Speaker 1: Just excuse me.
Speaker 2: Let me ask another question. When do you want to
Speaker 2: make out? Who do you make out to? Sinatra?
Speaker 1: A mess?
Speaker 3: That's a stupid question.
Speaker 2: One question.
Speaker 1: Answer that.
Speaker 2: It's a relevant I won't to answer about you.
Speaker 3: I'm married.
Speaker 2: We don't make out.
Speaker 3: Well, it is December, and this is glop culture. It's
Speaker 3: a two man glop culture. Might be three now, we
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: Now, we don't know.
Speaker 3: Now, we don't know. I'm John pod Hort's in New
Speaker 3: York and in Princeton, New Jersey. Is Rob Long, Hi,
Speaker 3: Rob John? How are you?
Speaker 2: Happy holidays?
Speaker 3: Happy holidays to you too, Just holidays.
Speaker 2: I think Conica starts on Christmas Day?
Speaker 3: Isn't it today? Around about? Yes, it's a late Conica.
Speaker 3: So we will all be so clebrating. So there's a
Speaker 3: little factoid for you. Interesting factoid for you. Because Honka,
Speaker 3: as you may know, extends eight nights and will be
Speaker 3: extending into January. The year twenty twenty five will be
Speaker 3: a rare year in which in the in the is
Speaker 3: it the Gregorian calendar is that we call it or
Speaker 3: the Julian.
Speaker 2: I think it's that we're in Okay.
Speaker 3: There will actually be two Honkahs in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: It's the end of the earlier Knka and then the
Speaker 3: beginning of the new Honkah.
Speaker 2: At the end, it's it's a bonanza of honicas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of us are hoping that there will be
Speaker 3: a miracle of the oil, just as as in the
Speaker 3: original honic As. You may know, the miracle Knica was
Speaker 3: that the oil burned for eight nights instead of one.
Speaker 3: Some of us are hoping that the oil will burn
Speaker 3: in on the ports of Iran for eight hundred nights
Speaker 3: from many many, never for many nights, as the Iranian
Speaker 3: capacity to export and produce and refine oil is destroyed.
Speaker 3: Now that Iran is entirely without defenses and should be
Speaker 3: punished for its monstrous behavior over the last forty five
Speaker 3: years and is in uh We and the Israelis and
Speaker 3: others have all kinds of good reasons to that. But
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm going.
Speaker 2: To political Rah, you are, you are, and you know
Speaker 2: what I just want to say. I wish everybody well,
Speaker 2: that's that's my thing. I wish everybody well, it's a
Speaker 2: happy holidays.
Speaker 3: Are you wishing the moll as well?
Speaker 2: I'm wishing the mill as well. I'm I'm here's here's
Speaker 2: what I am. I'm standing at the window. I've thrown
Speaker 2: open the window and I'm shouting down, boy boy, what
Speaker 2: day is it? And he goes, that's why it's Christmas days?
Speaker 2: And I said, and I'm saying to him, does the
Speaker 2: does the Greenes, the grocer or the poultry mongers still
Speaker 2: have the turkey in the window? And he says, give
Speaker 2: me the one as big as me. And I say, charming, delightful, lad.
Speaker 2: And that's that's that's the spirit that I'm in.
Speaker 3: But you know, why is the grocer open? Why does
Speaker 3: the butcher shop open on Christmas Day? What kind of
Speaker 3: monster has that shop open instead of celebrating Christmas with
Speaker 3: his family? How come we've never taken a turn down
Speaker 3: that road in a revisionist history of a Christmas.
Speaker 2: Carol because he's a Jew?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, fair enough now, I just want to say.
Speaker 2: That that would be like, boy boy, is the Chinese
Speaker 2: restaurant down the street open? You mean things such one
Speaker 2: delight why?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yes, charming? That wonderful. Can I get some mushu pancakes? Please?
Speaker 3: I just get a duck pushu pancakes for the entire
Speaker 3: tidy Tim family cratches. They love twice cooked pork.
Speaker 2: I gonna have a nice vindalo, you know, speaking of
Speaker 2: interesting spinoffs, Oh, how about a spinoff? Now?
Speaker 3: Jonah uh Goldberg is not with us because he is
Speaker 3: caught in traffic. But Jonah as as as everyone who
Speaker 3: has now been built bored enough to listen to this
Speaker 3: podcast for I don't know twelve thirteen years knows, Jona,
Speaker 3: I have an unhealthy obsession with the television show The
Speaker 3: Odd Couple, So rob with a. Bashar al Assad having
Speaker 3: fled to Moscow in la uh On you know, December eighth,
Speaker 3: Bashar al Assad was asked to remove himself from his
Speaker 3: country of residence. Yes, that request came from his people.
Speaker 3: Deep down he knew they were right, But one day
Speaker 3: he also knew that he would somehow return to murder
Speaker 3: them all.
Speaker 2: Wells to go, Yeah, there was to go.
Speaker 3: He showed up at the Moscow apartment of his friend
Speaker 3: Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2: Now, are you just did you just invent this?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Because okay, because I have to say that we have
Speaker 2: a listener a fan who's a writer, very fine writer,
Speaker 2: name is Eric Twardzik. And he just sent me. He
Speaker 2: sent me yesterday sick on my idea, Edward Snowden, but
Speaker 2: share all assade have to share an apartment in Moscow.
Speaker 3: Okay, you see that. Great minds think aike.
Speaker 2: And it's now And he had a title too, I'm
Speaker 2: giving him credit. Yes, two bedroom, one Baptist.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good.
Speaker 3: Right, that's good. Yeah, it is uh that this is
Speaker 3: the way it should go. Now we need we need
Speaker 3: Armando Yanucci, the author, the director of the Death of Stalin,
Speaker 3: Oh my God, to capture in full the world of
Speaker 3: the Assads.
Speaker 2: I find all that fascinating. I'm so interested in the
Speaker 2: TikTok of it all, just the actual specifics of it all.
Speaker 2: There's this moment and I can't I'm not really comparing
Speaker 2: these two situations, but I think that in terms of
Speaker 2: my interest, they are the same. I saw this this
Speaker 2: clip of Rudy Giuliani and he's saying, I don't have
Speaker 2: any money, I don't have a bank account, can't get
Speaker 2: any cab. Everything's tied up. I can't if I by
Speaker 2: hail a taxi cab. He's a very New York way
Speaker 2: to say it. But if if I call a cab,
Speaker 2: which of course yes, I have no way to pay them.
Speaker 2: I can't go to the bank because they can't get
Speaker 2: used the ATM card and there's no money in there anyway.
Speaker 2: I find that really fascinating, like that that that is
Speaker 2: what happens. And so but shir sad they left. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's like all the fift of roses. I
Speaker 2: think they could. They took what they could carry. They're
Speaker 2: like the czars, like the Czarists, right, yeah, and now
Speaker 2: he's in Moscow. At some point they're going to say
Speaker 2: you owe us, where's your rent? Where's your rent?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What are you going to do?
Speaker 3: I mean, where's the rent? I know it's very important.
Speaker 3: I you know, there is this novelist that you and
Speaker 3: I both are are fans of. Alan First, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: of course, who has written these wonderful books about Europe
Speaker 3: in the nineteen series and nineteen forties while the war
Speaker 3: is going on, kind of spy novels whatever. He wrote
Speaker 3: one about Paris, oh yeah, which is called The Something.
Speaker 2: Of Night, The World at Night, The World at Night.
Speaker 3: And what what fascinated me about it is it's this
Speaker 3: portrait of this movie producer who is trapped in Paris
Speaker 3: when when the Nazis invade and has to sort of
Speaker 3: keep himself alive. And much of the book is dedicated
Speaker 3: to what it is like to live in a city
Speaker 3: where you have no money and you're starving and you
Speaker 3: don't have any money to go and buy yourself a sandwich.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have, but you have money, you just
Speaker 2: can't get to it.
Speaker 3: You can't get to it, and uh, it's across town,
Speaker 3: and you can't get across town because if you someone
Speaker 3: might ask for your papers. And the just the logistics
Speaker 3: of life an extremists is a is a genuinely fascinating subject.
Speaker 2: It all becomes you know, as you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: in seminary John, I'm studying, I'm taking Holy orders soon.
Speaker 2: And one of the most interesting things about I'm sort
Speaker 2: of fascinated by in the in the both the Hebrew
Speaker 2: Bible and also it's analog or it's a you know,
Speaker 2: it's part two. It's a little code of the New Testament.
Speaker 2: Is the idea of written of wealth is not a
Speaker 2: It's not a philosophical or abstract notion. It's a physical thing.
Speaker 4: You have.
Speaker 2: You have gold, and you hoard it, and it's heavy,
Speaker 2: and it's in bags and you carry it around with
Speaker 2: you and in your little purse, and you have to
Speaker 2: store it, and you to think about it, like we're
Speaker 2: you gonna put it, you gotta bury it, you gotta
Speaker 2: guard it. It's like a thing. And if I take
Speaker 2: it from you, you don't have it anymore. It's just that.
Speaker 2: That's just that, and so so gold and hoarding and money.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere. It's in It's in the Psalms everywhere. It's
Speaker 2: in Ecclesiastes everywhere. It's in the Proverbs, it's in the
Speaker 2: New Testament. Of course, Jesus talking about a lot, and
Speaker 2: we just don't have that. That idea doesn't exists anymore.
Speaker 2: It's so we don't. It's a piece of paper. But
Speaker 2: it must seem to you that if you're Bashir al Asad,
Speaker 2: that you just get in an airplane and you fly
Speaker 2: to Moscow, and that piece of paper still counts. And
Speaker 2: if your putin you're like, no, no, that paper doesn't count.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, it's funny because one of the best
Speaker 3: books ever written about America and economics and American history
Speaker 3: is by John Steel Gordon. It's called an Empire of Wealth. Oh,
Speaker 3: And one of the things that he describes in this
Speaker 3: really wonderful book is the transition to the modern economy
Speaker 3: that was represented by the idea that people came to
Speaker 3: accept that a piece of paper could stand in for
Speaker 3: something of ye could stand for that pile of gold.
Speaker 3: Right that it was. It was the representation of the
Speaker 3: pile of gold. And this was the big difference between
Speaker 3: the Jacksonians and the the people who were opposed to
Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson, because Andrew Jackson could not get into his
Speaker 3: head the idea of currency he could intellectually held.
Speaker 2: Doesn't make any sense. It really doesn't make.
Speaker 3: Sense, right, it doesn't make sense. It is the entire
Speaker 3: kem to the modern economy.
Speaker 2: Well, there's always that story. We always hear that story.
Speaker 2: But in the Fed, you know, they have they move
Speaker 2: gold in forklifts from locker to locker depending on the
Speaker 2: clothes that day and sort of the closing out the
Speaker 2: accounts at the end of the day. And it's just
Speaker 2: a stupid thing that I mean, the guy could like
Speaker 2: just I guess, sleep late or something or or or
Speaker 2: leave work early, and then some gold will be in
Speaker 2: the wrong locker and then technically some country could be insolvent.
Speaker 2: But it's really just moving the gold the right spot.
Speaker 3: I believe it's possible. Could it be possible that Jonah
Speaker 3: Goldberg is.
Speaker 2: Oh Joanah Goldberg?
Speaker 3: Is that Jonah Goldberg? I seel it's Jonah Goldberg. Have
Speaker 3: a little picture of a handset of a phone zoom,
Speaker 3: and I believe it's Jonah Goldberg.
Speaker 4: On I see. I was listening to that gold of
Speaker 4: a conversation and I didn't want.
Speaker 2: To you can't come, you can't come now and derogate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not derogating, he's praising. He's praising this gold
Speaker 3: of a conversation. I think, Jonah, I do want to
Speaker 3: ask you how traffic is?
Speaker 4: Uh, traffic is ass cancer, Okay, traffic is terrible.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go back into
Speaker 3: the boy. So we have to go back into the
Speaker 3: glop memory banks to remember the day when our own
Speaker 3: Rob Long was daily driving from his apartment in Greenwich
Speaker 3: Village out to Eastern Long Island, far Eastern produced to
Speaker 3: produce a television show. And he drove himself every morning.
Speaker 3: You might think that a man of high a steam
Speaker 3: executive producing a major network sitcom would have a driver
Speaker 3: and a limo taking him no, but let me.
Speaker 2: Tell you, let me tell you. Yes, not only did
Speaker 2: I not have that, they the studio. They were very
Speaker 2: careful about saying we we won't pay for your uber
Speaker 2: more than twice a week.
Speaker 3: So Rob had a car. Rob out a car, and
Speaker 3: he was driving, and we were doing a blop in
Speaker 3: while he was in his car. He was crossing, I believe,
Speaker 3: going across the Williamsburg Bridge to get onto the B
Speaker 3: QUI to get onto the l I E to get
Speaker 3: out to Hicksville or wherever the studio was. Literally Hicksville,
Speaker 3: that's where we're talking. And then Rob is like, oh,
Speaker 3: holy hell, okay wait, I got to jump off. So
Speaker 3: it turned out while we were doing Rob got into
Speaker 3: a major traffic accident on Delancey Street.
Speaker 2: Well it was a major. I was sideswiped by a
Speaker 2: South Asian gentleman. And this is the I don't know what.
Speaker 3: His being South Asian has to do with this.
Speaker 2: Rob, Yeah, let me feel exactly, let me finish. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you the story. It really does. It's very It's
Speaker 2: germane I swear. So I was sideswiped and I got out.
Speaker 2: I yelled and screamed, and I was late and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the podcast was ruined, as we say. And
Speaker 2: then I got to work, and this is this is
Speaker 2: now twenty seventeen, maybe twenty eighteen, a different era. It's
Speaker 2: hard to believe that I got out of I got
Speaker 2: out of the car I got and I got to work,
Speaker 2: and I was telling everybody what I was hit. And
Speaker 2: I said to I said, in the sort of tone
Speaker 2: of voice, and the guy hit me. He was like
Speaker 2: from India. And I looked with Daggers at the young
Speaker 2: writer on our staff who was South Asian from India,
Speaker 2: who's very very very good, a very funny guy, and
Speaker 2: I said, so, you know, I'm really gonna have to
Speaker 2: ask you to, you know, chip in to fix my car.
Speaker 2: And and and he said, I'm very very sorry what
Speaker 2: my people have done. You know, we're not a driving culture.
Speaker 2: And went on and on, and I realized and we
Speaker 2: all laughed and it was very fun. And the rest
Speaker 2: of the day I kept saying, yeah, I got in
Speaker 2: a car accident, and I would shoot Daggers at him
Speaker 2: and we'd all laugh. And I realized that that very
Speaker 2: joke would get me not just fired, but probably arrested.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, and probably two weeks later I mean what
Speaker 3: you didn't. There wasn't much time between that joke. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when that joke could no longer be made.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely.
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Speaker 3: off your purchase. And thank you Luhman for sponsoring this episode. Okay, So, Jonah,
Speaker 3: I want to ask you an important question about America today. Yes, so,
Speaker 3: as you know, a healthcare ceo was shot and killed
Speaker 3: on a New York City street. An amazing dragnet was
Speaker 3: placed around to find the shooter, who was found yesterday.
Speaker 3: I guess as we're taping this Luigi Mangioni is his name.
Speaker 3: And not to get overly serious, but are you at
Speaker 3: all troubled by the fact that there are certain commentators
Speaker 3: on what I would call the anti Trump former right now,
Speaker 3: kind of like moderate left who seemed to be overly
Speaker 3: excited by the homo erotic nature of the photographs of
Speaker 3: Luigi Mangioni on an out inside in Hawaii with a
Speaker 3: six pack.
Speaker 4: I didn't think that this question was going to go
Speaker 4: to homo.
Speaker 3: Like well, if you knew who I was talking about,
Speaker 3: you would know why I went to homo eroticism. But
Speaker 3: I'm not going to name names, but in any case,
Speaker 3: that was the that that that was actually a key
Speaker 3: element of the reaction on the podcasting question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I missed that. I've seen a lot of
Speaker 4: asenine stuff said about this thing, and I'm utterly and
Speaker 4: completely appalled by it. And do you guys remember Fox
Speaker 4: used to keep this in the realm of pop culture
Speaker 4: of the moment you. Fox briefly had that series, the
Speaker 4: one like two seasons with Kevin Bacon and the guy
Speaker 4: who played Mark Antony from Rome, the British actor. And
Speaker 4: the British actor was basically a literature professor who convinced
Speaker 4: all these hot grad students and other people to become
Speaker 4: part of a stabby cult where they would just stab
Speaker 4: people all over the place.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I thought it.
Speaker 4: Was like the most ridiculous plot, but I found the
Speaker 4: show kind of weirdly compelling, and I think, like that's like,
Speaker 4: that's what this reminds me of, is this is people
Speaker 4: watching real events. I've been complaining about this since wrote
Speaker 4: my last book about like people following you know, events
Speaker 4: and politics, like it's a form of entertainment. And then
Speaker 4: you know, you root for the hero and you root
Speaker 4: against the enemy, and you don't care what happens to
Speaker 4: the enemy because all you wanted to hear to get
Speaker 4: the mcguffin. And here's this like family man who's shot
Speaker 4: in cold blood and they're these, you know, and there
Speaker 4: are thousands of people getting two message about it and
Speaker 4: thinking it's awesome. And that was before we saw the
Speaker 4: guys six pack ads. And I just think it's it's
Speaker 4: it's it's so friggin grotesque. Yeah, and I don't I
Speaker 4: don't think there's any defense of it. You can say,
Speaker 4: what do you want about how healthcare companies suck, that's fine.
Speaker 4: But like the one thing I'm thinking about writing about
Speaker 4: this tomorrow, the one thing I cannot friggin get my
Speaker 4: head around, is that these people think that if if
Speaker 4: healthcare wasn't run by capitalists, there would be no rationing
Speaker 4: of healthcare. And it puts me into this frame of
Speaker 4: mind like, gosh, you know, I really even hate thinking
Speaker 4: about this, but like, at some point someone's gonna shoot
Speaker 4: someone from the National health Care Service in Britain or
Speaker 4: a bureaucrat from Canada for denying coverage, and you're gonna
Speaker 4: see all these people go, well, that's different. It's not.
Speaker 4: It's just so friggin stupid and evil.
Speaker 2: I agree, you know, it's EA, that's wrong. But I
Speaker 2: guess I'm more struck by the number of people. I
Speaker 2: guess maybe my Twitter feed is different from everyone else's
Speaker 2: that are saying things like this doesn't add up. His
Speaker 2: arm is in a different position in the one photograph
Speaker 2: as it is in the other photograph or something. Those abs,
Speaker 2: how do you get those abs with that back injury?
Speaker 2: And you're like, okay, that's actually actually I don't have
Speaker 2: an answer to that.
Speaker 3: And by the way, we do we do have right
Speaker 3: presumptuum innocence. We don't know that he did it.
Speaker 2: We know that, Okay, what I mean to say.
Speaker 3: What I mean to say is that in a this
Speaker 3: is there are there are sort of forms and norms
Speaker 3: in relation to this. He was arrested in Nowton in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: He was carrying the same fake ID that the guy
Speaker 3: had at the hostel, that matched up with the photo,
Speaker 3: that matched up with the description and all of that.
Speaker 3: He's pled not guilty, he's fighting extradition, all of that.
Speaker 3: So that whole show, you had a manifesto.
Speaker 2: A manifest like we haven't we haven't read the MET.
Speaker 4: I understand he had a manifesto and he had a
Speaker 4: ghost gun, which looks remarkably like the ghost gun that
Speaker 4: was used.
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, I'm not saying what are you saying?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the paraphrase throw some circumstantial evidence is very convincing,
Speaker 4: as when you find the murder weapon, the I and
Speaker 4: the manifesto.
Speaker 2: But isn't that too perfect?
Speaker 3: I think that Emerson, I don't think that's Henry throw.
Speaker 4: Isn't it just oh, some thing some throws the line?
Speaker 4: Thing some circumstandial evidence is very strong. Is when you
Speaker 4: find a trout in the milk, and so I was
Speaker 4: paraphrasing that.
Speaker 3: I know you're you're so literate, that is you you
Speaker 3: you nailed me to the wall on that one in
Speaker 3: the car boy trout in the milk. But don't you.
Speaker 2: Find it strange? I mean, they found the murder weapon,
Speaker 2: and they found a manifest stow, and they found a
Speaker 2: ghost gun. Isn't it all adding up a little too much? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd be more believable they didn't find any of the
Speaker 2: I'd be more convinced that he did it. If they
Speaker 2: didn't find any evidence, they couldn't connect him to the crime.
Speaker 2: That's what That's my point.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen. I think that the problem with talking about this,
Speaker 3: and like our mind inevitably goes to jokes and things
Speaker 3: like that, is that, in fact, this may be one
Speaker 3: of the worst things that has ever happened. And I'm
Speaker 3: now not being hyperbolic because this is no because I
Speaker 3: think this could be the tip of a terrorist iceberg
Speaker 3: in the United States. Let me just lay this out
Speaker 3: for you, just very quickly, Okay. Nineteen sixty eight, nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, Richard Nixon beats Humphrey in the election.
Speaker 2: There's a starting there.
Speaker 3: Let me just spin it out for thirty seconds. Okay, there, when.
Speaker 2: You say I gotta settle in, I feel like.
Speaker 3: Then there have been any war protests were like for
Speaker 3: a year, year and a half, right, moratoriums, marches on
Speaker 3: the Pentagon, all of that going on. Populous is getting
Speaker 3: more and more radicalized on college campuses. And what happened
Speaker 3: was that that all morphed after, particularly after they started
Speaker 3: doing a lottery for the draft and various other things,
Speaker 3: a lot of the street action stuff settled down, and
Speaker 3: then came the wave of domestic terrorism from sixty nine
Speaker 3: through seventy three, twelve hundred bombings domestic bombings in the
Speaker 3: United States. A lot of them have military recruitment centers, banks,
Speaker 3: things like that. There were bank robberies. This country went nuts,
Speaker 3: and the weathermen emerged, and of course the held up
Speaker 3: the house next to you in Branwich Village. And I've
Speaker 3: been wondering what would happen if Trump would win? Right,
Speaker 3: for so for months on the commentary podcast, we said,
Speaker 3: you know, well, Trump may win, and there could be
Speaker 3: riots in the streets if Trump wins. Look, they've all
Speaker 3: been kind of primed because of what happened after October
Speaker 3: seventh on the college campuses. And then it didn't happen, Right,
Speaker 3: it didn't happen. Maybe it's because he wanted to convince
Speaker 3: a victory, or maybe it's whatever blah blah blah, or
Speaker 3: maybe what we just saw on the street of New York.
Speaker 3: But you know, is the beginning of the action that
Speaker 3: is going to be taken in regards to the horrible
Speaker 3: inequalities and the billionaires running everything and all of that.
Speaker 3: And this is very reticent of late nineteenth century, very
Speaker 3: reticent of it. Go read The Possessed by Dostoevski or
Speaker 3: the Princess Casamasso James or the secret agent by.
Speaker 2: The culture to the secret agent.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is a thing that happened where right
Speaker 3: where people were by by Joseph Conrad, right where people
Speaker 3: were targeted. The way terrorists acted was either they tried
Speaker 3: to assassinate leaders, which has now become extraordinarily difficult, even
Speaker 3: though someone almost killed Trump right three months ago. Or
Speaker 3: they could just start doing random stuff against industrialists.
Speaker 2: I guess. But you know what, can we wait and
Speaker 2: see it's Christmas, come on yet, have a little advent,
Speaker 2: have a little cheer. Let's could we don't?
Speaker 3: We don't have advents?
Speaker 2: He seems a little he's you know what, I could
Speaker 2: use the little window. Maybe that's the problem.
Speaker 3: That could be it only everybody had an advent calendar
Speaker 3: and we.
Speaker 2: Only had maybe. I guess I just would like to
Speaker 2: just alternatively. Nutty people do nutty things, and they are
Speaker 2: in their own little nutty world. It seems like this
Speaker 2: guy was. We don't know for a fact, but probably
Speaker 2: and I think that's that's the natural governor to this
Speaker 2: kind of thing, which is that you have to be
Speaker 2: a little bit nuts. I mean, when was the last time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm I'm normally the one talking John and Steve
Speaker 5: Hayes and a lot of other people off ledges about catastrophizing,
Speaker 5: and I think John's closer to.
Speaker 4: Right on this one. Not because because normally we have
Speaker 4: a mass shooter and something like that, like you have
Speaker 4: the people who are encouraged by that have to make
Speaker 4: these inferences why they're just the general same or intomy
Speaker 4: of them. But this they're turning this, this schmuck, this
Speaker 4: murderer into a folk hero. And I'm thinking about writing
Speaker 4: about this because you know, there were a lot of
Speaker 4: copycats of dB Cooper after he, you know, successfully did
Speaker 4: that hijacking and parashut it out of the plane. They
Speaker 4: made the Treat Williams movie Out of Him. Planes actually
Speaker 4: have a thing called Cooper veins because they had to
Speaker 4: retrofit all the planes to make it impossible to do
Speaker 4: what Cooper had done because there were so many copycats.
Speaker 4: And when you have like one hundred thousand people responding
Speaker 4: with laughing emo emojis to the United Healthcare statement of
Speaker 4: remorse about the guy's murder, like there are people and
Speaker 4: you have people, you know, people gushing about the dude's
Speaker 4: abs and you know, going on TV and praising him
Speaker 4: as if he's some sort of Robin Hood John Brown
Speaker 4: against capitalism. I think that that will create copycats in
Speaker 4: a way that like the normal just kind of like
Speaker 4: crazy people do crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: Thing doesn't Maybe, I guess I want to say, is
Speaker 2: that that that a smiley emoji thumbs up emoji costs
Speaker 2: you nothing. That the people's behavior and statements online are utterly,
Speaker 2: utterly devoid of any commitment or action. That's why they're
Speaker 2: so much five and but just like you know, I
Speaker 2: just look that the unibomber didn't inspire any more unibums,
Speaker 2: just this guy.
Speaker 4: It seems so like Taylor Lawrence, who is you haven't
Speaker 4: read my manifesto roup.
Speaker 2: Well, that's true. That's true only because it's a only
Speaker 2: because you insist it has full frontal nudity in it.
Speaker 1: So, Taylor Lawrence, who is, I'm going to I'm going
Speaker 1: to hang up for a few minutes and I'll join
Speaker 1: you on the computer. You keep going, okay, I'm on there, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I will quickly just mention Taylor Lawrence, the internet
Speaker 1: journalist who worked for the New York Times and then
Speaker 1: the Washington Post and then left the Washington Post after.
Speaker 3: Calling Biden a mass murderer or something because of Dava Yeah,
Speaker 3: then went to start a sub stack, went to Vox
Speaker 3: to do a podcast. She said that she was full
Speaker 3: of joy at the news of the murder. Let me finish.
Speaker 3: It's full of joy. She's thrilled, exciting. You know, she
Speaker 3: has long COVID and people are breathing air around her
Speaker 3: and killing her. And then she went on Piers Morgan
Speaker 3: last night in London, I guess where his show airs.
Speaker 3: And he said to her, I don't understand you're expressing
Speaker 3: joy at the murder of a man in the street.
Speaker 3: And she said, yes, I'm expressing joy because healthcare people
Speaker 3: are do monstrous things or whatever. And then he says,
Speaker 3: let me just get this straight. You say that you're
Speaker 3: joyful at the murder, the cold blooded murder of somebody
Speaker 3: unarmed walking down a street in New York City. And
Speaker 3: then she said, well, I didn't say joy, and he said, yes,
Speaker 3: you did. You said joy. And then she said, okay,
Speaker 3: I said joy. Yes, Now why do I bring this up.
Speaker 3: She's crazy. I've always thought she was crazy. All of that.
Speaker 3: She's a major American journalist, Like this is somebody who
Speaker 3: has worked for the most.
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 2: I don't think that doesn't matter. She's a joke, she's
Speaker 2: a hideous character, she's a loathsome person. And that's a
Speaker 2: looksome thing to say. And because we all are amplified constantly,
Speaker 2: and we all have a giant microphone in front of us,
Speaker 2: anytime you want to, she's she's been she said, she's
Speaker 2: been revealed. I don't that doesn't that does not mean.
Speaker 2: All that means is that she's irrelevant. I just don't
Speaker 2: think you can connect.
Speaker 3: We don't know that she's irrelevant. I think that's what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right again, Taylor Lorenz could inspire and this
Speaker 2: guy could inspire the next twenty years. But I just
Speaker 2: don't think there's any evidence of that, and I just
Speaker 2: don't think there's any evidence in the past of that.
Speaker 2: And I just don't think that picking out Taylor Lorenz
Speaker 2: as like as a data point is is valuable. She's
Speaker 2: a fringe character. Fringe characters get a microphone now, they
Speaker 2: don't have any effect. What on earth name one. I
Speaker 2: hope you're packed on so far.
Speaker 3: I hope you're right. I hope you're right. My fear
Speaker 3: is that there is something bigger and larger going on
Speaker 3: that the that the institutional crisis, the anti institutional fervor,
Speaker 3: the idea that you know, inequality now governs everything and
Speaker 3: everyone is being screwed by the rich, and all of
Speaker 3: that creates a permission structure over time that will mean
Speaker 3: that when somebody shoots somebody in the street, there is
Speaker 3: a panoply of people. Let me about this way, what
Speaker 3: about like, let's go to Norman Mailer, Right, Norman Mayler
Speaker 3: writes an essay called the White Negro in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 3: which is the celebration of the beating up and the
Speaker 3: killing of a shopkeeper in Harlem by a bunch of thugs,
Speaker 3: White Negro. This is the essay he's saying that basically,
Speaker 3: they were expressing a yop of you know, about the
Speaker 3: unfairness and injustice in our time, right, Okay? Was that
Speaker 3: an outlier? Yeah, it was kind of, except like ten
Speaker 3: fifteen years late, ten years later, when the crime wave
Speaker 3: starts in the United States, some of the ideas that
Speaker 3: were floated by Mailer in this outrageous essay start becoming
Speaker 3: the coin of the realm in intellectual journals and in
Speaker 3: think tanks and in discussions on sixty minutes about why
Speaker 3: people are committing such crimes and all of that. Ideas
Speaker 3: are infectious, and irresponsible ideas are no less infectious than
Speaker 3: responsible ideas. And so I'm not saying it's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I am worried that it's going to happen.
Speaker 4: Yes, I get it, I get it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I see, I see that. I just feel
Speaker 2: like the problem with the interconnected media culture is that
Speaker 2: everything seems important. And the good news is that nothing
Speaker 2: is important. That's also the bad news. Nothing has an impact.
Speaker 2: Our problem isn't that everything has this enormous weight. It's
Speaker 2: that even the important things are treated trivially. Everything's being trivialized,
Speaker 2: including this guy. When people talk about his abs, it
Speaker 2: seems callous because they but they don't because in a
Speaker 2: sentimental culture, or we don't have any image of his
Speaker 2: wife and children that could easily happen. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess what I mean is that I just come out
Speaker 2: from a different side of telescope. I think the problem
Speaker 2: is that nothing is important. Now everything is, but lol,
Speaker 2: nothing matters.
Speaker 3: There are two things about murder, right, So he was
Speaker 3: Hamilton was murdered on a street. We have two ways
Speaker 3: of looking at murder, one of which is that murder
Speaker 3: creates these victims, right the victims are his family, children,
Speaker 3: the people who have been denied the rest of his existence,
Speaker 3: the snuffing out of his own existence, his legacy, all
Speaker 3: of that. But we don't look at murder solely as
Speaker 3: a crime against an individual or a family. There is
Speaker 3: a long common law tradition that says that not just
Speaker 3: you know, if you kill one soul, you murder the
Speaker 3: world entire, which is which is a biblical line, but
Speaker 3: also that this is a crime against the United States,
Speaker 3: It is a crime against our society. People are not
Speaker 3: allowed to go around killing other people for any reason
Speaker 3: unless that reason is that they are in fear for
Speaker 3: their lives and they have a merited and justifiable reason
Speaker 3: to do what they must do to protect themselves or
Speaker 3: to order to protect others. Otherwise, we have no truck
Speaker 3: with it. We do not accept it. We do not
Speaker 3: believe that it is because if you say one murder
Speaker 3: is justified, there is no way not to say that
Speaker 3: any murder is justified.
Speaker 2: But there are always people who have this crackpot view
Speaker 2: we now hear from them. I don't think it's anything new.
Speaker 2: I mean, if this was an MSNBC podcast, we would
Speaker 2: be using the same language to talk about Daniel Penny,
Speaker 2: wouldn't we.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are people are trying to compare the two things,
Speaker 4: and I think they're very different. But I agree that
Speaker 4: like people are. I mean, you can make it. It's
Speaker 4: very Gotham, right, Like this guy's bane, the guy who
Speaker 4: shot the United Healthcare guy, and Daniel Penny is like
Speaker 4: Bruce Wayne. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The difference between them, and the reason that the
Speaker 3: comparison is so horrific is that Daniel Penny and the
Speaker 3: jury found this. So I'm not just opining about it.
Speaker 3: Daniel Penny did what he did to protect thirty other
Speaker 3: people from a marauding psychopath.
Speaker 2: Who, by the way said it essentially said I'm gonna
Speaker 2: maraud and kill you and you can't do anything about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he sacrificed him So he took his own
Speaker 3: life into.
Speaker 4: I'm just talking about he sacrificed himself to save the
Speaker 4: lives of thirty million people caught up in the rapacious
Speaker 4: maw of capitalistic exploiter healthcare. I just heard an interview
Speaker 4: on NPR basically saying that, yeah, that's right, right.
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Speaker 2: I feel it's weird that the guy did that Feels
Speaker 2: So Good song. It was such a big hit. I
Speaker 2: remember that, Chuck.
Speaker 3: Can I tell my Chuck Mitt Wait a minute, I
Speaker 3: now I now need to ask you if I've told
Speaker 3: this story like recently, because now I'm having one of
Speaker 3: those senior moments. I have a Chuck Mangione story that
Speaker 3: is a very name Okay, so should I tell it here? Scott,
Speaker 3: I just came in to say my story involves the
Speaker 3: restaurant Elaine's. Sure, okay, legendary legendary restaurant Elanes eighty eighth
Speaker 3: and Second Avenue, a watering hole for journalists and everybody
Speaker 3: in New York and Woody Allen for thirty thirty five
Speaker 3: years until Elaine died about fifteen years ago, and for
Speaker 3: a brief moment, I was a denizen of Elaine's in
Speaker 3: the late nineties. Elaine liked me. I was a serve.
Speaker 3: I was a figure at the New York Post, which
Speaker 3: is very important to her. She enjoyed my company. So
Speaker 3: I would go in to impress girls or I was
Speaker 3: dating or whatever, going a couple of times a week.
Speaker 3: And the big thing was when Elaine came and sat
Speaker 3: at your table. That was like a sign you were
Speaker 3: you were like, you were a hot person. So I
Speaker 3: was briefly a hot person. And Elaine sits down at
Speaker 3: my table. I can't remember what it was a different time. Yes,
Speaker 3: I was hot then ain't.
Speaker 2: I ain't no hat and also Elaine Laine was Elaine
Speaker 2: was really harriers.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So we're sitting there and Chuck Mangioni comes in
Speaker 3: the author of the song feels so good. No relation
Speaker 3: apparently to Luigi as far.
Speaker 4: As we know.
Speaker 2: Too convenient, don't you think.
Speaker 3: And Elaine says, oh no, oh no, And I said
Speaker 3: what She's like, Oh man, he's going to play. I
Speaker 3: just know it. He's going to play. And it ruins
Speaker 3: the whole evening. These guys they come in Groover, Washington
Speaker 3: did this once and they come in and they just
Speaker 3: start playing and it just ruins the whole vibe of
Speaker 3: the and I'm like, really, it's kind of cool, Chuck
Speaker 3: Mango are gonna come and play. She's like, you don't understand, Like,
Speaker 3: we want people to talk, we want people to have
Speaker 3: a good time. They don't stop talking to listen to
Speaker 3: some smooth jazz nonsense. And sure enough, Chuck Mangione stands up,
Speaker 3: Rob's gonna start playing, stands up and takes out his
Speaker 3: flugel horn or whatever the hell it is, and then
Speaker 3: he starts playing.
Speaker 2: The best of a disco. Here. Here it goes on.
Speaker 2: I will tell you this anyway.
Speaker 3: He went on for like four minutes, and Elaine, being
Speaker 3: a brilliant restaurantor, was totally right. Everyone stops talking. Yeah,
Speaker 3: people are kind of getting uncomfortable. They didn't want to
Speaker 3: stop talking. Yeah, right, they're there to be hanging out
Speaker 3: with each other. And then it was sort of over,
Speaker 3: and then there was this kind of uncomfortable kind of applause,
Speaker 3: and then that.
Speaker 2: One more time and someone says, what are and you'll
Speaker 2: chuck the out. My connection to feels so good. It
Speaker 2: came out nineteen seventy seven, and I was once a
Speaker 2: boy scout camp and so I was I don't know,
Speaker 2: I was eleven, maybe twelve at the time, and an
Speaker 2: older boy said to me, who may have been twelve
Speaker 2: or thirteen at the most said, you know that song
Speaker 2: that feels a good song, that Chuck Menji Andi song.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, yeah, she just just remember this. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you this. It's a great makeout.
Speaker 3: Uh wait, Jonah, who do you like to make out?
Speaker 3: Two more? Sinata of mathis? Sinatra? Of mathis.
Speaker 2: Sinatra?
Speaker 3: Okay, that's uh, that's my I was talk about d
Speaker 3: know what I don't and like I'm just imagining. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: you know what. Now I'm going. I'm going. I'm digging
Speaker 3: so deep. It's a scene and diner all right, right, Gottenburg.
Speaker 2: Says, who do you make out to?
Speaker 3: Sonata? They have this like five minute fantastic conversation about
Speaker 3: whether you make.
Speaker 2: Out to Sinatra with Johnny Mathis. That's all I.
Speaker 4: Can. I can I change gears real quick because I'm all,
Speaker 4: I'm all hyped up driving and I don't want to
Speaker 4: talk about murder anymore. So, you know, I'm sure you
Speaker 4: guys have had this experience where, for some reason, they
Speaker 4: put certain movies into rotation, and you happen to catch
Speaker 4: the movie, particularly the same scene of the movie, like
Speaker 4: over and over again in your channel surfing at the
Speaker 4: weirdest times. Yeah, So I've been watching I've been I've
Speaker 4: caught National Treasure, the first one, you know, the Nick
Speaker 4: Cage movie, like fifteen times. Now I've caught the last
Speaker 4: ten minutes of that movie. And there's a scene in
Speaker 4: it that for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, maybe
Speaker 4: and you really care, uh, skip ahead thirty seconds a minute.
Speaker 4: But they find the treasure, right, they find this game.
Speaker 4: Oh no, they find this great treasure and everyone's happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So it's sort of like.
Speaker 4: The scene in Raising Arizona where Nathan Arizona leaves the
Speaker 4: gun in the occupied crib and it just gives you
Speaker 4: anxiety that you're like, you can't.
Speaker 2: Leave a loaded gun in with a bunch of babies
Speaker 2: in the grip.
Speaker 4: So they literally have the hot blonde chick Fine, the
Speaker 4: missing scrolls from the library of alex Andretta and then Alexandria,
Speaker 4: and then like literally thirty seconds later, the next thing
Speaker 4: Nick Cage does is realizes that the room is honeycombed
Speaker 4: with these braziers or whatever full of ignitable gunpowder, and
Speaker 4: he's like, we need more light in.
Speaker 6: Here, and he lights it on fire, and you're just
Speaker 6: like you know, like like if you find a fossil,
Speaker 6: you're supposed to like back up really slowly and not
Speaker 6: touch anything or anything like that. The idea that like
Speaker 6: you're gonna have this wildly open flame around where you
Speaker 6: just found like Aristotles or Aristophanes missing poems. It drives
Speaker 6: me crazy and I start screaming at the TV about it.
Speaker 6: So anyway, I thought I would add that to the conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Well. It's like, I was so scared by
Speaker 3: Alien when I first saw I saw the night that
Speaker 3: it opened in Chicago when I was in college, and
Speaker 3: it was terrifying and I had to walk out because
Speaker 3: I was so terrified. But it did have this trope
Speaker 3: that I now recognize, had I been more sophisticated, would
Speaker 3: have made me think that the movie was a laugh riot.
Speaker 3: And it's true of all of these haunted house movies,
Speaker 3: which is essentially what Alien is. It's a haunted house
Speaker 3: movie in space, which is like, there are seven people, right,
Speaker 3: and there's something stalking them, so their genius plan is
Speaker 3: to go off in seven different directions. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: we have to do split up, right, And every time
Speaker 3: you see that, now you're like.
Speaker 4: What are you doing.
Speaker 2: Balance, you make a phalanx like you.
Speaker 3: The Roman soldiers understood this two thousand years ago, Like
Speaker 3: you all get a circle back to back so that
Speaker 3: everybody has eyes on everything and then you can savor them.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know what I'm gonna go. You know,
Speaker 3: over there, I'm gonna go. You go over there, and
Speaker 3: you go over there, and then will you all be eaten? Serially?
Speaker 2: And you can't that doesn't have a name. You go
Speaker 2: into that dark area where we heard that noise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well that was always the great thing on
Speaker 3: Star Trek, which was always like, oh look it's Jim's
Speaker 3: friend from Start Fleet Academy. It's like, well, he'll be.
Speaker 2: Start the countdown clock for that day.
Speaker 3: Well you remember that. It's a fantastic joke on that
Speaker 3: in Galaxy Quest when Sam Rockwell realizes he's gonna he's
Speaker 3: the one who's going to die because he was only
Speaker 3: on one episode. He's the starting guy.
Speaker 2: The guys in the Red Shirts always died, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: So oh my god, like I'm not going to survive anyway.
Speaker 3: Those things are so maddening when you when your disbelief
Speaker 3: you have spent movies, have to spend all this time
Speaker 3: getting you to spend your disbelief simply because life does
Speaker 3: not work like a plot in a movie, and you
Speaker 3: kind of fall into it and let it happen. And
Speaker 3: then they do this thing where they betray you or
Speaker 3: violate this compact that they've made with you, where you're
Speaker 3: going to go along with them as long as they
Speaker 3: don't make you feel like you're an idiot, and like
Speaker 3: an idiot.
Speaker 2: It's a term for that. It's called hang a lantern.
Speaker 2: You got to hang a lantern on it, meaning you
Speaker 2: you you call attention to it, you say it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Who would have thought that the combination for the sake
Speaker 2: of zero zero zero? Who would have thought that your
Speaker 2: dad is my thing? You hang a lantern on it,
Speaker 2: and once you want you acknowledge it. Audience are like, fine,
Speaker 2: I get it right, because that stuff that does happen.
Speaker 2: But you just you can't pretend that it's normal. You
Speaker 2: have to have your characters say there's like two tricks, right,
Speaker 2: one is hanging a lantern and the other is It's
Speaker 2: always the problem with exposition, because it's usually with things
Speaker 2: that you have this incres Now, of course, people are
Speaker 2: so lazy, they just have the guy in the movie
Speaker 2: who works on the computer to do the well, I
Speaker 2: have to get to the frame. Yeah, ten minutes to launch.
Speaker 3: You have to have that.
Speaker 2: But when you had exposition that you need to get
Speaker 2: out and you didn't want to be cheap about it,
Speaker 2: all you had to do. It's amazing. People just don't
Speaker 2: do this anymore. Old movies always did this. You have
Speaker 2: two characters argue about it. Right, if I'm arguing with
Speaker 2: you over what happened on Tuesday, the audience knows everything
Speaker 2: they need to know about us, and we're actually doing
Speaker 2: something dramatic. But people don't do that anymore. What they
Speaker 2: really do is they just have the guy at the
Speaker 2: computer turn See here's the problem. This is this, This
Speaker 2: is this kind of chemical reaction.
Speaker 4: Or you could have two implausibly well groomed, really hot
Speaker 4: whres make out in the background while little Finger explains
Speaker 4: huge devices in the fraightground and you're like, what, oh, Gil,
Speaker 4: thanks for explaining that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That was an an old Bogart line. But Boger had
Speaker 2: some It was in some one of one of his
Speaker 2: detective movies. I don't know if it was multis Falcon.
Speaker 2: It might have been big sleep where he Uh, you
Speaker 2: know he's got this two paragraphs and that's what you
Speaker 2: knew because you saw Bryson leave the bar and you
Speaker 2: knew that he had And Bogart look it, looks up
Speaker 2: from this and says, what what am I doing here?
Speaker 2: And what you got to say this is so we
Speaker 2: know we didn't know who did it the murder, and
Speaker 2: he goes, you're gonna put two camels in the background,
Speaker 2: and then he used the common Anglo Saxon expletive for
Speaker 2: intercourse because that's the only thing that's going to keep
Speaker 2: people interested in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, there's that great scene in Love and Death,
Speaker 3: one of the funniest movies ever made, very hard to find,
Speaker 3: by the way, as a lot of Woody Allen is
Speaker 3: for obvious reasons. But there's a scene when you know,
Speaker 3: there's Napoleon and Napoleon has a double. Uh. Love and
Speaker 3: Death is, you know, a parody of Russian novels. So
Speaker 3: Napoleon and Napoleon has a double, and the guy who
Speaker 3: plays Napoleon and the double is the guy who plays
Speaker 3: the principle in Back to the Future James Tolkien. So
Speaker 3: and Napoleon's faks like this, and then they say, we're
Speaker 3: going to introduce your double, and then the double comes in.
Speaker 3: He's like, hey, are you doing, your highness? I hate
Speaker 3: to see you anyway. In the foreground, you get this
Speaker 3: speech by Napoleon's aid, who is like and then they
Speaker 3: will come and they will kill the wrong Napoleon, and
Speaker 3: I will become the dictator. I will become the leader,
Speaker 3: and they will know my name and history. Sidney Applebaum,
Speaker 3: you never pay any attention to this dialogue because in
Speaker 3: the background, the two Napoleons have started to have a
Speaker 3: fist fight and wrestle because they meet each other, they're talking,
Speaker 3: and then as all this is going on, Alan in
Speaker 3: a brilliant piece of staging, has the two Napoleons un
Speaker 3: cheating each other and throwing each other on the ground.
Speaker 3: I don't know when you called that's not hanging a
Speaker 3: lantern on it, but.
Speaker 2: That's something else. I really like the idea, Like can
Speaker 2: you imagine I mean, I mean, since we're talking about culture,
Speaker 2: I mean imagine going in I mean I cannot imagine
Speaker 2: going into a studio or even trying to raise money
Speaker 2: even an indie picture. Say it's a parody of Russian novels.
Speaker 3: Well, remember The thing about Woody Allen is he had
Speaker 3: this deal yeah United Artists, and they said, do whatever
Speaker 3: you want, we'll back you. You know, if you spend
Speaker 3: three million dollars, we're not you.
Speaker 2: Still would expect at some point to have a conversation, Hey,
Speaker 2: what do you got just two minutes here?
Speaker 3: I just want to ask you.
Speaker 2: So it's a parody of Russian novels.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it. I'm one hundred percent on board. I'm
Speaker 2: just wondering where if you look and seize anybody talk
Speaker 2: to me about Russian novels.
Speaker 3: But the seconds why it's so great because it's got
Speaker 3: the two Napoleons punching each other, It's got the village
Speaker 3: idiot's convention, It's got the herring salesman who marries Diane
Speaker 3: Keaton and walks around his house having a conversation with
Speaker 3: a herring that is sitting on his arm, like the
Speaker 3: herring is a parrot. Like this is one of the
Speaker 3: silliest movies ever made with this through line of this
Speaker 3: insane and it doesn't Russian.
Speaker 2: Plot, and it does include the funny word herring. Herring
Speaker 2: is a funny word. What do you all used it
Speaker 2: a lot? Herring. Hey, John, do you do you like
Speaker 2: pickled Herring?
Speaker 3: I love pickle?
Speaker 1: Do you really?
Speaker 3: I do? I know many people I like. I like
Speaker 3: Harrying and the raw really love.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: It's a very it's a it's a it's an acquired taste.
Speaker 3: Some people like tongue. Jonah, Yeah, I liked tongue. I
Speaker 3: liked tongue. I liked tongue once, tongue later, and it
Speaker 3: was the most disgusting thing.
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Speaker 2: sponsoring the Love podcast and for creating a great product
Speaker 2: that will power the Christmas economy. I am sure, Oh,
Speaker 2: so I didn't get to tell you guys about my
Speaker 2: trip to India. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know, I don't.
Speaker 4: We don't have time to get into speaking.
Speaker 3: Did you did you meet the guy who smashed into
Speaker 3: Rob's car? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Tell him I'm still made. It was a really interesting trip,
Speaker 2: lots of things going on. All I will say is.
Speaker 4: We did this trip up into the Himalayas, saw the
Speaker 4: Chinese Russia and the Chinese India border. Very cool. We
Speaker 4: were treated as like real dignitaries. Had They put on
Speaker 4: shows for us, did all sorts of cool things everywhere
Speaker 4: we went. They gave us special like scars that we
Speaker 4: had to bow, sort of like lays and Hawaii kind
Speaker 4: of thing. And I had to sample several different preparations
Speaker 4: of yak products. Oh sure, I had industries yak yack milk,
Speaker 4: yet yak this grizzled. Do you remember the scene in
Speaker 4: Time Bandits where God yells don't touch that that's concentrated evil.
Speaker 4: That is how they prepared the yak for us. So
Speaker 4: just these dark black as coal bits of gristle that
Speaker 4: you eat that were basically the everlasting gobstalkers of stoppers
Speaker 4: of rat rantid meat and I started to get those
Speaker 4: beads of sweat under my eyes and got the full
Speaker 4: pre vomit sweats from trying to eat yak and yack
Speaker 4: milk is maybe worse.
Speaker 2: And yak cheese smells.
Speaker 4: It's like an old vaudeville skit. It smells so bad,
Speaker 4: like like animals would drop out, like instead of reading
Speaker 4: the the funniest joke in the world that kills the
Speaker 4: Germans when you read it, you know, like if you
Speaker 4: just open the bag, like things, living creatures would fall
Speaker 4: out of trees.
Speaker 2: Hard to believe something called yak cheese is delicious, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's super super super fermented. But other than that, you know,
Speaker 2: that was that's that's that's the that's the news you
Speaker 2: can use. It's just that, unless it's going to cause
Speaker 2: an international infant incident or really offend your host in
Speaker 2: some way, just avoid the yak I mean, And there
Speaker 2: may be better preparations that I missed.
Speaker 3: But you know, you know, you know what you have.
Speaker 3: You know what you that I have that you don't
Speaker 3: have you could have, you can you can claim rob
Speaker 3: anyone can claim it. They don't know just sayer, But well,
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 2: A yak allergy. I would bet you that yak is kosher.
Speaker 3: Probably not, I don't think so. It's basically a probably
Speaker 3: probably wasn't slaughtered.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: That's true. Okay, So there you go. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 3: my I'm gonna tell my Himalas joke.
Speaker 2: And then I have a joke.
Speaker 3: Okay, And I have a joke. And the little old lady,
Speaker 3: little old lady shows up, you know in Ulan bats
Speaker 3: or whatever that, you know, whatever the catman do. Says,
Speaker 3: I need to go up and see that. The the
Speaker 3: dolly chris up up at the twenty thousand feet in
Speaker 3: this in the monastery. And they say, ma'am, he won't
Speaker 3: see anyone, he doesn't see anybody. He never sees anyone. Also,
Speaker 3: it will take six months to hike up there. She says,
Speaker 3: I don't care. You gotta go up there, gotta go
Speaker 3: see him, very important. Hike up takes six months. They
Speaker 3: get there, they say, I'm sorry, he's gone into hibernation
Speaker 3: for the next you're gonna have to just sit here
Speaker 3: in base camp for six months, live through the winter
Speaker 3: before you can see him. And she's like, fine, I'll
Speaker 3: sit here, it's fine. This here's six months, six months,
Speaker 3: the spring comes and she's like, okay, you gotta let
Speaker 3: me and go see the Dolly Christmas, the doctor, the
Speaker 3: Dolly Chrisman. They say, okay, but very important. You're only
Speaker 3: allowed to speak three words to the Dolly Christmas. That
Speaker 3: is all you're allowed. All people are only allowed to
Speaker 3: say three words to him. She says, fine, three minutes
Speaker 3: is all I need. So they usher her the giant
Speaker 3: you know temple and you know the echoing, and there's
Speaker 3: the gongs and you know incense, and there's this little
Speaker 3: man sitting one hundred feet it's cross legged, you know,
Speaker 3: in front of a giant gong. And he's sitting there
Speaker 3: and she walks after him and she says, Sheldon, come home.
Speaker 2: That's a really good joke. I feel like that.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. Okay, what's your joke? Rob?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 2: I got a joke. I was walking down the street
Speaker 2: the uh a couple of days ago, and I ran
Speaker 2: an old friend of mine, Phil, who is a h
Speaker 2: got a famous wildlife photographer. This guy's like done a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff for National Geographic and stuff, and he
Speaker 2: looked terrible. He had like scar on his face and
Speaker 2: one of his eyes was like swollen, and he had
Speaker 2: a patch and his ear was torn off. Looked terrible.
Speaker 2: I said, Phil, what happened? He's well, you know, I
Speaker 2: was in Africa and I was doing a kind of
Speaker 2: a wildlife safari shoot from magazine. And I'm climbing through
Speaker 2: the bush and I lift, you know, I go in
Speaker 2: the bush and I come fake to face with a lion.
Speaker 2: The lion's right, and I soiled myself. And I said, well, Phil,
Speaker 2: that's understandable. Scary thing. There's no no just now. When
Speaker 2: I said, raw, I love that.
Speaker 3: All right, you know, we gotta go because we have
Speaker 3: a heart out. But anybody have anything you want to
Speaker 3: suggest as viewage for viewage purposes. I liked Wicked. I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna lie. I liked it. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Ariana Grande is spectacular in it, so as Jonathan Bailey.
Speaker 3: You may not like musicals, you may not like Wicked.
Speaker 3: I don't care. It's a great time at the movies.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed it. Moana too is garbage. If you
Speaker 3: have to take your kids, go ahead. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 3: Sure you like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good, It's super great. I mean the end,
Speaker 2: it's got a little woke thing. At the end you
Speaker 2: gotta get over. But all the process, all the way up,
Speaker 2: is like pure fantastic. That it's Vatican realism. If you're
Speaker 2: into Vatican realism, you love it. You'll love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, your number.
Speaker 4: Two was okay, probably Clint Eastwood's last movie, so you know,
Speaker 4: not not fantastic, but okay, pretty you know it stuck
Speaker 4: with you. I'm really liking the Dune Prophecy Show.
Speaker 3: Really, I'm a Dune.
Speaker 2: Dork, right, Yeah. And uh, and I got my wife.
Speaker 4: I rewatched Station eleven, which I hadn't watched, and I
Speaker 4: watched basically when I was really sick, I think with COVID,
Speaker 4: and I wasn't sure how much. I was sort of
Speaker 4: like a fever dream that I remembered from it, and
Speaker 4: then you watch it and you're like, no, no, I
Speaker 4: remember correctly. It's kind of like a fever dream.
Speaker 2: But she really liked it. We really like I enjoyed
Speaker 2: rewatching it, So there you go.
Speaker 3: Okay. I will make one final recommendation, which is I
Speaker 3: think I didn't do this the last time is the
Speaker 3: movie Anora, which is it's spectacularly good and I don't
Speaker 3: And here's what I'm going to say about it. It's
Speaker 3: very dirty. So if you if that's something it's hard
Speaker 3: for you to take, don't go. But it is one
Speaker 3: of the most surprising and brilliantly told movies that takes
Speaker 3: twists and turns you cannot see coming. It's about a
Speaker 3: It's about a a as they say, a sex stripper basically,
Speaker 3: who falls in with a the son of a Russian
Speaker 3: oligarch who lives in a giant mansion in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 3: and what happens to them as they fall in love
Speaker 3: or seem to fall in love, and it just goes
Speaker 3: like a rock a train into all kinds of hilarious,
Speaker 3: surprising and very moving places. It's probably going to win
Speaker 3: the Oscar. Mikey Maddon, who plays the title role of Honora,
Speaker 3: will almost certainly win the Oscar. And uh, it is
Speaker 3: a It is a mussy though it is very dirty.
Speaker 3: So that's my one.
Speaker 4: Push me to that briar patch. There you go, all right, guys,
Speaker 4: great to see you. Sorry from my from home. Yeah,
Speaker 4: thank you, talk to you soon, welcome home, Talk to
Speaker 4: you later.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Peter