Don't Praise The Machine (DPTM)

Alexander Holland & John Maloney
  • 4.9 (31)
  • Comedy
  • Updated Weekly

Al and John grew up together in the '90s. Now they live on opposite sides of the world, so once a week they log on to catch up and make sense of whatever the culture has done this time, laughing at each other along the way. The result is a funny, surreal trip through current culture, technology, trends and the mysteries of everyday life. What's it actually like to fall for an AI companion? Did Hilaria Baldwin really pretend to be Spanish? Why did movies used to explain their own plot with a rap over the credits? Get in touch at hello@dptm.org or find us on IG @dont_praise_the_machine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 3 days ago

    Your Rust Belt Town Just Got Data Centred: Deal With It

    There's a data center planned for Utah that was originally supposed to be twice the size of Manhattan. Even after intense local pushback chopped it in half, it's still incomprehensibly massive. Alex and John try to picture that (they can't), then get into why old Rust Belt towns are trading steel mills for server racks and getting a fraction of the jobs they were promised. Tax breaks, diesel generators, a 24-hour hum nobody asked for, but hey, John gets to pester ChatGPT with nonsense hypotheticals. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  2. 17 Aug

    The Viral Hit That Proves AI Music Is Out Of Control

    Fenix Flexin swore up and down he freestyled "Rubberz." He didn't. This week: how an AI-generated rap song landed on the Billboard Hot 100, racked up 35 million Spotify streams, and got taken down by a producer who noticed the file name still contained the AI music platform they used. facepalm Alex and John pick through the wreckage. The mumble-rap-to-Morrissey pivot nobody saw coming. The Andrew Callahan interview where Fenix can't even remember his own "freestyled" lyrics on camera. What it means when a guy with a decade of real releases decides two prompts and a "generate" button beat writing an actual song. Plus: Pitchfork's first zero-out-of-ten in years, the Fawaz/Madonna cover mess, and why Spotify's new AI labeling rules protect almost nobody. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. 10 Aug

    TikTok's Live Shopping Boom Is Changing The Face Of Retail

    TikTok Shop is quietly building the biggest impulse-buying machine in retail history — a live, algorithmically-fed home shopping channel on track for $112 billion in sales this year alone. Alex and John trace live shopping back to the QVC playbook of the 1980s, work out why parasocial trust converts better than any ad ever could, and confess their own TikTok- and Facebook Marketplace-fuelled purchases. Also: why eBay is panicking, why Australia still can't get TikTok Shop, and the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt that explains it all. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  4. 3 Aug

    Why Every Bus Stop In London Is Selling Nicotine Now

    This week Alex and John go deep on the nicotine pouch revolution that started in Sweden, jumped to America and has now completely taken over British train stations, McLaren merchandise and apparently Tucker Carlson's entire personality. They get into what is actually in these little white pillows (spoiler, not tobacco), why a Swedish company sold to Philip Morris for sixteen billion dollars, why teenagers on TikTok have turned pouching into a personality and why Tucker Carlson had to be told by his own sponsor to stop making claims about what Zyn does for a man's stamina. Also covered, why Australia just banned the entire category, why France did too, whether wet bagging is cool or deeply embarrassing and whether either host would actually put one in their gums for the sake of content. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. 27 July

    Screensavers, Ringtones & Answering Machines: A Eulogy for Dead Tech

    Screensavers used to be a whole universe — toasters with wings, mazes drawing themselves, flying stars you could stick your face in. Then one day they just... stopped. This week Alex and John dig up three pieces of tech that were once completely unremarkable parts of daily life and are now totally gone: screensavers, ringtones, and answering machines. Along the way: the accidental birth of the flying toaster, why Jefferson Airplane nearly sued a screensaver company, the Berlin-founded ringtone empire that gave the world Crazy Frog, a $4.4 billion industry that vanished in five years, and the case for the answering machine as the original social media platform. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  6. 20 July

    There's Something Missing In The World's Most Liveable Cities

    The 2026 EIU Global Liveability Index has dropped, and Alex and John have a combined 60+ years living in this year's top 10 — which makes them uniquely qualified to ask: is "liveable" actually the same thing as good? This week: why the famous rankings are secretly a corporate tool for calculating executive danger pay, what the criteria hilariously refuse to measure (fun, weather, goth scenes, the price of cigarettes), and why the world's "best" cities, New York, Paris, Berlin, aren't anywhere near the list. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  7. 13 July

    Bonnie Tyler Is Gone. The Power Ballad Went First.

    Bonnie Tyler has died, and with her goes something bigger than one Welsh voice with a rasp. Total Eclipse of the Heart is seven minutes of zero-irony emotional maximalism, the kind of song everyone on Earth knew without ever choosing to, and nobody makes anything like it anymore. So this week Alex and John tear up the episode schedule to ask the big question: what actually killed the power ballad? Along the way: Jim Steinman, the leather-gloved rock opera maximalist who wrote it for a Nosferatu vampire musical (really), the gloriously unhinged music video, the uncredited male vocalist you never knew was on the track, the 1995 Nikki French eurodance cover that fooled a generation, why hair metal bands were contractually obligated to get sentimental, and how irony, algorithms and the death of the school disco slow dance quietly murdered the most sincere genre pop music ever produced. Turn around, bright eyes. This one's for Bonnie. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  8. 6 July

    Ozempic Pt.2 - The Economic Shock: Shrinking Bras, Dead Snack Aisles & Denmark's Mortgage Miracle

    One in eight Americans is on a GLP-1, and the ripples are turning up in the strangest places. Victoria's Secret is selling fewer big bras. Secondhand sites are drowning in suddenly-too-large wardrobes. The checkout impulse aisle — a $6 billion monument to your eroded willpower — is dying. In part two of our GLP-1 deep dive, Alex and John follow the money through the collapsing snack economy: why cinemas and theatre bars are in trouble, how Nestlé is pivoting to three-bite meals, what happens to cruise ships when "all you can eat" stops being a selling point, the uncomfortable questions around kids and prisoners on the jab — and why the humble Gila monster is the unlikely lizard behind it all. Missed part one? Go back and start there. 🛎 Get bonus episodes, early episodes, and exclusive goodies while supporting DPTM! Patreon ➡️ https://www.patreon.com/dptm 💌 Sign up for John's famous weekly DPTM newsletter Click here ➡️ https://dptm.org/ 🔌 Connect with us! TikTok: ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@dontpraisethemachine Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/dont_praise_the_machine/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See All (275)

4.9
out of 5
31 Ratings

About

Al and John grew up together in the '90s. Now they live on opposite sides of the world, so once a week they log on to catch up and make sense of whatever the culture has done this time, laughing at each other along the way. The result is a funny, surreal trip through current culture, technology, trends and the mysteries of everyday life. What's it actually like to fall for an AI companion? Did Hilaria Baldwin really pretend to be Spanish? Why did movies used to explain their own plot with a rap over the credits? Get in touch at hello@dptm.org or find us on IG @dont_praise_the_machine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Alexander Holland & John Maloney
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    275
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Alexander Holland
  • Show Website
    Don't Praise The Machine (DPTM)

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