Hell Is Other People
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you.
What announcements and upcoming events does Cory Doctorow share at the start of the episode?
Well, hello, and welcome back to the Cory Doctorow podcast, coming to you from my echoey, hard-surface-filled office in London, where I'm still waiting for some sound baffles. I will be in Edinburgh August 16th and 17th at the International Book Festival, doing a solo presentation on the 16th and a gig with Jimmy Wales on the 17th. Then I'm flying to Sydney, Australia. I'll be at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on the 23rd and 24th, and then off to Melbourne on the 25th. at the Wheeler Center. Come September, I will be in Brighton on September the 8th with Carol Cadwallader. And I'll be in London on September the 9th with Riley Quinn. And there will also be an event in Manchester, but the details are still being worked out.
I believe it's going to be September the 11th. And there may be one more event in London with Novara Media. We're still working out all those details. October the 6th, though, I will be in South Bend at Notre Dame. And there are some other events, too, that I will announce as they come up. So this is going to be a quick podcast. I was on with you last week, and so not a lot of news to report in the intervening week in my life. I am writing now. I am working, I am touring, I just gave a talk yesterday at the Idler Festival here in London. More of that to come, although next weekend I will be away for my birthday. We're going to an off-grid cabin in the Hundred Acre Wood, so I won't be speaking to you then.
And yes, literally that Hundred Acre Wood. Anyway, I have a new Locust column out this week. It's called Hell is Other People, and it's about the solipsistic vibe that underpins AI. And I really think that I'm on to something with this. And so without any further ado, this is from the July 2026 issue of Locust magazine. Hell is other people. So this is hell. I never believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture chambers, the fire in Brimstone, the burning marl. Old wives' tales. There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people. Jean-Paul Sartre. No exit. Sartre was arguably an optimist. It's not that other people are unpleasant, quite the contrary. There's nothing that makes the day, or pointedly the night, more sweet than agreeable human companionship.
And of course, for those tasks that exceed what you or anyone could do alone, other people are a necessity. Without other people, your aspirations could never exceed the things you would personally make happen. And if you're honest, you have to admit that this is a short list of things. Other people, then, are a thing that you can't live without. And yet, other people stubbornly insist on organizing their lives around their needs, their preferences, their desires, without any consideration for how nice it would be for you if everyone would just do whatever you told them to. Thus it is that our species has invented all kinds of technologies like language and persuasion and bureaucracy and ethics and religion and government and coercion and slavery and wage labor and guilt and duty and conscription and commerce and meetings and chore wheels and corporations and teams that can be used to get some other people to sometimes act in ways that make your life better.
After all, we have neocortices, the most recently evolved structures in our brains that seem to specialize in understanding other people's motives to aid in this endeavor. Most of us have made our peace with this. We understand other people to be co-equal with us and their needs and wants, and acknowledge that a world in which everyone lives their lives in a way that maximizes our happiness would be fundamentally unfair. And even if we're willing to tolerate some unfairness, most of us are also aware that an unfair system is more likely to be unfair to us rather than unfair for us. Not everyone feels this way. A subset of humanity is committed to a world where everyone takes orders from them. We have different names for these people.
We call the majority of them toddlers, but we call the others bosses or tyrants.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:11
2
What announcements and upcoming events does Cory Doctorow share at the start of the episode?
0:11–7:45
3
Why does Cory call this a quick podcast and what personal updates does he give?
7:45–10:48
4
What is the Locust Magazine column 'Hell Is Other People' about and why is Cory excited?
10:48–13:58
5
How does Cory interpret Sartre’s line 'Hell is other people' and its optimistic reading?
13:58–16:27