.

Lyndon: But I suppose even if you just ran the whole transcript into an LLM and then just said, “Flag something for me,” even just that alone might leave traces, would it? Or is it literally just the text?

Breallyn: Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. And I think there’s certainly problems with the AI detectors as well.

There’s places where people have put ancient texts — like literally the Bible — through it and said, “Let me know if any of this is AI authored,” and they’ve got back, “Yeah, 30% is authored by an AI.” Yeah. Clearly it isn’t, but — yeah… the — but AI has scraped everything, churned it out, changed it, recycled it so many times—

Lyndon: It doesn’t know what’s what.

Breallyn: That it’s now, yeah, it’s now recognizing things that should be an original text. It’s claiming authorship. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s right.

Nobel Laureate Uses AI

Breallyn: Something else that’s been controversial in particularly the literary world recently is something that was said by Olga Tokarczuk, who is a Nobel Prize laureate. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018.

Lyndon: Where is she from?

Breallyn: From Poland. And she also won the Man Booker International Prize in 2018. She’s highly awarded, really — like well-renowned. She’s an author and activist, somebody who has written a heap of stuff and is very well renowned for it.

But recently she came out and publicly said — and this is a quote from her — she said, “I often throw an idea to the machine for analysis, asking, ‘Honey, how could we develop this beautifully?’ Even though I know about the hallucinations and numerous errors of factual algorithms in the field of strict economics and hard data, I must admit that in fluid literary fiction, this technology is an asset of incredible proportions.”

So she’s now, an author of many years and—

Lyndon: Gone to the dark side.

Breallyn: And a lot of books. Gone to the dark side. Gone to AI and been like, “Hey.”

Lyndon: She won’t be the last, and it’s probably gonna be a matter of time and, perhaps like in — I don’t know — in a few years you’ll find that more and more people are doing it and accepting of it.

There’s definitely producers that are using AI like Suno to just get an idea for a demo or something like that. And I think for some people the temptation will be too great. Because what you can do is — so if you’re sitting there in the studio with someone else and you go, “Hey, let’s write a song. Let’s write it about this,” and you’re trying to say the style and the flavour and in the style of Alicia Keys, and so it’s got piano vocal but with a hip hop beat.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: And then a — but a really soaring chorus, big ballad, and that was your discussion on the direction that you might take with an artist — that’s essentially a prompt, isn’t it?

Breallyn: I suppose, I suppose so.

Lyndon: That conversation — yeah… that you’re having with someone — “what kind of song are we gonna write?” Put that in as a prompt, and three seconds later it’s done — the whole song. And so even if it’s not perfect, it’ll split it into what’s called stems. So stems is — all the drum parts is one stem, all the vocals is on another stem, all the…

And so even if what you get as a producer, you go, “I wouldn’t use that audio, or maybe I would use that audio, or maybe I would use those drums. They sound lo-fi. But the rest of it I’m gonna obviously track with the artist that either is or isn’t in the studio yet.” Half the work or more has been done for them — yeah… in a few seconds.

Breallyn: I do get that. But what — I would argue, and I think a lot of humans are saying, is: A, as soon as you’ve got that AI rough draft or first iteration or demo track or whatever, all of a sudden it’s refined down the ideas and the possibilities to one thing, and then it’s actually very quite hard to break that apart and play from there. Like — all of that actual creative process, the things that come into making the decision about what that first draft looks like, that’s what it’s cut out.

So that’s—

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: That’s, yeah, that’s what is missing then. And I think for — like, I certainly use AI doing different things. Like, we’ve talked about — we let the robots do the boring bits. And even in some of my professional work I’ll use AI to make a process quicker. It’s certainly a tool to be there. I wouldn’t — I don’t think… I don’t wanna sound like I’m on a high horse, like I’m too good for this or anything, but I wouldn’t want to use an AI in my creative writing because it kills the fun. It takes all the best bit of it out, which is the creating and the coming up with ideas and—

Lyndon: Yeah. Okay. Here’s a—

Breallyn: The agony of the—

Lyndon: Here’s a scenario for you. When I was working at the former studio, sometimes you would get — and this was happening probably more and more as time went on — you’d get someone come in who needed somewhere to record their vocals, or they wanted to record their vocals and have vocal coaching, and they’d written a track that they were gonna sing to. That track, they hadn’t really written it. They just got it off of the internet.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And sometimes they may have paid $150 or $250 or $50, depending on who they—

Breallyn: Beat. A beat and some tracks.

Lyndon: When people talk about beats these days, it’s not just the actual beat, it’s the whole thing.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s a whole vibe. And so someone who maybe is very inexperienced, it’s just a hobby for them, or they may have aspirations beyond the bedroom. They will go, “I had a quote from a studio to get a demo done or to get a single done, and the quote was gonna be $800 for all the tracking and then the vocal tracking was gonna be a couple hundred bucks. It was gonna be $1,200 all up.”

So now I just bring in a track, the whole track, the whole song — and they’re either upfront or they’re not about whether they made the track, right? And it only cost them a couple hundred bucks maybe, and now they’re gonna spend a couple hundred bucks to do their vocal.

And you as the engineer or the producer, let’s say, in the studio that’s working with this person now, are stuck often with just a stereo track that they’ve brought in, and now you’ve gotta somehow make their vocal sound like it’s part of that track.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So in situations like that, I can completely imagine that there’s gonna be people offering a service — yeah… and they can go, “da, just tap it in.” Yeah.

Breallyn: I’m good with the prompts. I work in this area. Well — yeah, I can do it for you.

Lyndon: They can even — yeah… so they come in and just select from these — yeah… ready-made tracks that I’ve done.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And then it’s up to that person whether they decide to put real acoustic guitars on or this, that, and the other. And anyway, I just think it’s—

Breallyn: Oh, it’s a very—

Lyndon: It’s happening…

Breallyn: And it’s here to stay.

Lyndon: And, but—

Breallyn: But it, yeah…

Lyndon: But someone who’s maybe doing music for themselves and they’re more like you perhaps, they enjoy that whole process — and me as well — that is what being an artist or a musician or a writer is about. It’s the struggle, it’s the wrestling with your own thoughts, and it’s the experimenting and the trying. You actually wanna go through that.

That’s part of what you’re delivering on stage, say. When you perform the song, it’s like it’s this whole life that’s coming out in this moment. And so that’s really important to a lot of people, and it’s not important to some other people. Some people barrack for the Cats, good on, and some people barrack for Collingwood.

Breallyn: I definitely take your point about — it can be used by different people. Oh, yeah… it helps you skip some steps or it helps you kinda get an outcome that you can’t necessarily get if you don’t have the skill, or you don’t have the equipment or the time.

In this case, yeah, this was what was so shocking, because this isn’t someone in that category. This is someone who’s—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Breallyn: Written many things. And I wanted to quote author and critic Amy DeBellis here, because I thought she said it really well.

Lyndon: How did you do all this research? Did you go to a library and go through some literature and some books?

Breallyn: I didn’t, no. I used the internet. But she says this. She said, “You heard it here. A Nobel laureate has admitted that she does not have enough faith in her own brain to develop her own ideas beautifully. She requires a water-guzzling, environment-destroying, book-stealing plagiarism machine to do this for her.” And I thought, “Ouch.” Yeah.

Lyndon: Who was having a shot at this—

Breallyn: She’s an author herself…

Lyndon: Award-winning author?

Breallyn: And a critic and somebody who puts a lot of content online about AI, about art, about the world that we live in, and so on. Yeah. Amy DeBellis. You should look her up. She’s worth following as well. Two very intelligent women — and brilliant in their own ways — and having a completely different take on what AI has to offer in the creative writing process, specifically for fiction. Yeah, it’s really interesting. It’s a debate that’s not changing, or it’s not going away. There’s many threads to it.

What Humans Lose

Breallyn: But I was — you might remember at the beginning of the episode I was saying how enjoyable it’s been having a dog in the house, having Lacey here—

Lyndon: Yeah, I was wondering — if you’re gonna — how you’re gonna get back to—

Breallyn: That. Yeah, it’s coming back around.

Lyndon: Your famous — your famous juxtapositioning of two completely disparate things.

Breallyn: The question in my mind was this.

Lyndon: Mm-hmm.

Breallyn: And I’m thinking specifically of literature here, because it’s the art form that is closest to my heart and changes my life over and over again whenever I read something. And it’s often a human’s interaction and reflection on trying to piece together and make sense of the world around them — the physical, sensory kind of things. And they somehow manage to put those into words and form a story that both asks and answers questions, that shows us a new side of thinking and humanity and the world.

And that’s what, as a reader, you pull out of there. You read it in a way that no one else has read it before, and it’s an interplay between the author and the reader, and the things that they’ve managed to capture or imply in the wording. Sometimes it’s the words that they don’t say. Sometimes it’s where an idea stops and allows you as a reader to continue on.

So if a machine is gonna write it — as something that’s never experienced anything, something that’s never had an original thought—

Lyndon: Not even someone. Something that’s—

Breallyn: Something, yeah.

Some… what did Amy DeBellis say? A water-guzzling, environment-destroying, book-stealing plagiarism machine.

Lyndon: I mean, she… Yeah. I thought she stopped short.

Breallyn: Yeah. So if that’s gonna happen, and all they’re gonna do is take all of the brilliance of humans over all of time, scrape it all together, spit it out as a copy that will answer the prompts, and will pull itself together like a real piece, and will be well-written in certain ways — but does that change how you as a reader experience it? Does that — is it gonna lead to many lacking things?

Like I think it’s going to. I think that not having the way that a human will always take a different view of things and a freshness, and the way that all of their experiences right up to this moment have led to them crafting this particular story or this particular sentence like this — and no one else would do it that way. And obviously that’s not always true. We, as humans, our words fall short, or we all fall back into clichés, or we can’t actually describe things. And it’s interesting — I see sometimes people go — very much a clichéd thing, and it’s just ’cause they haven’t practised yet.

It’s just ’cause the words that they’re trying to put around their ideas, they don’t have — they haven’t practised enough to form their own combinations yet, and pulled it together in a new enough way yet. And that’s what’s beautiful about creating. And I, yeah, I feel like it’s gonna leave us so short-changed as humans to have the machines regurgitate stuff that other humans have already done. It’s nothing new or fresh. It’s just gonna leave us short.

Lyndon: Yeah, it sounded like that reading you did before of — what was it — The Serpent in the Stone?

Breallyn: Close.

Lyndon: Okay, let me have another try. The snake — the snake in the tunnel. The Serpent in — oh, bloody hell. The — I don’t know. What was it? What was it?

Breallyn: The Serpent in the Grove…

Lyndon: In the Grove? Yeah. What did I say? The Serpent in the—

Breallyn: The Stone…

Lyndon: Serpent in the Stone. Yeah. That’s better. Was trying to create some new unique metaphors — mm-hmm — it tried, it failed.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: What was it? “Sunrise dripping over the sink.”

Breallyn: Stuff like that. And that’s a typical sort of AI technique — trying to build new metaphors. But in the end, they sound a little bit literary, but they mean absolutely nothing and leave you cold.

I was reflecting on some of the really beautiful works that, collectively, culturally, we all enjoy and share.

Lyndon: Hang on. Did I have… Did I fall asleep or have a petit mal or something? But didn’t you try and bring something back to Lacey?

Breallyn: Yeah. But that’s why I’m — what I’m talking about now.

Lyndon: But did I miss it or—

Breallyn: No. I’m just saying what — what humans have brought to the field of literature is their observations, their the ways that they’ve tried to explore and explain the world around them and interact and see how it impacts them. And there’s so—

Lyndon: Oh, okay…

Breallyn: There’s so many incredible results of that, even speculative fiction and sci-fi — people trying to figure out this incredible world that we’re in. And people try to paint it, write songs about it, all sorts of things. So — and with literature, you try to say something in a way that evokes a sense, or puts people in a scene.

Lyndon: Yeah. It’s the — you’re showing, not telling kind of thing.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I think that’s maybe something that you recognize when someone goes, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” and then they write something and they go, “And then this happened and then that happened,” and — it’s telling, not showing. So when earlier on you were talking about watching Lacey and how the muscles are moving underneath the skin and all that sort of stuff that you were noticing — your point is AI can’t notice that. It’s not living, it’s—

Breallyn: AI can’t notice it.

Lyndon: It’s not living and it’s — yeah… not in the real world.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: All it can do is scour literature that is already written about it.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: And then it’ll, in some way, depending on what the prompt is and where that person lives, a whole bunch of different equations—

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And it’s — and algorithms, and then it will spit something out…

Breallyn: Literally like a prediction of text — predictions and numbers ascribed to text — of which words should go together here, and this might work. Yep, and that’s all it can do. So it will never observe Lacey. It will never see exactly her expressions. It will never try to put that into words, like how wonderful it is to see Lacey’s eyes light up when she sees Birdie. Things like that.

It will be able to describe a dog and a child, and it will be able to do it in a way that’s, yeah, scraped it from many other people who have described dogs and children together. But it’ll never come up with something fresh and new.

And I just thought about some — specifically some literature that has done that, has had that beautiful interaction with nature, and we’re all the richer for it.

Lyndon: Right.

Breallyn: Because—

Lyndon: Are you gonna get out one of my love poems I wrote to you—

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: Back in the day?

Breallyn: I’m not. I could have, though.

Lyndon: My most famous one, you may have heard it — “Roses are red.”

Breallyn: I liked the one that — what’s his name? Something Mack, that British comedian.

Lyndon: Oh, Lee Mack.

Breallyn: Lee Mack. I keep thinking Peter Mack — no… with the Cancer Foundation. Oh, Lee—

Lyndon: Mack. He’s got—

Breallyn: Lee Mack… some—

Lyndon: Funny stories.

Breallyn: He once did a poem on his show. And he — I think it was called “Old Lady’s Underwear.” And it was, “Roses are red, violets are blue, and myrtles are green,” or are like—

Lyndon: What?

Breallyn: Meryl’s are green. Oh—

Lyndon: Myrtle. Yeah.

Breallyn: So he changed the — for the—

Lyndon: Was it just those three lines?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So he changed it so it’s about their underwear.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: But did he have a title? Did we know where it was going — it was — or did we only know it—

Breallyn: At the end?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: I think the title was “Old Lady’s Underwear.”

Lyndon: So the joke’s there right from the start. Roses are red. Violets are blue.

Breallyn: Violets are blue.

Lyndon: Meryl’s are green.

Breallyn: Very clever.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s funny.

Literature That Captures the Living World

Breallyn: So some examples of literature where an author has had that interaction with nature and has then put it into words in a way that captures something new and captures an essence of it that helps us as readers really enjoy it and see things anew.

I’m thinking of ones that’ll be on most people’s shelves probably. Any of the tales of Beatrix Potter, and I know that—

Lyndon: Ooh…

Breallyn: Your favourite—

Lyndon: Hang on. I’m listening now.

Breallyn: What’s — a favourite of yours, Lyndon, is Peter Rabbit…

Lyndon: Well, I was almost asleep, but now you’ve got me.

Breallyn: You love Peter Rabbit. Maybe not the book, but certainly the latest movie.

Lyndon: Is there a book?

Breallyn: Yeah. I’ve got some of the gorgeous little books from when I was a kid — the — yeah… Beatrix Potter, different stories, Benjamin Rabbit, and all kinds of different ones, and they’re in very battered shape now. They have — the covers are torn. They are a little bit dog-eared, and so on around the edges.

But I enjoyed them as a kid, and our kids did as well. We had a lot of fun reading them.

Lyndon: I’ve just got a memory. I’ve had a memory just resurface, which I think is right, ’cause Beatrix Potter — Peter Rabbit, pictures—

Breallyn: Mm-hmm…

Lyndon: And characters and so on were on Corningware, weren’t they? Or they were on little — oh—

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Little — we—

Breallyn: All had a Peter Rabbit cup and a—

Lyndon: Did we all have a cup — yeah… or a bowl or — what about egg — yeah… egg cups?

Breallyn: Egg cups, spoons.

Lyndon: ‘Cause I have a feeling—

Breallyn: Like little cutlery. Yeah…

Lyndon: That my sister Melinda would’ve got a set when she was born, and then I got a set. Ah, yes. And so then Justine had to have a set.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And maybe this is a deep-seated memory that I have — even though it’s just resurfaced — but in my being of being nurtured and loved and cared for, and that’s why I like Peter Rabbit one and two, both movies.

Breallyn: Both movies.

Lyndon: Yeah. Or it could be the — well — it could be the great writing.

Breallyn: Bit of both. Probably that’s true, ’cause you are — could be—

Lyndon: Rose Byrne. Rose Byrne’s in that too, isn’t she?

Breallyn: Yeah, she actually plays — hang on… Beatrix Potter.

Lyndon: Our Rose Byrne.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, she does a great job too. Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: Roses are red.

Breallyn: It’s definitely something written for children, loved by children, read to children. It’s obviously very anthropomorphised animals with little jackets and talking and whatnot, but it’s still this delightful thing where rabbits are up to mischief in the garden. And they’re unpredictable, and they don’t do what the humans really want them to do. But that doesn’t matter. We’re following the characters of the animals. So yeah, it’s lovely. And I think your memory about the cups and that—

Lyndon: This is your memory?

Breallyn: No. It would be true, like that you — yeah… you and your sisters got. I’m fairly sure I had at least maybe a spoon and fork or something.

But your mum continued it on because she bought the same, or a Peter Rabbit set for our first two kids. I don’t think the last two got one.

Lyndon: That’s where—

Breallyn: That’s where the — that’s where it—

Lyndon: All fell—

Breallyn: Down… the tradition fizzled out a little. And I think they — all the pieces got broken.

Lyndon: Oh, no.

Breallyn: Yeah, I don’t think — hopefully Mum’s—

Lyndon: Not listening.

Breallyn: Hopefully not. So I can’t pass them on to our kids as adults, unless I’ve handily packed them away in the boxes in the garage.

Lyndon: Remember that — there is another — obviously there’s another podcast, there’s another three trillion podcasts — but when I showed you that, that woman talking about her ducky spoon.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah, that’s right. And it wasn’t a ducky at all.

Lyndon: It was revealed to her that, “Do you think maybe that’s a rabbit?” She’s, “No, it’s a ducky spoon.” And — I’m like, “You see the thing that you think is the wonky bill of the duck?” It’s ears.

Breallyn: Ears.

Lyndon: And then they pulled up one that was online, and it was exactly her one, and it was called the Peter Rabbit spoon. And she… it was just too much for her.

Breallyn: It ruined her childhood.

Lyndon: Oh, see, that was very funny. Oh, the shock in her face.

Breallyn: A couple of other — my favourites. I’m just gonna quickly mention a few. Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Lyndon: Oh, I love Watership Down.

Breallyn: It’s incredible.

Lyndon: That was so sad.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s a beautiful—

Lyndon: Movie…

Breallyn: Book, again, about rabbits.

Lyndon: I haven’t read that.

Breallyn: I love rabbits. Rabbits were my childhood animal.

Lyndon: We went through — we went through an antique store a couple of weeks ago, and they had a lot of rabbit-related—

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Antiquey things.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Like a cast iron rabbit, or a doorstop, or a—

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: A bell that had a — you know — a cast iron thing behind it that was a rabbit, or pressed steel that was a rabbit. And you were just like, “Oh, look at all these rabbits.”

Breallyn: I know. And the only reason I didn’t buy several rabbits was because the… trying to get through the sto — it was so packed full. It was like you were walking through a storage unit and — yeah… there was this narrow little footway through. You could only do one lap. You couldn’t pass anyone going the other way.

Lyndon: Oh, that’s right.

Breallyn: And we were trying to drag Birdie and Lacey through at the same time.

Lyndon: One of our first outings.

Breallyn: So I couldn’t pick up any cast iron rabbits.

Lyndon: I know. It was hard.

Breallyn: Yeah. But yeah, Richard Adams — Watership Down — just a beautifully woven tale. And how evocative the descriptions of the landscape are. And yeah, it’s not even just the story about the rabbits, it’s how you are so part of what’s going on and what’s around you just reading the words. It’s quite incredible.

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is another one that people will probably have on their shelves and have a great memory of as well. These beautiful animals playing along the riverbank and boating in the sunshine, and all the seasons that it transpires through, and how those seasons affect the activities of the animals and affect you as a reader.

Like, literally as a child I would remember feeling cold when it was warm because I’m reading something that’s cold, and things like that, and vice versa. It’s — you’re in the middle of winter and reading about the animals boating on the river, and you feel like, “Oh, that would be the perfect activity right now.” And yet you’re nowhere near a boat and it’s cold.

Lyndon: That’s why I watch Nordic noirs in the summertime.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: ‘Cause I can sit down in my singlet and thongs.

Breallyn: And feel the chill of the ice.

Lyndon: And watch that and go, “I need to put on a jacket.” It’s 38 degrees out here, but I need a jacket. Yeah. It does do that.

Breallyn: And The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is another one that I loved as a kid as well. And it’s a beautiful book because the awakening of this old neglected walled garden happens at the same time as the children are healing both emotionally and physically. So it’s this journey of both the natural landscape and the characters within, and just done so beautifully.

And I think, this is stuff that people have wrestled with, tried to figure out — how do we make a story about this, this important aspect of humanity, or this thing that I’ve experienced, how can I share that with other people in a way that might make them feel something?

And I don’t want that to stop. So yeah.

Lyndon: That was — it is like a — the concern for humanity because the humanity that we experience is actually really hard to put into words.

And it is like you were saying before, often it’s what’s not said. But what’s not said in the context of what’s either side of that. And there is that expression too of reading between the lines. Sometimes that’s exactly—

Breallyn: That’s exactly what happens.

Lyndon: What good authors are able to get you to do, and good songwriters. Yep. Where you can swear that there was a lyric or a melody or a note or something like in a particular piece of music, and then when you listen to it critically, you go, “It’s not there at all.”

Breallyn: It’s not even there.

Lyndon: “That was my brain filling in—”

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: The space.” So it’s this aspect of humanity, and often what is indescribable, and that’s what we love about good authors and good songwriters — is that even when they’re not necessarily literally describing a feeling, they’re enabling you to feel something or to imagine something or to emotionally react to something that reawakens a memory or a time and a place. It’s all this sort of kinda magical stuff.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that’s what a lot of — definitely in the creative world, people are, like, cautioning, “Are we gonna lose it?”

And—

Breallyn: And we need to caution our audiences, our listeners. They don’t maybe know that’s what’s at stake. ‘Cause it’s easy to go, “Oh, this is just like the McDonald’s burger version of art. It’s fine. It’ll do the job,” kind of thing. They don’t understand that what is at jeopardy is a new creation, something different.

You put all the artists out of work. You dull all our brains down till we can’t think for ourselves—

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s—

Breallyn: And think creatively and critically.

Lyndon: That’s probably true that there are — there’s a significant amount of people that do see it like, okay, this is what the printing press was to — what came before the printing press?

Breallyn: Yeah, or to information dissemination, like to the people that would literally write out copies of—

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Things for a living.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Once again, a newer technology taking over from an older one. And that’s just human evolution, and that’s how it is. When there’s — there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s unprecedented, obviously, in its scope and how it does threaten on so many levels — not just industries and not just careers, but humanity, potentially.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. I thought you’d done well getting it back from being a down vibe to an up vibe — with all your talk on rabbits and animals that can talk. And then I somehow took it back down. So can you bring it back up?

Breallyn: Hopefully can come back around. Let me just say — Lacey’s cute. She’s gorgeous. She’s so hard to resist. And I just wanna pet her. So there we go.

Lyndon: I don’t know if that’s gonna do it.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: If I see you even thinking about patting her, I’ll be ringing the authorities.

And the good news in all of that, to end on a high, is that an AI algorithm will never know that feeling.

Breallyn: Exactly. Neither will we, sadly. Yeah.

Lyndon: Oh, yeah.

Breallyn: Thank you for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.

Lyndon: See you.

Breallyn: Bye.

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