Marina Hyde on Trump, tech bros and Taylor Swift

0:00This is the Guardian. Today, a wild ride through the mind of Rienaide. There's a lot people don't tell you about owning a home, and for most of us, the questions pile up a lot quicker than the answers. The costs you don't see coming, the decisions you don't feel ready to make. It all leaves you wondering, do you own your home, or does it own you? I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie, and in my new podcast OwnIt, I'm talking to the experts for real talk and real tips to understand what home ownership really takes. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. I won't make a song and dance about it, so let's just get straight to the conversation.

1:04We're talking to Marina Hyde, a star for the Guardian, and winner of many, many awards for her columns, which are more original, much smarter, and far funnier than political writing deserves to be. How do you stay sane writing about a world that isn't? From the Guardian, I'm Nushy Nickbarl. To Dane Focus. Marina Hyde, on what a time to be alive. Marina Hyde, welcome to Dane Focus. Now, I don't think anyone really needs an introduction, but you have been, guess, documenting the life in times we live in. Three times a week for the Guardian for 25 plus years. Oh my god, it's almost half my life. It's a long time. And a long time. I don't want to bury the lead, but you are leaving us. And so we'll come onto that, but you've had an incredible run, and you've got this new book,

2:08which is a collection of your columns over the last three years. It's four years. Last four years. Yeah, four prime ministers. In four years? Well, yeah, naturally. That's right. It's the UK. Yeah. It's the content mill. We live in a content mill. Well, okay, well, let's talk about that then a bit. I'm going to start not at home. Let's start abroad with the year in Trump, traffic generator in chief. What have you most enjoyed or been most appalled by Trump term two? I mean, there's a lot to be appalled by, isn't that? I, in terms of what have I most enjoyed, the least malevolent things, although they are quite malevolent. I have enjoyed the series of kind of home improvements to Washington DC. I am obsessed with, or I'm obsessed with the ballroom. The New York Times got some pictures of the ballroom. And it's like you'd given an AI prompt of something, the ballroom designs, but they hadn't ever been to a ballroom. So they've got all these steps, but then there's no door.

3:09I don't know if they've changed those plans, but all the lose, I think, were down the side of the inside of the ballroom. I'm obsessed with the pool guy, needless to say, is a Trump donor, who Trump got to do the Lincoln reflecting pool. I'm obsessed with the one pool guy that no one's wife would want to fuck. I'm obsessed. And then when all the water went wrong, and the guy was saying, the people who'd done it had never done a pool before, or they were saying, but this is the same kind of water that would be in like a lake, or in a river, or I was like, you know, I believe it's H2O. You're just, you're naming a compound now. I've enjoyed that. I mean, it was quite a thing having a UFC fight on the White House lawn. It's the fripperies of Trump then, really. Well, you know, I prefer it when he does that than like, annexes a country, or, you know, allegedly behaves in corrupt fashion. When it comes to Trump's base, one of the issues that really has turned them against him is his wars, you know, Trump on the international stage, promising no more forever wars,

4:12and yet here we are. I mean, can you even count how many interventions? Yeah, it's really odd that it is strange, but then I always felt that his relationship with the base is so odd, because even during the last presidency, during COVID, you know, there was a bit where, you know, they're conspiracists about everything, and they believe that, you know, the state and the man is lying to them and all of these things, and it's like, no, but this guy, your guy, really is lying to you, and he is involved with all these things. And yet, they just, the one conspiracy in some ways, and you know, he is, as we can see, personally enriching himself in completely unprecedented ways from the office of the presidency. And yet, for so long, it just wasn't sort of acknowledged or seen. I mean, some people will just remain die-hard, Trump is no matter what he does. And I find that sort of fascinating from a human behaviour point of view. I think, increasing the way to survive the news is to say things like,

5:13I find it fascinating from a human behaviour point of view. But how do you, like, a firewall against actually thinking, my God, I mean, what are we living through? How do you think Mago and Morphe without him then? And, you know, do you think JD Vance is a credible follow-up? Oh my God, he's like the worst replace, it's not like getting Nagella into Bake-Off, is it? No, it is not like, he, there's nobody like him, there's something absolutely extraordinary about Trump, and, you know, you have to take your hat off to it in a sort of, you know, wearing your hazmat gloves, because there's no, he's totally sort of understand something intrinsic about showbeers and spectacle, and he is a kind of extraordinary figure. You can't feel that way about JD Vance, not at all, not all, like, Hexet, I mean, come on, but these are just complete, third-level henchmen. You write about the villains a lot in terms of Big Tech, you know, you're very good on musk,

6:16marks like a bird, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman. What is it about those characters that fascinates you so much? Well, it's interesting, the tech guys for so long were written about and interviewed for so many years, as though they were these kind of adorable inventors, or there was something eccentric about them, they were weird, they were sort of amazing, and you know, they were... Gifts inheriting the earth. Yeah, and there were points where, you know, I think some of the stuff that Elon Musk has done is maybe a net gain, well, you're thinking, oh, he obviously has a lot of drawbacks, but he's like a net game for humanity. I've passed that point now, but there were times back there, and there were... Can you remind us of a few of those net gains for humanity? It's very hard for a war. I think sort of trying to make electric vehicles a whole, you know, you forget how advanced he was on all those sorts of things. I don't care about the Mars commune. I know I desperately want him to go and live on it, and I feel free not to come back, but yeah, all of those guys for a long time were written about like they were not as though

7:18they were politicians, and actually what's become clear over the last few years is that they're far superior to politicians. Politicians are sort of like junior personnel to these guys. They're sort of front of house type people, and actually these people are so... They're as powerful as nation states, these huge firms, and they're sort of completely unregulated. And so yeah, it's much better to write about them, I think, as villains than to do what for a long time they were just treated as kind of slightly fascinating kind of creators. One thing I always wanted to do, although I can't drive, so I realised it would be complete points. I always wanted to go and write about Silicon Valley, and I read this really interesting article a long time ago now, but saying how all the tech bros sent their children to this stine-er school in the valley, and there's one, and they all like knit their own textbooks, and obviously nobody sees a screen forever, because crack dealers don't use their own product, right? I really thought it would be so fun to cover them as a sort of

8:23social class, and to almost write about them as a society columnist about them, but I can't drive, and I think it's kind of crucial out there. Drive-less cars out there, big things. Well, now they've finally invented them, they just want to keep on the platforms longer. Marina, we've just had another wave of AI workers binning their own industry, which I kind of wondered, like, could have maybe thought about this a bit earlier before you joined in. They claim it could end humanity if the industry doesn't slow down. How do you feel about the imminent AI of populism? I'm very relaxed about it, Nishin. I am very, very relaxed about it. I try to take it seriously, but I mean, obviously there are masses of benefits for this technology, and I'm excited for the diagnostic stuff, and it seems that actually it was a, I read something yesterday saying that actually lots of, it's creating more jobs at the moment. I feel that will, yeah, no, I know, just because it hasn't happened in the last two months doesn't mean that it's come down. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like

9:26everyone does about it. There's nothing they can do about it that it's possibly coming for them, but they just do want to spend quite a lot of time on it saying, why won't this guy text me back? That's why it's so hot this summer, it's just people saying, why won't you call me? What's a chat you've eaten? Can I form you a response? I mean, it's take things slightly closer to home, although obviously the apocalypse comes for us all. How many Prime Ministers were you able to capture this time round in the book, and which has been your favourite party leader to watch? Oh my god, there were three Prime Ministers. I could tell you the second I sent off the introduction to the book that it was absolutely guaranteed that I'd be rewriting it because there would be four. So there's four Prime Ministers in the book. The best one, what was the best one of those to cover? I mean, Liz Trass

10:31burned so briefly, but what a comment. So that was fun. I mean, they all had sort of hilarious points at different times. And I've, I mean, the soon-accollection in the rain, the announcement of the election in the rain, all of them had their highs and lows. I mean, did they have any highs? We'll see. But I don't know, the constant change of personnel has been, you know, I always say very, very good for business. And I don't mean by that for business, but I do mean for my business. I think historians will judge that to have been the main thing. I always, I mean, I was going to ask you a question about Starma, and yet I can't believe it feels almost irrelevant to do so, but I feel we should. Something happened. God, can I say this? I went to a restaurant on Monday, and God, I don't know if I should say this. I'm not going to say which restaurant I was, I went to a restaurant on Monday, and I got this amazing corner table. Me and

11:33my husband, it was his birthday, and I was like, wow, we're in this, like, we're in the absolutely apex table here. And then this guy comes in, and there's a table that is genuinely the kitchen door is flapping this way, and that I was like, they've not actually put Kirsta on my in that seat. He's not only at the table, that's the worst table, but the seat was like, the door is flapping like this, and I just thought, Jesus, and I was like, a mess at the door. Was he sit by my minutes or like, six weeks ago? It was brutal. It was like watching something brutal happen in kind of 1980s Hollywood, and I just thought, oh my God, I mean, that is showbiz. That's deeply, deeply unrelaxing. Yeah, I had a clear eye line to this the whole night was mesmerising. You don't seem, correct me if I'm wrong, you don't seem particularly energized by burner mania. It's as if like, he can't futter his eyelashes enough for you to be convinced by the energy that he's bought. I have to deal in realities, and I think you just, you know, you can't fight the fundamentals. So it's, you know, people, this is the problem, is that no one

12:36has really worked out how to be a good prime minister in a time of no money. And you know, if they could just do that, then lots of these guys, and maybe some ladies could be excellent too, but I fundamentally think he faces too many difficulties to overcome it with the sort of things he's suggesting. I think you just need to do enormous things and I'm. But three years quite hard to do enormous, enormous things. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's why I failed to sort of, but listen, all the best, all the best to all prime ministers of all parties. You were asked by Guardian readers about who you'd pick as prime minister and tongue, maybe somewhat in cheek, but you did pick JK Rowling. Can I ask you know, I originally put Connor's story from heated rivalry because he's so amazing in the sex scenes in that. And then I just thought like, come on, can you be, you know, so I thought I would in fact choose somebody who I think is strategic and principle and brave. But I do think kind of would make an incredible deputy. No more further elaboration on I feel like. Yeah, no, I don't,

13:41I don't feel like I need to like just get into a whole thing, but yeah, so, but I had, I've, yeah, I mean, Connor would be good, but anyway, I've done I've chosen now. I mean, you went for a drink with Nigel Fryer's in 2013 and wrote it up for the Guardian, which made me do that. Yeah, I highly recommend it, right? If you went for a drink with him now, what would you ask him? I couldn't do it now. I mean, they made me do that. I can't remember why, I remember writing a column about like, you know, he's the sort of person that people want to go for a drink with. And that's his high-end song. Yeah, he's kind of a crass and boring thing that people say about politicians. And then I think the features desk said, will you go for a drink with him? And I was like, really? I don't know. I don't know. I was at the time. Okay. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. I can't remember who it was. And I said, okay, fine. I will go for a drink with him. So then I actually ended up doing it. Yeah. No, I don't think. Even for the journalist to exercise. You should always go for and do all these things with people. People are very odd about, you know,

14:43you shouldn't speak to any of these people. The great thing about being a journalist is that you should speak to absolutely everybody and that there should be, you know, but actually one of the questions that I don't think I had time to answer from the readers was, you know, like, who would you invite to your dinner party? And it would have to be for me. Like, why would I not have like Trump and Putin and she, I mean, because you want the market leaders, right? You know, just saying, or, you know, I'd like to have Mary and Margly, although I don't think anyone wants her now after recent events, but, you know, saying all that is like, no, I kind of feel like you want to have the kind of monsters of the age in some way and you want to kind of get close to them and how would you get word in edgeways? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would just hopefully be writing it all down in my notebook like normal. Yeah, I don't, that sort of thing, you don't want to meet these people. You don't want to interact with them and you don't, I'm afraid you just can't do journalism like that and lots of people, you just have to kind of go and see people and find out what they're like. You know, you don't have to love them. But when it comes to forage and the particular impact that he's had on this country, well, it does say something about the countries and it's such a

15:45sort of small person. And I think sort of morally small has been such a large figure in our politics. I really do think he's completely psychologically not up to the job. I think he's mentally weak. I think it's very significant. I always think go on about this. But you know, I remember the night of the referendum and he conceded, then he unconceded, then he reconceded and then he unconceded. I think he would go to pieces in the top job. I think genuinely, look at him now, like sort of shout it. He's, he's got his big two big donations and maybe he thinks that puts a fair wind in his sales. I think that will unravel in a very different way given where they've come from. But I genuinely think he is a mentally not up to it person who cannot turn up and he doesn't turn up for the big events. He'll pick one murder to talk about and you know, the murder of Henry Novak. And then there are other things he's got nothing to say about Joe Cox. He's got nothing to say about Sarah Everard apart from its one bad apple. Well, I'm so sorry. You don't get to show up to just

16:48the ones that you think count. You are, if you want to be a leader of people, then you should find the words for all of these moments and all of those were moments of incredible national kind of horror and soul searching and he turned up for one of them because it suited him. And I really do think he is a kind of weak person and I don't think he has the kind of moral heft or most particularly the psychiatric strength to be in the top job. I think he would absolutely go to pieces. I think it would be extraordinary. Coming up, what did she get wrong? Marina Hyde and the things she's changed her mind about. This message comes from Jackson. Taxes aren't something you can only think about once a year, with investments planning for tax days year round. Fortunately, Jackson offers tax-efficient

17:53products. Visit Jackson.com for more information on how our products can make your tax bill a little bit less painful. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Incorporated, Jackson National Life Insurance Company Lansing, Michigan and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York, purchased New York. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching? Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at Schwab.com slash Washington Wise. Marina, what's your favorite celebrity plotline of the year being? Some of the fun things that I thought happened. I found it hilarious. The more I heard from people who'd actually gone to Taylor Swift's wedding, but they had things like they had a raffle and a give away. They were giving away cars and stuff. It was so basic in hilarious. I loved that. And then someone had to stand in a queue for a pasta salad next to Stephen's feel for.

18:57It kind of remarkably weird stuff. Genuinely hilarious. Everything about that. But I think the Beckham's has to be, God, it's such a cautionary tale. It's so Shakespearean and it's so, you know, Windsor aligned and for so long when they kind of exploded in the 90s and everyone said they were an alternative royal family. It's so weird to watch the kind of errant sun plotlines kind of converge. I mean, really so extraordinary. And desperately sad, you know, I feel incredibly sad for them. But to it, they epitomized so much about how people live and how people put their children all over social media, you know, and how they, it's impossible, I think, for them to think of living in any other way. Well, they are human. They're brands. They're themselves. They're humans. They're the business. So that's also a reflection of that. And yet they do obviously completely love their children. It's like, I mean, it's like sort of successional, or anything, isn't it? I mean, it's like all of these things. It's just a sort of horrible tragic thing. And you can see it condemned to repeat

20:01itself. So I think it was a sort of really shocking moment, the Brooklyn Beckham kind of diatribe and awful for them, but a cautionary tale for the way lots of people live. Was there any moment when you were looking back at the collection of columns that have been collected for this book that either made you wince or laugh at yourself, or perhaps even like you might have changed your mind on it? Oh my god, I'll be wrong about a load of stuff in this book, for sure. I mean, I just, sometimes you want to keep them in to keep the story, because you want to sort of have, you want the book to hear in a way so that people work out what happened within the politics. And you're like, oh, I've got to put this instance of me being very wrong in here. In general, I try not to make predictions, because I think so much of journalism has come about saying what might happen, rather than analysing what just has happened, because it's very compelling that to say, you know, tomorrow we're going to be doing this. And we live in this kind of, as I say, high alt-time way with lots of news cycles a day. So I try not to make predictions,

21:02but I don't always succeed. Yeah, I like to put all my mistakes in, and I didn't keep anything out of the way. I'm going to mistake. Yeah, and I'm sure it's, oh my god, there's loads in every column. I know that'll be loads in every column. I mean, I, when I was reading out the audio book, and that's heavy tea that apparently has a carve out from the Geneva Convention. I was reading this stuff and thinking, oh my god, I mean, this is a formal torture, like being in a room on your own for five or six days with your own thoughts from four years ago, like, well, I'm not- This is going to be a pleasure for a lot of people. Your first torture. I actually had to go back and redo the first 35 pages, because I finally understood the assignment. Not to do them at the end. But then I was more jolly. But yeah, yeah, there's, I'm wrong about millions of things. I'm all that, but you know, and I might think something different to what I write in a column, honestly, the next morning. I might just, you know, it's kind of like a moment in time. But it feels like you write with such conviction and such persuasion and, you know, so many good jokes.

22:02No, no, just like, but I can, yeah, no, I might change my mind even later that week, but that was the thing about journalism. It always used to just be a moment in time, and then, you know, famously, it was chip paper or budget cage liner. And now it's like, you know, it's forever preserved on the internet. And I have put it into a book. So, Well, if you were to- Please come and buy this book of my mistakes. Brilliant, my mistake. Just get a highlighter and put a line through every mistake. And you'll be run out by page 35, I'm sure. I don't think so. I wonder if there's, and this is kind of ridiculous question to ask. I know you've had your head completely in it. But if there was a word to describe what this book reveals of the age that we live in, word, sentence, how would you describe it when you looked back at it all? Well, it has been, you know, it's boring to keep going back to chaos, doesn't it, isn't it? But I suppose it has been chaotic and there's never been a through line that can last for- that can hold for much longer than two years or something. I mean,

23:04and that's- so we've got, we've cycled through so many kind of leaders and so many different plotlines that there's never a point where you think, I suppose what we've let go of completely is the idea of an even keel and that there's something that reality corrects to. Which was now seems like an idea almost from the last century, millennium. We just, I suppose we've let go of the idea of that. Everyone thinks that anything can happen all the time and you get up in the morning and you see that, you know, Trump's right into annex a country and it's just like, okay. And I mean, these things just didn't happen before and now they happen all the time. When you have been writing a column pretty much three times a week on politics, sport, celebrity for 20 plus years, event-tained us is an absolute joy to read your coffee. What's next and why stop now? God, you know what? It's difficult. It's 24- yeah, 25 years, it's nearly half my

24:10life. And it's a big thing. I have- the thing I would like- the people I'd like to thank by a million miles, I mean, I want to thank the people in the Guardian who have got my articles out, who've sent me to World Cups and Olympics and like 900 general elections. I'm thanking you a bit. I- but what I- the people I really have to thank are the readers. I was thinking the other day, you know, I've only had this one email address. I didn't have a Gmail or at least I didn't. Oh my God. And so for all of this time, I've only had, you know, Moena.Height at the Guardian.com. So people have been able to write to me for good and for real. You know, and often not threatened to kill me. I'm joking. There's only a few. And to have that relationship with readers and to have such an engaged audience has meant absolutely everything. And you get so many ideas from them, and they make you reflect, and they inspire you. And to have had that audience, you know, ultimately, as I say, you know, we're in the audience business for sure. And to have been able to kind of serve

25:11that one has been such a privilege and an education for me. So it's a big thing to go. It's a very politicians way of not answering the question, though, why stop now? I guess this- I just need to try something new. I need to do more of my own thing, maybe. And I- the thing I said to you before we started this interview was that all the way through the Guardian, I've changed all the time and done different things. And then I've added things outside, screenwriting or podcasting or whatever it might be. And the reason I've done those things is to feel scared again and to feel that I'm not in a comfort zone and to be challenged. And although, because kind of often it means I'm doing too much, I'm tired. There is something energising about that fear and about the challenge and to just not know what you're doing. And I just think it's time for that. But of course, it's a very emotional thing as well for me. We know it's such a joy to have you. And thank you so much for the years and

26:12years of writing. Look forward to seeing what you're doing now. Marina, thank you so much. Thank you, Noshi. That was the inimitable Marina hide. I know, I know we're going to miss her as well. You can of course buy her book, What a Time to Be Alive, which condenses many of her very brilliant guarding columns over the last four years. That's our in bookshops now. And that is it. This episode was presented by me, Noshi Nickbarl. It was produced by Ruth Abraham's and Lawrence Topham, sound designers by Brian McNamara, the executive producer of a Samy Kent. And we'll be back this afternoon with the latest. This is The Guardian. There's a lot people don't tell you about owning a home. And for most of us, the questions pile up a lot quicker than the answers. The cost you don't see coming, the decisions you don't feel

27:17ready to make. It all leaves you wondering, do you own your home or does it own you? I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. And in my new podcast, Own It, I'm talking to the experts for real talk and real tips to understand what home ownership really takes. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Jackson. Taxes aren't something you can only think about once a year. With investments, planning for tax days year round. Fortunately, Jackson offers tax-efficient products. Visit jackson.com for more information on how our products can make your tax bill a little bit less painful. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Incorporated, Jackson National Life Insurance Company Lansing Michigan, and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York purchased New York. 500 orders a month was manageable. 5000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with shipstation. The only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns, and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools shipstation does in one. Automate fulfillment and rate shopping to ship

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