Never Gonna Give You Up

This past week three things happened. The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened globally to $234M — a film about an industry that sacrifices craft for speed, made by sacrificing craft for speed. The first half and second half feel directed by different people, because the production more or less was. Ted Turner died, aged 87 — the man who invented 24-hour news in 1980, closed the gap between events and their broadcast to zero, and accidentally created the model that turned urgency into a default register rather than a signal.And re:publica, Europe's largest digital culture conference, announced its 2026 theme: Never Gonna Give You Up. The Rickroll. Inverted. You know it's Rick Astley. That's the point.In this episode, Sascha connects all three — using auteur theory, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, Walter Benjamin, and the political economy of media ownership — to ask what it looks like when media gives up on coherence, depth, and craft. And what it looks like when it refuses to.Recorded before heading to Berlin to speak at re:publica on gamification, dissent, and the digital frontlines of Southeast Asia.FUNK !T — media and communication theory for what's actually happening this week.