Speaker 1: Rob your your your sound is a little sharp, crackly.
Speaker 2: My two. Hold on.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to turn the game down.
Speaker 2: How about this probably better? Right? Just better?
Speaker 1: That sounds good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just turn the game down. That's all I had
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, you turned down the game.
Speaker 2: Just turn down the game.
Speaker 1: I'm very violent and the mos better. Well it's twelve
Speaker 1: days before the election, and this is block culture and
Speaker 1: I'm John Podhorns in New York with an interesting introduction
Speaker 1: of Rob Long in Princeton, New Jersey.
Speaker 2: I was here last time I was here. The last
Speaker 2: block shows.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just getting I'm just getting used to it.
Speaker 1: I'm just getting used to the idea of you in Princeton,
Speaker 1: New Jersey.
Speaker 2: I believe me. I have I have some thoughts. We
Speaker 2: should talk about Princeton.
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Okay, I would I would like to have
Speaker 1: And but as ever as he has been since the
Speaker 1: mid nineties. Jonah Goldberg in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Hi, Jonah, Hey, John, who were you before the mid nineties?
Speaker 2: Has been he's been since the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: Jonah Goldberg, You moved to Washington.
Speaker 2: The early nineties, early nineties.
Speaker 4: I came back in Prague, visited my girlfriend who was
Speaker 4: going to law school here and basically never left DC.
Speaker 1: So there we go. You know, swamp Rob, You know
Speaker 1: that Jonah and I, Sariatum. I think I eight or
Speaker 1: nine years before Jonah lived in the same apartment building
Speaker 1: in in Adams Morgan, Is that right? We did eighteen
Speaker 1: forty three? Mint would place you right? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Did you find any weird stuff, Jonah when you moved in,
Speaker 3: any kind of weird And.
Speaker 1: I don't think we lived in the same apartment.
Speaker 2: But the usual stain unusual, same story.
Speaker 1: That was amazing to me was that I had been
Speaker 1: living in New York, living in this dump in Times
Speaker 1: Square in nineteen eighty three, paying I don't know, four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month or something, sharing the apartment with
Speaker 1: my friend Todd Lindberg. And then I got this job
Speaker 1: in Washington that paid the princely sum of I don't
Speaker 1: know what, it paid, like thirty five thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: which was like more money than I had ever thought
Speaker 1: I would ever make. So I could rent an apartment
Speaker 1: for five hundred and fifty dollars and I go to
Speaker 1: this building and it's a duplex. When you go down
Speaker 1: the stairs and there's the living room is downstairs and
Speaker 1: the bedroom was upstairs. And I was like, I'm.
Speaker 2: Rich, I'm rich.
Speaker 1: I have I have two levels. I living in a
Speaker 1: place with a with a with a hot plate, yeah,
Speaker 1: and a half and a half fridge in a tenement
Speaker 1: on West forty sixth Street. I have. I have hit
Speaker 1: the lottery.
Speaker 3: You have and you can take should we repair upstairs
Speaker 3: for DJ just Stief's You could say that if you
Speaker 3: had people exactly know.
Speaker 1: But it was sort of like one of these New
Speaker 1: York parochial New York experiences where you go anywhere else
Speaker 1: in the country and it's like, oh, you don't have
Speaker 1: to spend sixty percent of your income on rent.
Speaker 4: Now, my wife, my wife's absolute favorite real estate porn
Speaker 4: thing is what like what a million dollars gets you
Speaker 4: or whatever it is in the or the New York Times,
Speaker 4: And like, you know, in New York City, it's a
Speaker 4: refrigerator box with insulation and.
Speaker 2: Theoria it's an eight room Gothic mansion.
Speaker 1: Well, have you ever watched My Dream Lottery Home on HGTV.
Speaker 1: So this is a show. The concept of it is
Speaker 1: people win the lottery and then they're going to buy
Speaker 1: the house of their of their dreams. And so the
Speaker 1: guy who is covered in tattoos, the host, takes them
Speaker 1: to see three different places. And so sometimes they have
Speaker 1: a lot of lottery money. Sometimes they've wont you know,
Speaker 1: like half a million dollars. Sometimes they have one hundred,
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars something like that. And he takes
Speaker 1: them there in you know, North Carolina, Florida, Maine, wherever.
Speaker 1: And it's always like, okay, and here is blue Bonnet Castle.
Speaker 1: You know, they give names to these houses. And it's like,
Speaker 1: how much do you think this house goes for? And
Speaker 1: it's like got eight bedrooms and three acres I don't know,
Speaker 1: and this and that, and it's like, I don't know
Speaker 1: two hundred and ninety thousand dollars. And then the guy says, well,
Speaker 1: actually it's two hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I couldn't get a bathroom for two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy eight thousand dollars where I live like your.
Speaker 2: You also you require a certain opulence from your bathroom.
Speaker 1: To be fair, you have my bathroom. You've seen you've
Speaker 1: been to my house for dinner.
Speaker 2: Rob I scrupulously avoided the bathroom. I have to be
Speaker 2: honest with you. I made a point not to not to.
Speaker 1: I don't want, I don't want.
Speaker 3: I have a very I have a wonderful image of you.
Speaker 1: I have a sense of.
Speaker 2: Your your incredible nobility.
Speaker 3: I don't want to see your lot people, people who
Speaker 3: I really admire and I like, whose bathrooms I do
Speaker 3: not want to see, and yours is one of them.
Speaker 1: Nineteen o eight, apartment building bathrooms were tended not to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: opulent would not be a word I would use.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I'm experiencing this firsthand, as you know. I'm
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, I recently moved to Princeton, New Jersey,
Speaker 3: and it's it's a disconcerting. It's a disconcertingly lovely place.
Speaker 3: It's weird. It's a it is like, you know, it's lovely,
Speaker 3: but it's you walk around it and it's like Stepford.
Speaker 3: It really is like Stepford, but Stepford if it was
Speaker 3: done you know, by a DEI person, Because everything like
Speaker 3: it's Richard Scary's Dei.
Speaker 2: Everything. Everything is a landing eye.
Speaker 3: People walking with ice cream cones and their families, multicultural,
Speaker 3: there's seeks and turbans, and there's like a bunch of
Speaker 3: like Africans and two shiki's.
Speaker 2: And other people wandering around, and everyon's got their dog.
Speaker 2: It's the most pleasant.
Speaker 3: It's the place where, if you if you put it
Speaker 3: this way, you know in colleges, where they have to
Speaker 3: take you know, they take that picture and the picture
Speaker 3: is absurdly multicultural, and you think the catalog Princeton, you.
Speaker 2: Don't need to arrange that.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just happening naturally in the little town
Speaker 3: in front of the upscale stores. And Prince is one
Speaker 3: of those places where if you see a disheveled, kind
Speaker 3: of shabby looking old person mumbling, your first question is
Speaker 3: I wonder what they teach.
Speaker 1: There? You go. So, I have been on college tour
Speaker 1: now for months with my twelfth grader. So I have
Speaker 1: seen colleges.
Speaker 4: All and you mean your twelfth grade age child, not
Speaker 4: like your blood boy or anything.
Speaker 2: Right, he's not going to.
Speaker 3: Set his blood boy you very much like he worked
Speaker 3: at a nonprofit something like that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he is all shiny and chrome.
Speaker 2: Anyway, you said you'd said you said you'd educate me.
Speaker 3: Shut up your orange juice.
Speaker 1: So and had been on college tours with my daughter
Speaker 1: who is now in her third year Williams. And so
Speaker 1: I've now seen I don't know, you guys, Jonah like
Speaker 1: speaks at colleges all the time, so he's probably seen colleges.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that many in my life, but I've
Speaker 1: now seen all these schools up and down the Eastern
Speaker 1: Sea ward. I think Princeton is the most strikingly beautiful
Speaker 1: of them all. It's definitely okay. I mean I I
Speaker 1: don't know that there is anything quite comparable to it
Speaker 1: outside of Oxford and Cambridge.
Speaker 3: Well, just to be just to be yeah accurate, like
Speaker 3: I'm at the seminary, so I'm at the Princeton Sements
Speaker 3: Prince of Theological Semony across the street.
Speaker 2: They were.
Speaker 3: They began as the same university, your same institution, as
Speaker 3: all these places did, and then they sort of gradually
Speaker 3: one became secular and one became theological. The the so
Speaker 3: there they have the same some of the buildings have
Speaker 3: the same names on put it that way, it's like
Speaker 3: just the same people gave the same building. The Prince
Speaker 3: of Theological Seminary campus is the boiled down.
Speaker 2: Beautiful version.
Speaker 3: Just there's no straining as anything that's smaller and they
Speaker 3: have tripled down somehow on.
Speaker 2: The only way I can describe.
Speaker 3: It is pharmaceutical ad quality trees. It's a it's a
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical ad quality bottom right now.
Speaker 2: It's like insane.
Speaker 3: And so you're walking, you're walking to class and it's
Speaker 3: like this giant red tree and or giant orange tree.
Speaker 3: And in the spring it's I was here in the
Speaker 3: spring or late spring, and it's this beautiful glush jungle
Speaker 3: and you just think this is I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's wasted on my classmates, because my classmates are
Speaker 3: here for a big purpose and there and they're they're graduateudents.
Speaker 2: But I think it's definitely wasted on the undergraduates.
Speaker 3: They to wander around Princeton University campus and they.
Speaker 2: They they really should be.
Speaker 3: I mean, like anything else here, I'm sound like an
Speaker 3: old man, which is not for the first time of
Speaker 3: this podcast. They really should appreciate what they have, and
Speaker 3: I don't think they do.
Speaker 1: Okay, can I can I speak to this because my
Speaker 1: daughter who is twenty and goes to Williams which is
Speaker 1: in the northwestern the northwestern corner of Massachusetts right where.
Speaker 2: Right Williams very pretty right.
Speaker 1: So she daily is like she calls me and says,
Speaker 1: this is the most beautiful day I've ever seen. She
Speaker 1: sends a photograph of a turning tree or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that it's necessarily the case that
Speaker 1: the kids are not experiencing the beauty. At least I
Speaker 1: have one who certainly does. I want to tell you
Speaker 1: guys about my quickly about my visit to Brown, which
Speaker 1: I had never seen with my daughter, because Brown also
Speaker 1: a very beautiful and interesting campus because it is it
Speaker 1: kind of precedes the city that was built up around it,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of integrated into the neighborhood of Providence
Speaker 1: in a way that I don't quite know that other
Speaker 1: campuses are that I'm aware of. So you're kind of
Speaker 1: in the city and you're on campus, and it kind
Speaker 1: of there are different quads and different crossing the streets,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's very striking. But two things about
Speaker 1: the visit to Brown. One, we go in for the
Speaker 1: tour and they have an information session before the tour,
Speaker 1: and the first big slide at the tour of Brown
Speaker 1: is a land acknowledgment, and they tell you that they
Speaker 1: worked very, very hard in the land acknowledgment acknowledging that
Speaker 1: the land that Brown sits on is the land of
Speaker 1: the Narragansett Indians or I'm sorry, I'm suppose I'm not
Speaker 1: supposed to say Indian, and that they acknowledge the land
Speaker 1: and they and you know, I was reading this and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, you know, if you really want to
Speaker 1: go with the land acknowledgement, why don't you give it back?
Speaker 1: Just give it back. You know, skid More, which is
Speaker 1: in Saratoga Springs, actually bought an entire h you know,
Speaker 1: like thousands of acres in the mid sixties and build
Speaker 1: a new campus somewhere on land that had purchased. So
Speaker 1: if Brown is so concerned about the asappropriation of land
Speaker 1: from the narragans It's it could just you could just
Speaker 1: give it back. It's got a huge downland. It could
Speaker 1: just go buy stuff, tear build a new campus and
Speaker 1: give it back to the Narraganza Indians.
Speaker 4: Or buy new parts of land and give that to them.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe they'd like something fresh.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, the acknowledgment's
Speaker 1: a little chintzy because that couldn't afford to give it back.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like, you know, it's sort of like
Speaker 4: driving around in a car with a sign that says
Speaker 4: this is stolen property exactly.
Speaker 1: So that was number one.
Speaker 2: Number Well, I would saying, can we just.
Speaker 3: Maybe they should just I mean, I don't think they
Speaker 3: need to give it back, but I think they should
Speaker 3: just change it from atlant acknowledgment to a you know,
Speaker 3: a land hat.
Speaker 2: Tip, the land hat tip. You'd like to give a
Speaker 2: hat tip to the.
Speaker 3: Land ht colon maragans it Academic communities may just a
Speaker 3: lands a land citation.
Speaker 1: Yes. The second landing I'll tell you about is walking
Speaker 1: around campus with one of these very enthusiastic campus guides
Speaker 1: who tells you that this is really super exciting and
Speaker 1: this site on the campus is really instagrammable if you
Speaker 1: want to take your picture, it's really instagrammable. It's the
Speaker 1: first time I've actually heard someone use the word instagrammable
Speaker 1: and ironically or maybe even actually spoken but again saying
Speaker 1: this is very instagrammable over here like that, but passing
Speaker 1: by the Ruth Simmons squad, who Simmons being the someone
Speaker 1: who was President Brown for like eighteen years, first African
Speaker 1: American to be president of an Ivy League University apparently
Speaker 1: produced a report on Brown's shameful reliance on money that
Speaker 1: had been earned from the slave trade. Right, and you are, now,
Speaker 1: as a Brown student, obliged to read the Ruth Simmons
Speaker 1: report before you come to school. And then I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, beat yourself with a palm frond
Speaker 1: or whatever for the sin of going to the school
Speaker 1: that was built on the back again once again. They
Speaker 1: could give it back, or they could, you know, if
Speaker 1: they want to pay reparations. They got an endowment, go
Speaker 1: go pay reparations. Like I I, that's not my business
Speaker 1: the private institution. But walking through the Ruth Simmons Quad,
Speaker 1: there is a sign and the sign has an arrow
Speaker 1: pointing to the symbolic slave garden.
Speaker 2: What wow.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but you know,
Speaker 1: can be quite hard to cultivate, but apparently symbolic slaves
Speaker 1: are really delicious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you want to eat local, you gotta or.
Speaker 1: Or or they bloom, you know, they bloom in interesting ways.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe in the spring you have to plant
Speaker 1: them now, let them let them sort of get through
Speaker 1: the tough winter. The symbolic slave garden. I don't know,
Speaker 1: what it's symbolic. I didn't get to go into it
Speaker 1: because we were passing by, not going through. But so
Speaker 1: the symbolic slave garden the acknowledgment both indicate a level
Speaker 1: of virtue signaling that I think is typifies why Donald
Speaker 1: Trump they win the election in twelve days and that's
Speaker 1: all I got for you.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: I think that it's the symbolic. It's a symbolic garden
Speaker 3: for a symbolic feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the symbolic how does it modify the slave for
Speaker 1: the gardener? Not? I know, That's what I'm saying. A
Speaker 1: garden is either real or I suppose you could have
Speaker 1: The Garden of Eden is presumably symbolic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm gonna say the garden of symbolic slaves really creepy,
Speaker 4: extra vibe Mary.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like Poultergeist. It's like, you build this garden,
Speaker 1: what did you do with the what did you do
Speaker 1: with the people?
Speaker 3: I would just like to talk to the person who
Speaker 3: who had to dig it and planted, who I I
Speaker 3: think probably has a tenuous connection to the studies at
Speaker 3: Brown and it probably is more often than not appalled
Speaker 3: at what he or she sees.
Speaker 2: Brown would be if it was an unpaid intern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. First, if I were really really going
Speaker 1: to go politically and correct, I could say that, you know,
Speaker 1: in the garden, they grow a lot of corn, but
Speaker 1: we call it maize. Right. So but in terms of
Speaker 1: beautiful colleges, it's it's pretty beautiful. I'm Colgate, Yeah, up
Speaker 1: State New York, stunningly beautiful.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I mean, if if a college campus
Speaker 3: is not beautiful in mid to late October, don't go well.
Speaker 4: I mean New England, a New England college campus that's
Speaker 4: over one hundred and fifty years old. If it's not pretty,
Speaker 4: they should just shut it down.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It kind of reminds me like whenever I would visit
Speaker 4: my daughter in summer camp. She went to summer camp
Speaker 4: in Maine, and it's like this very camp Walden. It's
Speaker 4: like where the parent Trap original camp was, and it's
Speaker 4: over one hundred years old, and every time I visit it,
Speaker 4: I would always be like, you know, the best real
Speaker 4: estate advice you can get is, if you're buying real estate,
Speaker 4: do it one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because like it is really just a fantastic piece
Speaker 2: a land. And if you but you can't can't do
Speaker 2: that today.
Speaker 4: And like, but all those college campuses, I mean, I
Speaker 4: I used to do a lot more college speaking, so
Speaker 4: I've been to like Boden and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: All of them.
Speaker 4: Are are super pretty. I can't say that all of them.
Speaker 4: I don't want to speak with too broad a brush,
Speaker 4: but I can't say that all of the students at
Speaker 4: all of those kinds of schools are all equally impressive.
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot more variation than, certainly than
Speaker 4: some of those schools would like you to discuss.
Speaker 1: So it's not like Lake Wobbegone Right, where all the
Speaker 1: children are above average.
Speaker 2: Like that is that I would always say.
Speaker 1: Lived experience, I would.
Speaker 3: I would also say that despite their youth, uh many,
Speaker 3: if not most, of the students at those campuses are
Speaker 3: not attractive enough to be there in that setting.
Speaker 4: They are not pharma pharmacological ad quality.
Speaker 2: They are notesthtically pleasing. They are not. They are not,
Speaker 2: and it's too bad.
Speaker 1: They So they are not Ryan O'Neill and Ali McGrath.
Speaker 3: No, they need to dress better, they need to spend
Speaker 3: a little bit more time, you know, just put themselves
Speaker 3: together before they leave the dorm or wherever they're they're staying,
Speaker 3: or they're you know, they're polycule.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 2: the young people live, but they It does.
Speaker 3: Seem to me that just walking down I live, I
Speaker 3: live a little bit from a from a. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm walking through a universal, big university campus every day.
Speaker 3: You know, hey, come on, look at the look at
Speaker 3: the trees and the buildings. Don't you think you need
Speaker 3: to step it up a little bit?
Speaker 1: Just I would just like to say, that's the important point. Jonah,
Speaker 1: this is you. You bring up an important point, which
Speaker 1: is it? I'm not I don't focus on on on
Speaker 1: the on the women or the girls or what they're wearing,
Speaker 1: because I'm not struck by it. What I'm struck by
Speaker 1: is this is the sartorial style of the male upper
Speaker 1: future leader of America between the ages of like eighteen
Speaker 1: and twenty two. Now, I dressed like crap in college.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you otherwise. I bought clothing
Speaker 1: at the Woolworths in the Hyde Park shopping center. I
Speaker 1: would buy flannel shirts that cost seven dollars, you know,
Speaker 1: when I needed clothing and that sort of thing I
Speaker 1: mean and jeans. I'm not praising my own forty five
Speaker 1: year old look back in the late seventies and early eighties,
Speaker 1: but they really do all look like their seven. And
Speaker 1: the mail this thing about the thing going around in
Speaker 1: marking the anniversary of October seventh, and people are saying
Speaker 1: in Israel that, you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: happened on October seventh when the Nova Music the massacre
Speaker 1: at the Nova Music Fessel happened, is that way fewer
Speaker 1: people died that might have died otherwise, because all the
Speaker 1: kids who were at the Nova Music Festival were veterans,
Speaker 1: had been in the IDF and knew how to defend
Speaker 1: themselves and had training. And there's an astonishing story about
Speaker 1: the kid who was in a shelter with Hirsch goolber
Speaker 1: poland the one who was just executed was one of
Speaker 1: the six executed in September. And this kid's name was Honor,
Speaker 1: and they they were in a he and Hirschgelberg and
Speaker 1: others were in this shelter and Hamas kept throwing in
Speaker 1: opening the door and throwing in a hand grenade, and
Speaker 1: this kid, Honor would pick up the hand grenade, open
Speaker 1: the door, and throw it back out at them. And
Speaker 1: this happened seven times until Hamas realized that they were
Speaker 1: not going to succeed.
Speaker 3: Seven times the seven times wisn took. I mean, you
Speaker 3: think that after the first time they would have figured
Speaker 3: it out, but I guess they weren't just sending their best.
Speaker 1: But get this kid. So this kid was level heading
Speaker 1: a kid. I don't know how old he was, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, but he had been through this experience, right.
Speaker 1: So all these nova they were there at a rave
Speaker 1: basically right, but they were had been through the Israeli
Speaker 1: military and they are now in the Israeli military now.
Speaker 1: And I have this this kind of weird feeling experience.
Speaker 1: It's like you walk around these campuses and I wasn't
Speaker 1: in the military. I wasn't you know, I wasn't conscripted.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about that, but man, there is an
Speaker 1: age there is some kind of age life gap that
Speaker 1: is very disheartening, it seems to me when you're talking
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you so like, we're not going to say
Speaker 4: where my daughter goes to school, because there are bad
Speaker 4: people in the world.
Speaker 2: But and they let me know it, but my daughter
Speaker 2: goes to a prestigious liberal arts college and her in Helsinki,
Speaker 2: you can say it. You know, she got hit hard
Speaker 2: by COVID.
Speaker 4: You know, so, like navigating social life in college is
Speaker 4: a thing for everybody, but like particularly her cohort that
Speaker 4: got kind of screwed out of their last year of
Speaker 4: high school and all that. And she's telling me about
Speaker 4: the kids and like how to and she's asking me
Speaker 4: for like advice about social stuff, and but like two
Speaker 4: boys in her dorm had emotional support dogs and not
Speaker 4: like I don't mean like they spotted their seizures or
Speaker 4: anything like that, right, I mean like just straight up
Speaker 4: they feel anxiety and they need emotionals wortrud And I'm
Speaker 4: not trying to make too much light of that. But
Speaker 4: like I was like, sweetie, and then she had all
Speaker 4: the other stories like that, and I was like, look, honey,
Speaker 4: I want to be helpful as I can and giving
Speaker 4: you advice in all this.
Speaker 2: But when I went to.
Speaker 4: College, if you needed an emotional support dog to get
Speaker 4: through the night, you would got would have gotten mercilessly
Speaker 4: made fun of, even if everyone liked your dog. And
Speaker 4: I went to an all women's college, and the idea
Speaker 4: that like I like, so like is what passes for
Speaker 4: acceptable levels of sensitivity? I mean, like the number of
Speaker 4: stories my daughter had when she first went to school
Speaker 4: about boys complaining constantly about hurt feelings for the mildest
Speaker 4: of criticisms. Will It's just really kind of remarkable and
Speaker 4: I and that's something that I think is very new
Speaker 4: in our experience. Like I just don't and I don't
Speaker 4: know if it's receded post COVID in a certain way,
Speaker 4: but it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 2: Mm.
Speaker 3: Well, here's what I don't see on campus. Then, now
Speaker 3: that I'm the glob campus correspondent, I feel like I
Speaker 3: could say this, I don't see a lot of you
Speaker 3: are Princeton stringer, I am, Yet I don't see I
Speaker 3: don't see a lot of protests here. I mean, I
Speaker 3: see there's kids walking around, a few have the CAFIA,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's a lot of free Palestinas in that.
Speaker 3: But it also feels to me a little bit like
Speaker 3: it's embedded now in the sort of university apparatus that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of posters for teachings and conversations and
Speaker 3: all that stuff, and not so much dialogue. Not peom
Speaker 3: Be screaming on the quad, which I mean is actually
Speaker 3: kind of good. It kind of in a way, it's
Speaker 3: sort of like I think everybody kind of woke up.
Speaker 2: I hope anyway around here.
Speaker 1: This is not I am very nervous that this is
Speaker 1: the calm before the storm. But go ahead, Jones.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't want to trigger John to start talking about anti
Speaker 4: Israel protests on college campuses, but I do think like
Speaker 4: Columbia is a special case. And as they talked about
Speaker 4: a lot on the commentary podcasts at the time, part
Speaker 4: of the problem was Columbia's on the subway line, and
Speaker 4: you had a lot of outside horrible people coming and
Speaker 4: it was just sort of so Columbia was on a
Speaker 4: special case. There a couple of other schools that were
Speaker 4: special cases. But I think one of the incredible screw
Speaker 4: ups of a lot of elite schools was that they
Speaker 4: liked the coverage to a certain extent that the whole
Speaker 4: campus was overwhelmed with protests when in reality, like I
Speaker 4: know for a fact that like at UCLA or USC
Speaker 4: or USA I can't remember which, the area that was
Speaker 4: like super protesting was like you know, a half acre
Speaker 4: that was cordoned off, and everyone else kind of walked
Speaker 4: around it for the most part. At I have a
Speaker 4: friend whose kid is at Notre Dame, and like, Notre
Speaker 4: Dame handled all that stuff very well. But the end
Speaker 4: of that Protestant is like, oh, yeah, they're doing that
Speaker 4: from one to four over the but like the cameras, yeah,
Speaker 4: make it look like, you know, campus in flames, kind
Speaker 4: of yeah. And I think it's so many of these
Speaker 4: sort of aging boomer type administrators. They're so invested in
Speaker 4: the idea that protest is part of the campus experience,
Speaker 4: part of the educational experience, that they they wanted to
Speaker 4: highlight it like it was a new friggin gym.
Speaker 2: Also, I feel like.
Speaker 3: They it was exciting to them to to like watch
Speaker 3: this happen again to validate all of their legitimate misgivings
Speaker 3: of a have any about the sixties, which was a
Speaker 3: complete loser decade, And if you're an overworked graduate student,
Speaker 3: it's like irresistible not to want to cancel class and
Speaker 3: exams for this. But I still maintain my point, which
Speaker 3: is I feel like people woke up after that long
Speaker 3: the way you might wake up after a night out
Speaker 3: with drinks, and I think we've all had that experience.
Speaker 3: So I got to tell you about this game changing
Speaker 3: product that I used before a night out with drinks.
Speaker 2: It's called z biotics pre alcohol.
Speaker 3: Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't
Speaker 3: back the next day like I used to, So I
Speaker 3: have to make a choice either can you have a
Speaker 3: great night or a great next day? So, but there
Speaker 3: now is a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh
Speaker 3: after a night of drinking, and it's.
Speaker 2: With z biotics pre alcohol. Pre alcohol is.
Speaker 3: The world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by
Speaker 3: PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here is
Speaker 3: how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into
Speaker 3: a toxic byproduct in the gut, and it's this byproduct.
Speaker 3: It's not the hydri it's dehydration, or eat an apple,
Speaker 3: eat a banana.
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
Speaker 3: It's this byproduct that is what's to blame for your
Speaker 3: rough next day. And pre alcohol produces an enzyme that
Speaker 3: breaks down this by product. So just remember to make
Speaker 3: z biotics your first drink of the night and to
Speaker 3: drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow and I
Speaker 3: have been doing I haven't done it in a while
Speaker 3: because I have to.
Speaker 2: Work every day with school.
Speaker 3: A school is really hard. But last weekend and this
Speaker 3: is coming, I'm going to a wedding on Friday. I'm
Speaker 3: actually officiating at a wedding and officially officiating at a
Speaker 3: wedding on Friday, so I'm not going to be in robes.
Speaker 3: I haven't been ordained, but you know anyway, and I
Speaker 3: will on I will on Friday morning be drinking tomorrow morning,
Speaker 3: be drinking my z biotics I guarantee you. So go
Speaker 3: to zbiotics dot com slash glob to learn more and
Speaker 3: get fifteen percent off your first order when you use.
Speaker 2: Glop at checkout.
Speaker 3: That's z by hold, I just just lost my place there.
Speaker 3: Go to z biotics dot com slash glob to learn
Speaker 3: more and get a fifteen percent off your first order
Speaker 3: when you use glop at checkout. Z Biotics remember is
Speaker 3: backed by a one hundred percent money back guarantees, so
Speaker 3: if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they refund your money,
Speaker 3: no questions ask. That is a real guarantee. So remember
Speaker 3: to head to zbiotics dot com slash glop use the
Speaker 3: code glop at checkout for fifteen percent off, and we
Speaker 3: thank Zbiotics for sponsoring the glob podcast and our good
Speaker 3: Next Mornings and for being such a loyal advertiser here.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to go to speculate. Now, twelve
Speaker 1: days the election, a couple of things have happened on
Speaker 1: campus that seemed to be morphing the protests into something
Speaker 1: a little different. There have been a couple of occupations
Speaker 1: of buildings on campus. So this did happen once at
Speaker 1: Columbia in the spring, right at Hamilton Hall got occupied.
Speaker 1: But at the University of Minnesota there was building occupied,
Speaker 1: and I think at some other college in California building
Speaker 1: was occupied. That this is what's really relevant of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, when college campus radicals occupied administration buildings, moved
Speaker 1: into the president's office, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That was a big trope. So twelve days from now,
Speaker 1: let us say Trump wins the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 1: this would not be the anti semitism outbreak tests that
Speaker 1: I am now talking about. But having been marinated in
Speaker 1: that and trained in it for a year, and having
Speaker 1: had this capacity to learn how to disrupt, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen. Because the president Wesleyan has
Speaker 1: a piece in Slate today yesterday today saying, I don't
Speaker 1: like this Michael Roth, who is a terrible person and
Speaker 1: a terrible college president, terrible public intellectual in every possible way.
Speaker 1: I don't like this viewpoint neutrality stuff. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like viewpoint neutrality because.
Speaker 2: I can't tell from the rants yet.
Speaker 3: No, he's saying, he's saying that I don't terrible person
Speaker 3: because JD.
Speaker 1: Vance and and Donald Trump are evil and they want
Speaker 1: to just destroy free expression in the university, and we
Speaker 1: need activism more than ever. So the president of Wesleyan
Speaker 1: is now essentially implicitly calling for campus protest against an
Speaker 1: election result that he doesn't like. And that's a It's
Speaker 1: not that he's that's a small school and in northern Connecticut.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's not really going to be it's not
Speaker 1: a harbinger of things to come. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in this country if Trump wins
Speaker 1: between now and January twentieth, and I don't think it
Speaker 1: could be very not pretty. And so I'm just speculating
Speaker 1: that the very not prettiness may start on campuses and
Speaker 1: explode outward from there, because that's because there has been
Speaker 1: a kind of a prologue to that in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three early twenty four.
Speaker 2: But to use your language, I think not prettiness is
Speaker 2: baked into the cake. No matter who wins it just
Speaker 2: where does it manifest itself?
Speaker 1: Right? But right? Well, so the not prettiness. If Paris wins,
Speaker 1: we at least have a dry run of that, right,
Speaker 1: which is claims of fraud, stupid electoral lawsuits. Trump winning
Speaker 1: also given the rhetoric that is going to be dominating
Speaker 1: the discussions over the next two weeks since Kamala Harris's
Speaker 1: Cilly decided to go with the he's a fascist and
Speaker 1: is going to destroy democracy as we know it. That's
Speaker 1: her closing message. Apparently they've decided that all the other
Speaker 1: stuff isn't working and this may be the one thing
Speaker 1: that works. So maybe she'll win and then it won't really,
Speaker 1: But if he wins and America is over, then the
Speaker 1: use of violence against the Blues brother the use of
Speaker 1: excessive violence against the Blues Brothers has been approved by
Speaker 1: the establishment somehow, right, I mean, what are you going
Speaker 1: to do? If Trump wins, you are you are. Basically
Speaker 1: it's nineteen thirty three and the Reichstag fire is coming,
Speaker 1: and what do you you know if you went back
Speaker 1: in time and knew the Reichstag fire was coming, what
Speaker 1: would you do. That's what a lot of people in
Speaker 1: this country are going to be thinking. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know. I had no way to game it out. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: am I being hystero.
Speaker 2: I don't mean I don't know. I mean a little
Speaker 2: to me, A little bit, I guess it. I mean
Speaker 2: I might. You're my priors that I was.
Speaker 3: Appalled by the post twenty twenty election behavior of the president,
Speaker 3: the then president. I felt it's disqualifying for him. I
Speaker 3: was not a fan to begin with, so it's your
Speaker 3: you know, you can get.
Speaker 1: Me on that.
Speaker 2: And he was terrible.
Speaker 3: January sixth was terrible, but it was you know, it
Speaker 3: wasn't a game of capture the flag where they had
Speaker 3: got If that guy with the horns had gotten in,
Speaker 3: had gotten the Golden Gabble, well he would have been.
Speaker 2: The President of the United States by definite. Like it's
Speaker 2: not what it is, right, So it's like I I bad,
Speaker 2: and then they'll be bad, and then they're gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: He's sat the iron throwne right, the goblet, Mike Pence
Speaker 1: is iron throne.
Speaker 3: I know, so all that's possible. But maybe I'm a Pollyanna.
Speaker 3: I you know, I think I think it's going to
Speaker 3: be horrible for those of us who don't like this
Speaker 3: kind of thing to live through. I think the next
Speaker 3: four years of a Trump presidency is going to be
Speaker 3: repellent and grotesque in a way that the Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: for presidency will be in some way grimly deliciously satisfying,
Speaker 3: because she's so awful and so incompetent. But I I
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to be the end of anything.
Speaker 2: Maybe it'll burn itself out. Maybe you got to have it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, But to me, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: it's going to be the end of anything.
Speaker 1: The end of anything, as a question is other people
Speaker 1: are going to think it's the not a bunch of
Speaker 1: people on either side are going to think it's the
Speaker 1: end of everything, and therefore they they will be activated
Speaker 1: to do could be activated to do radical and extreme things.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm, I mean I think that's that's baked in
Speaker 4: no matter what, and and you know, the only thing
Speaker 4: that gives me solace is knowing that Donald Trump is
Speaker 4: capable of the kind of sober, responsible rhetorical restraint that
Speaker 4: can reassure people in times of excess that we've come
Speaker 4: to expect from him.
Speaker 2: No, I mean like the I mean I.
Speaker 1: Like all of us.
Speaker 2: We think and talk about this stuff a lot. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe not Rob because he's still doing the big ats,
Speaker 2: but POT and I do, and I float above these questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I flowed.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I float above your little questions. I got
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 4: I think if I was going purely by my own
Speaker 4: mental health and my own satisfaction and my own best
Speaker 4: interest reputationally and professionally, it would be better for Trump
Speaker 4: to win, because then I would get to say I
Speaker 4: told you so for four years. And if Harris wins,
Speaker 4: which I think would be better for the country, I'll
Speaker 4: just be honest and I think better for conservatism. But
Speaker 4: my life will be pretty friggin miserable because people will
Speaker 4: be like, you wanted this, this is what you wanted,
Speaker 4: You got what you wanted, and and so look, I
Speaker 4: think she'll be a failed, mediocre. Most likely scenarios shes
Speaker 4: gonna be a failed, mediocre president and that would actually
Speaker 4: be good for the Republican Party and good for conservatism
Speaker 4: and better than you know, the worst case scenarios but Trump.
Speaker 1: But like.
Speaker 4: I agree with Rob, I mean, when you're talking about
Speaker 4: like must get the Golden gabble, Count reminds me of
Speaker 4: James the Second and the Glorious Revolution. He takes the
Speaker 4: seal of the Realm, the seal, the Seal of the
Speaker 4: King right, the seal of the Goblet, and he throws
Speaker 4: it in the river and he's like, ah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: and then they go to get in and what was it,
Speaker 4: William or whatever it says, to make a new seal.
Speaker 2: I was trying to explain this.
Speaker 1: I was explaining this to my son that for some reason,
Speaker 1: you know this famously or notoriously or whatever, the most
Speaker 1: complicated period in history has been a judge to be
Speaker 1: the period of the false Dmitries that followed the death
Speaker 1: and the Terrible Yeah, because in I think the space
Speaker 1: of seven years, so there were like one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six different pretenders to the throne, all of whom
Speaker 1: claimed that they were Ivan's son Dimitri, and there was
Speaker 1: because it was whatever century was sixteenth, fifteenth.
Speaker 2: I don't know how how how could you know.
Speaker 1: Literally, how could you know that somebody wasn't There were
Speaker 1: no photographs.
Speaker 2: I really have to know.
Speaker 3: Only about twelve people had to know, right, I mean
Speaker 3: right right, And if you were like you sitting around
Speaker 3: in your ste or you're like the steps, or you're
Speaker 3: like eating dirt or something or boiling harble bark tee,
Speaker 3: didn't really matter who was the legitimate air well, that's right, But.
Speaker 1: That's what one of the reasons. So there were I
Speaker 1: don't know there were there were two pokes around one
Speaker 1: hundred changes of government. Because nobody actually knew who anybody was.
Speaker 1: There was no way you could say, I'm Henry the Eighth.
Speaker 1: How do you know he wasn't Henry the Eighth?
Speaker 2: I am, I am?
Speaker 1: I mean unless yeah, exactly. So that's the seal thing, right,
Speaker 1: that that was the that was that was James, That
Speaker 1: was James the second, not really understanding that we had
Speaker 1: progressed beyond that kind of thing into Yes, the fact
Speaker 1: is that the seal was not the The seal was not.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a magic sister that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Calimber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that guy was going to get rubber stamping.
Speaker 1: Its hard, flying in ponds, handing out swords. Well, that is.
Speaker 3: For a proper moist and bince is what it was.
Speaker 3: I have to say that that that that does bring
Speaker 3: I cannot believe I'm asking this. Oh wait, I cannot
Speaker 3: believe I'm.
Speaker 2: Asking this question.
Speaker 3: I have a very very interesting question to ask and
Speaker 3: before I do, I just want to talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about Shopify. I don't know if you know Shopify.
Speaker 3: I know Shopify as.
Speaker 2: A customer of Shopify.
Speaker 3: In fact, if you look at the blurred behind me
Speaker 3: image of a circular bookshelf, I saw advertised on Instagram
Speaker 3: and I needed it for my all my books because
Speaker 3: you don't have many books now and I need to
Speaker 3: buy my desk. I bought it and it's a Shopify.
Speaker 3: They use Shopify, and boy are they selling these things
Speaker 3: like hotcake chopafy. As a customer is excellent and that
Speaker 3: is my real endorsement shop of I if you are
Speaker 3: selling something, so it is if you're a customer, it
Speaker 3: is the simplest, easiest way to order directly from your
Speaker 3: place of advertising. And if you are a shop owner
Speaker 3: or you are selling something on the web or on Instagram.
Speaker 3: You need Shopify. You upgrade your business. You get the
Speaker 3: same checkout everyone has.
Speaker 2: With Shopify.
Speaker 3: You sign up for one dollar per month trial period
Speaker 3: at shopify dot com slash glop all lowercase. If you
Speaker 3: are a seller, you go to shopify dot com slash
Speaker 3: glop and you can upgrade your selling and your sales
Speaker 3: operation today. And as a customer, I can tell you
Speaker 3: it is fantastic. A happy customer is a repeat customer,
Speaker 3: as everybody who sells anything else shopify dot com slash glop.
Speaker 3: Go there, and we thank Shopify for sponsoring the Glop Podcast.
Speaker 3: We also thank Shopify for helping the people who make
Speaker 3: this awesome circular bookcase able to sell them to people
Speaker 3: like me.
Speaker 2: Here's my question. Tell us his life.
Speaker 3: Is, or politics, or contemporary culture, or contemporary politics, or
Speaker 3: even the Great Republic of the United States. Is it
Speaker 3: more like Game of Thrones? Or is it more like money?
Speaker 2: Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 3: Well, and John is laughing, but I'm sort of semi serious.
Speaker 2: You mean life right now? Or do you mean like
Speaker 2: on this mortal coil, perous time?
Speaker 1: Existence?
Speaker 3: The nature of existence? I think I think my theory
Speaker 3: is that it is right now, like the Holy Grail.
Speaker 3: And if we were back then, in the time of
Speaker 3: the two Popes or the twenty seven Victors or whatever
Speaker 3: it is, it would smell worse, but it would still
Speaker 3: feel a little like the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: I would like to think that it was, of course
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail. I would not want to live in
Speaker 1: the world of Game of Thrones, and I do not think,
Speaker 1: in fact that we live in the world of Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones. I don't even think that in the worst
Speaker 1: parts of the world that they live in the world
Speaker 1: of Game of Thrones, because that's not how power struggles
Speaker 1: work in the twenty first century. The kinds of things
Speaker 1: that are portrayed in Game of Thrones are since they
Speaker 1: were in fact reflective of the Wars of the Roses.
Speaker 1: That's what George R. Maarten was basing Game of Thrones on.
Speaker 1: Power has a different kind of valence. The way people
Speaker 1: legitimize their authority has a different method, and we live
Speaker 1: in a different and it's not that funny unless Tyrian
Speaker 1: is speaking, it's really not that funny. And of course
Speaker 1: in Monty Python you do have the Holy Hand Graandy
Speaker 1: of Antioch, you have Timny Enchanter, you have the French
Speaker 1: guys with the on the on the castle top, you know,
Speaker 1: like every five minutes.
Speaker 2: You get yeah, some funny, I have another theory, but
Speaker 2: I want to hear killing you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, So I disagree because I look, I love
Speaker 4: Montypython on the Holy Grail. The problem with thinking that life,
Speaker 4: if we were around back then, we would think it's
Speaker 4: more like that than Game of Thrones is that part
Speaker 4: of the joke of Moneypython on the whole Holy Grail
Speaker 4: is that the violence isn't taken really seriously. But in
Speaker 4: real life, like when people are cutting off your arm,
Speaker 4: you know they are killing your kids, the crucifying people,
Speaker 4: the humor washes away really really quickly, and different parts
Speaker 4: of your brain kick in.
Speaker 3: And you call what Twitter did a Laura Lumer exactly.
Speaker 2: And so I think the.
Speaker 4: I do think that the world operates closer to the
Speaker 4: way Game of Thrones does, particularly in the bad parts
Speaker 4: of the world, less so in the United States. I
Speaker 4: think that liberal democratic capitalism was the great invention that
Speaker 4: got us out of the zero sum Game of Thrones
Speaker 4: way of looking at power and politics and economics. And
Speaker 4: the problem is is that our brains are wired to
Speaker 4: want to live more in a Game of Thrones world
Speaker 4: than the world that we live in, and so you
Speaker 4: have Jabbroni's and Jackwads and Poltroons all over the place
Speaker 4: who are always fantasizing about how that they were a
Speaker 4: Roman general in the Roman Empire and not thinking about
Speaker 4: how they were probably they probably would have been a
Speaker 4: slave who died young, thinking that we need to restore
Speaker 4: that old way of organizing things. And someone should write
Speaker 4: a about how that kind of choice is like pretty
Speaker 4: much suicidal. But it really it spells like the Suicide.
Speaker 1: Of the West.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 3: I guess what I say, but I would just kind
Speaker 3: I just I guess what I would say. Is the
Speaker 3: only I mean, yes, one is comedy, one isn't. But
Speaker 3: the only difference is that in the Game of Thrones world,
Speaker 3: or even in the world of history when you're reading it,
Speaker 3: there's not they're not those moments of spectacular clumsy incompetence
Speaker 3: because it all kind of makes sense, right, because it
Speaker 3: can't not make sense because it's you're living in the
Speaker 3: future that this this past event brought out, So that
Speaker 3: that is the part of the of the comedy, part
Speaker 3: the holy grail. Part that I think is interesting is
Speaker 3: that we do live in a time where we were
Speaker 3: watching incompetence happen that will kind of be justified or
Speaker 3: rectified or airbrushed or in some way ignored or memory hold.
Speaker 3: In fifty sixty seventy hundred years, you forget all sorts
Speaker 3: of mistakes that people made, and we just don't keep
Speaker 3: track of them. I mean, but since we brought it up,
Speaker 3: I mean you should have brought up there is that
Speaker 3: there is a story this week that you know that
Speaker 3: that corroborated I think by by John Kelly, he was
Speaker 3: chief of staff for President Trump. He President Trump said
Speaker 3: he want.
Speaker 2: He wished he had those.
Speaker 3: He wish he had Hitler's generals because they were loyal,
Speaker 3: And I thought, well, that's a very strange thing. They
Speaker 3: were yes man, and they gave they told you what
Speaker 3: you wanted to hear, and you eventually shot yourself to
Speaker 3: death in a bunker.
Speaker 1: Like that.
Speaker 2: Seems like a guy who doesn't quite get the history.
Speaker 2: How that story ended as that tried to kill ye.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, generals and colonels. That was one number two. Yes,
Speaker 1: you ended up So I wish he had them too, well,
Speaker 1: I mean to us, The Kelly story suggests a paucity
Speaker 1: of understanding about history on the part of Donald Trump
Speaker 1: that I know, I know comes as a great shock too,
Speaker 1: because you know that Donald Trump is a student of history.
Speaker 1: For example, there were five families and to Talia was
Speaker 1: a pimp yea and Tony soprano.
Speaker 2: No, always gloried. That was always a glorified crew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So my interpretation of this entire John Kelly
Speaker 1: story is that Trump decided Trump's Trump's personal perversity is
Speaker 1: a desire constantly to keep everybody who is in his
Speaker 1: ambit off kilter and off balance and in a state
Speaker 1: of dizziness and confusion. And he intuits what it is
Speaker 1: that is the worst thing that he could say to
Speaker 1: somebody to see how they are going to react and
Speaker 1: respond to him. And the fact that mostly they just
Speaker 1: go along and don't say anything is part of his
Speaker 1: power over them. And I think he said to John
Speaker 1: Kelly something like, you suck. I need a German, I
Speaker 1: need a Nazi general. What kind of crappy general are you?
Speaker 1: Was like, I'm saying this to you, okay, now are
Speaker 1: you going to quit? As every second that you stay
Speaker 1: in my company? After I say this to you, I
Speaker 1: own your.
Speaker 2: Ass that I have humility is true, way, which is true.
Speaker 1: I'm here to save America from you. That's why I'm staying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean LBJ would drag you into the bathroom
Speaker 3: while he said on the toilet. That is about I mean,
Speaker 3: you gotta.
Speaker 2: Talk about a land acknowledgement to LBJ. You got to
Speaker 2: give him a little bit of a hat tip for that.
Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 2: He shows And I've never done that. I've I mean,
Speaker 2: I I have, I mean, I I don't have.
Speaker 5: The math.
Speaker 2: Even Chuck Laurie wouldn't make you do that.
Speaker 3: And he's really he's a fantastically spectacular and successful showrunner.
Speaker 3: And he would even he would say, you know, just
Speaker 3: give me five minutes, just give me. You know what,
Speaker 3: Why don't you guys just wait in the office.
Speaker 2: I'll be right back. Well, you know, I have a
Speaker 2: friend who worked for John McLaughlin. I think, Uh, it's
Speaker 2: it's past time where we can speak ill of John McLaughlin. Uh.
Speaker 4: One of his favorite things to do was they had
Speaker 4: a bullpen at the McLaughlin Group. Were all the producers
Speaker 4: and associate producers and you know, writers and researchers, whatever
Speaker 4: had their desks all facing each other, and and what
Speaker 4: McLaughlin would do was use the intercom system on his
Speaker 4: phone and bellow into it. JM needs coco, meaning he
Speaker 4: needed his hot chocolate, but he never designated the person
Speaker 4: he wanted to bring him hot chocolate because he liked
Speaker 4: the humiliation of everybody looking at each other, like in
Speaker 4: the prison yard, being like are you going to do
Speaker 4: it this time? Or are you going to do it
Speaker 4: this time? And uh, And I think there is something
Speaker 4: to that about Donald Trump too. It's like the thing
Speaker 4: I always remember. It's the tiniest example, but was the
Speaker 4: first interview that he and Mike Pence did after he
Speaker 4: picked Mike Pence. And at one point Trump just turns
Speaker 4: to Mike Pence and says, it's okay, you can answer,
Speaker 4: like answer the question that the interviewer asking. And it
Speaker 4: was such a yeah kind of like, well, okay, little Timmy,
Speaker 4: it's your turn.
Speaker 2: Now you can go ahead and do it.
Speaker 3: There was a great story about showrunner of a couple
Speaker 3: of hit shows and she is stuck on a rewrite
Speaker 3: and she doesn't know what she got to write. It's
Speaker 3: something she's not quite sure what she wants to do.
Speaker 3: She's got to write a couple episodes.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure where she was, but she was
Speaker 3: a little under the gun. She decided she wanted to focus.
Speaker 2: So she went to.
Speaker 3: Some fancy hotel in Las Vegas where they had a
Speaker 3: you could get a suite. We had its own pool
Speaker 3: on the pool deck, and so she got one of there.
Speaker 3: She brought her assistant in an adjoining room or something.
Speaker 3: It got to the morning, they had breakfast and they
Speaker 3: went out into the pool when the shade was there
Speaker 3: still was a tree putting shade on the pool where
Speaker 3: the pool was, and so she would lay about in
Speaker 3: the pool a little in the sun, little in the shade,
Speaker 3: while the assistant, who was a larger, plump young woman,
Speaker 3: would have to sit there in this desert sun baking.
Speaker 2: While she wrote down every pitch.
Speaker 3: And at one point the showrunner floating lazily as I imagine,
Speaker 3: maybe even drinking a muggerite or something in her floating chair,
Speaker 3: she said, it's okay, if you want to put your
Speaker 3: feet in the water, it's okay, just don't get the
Speaker 3: keyboard wet.
Speaker 1: My favorite humiliation story involves an actress whom I will
Speaker 1: not name, because she is still living, though she is
Speaker 1: a very elderly and has become someone that no one
Speaker 1: will work with any longer, despite having been enormously world
Speaker 1: famous fifty years ago. At some point in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: this actress became the star of a sitcom, and as
Speaker 1: Rob knows, I was a TV critic. Rob went there.
Speaker 1: There's an an annual event called the TV Critics Press
Speaker 1: Tour where people I Okay, I didn't say it, you
Speaker 1: said it.
Speaker 2: Well, I got to think that a story. I got
Speaker 2: to add to this.
Speaker 1: Okay, anyway, she's starting a sitcom.
Speaker 2: I'm if you're listening, you did some wonderful work. We
Speaker 2: were big fans. Thank you for thank you for being
Speaker 2: a glop fan. Say anyway, go ahead, John, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Sitcom And she comes to do her panel at the
Speaker 1: press tour where people are there to interview her and
Speaker 1: the showrunner and stuff like that. And she arrives at
Speaker 1: this at the Universal City. Sheardon and has to use
Speaker 1: the bathroom, and the publicist who has been CBS publicist
Speaker 1: who has been there's job it is to squire her around,
Speaker 1: bring her in, take her through the hotel, take her
Speaker 1: to the Okay, uh, Faye down away says, I have
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom. So uh, they go into
Speaker 1: the bathroom. She shows her in the bathroom and uh,
Speaker 1: my friend, the publicist, is standing outside waiting for her
Speaker 1: to come out of the bathroom. Ah or is it
Speaker 1: going to wait outside? Then Fay says, no, come in
Speaker 1: the bathroom, come in, come in with come in, not
Speaker 1: not a into a not into an individual bathroom, into
Speaker 1: a you know, hotel ballroom bathroom with lots of stalls
Speaker 1: and stuff. And so my friend is standing outside the
Speaker 1: stall and then Faye opens the door and says, I
Speaker 1: need you to come in, And my friend says, what
Speaker 1: do you mean. She says, well, I'm in a very
Speaker 1: very tight dress and I need you to wipe me.
Speaker 1: I can't if I reach around, I might tear the
Speaker 1: scene under my arm. So I need you to wipe me.
Speaker 1: And my friend who left the business that long after, like,
Speaker 1: really wonderful.
Speaker 2: Your friend left the business that moment.
Speaker 5: I got to be in his head, in her, in her,
Speaker 5: in her spirit, just like John Kelly left public service
Speaker 5: the minute that Trump said I want you know, you
Speaker 5: should be in Nazi general And she in fact had
Speaker 5: to fulfill the band aid of her job, and yeah,
Speaker 5: wipe another person's.
Speaker 2: But a star. She was a star. That's another person
Speaker 2: who's not their toddler who you're potty training. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: and even then I can can't we outsource this?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, So when you read stories about this star
Speaker 1: in her behavior and there was actually a very good
Speaker 1: documentary about her being a monster that she participates in
Speaker 1: that's on HBO Max. Anyway, I wasn't going.
Speaker 3: I will say she was in the show you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Was the show I forget the name of it was
Speaker 3: she did?
Speaker 2: No, she was like she was the age.
Speaker 3: Played the literary the grandee literary agent to Rob Bob Yurick,
Speaker 3: who was an author and he had moved to a
Speaker 3: small town and he was a novelists. He was like
Speaker 3: a Stephen King or John Grisham something like that, hugely
Speaker 3: successful novels. She was the eighth of the editor or
Speaker 3: the agent that she was always trying to get him
Speaker 3: to finish his book. And uh, and so it was
Speaker 3: like that was the story and they did all this,
Speaker 3: all of this like testing for it because everybody loves
Speaker 3: Bob Yurick. Robert Yuick was a genuine TV star and
Speaker 3: the show was just tanking, and no one could figure
Speaker 3: out why. And then they really tested and they focus
Speaker 3: grouped it, and they just discover that the reason that
Speaker 3: the show wasn't working is because everybody universally hated hated
Speaker 3: Fade down Away so much they didn't want to watch
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 2: And so they were trying.
Speaker 3: The studio doing it was trying desperately to come up
Speaker 3: with numbers that made her look better. So they did
Speaker 3: is they they actually did. They did a bunch of
Speaker 3: different episodes, but one episode they tested was basically a
Speaker 3: fool proof episode where you her character somehow, somehow encounters
Speaker 3: or takes possession of, or now take care of a
Speaker 3: box of puppies, like twelve adorable lab puppies running around
Speaker 3: in a big crate and Fade down Away. And they
Speaker 3: tested the episode to see if they could bring Fade
Speaker 3: Downaway's numbers up, because obviously, you know you're surrounded by
Speaker 3: puppies that you're going to expire good feelings. And the
Speaker 3: story is that the guy that the research, the vice
Speaker 3: priad of research for the studio, was left the focus
Speaker 3: group and the tabulation room and the showrunners were there.
Speaker 2: They said, how'd she do and he says, shook his head.
Speaker 3: He said, wait, they didn't like her with the puppies,
Speaker 3: and then they said and then he said, no, they
Speaker 3: also didn't like the puppies. It's the first time in
Speaker 3: show business that she brought down the puppies.
Speaker 1: I just looked it up. The show was called it
Speaker 1: had to be You, It had to be You, And
Speaker 1: you know, to get fade down away to do a sitcom,
Speaker 1: it's a huge amount of money. Like this was Oscar
Speaker 1: winning actress, right, Like he's.
Speaker 2: Great, I mean it was great. By the way, she's great.
Speaker 1: He is a great actress. Not really somebody want on
Speaker 1: a sitcom, but a pretty great actress.
Speaker 2: And it's so great that she was on Mommy, that
Speaker 2: she was John Crawford and Mommy dearst right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, according to according to the documentary, that is what
Speaker 1: destroyed her career because she was so convincing as this
Speaker 1: psychotic monster that nobody ever liked her.
Speaker 2: Again connected with that role. Your friend could write up
Speaker 2: that story with like called.
Speaker 1: They canceled her series after four episodes. They they filmed nine,
Speaker 1: did not air five and it has it has vanished
Speaker 1: into the ether.
Speaker 2: And vanished into the ether, but you know what has
Speaker 2: not vanished into the ether?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what has it? Your metabolism, John has
Speaker 3: not vanished into the ether. It's still there. And I
Speaker 3: want to tell you about Lumen. Lumen is the world's
Speaker 3: first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your
Speaker 3: metabolism through your breath and on the app it lets
Speaker 3: you know if you're burning fat or carbs. It gives
Speaker 3: you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and
Speaker 3: even stress management. It's actually really simple. All you do
Speaker 3: is you breathe into your Lumen first thing in the morning.
Speaker 3: It's just a small thing. It's like a looks like
Speaker 3: a sharpie, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism,
Speaker 3: whether you're burning or whether you're bretting.
Speaker 2: Mosty fats or carbs.
Speaker 3: And then Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for
Speaker 3: that day based on your measurements that morning. You can
Speaker 3: also breathe into it before or after workouts or meals,
Speaker 3: so you know exactly what's going on in your body
Speaker 3: in real time, and Lumen will give you tips to
Speaker 3: keep you on top of your health gain. They set
Speaker 3: us one I've been using it, and I've been upgrading
Speaker 3: it too, like I'm now a customer of Lumen. It's
Speaker 3: actually really really great and it kind of reminds you
Speaker 3: me that I either I sometimes I need to eat
Speaker 3: in the morning, or what I need to do is
Speaker 3: you have some protein rather than another doughnut. It is
Speaker 3: a great way to measure metabolism, and metabolism is your
Speaker 3: body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you
Speaker 3: eat into fuel that keeps you going. And because your
Speaker 3: metabolism is at the center of everything your body does,
Speaker 3: optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of great benefits,
Speaker 3: including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results,
Speaker 3: better sleep, all those things. Luman gives you recommendations to
Speaker 3: improve your metabolic health every day, twice three times a day,
Speaker 3: whenever you feel you need it. So if you want
Speaker 3: to take the next step and improving your health, go
Speaker 3: to lumen dot me slash glop to get fifteen percent
Speaker 3: off your lumen that's Lumen lume en dot me. It's
Speaker 3: emmy slash glop for fifteen percent off your purchase. We
Speaker 3: thank Luman for sponsoring this podcast and also are sponsoring
Speaker 3: our Good metabolic health.
Speaker 4: Hey, I got an on brand and relevant to the
Speaker 4: conversation topic for glad you're talking about canceled shows. The
Speaker 4: other night, my wife and I were watching the We
Speaker 4: just caught the tail end of Tropic Thunder, which we
Speaker 4: do not have to talk about again. We've talked about
Speaker 4: many times, but I had mentioned about. I mentioned to
Speaker 4: her the Ben Stiller Show, which famously got canceled before
Speaker 4: it got an Emmy for Best Comedy Show, and and
Speaker 4: she'd never seen it. I had not watched all of them.
Speaker 4: I only watched a few of them, but like again
Speaker 4: thirty years ago, because it was like ninety one ninety
Speaker 4: two when that show came out, and so we bought
Speaker 4: it on iTunes or whatever, like twelve bucks of the
Speaker 4: whole season and.
Speaker 2: The pilot.
Speaker 4: The second episode much more hit or mis but the
Speaker 4: pilot is really pretty amazing. And the It's also such
Speaker 4: a time capsule thing because you know, Stiller's about my age,
Speaker 4: you know, somewhere around there and.
Speaker 2: A little older maybe, and.
Speaker 4: Uh, all of his cultural reference points are clearly and
Speaker 4: entirely the product of someone who grew up watching the
Speaker 4: TV shows that we did, right, I mean, the the
Speaker 4: most brilliant bit in it is they keep doing this
Speaker 4: sort of like behind the music thing with Bono and
Speaker 4: Bono is you know right, and they keep and they
Speaker 4: go to his agent and you guys remember who played
Speaker 4: his agent and Rubin Kincaid, and he's telling these stories
Speaker 4: about how he booked them bar Mitzvahs and they cut
Speaker 4: to Bono at the bar Mitza and it's really well done.
Speaker 4: And then like they sell out and they do Lucky Charms.
Speaker 4: You two is the pitch band form Lucky Charms and
Speaker 4: the ad is really really funny. But like the the thing,
Speaker 4: I guess he had a recurring bit like this on
Speaker 4: the on Satay Live where, but he does this whole
Speaker 4: spoof on Cape Fear the Robert the Genera Cape Fear,
Speaker 4: where it's Eddie Munster released from prison who's pissed that
Speaker 4: his show is canceled, and it's really well done. I
Speaker 4: mean Eddie Munster playing Robert de Niro and Cape Fear
Speaker 4: was really well done.
Speaker 1: That show was so good and it has this kind
Speaker 1: of astonishing cast, so it's him. It was a sketch
Speaker 1: comedy show but so it was like SNL but it
Speaker 1: was half an hour long and everything was filmed so
Speaker 1: that so that it's more like he and Peel later
Speaker 1: or something like that, so you could actually refine it,
Speaker 1: you know, and edit it and stuff like that. Him,
Speaker 1: Andy Dick, Janine Garofo, Bob Odenkirk, who ends up you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five years later, is thirty years later in Betterhole, Saul,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember a couple of other people. The
Speaker 1: thing that I remember that was so brilliant was remember
Speaker 1: the discussions of TV violence And it was so late
Speaker 1: early nineties Nightline there were always like panel discussions at
Speaker 1: TV violence and vulgarity on TV. After Tipper Gore made
Speaker 1: a whole thing and there was a they did a
Speaker 1: parody of Alf, and Alf is a sock puppet, literally
Speaker 1: a sock puppet called Skank. So it's like, oh, Skank,
Speaker 1: you're such a scaley wag and then just a sock
Speaker 1: is like, you shut your stinking track. That was his catch, trains,
Speaker 1: you got your stinking trap. And then so it turns
Speaker 1: out Alf is being played by an actor named Thurston
Speaker 1: Howell the Third or something like that, who is a
Speaker 1: sock puppet but has glasses. And so when he goes
Speaker 1: on Nightline to defend himself against the idea that he
Speaker 1: is lowering the standards of American culture. Speaks in a
Speaker 1: voice like this, but has has a sock puppet with glasses,
Speaker 1: and he's like fighting the head of Action for children's television,
Speaker 1: and the person on action says at some point, you
Speaker 1: shut your stinking trap, and then he and then the
Speaker 1: sock puppet with glasses like no, you shoot your stinking
Speaker 1: cry yelling at each other.
Speaker 3: It was so skank surreal, right, Well, a mister show
Speaker 3: the show that Bob Odenkirk did David Cross maybe I'm
Speaker 3: just remember that was Bob Odenkirk played it in the
Speaker 3: Ben Stiller's show.
Speaker 2: I can't remember.
Speaker 3: Uh, they did a bizarre parody of Lassie, except Lassie
Speaker 3: the dog was played by Bob Odenkirk. I think is
Speaker 3: Bob Odenkirk who was playing Charles Manson. And so the
Speaker 3: idea was that Charles Manson was the family pet. And
Speaker 3: they would say, Manson, Manson, where's Timmy.
Speaker 2: Timmy, He's well, he's gonna die.
Speaker 3: I would like do that laughter thing that he's in
Speaker 3: the well, and then oh Manson. It was just it
Speaker 3: was bananas, but it was pretty funny, you know.
Speaker 1: What's interesting, so and then we can sort of. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, I've been watching a lot of
Speaker 1: the new season of broadcast television.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's amazing thing to even here, you see.
Speaker 1: Because there have been three or four shows that looked
Speaker 1: mildly intriguing.
Speaker 4: To me which I started watching because, yeah, discuss Kathy
Speaker 4: Baker is Matt Locke.
Speaker 1: That is a good show. Kathy basis right, Kathy Baker
Speaker 1: another good actress who should be on something. But there's
Speaker 1: a show called High Potential, which stars Caitlin Olsen from
Speaker 1: It's All in Philadelphia as a as a sort of
Speaker 1: genius who becomes a police sort of consultant. That's a procedural.
Speaker 1: But there is the single most bosire show. It's pretty good,
Speaker 1: it's not great, show called Brilliant Minds, the same show.
Speaker 1: These are all like house derivatives, genius person with strange
Speaker 1: qualities that makes them socially inept. So this is Zachary
Speaker 1: Quinto from Heroes essentially playing Oliver Sachs at a hospital
Speaker 1: in the Bronx, and you know is able to diagnose
Speaker 1: things because he's so brilliant. But there's a show called
Speaker 1: Doctor Odyssey and it's Ryan Murphew's this one man TV studio, right,
Speaker 1: who made Glee and then he made Get whatever that
Speaker 1: show is about plastic surgery, and now his bread and
Speaker 1: butter is making constantly making shows for Netflix about the
Speaker 1: Menendez brothers, about Jeffrey Dahmer, right, that that's his big thing,
Speaker 1: or these fictionalized murder stories. But this show is called
Speaker 1: Doctor Odyssey, and it is a combination of the Love
Speaker 1: Boat and Gray's Anatomy, and so it's this. Every week
Speaker 1: is a cruise with Don Johnson as the captain and
Speaker 1: Jeremy Jackson as the doctor. And he's got two nurses,
Speaker 1: and that's the entire cast, is the four of them.
Speaker 1: And then one week is the plastic surgery cruise, one
Speaker 1: week is the wellness cruise, one week is something else.
Speaker 1: And if you go on this, these guys on the
Speaker 1: ship in the forty eight minutes of the episode are
Speaker 1: performing appendectomies, they're performing cancer surgeries, they're doing they're doing
Speaker 1: like their brilliant diagnoses of people having strange diseases. You
Speaker 1: do not want to go. We have all been on cruises.
Speaker 1: I've been on several, and you've been on way more
Speaker 1: than I have. We've been on these cruise ships. There
Speaker 1: are more. It turns out there are morgues they're performing,
Speaker 1: they're cryogenic chambers. They're performing twelve hour surgeries below decks.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure. The show is a huge. Apparently
Speaker 1: it is getting like eleven twelve million viewers once they
Speaker 1: add in the streaming services. So it's a huge hit.
Speaker 1: And it is so bananas, and you've watched, like I've
Speaker 1: watched watching it with myself, I watched like four episodes up.
Speaker 1: It is like it is like watching something on shrooms.
Speaker 1: They are and then in fact, in an episode, they're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a hurricane, the Wellness crew on
Speaker 1: the Wellness cruise and someone has gives slip these sistant
Speaker 1: captain psilocybin.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, psilocybin ahead.
Speaker 1: Psilocybin, excuse me, And so as they're trying to navigate
Speaker 1: this hurricane, the co captain is like high on shrooms
Speaker 1: on the deck and it's forty eight minutes and they
Speaker 1: basically do a huge surgery on somebody and then the
Speaker 1: show is over. And so I think, you know what
Speaker 1: net network television is like going down the tubes. Everyone
Speaker 1: says it's not going to exist in interesting five years.
Speaker 1: But somehow they seem now to have decided that a
Speaker 1: they want to have a cop show or some kind
Speaker 1: of straw or doctor show in which everything is wrapped
Speaker 1: up in the first.
Speaker 3: Is done but for GM and you know, uh, Chrysler
Speaker 3: except for Chrysler got better after Competition is good.
Speaker 2: Competition is good. They just need to get their head.
Speaker 2: And speaking of yes, please watchable shows.
Speaker 3: Any segment will work. I want to talk to you
Speaker 3: about ag one. I've talked to you about ag one
Speaker 3: a lot. I want to continue to talk to you
Speaker 3: about ag one. Ag One helps you build a healthy
Speaker 3: morning routine. In just sixty seconds. You can get your
Speaker 3: daily dose of vitamins, minerals and pre and probiotics, adaptogens
Speaker 3: and more in one drink.
Speaker 2: That's why I've been.
Speaker 3: Drinking ag one for I don't know, twenty fifteen years,
Speaker 3: A long time. I heard about it in the Tim
Speaker 3: Ferris podcast. I drink it in I don't drink it
Speaker 3: into the morning. I drink it sort of in the afternoons,
Speaker 3: and I like, like afternoon picked me up. It has
Speaker 3: replaced my cup of coffee and I have never been happier.
Speaker 3: Ag one is made with bioavailable ingredients that.
Speaker 2: Actually work with your body.
Speaker 3: It helps fill nutrient gaps and supports your gut for
Speaker 3: a healthy digestion. Just one daily scoop provides whole body
Speaker 3: benefits like gut, immune and stress support. So start with
Speaker 3: AG one and notice the difference for yourself. It's a
Speaker 3: great first step to investing in your health, and that's
Speaker 3: why they've been a proud partner of mine and this
Speaker 3: podcast for so long. Try AG one and get a
Speaker 3: free bottle of Vitamin D three K two, which is
Speaker 3: apparently we're all we all need. We don't get enough
Speaker 3: for that, and five free AG one travel packs with
Speaker 3: your first purchase at drinkag one dot com slash glop.
Speaker 3: If you're like me, the travel packs will be how
Speaker 3: you get your AG one that is a forty eight
Speaker 3: dollars value. It is for free if you go to
Speaker 3: drink ag one. That's drink the word AG two letters
Speaker 3: AG one the number one dot com slash glob check
Speaker 3: it out. We thank ag one for sponsoring the Glove podcast.
Speaker 2: For so long.
Speaker 3: They're a loyal advertiser, and also for making a terrific product.
Speaker 1: All right, so do we have anything to recommend to anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm not really recommending Doctor Odyssey. I can recommend Matt Locke.
Speaker 1: I can also kind of recommend the show El Smith,
Speaker 1: which is on CBS, which is about a kind of
Speaker 1: again a brilliant lawyer who is a consultant for the
Speaker 1: police department. This is now a new thing where you're
Speaker 1: not really a cop, but you're kind of a cop,
Speaker 1: and you're sort of a cop.
Speaker 2: Well they had to do that because cops had some
Speaker 2: pr cops were bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cops are bad, so you can be a cop, Jason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cop adjacent. I like else with because it seems to
Speaker 1: be filmed all over my neighborhood and full of stage
Speaker 1: on New York show. Very enjoyable. But anyway, so there
Speaker 1: is weird stuff to watch. But I uh, I I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I got something to recommend. I mean, I don't. I mean,
Speaker 2: as you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't recommend a lot of pop culture. But I've
Speaker 3: just been reading this great book and I can't put
Speaker 3: it down. It's Athanasius on the Incarnation, and it's just
Speaker 3: really kind of fun, interesting take, unique take on that
Speaker 3: whole thing. So I recommend, my recommend you the CBS
Speaker 3: shows very very more tasteful than you actually want. But
Speaker 3: but I you, I know that some great stuff on broadcast,
Speaker 3: I know. But I'm just saying, if you're if you're
Speaker 3: if you're looking for something else, something a little different
Speaker 3: but still fun. Athanasius on The Incarnation he had a creed, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they all did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was more like a mono. It was brand,
Speaker 2: had a personal brand.
Speaker 1: A video game like Assassin's Creed like.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, he had a personal brand.
Speaker 1: John, Okay, there we go.
Speaker 2: It's like a rule of a creed. Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, so that's a that's an excellent recommendation. I
Speaker 1: think the last time we were on, I recommended the iLiads.
Speaker 1: So you're just trying to trump me here as it worked, Yes,
Speaker 1: as it were. Can I point out that Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: the other day said that, uh, Donald Trump's policies would
Speaker 1: exasperate inflation?
Speaker 2: True? Now is that is that good like a yogism?
Speaker 1: Or is that bad? Like like the incredible malapropism?
Speaker 2: Well, we all want to exasperate inflation. It does sound
Speaker 2: like does I won't say what it sounds like, but you.
Speaker 1: Know, Jonah, you said that you think it would be
Speaker 1: better for America. I Trump, if Harris wins and all that,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna I don't even.
Speaker 2: We're not going to do this now. I wrap it
Speaker 2: up here, but I do want to.
Speaker 1: Say that of all the candidates who have ever run
Speaker 1: for office, now that Harris has come out of hiding
Speaker 1: and is giving interviews relatively constantly in the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, of all the candidates that have that have
Speaker 1: run for higher office, she is one of them, and
Speaker 1: I believe may go down in history if she wins
Speaker 1: as our dumbest president. I was going through the presidents
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. We had some very mediocre president.
Speaker 2: But they were they were educated, had education.
Speaker 1: They like new three languages. They sat around translating things
Speaker 1: from the Greek to amuse themselves.
Speaker 2: I mean, like literally the iliot or something, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at night, to keep himself, you know, to
Speaker 1: keep himself coming.
Speaker 2: It's not a good translation though, it's really.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, you know, you're a little too literal anyway.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like you go through the history of
Speaker 1: the American presidency, and there were terrible presidents at her
Speaker 1: big disasters and failures and all that, but I I
Speaker 1: think she's kind of dumb and and I I really
Speaker 1: That's where I'm going with this.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I look, I agree with you. I think
Speaker 4: she's a bad candidate, would not be a very good president.
Speaker 4: But I'm honestly curious about this because I think, you know,
Speaker 4: we hear constantly about how this or that or whatever
Speaker 4: is already priced into Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you think there is an academic or IQ type
Speaker 4: test that if you sat both Harris and Trump down
Speaker 4: right now and had them take that, Harris wouldn't outscore
Speaker 4: Trump a p history, math whatever like. Do you think
Speaker 4: that there is a test and she look and she
Speaker 4: you know, she failed to bar the first or second time, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not saying she's super smart, But do
Speaker 4: you think there is some sort of objective metric about
Speaker 4: knowledge or intelligence that Trump would do better on?
Speaker 2: Yes, what like an IQ test?
Speaker 1: You think? Yes? Yes, I don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I I think he's very dumb, I really do. I
Speaker 4: think he has a cunning, lizard brain, cunning and all
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, and he may have been, you know,
Speaker 4: smarter ones you watch it in his interviews in the
Speaker 4: nineteen eighties, and all that. But like, I think he's
Speaker 4: affirmatively a dumb person, and he has bullied people into
Speaker 4: like thinking there's a genius there that, and there is
Speaker 4: a kind of genius there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're so you're saying there's a genius there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, Look, I'm saying there's a cunning there is longer
Speaker 1: than she. So he if you gave her some, if
Speaker 1: you gave them I'm kind of general knowledge exam. He
Speaker 1: would have eighteen years on her to know things that
Speaker 1: she she doesn't know.
Speaker 4: No, do you think he she think You think she'd
Speaker 4: be worse on like twentieth century history, You think she'd
Speaker 4: be worse on?
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't, don't. I was not familiar with Rommel.
Speaker 1: He wants Rommel. That's selling John Kelly, he wants Rommel.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, if you read the actual.
Speaker 1: Object, I know, I know, I'm joking. I'm joking.
Speaker 2: If you do, if you read the exchange, that's not
Speaker 2: what happened. He wanted German generals, and.
Speaker 1: He saw Pat, and everybody saw Pat, and Kelly brought
Speaker 1: up Rommel. Robel, you magnificent bastard. I read your book.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 4: I think their scores would be both bad. But I
Speaker 4: think that Kamala Harris would beat Trump on most objective
Speaker 4: knowledge tests, and that kind.
Speaker 2: Of thing becomes a law. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And whether you whether you can whether you could use
Speaker 3: the US military to strike US civilians, that's another one
Speaker 3: of the probably passed the California bar I think that's
Speaker 3: one of them.
Speaker 2: I think it's a question hold on.
Speaker 1: Just just to be fair, Anderson Cooper asked her how
Speaker 1: she was going to get legislation through the House, and
Speaker 1: she said, we need to look at the filibuster. That
Speaker 1: literally happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's I mean, that's not the House.
Speaker 1: But she's a filibuster has a simple majority, so you're
Speaker 1: asking how a bill becomes law. She failed that test
Speaker 1: on national television. You asked me the question, I win.
Speaker 4: That speaks to her being a bad politician. I don't
Speaker 4: think that if she sat down, she would actually make
Speaker 4: that mistake. As a former US.
Speaker 1: Senator, I don't know anyway. I do think that she's
Speaker 1: she went to the eighty seventh rank law school in
Speaker 1: the United States. I am not a big ranking person,
Speaker 1: but that's not good after college.
Speaker 2: For somebodyho's not a big ranking person.
Speaker 4: You sound like, Look, I have very few affirmative defenses
Speaker 4: of Kamala Harris other than the fact that she's not
Speaker 4: Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, fair enough. I am not And you know
Speaker 1: I'm not defending Donald Trump, but I do I am
Speaker 1: saying you're saying, you're saying that we already had the
Speaker 1: dumbest president in history in Donald Trump, according to Yum okay,
Speaker 1: and you're but you're now saying that if Trump wins,
Speaker 1: he would he would continue in that got mold ha.
Speaker 1: He would still be the dumbest person today because she's
Speaker 1: smarter than he is. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Look, it's sort of like when we're talking about stuff
Speaker 4: within the margin of error.
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, I just.
Speaker 1: I don't even look, I'm not even I just think
Speaker 1: it's startling how pedestrian a candidate she is.
Speaker 2: I just like I I you know, she that's all.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: I keep thinking she can't be as bad at this
Speaker 1: as she is, and then she gives another interview and
Speaker 1: she's worse than the one she did before. So they
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing when they weren't letting her
Speaker 1: be interviewed.
Speaker 4: Although I have a little push could win, so I
Speaker 4: generally agree, But like her best moment in like the
Speaker 4: Brett Baer interview, which did not go great for her,
Speaker 4: also did not matter nearly as much as everybody freaking
Speaker 4: out on either side of that thought at the time.
Speaker 4: But when she gets angry, she's actually better right when
Speaker 4: she the softball interviews where like And that's why I
Speaker 4: thought Anderson Cooper was remarkably effective, because he just sort
Speaker 4: of asked these very seemingly banal questions and just sort
Speaker 4: of handed them to her like a cotton puff and said.
Speaker 2: Do whatever you want with this, and she didn't do
Speaker 2: very well often.
Speaker 1: Anyway. Uh.
Speaker 3: I think they're both just doing their best and they're
Speaker 3: having a on out there, and that's the most important thing.
Speaker 3: I wish they could both win. I I think that
Speaker 3: we should give it to them both. That'd be great sitcom.
Speaker 1: That's somebody pitched.
Speaker 2: A Yeah, somebody pitched. Yesterday.
Speaker 3: I saw on Twitter that the two women who have
Speaker 3: who sued successfully sued Rudy Giuliani and are now they're
Speaker 3: liquidating all of his assets, including his apartment. They should
Speaker 3: live there with him. That should be the sho butler.
Speaker 1: Well, with that commonality, I think we're not going to
Speaker 1: top that so I think we should we should call,
Speaker 1: we should uh reconvene. I think our next conversation will
Speaker 1: happen after the election, So either we'll be in bunkers
Speaker 1: or we will not be in bunkers, and we'll see
Speaker 1: where we are.
Speaker 2: Then it's all gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: People belove.
Speaker 4: England.
Speaker 3: W