Michael Patrick Moroney and Dr. Simon Mills | Founder Episode | Apr 27, 2026

Dr. Mills

Here we are, the first ever Good Authority, we'll call it a test, but it is the first ever broadcast trial production run with Michael Patrick Moroney, co-founder of Good Authority. How are you Michael?

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

I'm good. And Dr. Simon Mills, co-founder, good authority.

Dr. Mills

So you're one of my circus animals today for one of a better positioning. I thought, you know, as one channel, come across all sorts of people doing interesting things around the world and they're the genuine article from Howard Bloom to Dr. Richie to just people moving the needle on, on stuff that's, that's actually changing the world and making things better from companies to terraforming other planets in Howard Bloom's case. So I thought, we'll, we'll just get a, get a grip on, how we're going to do this, get some sort of benchmark and talk a little bit about good authority, why it's here, why is it here, what do you think about it?

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Well, I've got to, should I turn off my air conditioner? So we get in a, okay. All right, we'll just go with this. We'll go with the worst common denominator. I think that it's interesting. We were talking about it before about, you know, the amount of AI slop and how it's funny. It's impressive. Sometimes it's really good. And sometimes, you know, it can be moving, right? You know, if people do it, but I think

Dr. Mills

That sounds pretty good, but...

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

What it does is it creates a baseline and there's so much slop. There's so much AI slop. I enjoy like the weird, cool, you know, Star Wars fanfic and, you know, pictures of JD Vance 400 pounds playing bass, you know, with the dextive up. But it's so annoying. And I'm sick of this constant thing of where, I don't want to trust the experts. You know, the experts are always wrong. The experts said this couldn't happen, but look at our dear leader as he makes it happen. And, you know, I want experts. I want to talk to the guy who's been obsessively geeking out on microeconomics of, you know, Arabian Gulf shipping dynamics right now. You know, exactly. you know, you can use AI, we can use AI to make sure we transcribe it, that we capture the information, maybe we find data. It's a great search engine.

Dr. Mills

Exactly, people who actually do the stuff.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

and it's great for doing all the busy work that gets in the way of making cool shit.

Dr. Mills

Yeah, I mean you can go to YouTube and can find all sorts of content but you know I play in a band with Liberty DeVito and you know we can bring him in to talk about

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Yeah.

Dr. Mills

playing with superstars around the world. I've been talking with Leland Sklar lately, helping him solve some problems on his online e-commerce. And you know, you can get Leland in for a conversation about playing with Michael Jackson to Jackson Brown, you know, and.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

He's played, I I follow his YouTube channel where it's pretty much just him every day just going, hey, this is what up, know, the dogs are doing this. My wife's back is still out, you know, I've got to go to the store and pick this stuff up. But on top of that, it's great. mean, he pulls out this stuff that he's playing, like what a fool believes, right? And he's like, when I was in the studio playing that song, this is how this happened, and this is how this happened. And just the view into the creative process is amazing. And he's always playing along. Like he always just sort of, even when he's playing like, you know, James Taylor, he picks up a bass and he just starts like kind of playing along with it. I can't imagine that he still remembers the bass lines.

Dr. Mills

I incredible I saw him playing Sassuudio the other day on a YouTube clip just phenomenal stuff and he said yeah I was bit ratty through there going well I thought it was perfection you know

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Yeah, his, we aspire to achieve his ratty technique.

Dr. Mills

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So now you've written a book on IAR recently. How's that going?

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

It's going along. It's mainly about kind of what we've talked about, how new technology in general has changed how people make art and also what that art ends up becoming because people consume it and inevitably, know, artists and creatives are insecure little fucks. And if the audience likes something that they did, they tend to try to repeat it. or try to keep going for that attention. So the fact that everybody wants things a certain way now, and AI is helping to curate and be the gatekeeper, you gotta deal with it. And there's been stuff in the past. So I don't see it as that. I mean, it is drastically different, and it's probably gonna end up killing us all, but.

Dr. Mills

Here it is, More Human Than Human by Michael Patrick Moroney.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Yes, based off of the Blade Runner quote for the Tyrell Corporation, their replicants.

Dr. Mills

outstanding.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

And of course we all know what happened there.

Dr. Mills

Yes indeed. I was playing with the concept the other day where aliens invented a biological AI experiment and it turns out at the end of the book that we're it.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Yeah, I saw that. know what's super interesting is they have started, I saw two articles in the last two days. One, have you heard about these organoids where they take stem cells of like brains and they grow multiple brain cells and they start working a certain way and now they're using them essentially as processing chips? And the first...

Dr. Mills

No. Yeah.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

the first data center went online where you can go in and you can process stuff against their cloned brain cell chips. so, and people keep trying to figure out how to get from the tactile response from robots, right? You know, so they don't crush stuff so that, you know, they can, you know, move delicate items, have a sense if something's wet.

Dr. Mills

Yeah.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

And one of the solutions that seems very promising is they're creating essentially fungi skin. for the robot. the fungi can feel it and we know how to get the transmission of the various responses from a lack of a better term nerves in the fungi. So the fungi can essentially be the sensors of this is wet, this is dry, I'm getting squished, have more, how much weight is going against me?

Dr. Mills

Fungi skin. Wow. Yeah, right.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

And that information, they know how to get out of the, those data points they can get out of the mushroom skin. But that's pretty fucking gnarly.

Dr. Mills

I mean it's amazing how many people are scared of it and I'm sure it will probably try and kill us at some point and probably will wipe us all out but you know humans are destined to become extinct. Destined! They were just so self-destructive so you know is this it? Maybe.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Well, even then, don't think it will fully... Humans won't fully become extinct, you know, even if we had a global nuclear war. That's going to terraforming planets. We're never gonna get Mars. Mars is the worst place in the world for us to live. We would have an easier time surviving after a nuclear war than living on Mars. You know, it's got no... And so, there'll always be... little scraggling hunter gatherers, you know, in some little village, some little valley. and I think, yeah, I think AI will just kill a large proportion. They'll just, they'll call the herd down to where they've got enough firemen and, you know, miners, people who keep mining the minerals and firemen around to put out the fire if the data centers go on.

Dr. Mills

of the last of the Earthlings popping up on other planets. At least there'll be a record on good authority of some of the good people who've walked the earth and had some ideas about stuff.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Exactly, this is kind of like a, we're starting a project to collect the information for the alien archeologists that come back here in two million years and go, what the hell was here?

Dr. Mills

I love it. Well there it is, our first broadcast. Nine minutes and 11 seconds. We'll get out to about 10 minutes and that'll be our symbolic first broadcast. Maybe it'll live in him for me on there like the dude who started MySpace. What is his name? Tom. I don't know what happened to Tom. Maybe he got sold when Rupert bought it.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Tom, whatever happened to Tom? Tom just- Well, yeah, Tom just took the Rupert money and was like, okay, I'm done. I got enough.

Dr. Mills

you What nobody seems to know about Myspace and the Rupert deal is he actually made money on it. Paid half a billion.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

yeah, I mean remember my space was my space was like the biggest thing in the world so they overpaid for it and Yeah, he probably easily walked away with like one or two billion bucks You know Yeah, I think he's just you know, he's the type that I think's just moved off to fucking Costa Rica and as a surf photographer, you know

Dr. Mills

Yeah, amazing. Yep, yep indeed. Alright, that's it for the first broadcast. Thank you for tuning in, people, people of Earth. Alright.

Michael-Patrick Mahlon Moroney

Party, mate. Alrighty.