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The World's Most Famous Atheist… Can't Stop Crying at Poetry

Famous biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins built his reputation on cold, hard logic. 

He's also the author of bestsellers The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, destroys creationists on Twitter, and thinks prayer is a waste of time. 

But here's the twist: the high priest of reason is actually a passionate, emotional paradox who weeps at poetry, dreams about his dead father, and muses about going "temporarily insane" every night.

In this episode, we dive into an interview that journalist Malte Herwig conducted with Dawkins. Join Malte and his two AI co-hosts as they reflect on and debate Dawkins’s unshakable faith in reason, his surprising vulnerabilities, and his offbeat insights on reality, atheism, and even odd socks. Featuring plenty of original Dawkins audio, this episode blends a classic conversation with fresh AI-powered analysis. 

From his bizarre sock-matching optimization hack (yes, really) to why pain has to be *so* painful, Dawkins reveals what happens when pure logic confronts the messy, irrational reality of being human. Spoiler: his final answer to "What's the meaning of life?" isn't a formula—it's a hug.

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Oscar winner and Hollywood star Michael Douglas sits down with journalist Malte Herwig... and gets asked the question. The one his publicist would kill. The one Malte's AI co-hosts call "high-risk, zero-reward."

This ep is a deep-dive debate on that one interview. We get into it all:

• The Basic Instinct Legacy: Douglas's very '90s defense of the "ice-pick murderer" and why the problematic representation still matters.
• Algorithmic Bias: Why studios called Liberace "too gay" (a data-driven fail) and how HBO proved the algorithm wrong.
• Art vs. Life: Douglas on blurring the lines, using his son's real-life addiction for a film.
• The 'Mortality Wall': How surviving cancer made him "fearless" and changed his entire vibe.

It all leads to the moment Malte's human intuition took a risk an AI never would. Was it an ethical breach or an act of respect?

If you’re here for messy media ethics, calling out Hollywood bias, and the future of AI vs. human intuition, this one's for you.

Hit Follow & Drop a 5-Star Review telling us: Was Malte right, or out of line?

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What if the most human thing you can make is something that serves no purpose at all? Malte and AI hosts Alex and Isabel plunge into the exhilarating world of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, where national monuments disappear under oceans of fabric, red tape becomes a stage, and the end result can’t be bought, ticketed, or sponsored. Our conversation tracks how a refugee’s hunger for independence evolved into a blueprint for freedom: self-financing through preparatory drawings, banning ads, and embracing temporary works that force presence over permanence.

We press into the logic of “weaponized inefficiency,” debating with our AI co-hosts whether millions spent on short-lived art is waste or a radical revaluation of meaning. From literal cowboy standoffs to congressional wrangling, Christo turned bureaucracy into performance, inviting the public to wrestle with scale, patience, and wonder. The detour into environmental review yields an unforgettable twist: pink polypropylene tarps correlating with manatee mating, a case study in how irrational creativity catalyzes unforeseen ecological effects. We also unpack the wrapped Brigitte Bardot portrait, where story and secrecy eclipse the object itself, proving provenance can outbid surface.

Christo’s daily rigor—long hours on foot in the studio, ritual garlic-and-yogurt breakfasts, relentless organization—reveals how strict discipline births controlled chaos. He refused repeats, protected pure experience, and paid governments to keep commerce away from his work. Most of all, he bet on memory. Instead of marble, he trusted metadata: detailed documentation as a gift to future archaeologists who will parse images, logistics, and testimony rather than ruins. The takeaway is clear and urgent: the live moment matters more than the replay, and freedom thrives where usefulness ends.

If this episode sparks something in you, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a friend who loves big ideas. Tell us in the comments: what’s the most gloriously useless thing you’ve ever done?

Original interview: https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/kunst/interview-christo-kuenstler-80864 

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We trace Ben Ferenc’s hard line on human accountability from Hell’s Kitchen to Nuremberg and bring it into the age of algorithmic warfare. Stories of audacity, restraint, and selective justice sharpen a live question: where does responsibility sit when machines scale human intent.

• Ferenc’s principle that a person must answer for harm
• Algorithmic warfare and the limits of machine culpability
• Camp liberation paradox and power to intervene
• Hell’s Kitchen origins and blurred authority
• Ingenuity under Patton and the Dietrich encounter
• Forged pass and the psychology of command
• Mental partitioning amid atrocity evidence
• Threats, reciprocity, and field interrogations
• Building the Einsatzgruppen case and selective justice
• Ohlendorf’s chilling logic and moral void
• Shock at death sentences and refusal of spectacle
• From trials to the ICC and demilitarization
• A living legacy of law, not war

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What if the path out of media’s crisis is play, not panic? We sit down with author and journalist Malte Herwig to unpack how Rainer Esser took Germany’s stuffy weekly, Die Zeit, and turned it into a modern, multi-platform powerhouse—without gutting the newsroom. Instead of chasing shortcuts, Esser built a “dolphin culture” where curiosity is the norm, failure is data, and investment in journalists drives sustainable growth.

We explore the leadership choices that mattered: expanding the editorial team sixfold, quadrupling revenue, and betting early on podcasts that led to 20 million monthly downloads and paid subscriptions. You’ll hear how a candid understanding of readers powered disciplined brand extensions—from magazines and e-learning to travel and yes, limited-edition watches—while staying true to quality and intellectual curiosity. We also get into the tough stuff: working with big tech on pragmatic terms, prioritizing digital subscriptions as the königsweg, and holding the line on editorial independence and data control.

Then we zoom into AI with a clear-eyed lens. Malte explains how Die Zeit’s AskZeit („Fragen Sie Zeit Online“) tool uses retrieval-augmented generation to answer questions from a fact-checked archive with full citations—an approach that builds trust instead of eroding it. We dig into concrete workflows that help reporters reclaim hours—transcription, research synthesis, angle generation—while keeping human judgment at the center. If you lead a local newsroom or a lean team, you’ll get a practical playbook for adopting AI incrementally, measuring outcomes, and protecting core values. The takeaway is simple and bold: stay curious, experiment in public, show your work, and keep asking whether each tool helps you serve your audience better.

If this conversation sparks ideas, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review—what’s the one experiment you’ll try this week?

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Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation explains why great companies fail by doing everything right and has found applications far beyond business into military strategy, religion, and personal development. His framework provides a universal pattern that brings clarity to complex problems, creating a common language that helps people reach consensus quickly, even in seemingly unrelated fields.

• The Pentagon applied Christensen's theory to terrorism, viewing the U.S. Department of Defense as the incumbent and non-nation states like Al-Qaeda as disruptors
• Disruptive innovations typically start as simpler, cheaper alternatives that improve over time and eventually displace established players
• Christensen showed emotional vulnerability when discussing critics who misunderstood his theory, particularly a critical New Yorker article
• He used a powerful metaphor comparing heaven to a warehouse of truths and insights that God can only distribute when humans ask questions
• The conversation explores how religion, journalism, and AI all follow patterns of disruption
• Disruption theory applies not just to business models but to personal lives and social structures
• The most powerful ideas can be applied universally, not just in specific domains

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Françoise Gilot was the only woman who ever left Pablo Picasso. She shared her remarkable story with Malte Herwig in many interviews, which became a book: "The Woman Who Says No". Hers is a story of passion, creativity, and courage in the face of artistic genius. In this episode, Malte and his two AI-Hosts Alex and Isabel explore her unique position as both an accomplished painter and the partner of the 20th century's most famous artist. 

• Françoise Gilot was the only woman who said "no" to Picasso after a decade-long relationship
• Picasso exhibited intense jealousy when Matisse expressed interest in painting Gilot
• Gilot maintained her own artistic vision despite living in Picasso's shadow
• She characterized their relationship as "a catastrophe worth living"
• Gilot's fearlessness and quick intellect allowed her to challenge Picasso's attempts at control
• Her work is now featured in the Musée Picasso in Paris, a recognition of her artistic significance
• Even at 101 years old (before her death in 2023), Gilot maintained that taking risks is essential to truly living

If you don't take risk in life, it's not worth anything, in my opinion, because if you take risk, you have bad moments, but you also learn a lot of things and you are alive and you understand more and more. You don't understand less and less and you don't become dull, which is the worst you know to become dull.

Original interview (published in Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin): 

https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/kunst/picasso-war-wie-ein-taliban-79086

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Hah! Are our AI hosts gender biased? Malte tells Alex and Isabel about listener feedback to episode 1. What will our lovely pieces of code make of this criticism?  This week's topic is John Malkovich, who opened up to Malte about his contrarian perspectives on fame, power, and what truly matters in life while reflecting on his experiences from childhood trauma to financial ruin.  Alex and Isabel share highlights from this interview: 

• "Good people never strive for power, never" – Malkovich's uncompromising view on ambition and leadership
• Growing up as a "demonic child" in a Midwest coal mining town with four siblings
• Philosophical acceptance after losing his entire life savings to Bernie Madoff
• Finding it wasteful to spend time writing negative comments online
• Considering his greatest honor to be designing a fabric for Liberty department store
• Reflecting on mortality and the unpredictable nature of life
• Preferring detachment from political discourse and selective consumption of information
• Valuing creative fulfillment over traditional measures of success

Join us next Friday for a conversation with "The Woman Who Says No" - the only woman who survived Picasso, offering insights into the creative process from a remarkable painter.

Original Interview: 

https://www.stern.de/kultur/film/john-malkovich-im-interview-ueber-alter--tod-und-hass-auf-promis-7350180.html

The demonic child

John Malkovich appears as a dictator at the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, Germany. A conversation about power, beatings—and the deadly German city of Recklinghausen

Interview: Malte Herwig

Q: Mr. Malkovich, next week you will celebrate your world premiere as a megalomaniacal dictator in the play “Just Call Me God.” You have also designed a new fashion collection and named a jacket after the African despot Mobutu. Are you on a power trip at the moment?

Malkovich: The inspiration for the jacket came from a book called “Dictator Style.” It contained a photo of Mobutu in a funny outfit with an ocelot hat, which was both quirky and elegant at the same time. Some of these people have always been daring when it comes to fashion.

Q: Is there a specific role model for your role as a dictator?

Malkovich: Of course, there are references to the fall of Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein, so relatively recent events. But above all, I want to use the character of the dictator to say something about power and the nature of power.

Q: Namely?

Malkovich: That good people never strive for power, never. Period. People will tell you otherwise, but I don't believe them.

Q: The script by author Michael Sturminger also mentions names like Trump, Putin, and Sarkozy and mocks them as “ridiculous pseudo-machos.”

Malkovich: The play is still in flux, and I think we'll take names like Trump, Putin, and Sarkozy out again.

Q: Why?

Malkovich: Because I don't understand how the passage in which these names appear contributes to the understanding of the main character.

Q: Are you concerned about Donald Trump?

Malkovich: Not particularly. It's pointless. So many people lecture about it, I can't contribute anything at all. I don't read newspapers and I hardly watch television. As Paul Simon said, “A man hears what he wants to hear and ignores the rest.”

Q: Your ex-wife said about you: “If he hadn't gone into theater, he could have been a great army leader.”

Malkovich: She said that? I've never been in the army, so I never had the opportunity to try it out.

Q: What would have become of you if you hadn't found your way into theater?

Malkovich: I think about that a lot as I get older. Maybe a teacher? What would

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Hosts Alex and Isabel talk about a remarkable interview with the legendary pianist and writer, Alfred Brendel, conducted by Malte Herwig eleven years before Brendel's death in 2025. Join us as we discover the surprising wit and wisdom of an extraordinary musical mind and talk about how Malte managed to get the famously cantankerous pianist to open up. 

• Brendel discusses his hearing loss with remarkable candor, explaining how he continued to work on music mentally even when he could no longer enjoy listening
• Retiring after 60 years was "a relief" for Brendel, who contrasts himself with colleagues who pursue performing "like addicts their morphine"
• His fierce resistance to fate and refusal to accept the injustice of Schubert's early death reveals passionate conviction beneath his disciplined exterior
• The story of walking a baby tortoise through Vienna's Musikverein showcases Brendel's mischievous protest against overly solemn concert atmospheres
• For Brendel, the piano is "a vessel for all sorts of musical ideas" - some pianists "play the piano," while others "play the rainbow"
• His practical performance advice includes starting immediately rather than "fiddling around" and simply waiting silently when audiences applaud between movements
• The profound observation that "music comes from silence and leads into silence" underscores his reverence for the concert experience
• Brendel succinctly identifies the two things that made his life worth living: art and love

Original interview (German language): 

https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/musik/musik-kommt-aus-der-stille-und-fuehrt-in-die-stille-80650

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What makes someone tick? And how do you get them to reveal their truest self? The Art of the Interview goes on an expedition into the human spirit, peeling back the layers of captivating conversations with some of the world’s most fascinating figures. 

Join hosts Alex and Isabel as they team up with veteran interviewer Malte Herwig to explore how he uses preparation, intuition, and even silence to uncover the deepest secrets of legendary artists, actors, and thinkers. 

In The Art of the Interview, each episode unpacks an extraordinary life as seen through one interview. This isn't just about the answers—it's about the craft of asking the right questions, or sometimes, no questions at all.

WARNING: Hosts Alex and Isabel have a few surprises for you as they go from episode to episode, and Malte will weigh in on the powers and pitfalls of artifical and human intelligence. 

You'll find links to the original print interviews in the show notes for every episode.

More about Malte's work: https://publicorum.com/en/

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