Pod Insights Search Engine Is my favorite new TV show this year a ripoff? About this episode The makers of the medical drama The Pitt have been sued. The allegation: that the show is an unauthorized copy of ER.
This week, investigative reporter Nicholas Kulish walks us through the ensuing drama, reads us the possibly damning private emails, and finally helps us decide where inspiration ends and theft begins.
Is ‘The Pitt’ Really an ‘ER’ Spinoff? - Nicholas Kulish https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/business/the-pitt-er-michael-crichton-lawsuit.html
Sign up to be a premium subscriber at searchengine.show! https://searchengine.supercast.com/
Transcript 9,173 words · 18 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 PJ Vogt? Hello, Search Engine listeners. Before we begin this week, some exciting news. I mean, exciting. Maybe I've become a person who overuses the word exciting. This news is not a firework over your head, or a winning lottery ticket in your pocket, but it's good news. It's convenient news. For our listeners who enjoy the show on Apple Podcasts, you can now become a paid subscriber directly on Apple and get access to extra episodes and ad-free versions of our show. Just navigate to the normal show page for Search Engine, the way you ordinarily would, and you can even, if you want, sign up for a one-month free trial if you just want to briefly turn off my dulcet head reads. Also, while you're there, please drop us a review in Apple Podcasts. It helps people find the show. That's what we always say. It's true.
0:44 PJ Vogt? But also, it makes people here feel good. Okay, on with the show after these ads.
0:51 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Built. You don't need me to tell you that rent and mortgages are only getting more expensive. That's why Built created three credit cards designed to offer the richest rewards on rent, mortgage, and everything else you spend on. Whether you rent or own, you can earn up to 1.25X points on every housing payment without the transaction fee, no matter where you live. Points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, Lyft rides, a future housing payment, and much more. Turn one of the most unavoidable payments in your life into the most rewarding. Find the card that's right for you and apply at joinbuilt.com search. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com slash search. Use our links. They know we sent you. Terms apply. Subject to approval and eligibility. Built cards are issued by Column NA, member FDIC pursuant to license
1:36 PJ Vogt? from Mastercard International, Incorporated.
1:43 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky, and let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard. Vanguard bonds are institutional quality, meaning top-grade products built as a true commitment to your clients. Their impressive lineup features over 80 bond funds actively driven by a global team of 200 sector specialists, analysts, and traders. While other firms push star portfolio managers, Vanguard relies on collective brainpower, so every client benefits from shared expertise. Instead of chasing high-stakes gambles that lead to volatile rides, Vanguard delivers steady, reliable, and consistent performance designed for the long haul.
2:28 PJ Vogt? So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/audio. That's vanguard.com/audio. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation, distributor.
3:10 PJ Vogt? Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. This week, a question, a medium-sized question. When is it OK to copy somebody else's idea? Their song, their joke, their story? What is the difference between inspiration and a ripoff? Most of us agree that stealing ideas is wrong, but we also all know that it's complicated. All artists borrow. There's such a thing as inspiration. If the thing borrowed is changed enough, transformed, recontextualized, reimagined, it's OK. So the actual determination, unless we're talking about word-for-word plagiarism, can be hard to make. Or hard for most of us. Not so hard for most of the creative people I know.
3:55 PJ Vogt? Most of them are dead certain in their hearts that they can tell exactly when they're being ripped off. And it bothers them. Most people I talk to who make stuff have this gremlin, this voice in their head that gets a little obsessive, that tells them they can see exactly who has copied their homework and how, and wishes on some deep level that they did not have to smile and pretend to not notice it. They wish they could get a creative restraining order.
4:26 PJ Vogt? I'll be honest with you. I have this gremlin too. And I've had this feeling. And when I have, I've just told myself not to get into it. I remind myself that I borrow too. That no idea is really truly original. And sometimes that even works. But it's work trying to be better than your worst impulses. And so this week's story is emotionally satisfying to me because it's just about someone having one of these fights in public. Publicly feuding about whether or not a story had been stolen. Stolen from a person who, at the time the story was written, was dead. And this possibly stolen story happened to have been one of the more celebrated TV shows this year.
5:09 Speaker 01 Good morning, sunshine.
5:11 Speaker 02 You obviously haven't seen this board.
5:13 Speaker 01 Ah, we've seen worse. Nothing like a little challenge every now and then to keep everybody on their toes.
5:18 Speaker 02 Dr. Rebic?
5:20 PJ Vogt? The Pit is an emergency medical drama set at a hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is Nicholas Coolish, the person I first heard the story from. Nick works at The New York Times, where he's known for his sharp, deeply-reported investigations. The Pit is a show where doctors and nurses save the lives of patients who come into the emergency room. I think the thing that is most different about it from other shows is that it takes place in real time. Yes. So an hour of the show is an hour of the shift in the emergency room.
5:56 Speaker 02 Melissa King. Hi, we'll be joining you today. I just came from two months with the VA.
6:00 Speaker 01 Hey, welcome to The Pit. This is Dr. Jack Abbott.
6:03 Speaker 02 Nice to meet you. I can't take how excited I am to be here today, so.
6:07 Speaker 01 Talk to me at the end of the day.
6:10 PJ Vogt? So that's The Pit, a critically acclaimed, highly-streamed medical drama that I lost some sleep binging this year. And now I'm going to play you a clip of the show it's been accused of brazenly stealing from. Perhaps the most famous hospital drama ever created: ER.
6:26 Speaker 03 John Carter. Yes, sir. Peter Benton. You the surgical student? Yep, third year. Good. We're gonna be spending a lot of time together, so let me show you around so you'll be oriented. This is the admitting desk. If you need someone paged or a chart called up, you do it here. This is Timmy. Don't shake his hand, he's afraid of disease. This is the way to the lab.
6:42 PJ Vogt? And how would you describe ER to somebody who hasn't seen it?
6:45 Speaker 04 ER is an emergency room medical drama set in a fictional hospital in the city of Chicago, where a bunch of doctors go around saving lives.
6:58 Speaker 03 Do you know how to start an IV? Uh, actually, no. I thought you were third year. I am, but all I've done is dermatology and psychiatry. The well-dressed specialties, huh? Well, you find that surgeons actually-
7:08 PJ Vogt? So on the one side, you have that show, ER, and on the other, the pit.
7:16 PJ Vogt? And the question is whether the person who created ER should also get credit for creating the pit.
7:23 PJ Vogt? On the one hand, the shows definitely have some similarities, which we'll discuss. On the other, the creator of ER is Michael Crichton, a wonderful writer who also happens to have died 16 years ago. How someone who died during the Bush administration could be viewed as the author of a TV show written last year? Sounds like maybe a Michael Crichton plotline from some novel about cryogenics gone wrong? But actually, the story of Crichton's very unusual career helps us understand how we got here today.
7:56 PJ Vogt? I asked Nick to tell me about it. So one thing that I am slightly surprised that I did not know, I did not know that Michael Crichton created ER. Michael Crichton to me is Jurassic Park guy. Can you just give me the backstory of Michael Crichton as a person?
8:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, the story of Michael Crichton as a person is pretty amazing. He was going to medical school, and times were so different in those days that writing novels was a way to make money on the side to help pay for medical school.
8:29 PJ Vogt? How is that possible? Like legitimately, how is that possible?
8:33 Speaker 04 Um, well, nobody had cell phones in their hands, smartphones to look at, to scroll on. And so many people, instead of scrolling on phones, had these paperback books in their hands that they read.
8:51 PJ Vogt? And people paid a lot of money for these books? They weren't ad-supported?
8:54 Speaker 04 No, they paid very little money for them, but it was good money for the time. So you would actually go into a drugstore and there would be these wire rack stands that had these cheap paperbacks on them, trashy romance novels or thrillers or whatever. And people would pick them up for next to no money. And you read it while you stood in line at the DMV. And so Michael Crichton was writing books under a pseudonym, or actually under two pseudonyms, but mostly under one, that were these kinds of thriller, action-y kind of books. And they were selling well.
9:30 PJ Vogt? But the thing he thought he was going to be was a doctor.
9:32 Speaker 04 Yes, he was going to medical school. And he also started doing the hospital routine, which he did in Massachusetts in Boston. And those experiences are very much a part of the screenplay that he wrote.
9:50 PJ Vogt? And so he, but again, it's not like he's in medical school. Novel writing is something you can do for like side cash before he gets to writing his medical drama script. Like what knocks him off the path of doctor who writes his way through medical school to just like writer, like what happens?
10:13 Speaker 04 I think probably the answer to that question is a book and a movie called The Andromeda Strain.
10:18 PJ Vogt? Which I have not read or seen.
10:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's really strange. The Andromeda Strain came out before I was born and I actually saw it for the first time in a small, almost hut in Tanzania.
10:29 PJ Vogt? Why were you in a small, almost hut in Tanzania?
10:31 Speaker 04 I used to be the East Africa correspondent for the New York Times and I was writing a story about sort of rural farmland issues. And I guess this old rabbit ear broadcast television in Tanzania, you know, they're playing older movies because maybe they're not paying for the rights. Sorry to bust your spot there, Tanzania. Or they're just paying for really old movies because they're cheaper. And I just was sitting there watching this thing and it's pretty gripping. Basically, it's the story of an alien pathogen that arrives on planet Earth and starts killing people.
11:06 Speaker 05 All reports continue to indicate that the experiment was successful.
11:10 Speaker 06 Then we can feel confident your so-called biological crisis is over.
11:14 Speaker 05 As far as Andromeda's concerned, yes, we have the organism at wildfire and we continue to study.
11:20 Speaker 04 And so it's like a medical mystery of what do we do and how do we solve this? And it's so hard because everything is different, you know? The cell structure is different. And so it's outer space contagion before contagion.
11:32 Speaker 05 However, with this new knowledge, there's no guarantee that another so-called biological crisis won't occur again.
11:41 Speaker 05 What do we do about that? Precisely, Senator.
11:46 Speaker 05 What do we do?
11:50 Speaker 04 And the movie was a big deal. And suddenly he was a big time novelist, but also a big time Hollywood guy.
11:58 PJ Vogt? And so what happens then? Like even still like pre ER, what does the rise of Michael Crichton look like from the Andromeda strain?
12:06 Speaker 04 Well, so he also takes a detour into directing. So he wrote and directed a movie called Westworld.
12:14 PJ Vogt? The robotic cowboy movie that they turned into an HBO show later.
12:17 Speaker 04 Exactly. I mean, the breadth of his imagination and ability to think up these scenarios is is pretty incredible. Although I did have a funny insight while writing the story, which was, I was like, Westworld, robots in a theme park, like run amok and start killing people. And I'm like dinosaurs in a theme park.
12:40 Speaker 04 Westworld and Jurassic Park are this movie with robots instead of dinosaurs instead of robots.
12:45 PJ Vogt? He had some like deeply held fear of amusement parks that he was given.
12:50 Speaker 04 There must have been a terrible incident where he was left behind.
12:53 PJ Vogt? Yeah, I mean, I remember, it's funny, when I encountered him, it was like Jurassic Park came out when I was in grade school. It was like the scary movie that your friends dared you to watch.
13:16 PJ Vogt? So then picking up his books felt like, it felt like heady intellectual works because he would fill his science fiction with lots of science. And so you would be sort of like, I remember reading Jurassic Park. I remember reading The Lost World. And you feel like, he gives you the feeling almost of being like, an academic. Like, if you're not looking down on him, if you're looking up to him, it's a really fun reading experience because you feel like you're really parsing something.
13:40 Speaker 07 What about the lysine contingency? We could put that into effect.
13:44 Speaker 08 What's that?
13:45 Speaker 09 That is absolutely out of the question. The lysine contingency is intended to prevent the spread of the animals in case they ever get off the island. Dr. Wu inserted a gene that creates a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. The animals can't manufacture the amino acid lysine. Unless they're completely supplied with lysine by us, they slip into a coma and die.
14:02 PJ Vogt? But then there's exciting scenes where dinosaurs eat people and stuff.
14:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, although I did want to mention something. You said The Lost World.
14:09 PJ Vogt? Yeah.
14:10 Speaker 04 And I do find myself thinking about The Lost World a lot in the larger context of this story and like, whose story is whose and what belongs to the world and what belongs to the writer or the estate. Because The Lost World is the name of a book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known for the Sherlock Holmes series. And The Lost World is about finding dinosaurs in contemporary time, like humans interacting with dinosaurs.
14:41 PJ Vogt? Really?
14:42 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:43 PJ Vogt? Huh, I didn't know that.
14:44 Speaker 04 And so The Lost World is an inspiration, I believe, for the Jurassic Park books. And that's fine because it's in the public domain. You know, it's old enough that anybody can do that. But that idea, that larger question of when is culture something that we all use and that we're all able to riff on versus when is culture something that is like locked up and locked down and belongs to this one person? Because I think... I think it used to be more normal to sort of say, yeah, you know, somebody's gonna write a book with some dinosaurs in it. And now it's like, that's IP.
15:18 PJ Vogt? Yeah.
15:19 Speaker 04 IP, like, whose IP is this?
15:23 PJ Vogt? Yeah, I find like the word IP itself to be like a bad Andromeda strain, where it seems to infect the minds of people who make anything ever at all, where they're like, my IP, my IP. And like this idea that, once an idea has occurred to you, whether it was inspired by someone else, whether it really sprung completely from your mind, it is like something you have to protect, like land rights. Like, it's just an instinct that I don't love. And I didn't know that about The Lost World, but it's interesting, because it's like by nodding to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it's like he's making a kind of statement of values, which is to say, it's okay to borrow ideas, it's okay to have a spin on somebody else's idea.
16:05 PJ Vogt? Like, even an idea as outlandish as dinosaurs are back, which really, I'm surprised anyone else had that. Like, everything is probably gonna come from somewhere else.
16:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely.
16:16 PJ Vogt? So, Michael Crichton was an incredibly prolific and successful writer, who, at least sometimes, was inspired by other people's ideas. The story of how he would come to create ER, the TV show, it actually starts as a movie script Crichton had written, inspired by his med school experiences. It was called Emergency Ward.
16:35 Speaker 04 So, the Emergency Ward script had been kicking around for a while. And by a while, I think it might be like 20 years. And it just kind of sat. And there was an idea from Spielberg that they would turn it into a TV show. But then they got distracted by the dinosaurs, as we all do.
16:54 PJ Vogt? Yes.
16:55 Speaker 04 And they did the dinosaur thing. And then they came back and they're like, well, what about this hospital idea? And the hospital idea has deep, deep roots.
17:08 PJ Vogt? When Nick says the hospital idea has deep, deep roots, he means that the genre goes back before the invention even of TV.
17:17 PJ Vogt? This is a medical radio drama that premiered in 1937 called Dr. Christian.
17:22 Speaker 10 Oh, Dr. Christian, you.
17:24 Speaker 07 Well, hello there. How are you, young lady?
17:28 Speaker 10 Oh, I'm all right.
17:29 PJ Vogt? All told, more than a dozen radio medical dramas would find their way onto American airwaves. But the genre really explodes when it moves to television in the 1950s.
17:39 Speaker 11 Dr. Crane, we're simply frantic with worry about David. This is such an important moment in his career.
17:45 Speaker 07 Yes. Won't you be seated, please?
17:48 Speaker 11 Thank you.
17:48 PJ Vogt? This is a clip from the first ever TV medical drama, City Hospital.
17:53 Speaker 07 We'll operate as soon as we can. I told that to David, but just when that will be, I can't say.
17:59 PJ Vogt? In the intervening decades, more than 50 medical dramas hit American television sets. They get set in different hospitals, sometimes they're grittier, and at least once the doctor is a teenager. But for the most part, it's a genre not prone to innovation.
18:14 Speaker 12 Diagnosis is definite now. Hodgkin's disease.
18:17 Speaker 13 Don't tell my father.
18:18 Speaker 12 I had no choice.
18:19 Speaker 13 What's the matter? Afraid of a little blood?
18:23 Speaker 13 It's hard. It's beating.
18:27 Speaker 10 Look at that.
18:29 Speaker 10 My God.
18:30 PJ Vogt? I like to say about hospital shows, like where else can a baby be born and a life be heroically saved every single day or every single episode? And it not strain credulity? Right, right. It's a place where actual drama happens. I will say, I had to go to the emergency room like a month and a half ago for something that turned out to be nothing, and I was so disappointed. Like I was sitting in the emergency room and like, nothing particularly exciting was happening. Like people were not moving very quickly. No one was screaming. I was there for like three hours because I was very low priority. And this is kind of a mess, something to say. But at the very end, a person came in having like a psychotic break. And I was a little bit like, finally, like grandma.
19:15 Speaker 04 You were very lucky because when I was a teenager, I went for what I thought was a broken foot, but turned out to be a sprained ligament.
19:21 PJ Vogt? Oh, no.
19:21 Speaker 04 And they brought someone in, an older, middle aged man, and they did the whole like, clear, clear, like, working on him. And then, then they pronounced him dead. And then all turned around at once and saw me sitting on the bed next to him. And then somebody just pulled the curtain closed in front of me. And I thought, they really should have done that right away. And I was like traumatized is, you know, a more popular word now than it was in those days. But, but yeah, it definitely stuck with me. I left a mark. I left a really bad mark.
19:54 PJ Vogt? So to recap, Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg decide to take this old, unmade film script and turn it into a TV show. In order to do that, they need a showrunner. So they bring in another person who will turn out to be a key character in our story. A person who will end up being on the other side of the upcoming legal battle. John Wells.
20:15 Speaker 04 Basically, a meeting is set up between Michael Crichton and a TV writer named John Wells, who had been working on a Vietnam hospital show called China Beach.
20:30 PJ Vogt? MASH already existed.
20:31 Speaker 04 MASH had already existed. Right. So China Beach is a little bit of a MASH for like the late 80s, early 90s. And so these two guys, the successful novelist, whose Jurassic Park book is everywhere, including my bedroom, and this TV writer coming off this hospital show, and they bring them together. And they have this meeting of the minds, and they agree to make this show, and they agree that they'll never talk down to the viewers. They will always throw medical jargon at them that they don't understand, but they won't mind because they'll just enjoy letting it run past them with verisimilitude.
21:06 PJ Vogt? And that's all true. Like, that was part of what was working on the show is that it felt adult and real relative to what people were used to?
21:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think that that was definitely a big part of it.
21:18 Speaker 14 Dr. Green.
21:19 Speaker 04 I mean, the thing about the ER screenplay, the pilot eventually of the show, is it's not dinosaurs, right?
21:26 Speaker 14 Dr. Green.
21:30 Speaker 14 What is it? Patient for you, Dr. Green. Can't the intern take it? Nice for you.
21:36 Speaker 04 It's about this doctor who is sleeping in a glorified broom closet, who keeps getting woken up to go and deal with patients.
21:44 Speaker 14 Can't the intern take it? It's Dr. Ross.
21:50 Speaker 14 Dr. Ross. I'll be right there.
21:54 Speaker 04 And it's 24 hours in his life. And he's trying to decide whether to go and work at a fancy medical practice where he'll make tons more money. But, you know, it's implied that he'll sort of be helping wealthy dowagers or stay in this exhausting, desperate place where gunshot wound victims come in. And it's like, you're saving lives. You're exhausted and you're not making money. So it's like a very realistic take on medicine.
22:23 PJ Vogt? But so I watched, I watched the pilot and did not finish it. I found it to be sort of like, I was surprised at how slow it was.
22:31 Speaker 04 Maybe you were just overly immune to the dreaminess of young George Clooney.
22:36 PJ Vogt? He looks really good.
22:37 Speaker 04 Because that was, that was a big part of, I think, the early appeal of the show.
22:44 PJ Vogt? Obviously, ER was successful for reasons beyond George Clooney's intoxicating dreaminess. My favorite TV critic, Alan Sepinwall, has called that first season "among the most self-assured debuts the medium has ever had."
23:00 PJ Vogt? ER was such a huge hit, it's actually hard for me to find modern things to compare it to. It ran for 15 seasons. It garnered 124 Emmy nominations, had vast global syndication. We just don't really make TV that big today. It was a hit during a much more profitable time for television. And it would make its creators an astonishing amount of money.
23:28 Speaker 04 There's this figure that is thrown around in the court documents that says that Michael Crichton made $800,000 of backend on each ER episode. And there are 331, I believe, episodes. And I did the math. It was about a quarter of a billion dollars, give or take, for Michael Crichton's take.
23:45 PJ Vogt? A quarter of a billion dollars?
23:47 Speaker 04 Yes.
23:48 PJ Vogt? Okay.
23:48 Speaker 04 For Michael Crichton, this is part of ER. That's also Steven Spielberg's company's take.
23:54 PJ Vogt? Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg, crucially, they were not involved in the day-to-day operation of the show. It was their initial idea. But when it came to actually filling those 331 episodes with stories of different things that could happen in the hospital, that responsibility ultimately rested with showrunner John Wells and with the writers he managed. In one email that would later end up in court records, John Wells did point out that despite having worked on ER for more than a decade, he earned less than half of what either Crichton or Spielberg made. Although he added, quote, "That's not a complaint. It's the deal I made." If privately, the gremlin in John Wells's head felt differently, or if he even had a gremlin in his head, that we can't know.
24:39 PJ Vogt? In the end, ER was just not his IP, which meant in some sense, he would always be a renter, not an owner. After the break, a new hospital show arrives.
24:51 PJ Vogt? Or does it?
24:58 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Bombas. Cozy season is here, which means it's time to bring out the movie marathons, crisp morning walks, and super soft layers. Once fall hits, I genuinely just want absolute comfort on my feet, and Bombas have become a go-to for me. Their new suede moccasins are a total game changer for this weather, packed with water-resistant suede, ultra cushy soles, and a plush shearling lining. On those busy days, or whenever I have travel coming up, I've reached for their compression socks. They offer specialized support that actively fights fatigue and aches, keeping my legs completely energized no matter how long I'm on my feet. And best of all, for every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential item to someone experiencing homelessness, with over 200 million items donated so far.
25:42 PJ Vogt? Head over to Bombas.com/Engine and use code ENGINE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash ENGINE, code ENGINE at checkout.
25:57 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Framer. We've all seen what happens when a quick landing page idea gets buried under a mountain of developer tickets, tedious handoffs, and endless delays. If your team needs a website that feels meticulously handcrafted without taking months to ship, you need to check out Framer. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. Think of it as a creative partnership. AI agents bring incredible speed and scale while your team brings the taste, judgment, and final say. Instead of leaving you with a half-baked first draft, Framer's agents work directly on the canvas alongside you, drafting pages, building custom code, managing CMS content, optimizing SEO,
26:41 PJ Vogt? and auditing for bugs, so everything stays fully editable and instantly publishable. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/search for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/search. Rules and restrictions may apply.
27:02 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Akosia. Think about how many random things you search for in a single afternoon, from recipe ideas to quick trivia. What if every single one of those clicks went towards healing the planet instead of lining the pockets of big tech? By making one simple switch to Akosia, your daily internet habits directly power environmental restoration. Akosia is a search engine and browser that dedicates 100% of its ad profits to climate projects, having already funded over 250 million trees across 40 different countries. They even use satellite tracking and hands-on site visits to ensure every tree thrives for the long haul. Plus, Akosia is legally structured so it can never be sold out to wealthy investors, meaning its mission stays permanent. You do not need to rewrite your lifestyle to make a difference.
27:46 PJ Vogt? You just need to update your search bar. Switch to Akosia, and every search you make funds climate action, plants trees, and supports a more independent internet, all without changing your routine. It takes 30 seconds to download, and it's one of the easiest things you can do today that actually matters. Download Akosia from the App Store today and help reforest the planet.
28:18 PJ Vogt? Welcome back to the show.
28:22 PJ Vogt? So when I started watching The Pit as a person who totally skipped ER, one of the things that confused me was the pit's starring actor, the guy who plays Dr. Robinovich. I was confused because the actor was clearly in his mid-50s, a tremendous performer. And I just thought, how has this guy never been in anything? And also, how'd he finally get this big role? It turns out that that actor, Noah Wiley, is famous to lots of other people because he was one of ER's main characters. And Noah Wiley isn't just the star of The Pit. He was perhaps the driving force for getting the show on the air at all. Because for Noah Wiley, The Pit was an opportunity to re-energize a Hollywood career that had cooled somewhat.
29:07 Speaker 04 So to go back a step, when ER came out, it made stars of a couple people. George Clooney became a big star, who we all know as a movie star, but ER was really his thing. And Juliana Margulies went on to be the good wife. And Noah Wiley, who was younger, stuck with the show a lot longer. I think he did 11 full seasons and then some additional appearances. So for him, ER was like a real job for more than a decade, where he didn't jump straight into matinee idol. He did some other stuff. He played Steve Jobs in a very well-received, made-for-TV movie about the tech industry.
29:49 Speaker 04 But I think it's pretty clear for him that up until The Pit, ER was the pinnacle of his success.
29:56 PJ Vogt? Right.
29:57 Speaker 04 And so that's how we find ourselves in February 2020 with Noah Wiley saying, hey, I know what the world needs. The world needs a television show called Carter.
30:13 Speaker 04 About my most famous character, Dr. John Carter. At the time, he name checks these things like Logan. Right? You remember the movie Logan?
30:22 Speaker 07 As I live and breathe, the Wolverine. And he's a junkie now. Who the fuck are you? You know, you got some buckshot in your door.
30:33 PJ Vogt? Oh, it's so good. It was like Logan Wolverine from X-Men. But they were like, we're just gonna make a movie about him and it's gonna be darker. It's sad. I loved Logan. It was cool.
30:41 Speaker 04 Exactly. So he's like, we need a Logan for Dr. John Carter. So the grizzled old guy, the white and the beard.
30:49 PJ Vogt? Yeah.
30:49 Speaker 04 Is a feature, not a bug.
30:51 PJ Vogt? Okay. And of course, he wants this. Like, wouldn't you like to go back to your most famous role that everybody loved you for? And what does it look like? He's like sending emails. Is he trying to write the scripts? Like, what's happening?
31:03 Speaker 04 He's emailing people like John Wells, who worked on ER a lot in some of the later seasons. And so, yeah, so there's this like, let's get the band back together. And let's do an ER again, but coincidentally focused on my character.
31:18 PJ Vogt? Which sounds like a little bit silly and like, whatever, except for like, they do make it. It's great. He's great.
31:25 Speaker 04 I am legally obliged to say that Warner Brothers Television would not say that they made it. They would say that they made a different show. They do say it quite forcefully in lots of court documents. But yes, they ended up making a hospital emergency room drama starring Noah Wiley as a grizzled old emergency room doctor.
31:44 Speaker 15 You're afraid of making a mistake?
31:45 Speaker 16 I'm always afraid of making a mistake, aren't you?
31:47 Speaker 15 Yeah, of course I am. But you know what I mean? You make a mistake once and somebody dies and you feel so badly about it, you'll never let it happen again.
31:54 Speaker 16 How is that wrong?
31:54 Speaker 15 Because you waste time and money on unnecessary tests. You keep sick patients waiting too long.
32:01 Speaker 04 And people really got into it. And one of the things that people seem to like about it is that it's not the bear. Oh, no, I'm just kidding. Did I say that?
32:10 PJ Vogt? That is a thing that I liked about it.
32:12 Speaker 04 Right. They weren't like, oh, we're like having a special episode where it's all about like this one surgeon who like sits with a scalpel. You know, um, we should probably cut that. No, it's not a show that's like lost in its own poeticness. It's just like, let's save lives, hour after hour. Bring in a new patient in on the gurney. Like, let's keep doing this. Let's raise the stakes.
32:34 Speaker 15 Being here? Means no matter how good you are or how hard you try, you're gonna make another mistake. And someone else might even die. That's called being an emergency medicine doctor. If you can't accept that, then maybe this isn't a place for you.
32:48 Speaker 16 I can accept that.
32:49 Speaker 15 You sure?
32:50 Speaker 16 Yes.
32:51 Speaker 15 OK. Good. Go save some lives. Clear some beds while you're at it.
32:58 Speaker 04 The doctors are being doctors and I just, that's all I want is to just watch these people be good at being doctors.
33:03 PJ Vogt? Yeah. It must be so satisfying for Noah Wiley, where it's just like, it's the fantasy that never works out. We were like, what if I could go back? And he goes back and it turns out like, people love hospital shows the same way they always loved hospital shows.
33:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, for Noah Wiley, it couldn't have gone better. Like, he was nominated multiple times for Emmys for ER, and he never won. And then he was like, let's do another hospital show. And he just won his first ever Emmy for Best Actor. So I mean, yeah, it could not have turned out better for him.
33:35 PJ Vogt? So, OK, so tell me, how does the drama around the drama start? The real life drama?
33:41 Speaker 04 Well, before The Pit had even debuted, there was a lawsuit filed in California court that said that, it was the Michael Crichton estate, and they said that it was an unauthorized sequel to or reboot of ER.
33:57 PJ Vogt? And did they want to stop it from being made?
33:59 Speaker 04 They wanted to stop it. I think it had already been made, but they were trying to stop it from being aired. The first step that Warner Brothers and the creative team behind The Pit took was to try to have the case dismissed. The courts did not agree and the judge in California did not grant Warner Brothers' request.
34:17 PJ Vogt? The judge was like, we're not just gonna dismiss this lawsuit out of hand.
34:19 Speaker 04 Right. The judge was like, you know what? There's more to this than meets the eye.
34:26 PJ Vogt? Here, we have reached a surprising twist in our story. Not that the judge made an early ruling in favor of the entity trying to stop The Pit. The twist is the identity of that entity, a character I did not expect to find in this story.
34:42 PJ Vogt? And so who's behind the lawsuit? Like, who controls the Michael Crichton estate?
34:48 Speaker 04 Okay, so we have to go back a couple of steps. Michael Crichton, four times divorced with a teenage daughter, begins dating a former soap opera actress named Sherry Alexander.
35:04 PJ Vogt? Famous writer marries former soap opera star. And tell me more.
35:10 Speaker 04 Well, they have a romantic wedding in Hawaii in front of a waterfall, and she becomes pregnant. And then he falls ill with cancer. And he dies tragically while she's pregnant with their unborn son. And so there's some back and forth over exactly who controls the estate and how. But at the end of it, Sherry Crichton ends up as the CEO of Crichton's son, which controls his archive and handles a lot of these kinds of rights negotiations.
35:50 Speaker 04 And she is not a passive collector of royalties.
35:56 PJ Vogt? Okay.
35:57 Speaker 04 So since her husband passed away, they've done four Michael Crichton books. Two of them were books that he had written but hadn't published. Another one is called Micro and is finished by an author named Richard Preston. And then I think the best known work is called Eruption, and it's finished by James Patterson, becomes the New York Times number one bestseller last year. And for a person who died in 2008, Michael Crichton has a pretty huge presence, right?
36:29 PJ Vogt? As a person, you yourself is working on a book. Posthumously, he's publishing, I think, more than you have recently.
36:39 Speaker 04 That's a particularly mean, mean way of putting it.
36:44 Speaker 04 Yes.
36:45 PJ Vogt? He also has a lot more help, though. Like, if somebody was like, Nick Coolidge, we're giving you James Patterson.
36:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, I was about to say, James Patterson, if you're listening, meet me at the Brooklyn Public Library on Sunday.
36:56 Speaker 04 I could really use your help.
36:58 PJ Vogt? The Crichton Estate, led by Sherry Crichton, in addition to publishing books and approving new Jurassic Park movies, they also fight to make sure Michael Crichton keeps getting as much credit as possible on the new material that's made out of his old IP. But crucially, for our story, the estate lost one of those fights not too long ago.
37:26 PJ Vogt? You can see that defeat happen in real time by watching the beautiful opening credits to the pilot of HBO's TV show Westworld, which came out in 2016. While Michael Crichton's name appears in the show's credits, he's not listed as the show's creator, which to the estate felt disrespectful.
37:47 Speaker 04 They firmly believe that he should have been considered the creator of the television series, and that at the beginning of every episode of that show, it should have said "created by Michael Crichton."
38:00 PJ Vogt? I mean, okay, in their defense, I didn't know it was a Michael Crichton series. Not in their defense, one, I don't pay a lot of attention to things, and two, he was dead at the time that they made the TV series.
38:11 Speaker 04 Yes. This gets into the naughty, K-N-O-T-T-Y, questions about intellectual property.
38:20 PJ Vogt? Can dead people have new ideas? Or can dead people get credit for new ideas?
38:25 Speaker 04 Exactly. It's like, how much credit do you give to the person whose idea has been reanimated by people after their death?
38:33 PJ Vogt? And obviously, the estate is always going to have a maximalist view of this.
38:37 Speaker 04 Definitely. And I think that, for this story, what matters is, the Crichton Estate believed that Warner Brothers Television had not given proper credit and respect to their departed loved one. And they held that grudge and defeated projects.
38:57 PJ Vogt? So the Crichton Estate, led by Michael's widow, Sherry, tries to get as much posthumous credit on Michael Crichton's behalf as possible. But with Westworld, they feel like they didn't succeed. Flash forward a decade to the moment at hand. As Nick mentioned, in August 2024, the Crichton Estate tries to file a lawsuit to prevent The Pit from ever seeing the light of day. But the courts are slow, TV is relatively fast, and this past January, The Pit premieres. And lots of people watch it, including Nick. So before you started to actually look at the lawsuit, like, what did you walk in thinking?
39:30 Speaker 04 So I think I found myself the way a lot of people would, watching the TV show, scrolling on my phone, and reading that Michael Crichton's widow had sued the makers of The Pit, saying that they owed her and the Michael Crichton Estate, more importantly, for making this sort of ER reboot. And my reaction to that was, that's crazy. It's not called ER. It's called The Pit.
40:02 PJ Vogt? Yeah.
40:02 Speaker 04 It's not set in Chicago. It's set in Pittsburgh. That character's name is not Dr. John Carter. It's Dr. Robinovich.
40:10 PJ Vogt? And like, hospital show is a genre.
40:12 Speaker 04 And hospital show is a genre. So, you know, what's she up to? And I think there are some obvious stereotypes that come into play, right? The widow, you know?
40:21 PJ Vogt? Wait, the widow who's like, trying to steal IP? That's not a stereotype.
40:23 Speaker 04 No, the widow's wringing money out of the... I think, I think there's like, people have those, like, the greedy widow ideas, right?
40:29 PJ Vogt? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:30 Speaker 04 But when I started looking into it, because I'm the kind of person who watches a TV show and reads the Wikipedia page and then starts downloading court documents.
40:39 PJ Vogt? It's so funny, because the human impulse of, I just watched a show, I want to read something on the internet, I also have, it's never extended for me to court documents around the production, and I'm slightly jealous.
40:51 Speaker 04 Well, I mean, it should. Court documents are, as we'll see, the best.
40:55 PJ Vogt? So what do you find?
40:57 Speaker 04 Well, what I find is a much more complicated story, because in the parlance of your time, Sherry Crichton has a lot of receipts.
41:07 PJ Vogt? Oh.
41:08 Speaker 04 Sherry Crichton has a lot of emails. And these emails are from John Wells.
41:17 Speaker 04 Noah Wiley, and they're very detailed and very emotive. And they are saying, hey, we want to remake ER. And this is how we're proposing to do it with this realtime show where you're in the emergency room, hour by hour, with the older, grizzled Logan-style Dr. Carter.
41:38 PJ Vogt? I see. So they'd asked for permission first?
41:42 Speaker 04 Yes. They very, very clearly ended up in negotiations with the Crichton Estate about rebooting ER with a show that, to the layperson, looks a lot like the show that ended up being The Pit.
41:57 PJ Vogt? Can you read any of these emails?
41:59 Speaker 04 So here's an email that was attached to Sherry Crichton's declaration to the court. That is from Noah Wiley to John Wells. And it says, subject line, "A Not So Crazy Idea."
42:22 Speaker 04 "I then had my not so crazy idea, a character study in the vein of Logan, Picard, and Joker.
42:32 Speaker 04 Carter. A 12-episode Hulu limited series where we take another look at the guy who showed us the world the first time, darker and grittier, aged, but still him. Is he practicing in Africa, Chicago? Is there any money left? Did he and Cam make it? I suspect that's a romantic partner from after I stopped watching ER. Was there a kid? Did he ever slip? How he's framed the last 15 years would be interesting to a lot of people. What he feels about it all today would be equally so. I don't think I would have ever liked this idea before now, but there are things I want to say that need to be said, and I keep hearing them in his voice."
43:14 PJ Vogt? And so this is Noah Wiley to John Wells, the original ER writer.
43:18 Speaker 04 Yes. Well.
43:19 PJ Vogt? Well.
43:20 Speaker 04 Original ER writer is Michael Crichton.
43:22 PJ Vogt? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We must credit Michael Crichton. Michael Crichton, in some ways, was responsible for Search Engine. But, okay, so on the one hand, she's got them a little dead to rights because clearly this started out as an ER reboot. On the other hand, as someone who watched The Pit and really enjoyed it, there is a lot of stuff in that pitch that's gone. Like, I don't know who the person from ER is because they don't use that backstory. Like, they gave him a new backstory and basically it's the same character with a different name. It's close.
43:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yeah.
43:54 PJ Vogt? Nick reached out to both the people in this email thread, Noah Wiley and John Wells, for comment. They both declined. But while they didn't want to talk, presumably because of ongoing litigation, their emails tell a story of their own. After that internal email describing the gritty ER reboot, John Wells, former ER showrunner, wrote an email of his own, directly to Michael Crichton's widow, describing his vision for how the story would look on screen.
44:20 Speaker 04 So this is an email that says, "From John Wells to Sherri Crichton, from February 2023." He says to her, "So what was the idea that made me think that we should revisit Chicago Memorial 15 years later?"
44:40 PJ Vogt? Oh, no.
44:41 Speaker 04 "A 12-hour shift, an hour an episode that spills over into a 14-hour shift. Michael's original screenplay, our pilot episode, was a day in the life of the ER and Mark Green."
44:52 PJ Vogt? Oops.
44:52 Speaker 04 "30 years later, it was to be a 14-hour shift for John Carter, Noah Wiley, now the attending physician in the ER. The idea was to show the continuing collapse of public hospital emergency room care as chronic homelessness, fentanyl, and the aftermath of the pandemic have eroded the public health system."
45:12 Speaker 04 We could see Carter arrive for the beginning of his shift.
45:17 PJ Vogt? I can almost see it. He's got the AirPods in, he's listening to music.
45:30 Speaker 04 Follow him through the 14 hours of his day, considering whether he can keep doing this work and watch him regain his purpose and recommit to his profession.
45:41 PJ Vogt? It sounds a lot like the show that I watched.
45:43 Speaker 04 It does sound a lot like the show. And so after reading these emails,
45:51 Speaker 04 I had to, as a few of your listeners might say, update my priors.
45:55 PJ Vogt? Mm hmm.
45:56 Speaker 04 I'm not saying that Sherry Crichton or should win, or Warner Brothers should win, but I'm saying after reading these emails, I understood why Sherry Crichton felt that they'd kind of gone around her to make the show.
46:07 PJ Vogt? Yeah, generally speaking, if you're going to ask somebody for something, you should probably be ready, if they say no, not to take it anyway. And I'm sure they feel that they adjusted the story enough that it's okay. But I understand why she would feel like that's not the case.
46:25 Speaker 04 Right. I think, and this is my opinion, not an informed legal opinion, but just my opinion as someone who's read all the documents. I think that if the people had made the pit and called it the pit without ever talking to Sherry Crichton, that they wouldn't be in court and we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it.
46:45 PJ Vogt? What Nick's saying is not that the estate is necessarily right. He's saying those emails mean the estate has a viable legal case. Nick is a reporter for the New York Times, as well as a careful person by temperament. So he's not going to render his personal verdict here, assuming he has one.
47:02 PJ Vogt? But I'm a podcaster and much more risk tolerant, so I'll give you mine. I don't know what Michael Crichton would have wanted. Most people enjoy getting lots of credit and money for their ideas. But hearing the story of his career, what strikes me is that he was a deeply inspired person. The stories he told may have had roots in other stories. All the hospital dramas that preceded ER, the dinosaur stories that preceded Jurassic Park. But when Crichton told his versions, they had more power. He could tell a story that made people all over the world listen in a way that is exceptionally rare.
47:37 PJ Vogt? And he got paid for that, a lot, as he should have. But the idea that now that he's gone, his estate should be able to stop other people from telling stories that are inspired by ER, but not, in my view, adapted from ER? I just don't agree with that. I think that logic belongs to the world of lawyers, not the world of storytellers. If you tell stories, you'll steal and you'll be stolen from. It'll bug you, but if you're really good at what you do, it won't matter much. Michael Crichton was very good at what he did. So are the people who made the pit. What will shake out in court, though? That's a different matter.
48:16 PJ Vogt? So what's the most likely? Like, I know how much you love making predictions, particularly recorded in public, but like, what's the likely outcome of where this goes?
48:24 Speaker 04 Well, I think the next step is the easy part to describe, which is Warner Brothers is appealing the judge's decision. And so if they win on appeal, then I think it's likely that they win and they get to continue making the pit and the Crichton estate is frustrated. I think that if Warner Brothers and the creative team lose again, they will have a pretty big incentive to settle because this is a big, complicated case that sprawls in a lot of directions. I don't think any of them are directions that a entertainment company really wants them to go.
49:06 PJ Vogt? You mean it could just get very messy for them?
49:09 Speaker 04 Well, so I was reading those emails to you.
49:11 PJ Vogt? Yeah.
49:12 Speaker 04 And nobody really wants their emails read out loud on a podcast, right? But those were the messages that they sent to Sherry Crichton, a person who they might reasonably have expected to sue them at some point over this.
49:25 PJ Vogt? Oh, if there's a bunch of discovery.
49:27 Speaker 04 What were they saying to each other, writing back and forth?
49:30 PJ Vogt? Right.
49:31 Speaker 04 It has been mooted and suggested that the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, David Zaslove, could be asked for a deposition or to sit in the witness stand. That's the kind of thing that people try not to let their CEOs do.
49:49 Speaker 04 More importantly, there's a big debate going on about how much money there is for writers, or how big the pot of money is that should be shared. And in a lot of ways, it's opaque. How do you say what is owed to the people who made the pit out of the money that was spent on a subscription to HBO Max?
50:12 PJ Vogt? Right.
50:12 Speaker 04 That's very hard to figure out. But if this case moved forward far enough, that's exactly the kind of thing they'd be trying to figure out, because they'd be assessing damages. And does HBO Max, or does Warner Brothers Discovery, do they want other creators knowing exactly how big the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is?
50:31 PJ Vogt? Certainly not.
50:32 Speaker 04 Probably not.
50:35 PJ Vogt? Nick, thank you.
50:36 Speaker 04 Thanks so much for having me.
50:39 PJ Vogt? Nicholas Coolish. We'll include a link to his story about all this in our show notes. And you should also keep an eye out for his forthcoming book about Bill Gates. I predict it will be IP worth feuding over.
50:55 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Mint Mobile. Remember back when you were a kid and you'd spot something cool at the store, only for your mom to remind you to just wait until the holidays? Well, Mint Mobile is giving you the present early with zero waiting required. Right this minute, all of their wireless plans are available for just $15 a month. If you make the switch to Mint, your monthly expenses will take a huge step without your signal quality taking a hit. You get high-speed data, unlimited talk, and unlimited text powered by the nation's largest 5G network. There's no need to buy a new device either. You bring your own phone and keep your current number. So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/search. That's mintmobile.com/search. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/search.
51:38 PJ Vogt? Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigs may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
52:01 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Gusto. I remember back when we were juggling hiring, tracking benefits, and running payroll all by ourselves. And frankly, how much we used to dread payday every single month because of how manual and tedious it was. If I could give my past self a piece of advice, it would be to stop wasting precious hours on administrative work that software can automate in minutes. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. They make everything effortless, from automatic payroll, tax filings, and direct deposits, to 401Ks and workers' comp. You get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price with zero hidden fees,
52:42 PJ Vogt? plus automated offer letters and direct access to certified HR experts whenever tough questions pop up. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/search and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/search. One more time, gusto.com/search.
53:03 PJ Vogt? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Rocket Money. You know how keeping track of your finances can feel like a full-time job? Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. But they just launched something that changes the game entirely. Introducing Rowan by Rocket Money, an AI-powered personal finance assistant. You can text to manage your money. Instead of digging through bank statements or opening the app, just text Rowan your money questions. Rowan also proactively catches things like overspending, price increases, and savings opportunities automatically, making it easier than ever to stay in control. I started using Rowan this week. I asked how my spending was tracking for the month, and it showed me I was spending way more on dining out than usual,
53:47 PJ Vogt? then helped me budget so that I wouldn't overspend. It takes all the guesswork out of managing your money. Try Rowan when you sign up for Premium Plus at rocketmoney.com/search. That's rocketmoney.com/search.
54:11 PJ Vogt? Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Trudy Pinamaneni. Garrett Graham is our senior producer. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Fact checking this week by Natsumi Ajisaka. Additional production support from Emily Multer and Kim Kubel. Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hilary Shaff. Our agent is Orin Rosenbaum at UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in two weeks.
55:14 Speaker 17 Ring Central's AI receptionist uses Voice AI to answer on the first ring, so you'll never miss a call again. In just a few minutes, you can personalize your own AI receptionist to answer questions, route calls, schedule appointments, and even send texts in multiple languages. Plus, it's easy to scale. Create unlimited AI receptionists across any phone system. It's all powered by one reliable platform for effortless AI communications. See for yourself at ringcentral.com. Ring Central, voice of your business.
Previous The Obituary Next Cocomelon For Adults Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
