Speaker 1: No, let's let this is gold Let's talk about this
Speaker 1: on the podcast.
Speaker 2: All right, so let's let's go.
Speaker 1: You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance.
Speaker 3: It's not a real word. Like just gesture is a
Speaker 3: good word. At least you know where you stand with gesture,
Speaker 3: But nuance, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm well, we're coming on the end of February,
Speaker 2: and this is glop culture. And I'm John pod Horitz
Speaker 2: in New York in Princeton, New Jersey. Rob Long, Hi, Rob, Hey, John?
Speaker 3: How areight?
Speaker 2: In Washington, d C? Jonah Goldberg Hi, Jonah, Hey, John, guys.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know this or not, but
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and this morning he
Speaker 2: announced that he was changing the editorial policy of The
Speaker 2: Washington Post's opinion section to reflect his interest in it
Speaker 2: promoting personal liberties and free markets. And I speak as
Speaker 2: somebody who has twice in my life been the editorial
Speaker 2: page editor or the opinion editor of two newspapers, one
Speaker 2: The Washington Times, the other New York Post that lost
Speaker 2: money and were owned by proprietors with ideological interests in
Speaker 2: ideological goals in mind. And it was my understanding, as
Speaker 2: it is for anybody who works for money losing institutions,
Speaker 2: that it was the prerogative of the owner to set
Speaker 2: the editorial philosophy of the thing that he owned, particularly
Speaker 2: when it was losing money. But you would think today
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos having announced this, and having also annound that
Speaker 2: David Shipley, the current manager of the opinion section, would
Speaker 2: not be joining him in his new approach, and was
Speaker 2: therefore leaving that what Jeff Bezos did was a craven
Speaker 2: act of monstrosity, largely designed to curry favor with Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: which it may be. It may be that he wishes
Speaker 2: to curry favor with Donald Trump. However, the fact is
Speaker 2: that the guy has now lost something like three hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars in the last three years on the Washington
Speaker 2: Post and may not want to continue losing enormous amounts
Speaker 2: of money on the Washington Post and having his other
Speaker 2: businesses affected by the anger of politicians. Which again, through
Speaker 2: the course of American history, politicians have used their editorial
Speaker 2: pages and their opinion sections to curry favor with politicians
Speaker 2: and power who might help them get things like favorable
Speaker 2: placing of their printing plants and things like that. So
Speaker 2: the crocodile tears on the screen, and the yelling and
Speaker 2: the and the and the hysteria that has been uh,
Speaker 2: the michi flowing, the mischia go has been flowing today.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, you're right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's why the focus just keep going, every
Speaker 2: Yiddish word, just go ahead.
Speaker 3: But also it's such a weird bromide. What he said
Speaker 3: was he wanted to be one the editorial page to
Speaker 3: be to be to emphasize personal liberty and pre market.
Speaker 3: I mean, like only only an American editorial page editor
Speaker 3: of a major newspaper would find that I quit.
Speaker 2: I'm against both those things.
Speaker 3: I refuse, like I refuse to write to publish editorials
Speaker 3: and favor of personal liberty and the free market. So
Speaker 3: it's sort of like like, I mean, what have you
Speaker 3: really said? What he wanted, which was pro tariffs, which
Speaker 3: is sort of slightly more more in keeping with the
Speaker 3: current administration. It's a very it's a it's a it's
Speaker 3: a strange, and it also it's like another indication that
Speaker 3: I I think I need to you take some kind
Speaker 3: of like weird retreat because all the things that people
Speaker 3: are really mad about, I'm not mad about, and then
Speaker 3: all the other things that people aren't mad about. I
Speaker 3: find myself enrage by. But there, there you go, jonah So,
Speaker 3: I have a slightly more nuanced take. I generally agree
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Ah, I don't like nuance. Paul Reiser and dieta reference there.
Speaker 4: I generally agree with you. And at the same time,
Speaker 4: I think that the how to put this, the devil
Speaker 4: will be in the details, right, I think that's it
Speaker 4: really depends what he how this actually gets implemented, is it?
Speaker 4: You know, there are a lot of The current Washington
Speaker 4: Post op ed page is the most conservative I think
Speaker 4: it has ever been.
Speaker 2: And that's I don't think that at all.
Speaker 4: I got Jim Garritty, you got George Will, you got
Speaker 4: Megan mccardalship has the most conservatives it's had, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: crowdhammer is gone.
Speaker 2: But in the nineteen eighties, certainly Meg Greenfield ran a
Speaker 2: far more conservative or conservative friendly editorial and opinion section.
Speaker 2: And remember you're you're mentioning a couple of people. They
Speaker 2: are outweighed by the tens of thousands of online columnists.
Speaker 2: Who's woke level of wokeness approaches? I don't know, vel So.
Speaker 4: I welcome your counter nuance. So I really don't like
Speaker 4: counter nuance. My only my only point is is that
Speaker 4: it it just kind of depends on how this is implemented.
Speaker 4: And in the context of Bezos's sort of switcheroo towards Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, with the Kamala Harris editorial spiking and all
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, endorsement spiking, I have a more
Speaker 4: wait and see attitude about it. But I agree with
Speaker 4: you that in principle, you know, the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 4: basically is dedicated to free markets and and you know,
Speaker 4: personal liberties broadly understood and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: But I don't know, I also kind of think that,
Speaker 4: you know, the third most important op ed page in
Speaker 4: the country, depending on how you measure these things, should
Speaker 4: have a little bit of a sort of let's have
Speaker 4: the best arguments possible attitude on its on its pages,
Speaker 4: and we'll see what that looks like without you know,
Speaker 4: going forward.
Speaker 2: Well it should, but not, no, no, no editorial page
Speaker 2: in the country has a let's just have the best arguments.
Speaker 2: That's that's not the way any of them works. They're
Speaker 2: always aligned or affiliated with one side or another broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: And I don't care. I don't care what the editorial
Speaker 2: line of the Washington Post is, by the way, look
Speaker 2: on it. I genuinely don't care. Unless they were unless
Speaker 2: they wanted to hire me, I would, unless they want
Speaker 2: a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to write one
Speaker 2: column a week. I really, I really don't particularly they
Speaker 2: used to.
Speaker 3: Do that, remember that, Nor that they used to do that.
Speaker 2: There were people who had ridiculous deals to do stuff
Speaker 2: like that. When I say that I don't care, I
Speaker 2: mean Jeff People at the Washington Post who are complaining,
Speaker 2: there's some guy named Jeff Stein who you know, you know,
Speaker 2: actually went out and sort of attacked Visa. They should
Speaker 2: be falling on their knees to thank Bezos for the
Speaker 2: fact that he is supporting this completely insupportable enterprise that
Speaker 2: cannot make a nickel and in fact loses nine figures.
Speaker 2: This is nine figures a year. So you know what,
Speaker 2: You're lucky to have a job there. You don't like it,
Speaker 2: get the hell out, What do I care? David Shipley
Speaker 2: doesn't want to go work there. Fine, everybody gets hired
Speaker 2: by the Atlantic. I'm sure he'll get hired by the
Speaker 2: Atlantic to produce equally mediocre op ed edits that he
Speaker 2: has currently that's whatever, Like it's nobody. The weird thing
Speaker 2: is the staff. I felt this way. Look, I worked
Speaker 2: for Sun Young Moon, you know, and he let me
Speaker 2: work and like I ran sections of a newspaper, I
Speaker 2: ran a magazine, I ran up you know. It was
Speaker 2: like he was a crazy person and you know, had
Speaker 2: a lunatic religion and all of that. And I was
Speaker 2: still grateful to him because I had a job, I
Speaker 2: got to do something that I really liked. And he
Speaker 2: lost money. He was losing money to provide me with
Speaker 2: a forum, and like everybody who works at that paper
Speaker 2: should be on their knees. I felt the same way
Speaker 2: about Rupert Murrock when I worked at the New York Post,
Speaker 2: which now, by the way, does not lose money, and
Speaker 2: it is it is ungrateful and unseemly for people to say, oh,
Speaker 2: he doesn't have the right to do this, he's just
Speaker 2: cow towing to Trump. Well maybe he is cow tewing
Speaker 2: to Trump, and maybe you should let me have a
Speaker 2: right to do it. Yeah, and maybe you should let
Speaker 2: her do that because he should be happy. He shouldn't
Speaker 2: have tourus. If you'll look use the owning the newspaper
Speaker 2: is then they'll just get rid of the newspaper. And
Speaker 2: you know who is going to come in and spend
Speaker 2: lose one hundred million dollars a year on it. Nobody.
Speaker 2: Nobody loses one hundred million dollars a year on things
Speaker 2: like that is actually not something that's done in the
Speaker 2: United States. Capitalists don't come in and then like waste
Speaker 2: a hundred million dollars. They come in, if they have
Speaker 2: a delusion, then they can run it at a profit.
Speaker 2: I think Bezos is basically proved it can't be done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are like three newspapers in the United States that
Speaker 2: make money. The Journal is one and The Times is another.
Speaker 2: And as I say, I think the New York Post
Speaker 2: doesn't lose money anymore. Nobody can make money on a newspaper.
Speaker 2: No one's coming to buy it from them, or if
Speaker 2: they do, they're buying it for scrap. So they should
Speaker 2: be happy. They should say thank you, Jeff Bezos for
Speaker 2: changing your editorial policy. Those personal librities and those free markets.
Speaker 2: What a great idea.
Speaker 4: So I do think what is interesting is that, you know,
Speaker 4: I have this long standing argument about like how America
Speaker 4: took this weird turn because basically because of TV bits
Speaker 4: starting with the Telegraph, of buying into objective coverage, right,
Speaker 4: And it was this whole idea, if you just put
Speaker 4: a TV on things you didn't have, you could take
Speaker 4: out all the bias. And of course it's nonsense and
Speaker 4: that never happened like in the UK or most of Europe. Right,
Speaker 4: I mean the Guardian stayed left wing. Doesn't mean I
Speaker 4: mean I don't like the Guardian, but it doesn't mean
Speaker 4: it was. Or the times of the Telegraph which are
Speaker 4: right of center or conservative, doesn't mean they were bad papers,
Speaker 4: but you just knew where they were coming from, right,
Speaker 4: And I think that's a more honest way to do journalism.
Speaker 4: What is interesting to me is like American media is
Speaker 4: reverting back to the nineteenth century model in all sorts
Speaker 4: of ways. And I've been making that argument for a
Speaker 4: long time, and now it's reverting in another way, which
Speaker 4: is to have media barons basically leaning heavily on how
Speaker 4: their outlets cover the news. And I think that's both
Speaker 4: good and bad depending on the actual circumstance. You know,
Speaker 4: the La Times is going through all sorts of turmoil,
Speaker 4: where I've been a columnist coming.
Speaker 1: Up on twenty years.
Speaker 4: Because the new owner has an idea about how these things,
Speaker 4: how a newspaper should work, and that's normal.
Speaker 1: I agree with you.
Speaker 4: There is this weird sense that the sort of institutionalized
Speaker 4: progressive elite seems to think that these institutions should always
Speaker 4: and forever be aligned to their priors and their interests,
Speaker 4: and when these institutions go another way, they think, it's
Speaker 4: this just outrage It's like petting the cat backwards. They
Speaker 4: just think it's apps outrageous and unthinkable, and it's it's
Speaker 4: kind of fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: Again, We're used to living in a world in which,
Speaker 2: sure we hold minority view. We work in a profession
Speaker 2: in which they have had the high they have had
Speaker 2: the uh you know, the high ground uh in the
Speaker 2: culture for our entire professional lives, all three of us,
Speaker 2: in our different you know, in our different respective professions
Speaker 2: or places that we work. And we're used to it,
Speaker 2: and they're not, and they don't. They are not used
Speaker 2: to not being kowtow too. And in fact, the last
Speaker 2: five years, for the last seven years, they were kowtowed too.
Speaker 2: They were sold a bill of goods that not only
Speaker 2: if they went woke, and they and they went in
Speaker 2: this direction. Not only would it be commercially a blockbuster
Speaker 2: for them, but they could alter the course of American
Speaker 2: history for the better by preventing the return to power
Speaker 2: of one Donald Trump. And guess what, it didn't work.
Speaker 2: They didn't prevent him from getting reelected. In fact, maybe
Speaker 2: if they had not covered up Biden's infirmities, the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party could have been forced to ditch him into twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. They got a different candidate in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four who might have had a chance of beating Trump.
Speaker 2: Who knows. But all these owners Shu and Singh, you're
Speaker 2: the guy at the at the at the La Times, Bezos,
Speaker 2: all these guys, they were told, you have to go
Speaker 2: this way. It's going to be fantastic. Democracy dies in darkness.
Speaker 2: It's a gold mine. The resistance is a gold mine.
Speaker 2: And it turned out a it wasn't a gold mine.
Speaker 2: Look at what's happening at MSNBC and b what whatever
Speaker 2: political end they thought they were going to achieve backfired
Speaker 2: on them. So why is he still giving them run
Speaker 2: of the paper. Why is Jeff Bezos giving them run
Speaker 2: of the paper. They didn't take the guy down. He's
Speaker 2: now running things, and Bezos wants to make peace with him.
Speaker 2: Maybe you think that's, of course the illegitimate, because you think, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if he I mean, I
Speaker 3: mean I think that Trump will can consider this a triumph,
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure it's gonna be making peace. I mean,
Speaker 3: the the as you want to point it out, the
Speaker 3: pro free market, pro individual liberty newspaper in America right
Speaker 3: now is the Wallsey Journal, and the editorial page has
Speaker 3: all been called Trump and his administration fools and a moron.
Speaker 2: And he complains about it, and he complains about it.
Speaker 3: So I was like, you know, you could be you
Speaker 3: could be pro pro free market and pro personal liberty
Speaker 3: and still run a thwart of our erratic and I
Speaker 3: think sort of mentally imbalanced president. Yeah.
Speaker 4: We don't need to get deep into conservative esoterica here,
Speaker 4: but just to put a pin on this, the contention
Speaker 4: that Donald Trump is pro free market.
Speaker 1: And pro personal liberty is disputable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yes, it's not a Yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: a fact.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's go where where Bezos is going. So
Speaker 2: forget that maybe he's trying and to make peace. No,
Speaker 2: but maybe what he's making peace with is the original
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley worldview, right, which was this kind of libertarian
Speaker 2: I know he's not Silicon Valley that he was in Seattle,
Speaker 2: but he's over there, this libertarian let it all hang out.
Speaker 2: Information wants to be free, you know, do all that.
Speaker 2: And then they got woke. They got woke. In the
Speaker 2: twenty ten Silicon Valley went to the left. It was
Speaker 2: this weird leftist libertarian thing.
Speaker 3: And now, yeah, no, I just I don't think that's true.
Speaker 3: I think that if anything that weird and information wants
Speaker 3: to be free nonsense, they're all embarrassed by because that's
Speaker 3: how you go broke. I remember hearing.
Speaker 1: That information was destroyed the newspaper industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, information wants to be free. He wants me free.
Speaker 3: He wants to be free. And I remember a very
Speaker 3: very prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist running something he called
Speaker 3: the New York Times Deathwatch, because of course the New
Speaker 3: York Times is foolishly not doing that. And the New
Speaker 3: York Time realized, Okay, well, we just have to do
Speaker 3: something about our brand, and we have to have a
Speaker 3: better cooking section, and we have to have a better
Speaker 3: games section. That people will pay for and that actually
Speaker 3: did that actually had a huge effect on their bottom line.
Speaker 3: I think what Basis wants to be is he wants
Speaker 3: to be a really important guy that everybody thinks is cool,
Speaker 3: rather than this weird nerd that he is still in
Speaker 3: his weird transference phase to the guy who doesn't really
Speaker 3: understand popular music. That that guy. He doesn't want to
Speaker 3: be that guy anymore. And it's intoxicating to have a newspaper,
Speaker 3: to be able to like have a newspaper, and I don't,
Speaker 3: but you know, he's got that. He's got Elon Musk
Speaker 3: running around. And seeing Elon Musk is basically president standing
Speaker 3: looming over Donald Trump, It's like it must be really
Speaker 3: really frustrating and also really really cool. I mean, why
Speaker 3: why else would he buy James Bond? That's what he
Speaker 3: wants to be, you know.
Speaker 4: I lately I've been on a bit of a terror
Speaker 4: against needless anthropomorphization of things.
Speaker 1: And as one does, you know, and this one does.
Speaker 4: And the first of all, information wants to be free. Well,
Speaker 4: first of all, who gives that rats ass what information wants?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And second of all, like alcohol wants to be free,
Speaker 4: Lots of things want to be free by the same logic,
Speaker 4: but like bars that serve alcohol for free go out
Speaker 4: of business. And the whole idea that somehow you were
Speaker 4: going to have something that's very expensive to produce, which
Speaker 4: is reported journalism. Believe me, it's very expensive, as we're
Speaker 4: learning at the Dispatch to have good reporting, both in
Speaker 4: terms of time, salary and resources and all the rest.
Speaker 4: If you go by the motto, it just it just
Speaker 4: wants to be free, like it's some stallion that needs
Speaker 4: to be let off some BLM ranch in New Mexico.
Speaker 1: You're going to go out of business.
Speaker 4: And the willingness of the news industry in general to
Speaker 4: buy into something that they obviously had to know at
Speaker 4: some foundational level.
Speaker 1: Was not true.
Speaker 4: Is one of the great self inflicted wounds of America.
Speaker 3: I think I.
Speaker 2: Told this story about the New York Post. When I
Speaker 2: was at the New York Post and when the website
Speaker 2: went sort of the entire paper was put on the
Speaker 2: website for free. And I had just come from the
Speaker 2: Weekly Standard, and I had had one rule when we
Speaker 2: started the Weekly Standard, and I went to Bill christ
Speaker 2: I said, we are not giving content away for nothing.
Speaker 2: Because I had watched time magazine did it and they
Speaker 2: had made a huge mistake. And then Walter Isaencson tried
Speaker 2: to correct that mistake, and we didn't. The Standard did not.
Speaker 2: You had to subscribe to get a code to read
Speaker 2: the Standard online. There was no other way to read
Speaker 2: if you were going to read it at all, and
Speaker 2: not on paper. And the New York Post went entirely free.
Speaker 2: And I said to my boss, why are we doing this?
Speaker 2: I don't understand. He said, you should love this because
Speaker 2: it'll give you a national audience. Like people are still
Speaker 2: going to read the Post the way people are going
Speaker 2: to buy the paper to read it on the subway.
Speaker 2: We were the number one selling newspaper in Manhattan. People
Speaker 2: bought it in the afternoons to read it on the
Speaker 2: subway on the way home. Sold three to four hundred
Speaker 2: thousand papers that way by hand for fifty cents, you know,
Speaker 2: two quarters thrown in. And that therefore there was no
Speaker 2: threat because all the only thing you were going to
Speaker 2: get was people reading The New York in Cincinnati or
Speaker 2: San Francisco or something like that. And it made sense
Speaker 2: if you if you didn't understand that at some point
Speaker 2: people were going to be able to carry something around
Speaker 2: that was going to make the free thing available to
Speaker 2: them when they were on the subway, and therefore weren't
Speaker 2: going to buy the paper.
Speaker 3: It's still a part of you though, that when you
Speaker 3: hear the stuff, you think, wait, we're still talking about
Speaker 3: the newspaper.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Joan and I both still write for newspapers,
Speaker 2: so we're still talking about it because you know, it's
Speaker 2: like if we were if we had a if we
Speaker 2: had buggy whips, if we had a horse and we
Speaker 2: needed a buggy whip, we would still talk about the
Speaker 2: best place to buy a buggy whip. Yes, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe that's not something that other people really pay
Speaker 2: attention to, But you know.
Speaker 1: I also still love physical newspapers too.
Speaker 3: I do the crossword every day.
Speaker 2: See I don't. I'm very happy not reading the physical newspaper.
Speaker 2: I mean, and I find, by the way, with books
Speaker 2: that because my my eyesight isn't great, that that iPads
Speaker 2: you know, where I can blow the type up or
Speaker 2: actually and the phone, by the way, are much easier
Speaker 2: on my eyes than a than a conventional codexes. But
Speaker 2: but that's okay. I mean, I many people do.
Speaker 3: Like doing the crossword puzzle. The Journal and The Times
Speaker 3: cross repuzzle, and there is a mystery to the Journal
Speaker 3: and the Crimes cross re puzzle, in which there are
Speaker 3: occasionally clue that are that are repeated. There'll be one
Speaker 3: on Tuesday and The New York Times that will appear
Speaker 3: on Thursday. Not not exactly the same clue, but close.
Speaker 3: And it's impossible to know how that happened. It's unlikely
Speaker 3: that anyone consciously stole it right, because it's just too silling.
Speaker 3: These things are all done way ahead of time. But
Speaker 3: I don't know if anybody else has noticed that. I
Speaker 3: just thought I would talk a little bit about crossroad
Speaker 3: puzzles because I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just doing storing. To me, doing a crossroad puzzle
Speaker 2: on the phone or on the computer on the iPad
Speaker 2: is fantastic.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 2: Oh yes it is.
Speaker 3: No, that's an incorrect opinion.
Speaker 2: It is not an incorrect opinion, and it is in
Speaker 2: fact demonstrated by the fact that, as you say, the
Speaker 2: puzzle is one of the things that makes The Times
Speaker 2: have ten million subscribers.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's not profitable. I'm just saying it's
Speaker 3: an incorrect opinion. But you know, it's not an incorrect opinion.
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Speaker 2: So we've been talking about Jeff Bezos. I think it's
Speaker 2: now time for us to talk about Mark Zuckerberg and
Speaker 2: our friend John Goldberg. Mark Siberberg has seduced John Goldberg.
Speaker 2: Uh in a very horrifying way. Terrified. It's like Black Mirror.
Speaker 2: I'm in an episode of Black Mirror because joon' Goldberg,
Speaker 2: as I see him on on Zoom right now, is
Speaker 2: wearing a pair of smart smart spy glasses. He's wearing
Speaker 2: smart glasses, and I am freaked out. So Joanah, what
Speaker 2: are you seeing?
Speaker 3: Can you tell what you're seeing right now?
Speaker 2: What is going on?
Speaker 4: So just to be clear, these are not the virtual
Speaker 4: reality glasses. Uh huh okay, so yes, those virtuality grasses
Speaker 4: are different. Those are those big honkin things that look like.
Speaker 2: That's the oculus. That's called the oculus, right.
Speaker 4: Which is sort of like a slim down version of
Speaker 4: the thing from that Albert Brooks movie where the cameraman
Speaker 4: all had these word helmets.
Speaker 2: Real life was called real life Real Life.
Speaker 3: So this these are written by Albert Brooks and Harry Shearer.
Speaker 3: By the way, Harry was it was co creator, co
Speaker 3: created my mind.
Speaker 4: But go ahead, So these are basically modified tricked out
Speaker 4: ray Man wafer sunglasses good by the way, and the
Speaker 4: lenses are transitions, so like in the sun'll be there'll
Speaker 4: be sunglasses and you can link it with your phone
Speaker 4: and I can I'm not currently linked with my phone,
Speaker 4: but I can ask it sort of instead of like
Speaker 4: asking Siri for something, you can say you can ask
Speaker 4: Meta for something, and you can say, hey, I don't
Speaker 4: want to say it because I'm afraid it'll trigger here
Speaker 4: and confuse things. But you can say, hey, what am
Speaker 4: I looking at? Or take a page? Yeah, take a video,
Speaker 4: what's the capital of Belize? You know that kind of stuff,
Speaker 4: and it'll basically just do the search and read it
Speaker 4: back to you, readbact the answer to you. I don't
Speaker 4: use that very much. I tend to have the AI
Speaker 4: stuff turned off because I find it annoying. But uh,
Speaker 4: I thought these were really cool when Karas Swisher showed
Speaker 4: me a pair you had brought to the studio one
Speaker 4: day at CNN. And the audio on them is fantastic.
Speaker 4: It's about as good as air pods, and so you
Speaker 4: can have them in and listen to a podcast or
Speaker 4: music or any of that kind of stuff, and you
Speaker 4: can also very surreptitiously just taped aside and take a photo.
Speaker 4: And the photos are actually pretty good. And so the
Speaker 4: highest best use I've gotten out of them was when
Speaker 4: I went to India on that special trip and you went,
Speaker 4: I went to all sorts of places where you weren't
Speaker 4: supposed to be taking a picture to pictures, and since
Speaker 4: people don't realize what it is, no one noticed. And
Speaker 4: it's not like I got pictures of classified things or whatever.
Speaker 4: But it's a kind of a fun way to like,
Speaker 4: if you're driving and you see something wacky, you don't
Speaker 4: have to take out your phone and like you kill yourself.
Speaker 4: You just tapped aside of your glasses and it takes
Speaker 4: a picture.
Speaker 3: Is it weird and racist for me to say things
Speaker 3: something like tell me please, why are you keep tapping
Speaker 3: on the side of your head? Are you taking pictures about?
Speaker 3: Is that we cut that out?
Speaker 4: I don't know if no, But I love okay, And uh,
Speaker 4: they're just a toy, you know. I mean it's kind
Speaker 4: of cool. I have not gotten massive utility out of them.
Speaker 4: But if you're doing something where you're not going to
Speaker 4: be I wanted to take out your phone to take
Speaker 4: a picture and all that kind of stuff or video,
Speaker 4: but you want the ability to do it, or if
Speaker 4: you want to listen to something while not having air
Speaker 4: pods in or any of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: And if you like the the AI features, there's all
Speaker 4: sorts of cool stuff you can do with it. I'm
Speaker 4: just not that into it, so I'm sorry. I don't
Speaker 4: have a more grandiose, exciting explanation. But they're a fun toy.
Speaker 2: This is the end of the work. This is it?
Speaker 2: Is it really that we're done? We're done, humanity is done?
Speaker 3: Why because we have we have fun glasses.
Speaker 2: I saw Elon Musk the other day tweeted that we're
Speaker 2: on the verge of the singularity. Jonah is merging with
Speaker 2: his glasses. The AI is now on his body, is
Speaker 2: literally hanging off his body, and at some point they'll
Speaker 2: put it in. I'm wearing contact lenses now because my
Speaker 2: eyesight has gotten somewhat worse that it's actually better with
Speaker 2: I got with. What if they put AI in my
Speaker 2: contact lenses like ten years from now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that.
Speaker 2: John, Yeah, I am very Why not.
Speaker 1: Sure that you will be gentle?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It will happen. This is very bad. This is very bad.
Speaker 2: It's more more more badness of the of the bad,
Speaker 2: of everything going bad. You think he gets his hands
Speaker 2: on this. Here's what they see. What do we see?
Speaker 2: What these lasses do to the next generation of people,
Speaker 2: the next generation of people between the ages of ten
Speaker 2: and fifteen.
Speaker 3: I am surveying the people the ages of ten to thirteen,
Speaker 3: and also people in the ages seem seem to be
Speaker 3: the ages of all ages, and they seem to me
Speaker 3: to be in these many many people seem to be
Speaker 3: sort of mentally and emotionally imbalanced and filled with inappropriate
Speaker 3: anger all the time, and angry at stuff and easily
Speaker 3: persuaded nonsense. So the idea of maybe having some kind
Speaker 3: of a machine in there to sort of govern their
Speaker 3: weirdness and to remind them, actually, no, this is not
Speaker 3: really what's happening. Could be? Uh could could could?
Speaker 2: Well, that's good. So you're saying, what if you programmed it?
Speaker 2: What if somebody got in there and turned you into
Speaker 2: a character in a Philip K. Dick novel. You're like,
Speaker 2: you put your glasses on, you take a picture, and
Speaker 2: they're like, that's not actually The Washington Monument there is
Speaker 2: no Washington Monument. In fact, that is an alien base.
Speaker 3: Let me explain. So, let let I have I have
Speaker 3: four words, maybe six words, to to say, Deputy FBI
Speaker 3: Director Dan.
Speaker 2: Was terrible. I didn't just say.
Speaker 3: You're telling me that putting a little AI in there
Speaker 3: is gonna make it worse. I think you're your dreams.
Speaker 3: I can't get only make it better.
Speaker 2: You're saying that Dan Bongino with metaglasses would be better.
Speaker 3: I'm saying that the evil masterminds in the Philip da
Speaker 3: k Dick novel, or the evil masterminds in the George
Speaker 3: Orwell be.
Speaker 2: Like, well, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 3: Obviously, this is one Come on, now, we're gonna we
Speaker 3: may be evil, but we're not gonna be That's that's
Speaker 3: too far. I don't know. I couldn't look at myself
Speaker 3: in the mirror in the morning, in the telescreen and
Speaker 3: know that I had done that. I mean, you know, so,
Speaker 3: so I just I take a more sanguine attitude towards
Speaker 3: all of this technology. But then again, I'm a seminary,
Speaker 3: so I have.
Speaker 2: To you do well, why why why does a seminarian
Speaker 2: look at the present and think that the world is
Speaker 2: not full of sin, and that we are not and
Speaker 2: that we are not headed. We are not making it
Speaker 2: easier for people to sin, to live, to live disconnected
Speaker 2: lives from others, to not to serve others, but to
Speaker 2: only live as part of the priesthood of the self.
Speaker 2: Why couldn't that be the lesson of the metaglasses.
Speaker 3: Because people don't want to do that. They want to
Speaker 3: connect it what they that they are. We are, deeply, deeply,
Speaker 3: deeply in our heart of hearts and our soul, we
Speaker 3: are lonely and we want to be connected, and no
Speaker 3: matter what we invent, will never ever be able to
Speaker 3: stamp that out. And maybe we just need to know
Speaker 3: what that what the value of that is. Maybe we
Speaker 3: we we maybe people think for a little bit, Oh
Speaker 3: you know what, I don't really need to to have
Speaker 3: this conversation. I'd rather just send you a like on
Speaker 3: TikTok or whatever it is. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe we need to hit rock bottom like a drunk.
Speaker 4: So Rob, can I ask you a related question because
Speaker 4: I'm actually kind of on POD's side about generally, I
Speaker 4: think iPhones have been in social media, all these things
Speaker 4: have been bad for the soul and all this connectivity
Speaker 4: has made everyone lonelier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's true.
Speaker 4: I have a question for you as a seminary. Have
Speaker 4: you told anybody.
Speaker 1: You know get to church you Heathen?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I have not, I have not, I have not.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's coming?
Speaker 3: Uh? No? I mean you think for me to be
Speaker 3: telling people to go to church? Yeah, no, I don't
Speaker 3: think so. I think what you want to do is
Speaker 3: you want people to you want people to go to church.
Speaker 3: I mean this is what I think religion and church
Speaker 3: is a place where you go because it has something
Speaker 3: you need, not because it's something you have. So you
Speaker 3: don't go to church because you want to like profess
Speaker 3: your faith. You go because you want faith. I think
Speaker 3: that the churches have kind of missed that. So they
Speaker 3: just have to make sure that whatever it is that
Speaker 3: they're I mean it's easy for me to talk about
Speaker 3: the Episcopal Church I know pretty well, but you know
Speaker 3: there will be big, you know, committees, and they wonder
Speaker 3: what what can we do to get people back to church?
Speaker 3: And they'll you know, they do things like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: we'd remind people that our coffee hour we serve Starbucks
Speaker 3: coffee and you can drive by churches every now and
Speaker 3: then and see a silence that we have Starbucks coffee,
Speaker 3: They'll say, which is weird because so to Starbucks down
Speaker 3: the streets, So like, why would you go to the
Speaker 3: church or you could go to starbuck, right, you know,
Speaker 3: churches need to start serving up and delivering and offering
Speaker 3: things that people really want. But what they don't want,
Speaker 3: obviously is to go and hear sinners in the hands
Speaker 3: of an angry God. I don't believe that anyway, So I'm
Speaker 3: glad that they don't, but they do want to hear something,
Speaker 3: and I think that people writing though, oh yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean it's killer, it's killer.
Speaker 2: Guy, that guy, that guy knew how to that guy
Speaker 2: knew how to kill material.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Greenwhild my colleague today has a has in our Daily
Speaker 2: Commentary's daily newsletter. We're taping this on on Wednesday the
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, points out that there is a new survey
Speaker 2: that suggests that the decline in religious faith, religious attendance
Speaker 2: and people saying that they has stabilized for the first
Speaker 2: time in a very long time. Ross staff that very
Speaker 2: excitedly also that as welless.
Speaker 3: On our on the Ricochet podcast last last Friday was great.
Speaker 2: And humorously points out that his own book is on
Speaker 2: the bestseller list, and maybe he's personally responsible for his
Speaker 2: new book, which is about why people should believe in God.
Speaker 1: Why he says go to church Heathen?
Speaker 3: He does, He doesn't, he does.
Speaker 2: But Abe has a very interesting theory, which is that
Speaker 2: he says that the last five years, really beginning with
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, so that's the year of the pandemic, and
Speaker 2: the year of George Floyd, and the year of the
Speaker 2: Awokening and the year of the revolution in consciousness, and
Speaker 2: all of that have been so terrible, and that this
Speaker 2: substitute religion wokeness, which is a subsidute religion, as John
Speaker 2: McWhorter said in his book on it, and I think,
Speaker 2: as is true of socialism and leftism in general, that
Speaker 2: the failures of this, the failure of this to do
Speaker 2: anything but try to instruct people that men are not
Speaker 2: men and women are not women, and the entire world
Speaker 2: has actually is actually might be having the same kind
Speaker 2: of boomerang effect I suggested about politics and Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 2: and that people are like, we gave a shot to
Speaker 2: this fake with this pseudo religion, and they're describing a
Speaker 2: world we neither add, we understand or want to live in,
Speaker 2: and it's time to go back to the older ways.
Speaker 3: I think that may be partly that certainly I think
Speaker 3: is driving some of the attractions and more orthodox religions.
Speaker 3: You know, the Orthodox Church is getting very popular now
Speaker 3: that a lot of converse with that. But I would,
Speaker 3: I would actually pre would date that much older. I
Speaker 3: remember when I was a kid and my dad was
Speaker 3: in the it was in the tech business, and he
Speaker 3: brought home this thing. This is like ninety seventy six,
Speaker 3: seventy seven, maybe seventy eight. It was a computer chess
Speaker 3: board and you could play chess with a computer. And
Speaker 3: I remember thinking, man, now that I have this, I
Speaker 3: will never be bored. But of course, you know, I
Speaker 3: was bored, Like within a minute, I was bored. And
Speaker 3: you know, midde day, that says a lot about me.
Speaker 3: But I was easily bored. And I think we've been
Speaker 3: told for twenty years to go back to the technology thing,
Speaker 3: that these these these items will help connect you to
Speaker 3: other people, and it's going to be great. You're gonna information,
Speaker 3: you can connect with people, and this is the you know,
Speaker 3: the I actually wrote a piece about this and the
Speaker 3: the years ago, the the heart of all the technology,
Speaker 3: that invention and money and investment and the innovation from
Speaker 3: you know, two nineteen ninety eight, ninety two thousand on
Speaker 3: has been really about the war against loneliness. And we
Speaker 3: have all these things and they don't work. People are
Speaker 3: still lone not only just lonely, they're just they're pissed too.
Speaker 3: Now I not only am I lonely, but I also
Speaker 3: have a gigantic list of people like despise and some
Speaker 3: of them are some of them are my friends. Right,
Speaker 3: And I think that you kind of want to go.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to ask yourself, Okay, well, what's if
Speaker 3: I have all this and I'm still lonely and I'm
Speaker 3: still still emptiness? What could possibly be the answer I
Speaker 3: find I have this? I mean, I know we should
Speaker 3: just keep going, we should go to tough, funny stuff.
Speaker 3: But I have this problem with people. You know, some
Speaker 3: of my colleagues at seven you keep talking about how
Speaker 3: terrible everything is. Everything's really terrible, you know, global warming
Speaker 3: and war and whatnot. And I said, no, no, See, the
Speaker 3: thing is that things are really great, but it's not enough, right,
Speaker 3: I mean by any measure or metric. The world is
Speaker 3: a better, better place it is today that it was
Speaker 3: you were, you go. And I think that we're starting
Speaker 3: to realize that, oh, we we need another way of
Speaker 3: measuring happiness and goodness and purposefulness in our life.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's the deepest possible point. We
Speaker 2: are living in a time in which in which there
Speaker 2: are literally billions of people who are not starving, who
Speaker 2: people in their position forty years ago would literally have
Speaker 2: been starving to death. Yeah, right right, this is this
Speaker 2: is a real thing.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: The advances of humankind credible out of the most the
Speaker 2: deepest penury. Uh is something that we take totally for
Speaker 2: granted in a really terrible way, and for people, and
Speaker 2: and we're people, and but you're right that that does
Speaker 2: not solve for soul aching, the thing that makes the
Speaker 2: soul ache, and that a lot of what makes the
Speaker 2: soul ache. Yeah, is this refusal or inability to connect.
Speaker 2: The connection is a burden.
Speaker 3: And we should also have some jokes here, but I
Speaker 3: don't have any. Let's put I say one other thing,
Speaker 3: which is that that one of the things that we
Speaker 3: have discovered with social media is that the your ability
Speaker 3: to show off to people is much much greater than
Speaker 3: ever was, and that is not enough that everyone. You know,
Speaker 3: part of the sort of self promotion that people do
Speaker 3: is just it's just not satisfying, and so you have
Speaker 3: to look for something else, which may I would not
Speaker 3: recommend looking to a night out with drinks if you
Speaker 3: reach a certain age, but if you do go out
Speaker 3: at night and have a few drinks, you'll maybe you're
Speaker 3: like me. You don't bounce back the next day like
Speaker 3: you know we used to. I am approaching a very
Speaker 3: big birthday in June, and I can tell you that
Speaker 3: I don't bounce back the next day or even the
Speaker 3: day after. I have to make a choice. Sometimes I
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Speaker 4: So Rob, I have notes. I I agree entirely that
Speaker 4: we should get to something more jocular. So I'm going
Speaker 4: to forego trying on the prior conversation except to say
Speaker 4: two things. One, I did write a whole book on
Speaker 4: this entire topic. The rest it's all about ingratitude and
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff. And two you said in
Speaker 4: that excellent ad read for that excellent product, the people
Speaker 4: who always used to say, no, no, it's about dehydration.
Speaker 4: You need to eat a banana?
Speaker 3: What? Yeah, I'm sorry, I I alighted two things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but the banana has potassium. So some people say, oh,
Speaker 3: you need to drink water, and let's be say, oh, no,
Speaker 3: just eat a banana because it has potassium. And so
Speaker 3: I you're good, is correct.
Speaker 1: I've never man.
Speaker 4: It's hot outside, I'm so thirsty, I gotta eat a banana.
Speaker 4: It's just not give give a give a thirsty man
Speaker 4: a banana.
Speaker 3: I do sometimes. I remember once I I I got
Speaker 3: into this like fugue state. I would when I was
Speaker 3: pitched TV shows. I remember like once pitching his show
Speaker 3: and we were we said it in San Francisco, and
Speaker 3: it was the picture went great. Every he's nodding and
Speaker 3: smiling and laughing, this is great. We won a great pitch,
Speaker 3: you know. And I said, and we love, you know,
Speaker 3: we want to sit in San Francisco because it's such
Speaker 3: a great city's going these great things. And then I
Speaker 3: said some weird, I said, I had no memory. I said,
Speaker 3: and you know, with great about San Francisco is there's
Speaker 3: so many ways in and out of the city. And
Speaker 3: everybody nodded like, oh yeah, yeah, right great. And then
Speaker 3: we were walking out and we sold the show. We
Speaker 3: were walking down, we sold the scriptway walking out, and
Speaker 3: my writing partner said, what are you what are you
Speaker 3: talking about? There's so many ways in and out of it?
Speaker 3: What does that even mean? I said, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Did I say that? Because yeah, you said. The thing
Speaker 3: we like about San Francisco is there's so many ways
Speaker 3: in and out of the city. Is that? What is that? Even?
Speaker 3: And I said, well, did anybody No? No, They all
Speaker 3: nodded like that made sense, But it didn't make any
Speaker 3: sense at all, And you know, and and like he
Speaker 3: was mad at me, Like we we kind of had
Speaker 3: a little tension in the car the way back of
Speaker 3: the office because I was like, well, we sold it,
Speaker 3: didn't we? Yeah, but it was just nonsense. It's just
Speaker 3: like you need to think about what you're saying, is
Speaker 3: what he kept saying to me in a very angry
Speaker 3: tone of voice.
Speaker 4: So years ago, you know, I'm still friends with these
Speaker 4: guys that I worked with when I was a television
Speaker 4: producer for Ben Wattenberg's TV show. And the whole stick
Speaker 4: behind the TV show was we were gonna have experts,
Speaker 4: right because journalists are glib and don't know a lot
Speaker 4: about a lot of things, and politicians lie.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be people.
Speaker 4: You have to have written a book, or you have
Speaker 4: to be a scholar or an expert on something, and
Speaker 4: you can't just be some you know whatever. And we
Speaker 4: were in an editorial meeting and someone proposed to have
Speaker 4: Ed Koch as a guest on this panel. And I
Speaker 4: was not particularly fond of the person who proposed this,
Speaker 4: and I kind of scornfully got this haughty.
Speaker 1: Tone and I said, well, I just don't know.
Speaker 4: It seems to me that ed Cotch doesn't really have
Speaker 4: an at academic pedicure. And I made it like another
Speaker 4: ten twenty five seconds into my little shpiel before someone
Speaker 4: said what.
Speaker 3: And wheeled around the way.
Speaker 4: And so twenty thirty years later, my friends still give
Speaker 4: me a grief for having said academic pedicure.
Speaker 2: That is, that is a malapropism for the ages. That
Speaker 2: is so good, that is so good.
Speaker 3: It's probably true. I don't I don't think i'd want
Speaker 3: to like check that.
Speaker 2: Where where where? But where do you go to get
Speaker 2: a degree in pedicure? Would be I assume Korea. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna I'm gonna make a wild stab and say that
Speaker 2: South Korea, since all nail salons in New York City
Speaker 2: are run by people from South Korea, that maybe this
Speaker 2: is something that you, you know, have to take a
Speaker 2: very difficult test for.
Speaker 4: Thanks to the good work of the Institute for Justice,
Speaker 4: the think tank R Street, and governor's like Doug Doosey,
Speaker 4: War on Occupation, no licensing, Yes, such that you no
Speaker 4: longer need a degree in academic pedicure.
Speaker 2: And although yes, that's that, that is that's very deep.
Speaker 2: I want to mention you mentioned bananas. And this brings
Speaker 2: to mind the fact that the new season of White
Speaker 2: Lotus is now on HBO and it's set in Highland.
Speaker 2: And two things about this one is they keep cutting
Speaker 2: all the all the interstitial things. When they cut between
Speaker 2: the the three plot lines are they show like a
Speaker 2: monkey in a tree, a little monkey, a big monkey,
Speaker 2: a medium sized monkey. The monkey is crawling up and
Speaker 2: down the tree. So that's why I brought to mind
Speaker 2: the banana. And the fact is, so I've watched I
Speaker 2: think it's either two episodes or three, I can't remember. Now. Uh,
Speaker 2: this it is so boring. It is like watching paint dry.
Speaker 2: I swear to God this season.
Speaker 3: Uh you know.
Speaker 2: Basically, now this has become a show where you pick
Speaker 2: a location. Mike White picks a location right, the Hawaii,
Speaker 2: the first one that was a COVID show that he
Speaker 2: did sicily. Now this is Samoi Ko Samoi and Thailand
Speaker 2: and god, you know he'll be the Maldives next or whatever.
Speaker 2: And then you like have music from the company and
Speaker 2: then then you have these rich Americans acting foolishly on
Speaker 2: on location, and my god, it is so excruciatingly dull.
Speaker 2: And I'm saying this because I think people need to
Speaker 2: understand that you are permitted to watch a show like
Speaker 2: White Lotus, which wins Emmys and everyone is so thrilled
Speaker 2: with it, and everyone's like waiting for it to come back,
Speaker 2: and then it comes back. It's okay to think that
Speaker 2: it's bad. When it's bad, people often don't give themselves
Speaker 2: permission to think.
Speaker 3: That, really, that's interesting. I've never had that problem.
Speaker 2: Well you haven't, but you know that there are people
Speaker 2: who are like, oh, you've got to watch Oh you know,
Speaker 2: we've talked about this the Oh no, it only really
Speaker 2: gets good in the fourth Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, are girls, you know, which is still the greatest
Speaker 4: example of that.
Speaker 3: Pat, Yeah, that's absolutely true. Patrick Schwarzenegger is in it,
Speaker 3: and somebody I think I just read a little somebody
Speaker 3: just post. I assume this is real because I saw
Speaker 3: it on Twitter. His angry response at the charges that
Speaker 3: he only got the job because he's, you know, Patrick Swartz,
Speaker 3: He's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver's son, and he so knows everybody.
Speaker 3: He said, those people are that's unfair. They weren't there
Speaker 3: when I was doing all the plays in high school.
Speaker 3: We're going to drama classes, like, yeah, I guess that's true.
Speaker 3: They missed your He is Pajama game.
Speaker 2: He is very very good. He is actually very good.
Speaker 2: I mean, he plays the worst person in the world,
Speaker 2: a genuinely sort of repugnant bro. Very good looking. He's
Speaker 2: very good looking. He's he's nominally he's playing somebody who
Speaker 2: was nominally charming, but it's actually morally disgusting, and I
Speaker 2: gotta say he's he's good. So I'm happy to report
Speaker 2: that that we should talk.
Speaker 3: About the other shows that, I mean, the honest truth
Speaker 3: about it. Yeah, these jobs are easy anyway, so good
Speaker 3: you know it's it's not that hard, but go ahead, sorry,
Speaker 3: we should.
Speaker 4: It's it's a little bit like the Seinfeld where like
Speaker 4: you're not allowed to dislike the English patient.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, we should.
Speaker 4: I mean there were like the last season of True
Speaker 4: Detective terrible, like deserve to leave skid marks on the
Speaker 4: toilet bowl.
Speaker 1: It was so bad, and.
Speaker 2: Well you also disliked it because it was it was
Speaker 2: it defamed Alaska. It was an act of defamation of
Speaker 2: poor poor Alaska. That it was its Yeah, but like.
Speaker 4: My problems with it there on the Alaska stuff having
Speaker 4: been to like Barrow in the place where it's supposed
Speaker 4: to be set, is like I think that's where it's.
Speaker 1: Supposed to be set.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like you know, when we watch sort
Speaker 4: of second or third tier action movies, they're all filmed
Speaker 4: in Toronto and they're supposed to be New York City
Speaker 4: and they go on these like subway systems that look
Speaker 4: nothing like New York, right. That's that was my main
Speaker 4: problem with the Alaska part of it was just like
Speaker 4: this is not what Alaska is like.
Speaker 1: But uh, you should see that.
Speaker 3: You see that. Austin Powers Movies made fun of that,
Speaker 3: where they would you know, be in a car chase
Speaker 3: through London and then suddenly they were on the Hollan
Speaker 3: Drive and there's a little musical I saw it. I
Speaker 3: forget that. It's called Love Me Tonight, or I think
Speaker 3: it's called Love Me Tonight with Maurice Chevalier. Actually sorry, Early,
Speaker 3: it's a really great, great movie.
Speaker 2: One of the great, one of the great original on
Speaker 2: the outside musicals.
Speaker 3: Not on set, yeah, yeah, not a set and incredible,
Speaker 3: incredible opening sequence, really really brilliant. But there's a period
Speaker 3: in when when I think Janet MacDonald is on on
Speaker 3: a horse and she's chasing after him on a train
Speaker 3: and it's it's the Valley. I mean, it's it's Covina
Speaker 3: she's on. Basically she's like, right, you're supposed to it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be France, is what you're saying, right, And
Speaker 3: she's basically on the corner of Ventura and wits it.
Speaker 3: But it's great, I mean still good. But it's like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Fine, but I mean I find this all the time now,
Speaker 2: particularly extremely it was also it's always been true, but
Speaker 2: but these shows that people they come back. They they
Speaker 2: have a great first season, right, and people get very excited,
Speaker 2: and it's totally logical that you get six good hours
Speaker 2: or eight good hours out of something and that's a
Speaker 2: pretty significant accomplishment. And then you come back and you
Speaker 2: don't have and that's it, and then they have to
Speaker 2: make more because it's popular, and then they gets really annoying.
Speaker 2: And yet it's the second and third seasons where people go,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is so f Oh my god, god,
Speaker 2: the bear. The bear is so fan it's so fantastic.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, it's sun cost fouls. You already put
Speaker 3: in so much time you can't possibly pull the ripcord
Speaker 3: on it. But also it's kind of like the same
Speaker 3: thing we're saying before, which is that you're discovering, Oh,
Speaker 3: this thing I thought would make me happy actually doesn't
Speaker 3: make me happy.
Speaker 2: And then you don't want to acknowledge it, so you know,
Speaker 2: you sort of and you don't want people to be
Speaker 2: mad at you if they're enthusiastic and you're not, because
Speaker 2: then you're like a wet blanket. You're you're, you're, you're
Speaker 2: you're harshing their mellow. You're you're ruining their good time.
Speaker 3: And you would you say say more about how you
Speaker 3: feel when people get mad at you.
Speaker 2: People get mad at me from the first moment in
Speaker 2: the morning till I go bed, go to bed, not me.
Speaker 2: I am not that that is not I but I
Speaker 2: am not.
Speaker 3: Who are they getting mad at? Are they getting mad
Speaker 3: at John? Are they getting mad at little John? Who
Speaker 3: are they getting mad at?
Speaker 2: Whatever? Whoever they're getting mad at. It has my name
Speaker 2: and it has.
Speaker 1: My face, so maybe it is session.
Speaker 2: We probably Yeah, thank you, thank you so much that
Speaker 2: that would be that would be a very, very very helpful.
Speaker 4: So there's a show that we're supposed to all of
Speaker 4: which I'm not saying is anything like True season four,
Speaker 4: True Detective or Girls or anything like that. But I
Speaker 4: am curious because it is benefiting from this, Oh you
Speaker 4: have to love it phenomenon is uh Severance, And I'm
Speaker 4: curious what you guys think about this season.
Speaker 2: I'm getting very annoyed by this season of Severance. So
Speaker 2: the first season of Severance I thought was fantastic. It's
Speaker 2: a workplace satire, right, That's the whole thing about Severance
Speaker 2: is that it was a workplace satire about what what
Speaker 2: what what? What? What would it be like if you
Speaker 2: could ditch the parts the boring part of your life
Speaker 2: where you were a drudge and you could just sort
Speaker 2: of like come, that person goes to work and you
Speaker 2: don't have to be at work, and then you just
Speaker 2: live the parts of your life where you're not at work, right,
Speaker 2: and so and then this hilarious depiction of this, you know,
Speaker 2: bizarrely Amway like cult like Kellogg like corporate culture that
Speaker 2: you live inside, right, And that was what was really
Speaker 2: great about it. And now it's just a science fiction
Speaker 2: now it's just a bottle science fiction show. That was
Speaker 2: just a show where it's like, what's really going on
Speaker 2: at Lumen and not Luman the breathing metabolic device, what's
Speaker 2: going on there? And are they clones? Are they do
Speaker 2: indies have consciousness? And stuff like that, and then it's
Speaker 2: like stuff. So the thing that really got me was
Speaker 2: I was listening to another podcast, Matt Bellanieese podcast about Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and he had on the producer of Severance, and the
Speaker 2: guy was like, well, it's such a big hit on
Speaker 2: Apple now we are looking forward to having many seasons
Speaker 2: to come. And I was like, oh, oh my god. No, like, no,
Speaker 2: try to finish up because you're already losing me with
Speaker 2: the seventeen different twists on the plot lines.
Speaker 3: It all goes to the same place. And I just
Speaker 3: remember a year, million billion years ago, it's going to
Speaker 3: see the And by the way, if you have not
Speaker 3: seen the movie Blade Runner, I apologize for this, but
Speaker 3: going to see the movie Blade Runner in the movie theater.
Speaker 3: In the movie theater, some you know, at some point
Speaker 3: in the movie, some guy some rose back turned to
Speaker 3: whoever goes. I bet you that guy's a robot too.
Speaker 3: He just doesn't know it. And yeah, it's like, yes,
Speaker 3: it's all just not as interesting or as earth chattering
Speaker 3: as people think. It is funny, a little funny joke,
Speaker 3: and then you're out.
Speaker 4: It's funny you say that about the robot thing, because
Speaker 4: I think the far better comparison. So could be right,
Speaker 4: Maybe they'll stick the landing. But like, is when World
Speaker 4: the HBO show.
Speaker 2: Or it just spun out of control?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they got It's like the boond Smoke didn't. They
Speaker 4: didn't have the right ventilation in the writer's room or
Speaker 4: to a certain extent lost, which I have now concluded
Speaker 4: that the title of that show was actually an ironic
Speaker 4: one who describing viewers who are trying to follow everything
Speaker 4: and the writers who completely lost whatever intentionality they originally had.
Speaker 4: And so like, I kind of liked the mood and
Speaker 4: the stuff in severance, but you can just feel like
Speaker 4: they're going to have an ending that does not justify
Speaker 4: the investment.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if they're going to have an ending.
Speaker 2: That's my point. I mean, one of the things about
Speaker 2: what's going on here is it took two and a
Speaker 2: half years for this second season to come out, right.
Speaker 2: Because of the strikes COVID there were various things that
Speaker 2: delayed everything. So this show is on like two and
Speaker 2: a half years later. Yellow Jack, which is another mystery
Speaker 2: bottle show thing, has just returned, and it's like, I
Speaker 2: can barely remember what I did on Saturday. You expecting
Speaker 2: so remember you're not about it from a show that
Speaker 2: I watched two and a half years ago. And you know,
Speaker 2: Stranger Things is coming back this summer and they're all
Speaker 2: eighty years I only want to see they're four years older.
Speaker 2: They're supposed to be teenagers.
Speaker 3: I only want to see TV or movies in which
Speaker 3: if there is like an artificial intelligence kind of character
Speaker 3: or like some kind of android that at least one
Speaker 3: of the actors describes that person as a robot.
Speaker 2: Robot.
Speaker 3: I don't like robot. I think robot because it kind
Speaker 3: of like it sets it in the fifties where I
Speaker 3: want to be. And by the way, take a quick break,
Speaker 3: we will be right back, and please listen to this
Speaker 3: wonderful message that's been been inserted by a robot or
Speaker 3: a robot, and we're back, so that the robot did
Speaker 3: his work.
Speaker 2: Uh, by the way, that's one of the things that
Speaker 2: where I where I decided that I was losing my
Speaker 2: sympathy with severances. There's a whole thing. There's a plot.
Speaker 2: They they they the the the inny that they end
Speaker 2: up outside, right, they're outside on an outing and the
Speaker 2: outing is called ortbow, which of course is at anagram
Speaker 2: for robot. So it's like, oh, so now you're telling
Speaker 2: me that they're robots or this is just a total
Speaker 2: like ridiculous red herring, like do it or don't do it?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. It's like you mentioned Lost
Speaker 2: Lost when Loss started to lose me, which was I
Speaker 2: think was like in the second season, though I kept
Speaker 2: watching it, of course, and it did have wonderful stuff
Speaker 2: all the way through its six seasons. Was when they
Speaker 2: met the the others, right, the other people from them,
Speaker 2: and people are like some guy says to uh Matthew Fox,
Speaker 2: the hero is like, this isn't your island, Jack, this
Speaker 2: is our island. It's not your island. I was like,
Speaker 2: they don't want it to be their island. They want
Speaker 2: to get.
Speaker 1: Off the island.
Speaker 2: I get off this island. You you you keep it.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to have you have the island. I'm not
Speaker 2: contesting ownership of the island with you, and that was
Speaker 2: when you thought, Okay, they've really lost the thread here.
Speaker 1: You can call this the Gulf of America. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, but can I just offer it? Can I
Speaker 3: for since we're talking about TV shows and stories and
Speaker 3: I know we got to run probably pretty soon. And
Speaker 3: I know you two are not on the TikTok for
Speaker 3: whatever reasons you can come up with.
Speaker 2: Because I'm not twelve, but if you.
Speaker 3: Are twelve or you're you know, emotionally twelve. The thing
Speaker 3: about TikTok is that there are there are there are
Speaker 3: shows on it, and they're terrible, and they are incredibly
Speaker 3: incredibly uh by the numbers, kind of like you can't
Speaker 3: believe it. It's as if they are written by and
Speaker 3: acted by robots. But they are very, very simple. It's
Speaker 3: usually it's either a a humble person going into a restaurant.
Speaker 3: This is the one I saw the other day. Hi,
Speaker 3: I'm here at what are you doing here? This restaurant
Speaker 3: is the number one restaurant. It's such a person such
Speaker 3: as yourself wouldn't be here. And then the resons, well,
Speaker 3: I think I have a reservation it's impossible, go away,
Speaker 3: you know, and then it goes on forever, and then
Speaker 3: you can because I'm hooked on this. And then you
Speaker 3: gotta you go down and like a and then the
Speaker 3: chef comes in and says, a is, did my mother
Speaker 3: come here to get her table? What? Wait here? Your mother?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 3: Who? And then then the person is, you're fired for
Speaker 3: biggest snob And the one I saw the other day,
Speaker 3: which I love, which is the guy's asleep at a
Speaker 3: tech company in his little The kid, the son of
Speaker 3: the owner for Dyson Technology or whatever it is, comes
Speaker 3: and says, what are you asleep in the chair? You're fired?
Speaker 3: And he goes, I was just here all night, just working.
Speaker 3: You're fired, your loser. And then the guy's girlfriend has
Speaker 3: just been fired. She's some kind of weird corporate uh
Speaker 3: you know, hr person, and she's like, yeah, yes, I
Speaker 3: would fire him. To boss's son, and then the boss's son,
Speaker 3: it's unbelievable. And then you just if you just if
Speaker 3: you scroll down and watch the rest of them. Then
Speaker 3: of course the boss's son is screamed at by his father.
Speaker 3: But there's the great moment where the kid, the guy
Speaker 3: who has been fired is then rehired by another beautiful
Speaker 3: woman who's at the you know, Thunderland Technology. I will
Speaker 3: give you a salary of one million dollars a year,
Speaker 3: and you will have a company called It's all kind
Speaker 3: of weird fantasy. You have to described incredibly satisfying.
Speaker 2: So you have to describe what you're talking about here,
Speaker 2: because what happens on TikTok, which I have sampled, is
Speaker 2: these these things are in chapters, right, so, and the
Speaker 2: chapters last two minutes, and then when you're done with
Speaker 2: that chapter, you can swipe up to go to the
Speaker 2: chapter that immediately succeeds it, and then you keep going.
Speaker 2: It can be fifty or sixty chapters. And they are
Speaker 2: little moral dramas, and they are made in China. They're
Speaker 2: made by they're written by Ai. They're made for by
Speaker 2: these Chinese production houses. Though they're all Americans or Canadians.
Speaker 3: They're all yeah yeah, right, but the dialogue is so hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I saw one myself about were wolves.
Speaker 3: No, it is not only loyal service to you, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's were wolves, but their corporate they're there.
Speaker 2: It's a were wolf who's also a billionaire. So it's
Speaker 2: like Twilight plus fifty Shades of Gray with a girl
Speaker 2: in high school and Succession, but they are written that way.
Speaker 2: It's like they make Hallmark movies look like Congreve or
Speaker 2: Sheridan or Moliere.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I mean that is the level of dialogue. So congratulations on.
Speaker 3: Because every trait it's like it's like watching a h
Speaker 3: Case Code movie. Every transgression is punished the evil person.
Speaker 2: This is what we need from you, Rob as a seminary.
Speaker 2: We need you to punish transgressions so that people will
Speaker 2: no longer be lonely. This is how we're coming around,
Speaker 2: I think for loneliness.
Speaker 1: John Oh, yeah, this is the punishment reach out.
Speaker 2: That is fair enough. I think that is a very
Speaker 2: good I do want to make one recommendation. I did
Speaker 2: it on our podcast, but remarkably because I thought the
Speaker 2: first season was not very good and the second season
Speaker 2: was terrible. Though I did watch them both because I'm
Speaker 2: a sucker.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: The the Amazon series Reacher, right, which you're right, the
Speaker 2: Lee Child novels, right you did. The third season is
Speaker 2: now up, and uh, it's really good. It's shockingly good.
Speaker 2: Like it's as though they took this terrible turn in
Speaker 2: the second season where it's Reacher with his team, his
Speaker 2: former team, and that's not what you want from Reacher.
Speaker 2: Reacher is the lone ranger, and you don't want Reacher
Speaker 2: having a team.
Speaker 3: So you think is better? Do you think it got
Speaker 3: better or do you think you got No?
Speaker 2: I think it got better. I certainly got dumber, but
Speaker 2: I think so. I'm recommending that. Jonah, do you have
Speaker 2: anything to recommend you? You You're always on a plane
Speaker 2: somewhere watching something, so.
Speaker 4: You know I should have thought about it more before
Speaker 4: coming on here. No, because everything is terrible, but uh gosh,
Speaker 4: I feel like I watched something recently that, oh, well,
Speaker 4: we talked about it last time. I think, so it
Speaker 4: doesn't really count. But man, did I enjoy American Primeval.
Speaker 2: I did too, although it's so needlessly grim, but it's
Speaker 2: so so unbelievably so beautifully photographed. And oh that's another thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: three was pretty Nineteen twenty three was pretty boring. Also
Speaker 2: the first episode of nineteen of the second season of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three, I Haven't I Haven't, which which was
Speaker 2: Rob are you watching anything or are you too busy
Speaker 2: reading the Nice in Creed or whatever?
Speaker 3: Well, a nice and Cree isn't that long. So I'm
Speaker 3: not watching this thing. I am, but I am, I am,
Speaker 3: I'm a huge amount of reading I have to do.
Speaker 3: That is that is a that is a problem, although
Speaker 3: it's a happy problem because you get to sit down
Speaker 3: and read, you know, the Saint Basil of Says area,
Speaker 3: which is kind of the that stuff is really good.
Speaker 3: The harm anytime I see that I'm assigned to read
Speaker 3: a hom read a homily or a set of homilies,
Speaker 3: I'm in. It's when you're when you're reading, you know,
Speaker 3: so you love good homily, love good homily because someone's
Speaker 3: got to hear it, you know. It was it was
Speaker 3: it was written to be read out loud, written to
Speaker 3: be understood, right, I am reading a certain amout. There's
Speaker 3: a certain amount of theology now which would be come
Speaker 3: under the heading of woke theology. And that is uh,
Speaker 3: that has been instructive. It's interesting to read. Some of
Speaker 3: it actually is valuable, and some of it is absolutely
Speaker 3: kind of like making up new words for stuff. And
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of conversation about as the when
Speaker 3: you're reading the Old Testament and reading it this sort
Speaker 3: of as a through the lens of migrant literature. You
Speaker 3: do get a little people get a little hot on
Speaker 3: the collar when it comes down to some of those things.
Speaker 4: By the way, Uh, John, maybe you've already planned or
Speaker 4: maybe you've already reviewed it.
Speaker 1: It's not out yet.
Speaker 4: You probably haven't reviewed it yet, but someone a commentary
Speaker 4: should take a look at my AI colleague Mike Rosen's
Speaker 4: new book coming out. I just did a podcast with them.
Speaker 2: It's like, uh, it's on the Torah and AI right.
Speaker 4: Making clay from clay from silicon, and it's it's about
Speaker 4: how Jewish mystical, Jewish mysticism and Jewish ethics can inform
Speaker 4: our understanding of AI and how to regulate it. And
Speaker 4: it's actually pretty interesting, good stuff.
Speaker 2: He's a good writer. He writes for me all the time.
Speaker 2: The book is in fact assigned, and that is a
Speaker 2: very good assignment. You know. The the world again, My
Speaker 2: colleague A. Greenwall is very much obsessed with this, and
Speaker 2: I think there is something to it. The more AI
Speaker 2: is sort of a factor is going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of what will make AI work is the development
Speaker 2: of kind of these quantum computers and quantum mechanics and
Speaker 2: things like that, and the deeper you look into that
Speaker 2: or you try to sort of understand what's going on
Speaker 2: there and quantum theory. The closer the closer you get
Speaker 2: to something that starts looking very much like a pre
Speaker 2: modern world view about the existence of other worldly beings
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. There is something to the
Speaker 2: idea that AI, which, as I say, I look at
Speaker 2: and I think it's very frightening and the destructive. But
Speaker 2: the thing that will make it work is raising all
Speaker 2: kinds of interesting spiritual questions about the nature of reality
Speaker 2: itself that I don't even begin to understand, but that
Speaker 2: I think Rosen's book starts to touch on, and that
Speaker 2: other things are going to deal with even more so
Speaker 2: it's one of those things. The AI thing is one
Speaker 2: of those many things that people are talking about more
Speaker 2: and more. Like Frederick Douglass, if you remember what Donald
Speaker 2: Trump said in the first term, he is somebody that
Speaker 2: people are talking about more and.
Speaker 3: More, more and important.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, hey, we got through this whole thing
Speaker 2: without talking about Eilon Musk.
Speaker 1: So let's get out out all right. That's problem no
Speaker 1: Eel and Musk.
Speaker 2: Spader