Jesse Armstrong has been thinking a lot about billionaires.

The creator of HBO’s Succession has written and directed a new movie — Mountainhead — about four uber-rich leaders of tech. They’ve assembled at a mountaintop chateau for what’s supposed to be a weekend of poker and conversation — an “intellectual salon,” as Jason Schwartzman’s character Hugo Van Yalk puts it.

Meanwhile, the world below them is falling into chaos. They watch news reports of mass executions, governments toppling — all because one of them, Venis, owns a social networking company that’s made sharing deep-fake videos very easy.

As Venis’s rival, Jeff, puts it: “Now you’ve inflamed a volatile situation, and people are using generative AI to circulate hyper-personalized messages, unfalsifiable deep-fakes… promoting genocidal proximate attacks, creating sectarian division with video evidence, massive market instability, fraud!”

The question at the heart of Mountainhead is this: What do these tech gods do about the carnage while watching from their Mount Olympus?

As Jesse Armstrong told Morning Edition host A Martínez, “When you’re on yachts and in private jets and in gated communities, you are physically removed from your fellow human beings. That has a psychological effect, I think.”

Armstrong says the central relationship in the film is between Venis (played by Cory Michael Smith) and Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who’s developed an AI application that might solve Venis’s problem. But Jeff is being coy about whether or not they’ll partner up. “On one level,” Armstrong said, “he’s the worst in that he could help stop the worst things that are happening in the world if he was to cooperate. Now, whether Jeff trusts Venis is a question. He is unwilling just to roll the dice in the hope that his friend will act in a way that’s beneficial to humanity.”

The patriarch of the group is Randall (Steve Carell), a venture capitalist who’s guided them to their wealth. As they consider solutions to the crisis, they’re also considering ways they can take financial advantage of the situation. At one point, Randall says, “That’s why I’m so excited about these atrocities!”

“There’s a spectrum of behaviors,” Armstrong said of his four main characters. “On one end, you have confidence, which is probably a positive quality one needs to get through life. And the extreme version of that is arrogance. Where each of them falls on that spectrum, the viewer can decide — but they think they have the solutions and they would like to apply them to the world. That requires a great degree of confidence. And maybe you see when that confidence tips over into arrogance in this film.”

Armstrong likens that extreme confidence to some of today’s real-life tech leaders. “They are at a frontier of knowledge which is shaping our world, and they rightly think that they know more about that on the whole than we do. So the level of trust that we’re being asked to put in them is enormous… We really have got nothing to do other than hope that these people, to some degree, have the rest of humanity’s best interests in mind.”

Mountainhead writer/director Jesse Armstrong (left) consulting with actor Steve Carell

MACALL POLAY. SMPSP/Warner Bros. Discovery

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MACALL POLAY. SMPSP/Warner Bros. Discovery

The audio version of this story was produced by Ana Perez. The digital version was edited by Olivia Hampton.

What Felix Mallard has grown to appreciate about living in L.A. is that there’s a pocket of town to match every vibe — even if that vibe is “Aussie,” which his proudly is, having moved from Melbourne seven years ago.

“There are a lot of places that remind me of home,” says the 27-year-old actor, who plays tough-shelled Marcus in Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia,” which returns for its third season next week. “The coastal cities and certainly some parts of Silver Lake and Echo Park feel very Melbourne. They feel very hipster. I mean, that word has changed so much — I don’t know if bohemian is the right word either. But there’s a sense of wanting to engage with good food, good coffee and good art. That kind of thing is very important to people from Melbourne.”

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

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As he carves his own space in Los Angeles, Mallard has been captivating Gen Z audiences with his nuanced roles, ones that tend to resonate with young men amid all of the distinct pressures they face. Last year, he starred in the romantic drama “Turtles All the Way Down,” the film adaptation of John Green’s young adult novel that explores the complexities of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He’s now set to headline “Nest,” a movie about a young family whose home is invaded by deadly arachnids. (“It’s a quiet meditation on masculinity and being a father, wrapped up in a really fun spider horror movie,” he explains. “A real one-two punch.”)

For Mallard, a perfect Sunday in L.A. involves surfing (a must), playing music loudly (he knows his way around the guitar, bass, piano and drums) and trekking from West L.A. to the Eastside in the name of adventure. Here’s a play by play.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

5:30 a.m.: Chase the waves
I’d get up early and have a surf. The funny thing with surfing in L.A. is that you have to go where the waves are good. So it could be anywhere — Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Malibu or Ventura. You’ve got to check the Surfline app and kind of know the seasons as well, like how winter brings north swells and summer brings south swells. But it’s a guessing game. You kind of throw a dart and follow it, you know? There’s a nice crew of Aussies, Kiwis and Americans. We all try and surf together, which is really sweet.

8 a.m.: Post-surf burritos
Now I’ll probably be in a raggedy flannel top and some track pants and some Birkenstocks. Really just kind of half asleep. But it’s mandatory after a surf to get a breakfast burrito. There’s a really, really good place in Hermosa Beach called Brother’s Burritos. They don’t do the typical kind of massive breakfast burrito. Theirs come in two little bite-size burritos, which is perfect for breakfast, you know? And then there’s another place in West L.A. called Sachi.LA that’s just off the Culver loop. It’s a really cool, funky little coffee shop and cafe with a little record store next door — the perfect kind of vibe after having a surf and being in nature all morning. I really try to enjoy the peace that comes after that.

9:30 a.m.: Catch up on shows
I’m going home and catching up on the week’s shows. Right now, I’m really deep into “Hacks” — obsessed with it. I feel like I came to it quite late and I’ve had to make up for lost time. And I’m really, really loving “Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney,” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” I feel like if you’re going to check in with the news these days, it’s got to be in a format that’s digestible. I think John Oliver has a really great way of doing that, presenting the outrage and the absurdity in a fun context.

Noon: Try to find the joy of cooking
I’ve always found it such a challenge to see cooking as the expression of love that I know it is — I just haven’t had the inspiration. But Jamie Oliver’s books have really helped me because he explains recipes in a way that teach you the fundamentals. He’s got this cookbook, “One-Pan Wonders,” with an herb-y chicken tray bake that’s really simple. You can put the vegetables at the bottom of the tray — and a lot of rosemary and a lot of lemon — and put the chicken on the bars above the tray, so that when it cooks, the chicken fat drops into the vegetables and creates this really lovely flavor in the veggies. And then you finish it off with some lemon and olive oil. So that’s the one I think I can do. But if anyone has seen that recipe, they’ll know it’s the easiest one in the book, so I’m not trying to brag here.

1 p.m.: Get lost in the music
It’s always a struggle to get up off the couch, but once there’s been some food, I’m off to play some music. There was this beautiful, really fun, cheap, grungy rehearsal studio in Culver City called Exposition Studios. It would be, like, $25 or $30 an hour, and you could rent instruments and rent a room and just play as loud and as long as you want. It’s not there anymore, but there are a few other places like that around town. I’ve gone to Pirate Studios in West Adams a couple times, and just anywhere I can play some music, really, really loud.

I’ve got an EP of songs that I’m working my way through. It’s very grungy, very emotion-based. It’s probably quite angsty. There’s a lot of anger in there, and then I think maybe a lot of sadness. It’s touching on a lot of the uglier sides of our psyche that we all have.

4 p.m.: Car entertainment
Now we start preparing the journey east. Because it’s L.A., you can’t pretend that you’re not going to spend some part of your day in traffic. So a podcast is a must. I’ll be listening to Louis Theroux. I just love how he asks questions, how he kind of gives a space for his guests to either showcase who they are or maybe unknowingly reveal parts of themselves they may not even intend to. How he holds the space for that is quite impressive, and it’s a good distraction while you’re driving.

5 p.m.: Fuel up with burgers
We’re going to Burgerlords. They do a really simple menu. You can get a smashburger, I think a vegan burger, and something else, and they’ve got a really nice selection of craft beers. And it’s kind of like a redone version of a ‘50s diner inside.

7 p.m.: Let loose at a punk show
From there, we’ll go to Zebulon. I love it. I don’t see too many venues with an indoor-outdoor kind of space. They have a big garden, so you can go and take a break outside and then come back in and enjoy that change of pace. It’s one of my favorite spots in L.A. to go and watch music, for sure.

The last time I went, we saw the Spits. They’re, you know, really proper punks. And then another time, we saw a band called Spy, and they were supported by Fentanyl, Blood Stained Concrete and Yard, which is a Polish hardcore band. So any time we’re out there, it’s usually for a bit more of a hardcore kind of scene. And they’re the most fun gigs to go to. Everyone’s there to release some tension, some energy. The fans are always super, super, super die-hard fans.

Midnight: Straight to bed

I’ll make the trek home and tuck into bed. That’s usually about midnight. I’d like to say it’s earlier and that I’m, like, healthy, but I’m not.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan writer and novelist who critiqued colonial rule as well as the post-colonial Kenyan government, died Wednesday in a hospital in Buford, Georgia. He was 87 years old.

His daughter, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, first announced the news in a Facebook post.

Ngũgĩ’s writing career began in 1964, with the novel Weep Not, Child. It was about a family living in colonial Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion, which fought back against British rule. The book became an important part of the African literary canon.

He was a strong advocate for writing in local African languages. His 1980 novel, Devil on the Cross, was published in the Gikuyu language. “One of the greatest tragedies of Africa is a complete disconnection of the elite from their linguistic base,” Ngũgĩ told NPR in 2013.

“If Africa is going to contribute something original to the world, this must be rooted not only in the experience but also in the possibilities inherent in their own languages,” he said. “We have been brought up to think of our many languages as something which is bad. And it’s the other way around. Monolingualism suffocates. It is a bad thing. Language contact is the oxygen of civilization.”

Ngũgĩ wrote Devil on the Cross while he was in prison. In 1977, he co-wrote a play in Gikuyu and produced it in a local theater in Kenya. And while he’d previously written work critical of the Kenyan government in English, it was this play that got him sent to a maximum security prison, though he was never charged.

Born in 1938 in Kenya when it was a British colony, he originally went by James Ngugi. He went to Alliance High School, an elite boarding school, where he got to wear uniforms and play chess and read Shakespeare while his family was dealing with living under colonial rule. He wrote about this tension in his memoir In the House of the Interpreter. In the 2013 NPR interview, he said this experience informed his decision to write in Gikuyu – that he was sent to get an education in hopes of empowering his community.

“In reality, because of language, what happens is that the messenger who is sent by the community to go and fetch knowledge from wherever they can get it becomes a prisoner,” Ngũgĩ said. He never returns, so to speak, metaphorically because he stays within the language of his captivity.”

Ngũgĩ eventually became a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, and was founding director of the school’s International Center for Writing and Translation. He was the recipient of many literary awards, and was also constantly name-checked in discussions for a potential Nobel win. But in 2020, he told NPR that he appreciated what he called the “Nobel of the heart,” which is when someone reads his work and tells him it impacted them.

“The beauty about the Nobel of the heart is it’s very democratic,” he said. “It’s available to every writer.”