Yeah, but he's not listening the same way Pot is. You know,
it's a different it's a different energy. As they say. He's not sitting
on a New York City subway yelling at everybody. Leave it down, gave
it down. I'm trying to hear. I don't talk all the time.
Well, fine, you do you then you know what? Then you do
it. My question is is our depiction fair? I have seen the worse.
There's nothing to offend a reasonable man. Father. The motion picture teleplay
was respectful and exhibited tastefulness and class. And what do you think, Rabbi?
I have been an opinion? How does pot of a standard thing when
he opens this thing? Hello everybody, I'm Jonah Goldber sitting in for John
pud Hoortz, And uh, this is an episode of glop or technically now
just blah or glue since pod is not here, but I am happy to
introduce my friend and colleague Rob Long from New York City. Hi, Rob,
Hey, Jonah, I should say, is this like, is this
an episode of the Glemnant? That's right? This will also be going out
on the on the Remnant channel, my podcast, and uh, we can
chop this up into like twenty seven different martini shots, so you can little
bit. Well, that's right, you might have to. I would like
to say a very warm welcome to all our listeners and all your listeners,
Jonah, because it's going to go. We're we're crossing the streams you're not
supposed to do according to the Ghostbusters. But I'd also like to say it's
very special hello to a listener that we know is listening very tently, and
that's John padorits Hi. John, Hey, John, gotta keep listening to
Gotta have AI to a transcription because we're going to talk about you probably anyway.
Yeah. I can't promise this is the Actually I can promise this is
not the last mention of John and uh. For remnant listeners who don't know
what glop is, how long have we been doing glop? You know it's
I don't know. I mean because it started as a you me Mark Stein
thing, Yeah, right back in the pleistocene, exactly right. So this
is a this is a decade at least. Yeah, Scott Emergood or our
trustee producer is saying about twelve years. That seems short to really. Yeah,
Because so for people who want to know the history of this, really,
the genesis of it was really you, me and Mark Stein used to
do these like night Owl, Comedy Man, Yeah, National Review, cruises,
right and uh, which of them were really good? Which none of
us are invited on it anymore, that's right, for different reasons, for
very different reasons, yes, and uh. And then you and Immigrant and
some people launched Ricochet around that period and it became a podcast. I don't
know what we called it with when we did it with Stein, I don't
know, because it wasn't glop because and then then when Mark went on to
different pastures, Yeah, we brought in pod who had subbed had started doing
the panel stuff on the cruises anyway, and for the longest time was just
the unnamed podcast. And then I came up with doing it as our sort
of our initials, so we could call it glop cultures instead of pop culture.
Right, not clever, but it had been well, I mean,
it's so obvious, but it actually I never I mean, it's one of
those things, you know, It's one of those things that I just never
thought about. And I think it was like three years later, four years
later, Oh, glop I get it, like pop culture right, or
I know, I think it was the opposite. I think I said to
somebody like on one of our text change, like, why are we always
talking about pop culture so boring? That's the name of the podcast, and
it's just something dawned on me. I just thought it was a funny sounding
thing that just we just decided to call it glop because it was such a
weird coincidence, like turning out that Stormy Daniels was a porn star Louke garrettic
disease. It's just one of those weird things that happen, those weird things
I do. There are things like that in my life that I just never
ever reflected on. I just sort of accepted and then later discovered, Oh
I oh, I get it. Oh that's what that is. And I
will say glop has a listenership, Yeah, that is large and also different
than the remnant listenership like I will meet. Basically, I don't think our
listenership is particularly young. Well, we do our best to we do our
best to maintain that it takes war are of pop culture podcast Yeah, I
mean how old with the exception of say, like if you did a ringo,
if you did a blop bingo card. Yeah. The most frequently cited
names and concepts, you'd how young do you think you could be? And
still like get like no with some fluency. Larry Storche Forest Talker. I
was gonna say Larry Steorge too, That's that's not a good sign. I
I don't know. I well, I partly I feel like there's a little
like for the for the for the for the older folks. Uh, it's
it's kind of fun to talk about that stuff because it's like, oh yeah,
oh yeah. But even though even you know, we're it's hard to
explain it to younger people. But we know those things from the rerun,
so they were old when we watched them, and then younger people I think
just it's like, you know, it's like it's like they get to spend
time with three people they experiencing adult onset dementia, but they don't have to
clean up after us in the bathroom. It's like the best of all possible
worlds. We're all all we are is fun, and then they get to
move on with their lives. It's probably nicer way to put that. Yeah,
I think they probably is. I mean, I will sometimes get emails
from people who like when none of us can remember the name of some actor
or actress, they will stop in real time when they're listening, which is
obviously way in the future. From when to send me the answer, Grig,
what's wrong with you? We're not doing it now you're listening to it.
Yeah. I feel like we do this the best. I mean,
I know we're getting to this metacritic criticism, but it's sort of interesting for
me. The most enjoyable ors that we spend doing this are when we suddenly
fall into a vein of interesting conversation or humor that has nothing to do really
with pop culture or with culture or with politics. It's just sort of like
this one thing we suddenly remembered, or the one thing that we So the
three of us have in common that we don't know that we have in common,
that in fact the listeners have in common as well. So we didn't
talk about this beforehand. And I am technically driving this bus, but we
will obviously cut this out if you don't want to talk about it, so
no one will ever know I had it. I've had the system removed,
I had drained and removed excellent, excellent, and it contained the undeveloped fetus
of the twin brother I've been hankering for in my whole life. But does
it still talk to you? No, h you me Pod and our friend
clip as this. We had dinner in New York and great dinner. It
was a great dinner, and you guys were all clued in on this thing
that's going on in your life that you dropped at the end, like,
oh, and by the way, it's happening, and I didn't even know
what was happening. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're thinking about
going to seminary. So I had been accepted at the Princeton Theological Seminary.
That was very exciting to get an MDV. And then I was telling a
friend of mine a while ago when I was thinking about doing this, and
I said, but I don't think I'm really going to go for the Caller.
I just kind of want to study it and I have some time and
and help. I want to write about it. I mean, you know,
I want to write about this stuff, so I should learn about it.
But I'm doing the opposite of that I've done my whole life, which
is I'm learning about something and knowing about it and then writing about it rather
than what I usually do, which is just write make it up and write
about it. Yeah, And then I said, so, I don't think
I'm going to go for the collar, because that's in the Episcopal faith,
right, is a different, very different kettle of fish. And his response
is, why on earth would you bother to go all that way and not
get the collar? Because the call, oh, I was gonna be the
fun part. And although I recognize that this is not kind of like going
to police academy not getting the badge. Yeah, like now you gotta like
you know, now you gotta. I mean, you don't have to call
the collar. You get to like you walk at a restaurant and they just
give you a table as far as I understand it, right. And also
I say to all my friends like, if you think I'm insufferable, now
just wait until I can say unto you, and that kind of stuff.
So yeah, so it's very weird. It's very strange thing. I'm not
I'm not surprised by it, but I'm surprised that I'm I'm going away through
it. But I'm the more I'm the more I'm contemplating it, the more
kind of fun it seems. I mean, I've always wanted to do that
because I think I sort of you know, I kind of coasted my way
through college and I didn't know a lot of people feel that way. Like,
boy, if I can go back and learn something, I would really
learned something. You went to that trade school in new Haven? Right,
I went to a trade school in New Haven, which, ironically, I'll
be a be even more revealed. That was the first place I applied to.
Is the Yale Divinity School? Really they said no, Yeah, they
said no, they did not accept me. And friends of mine was like,
of course they didn't. You know, for one thing, you believe
in God and for the second thing, they probably clicked on a few links.
Yeah, you know, they don't like what they saw. So I
don't know if that's true. Point of information, like this is not an
interview, but question. Yeah, you say you're not going to go for
the collar, Like, what are the extra steps? What would be involved?
Well, I probably am going to go for the collar, actually,
but the extra steps are you get your MDIVE and then one of the years,
the later part of the years, you're basically doing some kind of sort
of outside work and you try to combine that with what they would call like
an Anglican episcopal year, so that you're sort of getting certificate in those studies
and then and and then you're then that's your process of discernment. And the
discernment has to get got to find some sponsoring church, which I have here,
I hope and the bishop, and the bishop says, okay, go
ahead, and then you do your stuff and then your day and and that's
when the fun begins. M yeah, yeah, So I know you hate
when this happens, when people do this, but I got an idea for
a TV show for you. I'm all ears, Okay, A somewhat looche
irresolute, middle age Hollywood burnout with a lot of experience under his belt and
a sardonic eye for the ironic and the weird, decides to go to Divinity
School. Yeah okay, he gets the collar. And then the real twist,
the real twist starts running into all sorts of terrifying supernatural state off and
actually has to be like an exorcist. Guy. It's started because which is
sort of the story of the Exorcist, right, the actual and the Exorcist.
The father, the younger priest Marin no, not right, right,
right, right. But the younger he's jaded, he lost his face.
He doesn't believe it's real yet. Right, he's like a psychologist now,
and that's it. So like that whole idea, but for laughs with instead
of being a psychologist, being like a sort of pundit guy who then all
of a sudden, once he gets the collar, God's like, yeah,
you're my guy to take on the forces of darkness. So like, uh,
Sam Raimi kind of like kind of thing. I think. The only
thing weird about that is that we already do have a pundit who believes that
the earth is beset by demons. So I would have to wait for Tucker
to move on to something else before I could do that. But I listened
one hundred percent. I'm with it. I mean, I you had me
at middle aged. Thank you, You're welcome. It's really the least I
could do. Yeah, that is like people say, well, well,
are you gonna, like, are you doing something different? And I don't
think I will. I think I'll try to do the same stuff. I'll
just do it with a slightly different so you know, I'll add I'm adding
this into what I'm writing. So who knows what it'll be, who knows
what will come out, but it'll be this will be part of it.
And I always know my truly religious friends because my friends who have faith or
just don't have faith, but are like just generally positive. That's really fascinating,
it's really interesting. But my really religious friends say, yeah, you're
going to the wrong place and you're doing it in the wrong religion, and
they're not really very good, and you're you're you're going to spend three years
learning absolutely the wrong thing. If you really want to do it, you
spend three years, and then they'll mention some incredibly strict doctrine that they happened
to believe that I should then become an ordained minister in which is just not
going to happen. The great thing about they want to be like Robert pulling
your own armor through the Amazon rainforest. Yeah, I'm not doing that.
The great Episcal Church is that it's base is essentially groovy and and uh and
super woke. Uh. And you get to be a right winger, which
is nice. I get to be yeah exactly for them, that's there.
I'm absolutely unacceptable. But also I just I mean, you know, so
is part of the culture. So like, I'm not afraid of that.
I mean, it's not as it's it's it's it's grounded in something which is
more you can say for you know, journalism and entertainment. So we can
get off this. But I just question because I find it fascinating, and
my wife insists that I asked you, ask you about more about it?
Are you going to would you characterize this primarily as a journey? Is it
and intellectual journey or faith journey? I think it's both. I guess that's
the right answer. Yeah, I mean it's got to be both, right,
I mean you why would you? I mean I think what I what
I would characterize it as like the idea that at a certain point for me
anyway, Uh, you're kind of I'm just kind of more interested in what
are we doing here? What we're all doing here? And that's sort of
where I've been led. And I've been led you know, to AH to
this for over you know, ten years, and in various speeds and velocities,
and so now I'm like, what, what, what? Why?
Why? I mean, And I think what for me? What what happens
is you end up saying over and over again. Well, I can't do
that. I can't well that not that, like, I can't not have
time for that, I can't do that. And then at some point you're
like, wait, wait, why don't I have time for this again?
What? What? What? Else? But I'm you know, I'm not
gonna. I mean, it's a strange thing. I think when you're a
kid, right, you spend eighteen years or more a twenty years plus years
learning a certain pattern, which is I do they tell me what to do
and I do it, and then they give me a grade and they must
promote me, and a lot of this sort of that. I think that
I don't know if you've noticed that to younger people, that disconnect they have
with the world. Isn't just that young people are sort of feckless and gen
z Ers and whatever, and you know, bicycle helmet, everybody gets a
trophy generation. That is true, but it's also just a toxic in this
toxic brew basic which is necessary. But they're all been in school their whole
lives, in which case they know exactly what they're supposed to do, and
then when they do it, you really have to You're the other side of
the contract, is you get an a and a pat on the head,
and you get told how great you are. And I just I think that
that hangover lasts for a long time for a lot of people, and there's
still remnants of it in my life. So one of them was like,
well, I can't like people expect me to do X, Y and Z.
The don't expect me to do this, so I can't do this,
which is like, well, no, actually they can. So are you
gonna like drive out to Princeton? Are you going to rent an apartment out
there? What do you move there for the duration? Thanks fantastic. I
was just in Princeton recently to Lovely count It's adorable town. Looks like there's
some good eating. Yeah, some good eats. I mean it's I mean
it's rich. They're they're rich people living in Princeton. Yeah, not that
that's the way I'm going, but but you know, hey, but you
know you have to you have to associate with the certain you've got, You've
grown accustomed to a certain associate you know, associational level, peer, the
you know, of a lifestyle. Right. So yeah, yeah, there's
always this thing like, uh, there's always the old you used to go
to old French restaurants in in France definitely, but in New York and the
fancy ones I'm talking about the eighties, you know, and you'd see there
would be a table. If they're French, truly French, there'd be a
table, and there'd be like a couple of priests, they're usually Catholic priests,
and they'd be drinking the best wine and just dining, like full out
dining. Apple cheeks, eyes glinting, you know, slightly, words slurring,
and you know, the rosary clickity clocketing or whatever those people do.
And it was always kind of like, wow, that's you know, that's
I don't think that exists anymore, but at the time, it was kind
of like that was the that's a normal thing. I mean, obviously,
being the Episcopal tradition, it's very different. I mean there's none of that,
but there's more mayonnaise. There's more mayonnaise, and there're more cocktails,
and a wider variety of blazers and a richer palette of pants, hues,
more reds, more exactly right, Well, yesterday was the Pentecost when everybody's
spoken tongues. Briefly, I like to think of that as like pants hues,
like everyone's got crazy, it's like a Madras. Before we keep going,
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for sporting clop. So. I don't know if I've told you this.
I am the five hundred and thirty eighth inductee to the Gridiron Club. Oh
wow, congratulations. Yeah, we'll see about the congratulations part. I was
I was starting. It was it was very nice that they asked me.
It was yeah, nice people and all that kind of stuff. I'm not
really a joiner, but I figured it's I can always leave, right,
It's not like it's it's it's not like joining the Jesuits in the fifteen hundreds
or something, right, So like I can, I can check out,
but like worth kind of doing, you know, my parted parents thought would
have thought it was really cool and so blah blah blah blah blah, and
but I don't think so. I don't think I told you the story.
So, Jonathan Carl, ABC News, one of my two co sponsors for
the grid Iron, I have different sponsors in other contexts. Oh, sure,
that's right. They're they're asleep on the job. Yes, that's yeah,
they are. They are to a sponsorship what Rob Long will be to
uh fire and Brimstone preach craft. But uh so I uh so, No.
Carl calls me, and I'm on my cell phone, you know,
we're talking and he's explaining, you know, would I be asking, would
be interested in joining? And and you know, here's how it works.
And I'm like, well, like, I'm not gonna dance and I'm not
gonna sing, you know, but like I can't write skits or help with
the upsets or whatever. And for listeners who don't know, the grid iroon
is this thing where they put on skits once a year and whampooning. Yeah,
anyway, so it goes on for a while and then and then John's
that are too funny for the humor segments on National Public Radio. That's exactly
right, that's exactly right. And so at the end of this conversation,
johnsans like, do you have any other questions? And I'm like, I
should ask him, and I don't know what this thing is going to cost.
I'm like, are there any dudes? And there's this long silence and
he's like, well, yeah, there's some and I'm like, okay,
like yeah, are they are? Are they onerous? Are they bad?
Is is you know? Are they a hassle? Start asking all these questions
long sign and he's like, I wouldn't I wouldn't call him owner what he
like? And it turns out he thought I'd asked are there any Jews?
His answers, well, there are some. He didn't know how to answer
it. I mean, that is not the answer. The answer if he
thought that was a question, The answer is like, of course, joanah,
how dare you? I mean, like answer he was so flustered,
but he was so flustered by the question, And then I was so flustered,
like, wait, am I not supposed to ask about this? Is
this something one does not do and ask about how much money it's gonna cost?
Well you have to ask, Yeah, you're you're the first person who
asked what it costs? So I guess no, Uh is there a clubhouse?
Does they have a clubhouse? Can you just go hang out? Is
that a thing there? I don't think so, at least that has not
been communicated to me as of as of yet. And uh, would you
be a shame like, Yeah, what's the one in New York? The
famous one? To which one the classic comedian one? You know, the
one, Oh Friars Club? I think that's closed. Well. I belong
here in New York to the Players Club, which is Grammercy Park, which
we should go to sometimes. It's it's it's was founded by the most famous
actor, famous person of his day, Edwin Booth, the actor Edwin Booth
and Mark brother of the Bad both brother of the brother that Booth and Mark
Twain, and they sort of hung out and they decided one day they're going
to start the Players Club for players. And and then when Edwin Booth died,
his house on Gramercy Park is the Clubhouse, which is a lot of
fun and it's a it's a first of all, you walk through there some
beautiful paintings and they're all paintings. Are the famous actors of the day and
in student like his Hamlet or something, and you just realize how terrible the
acting was back then. It must have been terrible because they're hamming it up.
They're like, you know, the big gestures and everything. It's like
that John Lovet's character acting. It's like that. And then the second thing
is you go in the library, on the library one of the library tables
they have under glass. They have a facsimile, they have the real one
somewhere the letter that Edwin Booth and his mother and brother wrote, the open
letter they wrote to the nation apologizing for the actions of their brother, And
it's kind of very moving. It's first because you realize, oh my god,
what terrible they can talk of the shame of it. But then by
paragraph three you realize it's not at all about John Wilkes Booth or Abraham Lincoln
or the nation. It's just a family of drama queens making it all about
them. We can never show up face we are, but if you see
us, to turn away. But it's this great old nineteenth century weirdness,
and the place is great, and it's like filled with actors and people playing
piano, and it's a it's a great bar and now I'd love to go.
It's a lot of fun. And the dues are not onerous, and
there are some jus, I mean there's there are some dues. Yeah,
yeah, but they keep them. They're very subtile, they're not they don't
make a big deal about the Yeah, all the dudes they try to pass
the Jews. Yeah. We talked about this briefly at our swanky dinner last
week and we started a conversation of you could do a good piece on dynastic
families in politics, arts, whatever who ended up having to sort of make
apologies for their black sheep, right, Yeah, like the Kennedy's now with
Robert F. Kennedy Junior. We had another one and I can't remember.
We'll try to the families who have to say, gosh, d reputy eight,
he doesn't speak for us kind of thing, right. Yeah. There
wasn't a bad Adams was there, like, uh, because the Adams was
were a real dynasty. Yeah right right, yeah, I mean people for
Edwin boot Just to go back to Edwin Booth was the most famous person.
I mean, he was unbelievably famous at a time when if you were an
actor and you were famous you were famous for people knew who you were who
would never had never seen you act and would never see you act. Right,
it's just like they went to the movies and you know, and how
weirdly that all changed. You know, within half a century everything was different.
You know, the undeniably Charlie Chaplin was the most famous person in the
world for a while and because they had all seen him. Yeah, it's
just movies. I mean that's yeah, movies and posters for movies and yeah,
laughing magazine stuffing like that. But it must be weird to like have
that. I guess you know what I think it was, like, which
one? Which Trump? Is it? That is the Mary Trump? Mary
Trump? Yeah, she's the lone Trump who actually has some dignity in class.
Well whatever, I'm just talking about just this to the proportions, says,
you know, she's the the sad little Trump all alone. Yeah.
I think she didn't die. That was the sister who died. The judge.
I think the judge died. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right,
So what else should we talk about? Well, well, I'm glad
you asked, Jonah because says, you know, I've had to give you
the good news about Jesus, could you open the door, please give me
some literature exactly. It's going to be interesting to hear you in a pod
uh uh go, you know battle theological with each other. Now yeah,
well of course we we include that book too, that's in the pews.
So it's like, you can't Christians. Often Christians forget that the you know,
three quarters of the book is you know, crazy Jewish stuff, and
then one quarter of it is essentially the same story over again, told differently,
so like you just sheer tonnage. There's more smoting and smiting, and
there's more animal sacrificing letting the Romans go up to God than there is turn
the other cheapness. So this is I mean, this is this is a
very unglopped topic. But since we don't have pod here, what do we
want to really it's like our parents are like away from the Jews. Should
we go through Let's eat over the sink? I think about this a lot.
I've been trying to get Tom Holland do you know Tom Honald how the
historian. I've been trying to get him on the remnant for a while.
I am I'm really sort of well, two things. One I'm intrigued at
and he's really good on this about how virtually all of the criticisms in the
West of Christianity are within a Christian moral framework. Right, So like all
the atheists, all the human rights people, they say that they've sort of
shed, you know, the backwards, datavistic religion of Christianity, but then
all of their critiques, all of the architecture and frameworks of their moral and
ethical systems, are basically Christian. And and so I'm sort of fascinated by
that. And then the second part of it is is like I'm fascinated with
the you know, our I don't mean my people or your people in ethnic
or religious sense, but like on the right is sort of it's sort of
just good manners to talk about Judeo Christian rather than just Christian. And it's
it's largely there's a very strong intellectual, historical argument for doing that. I'm
not trying to reject that whole land, but it manifests itself in a large
part as a matter of politics. Right, there's something icky in our politics
to just talk about Christian values. It feels, it feels sectarian in a
way that the second you say Judeo Christian. It feels much more ecumenical kind
of thing, right, Yeah, And so anyway, what I'm really interested
in, and one of reason I want to get Holland on is to get
his take on this is like, so separate the wheat in the chaff between
where is this a legitimate way of framing our moral framework and where is it
just like good pr for sort of conservative value stuff. And I don't have
a great answer for it, and I have I can speculate, but now
you're going away to get this thing, so like offle you in. Yeah,
I guess my quick answer would be like, on the one hand,
it is sort of good manners, but it's also kindness because I think when
I mean, I mean to full disclosure. Had you asked me this a
year ago or six months ago, whatever, seven months ago, I might
have said, you know, the reason you say Judea Christian is you really
mean Christian? Because sometimes you do. The reason you say that is because
you know it makes Jews uncomfortable when they hear people have the Christian values for
like legitimate reasons. And then six months ago I would have said, you
know, because the Jews like they they're you know, they're a little overreacting
to this, to the signs of anti Semitism that they see here in the
other place, and it's really not yeah, rolling my eyes Jesus like I
get it. I yeah, but you know, come on, And then
of course now I would say them, oh, reikes, you're right all
along. And part of it is that you can't really have a religion of
you know, love and forgiveness and redemption if you don't also have a religion
of you know, people learning about laws and putting laws together. I mean,
there's no reason why Jews exist, should exist. There is no reason
why Judaism should exist. There's just no reason for it, really, I
mean, tiny little group of people always being invaded by more powerful, more
powerful empires who themselves had religions in full career, right, So like the
Egyptians and the Persians and the Greeks and the Romans and these Syrians, all
these people had like fully formed religions with literature and stuff. And there is
no reason really you can think of why we nobody's praying to Isis or Jupiter
or you know, nebukad Nezar who it gets Quadal, right, I mean,
so why did this last and one of them I think is because the
most honest examination of a people try to figure out how to live in the
world. Another one is like it absolutely breaks in half the idea, the
sort of Marxist idea that power, it's all about power. Well, Romans
were more powerful than the Jews, and they tore down the temple. They
earned the temple. What yeah, so like, so how did this all
work? So like if you don't, if you're not focusing on that,
and then I think you're missing a big part of the piece. And then
I would just say, as a Christian chaupinness that Christianity and Jesus especially the
message was He's the first person in the history of mankind or personhood or on
the globe uh and is really the only religion in the world that says still
today you are important, You Jonah are important. Not where you belong in
the tribe, which is what Judaism is like the idea of keeping the people
together, which is understandable, not where you belong in the dharma, which
is sort of Buddhism and Hinduism, which is very These are very beautiful religions,
but they're not really about yourself. And personhood. This one is that
you are so important that God leave the flock to find you, and that
is kind of radical, and it still remains radical for people. But I
think if I was going to come up with a theory, I would say
that one of the reasons why the West was slow to move obviously, I
mean when the Arabs are taken over the world and crossing North Africa entering France
from the south, which of course is the way the French prefer it.
You know, Christians are burning each other up and chopping each other's heads off
because you disagreed with my specific definition of the divine right right thought the Holy
Spirit was something else. And then but at some point they caught up.
And I think they caught up because in Christianity, you, your selfhood is
was for the first time the only place was the was an important thing and
God knew you. And you know that's of course's been distorted and whatever over
time. But if I had to, like, you know, that's so
that's kind of my answer. But you can't really have one without the other.
So we'll be back to go up in a minute. But if you're
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weird little piece of gossip. If I could so, I was in Jerusalem
a few years ago. A year and a half ago, I took a
tour very lovely, very generous, a very very philanthropic Americans, mostly Americans
zillionaires have had this most incredible archaeological dig I've ever been on in my life.
It's the the city of David, right, which goes from it's amazing,
goes from David down to the pools of Salom. They've they dug it
up. So if you go to Jerusalem, you're always told in Jerusalem,
Okay, in the Christian world we say, well, it happened here or
near so this is not really here, but it was around here and I'm
twenty feet below. So these are not the owns that Jesus walked in.
But they have dug up the path from the pools of Salom to the second
what was then the Second Temple, and that is those are the stones.
Yeah, and that's kind of bananous to think about. But the the young
woman who's very lovely and smart and incredibly charming, was giving U the tour.
She's from Jersey, and she's like, I guess she was, I
don't know what she's doing. She kept saying, and she kept saying Judeo
Christian, Judio Christian, da Christian. So there's a little bit of politics
there because what they want with her point is and guess what is not part
it's the third troublesome part. So everything in Jerusalem is political, so Robert
F. Kennedy of Monotheism, I took it back. I it back.
No, the scene, David, thing is wild. It's really great.
I mean I was there ten years ago or something, and I'm sure they
found a lot more cool stuff since I was there, But one of the
just like the basic like you know the old quarter of Jerusalem, right,
Like that's like the old quarter. It's like the oldest quarter of quarters in
urban world. Right. It turns out that's the new Jerusalem, right,
And uh, but no, the city the thing is is is just wild
and and like I'm not super versed on fluent on on biblical stuff about where
you know, the Philistines did this and the so and so's did that,
but like I remember it when people remind me of it, and they're like,
yeah, so like where it says that in the Bible, that's right
here, you know, And that's just that stuff is really cool. It's
really cool. And you think, oh, so this is a this is
a record, this is a and a friend of mine who old college friend
of mine, so raised secular Jewish, not really our family was of the
very secular Jews from his parents and all this family from England. And once
he went back to England to visit some old friends, old family friends,
and one of them was an old thing this, CRISI tell me, is
your father still into Judaism? But he, you know, not that long
ago, converted to Catholicism. And I asked him, I said, you
know why, and his response was, well, I think it might be
true for one thing. Oh well that's that's a pretty good answer. And
you know, it's you know, it's like, I don't know, if
you believe the Trojan War happened, and you believe that Caesar was assassinated,
and you believe, you know, a while of other things we say their
history, this has got as much historical record as that. And then to
dig up I mean for the Jews to dig up the David's temple is his
castle, and to find little pieces of bottery and stone and things with ancient
Hebrew on them, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah, do you know
we can get off this in a second. But like when I was there,
they felt like they were closing in on proving the historical existence of David,
which up until ten years ago at least, Yeah, he's sort of
like King Arthur. It's like they think there was someone named King Arthur,
but they can't find any physical evidence to back it up. And Robin Hood's
different, right, But like King David, I'm pretty sure there was a
King David. It'd be really weird to like right around, you know,
to fictionalize that one, dude. But they hadn't found anything yet. I'm
just curious. Has that been nailed down? Do you know? I think
they've nailed it down, at least they represented I feel like they have.
I can't remember and and that and that, and also all the various sieges
of the city, right is the famous I think that these Syrians come back
and lay siege to the city and I forget what it is, probably in
chronicles or something where there's like a and the starvation, right because there's see
there, there's like there's starving them out, and they have they know that
something like that must have happened at a certain date because on the side of
the hill which is now sort of right above so on the slope side on
the on the eastern edge of the city, right above a giant Muslim cemetery,
they found all these like little places and they found little toilet seats,
little stone toilets, and they dug into them and they found little ossified human
feces which they then tested and it revealed the kind of diseases and traces of
things that suggest that people starving to death. But it's you know, it's
just like a bow. That's somebody's job is to like, let's uh,
we're gonna test it of some elderly Jews and find out what was going on.
Well, no, I mean the thing is is like, is the
dude working in that lab when his wife calls and says he gonna be home
for dinner and he's like, look, honey, I'm just up to my
ears and right now, and you know what, I don't have an appetite.
I went to this hold on do they get like when someone comes in
with that, we got a new batter we got to study, and he
says, don't come don't come at me with that and bring that to me.
You know, put all that, put all that there, with all
that other sh everybody's ever you know I did. I went years ago.
I went to this some I don't know why I did this. I went
to a there's a name for them, a functional meta functional. I was
having like I was speeching right, and it wasn't like not like I was
allergic to something. And so I went to this doctor who's a functional medicine
and she's a I don't know, it's like some groovy not really quasi medical
scientific. And so she one, we'll test everything. We'll give you tests
and Sanino, we could also, you know, I send your stool to
a special lab. I was like, how do you do that? How
does that happen? Well, we give you a kit. Connect the dots,
worry please, we give you a kit. So she gave you this
kit which included all these things, including a prepackaged, prepaid FedEx box.
So I thought, well, when is this going to happen? And because
you know, honestly, I thought, look, if everything goes horribly wrong
somehow, I think it's pay better that I do this when I'm gonna in
the night in the hotel anyway, right, because you know, I mean
yeah, so I yeah, So I'm actually out of town and I'm out
of town. Good, I'm gonna be out of town in two weeks.
I'll bring my kit. So I brought the kit, which includes by the
way, the kit the people who put the kit together. They were way
out of everything, right, because I'm like a houses e gonna work,
and like, well, they have a little tray like you get when you
you know, like French fries. There in a little tray, and they
have a little plastic spoon, and they have a rubber glove. I'm just
telling you what they got, right, And all these various various vials with
different like liquids in them to like preserve, so you have to get like
three or four samples. And then you have a black sealable bag and you
put that in a thing. You put this in a thing, and you
take it all to FedEx and you pretend when they say what is it?
What does it contain? You say books, you know, my manuscript?
Uh, what is this diseased? And then but then I got I was
coming home. I got home too late to drop it off at the fed
X store, so I I put it in the refrigerator. M and then
I in the morning, when I went off to my little workspace office where
they pick up the fed X, I took it and I put it in
that refrigerator. It's a FedEx box, to be fair. I put it
in that refrigerator where everybody you know stories there. This is my this is
my diet coke, this is my thing, this is my sweet green whatever
did you put a note on it? And then I sent it away and
the results were not that interesting, but I smarted thinking like, wow,
that's like one of the percentage of the fed X boxes that you see in
office refrigerators. Anyway, that would have been a enjoy very It would have
been a very, very very different scene if Tom Hanks and castaway. We'll
be back to go up in a minute, but at first I want to
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making a really cool and useful gadget. I do want to apologize to new
listeners of Glot that we don't don't normally dwell on the fecal in the scatological
for this long we went by the way. Yeah, and and we really
have gone sacred and profane in a certain way. Right, So we've done
almost no pop culture on this. So I'm gonna change gears again this weekend.
My daughter's in town and she is one of our oldest and most revered
traditions is we go to the movies together. It's just daddy daughter go to
the movies, right, And so we saw The Fall Guy and it's not
bad, no, you know. I mean, I was never a huge
fan of the TV show, upon which it is very loosely based, but
Ryan Gosling is actually a pretty good comedic actor and it's funny. Yeah.
And the thing is, and this is not really a spoiler. This is
about the credit sequence, right, so like, and anyone who goes to
that movie and thinks it's going to have a tragic ending really does not.
But anyway, so the movie is really a love letter to stuntman, which
I'm all in favor of. And it did occur to me that the TV
show was basically a loosely loose ripoff of Hooper, and this is the movie
was kind of is like a ripoff of Hooper too. It so like you
can see the genealogy in it. But anyway, like they're they're playing country
music songs or songs about stunt men. It's all about how stunt men are
great. They're the unsung heroes. They don't get no gold, you know,
awards or any of that kind of stuff. And so you'd expect during
the credit roll, when you knew they were going to show you a whole
bunch of cool stunt stuff, right, you'd expect them to like put like
the names of the actual stuntman in there so you can see them and stuff
and instead it was all like an homage to Ryan Gosling pretending to be a
stuntman, as an ode to stuntman, and like you just and my daughter
pointed out you. She was like, I think this is kind of mean,
Like this whole thing is supposed to be about stuntman, and then it's
at the star and then the end it's still about It's still it's actually proving
the point of all the complaints that in the part that's supposed to be the
celebration of stuntman is still a celebration of the talent. It was just interesting.
I hadn't caught it, but my daughter was like, really pissed off
about it. Uh, yeah, it's weird. We're weird. A couple
of weird things about that. One one is Lee Majors, who's the star
of the of the Fall guy is still alive. Yeah, well he has
a cameo in this. Oh that's good. I was going to ask about
that, and I, you know, it was this was part of an
argument. I hadn't seen the movie, but it seemed like it was fine.
But it's part of the argument I was making with somebody in the movie
business, and they threw this back in my face because I was saying because
the movie didn't do well, well, didn't do well, and part of
the part of the argument a bunch of different interpretations for it. One was
people's well I saw it, it's stuck. It sucked, but I'm like,
okay, fine, I don't know what. And now people said,
well, this is the problem with a movie. Business is entirely based on
what they call IP, intellectual property, which is a fancy way of saying
a title you already know, like something I already know, so I'm gonna
go see it. Because IP means that you're if you greenlit that movie,
you have some kind of corporate protection if it if it fails, which is
really the most important driver of anything in Hollywood is fear. And then the
second thing it means is that, Okay, I don't I don't need to
bring you all the way up to speed on what this movie's about, because
that's gonna cost me money. So you're going to get more. You know,
you're a title or a name that's familiar, it's gonna cost just cost
less to promote, and promotion is the most expensive thing these days. And
so of the death of the IP obsession, because look, if people aren't
well flooding in to see this this The Fall Guy, which is this big
hit TV show a thousand years ago, then maybe IP, which isn't the
most important thing. Although the reality is that I don't think people really remember
The Fall Guy. Yeah, this wasn't that big. But the third thing
I said was like, because this was thrown in my face, I've been
saying over and over again that, I mean, it wasn't that long ago
that every single summer had two or three giant comedies, big loud, noisy
comedies that we still refer to, like people still say you stay classy,
right, Anchormannic to zooland or all those things. Right, And if you
look where the script for those movies or somebody's trying to explain what those movies
were, they were not IP. They had nothing to do with anything.
They were kind of weird. Like if you had a meeting about Anchorman,
you'd be like, well, what when is is it like set in the
seventies, right, And the answer is well yes and no. They're kind
of like, well, wait they have this big fight and people's arms get
chopped off. It's like yeah, but you just would have to close your
eyes and say, well, it's Will Ferrell and his friends will be fun.
Yeah, And this is just I think this is an example of of
of the right directionally correct. Make a big, loud, noisy comedy,
but don't tie it to something. Just make a big loud, noisy comedy
and people will find it and they'll like it, and you know, in
the summer, that's what you want to do. Although some of the I
mean, there was a wave of actually funny comedies that were based on IP,
like the Start Skiing Hoch Go Bad. I mean, I don't know
how it did, but I think it's right. Yeah. But and then
another topic which we didn't talk about, I think because uh, John Pedortz
vetoed it and people. What people need to know is that the reason why
we let John talk as much as he does is we're terrified of him and
he runs a very tight ship. It really does. And I walked to
a door and it was my fault. Uh. But we never talked about
Unfrosted, which I gathered did not do great though I don't even understand what
the metrics are for do great for Netflix? Are I guess download the streams
right? But yeah, they decide. Yeah, so what did did you
see it? I saw parts of it. I mean, I mean I
want to see the whole thing. I thought it was fun. I liked
it. I mean people like were all up in arms by people said otist
stupid. I think it was really I don't know. I thought it was
the scenes I've seen. I haven't seen a whole thing, but they seem
like, oh, I'm I'm gonna finish watching this. Yeah, I thought
it. I liked it. I didn't love it. I love the cat
and it seems to me, uh, it's it's a little bit like Saturn
Live. Like there are very few even in the Golden Ages Live Golden Ages
Saturn Live was and you had a shot an episode is Sign of Life where
they had three successful skits right right, right, I mean they never had
one where every skit was great, right, And that and that's not because
that's not because they were terrible. That's because actually writing sketches is hard,
yeah, for sure, right, and you're throwing stuff at the wall,
right, And so like maybe it was like two really good skits and one
great fake commercial and that's a super successful show, right, And I kind
of feel like Unfrosted will have a very long half life because there are a
handful of legitimately really funny scenes and that's kind of all you need to sort
of have a long hangtime, you know, in the culture for a comedy.
I also think fall Guy is going to be really really popular on cable
in reruns. Like there's just some shows you could see, Oh, I'm
gonna watch this for ten minutes and end up watching the whole and it feels
like that kind of thing, you know. Yeah, it's like one of
those like the step Brothers that that c Riley. Yeah, I'm like,
it did that great in the theater, but you know there's a period when
it was on cable all the time and whenever you're flipping around and it's there,
like I'm watching the rest of it without doubt. Yeah, yeah,
it's one of those I mean, I'm it's the I'm just going to think
of like that that there are those movies like that. I mean, but
you kind of have to, like the idea is that you have a vote
that you can't you can't do the kind of coverage that you would do.
You can't do the kind of like which meetings a meeting a creative meeting about
a script and there'll be some intern to coverage. Now that's going to be
a I like tell you what happens to the script, the characters are,
and where the plot holes are, and that those are usually the creative meetings
that you have in a studio when you're making a feature film or television show.
But if you're dealing with a comic brain like you, what what what's
the meeting going to be? Is only going to be about budget. And
these movies are generally very cheap to make. They're not that expensive, and
so there's no they they slip right through. And that's usually where where you
know they're they're either going to do really well or do really really well later
or if they don't get the right kind of promotion or just bad timing for
the release. But movies like that, I mean, what makes them work
is that I think it's that there. It's kind of like we should call
it an old show business, a sweat act. It's like a sweat act
is the act that it's a performer who's just working really hard, Like is
a sweat act like the old Vegas like the Headliners, the Wayne Newton,
you know, for a long time is a sweat act. He's running around,
he's gonna he's earning the money. And that's like I remember like thinking
that like a show, a TV show like thirty Rock or The Simpsons,
really like you know, like this joke is one coming right now. You
don't that joke is one coming right now. It's like we're putting jokes this
five jokes page. You don't like one that's okay, By the time in
your brain registers that didn't work, there is another one's going to make you
laugh. And it's just that level of like constantly working really hard. And
usually those are the movies that people love. They like, but are they
all is every joke killer or no? But they're working and they're trying really
hard. I once gotten a big Twitter argument with a young actor who is
a star of a show on I think the Fox at the time, because
he was a big improv guy. And I did a little my Little Martini
Show, one of my Little Martini shot shows, which was on public radio
in LA at the time, about you know, I'm not a big fan,
like you know what I mean, maybe summer writers like how about this,
how about you you write it down? And then you rehearse it and
then you change it, make it better, and then invite me to come
and pay money to sit and watch it. But that that that's also an
option, right, write it down first, it's okay, And he was
sort of like, well, you don't understand and problem. So we sort
of got into it in Twitter a little bit. He's when we met.
He's a very nice guy. He's a lovely guy. But I do remember
like thinking, we're writing it down and working on it, and I uses
my example, what are reliably the funniest parts of SNL. Reliably the funniest
parts are the stuff that they've pre taped, the things that they've shot.
Those the commercial parodies, the whatever it is. Those are always killer because
they they had to work harder on them, because you had to like shoot
them, and they had all this time to make them better. And that's
a good thing. Making it better is a good thing. Yeah, it
can go I mean, obviously you know this process stuff much much much better
than I do. But it can go the other way too, right,
where stuff can get committed to death. You know, Well, this is
one of the reasons why I have always disliked the process of institutional editorials.
Sometimes they're necessary, but like if you start getting everybody, so it's the
too many chefs problem, right, and it gets watered down and it gets
too broad and loses its voice. And I think that like most editorials,
like the way the washert Journal understanding does it is they sign it to one
person, they write an editorial in their voice, and then other people And
the way I think the Washington Post used to do this and then yeah,
if people will chime in on it and offer boutiques, but it's got a
consistent voice to it. And the way the New York Time is my understanding,
at least they used to do it, is fifty people are writing the
damn thing, and so it comes out as just pablem nonsense you are you
know, and Islamophobia and everything you know, Yeah, of course there is
scourge of Islamophobia. Yeah, I mean, like the number I mean this
is could be completely completely unfair, but I canna say it anyway. The
number of writers I know who are worried, you know, the event diagram
number of writers I know who are really worried about AI and the number of
writers I know who's writing already sounds like AI is almost not quite overlapping,
not quite one hundred percent overlapping, but majority of huge overlap. Yeah.
Yeah, Like, like, I don't do you think AI. Maybe in
the future they could, but for right now, I don't think AI could
write a joke. I could not write a chief file. Have you tried
it? I have. It's really really bad, but it's it's I mean,
obviously you tried it last week. Uh no, no, no,
no, Like I asked, I said, write me a thing about this
in the voice of Joanah Goldberg, and I'm just like, I mean,
there are sentences that are like, I see what you're going for here.
Yeah, the whole thing, No, just doesn't kind of work. And
I agree with that. I mean, uh, you know, I went
into all this with the you know, like I wanted to get to a
point where you could put your hand over my byline and people would say this
sounds like John of Goldberg, right right, And I think that's what writers
are supposed to do. I mean that reporters are a little different, right,
because there's a little less room for voice, you know, which makes
the really good reporters amazingly good, right, you know, the ones who
are really good at it where they managed to get voice in there while also
staying within the narrow you know, within the lane of straight reporting. It's
really impressive and much more difficult. But anyway, we're neither. I didn't
mean to go down it. Yeah, no, I feel like it's it's
one of those things that's kind of hard to do. And and if you
you almost as you get older in your in your writing, I think you
you suddenly realize, at least I did. I suddenly realized, oh,
oh that's oh that's how I write. Yeah, oh, that that's my
style. That's that's the person I've created who does the writing, and that's
the you know, the you know, the persona when you're when you're stuck,
you're like, okay, well, what what would I write? What
would I write about this? And I feel like that would be very hard
to recreate. Uh. I mean I never ever looked at stuff. There
was one time, a time for a long time, the National Review.
I don't know it's still true. The archives were all so messed up that
I know I had written a peek a little something for someone about and I
said, roughly, I told this story, and I was like looking for
it, looking for it and looking for it and I couldn't find it.
And then I looked on an R because I like every time. Then I
wrote for the website and I found it mm hmm on it. But it
was like it was weird attribution. It was kind of strange. I don't
know who. I don't know who. They still was writing it, but
it's like it was this weirdly hanging out there in the middle of the archives.
That's it. And I knew instantly I wrote that. I remember writing
that. I remember that I could try to match it to my what's all
my dropbox from million years ago? What I could, and I thought,
oh, that's kind of amazing. That was that's I could. I could
tell that signature. And I mean, I don't know if I was reading.
I mean, the great thing about AAR or chat ept for me is
that I can ask a questions that explains things that I that takes. It's
shorter than googling and more efficient than googling. But it's not It's not fundamentally
different from googling. I don't think for me in the way I use it.
Yeah, so every time I get I start to trust CHATCHPT again,
it disappoints me. And uh, like I've been on this. So I
had this guy Doug uh uh, I'm sorry, Ryan Bourne sure on the
Remnant recently and I was like, Okay, this is the perfect thing for
chat pt to do for me. Give me a list, asked, give
me a list of quotations for from famous economists, but the definition of what
a price is, you know. And I constrained the question pretty well,
I thought, and it was very clear what I was asking. And it
gave me a list of quotes from Milton Freeman said this in nineteen seventy six
in this book, and so and so said this, right, And I'm
like, I recognize this definition as being from Alex Tabarak, who's this great
economist at Mercada's in And then you start going through it and it's like it
just I don't want to say it made up, but it just got the
attributions for like half of these quotes wrong. And does it apologize it does
sometimes you say this is incorrect, you know, it's just you're right,
and then sorry, sorry sir. Then of course it's like it gives instructions
to the defibrillator machine in my hotel, my hospital room to give me a
heart attack or whatever. But uh, I find you're right, like like
the place the only place I find it reliable. Like I'm about to go
to TV and I'm talking about like protectionism. Yeah, like give me the
five arguments for protectionism. And it's not like I don't know the arguments,
but yeah, running into this TV studio being reminded of them. Oh yeah,
I know this one. I know this one. No, that's that's
not really one of the arguments. Blah blah blah. But I'm just I'm
I'm really still underwhelmed by it. I think it's late for biomedical stuff and
chemistry, but I'm just on the creative side. I'm still not really sold
that it's going to be this or as earth shattering as people are making out
to be. I have a friend who's who's been we're in this world in
the AI business for a long time for medical imaging, and you know,
AI looking at your MRI is the wave And I said, wow, how
do doctors feel about that? And his response was they hate it? And
I tell them the solution to hating it is be better than the AI,
because right now the AI is some like a ninety three percent success rate,
and the human doctor as a seventy three percent success rate. But AI plus
doctor is a very very good success rate in identifying things and not not cutting
into you if they don't need to cut into you. That's one thing I
mean, I used it. I mean when we had our our our our
our little our dinner, fun dinner, which we should we should make a
regular thing, our fun dinner in New York last week. On the way
there, I was, we were going all going to have these delicious patty
melts, and I said, well to the chut you degenerate a North Korean
propaganda poster of people exalting the patty melt and the first one was a perfect
perfect image of a Chinese propaganda poster because they all looked like Chairman Mao and
they had to start. Everything was not North Korean, so I said,
no, this is Chinese. Make it North Korean. And it said,
oh, I'm sorry, let me let me help you. But it it
got really close and got really good, except it couldn't. It was always
a hamburger. Yeah, it's like a weird hamburger with like a patty on
it and lettuce and tomato and then a weird like brown thing on top,
like almost like there was a fried chicken filet on top of a hamburger,
which actually sounds a pretty good And I had to get it to like,
please remove that thing above the patty, please make it you know, rye
bread. And I finally sent it a picture this is a Patty Melt,
and it said, thank you, I will to add that to my knowledge
base, and then it delivered me a Patty melk. So that's the highest
and best use of this incredible technology. It's just coming up with the funny
little picture that I thought of that took you twenty minutes. Again, but
again like getting to your point about how the writers who already sound like chat
gipt you are in trouble. Yeah, It's like we are very far away
from AI coming up with like if you just said, give me something funny
about Patty melts, it is not going to come up with a North Korean
propaganda poster or worshiping Patty Melts, right, And it is very far from
doing that, right. So like it's it can't make a joke. It's
sort of like you know, on Star Trek Next Generation, the scriptwriters they
would put as a placeholder like technobabble or something like that for when they needed
to talk about how the flex capacitors weren't able to control the dilthium overview or
whatever, and they just fill that stuff in later because it's it's kind of
meaningless. But there's an art and you needed and you need a consistency to
it, right, it needs to because there's gonna be some nerd out there
saying that's not how flex capacitors were, right, And besides, flex capacitors
are from back to the future. But like I could see chat GPT being
good at that. Give me language about how di lithium crystals don't work,
and it'll like because all chat GPT is for the stuff that we do is
a plagiarism machine. Right. It doesn't actually create anything. It just it
looks at the highest number of associations of this word with that word within the
parameters of the thing that you asked it to do. Yeah, but I
wondered though, if you could hack it, like if there if there was
a worldwide human effort to hack it, like years ago when you when you
did a TV show or you just shot at to TV pilot. They would
especially for CBS. CBS spent like ninety million dollars and built this testing facility,
so like a focus group facility at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
And the theory was that pretty much a crowd wandering the streets of Las
Vegas or in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel, if you scoop up
some people and give him a free slice of pizza, it's kind of representative
of your audience. And so you shoot a pilot and then you just take
it. They take it to this testing facility and they would focus group it.
And this is the pome. Like I've said this to the guy running
in Paramount Studio at the time when we did a pilot, I said,
well, look, we spent two and a half million dollars three million dollars
in a pilot. Why don't we spend two hundred thousand dollars in cash,
hire a bunch of people, send three buses, you know, for the
week into the MGM Grand, have the mill around until somebody scoops them up.
And then if they they we find that they're watching our pilot dials up
they only have twelve people, twelve fifteen people, So like you're you only
need three people in there to like make it a giant hit. And his
response was, Oh, that's crazy. And then thought, well, what
what would it cost? And I wonder whether if you had an underground system
of people. It's like that old Steve Martin choke, you know, whenever
you're around a baby talk wrong, Like what if they all just what if
you said thank you? That is correct? That is the Milton Friedman of
definition of prices. Oh. Also, do you have a picture of Milton
Friedman and the antlers he had? We have no pictures. Oh there's he
wore antlers. You didn't know that, Ai. You know, he was
the our most famous Nobel Prize for the economists with antlers. I cannot believe
the day that John Padortz isn't fine glat. You were going full look at
the jew with his horns. Oh well, I said antlers. Yeah,
well, we know what you mean. It was a stag. We'll be
back to glop at a minute. And I know we just I think Joan
and I talked about the fact that we all had dinner together a few last
week sometimes and there were there were cocktails served, just so you know,
there were cocktails served, and there was some wines served, and then there
were some more cocktail served. So it reminded me that I want to tell
you about a game changing product that I use before a night out like that
with drinks. That's called z biotics. Because let's face it, after a
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we thank z Biotics for sponsoring this episode and for making the day after our
big dinner last week such a breeze. You know, I think about that
kind of stuff all the time, about like how it wouldn't take much to
tweak all sorts of things, right, And but at the same time,
that's sort of why the Internet has gotten worse in the last ten years.
Like I don't trust any Yelp reviews, I don't trust any of those four
star things, right because you know that they're just being gamed out there.
And and like I think half the time I'm being harassed on Twitter. Now
I'm not even being harassed by human beings. There's just some bot that is
programmed to sat down again, right, Yeah, Like there's like there's like
one big fat dude in overalls and a dirty T shirt somewhere running like fifty
different algorithms make the jew angry, making you know whatever, and it just
running on autopilot while he's you know, playing angry birds or something or looking
at porn. Yeah, I mean why why uh, why put any effort
into it? Yeah, sort of like this episode of glop effort. We
covered some big stuff here. We did we didn't. Actually it was a
pretty good one. I mean, not that you're supposed to think of it
that way, but I always say to people when you know, I say
that people like when they complain about your dog stuff. It's like on Twitter,
I want to say, like, I'm sorry, how much did you
pay for this? I want free entertainment the way I want it. Like,
no, you don't get free entertainment the way you want it. That's
what that's what paid entertainments. And I do want to apologize to our regular
listeners who are unaccustomed to hearing me and Rob finish complete sentences. But you
know, there's a price you have to pay when when well, the three
is a you know, it's it's like that movie Challengers. Three is always
complicated, that's right. What I was going to say was like, uh,
and there is this. I mean, I don't don't expect you to
finish it now because it's it's it's your story and I'm sure it's not fit
for general ears. But walking out of the restaurant whatever last week, I
thought to him myself, Wait a minute, Jonan, never finished that story
that you started at the beginning of dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, for a whole lot of reasons. But also and I'm not going
to finish it now either. Now, no, of course I won't do
it, you know, like the Russian and the Pine Barons, like what
story happened? What happens? Exactly right? Exactly right? He's dead,
all right, I don't I think I think we've run our course here.
John Podortz will be back in the captain's chair, uh in due course and
h h, I sorry, I have to obey the forms here, right,
Rob are you appearing anywhere? And then you're not appearing anywhere? But
I'm I'm available as always on Martini Shot. So if you just subscribe to
Martini Shot, that's then you'll get one hundred percent of me. And you
are a frequent contributor to commentary magazine? You actually tie a commentary or are
you just like a frequent contributor? I have I have a column. I
think it's a column, but like, are you know that editor Matt Continey
has the most annoying title, at least on the commentary podcast, because it's
like the Washington Commentary Commentary columnist or something like that. It's like there's a
two uses of the word commentary, one lower case one capital C. Well,
I mean I have to add to that. In September, I'll just
demand to be called the I'm the Jesus I cover the Jesus desk. There
you go. I like that. Yeah, well obviously yes, as the
AI insists, and you the remnant of course, but there's the Remnant you
can catch, you know, on all your better podcast feeds. And if
you want to sort of take Rob's uh so Mary prankster spirit to heart about
like messing with things a lot of you could go into things like iTunes and
give Blob and Martini Shot and the Remnant blowing five star reviews. Where does
work? The problem is is the only people willing to go do that are
the people who already want to give it a five star review. Yeah,
people want to give it a one star review. You're not going to convince
them if you ask really nicely to go give it a five star review.
So it kind of defeats the Purpose And I'm on a CNN A bunch,
but what's your next CNN? I don't know. I canceled this this coming
Chris Waller Show is supposed to be on. But I have a family stuff
because my daughter's in town. And sure, it's a very weird thing for
me to hear I's gonna say at the beginning, I mean, we want
to run, But it's a very weird thing still for me to hear you
say the words of my daughter's in town, because in my brain she's always
she's ever going to grow up and never have that little girl from the cruises.
Yeah, she's not ever gonna but apparently you have failed. It's a
parent and she's grown up, and she's actually she comes into town now,
yes that's correct. And uh and she's actually going to be doing like some
intern stuff, I think the Tribeca Film Festival this year. So maybe you
great good for her. And uh, that's it, So thanks for listening
and we will get back to normal. Uh. Three altacaccas sitting around eating
deli kind of conversation on the next exciting episode of the Glot podcast. And
can I just say that John, it's you can turn it off now it's
or can you or can you? Three two one turns out. You know,
we kind of like having John around. He's pretty good. Yeah yeah,
I mean, oh wait, this was on Oh my god. Everybody
heard it, including John John John go now good things to do