This week Alex and John trace the full arc — from Ötzi the Iceman's 5,300-year-old tattoos to the Gen Z vs millennial style split, the mainstreaming of ink in professional life, and the industry that's now growing faster than tattooing itself: laser removal.

Also discussed: how you rebel against your parents when your mum is already covered in tattoos, why the tattoo removal industry is worth $1.86 billion a year, and whether John will ever get one.

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Alex saw Michael Jackson perform live in 1996. He was 14, obsessed, and desperately wanted to be one of those lucky boys he always saw by Michael's side. As the years went on, he became very glad he wasn't.

With the MJ biopic crossing a billion dollars at the box office and two active lawsuits still pending against his estate, Alex and John ask the question nobody in a theatre queue seems to be asking: what exactly are we all agreeing to ignore?

In this episode we cover the decades-long pattern of behaviour, the 1993 Jordan Chandler settlement, the evidence presented at the 2005 trial, the Australian boys, Leaving Neverland, and the $16.5 million payout to the Cascio family that almost nobody knows about.

And underneath all of it: the uncomfortable truth that his music is so woven into the fabric of our lives that the world has quietly decided the evidence just isn't worth looking at.

Michael Jackson | MJ Biopic 2025 | Leaving Neverland | Jordan Chandler | Gavin Arvizo | Wade Robson | Cascio Family Lawsuit | Michael Jackson Documentary | Don't Press the Machine Podcast

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This week on Don't Praise the Machine, we're asking the question nobody in the productivity space wants to answer: is optimization culture actually making your life worse?

When a clip of Steven Bartlett went viral, explaining how three glasses of wine with friends "ruined him for three days," the internet didn't push back on the sobriety. They pushed back on the measurement. The Whoop band. The sleep scores. The idea that a normal Thursday night had become a biometric failure.

We dig into whether treating your life as a quantifiable system to be hacked and continuously improved is quietly destroying the things that make life worth living. Friendship, spontaneity, and the occasional loaded fry.

If you've ever felt guilty for enjoying yourself, this one's for you.

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