The Present Age

The Present Age is reader-supported. Please consider subscribing to the free or paid versions. Thanks!Today, for another edition of You Know, where I introduce you to someone who is starting a newsletter who you should know, I am joined by the insightful Maris Kreizman. Maris is the former host of the beloved podcast The Maris Review, the new head of the recently relaunched newsletter of the same name, and a celebrated cultural critic who bridges the worlds of literature and pop culture. With her extensive experience in book publishing and her sharp commentary on contemporary media, Maris brings a unique perspective to the world.Can you share a bit about your journey from working in the book publishing industry to cultural criticism, podcasting, and now newslettering? What are some of the pivotal moments that sort of shaped your career?Yeah, in my About Me section on my Substack, it starts, takes a long drag on a cigarette because I feel like I've really seen it all. I started out wanting to be a book editor and I did that through most of my twenties. And then I was laid off and had to find work that was more in and around books. So, I worked at barnesandnoble.com and Kickstarter and Book of the Month.And while I was doing all of that stuff, I sort of realized, as we all did back then, that it's nice to have a personal brand. It really is. And it's nice to have one that is not attached to your profession or the way you earn money. And I began to realize that I loved writing as much as editing. So I do some book criticism and some TV criticism and I started freelancing. And I started my podcast for Lit Hub because I was getting frustrated that I couldn't pitch conversations or profiles with authors anymore at most publications now that aren't paying that much attention to books.I figured that was a way to talk to the people I wanted to talk to on my own terms. And this will be kind of a continuation of that. It won't be audio to start, but I get to talk about what I want and when I want to, and that's so freeing.You've been really vocal about the intersection of literature and the broader pop culture. How do you think that relationship has evolved with the advent of digital media and social platforms? You know, “BookTok” and such.Yeah, I have to admit that I am a lurker on BookTok, [but] have not participated. I started out on Tumblr, and that was really my main platform. And since I started out on Tumblr, I think social media in general has gotten more toxic and digital media has gone from an industry that was booming to one that I hope is still around tomorrow. So it becomes really important to have a way to talk about books that doesn't rely all the time on those platforms. … There are so few platforms now to talk about books other than BookTok. BookTok has become so big that you might start thinking those kinds of books are the only books out there. And there is a vast world and it would be so wonderful if there were a platform for all of the kinds of books that I enjoy.Yes. Which brings me to my next question. With so many new books being published every year, how do you decide which titles and authors you'll engage with? Are there any particular trends that excite you?Parker, this one keeps me up at night and makes my apartment a wreck. It's really hard. There are some books that I know are coming and they're written by someone I already admire and that's really exciting. But getting a first novel from someone I haven't heard of is so exciting and I don't have time to read them all. And sometimes it's really just luck of the draw. I pick one and then I'm in it. And that's why book criticism is so important that we need as many people as we can to be picking out those debut novels and small press books and telling people about them. Because I'm not looking at trends.I'm just looking at whatever looks interesting to me, which is specific.Finally, tell me about the Maris Review, the newsletter and how does it differ from your podcast (RIP) of the same name and what can readers expect format wise, frequency, et cetera.I think my main challenge with my Substack is going to be that I have become so disillusioned with the publishing industry and the digital media industry. And I just have to always try to keep my love of books and the excitement around books away from that.And so the Maris Review will be a place where you can see what I'm reading, see what I'm going to read next, hear my thoughts on the latest scandal — scandal's a big word for the book world, but kerfuffle, perhaps. I hope to talk about adaptations because that's such a big way that people find their way into books. I hope to do author interviews and perhaps audio once again.I'm so excited to figure out what my own constraints are going to be. I have so much freedom now and I'm getting ready to kind of wheedle it down.That's it for me today. Thanks again for reading! Get full access to The Present Age at www.readtpa.com/subscribe

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to read a book called The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt. The argument made in the book went like this: with the rise of smartphones and other internet-connected devices, there's been a massive uptick in mental illness among Gen Z youth and adolescents. Haidt connects these two, arguing that these don't merely correlate, but share a causal link. I saw a lot of really positive coverage of his book, a lot of really fawning praise for his work, but something about it didn't sit quite right with me. It all fit too neatly.There was a review of the book published in Nature that tore into his findings, which I recommend people check out. I'll link that in the notes here. But for today's newsletter, I'm sharing an audio interview I conducted a couple weeks ago with Siva Vaidhyanathan, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, and one of Haidt's more vocal critics.In the interest of fairness, I'll also be linking to the original book, some of the more positive praise it received, and some coverage of the controversy it's caused. I hope you enjoy this special audio edition of the newsletter. Full transcript included, obviously.Parker Molloy: All right, so it's so great to talk to you. And so I spent the past week reading Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation. And I really wanted to chat with you about it because I know this is a topic on which you've done a lot of study on, and I've seen your social media posts about it. And yeah, so the basic argument that he makes throughout the bookThe book is very repetitive. He repeats his thesis over and over. He makes the argument essentially that the rise of what he calls phone-based childhood, which he refers to as all internet-connected devices, has replaced play-based childhood. And that is primarily to blame for the Gen Z mental health crisis. So I wanted to know what he got wrong here.Siva Vaidhyanathan: Sure, sure, sure. Well, let me start with what he got right. Right. First of all, it's indisputable that young Americans, especially girls and young women, are experiencing higher level of expressed mental distress and emotional distress than we have seen in some time. Right. So that that pretty much tells us that something is happening in this country and probably a few other countries that is creating some combination of suffering we have not seen before and an ability to express and a willingness to express that misery. Right. So, you know, it's a weird thing to look at historically and height doesn't tend to look at things historically, but, you know, life for most people in most of the planet is better than it has been ever in human history.So in the long curve, you know, misery is down, but that shouldn't be a reason to not take seriously the stress, distress and suffering of so many millions of young people. Now, the other thing he gets right is at least in the American context, a steady change in tactics of parenting and the experience of childhood. That's well documented. You don't just need anecdotes to show you this. And it comes in many forms, of course, and it's largely class -informed. So we do see, and we've seen for decades, a sense of parents being both more protective of their children's loose time, right? And this can come from various sources. It can be influenced by the moral panic about drugs or the moral panic about kidnapping or exploitation or any of those things that has been circulating in our media for so many decades, convincing parents that they have to manage children's time precisely.You know, along with the hyper competitive culture that we're seeing among the more privileged classes in the United States where everybody's struggling to get into the same 20 colleges and everybody is trying to sign up for the travel soccer team. You know, all of these things have definitely shifted the practice of parenthood and the experience of childhood. Now, for people who are not privileged,Of course, we've seen the proliferation of demands on parents that take them out of their children's lives, right? So it's not like the free -range latchkey child phenomenon is gone. It's just alive among lower -income families and lower -wealth families, because of course, no one can afford childcare.No one can afford a nanny. No one can afford for one parent to stay home and not work. All of those things that allowed, especially the one parent staying home and not working, which was a luxury long gone in this country, allowed for children to have that space and that security. And so all of these things are long-term changes over four or five decades we've seen. So what happens in the 2000s and what happens to crater mental health among young people? Well, I think it's important to remember that when you're talking about, first of all, as diverse a population as the United States and as complex a question as mental health is thatYou should resist looking for one factor or even trying to isolate variables to find the main factor, the universal factor, the contributing factor. That is what leads us astray. Right. So this is what I think he does wrong. What I think he does wrong is he starts out with a very poor archaic theory of technology. And he starts out with an ahistorical approach to what has changed in American life in recent decades. But he still has this phenomenon that does speak to his thesis, which is that there is a demonstrable drop -off in well -being starting around 2010 or 2011, which is four years after the iPhone is introduced. And just as we start to see younger and younger people get smartphones or get mobile phones at all. And look, every child who has a mobile phone, everybody under 18 who has a mobile phone or has a smartphone has so for a particular reason. There was a conversation, they're expensive, there was a commitment, there were rules set down, there are reasons for it and there are often very good reasons for it. But collectively you do have this change.So he sees a correlation here and it's irresistible to him because of course if he can spark panic about this, then he can create a tremendous amount of attention and then he can be the one stepping forward to try to, you know, prescribe a problem. But this isn't going to help, right? This isn't going to help because the problem is complex.Let's concede that moving one's eyes from the park to the phone is not healthy. I think it would be hard to argue otherwise, right? We experience in our daily lives, it's just so obviously not as healthy as running and playing and playing kickball and softball and street hockey and all of those things, right? So at the same time, let's concede that people do engage with these screens and the apps on them for reasons that are important to them. It's not a default. People have particular uses and needs that they're satisfying by moving to these phones. So again, let's concede it's not great. But that leaves us a huge gap between not great or even bad on balance, and being the chief cause of this high level of distress. When a much more reasonable explanation, and I think a richer explanation, is that a number of factors work synergistically to affect not only an individual's mental health state, but collectively a population's mental health state. It's safe to say that there are people in our country in our communities who are better off because their screens, their phones, the apps on their phones allow them to build community, allow them to find people who have gone through similar experiences to whatever stress or distress they're experiencing, right? People who find mentors, people who find guides. This has been well documented among queer youth for many, many decades, right? Thatthat the ability to reach out beyond your immediate surroundings and find stories and role models and guides and peers could be crucial to surviving some of the most and thriving through some of the most stressful developmental moments that a person can go through. And so for someone in a hostile family or an uncaring or an unreasonable family, or an unreasonable community or church or whatever, these sorts of tools can be crucial. Now, who knows how many young Americans use these tools for that purpose, but we know it's not zero. We know it's significant and we know it's important to them. We also know that children whose families are dissolving or children whose families have lost wealth, houses, jobs, over the cascading economic crises, first the 2008 crisis and its long legacy wiping out American wealth, and then the COVID crisis, right? The sort of two convulsions happening in their lifetimes. How many found solace, community distraction, fun, joy through their screens when nothing else was available?So going back to this question, remember, Haidt has a two-part diagnosis, but he and everyone reading him seems to be only focusing on the second part of the diagnosis. The first part of the diagnosis is that childhood has changed. We've gone from having a sense of free-range immersion in our immediate surroundings, our physical landscape, our communities, other people face to face, and shifted our behavior toward these screens and it has not been healthy, right? So you don't even have to go as far as height to say the problem is the phones. Maybe the problem is everything else in society, right? Maybe the problem is that everything else in society seems scary, unfriendly, unwelcoming, not permitted by certain parents, right? And the only reasonable escape is to go to one screen. Now Dana Boyd did tremendous qualitative research on these very questions about a decade ago before smartphones themselves were the screen of question and when there were plenty of other platforms accessible largely through computers that young people were starting to use.And it was really clear from the deep interviews she did with hundreds of young people around the country that the strategies were worth paying attention to. That what the young people were saying is, yeah, there are things in my life that are suboptimal, that are stressful, that maybe my parents or my older siblings had ways of dealing with that are no longer available to me. There's no place to safely hang out, right? If I hang out in the community, the police are gonna mess with me or the mall security guards are gonna mess with me or the mall's closing down anyway after 2008, right? Pretty much all the malls in the country closed down, right? So all of these spaces, the parks, the malls, they're in disrepair or recession. And so the places where young people can learn to be themselves and be with others and figure themselves out.They're disappearing from real space. So again, Dana Boyd documented all of this and that is a widespread analysis, right? It's not just one device. It's not just one technology. In fact, what we learn from that work and Dana Boyd was not the only one. There were a number of other people doing this sort of qualitative research on young people at this time of great change when social media was really booming even before people got phones, right? When the days of MySpace and early Facebook, what we see time and time again is that the problem is us, the problem is society, the problem is adults, and that young people are trying to cope, and they're coping by going toward an occasional endorphin rush, whatever else these devices offer them, everything from community and solidarity, and friendship to pornography and games and paranoia and conspiracies, right? You've got all of these potential temptations that can give one some sort of comfort, community or distraction in a society that is otherwise unfriendly and untrusting of many American young people.So what I would say to John Haidt, if he cared to listen, is your data is too narrowly focused on big sweeping data sets. You're not actually listening to young people to ask them what are they experiencing and what are they deciding to do and why. Because they have autonomy in this. Young people don't have to pick up their phones. They don't have to install you know, Snapchat, that's their choice. They're doing it for a reason. Where are they getting out of it? You know, those are important questions that other researchers have gone through. Height had no interest in talking to the researchers who actually listen to young people about how they're living and why they do what they do.Now, when I said he has a poor theory of technology, he has this idea that the presence of a technology in our lives has one necessary effect, right? That it's the technology that is the driver of social change, not ever considering the idea that the presence of the technology could actually be the response to the problem, not the problem. And so, of course, it correlates, right? And what we've seen in other people's studies, studies he tended to ignore or downplay, is that the young people who tend to suffer the most acute distress, mental illness, self-harm, other things like that, tend to be the ones who gravitate toward the use of phones and apps. And so if that's the case, if there's a correlation there, then it's just as likely, in fact, more likely that, first of all, people who are susceptible to suffering, let's say, self-harm or eating disorders are more likely to be affected by whatever content they're encountering that either encourages or triggers that behavior when they engage with their phones, with Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok or whatever, right? So if there's a causal connection, it's gonna be more acute among those already susceptible to or perhaps suffering from these conditions and just as likely, and this is what we hear when we talk to young people, is that those suffering through that are more likely to seek out community advice, solace, solidarity. And maybe even some answers on how they can change their lives. And so we've seen that in the qualitative work. We've seen it in the quantitative work as the response and that wonderful review in nature that pretty much took down Height's book, you know, makes very clear that that's something showing up in the quantitative work. And I have to say, I've seen it anecdotally. You know, I have an 18 year old daughter who has many friends who have gone through various experiences and, you know, rather all too common conditions. And these are the conversations that those girls have about why they do what they do and how they're coping. And, you know, it's a deeply sensitive and complex thing. And so when I first encountered Haidt's position, I don't even want to call it work, but position, through his Atlantic articles, I was immediately struck by the lack of voices of girls and young women. You know, they're not hard to find. And the scholarship interviewing them is not hard to find. And yet he doesn't seem particularly interested in their actual experience or perspective. He's only interested in launching a tirade.He doesn't seem to be interested in listening. He's only interested in talking, which means he's less of a teacher and more of a preacher. And I think that's basically unhealthy. Look, you know, a lot of us, people in my scholarly community and intersecting scholarly communities have been trying for two decades to get Americans to think in more complex and sophisticated ways about the communication technology in our lives and constantly entering our lives. We want people to understand that these systems are socio-technical.They involve both the actions of autonomous humans and the tendencies of highly designed technologies. And it's in that interaction between what we humans want to do, tend to do, and do to each other and the way these systems are designed, that's where the action is. That's where it's interesting. And so to say it's the technology or it's the humans, is a mistake, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology works in our lives. Technologies, as Marshall McLuhan wrote, are extensions of our capabilities. A bicycle is merely an extension of my legs. It makes me a more efficient user of my legs, but the purpose is the same. Get from point A to point B. It just means I get to do it with less energy expended at a quicker rate.A computer, as Steve Jobs reminded us, is a bicycle of the mind, right? It's something that is designed, at least in its current form, to extend our mental capabilities beyond our rooms and beyond our immediate capacity. So my computer is filled with spreadsheets and lists of things that I can't hold in my memory with any reasonable expectation.But it's also used to render the thoughts I have when I want to put them in word form or video form or audio form. And the computer is an extension of my voice and my fingers in the sense that it can send these expressions to many other people as well. When you understand that, that that's all technologies are, extensions of things we already want to do.Then there's no point in trying to make an argument that it's the phones or it's the people. It's of course in the interaction and the conversation. And to fail to understand that synergistic effect is to get everything wrong and then miss the diagnosis, right? So, Haidt's diagnosis is something close to prohibition. And it reminds me of like, you know, the fact that in the first two decades of the 20th century, there were many people making sincere arguments that alcohol abuse was causing great harm in society, that it was ripping families apart, it was causing violence, it was causing people to lose jobs, and the harms were so widespread and well-documented that we would be remiss not to make alcohol illegal.But in the absence of understanding the motivations for that kind of drug abuse, we of course made the absolute wrong policy decision, one that empowered criminals, one that did nothing to stem the abuse of alcohol. It just made the abuse of alcohol a much more dangerous phenomenon. And that's why Americans undid that decision within a decade. It was clearly documented as a mistake.There wasn't just a mistake of intentions. The intentions of prohibitionists were pretty good, although there was a whole lot of anti-Catholicism attached to it and anti-immigrant sentiment attached to it. So the undercurrents were not so good. But the actual claim like, you know, wouldn't society work better if people were not drinking alcohol all the time? Well, of course. But if you're going to address the problem, let's identify the problem. And the problem was then as now, life sucks.Life was rough and people were escaping into the technology of the moment, you know alcohol or phones or You know Oxycontin or whatever right people escape into it, for good reasons and bad mostly in those cases -- Escapism in the case of phones. There are good functional reasons to do it if you are a parent working two jobs with contingent hours, you're working at a gas station and a Starbucks, and you're a single parent, you better have a smartphone to be able to manage your hourly commitment to both jobs and your transportation and whatever childcare you can hack together. And you better give your child a phone too, so that you can be in constant contact with your child. It's a necessary survival strategy in a society that has no safety net and no decent commitment to making sure that children lead safe and secure lives. So you want to address the problem of alcohol abuse? Maybe you do things to strengthen unions. Maybe you do things to strengthen the social safety net. Maybe you give women more legal autonomy to get out of marriages that are abusive. Maybe you do a dozen other things that we ended up doing in the 20th century to a large degree and at least reducing the overall damage of alcohol abuse in society without outlying alcohol. You can still regulate it in reasonable ways. So you want to address the problems of misery among young Americans? Let's do that. Let's do it seriously, like grownups, looking at all the factors. Let's talk about the fact that it's really hard to be a parent if you don't have health benefits at your job.And, or you, for that matter, you depend on your job for health benefits. You know, like, in the absence of government single payer health, a whole lot of Americans' lives are much worse off, I would say most of our lives are much worse off than they could be. Right? Let's have that conversation. Well, what would that do to lift the overall quality of life in America? And therefore, lift the quality of life of children growing up in households where parents might have to change jobs, might lose their jobs, might have to work two part-time jobs to make it all work, right? Those are really crucial questions that we dodge by saying it is the phones.Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that it really does seem like a cop out when he points to the phones. A lot of his answers to this sound, some of them reasonable, you know: phones shouldn't be out during classes, obviously, you know, I mean, like that's fine. Others like passing the Kids Online Safety Act. That's less fine. That would have wide ranging implications for all of society. That would be very bad.Right, exactly. That's a sledgehammer. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, no, that's a sledgehammer. And look, even this idea of what the school's phone policy should be, my kid's high school has been wrestling with this for a decade. And during the last four years when my kid was in high school, we had monthly updates from the principal on tweaks to the cell phone policy and the state of the cell phone policy.And my kid's school was slightly different in policy to some of the other public high schools in the area. And each one of them is dealing with pressures from parents, many, many parents, especially lower income parents, demand that their children have their phones with them and have them on at all times. Because that's the only way to cope with the turmoil of daily life for working class parents.Many of the wealthier parents who are much more concerned about test scores and grades and peace and quiet were insisting on prohibition. And that's a vast generalization. Of course there were members of both communities taking the other position too. But my point is there were no simple answers that worked for every child. And the teachers and principals understood that and continue to understand it, which is why every school in America has not completely banned phone use, right? If the answer were that simple and everybody's quality of life would go up, then of course we would. But if you take seriously the testimony about people's real lives, you quickly see that it's not that simple. And there are issues that have to be considered, right? So,And there have to be experiments and every school should have the money and patience and studies to support experimentation and report their results. Maybe having phones in a bag that allows no radio signals in during class is a good policy. That seems like a reasonable thing. And then when class changes go, people can pop out their phone and see if their parents texted them. You know, those seem like reasonable policies. Having a no camera policy in school seems like a reasonable way to deal with privacy violations and surveillance and bullying and other issues that happen to be accelerated by the presence of these technologies, although certainly not caused by because all of those things existed for centuries, right?So that's how you have to look at these problems. And what really bugs me about Haidt is under the veneer of scholarly sober distance, he simplifies everything and fundamentally doesn't seem particularly concerned about the needs of young people in America. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readtpa.com/subscribe

Parker Molloy: My guest today is Matt Negrin, a senior producer for the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. And just about the only person on the planet, I know who gets more irritated about the way politics gets covered in the media than I do. Matt, thank you so much for joining me.Matt Negrin: No, I'm obviously happy to have a contest with you about who is more angry at the media on a daily basis. It's a contest in which we both lose so full in on it.Well, I was thinking about this. So this is going to be the first episode of my podcast for the new year, because I had to take a month off because I was just like, “Why am I doing this?”I take a month off because I celebrate January 6th privately. And so I really just a full-on month of just remembrance.Yeah. Well, I mean, if Christmas starts in November, January 6th starts in December.January 6th creep is a real issue that we need to address, people are putting up their January 6th gallows way too early.So I feel like the two of us started the Trump years as relatively sane individuals who just happened to consume a lot of news media. What happened to us?The question is how did we become totally crazy while also feeling that we're the only sane people in a world in which everyone else is crazy, right?Yeah. Pretty much.To me, it feels like the beginning of the Trump years, or the beginning of the Trump term was like, okay, obviously this is a catastrophe, but maybe, just maybe our trusted news media will do the right thing and we'll hold this guy accountable. We'll check him, we'll provide a level of accountability that you and I haven't seen in our lifetimes really. And obviously, that didn't happen. So I think the ongoing frustration with that is what has, at least for me just made me question what is going on with this industry that I was a part of? That I spent almost a decade in, how did I not see that this was kind of inevitable? And then when I left the industry, I was like, all right, now I feel like I can talk about this stuff freely, which is kind of a bad sign that people in journalism can't talk about what's really happening.And that's been kind of the undertone I think of journalists will tell you privately in the DMs that they agree with what you're saying, but will never say it publicly. And that's bad.The Present Age is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.Yeah, well, on that sort of the same kind of thought, I get a lot of people who will text me or DM me to say they liked something I wrote and I'm like, "Cool. I would appreciate a retweet." And they're like, "Sorry, I can't."It's just, "I'll get in trouble if I do that." I've heard from so many people at newspapers and TV networks who say the same thing. And they're like, "God, you're so right. Thank you for doing this. This really needed to be called out." And my response is always, "You are totally in a position to call this out yourself." And they all say, "Ah, you know I can't do that." And it's like, “ha ha.” Yeah. Well, that's fun. Thanks for your help. But I'm just going to sit back and let this profile of Greg Gutfeld just kind of go out and get tweeted about, and I won't do anything about it.Yeah. “I won't criticize it because I don't want to get in trouble with the bosses.”Exactly. I don't want to mention how we gave a platform to Josh Hawley. I don't want to be the person who does that. It's not my role. Yeah.So speaking of giving a platform to Josh Hawley and giving a platform to Ron Johnson and giving a platform to Roger Marshall and Rick Scott and Mike Ron, and all of those. So is Chuck Todd your nemesis? And does he know that he's your nemesis?Okay. The word “nemesis” requires the person to acknowledge your existence. So I think the answer is no, I don't think he has ever once acknowledged at least explicitly, any of the good faith. I would say criticisms about Meet the Press, but I've heard from enough people to know that like yeah, he's aware of it. They're aware of it. They're all aware of it. And one of the NBCPR guys, Richard Hudock has engaged with me on Twitter. So has another producer for Meet the Press. So yeah, they're aware, but they do not respond anymore and I think part of it is because they probably know it's not a good look to be fighting on Twitter. But also I think they know that some of these things are indefensible.So you can't defend Chuck Todd for putting Roger Marshall, who is a Senator who voted to overturn the election on Meet the Press. You can't defend that. It's an obvious message that Chuck Todd thinks it's okay to give a platform to people who tried to overturn the election. And that's simply something that if you're a good faith journalist, you probably don't agree with. So I don't relish the idea that there's a guy on TV who is my nemesis, but at the same time, why aren't more people talking about this? It seems very dystopian. I don't know. What was your feeling after January 6th? I feel like there were a bunch of us on the left who were saying we have to hold these people accountable by not giving them platforms or at least by branding them explicitly every time they're mentioned or on the air with a reminder that they did this thing. Right. Do you remember that feeling?Oh yeah. I mean, I wrote an article for Media Matters in December 2020. So it was before January 6th where I was just like, “What they have done is an unacceptable attack on democracy, et cetera, et cetera.” And yeah, so then of course, then January 6th happens and the-You brought up Mike Braun, that's a triggering person for me because I remember in December, I think it was December 6th, I hope I'm right about that. I'm going to Google it real quick because I'm pretty sure I'm right. I've just ingrained all this stuff into my f*****g head. Yeah. December 6th, 2020, Mike Braun was on ABC's This Week and he floated this conspiracy theory that boxes of ballots were being hidden under a desk in some state and that there was a video showing how the Democrats were trying to steal the election. So this is a month after the election. It's, I guess three weeks after Biden was declared the winner. And you have a sitting senator on ABC talking about this conspiracy theory. That is at the time, the media was feeling out this world, right?“How many senators are going to help Trump try to overturn the election? What is the line?” And Mike Braun was seen as a non-crazy Republican by a lot in the media. And then he goes on This Week and pushes this thing out. To me as a producer or as a host or as a person at ABC that should have been the cutoff line, like okay, we're ending this interview. And it just went on for six minutes. They didn't even talk about the thing they were going to talk about, they just talked about voter fraud and that's millions of people who are seeing that and thinking what is this video? What is he talking about? Maybe there is something to this. That to me was like, Mike Braun is not Josh Hawley, he is not Ted Cruz and that's kind of the point.They can all be pushing this conspiracy theory or different versions of the conspiracy theory. And the media is going to accept them because they don't have this outwardly crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene-ish stain on them. Mike Braun looks like an honorable person, but if you look at what he really does, he goes on Newsmax and talks about the same thing. So that's why that guy is very triggering for me. Months later you have Donie O'Sullivan, who I think is a really sharp reporter at CNN going to these QAnon rallies, interviewing people who are saying the election was stolen. And they specifically cite the thing Mike Braun talked about. So, this is how misinformation spreads. It spreads on mainstream media. And the fact that these networks keep putting these people on, to me, indicates they either don't know their role in it, or they're just totally fine with it. I don't know what another option would be.Yeah. I mean, that's... God, I remember when I first got hired at Media Matters, one of the first things I did was I flew out to DC because we decided to do a thing where I would work in the office one week and then spend a few months working from home and then kind of repeat that. And I flew into DC and I saw a guy wearing a shirt that just had a big letter Q on it, standing on the steps of the Supreme court with a selfie stick, taking a picture where he is making a real tough guy face. And it was just him by himself. And it was the first time I had ever seen anyone in person wearing a QAnon kind of thing. And I thought, “Ha ha, that's so funny.” It's not so funny anymore. Part of the issue is that these views aren't debunked on TV instead what you get is you get, "Hey, do you think Joe Biden won the election?" That's not good. Presenting it as a question is part of the problem.Right. And there are multiple journalists who have done this in GOP primary debates over the past year, there was one in, I think it was Hugh Hewitt who did it in the, oh, what race was it? I can't remember, but he was moderating a debate. And he said, do you believe Joe Biden won the election? Okay. You're a journalist on MSNBC, you should not be allowed to do that. There was another local news reporter in New Mexico who was moderating a special house race primary and, or I think it was actually the general election, and she said, "Who do you think won the 2020 election? And how do you plan to work on work with others who disagree with you?" Don't frame this as an issue, it is not an issue.Part of the problem with the Q stuff that, what you just said made me think of is, when QAnon first started becoming a topic that the mainstream media had to talk about. They did it really poorly. And I remember the Q baby at the Trump rally, someone held up a baby with a Q on the shirt and it was like Q baby. And then QAnon went nuts. And then someone was wearing a Q dress and the letter Q. And so then the media had to be like, all right, let's do QAnon. I remember Lester Holt, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, doing a whole thing on QAnon, on what is it? And they just really did not do a good job explaining that.This is rooted in antisemitism, a conspiracy theory that feeds a lot of extremist impulses. It's an online-based thing. Ben Collins and a handful of reporters do really good work on this stuff at these networks and the rest of the journalists there just kind of don't, it feels like they don't read it or they don't talk about it. They just kind of say, QAnon, it's part of the right-wing. No, it is so much deeper than that. And it's basically all the people at the January 6th insurrection are QAnon believers. Technically, if you wanted to extrapolate a lot of those views, Kevin McCarthy believes half the s**t in QAnon, but you would never get reporters saying Kevin McCarthy is a QAnon believer because he hasn't said "I'm a QAnon believer." But he does believe that George Soros is in charge of the federal election takeover or whatever. That's a Qanon conspiracy theory. So he is a Q believer. And it shouldn't be weird to say that, it should be the reality.And part of the problem I think is that these things start online and journalists generally seem to not take things that start online seriously, which is a gigantic problem because so much of our lives are online. So you have all these journalists who've been around for 20, 30 years, or whatever. And things are not the same now as they were then. And so you have newer journalists, you have people like Ben Collins who are doing great work with a lot of this internet-based stuff at, in the... Who else? Brandy Zadrozny.Oh yeah. Yeah.Yeah. Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins are kind of like the tag team misinformation reporters at NBC.And yet, sometimes NBC will do things that touch on those topics that they don't involve those two and which is just mindblowing.Right. Feels extremely strange. Yeah. Feels extremely weird. Yeah.That's why I find your approach to the internet generally kind of interesting because you're trying to fight misinformation with tweets and with... I like your TikToks.I haven't done them in a while.I know, but they're funny.All right. You know what Parker I'm going to do one today or tomorrow, just because you have formally requested it. I'm taking that as a request.But no, I mean they're good. And TikTok is one of those places where it's one of those things where I start to feel way too old and it's weird kind of aging into something where it's like, “Oh no, a social media platform feels like it's too geared towards the younger kids.”Yeah. But there's a version of TikTok that doesn't have to be that for us. I think TikTok is popular among the generation younger than us because it's so easy to embrace video culture and phone culture. All we have to do is just kind of lean into that. It doesn't have to be us being like, ah, we're the old cranks. It can just be us being like, okay, I'm going to just slightly change the way that I view how to get a message out. There are older people on TikTok who do really, really well. And I think it's because video just comes naturally to them, but the medium is video rather than text. I think that's just the big difference.And I appreciate that you put in the effort to try to find that because I do feel like there's sort of a formula to a lot of the way information travels online and TikTok is a place where a ton of misinformation just thrives because it's harder to check. You can't just do a word search to find something on TikTok. You have to actually find out that some creator on there believes objectively insane stuff.And then go, “Okay, so this person's a Q creator, so what do we do about it?” And I don't know what the answer to that is other than the fact that most of the time, if you bring this up to a lot of the older, the legacy journalists, they will go, well, it's just the internet. That doesn't count.It has the same tone-deafness as an article that's written about people having a reaction to some viral moment. And the headline is like, "The internet loves..." It's like, no, no, no, the internet is a collection of people, they're expressing themselves on the internet. The internet is not a sentient thing. I think the approach to social media has to be, and this might sound very pedantic, but I think that journalists, writers, and kind of like the conversation havers or the conversation starters either rely on social media or use social media to develop their kind of first and second level takes on things. And that's why it's important to get in there early and point out that like, okay, this person, an example from today, Alyssa Farah, who's spreading misinformation about the vaccines, who is hired by CNN, which is insane.Let's get in there early and point out how she was a writer for WorldNetDaily, a conspiracy theorist birther website that was run by her father. And then she worked for Donald Trump for a year, spreading COVID misinformation. And now is hired by CNN. Getting in there early hopefully shapes the way that other people see that story. But a lot of, as you just said, legacy journalists, they might be on Twitter. They might be looking at tweets, but they don't really participate in the conversation.And one example of this that I just remembered was in September 2021. So 3, 4 months ago when Ted Koppel, who is 81 years old, the most legacy journalist you could have, went to Mayberry, the fake town in Andy Griffith. It's like Mount Airy in North Carolina, which is the inspiration for Mayberry. So he goes there to do a trolley tour and talk to Trump voters. And all he did was exactly what you were just saying earlier was like, "Who do you think won the election?" And they're like, "Mm, Donald Trump." And he is like, "Interesting." Like, this was a really bad piece of journalism that CBS Sunday morning aired as how quaint, this cool little town. Oh, the people here have some interesting thoughts. Hey, these are people who are radicalized on Facebook and Fox news. They think that QAnon, they think that Q is the leader of a secret plot. These people are psychos and you should not be giving them this platform. And Ted Koppel has no idea what any of that is about.No. None. He's like, how could you believe this? Well, I mean, because the internet told me. I mean, just as we're discussing this, it was only a couple of days ago that Joe Rogan was pushing some sort of vaccine misinformation on his show, which is kind of his thing.He really leaned into it.Yeah. And someone corrected him and he's like, shifting the goal post to be like, "Well, actually I read somewhere..." And that's all people, I mean, need that's all people need these days is just, "Well, I read somewhere that something agreed with me." I mean, I could write something that says, yeah, the vaccine makes you grow a third arm. I don't know. And, it's not true, but I could put it on the internet.I think the way that this clip, if anyone wants to check this out, I feel like if you go on Twitter and search, Joe Rogan, Josh Zepps, Z-E-P-P-S. You'll find this clip, but it was Joe Rogan pushing this idea that young kids can develop a complication if they get the vaccine. And then this guest was like, you actually have a higher chance of getting it if you get COVID. Rogan was like, no, that's not true. And then they look it up, which is the only thing redeemable about this is, well, at least they looked it up. And then it turns out that Joe Rogan is wrong, what he was saying was false. And then as soon as he realizes he's false, he just questions the nature of journalism.He's like, “Well, how do we know that? When we read these things, it's like, where are we getting this information?” Buddy, you Googled it. You looked it up, this is a reflection of how you do your own research and how you are relying on your own preconceived notions of what is true or false based on what you need to say. And because he knows his listeners want to hear the skepticism, the hesitation, just the falsities, he will lean into it and he'll go back the next day and the day after that and keep pushing it, having not learned a thing, because he's not interested in educating people, he's interested in amassing a following. And that is what you kind of see all across right-wing radio, smaller podcast networks, even these like Fox shows, OAN, Newsmax. It's all people who are probably mostly in on it. They know what they're saying is b******t. And if they happen to believe it, that's even worse. But I feel like most of them don't, they just know that it's really good for them. Although it's impossible for us to know, I'm not in Pete Hegseth's head, he might really not wash his hands. He might really think germs don't exist.See, now you sound like a New York Times reporter circa 2017 where you're like, I” can't say ‘lie.’”“I don't know it's in his heart. I don't know what's in Donald Trump's heart. He might not be lying. He might truly believe, Donald Trump might really believe that Hillary Clinton used the Venezuelan treasury minister's brother to facilitate a deal with Barack Obama's niece. He might believe that. He might believe that and we don't know. And so we have to call it, like an untruth or a false claim.”An “unsupported claim.” “We will give it one Pinocchio.”Oh, man, the Pinocchio system. I mean, if there ever were a metric for how we need to evaluate our world, I love seeing Glen Kessler, the Washington Post Pinocchio guy give Biden four Pinocchios. If you gave Trump four Pinocchios on anything, no one else can ever get four Pinocchios. There cannot be a comparable way to say Joe Biden also did a bad, come on, there is no comparison. Joe Biden misstating a percentage on COVID cases is nowhere close to Donald Trump being like "Ghosts voted in the 2020 election."So in November, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted, "The only way fascism wins is if the free press covers fascism versus democracy, like just another cats and dogs political fight." I have bad news for him.First of all, zero Pinocchios.That's true. But that's exactly how it's been so far. And that's what kind of worries me. At the time you quoted that and you wrote "Two hours ago, Chuck Todd invited a fascist big liar on the top-rated Sunday show to state that vaccines don't stop the spread of COVID and didn't offer a chance for a Democrat to respond to anything he said." And I think that kind of sums up where we're at.Parker you giving me the play-by-play of my own tweets is any Tweeter's dream. Let's go back.“And then you got this many likes and then...”Oh my God. Okay. Yeah, it's good. This is net-positive. I think for the cause, which is people in Congress have a bully pulpit. They can go on TV and talk about this stuff. They can tweet stuff. They can give interviews, they can write op-eds. They have an outsized voice in the conversation because of the way that our media respects elected officials for better or worse. So it's good that Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz, Ted Lieu, Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan, all of these kind of resistors, the lefties are taking up the message for media reform or media awareness, media literacy. I don't really know what to call it. So I like that. I don't think enough of them are doing it to make it as successful as we'd want it to be, but it is good that they're aware of it.And to your point, it also is really unfortunate that the media doesn't really change at all. And it's not just Chuck Todd. I think Chuck Todd is one of the prime examples of it because he has the biggest platform on Sunday mornings and that still has a sizable audience. And it influences a lot of discussion for at least 18 hours on social media. But there are others too, who kind of either agree with the worldview or not the worldview, but agree with the philosophy of we still need to give these people who deny vaccines a real platform, or just giving Ted Cruz a voice on anything seems crazy to me. But there are a lot of journalists in that world who believe it.And so the cats and dogs thing, the political horse race thing is a separate criticism to me. Yes. Politics is covered with this frantic nature of who's up, who did a good zinger, who didn't, and there's a place for that. And it's anything before 2015. That doesn't really longer apply, I think. But that is also different than giving a role or sorry, giving a platform to the people who are rooting for the end of truth and democracy.So it does go hand in hand, obviously, those people who want to cover politics as a horse race also probably think that those people should be given a platform, but they are kind of two different issues for me. And I mean, one of my unpopular among our cohort opinions is that I do think politics can be covered in a horse race way at times.I don't think that's necessarily bad. I think polls are interesting and good for the most part. It's when you're polling things like critical race theory and then running a headline afterward that's calling it education instead of what it really is, which is just racism. And I think the sanitization of those really dark elements of the Republican party is what happens when you cover things through a horse race prism in 2020, 2021, 2022. So that kind of needs to change for us to have a more honest media, but obviously a very low chance of that happening.Yeah. Well, there's, God, there was something recently, let me, I'm just going to find this. So there was a poll that Harvard did and I'm trying to find- Okay. So this poll, this was polled by Harvard's Center for American Political Studies survey.“So how do we even know where we're getting these reports,” I'm being Joe Rogan. “We're Googling stuff and just reading it.” No, I'm kidding. Go ahead.And here was the question. There are only two possible answers. Do you think the schools should promote the idea that people are victims and oppressors based on their race? Or should they teach children to ignore race in all decisions to judge people by their character?Wow, that's amazing. So it was obviously 70% weighted toward the position of “Wait a minute, we shouldn't be doing the bad thing.”It was 63/37 in favor of ignoring race in all decisions.Just great. Wow.And the funny thing is, so someone tweeted, this is an actual question from the survey and Andrew Sullivan responded "And a good one." That's what he said. Well, no, it was not a good question.The idea of doing push polls, in general, is kind of slimy, but something on that, the wording of that is so deliberate and so designed just to get a Fox News headline that it feels, I don't know, it's gross. Ugh. Yeah. I hate hearing that. Oh my God. Some of the words in those things, what was it "completely ignore"?Yeah. Yeah. It was "Should they teach children to ignore race in all decisions to judge people by their character." The fact that they had to add "in all decisions" was like-Isn't Mark Penn part of a polling group that's called Third Way or something, or some middling, his whole, I could be misrepresenting him. I thought he was part of the Third Way thing or No Labels or something.He is the Stagwell group. I don't know what that is even, but…I was going to say some of these fake Democrats, or fake centrist people are part of this idea that there has to be a third option. It doesn't have to be Democrats or Republicans, oh, but your question here is two very extreme options right now. If only there were a third way or a more purpleish answer to this quagmire.The funny thing is, so this poll, the pie chart they used for it is the red and blue, and blue is people are victims based on their race and red is ignore race. So I think it really gets out there.Obvious. Yeah. I remember in 20- I think 14 or 15, Fox News, it might have been Doug Schoen, that guy who did a poll and it was, “Do you think the country is going to hell in a handbasket?” That was the question.There was the Lou Dobbs one that was like, “Is Trump doing great, greater or greatest?” It was basically that old Colbert bit.Okay, that screenshot to me is the defining screenshot of Trump propaganda. “How would you rate President Trump's handling of the China virus,” is what it said. And it was like “Very good, great, and super.”Stuff like that, it is made not just for the Fox News audience, it's made for the internet. And that's why I'm so interested in this topic generally, because the way we talk online, people like to be like, “Well, no, it's not real life. It's the internet. It's not real life.” What do they think real life is?I know. Honestly, but also I'm glad Twitter is not real because real life sucks. Twitter is where I want to be now.Only marginally better than real life, which is also bad.Have you seen real life? It's terribleSo the last thing I wanted to ask you about before I let you go is, so when the New York Times got rid of their public editor position, they told people to tweet. They said it was unnecessary because people could just tweet. Twitter is the public editor, which that seems like a bad idea, but also there is no group of people less inclined to change or reflect based on tweet responses than New York Times reporters, it seems. How do you think that’s been going?I have a feeling that the intention behind that, I think was good. I think the intention being, “We want to hear from readers and we acknowledge that social media is where our readers have the fastest and most direct way to let us know what's going on. And a handful of our reporters engage with people on social media that can all in an ideal world, in which everyone is acting in good faith and willing to acknowledge their own shortfalls or errors, which can lead to a much better transparent reporting process.” That, I think, was the intention. In reality, obviously, it means we pile on the New York Times for bad headlines, and they, I guess we don't know what their real response is, but it feels like they don't change anything in a significant way.But that said, there's no way that all of these comments can't live in their heads at some level, which is why I do feel like having rapid response to bad framings or all these diner stories. I want to think that it's good because it will affect what they do in the future. I don't know if that's true. Part of the reason that I am skeptical of how effective tweeting at journalists is, is because a lot of the journalists at the New York Times are really good and they do really good reporting and exposes and then some f*****g editor will undermine it all with a shitty headline. And people don't understand that reporters don't write headlines, which for the most part, is the case. Reporters have very little to do with the headlines as a...This is my big brag of the day. I used to be an intern at the New York Times. I was on the copy desk and the copy editors write the headlines and they work with the reporters on it if they want to, but editors write the headlines and then a different editor rewrites it. And then a page one editor rewrites that. It goes through a whole process. The headline is normally what we're most upset about because that sets the tone for the story. And we are rightfully upset about that. Those editors should be better at that.It's also the only thing that most people see. Most people don't click on stories. At this point, this thing is so outdated, but it was a 2010 survey [Ed. note: it was a 2014 survey], I hope that there's a new version coming out at some point, but it was an old survey that was basically 60% of Americans haven't clicked on a story in the past week. So they're getting everything from what they see on Twitter and what they see headlines as they pass by.Wow.So that's why you can't just have a little misleading tweet or a little misleading headline Because that's what most people will see.Did you read that story or did you just read the headline that said 60% of people?Just read the headline that said 60%.Sounds good.And the funny thing is, I remember when it came out, Chris Cillizza wrote about it and it was like, "Dude, how do you not understand?!”The clickbait master.Well, as it relates to headlines, yes, I think everyone acknowledges that's a huge issue. And I think that should put more emphasis on the role of editors at newspapers, like the New York Times, which by the way, there are a lot of headline writers there and headline writing is kind of an art at the Times and that needs to be reevaluated because a lot of their headlines have been really bad. And we get a lot of the reaction to it in this, I think, okay. So I think a lot of the reaction to those headlines kind of snowballs into this narrative that the New York Times is being out of touch, being tone-deaf, whatever. And then it's easy to go after the people on the byline, the journalists who write the story are the only ones with their names on it. And the editors aren't.That, I think, is not always fair. That said, if Peter Baker writes a stupid story and is quoting people stupidly and is making bad analysis about how January 6th is just a red versus blue reality thing, sure, he's wrong for doing that. But I think a lot of the times when [people] are going after headlines, it's good to know, it's important to know that the reporters, aren't the ones who write the headlines and this is such a weird thing to try to educate people about because it's not intuitive. You would never think that that's the case, especially because in a lot of new media websites or digital publications, reporters do write the headlines and they often write it tying into the story, which is fine. That's a good way to write for a digital audience, but it's not always the case at these legacy papers that we focus on because they do have a huge circulation.I'm also thinking right now of the cliche Buzzfeed writer, who's like, "Okay, I have to do a story on the 43 greatest kangaroo gifs." And then the editor's like, "How about we do the 43 great kangaroo gifs?" And the writer's like, "That's not the headline I want."“It will restore your faith in humanity.”Yeah. “I would never say that.”And so, yeah, Matt, is there anything else that I haven't asked that you want to mention or any projects you're working on or anything?Oh, man, you covered so much.Anything at all. The floor is yours.I have a perfunctory plug for this thing we did at the Daily Show where we've put up these January 6th monuments. If anyone wants to check this out, just go online and use the hashtag daily show monuments. But it's basically a tribute to our wonderful Freedomsurrection heroes who tried to overthrow the government on January 6th. And we just felt that we needed to honor them, kind of the way that civil war generals are honored in the south. So we put up some monuments to them. I would encourage everyone to just educate yourselves about our history and our heritage before the woke right-wing mob tries to tear them down.See, what we need to do, though. If you really want to be like the way that civil war monuments are celebrated in the south, we should wait 70 years and then put the monuments up just aggressively too.Okay. This is a really crazy thought is in 70 years, what will, Parker you and I will have to do a podcast in 70 years and see if people even know what January 6th is.I hope I'm dead.I hope I'm dead in seven years.Seven, 70, whatever. It's all the same. But Matt, thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun talking to you.This is the least angry I've been in so long.I know. So now it's like, I'm going to close this and go look at Twitter. Yeah. I'm sure things will be fine.We'll go get angry together online.Sounds good.Thanks, Parker. Thank you so much. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

This is part 2 of 2 of my conversation with Matthew Sheffield. If you haven’t checked out last week’s episode, you may want to do that here:Parker Molloy: A lot of criticism of Democrats seems to ignore the asymmetric nature of partisan media. There's a massive right-wing infrastructure in place that can keep the same topic and headlines for an indefinite amount of time. This makes it easy to pick a topic re-alert invented to hammer away at for their own political goals, and I think we saw that recently in Virginia about critical race theory and all of that. And you have people like James Carville offering advice like stop the wokeness, but what he seems to miss is it's not Democrats who are pushing these narratives. If Fox News wants to spend every night between now and the next election claiming that Biden quadrupled everyone's taxes or made it illegal to breathe oxygen, they can, and some people will believe it and they'll repeat it.The Democrats who lost these recent elections, they didn't run on critical race theory or defund the police or anything like that, or LGBTQ issues, which, trust me, I wish the Democrats were as pro-LGBTQ as right-wing media make them out to be. But I don't know what they're supposed to do, or even more importantly, what legitimate news outlets are supposed to do to counter this. If Democrats weigh in on every nonsense issue that comes up... As we're recording this, we're in day two or three of them freaking out about Big Bird. There's a new target every day that gets thrown out there. If they weigh-in, they lose because they're weighing in on something as trivial as Big Bird. If they ignore it, it just builds up and so all of it's a long way to ask you what... How do you fight back against that when the infrastructure is so... It's a very strong infrastructure that right-wing media has built. You have Fox and Gateway Pundit and Daily Caller and Daily Wire and all of that; they keep bouncing the same ideas back and forth. Oh, commentary from a Daily Wire contributor turns into a Fox and Friends segment with that person, which then gets put on Daily Caller. It's this very incestuous, basically. It's an echo chamber. And people often talk about there being, "Oh, the liberal bubble, get out of your liberal bubble." That was something we heard over and over and over after 2016, and then after 2020 there was a big push to, "People have to get out of their liberal bubble," again. The answer is always people on the left need to do this. It's never people on the right need to get with reality. That's never something that gets brought into it, and that's one way I feel like mainstream outlets are failing us is that they don't realize, or they refuse to urge people on the right to maybe be less extreme. You hear after the recent elections, there's been this push, hey, oh, does Joe Biden need to move to the right? Has he been too extreme? He hasn't really done anything extreme. The policies he's proposed have generally been pretty well supported. There's nothing crazy in there, especially when you consider that when Republicans passed the tax bill in 2017, it had something like a 30% approval rating. It was super low and they passed it anyway. And it remained unpopular, but they didn't care.Matthew Sheffield: Well, there's a lot to unpack there.Oh yeah, I'm sorry. That went on forever on my end. The first thing I would say is that after Republicans lose elections, they don't think, well how can we move to the center? What is the message that we can say that will make people like us? They don't do that. They never do that. In fact, what they do is to say, "How can we change the environment so that our ideas can propagate better?" And nobody on the left does that. And part of that is why I started my website, Flux, to try to focus on some of these larger issues and larger trends. In terms of Christian nationalism and the Republican mind, I just did a long interview and discussion about how this works. The Left Behind novels. People have heard of them but did you know that they were written by the... from one of the co-founders of the Council for National Policy? No, I didn't.Which is a right-wing networking organization. The Left Behind novels are designed as political propaganda. That's what they're for; that's the point of them. But people just think, well look at this stupid moron Kirk Cameron movies and whatnot. Of course it's done. Whatever. Understand-Yeah, that God's Not Dead; that whole series of movies, too. It's all the same.Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, of course it's dumb, but you have to go to the next step which is what is the point of these things? Why do they exist? How many people are reading them? And in the case of the Left Behind, those things have sold over 100 million copies.Yeah. Which, in fairness, it's a cool premise for a book, but it's definitely... I feel like it's a cool premise that could've been done in a less super propaganda type way, which I guess that just becomes the Leftovers.Yeah, the end of the world, Satan trying to kill everyone or the demons or whatever. Hell, that's every f*****g superhero.Yeah, it's true.Marvel literally has a god character, Thor, in its pantheon of superheroes. Yeah, it is a cool premise, for sure, but people have to understand what does it... The way that it's executed is designed to tell the audience who reads the books or watches the films or whatever that Democrats are the literal, not metaphorical, literal servants of Satan. Yep, that's... Yeah.And that reality that there are 10s of millions of people who think this. Have you ever seen that discussed on cable news? No.I don't think ever.No. And if it was brought up, people would get slammed for, "Oh, your generalizing," which, okay, but if one Democrat somewhere saying, "We should defund the police," gets turned into, "This is what Democrats believe," there's no... No one goes, "All Republicans believe that forest fires are started with a Jewish space laser," like Marjorie Taylor Greene said, but that's kind of how things are when it comes to you find one fringe-type character on the left and that becomes this is what Democrats believe, this is what the left believes.Yeah, or even in the case of Black Lives Matter, there were some acts of arson or criminality that were conducted, but if you act... I actually was watching the... I live in Long Beach, California; I was watching some webcam footage that people had, the public webcams, and I saw the protests. They were in an area and then they left, the protesters left. And then some people drove in from who knows where and then broke into a store. They had nothing to do with these protests, they were just looters and were not affiliated with the groups. But nobody reported that.Yeah. Well, and also with that, there was this narrative last year as that was happening, "Oh, Democrats support riots and mobs and violence and looting and burning," but I don't know, there might have been a couple who were outspoken on the more extreme ends of whatever was happening, but for the most part, Democrats were like, "Violence is bad, violence is wrong. No violence. Stop it." That sort of thing. But it's-Well, and then, yeah... Oh, sorry.There was this idea that Joe Biden was... these were Joe Biden fans. No. No one who goes and calls themselves an anti-fascist is a Joe Biden fan.They hate Joe Biden.Yeah. Joe Biden, he's the middle of the road. I don't know. He's, "Is Pepsi okay?" as a person, you know?Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.That sort of thing. He's no one's first choice. Yeah. But I would say, though, that, yeah, I don't think, though, that the mainstream media is adequately positioned to cover this. And Democrats and democratic leaders and funders and activists need to understand that the mainstream media will never be up to this task. There is nothing that you can say to them because most of them operate... Their training is basically show up in a building and try to find people and ask them about legislation. That's the only thing they know how to do. They don't know-Repeat whatever gets told to them, which that's one of those things that, especially during the Trump era, was pretty obnoxious because you'd have respectable mainstream reporters tweeting out whatever nonsense Trump said that day or whatever-Yeah, "I had the biggest inauguration attendance ever."Yeah. One guy who used to do that a lot was this CBS reporter, Mark Knoller, where he would just say nonsense. Trump would say nonsense and he would just type it up and send it out and everyone would be like, "Why are you doing this? You understand that this is straight-up untrue. You don't need to share it word-for-word without saying-“Are you a stenographer?”Yeah, well exactly. And then he... I forgot, there was-He retired, actually.Yeah, he retired and then immediately started popping up in the replies of some... I forgot who it was but some democratic lawmaker said something that was a slight exaggeration and he popped in to go, "Actually..." And it's like, where was this guy? Where was this guy the past four years? But-Yeah. Well yeah, so basically what has to be done is that there has to be multiple organizations started who will not only document the lies but also actively push back against them and then also try to stay in touch with the democratic base and get them to be engaged and continue to be engaged, then also to... And then there also need to be groups that are out there telling people who vote Republican, "This is who you actually are supporting when you support these people," because I can tell you so many people who I know, they have no idea. I personally didn't know about this stuff and I worked in media commentary and analysis and I didn't know how crazy these people were. And so the mainstream media isn't going to report it because they are so upset. The only thing that they can understand is an elected politician said this. And sometimes they will debunk it, maybe. But most of these people in the right-wing ecosystem are not elected politicians, and that's by design. Charles Koch, he actually did try to run for president, actually, I think it was 1980, and he got completely destroyed because no one likes their ideas. They don't care about public opinion. They're not going to put themselves out there on the ballot. And so you need to understand that these activists, that these donors are the actual powers behind the right. The politicians themselves are literally just window dressing; that's all they are. And in fact, Reverend [Norquist 00:56:40], who is one of the most powerful and wealthy right-wing activists out there, been around forever, has said, "The only thing we want in a president is a monkey able to sign legislation that we write," basically. That's what he said. And that is their attitude. This guy has been around in politics literally since the '80s at the epicenter of Republican politics. You have to understand if you're a reporter that that's who you should be covering or paying attention to. But again, you can't count on the mainstream media to understand-They're so set in their ways and stubborn, even now after the entire world has been working remotely, not in offices for two years, if you go to any mainstream media publication and look at their job listings, they'll all be like, "Must live in New York, must live in DC." It's like, did you not pay attention to any f*****g thing that you yourself experienced? The answer is no, they did not. If they can't even learn from their own experience in their own industry, you can't count on them, so don't try them.It reminds me of those stories of people who had really serious COVID and then survived, and they're still not getting the vaccine. It's like, dude, how? How are we here? How did we end up there? Here's an example I was thinking about from last week. There was this segment that CNN ran during New Day that was about... It was a trip to the grocery store with a family of 11. First off, the average size of an American family's two point something. It's very small, not 11, so right there you're not talking about the average American family in any way, shape or form. The family they spoke with lived in Texas so they flew a reporter down to Texas because when they aired it, he was in New York, so they sent him down to Texas to meet with this specific family to go shopping with them for a piece to illustrate how Americans are struggling to pay the bills with the way inflation is going. And then when you looked up the people who were being interviewed in these stories, they were very clearly pretty partisan. That's fine. They had Facebook posts about, oh, gas hasn't been this high since, well, the last time a Democrat was in office, which is not true. But beyond that, the story comes out and there were a number of false claims in it, which could've just... They didn't go down there and film three-and-a-half minutes of footage, they filmed probably an hour at least, and they could've left out portions where one of the family members said things like, "Oh, milk went from $1.99 up to $2.79 this year." It did not go up 80 cents. It did not increase by 40%, which is what the argument was there. And when you're buying 12 gallons a week, that's a lot of milk, yes. Yeah, when you're buying 12 gallons a week even at the amount that you're talking about, that's $9 which, yeah, adds up but it's not necessarily a lot, a lot, I guess. But the whole story hinged on that where they also said, "Oh, well if in June $1 was worth $1, now it only has 70 cents worth of the same buying power," which is not true, obviously. That would be the worst inflation in the country's history if in five months you had 30% of the purchase power of the US dollar disappearing. But CNN left those in there, didn't challenge any of the statements and aired the segment. And when people pushed back on it, when people said, "These things that she said were false and you included them in the segment without really challenging them at all," they got angry. The person who reported it out who flew down to Texas to meet with this family, the person who did that went and called people who were criticizing him a******s on Twitter. Now, that's not something that... I don't know, CNN has a history of firing people for tweeting things that are bad or for saying things that are controversial. You had Reza Aslan, he lost his show because he tweeted that Trump was a piece of s**t, which okay, that's fair if you want to fire someone for that, but then you have this dude calling your audience a******s for correcting misinformation that was put out there. It's frustrating because there are very, very clearly separate rules that the right is allowed to abide by and the left has to abide, sort of like how the New York Times will buckle under pressure to bend over backwards to try to appease right wing criticism. They'll bring in... Oh, let's have Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton come in and write op eds for us. Let's invite Eric Erikson to write an op ed for us about why we need to come together after he took a page of the New York Times and shot bullets into it. These sorts of things that-Well, and a guy who called a Supreme Court Justice a pig f****r.Yeah. Well, I think it was a goat-f*****g pedophile. That was, I think, what he said. Yeah.Whatever it was, yeah-Yeah, it was not good.... about civility. It was a lot. And these are the people who get voices, these are the people who get... They pop up on CNN all the time. It's really frustrating as... Not just as someone who wants to live in a society where we can all... I would love to debate the merits of different tax policies or to discuss what the US role in foreign policy should be or something like that, but there's no policies being discussed, it's just culture war straight up and down. It's just Democrats want to kill you and that's why you should vote Republican. That seems to be the message, and it's unhinged. And I don't know how we all coexist. I would like to, but-Well, like I said, I think the right a long time ago decided that, well, the mainstream media isn't going to promote our candidates for us and do the pure propaganda that we want so we'll just go and start our own things. There isn't really any appreciable... Not really. There are some liberal outposts here and there, but certainly not anywhere near the amount of... There is no equivalent to right wing talk radio, and people sometimes will be like, "Oh, well there's lots of popular left wing podcasts." And it's like, well, sure that's true, there are some, but guess what? Head over to the Apple podcasts top news and politics and see who dominates that. It's ain't NPR, I'll tell you that. Yeah. Well, and same thing with Facebook. One great illustration, I think, of the way that right wing media can game the system is I always thought that the way Facebook reacted to this pretty flimsy 2016 Gizmodo story about supposed suppression of conservative ideas, and in reality the complaints seemed to be mostly that Facebook wasn't promoting conspiracy theories about the IRS targeting only conservative groups but not liberal groups, which the IRS was monitoring both groups because you have to be careful when you're an overtly political organization applying for tax exempt status. That's how it's supposed to go. They were mad that these stories about how the IRS were not trending and they were upset that the Associated Press was being weighted heavier than something like Gateway Pundit or Steven Crowder. And I always thought that was a moment that things really started to spiral totally out of control.The article was published, and within hours you had every right-wing media outlet screaming about it being censored, the RNC weighed in on it. And within days, Facebook set up a meeting with high-profile conservatives. You had Brent Bozell, Jim DeMint, Tucker Carlson, Glen Beck, all of these people went to Facebook and met with Mark Zuckerberg to talk about what they can do to make them feel better about things to assure them that it's not biased against conservatives. Facebook took a bunch of the recommendations. Facebook immediately fired the team that curated its trending section, replaced it with an algorithm that didn't differentiate between nonsense stories and actual news. And then in the months leading up to the election, it just fed readers false stories about things like the Pope endorsing Trump or Megyn Kelly endorsing Clinton and a bunch of conspiracy theories. [crosstalk 01:06:52] It seemed like a pretty clear-cut example of conservatives seizing on an opportunity to weaponize a sense of being wronged, a sense of being the victim to claim bias to their advantage. Facebook bent over backwards to make sure that they felt okay. They carved out special rules so that Trump could lie in his ads. They did all of these things. And what's the conservative position on Facebook? It's still biased against conservatives. There's nothing that can be said or done that would change that because it's not actually about correcting a bias, it's about pushing for an advantage. I don't know. Do you think that I make too much of that Facebook example? Because it's stuck with me for five years.Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I wouldn't say it's more of a... It's just a good test case or example. But that sort of thing happens all the time. But that's why I do think that there needs to be more... There are some progressive publications out there. Let's say the Nation or New Republic or Talking Points Memo, et cetera, but they are more about progressive interpretations in reporting of the news. But they aren't about actually combating right-wing stupidity and lies and activism, and so basically these people have had waging a one-sided war on mainstream institutions so it's no wonder that they have been favored by them. Your former colleagues at Media Matters have started a new project where they're tracking the most popular Facebook posts, and the most popular Facebook posts are almost without exception right-wing propaganda.Yeah. And this is something that Facebook could choose to just do rather than eat up all the resources of Media Matters to do that, but alas, Facebook is a secretive organization that worries me. Well, their key investor is Peter Thiel. Yeah, which-He is Mark Zuckerberg's mentor. The “tech companies are biased against conservatives” lying always gets me because it's so clearly not true but it's impossible to convince people that it's not true. Well, here's the thing; and this goes back to something I said earlier, that conventional right-wing Republican leaders are... They're much closer to the radical conspiracy theorists and outright fabricators than people realize. The primary reason that Facebook took these criticisms seriously... There were two reasons. One was it was a business decision. They wanted to make sure that half of their audience wouldn't, well... Or 35... Facebook is majority elderly people now, so that's... they didn't want to piss off their Republican mainstays, so that was number one. But then number two is that when you look at the way that disinformation works and is distributed if you have automated filters put in place against disinformation, they will disproportionately affect Republican politicians, and that's because... But nobody ever takes the second step which is to say, "Okay, so if that's true that these filters are doing that and it's indisputable that they do, then that means that Republicans are basing their politics and messaging on lies." That's what that actually means and that's the thing that we should be pointing to as the problem in this discussion. It isn't the algorithms. The algorithms are based on detecting exaggerated or fabricated statements and so they are neutral. They are not having things that are based on, oh, let's make sure to take points off if it's a Republican saying it. That's not how they work. They are neutral. They are literally math formulae. That's what they are.The thing is, though, these... If Facebook wanted to, it could say, "Yeah, it affects more Republicans than Democrat politicians because that's just the reality of it." They could but they would piss off millions and millions of their users, which obviously they don't want to do. They instead kind of try to back off.Yeah. But still, I don't think that point is really made very much even in the... There's tons of critical coverage of Facebook now that's come out in the mainstream press, but I don't think any of it's really touched on. A lot of the problem that Facebook has in terms of disinformation and falsehoods, it isn't because of Facebook's audience or the people who use it, it's because that right wing activism is based on lying. That's the root problem. If you talk to people who actually work in machine learning and content moderation, they actually do discuss this stuff, but it's only within that very small little universe that these discussions are being had and they need to be had on a much greater degree because... I'll give you an example. Sam Harris, the atheist author who has drifted over to the right the past few years, he did an interview recently where he said that... Somebody had asked him, "Why is it that you seem so... Almost all your content is about criticizing "woke" stuff? That you never talk about Republican extremism or Christian nationalism. Why don't you do that?" And his response was, "Well, because that stuff is so obviously wrong that I don't need to criticize it because it's wrong and so I have to focus on cleaning up my own side." And it's like, bro, do you realize who was the president of this country? Do you realize what is the top-rated cable channel in America? He has no idea. And to be honest, I do think that there are a lot of people in the A political technocratic center or even center left who have that opinion because they have no awareness or contact with right wing media. There's a very easy mistake that you can make which is to think that because you don't know about something that it doesn't matter. And the reality is maybe you don't know about this thing because you're wrong. Which is an important lesson all around. This has been just a totally fantastic, extremely long conversation. I am so thankful that you took the time to chat with me today. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

This week’s podcast guest is Matthew Sheffield, the founder and editor of Flux, a new online community for progressive writers and podcasters. I was interested in talking to Matthew about his earlier life experience as someone who was present when right-wing media really started building the echo chamber. The interview went pretty long, so this is part one of two. The second portion will be posted next week.The Present Age is a reader-supported newsletter. Please subscribe. Thank you!Parker Molloy: Joining me today is Matthew Sheffield. One of the first things I wanted to ask you is can you tell me a little bit about your connection to right-wing media? How it started, what you did, how your views changed over time, how your involvement changed over time. You offered to share the tale of your exit from the world of right-wing media and I would absolutely love to hear it.Matthew Sheffield: Okay, all right. Well, my background is I was raised as a Fundamentalist Mormon, and Mormons basically, a lot of people don't know, but Mormons actually are the original Christian Nationalists. Mormonism was founded on the idea that America was the choice land above all other lands. That's literally in the Book of Mormon. And that Christopher Columbus was moved upon by the holy spirit to discover America even though he never came here, but... And so Mormons, to some degree, kind of created the environment then rubbed off on a lot of people. I was brought up in that environment very much to a large degree. I have seven siblings, and my family and I, we traveled all over America doing an informal ministry because Mormons don't actually have ministries; they're not allowed to have them by their church. It's a very centralized bureaucratic church, and so I was in that. Part of it was that we were so disenchanted with the regular Mormon church. It wasn't fundamentalist enough for us. But luckily, we were not into polygamy, so that was at least good for us in that regard.But I didn't want to go on a regular Mormon mission because when you turn 19, that's what young men are expected to do. But I was so disenchanted, I was like, "No, I want to do something else." And it was, unfortunately, a really bad idea in retrospect, but in any case, we started traveling around America playing classical music on the street, literally. That was my misspent youth. We did that, and in the course of doing that, for whatever reason... This was the pre-internet days. We actually watched the evening news on TV, and our family watched the CBS Evening News. During the imbroglio over Bill Clinton's impeachment, we decided that we thought Dan Rather... One of my brothers and I decided we thought Dan Rather was unfair. In retrospect, he's obviously shown he's a fairly progressive guy. But anyway, we decided we were going to start a website called ratherbiased.com, and it basically was blogging before there was even a word for it. We got picked up all over the place. I guess people liked it, or some people liked it. We did that for a few years until we got thoroughly and utterly sick of talking about Dan Rather, and so we quit the site in 2002 and we got so many requests to bring it back for 2004 from our... Because we left the site up but we didn't want to do it. But so many people were like, "Please, please bring this site back." And so we said, "Fine, we will." But we had decided at that point we're definitely going to stop no matter what after the election's over. Well, after the election was over, we actually kept going because Dan Rather had gotten involved with that document scandal where he used fake documents to say that George W. Bush had avoided the draft in the Vietnam War. I think that's probably true that Bush did that, but when you're using documents that were typed up in Microsoft Word and you're presenting them as if they were made on a typewriter, that's pretty embarrassing. Anyway, that just exploded in popularity. We thought, my brother and I, we were tired of our family ministry by that point but we had no way out to go and do something on our own. None of us had ever had an internship, none of us had any friends because we lived basically a nomadic lifestyle. We grew up in trailer parks and tents, so yeah, we had no network. I went to I think eight different colleges, and I have two other ones from my high school years, so I've got 10 universities on my transcript. Originally, we thought, well what if we had a website that brought together left and right-wing media criticism? We actually started recruiting a bunch of people for it, and there was a ton of interest for it and people liked this idea. We actually found... before they had signed on with anyone, we found Matt Yglesias. We also found Ezra Klein while they were in college and a bunch of other right-of-center people, and so a lot of people wanted to do this but then we got to the point where we realized, oh, we don't have any money. We can't pay anybody to do this stuff and we have no way of raising money. We're like, f**k, I guess we'll have to just go into right-wing media because we have no other options. It was a weird moment because I remember I applied... I had never even applied for a job before, and so I went up and applied for, I think it was Nordstrom Rack or something like that and they never got back to me, and I was like, man, I don't know. I have no idea what to do. My university people had no interest in helping me, and so we're like, all right, well I guess we'll team up with a media research center and start News Busters. News Busters was basically like a large format version of what we had been doing at ratherbiased.com, and they had apparently seen what we were doing. Actually, we ended up getting more publicity for our stuff than they did, and so we started News Busters. After that, it was basically the first-ever think tank blog publication out there as far as I know. And then a bunch of people started trying to get into that business as well and Heritage Foundations did it, and actually, Media Matters, as I understand, was inspired by what we were doing to some degree. And then I started a business basically sort of duplicating that idea. Had only Nordstrom Rack gotten back to you, this could've all been avoided. Apparently yeah, yep. We did that for a while and then I actually tried to do that... After we started working with them, the first day after we moved out... My brother and I actually had money, we could move out so we did as soon as possible. And I was 27 at the time, and we both... The first Sunday after we left, moved out, my mom had put up a paper on our kitchen because we were living together, actually. She put a paper on it for the address of the local Mormon church, and my brother and I, we got up on Sunday morning with enough time to go to it, but then I looked over and him and I said, "I don't want to go. Do you want to go?" "No," so we didn't and we never did. We never went again after that. Anyway, long story short, our faith in Mormonism and religion generally collapsed after that, but not our interest in right-wing activism. I, for a number of years, tried to make space for non-Christians in the Republican party. And, well, ultimately that was a fool's errand as I soon discovered. Well, not soon, I eventually discovered. I guess the big catalyst for that discovery... Well, there was a couple of things. One was that I kept noticing how people were stealing my ideas on the right. I would go to an organization and say, "Hey, I've built these things here that have millions of readers that are nationally known. I could do that for you." And then they would say, "Well, I don't know, I don't know," and then a few months later big fundraising campaign: We're doing this large website and we need your money. Of course.Yeah, and so that kept happening to me. At first, I thought, well maybe it's just because I'm not... I don't know. Because I grew up in a trailer park and I don't know anybody. I'm not an elite Republican consultant or whatever. And that's what I thought for a while. But then eventually I decided to start writing a book to try to improve conservative politics. And by improve, I also meant to help them become more responsive to public sentiment, so public opinion. And in the course of doing that I began researching why do they pursue these ideas that people don't want? Where does that come from? I had always stayed away from the religious right just by being not religious, but I actually started reading their stuff and I was horrified at what I was seeing. I remember reading a story of this man who was, he's a Hindu priest and he was invited to give the... The US Capitol has a daily prayer session at the beginning of all their... when they're in session, and they invite different people do to it. And this guy, who was a Hindu priest, was invited to do it. And so he got up to do it and people started... They invaded the Capitol, actually. This was a predecessor of January 6th, and no one has ever heard of it. But this happened, and they invited the rotunda and started screaming about Satan and, "We have to stop this." They were demanding that he be arrested. It was awful. I was like, is this what I am helping here? And so I started trying to rewrite to, I don't know, oppose that Christian nationalist extremism, but eventually, I got to the point where I realized, you know what? The reason that they do these things is because they think they're God's servants. I could write all the best words, to use Trump's phrase. I could have all the best words, the best-written book in human history and it wouldn't matter because they're doing these things because they think God wants them to do it. And their ability to distinguish between their own ideas and the will of God is none; it's nonexistent. And it was a profoundly depressing realization because I had thought that there were sincere motives about policy and America and the public service and things like that, but I realized, no, it isn't that. And so I had written 80,000 words at that point, and... And I actually had a publisher as well, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it so I pulled it off the... I withdrew it. I went into depression, actually, I did. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, and it was like, I didn't want to do that, though, because this was the second existential crisis in my life. Most people, they may have one, but here I was having a second one.How old were you at the time?I think I was 39, 38, something like that.Yeah. Two big, existential crises by that point-Before you're 40. That's rough. See, my trick is that I start with one and I just keep that crisis going my entire life. Which, actually, just really quick, one thing I was thinking about because I actually had not heard the story of the Hindu priest. I just googled it and I'm honestly amazed that I had not ever heard of this, and I'm going to read up on it later, but one thing you said that caught my attention was that... And this is something that I have always been trying to figure out is that people do these things because they honestly believe this is the will of God and all of that stuff. And I've always wondered, these people actually believe? Because the way that a lot of people involved in the religious right seem to act, it's kind of like if there's a hell, dude, you're going to it. I've read the Bible cover to cover and I know that a lot of the attitudes just aren't consistent with any actual teaching. There's no way that people can actually believe all this pretty hateful stuff when it comes to treating other people as equals and whatnot. But you said that you think that, generally speaking, the people involved in the religious right actually do believe in what they're saying. They're not just saying it for the sake of advancing their political worldview, but rather that they actually believe these sorts of things. Oh yeah. No, they-It's their responsibility to-No, they believe everything that they say.Well, that's kind of terrifying. It is. After I had discovered that, I started publishing about it to some degree, or trying to. And a lot of people didn't even want to publish what I was writing.I'll give you an example. I had written a 5,000 word piece for the Atlantic. Somebody there had asked me to write it. And I showed how Ben Shapiro's right-wing views were not really different from this white nationalist guy named Nick Fuentes. And I literally had audio of him bashing Jewish people; Ben Shapiro bashing Jewish people on a white nationalist podcast.Oh yeah, was it Red Ice Radio?It was.Yeah, I've listened to that one too. I probably saw it because you posted it somewhere.I'm guessing, yeah. But yeah, nobody had seen that before. But most people who follow politics I would say haven't seen it, and so I was able to... Anyway, I finished the story. It was impeccably documented. There was no possible way that anyone could sue you based on this story because it was 100% true. I based it on the... Fuentes, he and his fans had started trying to... Basically, they were trying to take over the Turning Point USA audience because they both are effectively going for the same group; right-wing, young Christians. And so they were showing up at Charlie Kirk events, and they showed up for one out here in Los Angeles with Donald Trump Jr., and they humiliated him. I told the entire backstory of how this happened, why it's so hard for Charlie Kirk's... Why his audience keeps becoming white nationalists. And anyway, so I sent it to him and the guy who was my editor, he said, "Oh, this is fantastic but, I'm sorry, I can't print it." And then I said, "Well, why? Why can't you print it?" And he never responded. Oh, that's awful.It is. That attitude, though, I kept encountering it over and over and over. There is this sentiment among a lot of elite journalists that they don't take these people seriously. They think that they're just a bunch of redneck losers who are masturbating into a teddy bear, or whatever; to Jesus and Donald Trump pictures. That's how they see them. And they have no idea that these people have gigantic, massive audiences. I've heard people say, "Oh, well I don't want to give so-and-so a platform." And it's like, they have a bigger audience than you, okay?Yeah, that was always funny when I was at Media Matters and I'd post an article that I wrote about Tucker Carlson, and I'd have someone who's like, "Why are you giving him a platform?" And it's like, I hate to break this to you, but he has far more viewers than I have for years, exponentially so, you know?Yeah. There is this naïve attitude that a lot of people in the establishment left have. They don't understand how small of a space they occupy in the American mind. For instance, I remember having an argument; I was on a debate show one time with somebody who was at the Free Beacon, and they were trying to say, "Oh, Alex Jones, he's just this fringe figure." And I said, "Alex Jones has about 10 times the audience, web audience alone, of your publication. Does that mean you're a fringe figure?" And of course, they didn't respond to that.Yeah. That's a great point because... And it kind of shows... What am I trying to say? That's a great point and it gets at something else that I've been thinking a lot about which is this idea that, oh, don't pay attention to Alex Jones, don't pay attention to Marjorie Taylor Greene, ignore them, ignore them. These people are fringe, as their audiences keep growing and as their influence keeps growing. That's something that just happens in politics, and I see people brush off fringe elements of something. And I'll just kind of think to myself five years from myself, that's not going to be fringe whatever gets said there. Alex Jones, that's been one hell of a trip following his career for as long as I have. Yeah. Well, and now Tucker Carlson, the number one host in Fox News and the highest-rated television personality in America is basically Alex Jones light. And Alex Jones himself actually said this the other day. He said, "I've been so pleased to see what a great patriot Tucker Carlson has become." And then meanwhile the rest of the liberal Hollywood elite continue to do business with his paymaster, Rupert Murdoch. Ultimately, people need to understand that this is not Tucker Carlson doing this, this is Rupert Murdoch doing this. And if you, as a Hollywood studio or movie star or whatever, you work with him in any capacity, you are supporting Tucker Carlson. Yeah. I worked at Media Matters, which is kind of the... I don't want to say the flip side because I feel like it equates the two, but it's the left-leaning counterweight to News Busters, basically, for about two-and-a-half years. And while Media Matters I think does some great work, in my view it's an organization that the right dismisses out of hand and mainstream outlets often seem reluctant to rely on for fear for being slammed by the right for relying on some study that we did over there or some data that we pulled or even some quote that we found because that's 90% of what Media Matters does is just taking clips in context and posting them to the site that's just like, hey, on Alex Jones' show today he went on a five-minute rant about whatever. Those things are good to know because most people aren't just going to sit there and listen to three hours of Alex Jones every day, and that's probably for the best. But one thing that was frustrating about that is that working at Media Matters kind of made it really difficult to get a lot of my arguments through the noise. And so one thing I really want to ask you is just what don't people get about right-wing media that perhaps coming from you and not me, from your point of view, from your involvement in all of this as you were realizing this and making your decisions to distance yourself from that movement, what don't they understand that you might help them get it? That you saying it might help them get it. Sorry if that was confusing. There is a few things. One is that the generic Republican Capitol hill professional class establishment is much closer to the white nationalist or Christian supremacists fringe than you have any idea. And just as an example, the... You've got a number of Republican members of Congress who have said that biological evolution is a lie from Satan. That is a ridiculous extremist position, and a lot of Republican officials believe it. Mike Pence believes it. And there were real implications, real-world implications of these beliefs because it means that you don't accept science. And in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, that's is a reason that they were so prone to these stupid conspiracy theories or dumb medical things. Yeah, people always say, "Well, I don't understand, why do Republicans like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin so much? Why do they like it? It must be Trump." And it's like, no, it isn't because there are 70 years of religious nut jobs selling people herbs and spices and telling them that these are God's cures for cancer or pneumonia or whatever. They've had a business of this and nobody paid attention to it on the left or in the establishment press. This is a cancer that has been growing in America, and you have to pay attention to it, not just when they invade the Capitol and try to kill the vice president. It's something that has to be... The average person has to know how radical these people are. And the connections are just so clear. You mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman that I remember people, after she was first elected, were like, "Oh, this is just a fringe person. Republicans are not going to respond to her. She's just a freak Qanon person." But low and behold, she is now one of the most prolific Republican members of the house at fundraising. She's rolling in money and is routinely defended and promoted by Fox News. It's almost like there is this old internet meme, the rules of the internet, right? You remember those? I think it was 50 or whatever it was, but rule number 34 was if it exists, there is porn of it. And there was basically a rule 34 of conservative politics. If it's insane enough, eventually they will believe it. And that's what people need to understand. There is nothing too crazy or too dumb that they won't believe. But here's the other thing, in terms of right-wing media: It is their ace in the hole for politics. The Virginia gubernatorial race, it's such a great example of that.Oh, absolutely.Here you had Glenn Youngkin, who is basically a Mitt Romney clone, boring, rich, out-of-touch plutocrat; destroyed people's lives in private equity.The ideas and experience of Mitt Romney but with the sweater vest of Rick Santorum. Yeah, basically. And so this is not someone that a normal person would want to vote for. It just isn't. But what was key for him was this lie campaign that was ginned up in right-wing media. And they had two primary lies. One was that they had fabricated several incidents about supposed transgender bathroom violence.Well, yeah, no, but it's important, though, to... Since I mentioned it, though, I have to... There was this incident that... alleged incident that happened in a school in X-urban Virginia around DC. Loudoun County is the county. There was a male student who apparently occasionally cross-dressed or something like that, but did not identify as transgender, had apparently had sexual encounters with a female student in a bathroom multiple times. One time I guess she said no and then he proceeded to rape her. And then the school was... The district allowed him to transfer over to another high school after the incident. And by the way-That's an issue, but-Yeah, but here's the other thing, though, is this was the policy of the former Trump administration. Betsy DeVos had said that... The secretary of education at that time had said that students who are accused of sexual crimes, they needed to be continued... to have continued access to their learning environment; that that was very... Instead of being concerned about students who had... That these students might again commit the crimes, or whatever, that they were accused of. They wanted to let them keep going to school. This was the Republican policy, and so the district allowed the male student to go to another high school, and apparently went into... He was accused of doing another assault, a sexual assault of a female student in the classroom this time at the second school. But at no time was there a transgender bathroom policy involved with either of these incidents or even a transgender person. Yeah, which seems important to note when people are trying to stoke those sorts of things. But even if it was a trans person, there's no school in the country that's saying, "Hey, let's make it legal for trans people to assault people in restrooms or assault people in classrooms," or anything like that. No matter what, what the person was doing was wrong in any case, and that's what's so frustrating. But it was also... And I might just be getting ahead here. When all of this happened, it was before that school district had taken up a policy.Had that policy. Yeah.Yeah, so-The first incident, yeah. And then the second incident wasn't in a bathroom.Right. Well, exactly. And with that first incident, one of the things that personally frustrates me about it is that the argument seems to be this happened because of this policy, this trans-inclusive policy. And it's just not true. It can't be true. And the tricky thing about it is arguing this point on Twitter or whatever else immediately gets you going, wow, you're defending this person? And it's like, no, I'm defending the people who had nothing to do with this but are getting blamed for it. It's frustrating.Yeah, it is, it is. I'll tell you one of the last straws for me from trying to stop reforming the right to start opposing it was if you remember when Mike Pence was the governor of Indiana. They had passed this law that allowed... They called it a religious freedom law. This is, I think, their most successful evil scheme ever is trying to rebrand these Christian supremacism as religious freedom. But the way that law worked was basically anyone could claim a religious objection to any law and say, "That goes against my religion so I don't have to follow it." And that actually was what the law said. I was still loosely conservative when that came out... or when that was signed, but I kept hearing in right-wing media, "Oh no, that's not what it does, that's not what it does. It just protects people to have their... from having their rights violated." And then I would ask people, "Well, have you actually read the law? How do you know that?" And they'd say, "No, I haven't read it."And then finally I was like, all right, I don't want to have to read this but I'm going to read it. And luckily for me, it was only two or three pages, the law, thankfully. And I read through it and I was like, wow, these people have totally lied about what this law says. And I was like, I'm done, I'm done with this. I can't do this anymore because they have no regard for truth. Either they have no regard for truth or they don't care about what truth is. Once I had that realization... One thing that's important, I think, for people to realize is that right-wingers do not believe in facts. When people are like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to fact check them," and whatnot, they don't care about facts. What-No. It eats up time on the end of the people who are trying to correct misinformation or correct facts or fact check.Yeah. No, it's fine. Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it-No, of course.... but what I'm saying is that you can't persuade them of facts because facts don't matter. All right-wing reasoning, it's not empirical-based. And I hate to get too philosophical here, but in logic-You are on a podcast named The Present Age, so feel free.All right, well in formal logic there's essentially two types of... There's more than two, but two basic types of reasoning. There's empirical reasoning, which is where you look at... You use observation then your senses to deduce what reality is, as you can perceive it. And then there is another kind which is a priori, from Latin, from before. And because right-wing Americans are overwhelmingly either Christian or Jewish fundamentalists, they don't believe in empirical reason or deductive reasoning. They believe in a priori reason, and so for them their opinions about the Bible or the Book of Mormon in the cases of Mormons... Their opinions about religion are facts. Not only are they facts, they are timeless, eternal truths. This is an aspect of right-wing epistemology that almost nobody who has had... That if you haven't come out of that environment you really don't understand it because they don't really talk about it, of how they reason because they just all agree that the Bible is literally true in every aspect. And so that is the truth, and so everything must comport with that, with our understanding of religion. Otherwise, it's a lie. But the problem is, of course, the Bible is not literally true, and so effectively, they... Because they believe in moral absolutes but their morals are based on lies, basically they have moral absolutism and factual relativism while accusing everyone else of moral relativism and factual absolutism. And they're right, of course, to say that because everybody else, we want to have our opinions based on facts and based on what's real.Which is why it's kind of funny that so many on the right seem to try to brand themselves as I am all facts, all logic, all... There is that strain of Ben Shapiro type right-wing pundits who go, "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just telling harsh truths. Facts don't care about your feelings." It's always so mind-boggling that something like that would take off as a... something like that would take off as a slogan for a movement that is honestly pretty detached from facts, but yeah.Yeah. But it makes sense when you understand that for them a fact is that homosexuality is evil, a fact is that marriage should only be between man and a woman, one man and one woman. These are facts from their standpoint. It is a fact that Jesus was crucified for the sins of the world and was resurrected on the third day. That's a fact. Basically, though, they have an inverted epistemology, and that's why it's so hard for a lot of people who are educated, especially liberals, educated liberals to understand them, that they really... they cannot believe that they actually are so dumb, basically. It's hard for people who have had, let's say 20 or more years of schooling to understand that there are people out there who think that education is a lie. Sure. And to be clear, I think it's one thing to blame the intellectual leaders of right-wing movements for this, but on an individual level it's so much harder to understand where people are getting their news, which is why media matters. How the press covers anything, it's important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right-wing media is how their entire political structure is based on now. The average Republican activists or voter, they can just be submerged continuously in this information and lies. They can wake up to their Christian morning podcast - The Daily Wire has one now - and/or any number of these Christian radio stations that have millions and millions of listeners but nobody outside of their audience has ever heard of them. And then they drive to work and can listen to local talk radio on their way to work, and then they get to work, they can turn on their talk radio while they're doing their tasks and read their thousands and thousands of websites, and then they go home and they can watch their propaganda videos on TV and YouTube, or wherever. They have no awareness of anything that is not in that ecosystem. I always hear democratic consultants and politicians saying, "Oh, our people just don't vote in the midterms. I wish they would, I wish they..." Well, you know why Republicans vote in the midterms? It's because of right wing media and that are telling them every election, "This is the most important election ever. If you don't vote now, Jesus will be crucified again," basically. That's the type of hype. And they're subjected to it every day. I would like to do something to try to educate and keep left-of-center voters motivated, but it seems like the Democratic establishment is like, "No, we'll just run some TV ads."It's definitely frustrating to watch as... It's just honestly sometimes seems like Democratic politicians in the Democratic establishment generally doesn't-They don't care.Again, I want to believe that they see this very obvious thing that's happening, but they just don't respond to it as though there is a genuine issue at hand. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Parker Molloy: Hello, hello. My guest this week, today, whatever, you're listening to this podcast is Michael Ian Black. Hey.Michael Ian Black: Hey.How's it going?That was quite an introduction.It was. I'll record something. I'll record something before this, talk about... I'll be like—You're making a big assumption that people are going to know what that means or who I am.No, no.That's just a giant leap that you're making.I'm going to be like, “He's the guy from that show Ed.”“He's that guy that maybe you saw on TV several years ago.”“Did you have VH1 in the early 2000s?”“That's right. Then you know my next guest.”Yes. That will be the intro I'll record. Yeah. So thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me for this podcast, which will be listened to by tens of people. Maybe hundreds if we're lucky.Well, that's more than come to my comedy shows lately, so I'm thrilled.Yeah. Which kind of leads me into what I wanted to chat with you about. So my podcast and newsletter are both about communication. That's just the general idea, which is great for me because it gives me the opportunity to talk about pretty much anything, because pretty much anything falls under the category of communication. But specifically I have been really interested in stories about how the pandemic has forced people to change how they communicate. For instance, pandemic's caused a lot of people to recalibrate how they interact with the world. You've got bands forced to put off touring and instead trying to sell tickets to livestream concerts, reporters had to rethink news gathering to account for a world where people isolated themselves away from society and just ate up whatever the Facebook algorithm gave them that day. How has the pandemic affected your work, and your ability to work, for that matter?Well, it devastated it. My main sources of income are acting, performing, and I guess those are my two main sources of income. So showbiz shut down, venues closed, and so there was a year and change where it was very, very difficult for me to make any money whatsoever. I joined Cameo. That was helpful. I made Cameo videos for people. That was my main source of income for 2019 and 2020, which, you know, that's not great, but it was a help.Cameo is interesting to me because half the time it's like, oh, that's really sweet. You got that celebrity to wish so and so a happy birthday. And then the other half of the time it's “haha, you tricked such and such celebrity into saying something coded and really weird.” And “tricked” is questionable, as it is, because some people just might be like, “Sure, I'll say whatever you want.”That's me, I'll say whatever you want.Anything.If you want to pay me 85 bucks to say, “You know what? Hitler had some good ideas,” I'm happy to do that.Cool.Whatever you want.That right there is just going to be my promo for this episode, just you saying...I'm service-oriented, I just want to make people happy.Yeah, I'm like, how can I get more people to listen to my thing? I'll let Michael come on and talk about—I'm not saying it's my opinion. I'm just saying you paid me to tell you, and I'm fine with that.But yeah, that's kind of the general vibe is just this idea that... Especially people involved in performing, whether it's comedy or acting or even writing. Your book came out last year, right?Yeah. My last book came out in September 2020.Yes. It was called A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to my Son, which you sent me a copy of that, and I read it, and it was great. And it was mostly serious, but also funny. One thing I found interesting about it was really just the fact that you focus on a lot of darkness in that book. I think you opened it with talking about mass shootings, right? Or something like that. How challenging is it to be funny in a world that is not funny, that has so much darkness; climate change and the pandemic and mass shootings and all of that stuff?Well, I'll take the question generally speaking first. Which is, I'll say it's... Humor has always been the way that people cope with terrible circumstances. Humor will always find a light through the cracks. It's just a coping mechanism, it's genetic, it's just who we are. The way you alleviate suffering often is just to make light of it, just to make a joke of it, just to flip the awfulness on its head, even if it's just for a second. So I think that's just who we are as a species. Specifically, with this book that I wrote, which does start with school shootings, I gave myself permission to not try to be funny. I gave myself permission to just say what I thought about stuff, and if there were jokes along the way, so be it. But I definitely wasn't trying to make it a funny book in any way, shape, or form, which is why the subtitle is A Mostly Serious Letter to my Son, because that's what it was.Yeah, yeah. Yeah, If someone bought that thinking they were going to get a lively romp of happiness, that's not-A lively romp of school shootings and the problems with contemporary masculinity, this wasn't the book.Yeah. That's not the book for you. Yeah. So that's interesting, just kind of how comedy as sort of a release valve to cope with things outside of our control.So comedy is just a form of creative expression. All art is just... I think it's all the same thing. It's all how we deal with the condition of being a human. It is just our natural impulse to create. We don't have a choice. It's just part of who we are as a species. So it's going to express itself as art or music or comedy, or whatever else. I was going to say architecture, but I don't think it really will express itself as architecture.I mean, it could. Did you hear that there was a recent that article about the billionaire who was like, I'll give you $200 million if you let me design it?“If you let me make a giant coffin for your students.”If I was really rich, that is exactly the kind of thing I would want to do. I'd be like, yeah, I'll give you money, ... if. And then just put one really strange condition on everything.“No, it's going to be a state... Look, guys, it's going to be a state-of-the-art dorm. I'm going to pay for the whole thing. The only thing that's a little weird about it is to get up and down it's chutes and ladders, and the chutes are all water slides, and they all end in a vat of hot chocolate. Can we just agree that that's okay?”I want to build Willy Wonka's factory. We can house people in there. Yeah, that's totally what I would do.One thing that I also wanted to ask you about, because you are so much better at this than I am, is you listen to people a lot on Twitter when it comes to... Because your comedy isn't necessarily political, but that doesn't mean that you're not involved in the world around you or anything like that. And I've watched some really interesting interviews that you've had. You went on Dave Rubin's show five years ago, or something like that, and had an interesting conversation with him. You went on Adam Corolla's podcast last year, which I mean, he's a comedian, but he's also extremely political. And you have these really interesting conversations where you're able to kind of diffuse, cause them to put down their defenses for a little bit, to have honest conversations, which is honestly lacking in now.Because half of the time if you watch Dave Rubin, he'll be going on some rant about how trans people are bad or something like that [Ed. note: in the off chance that Rubin or his fans see/hear this, before they respond, “Uh, he’s never actually said ‘trans people are bad,’” understand that I am speaking generally about his tendency to invite anti-trans people on his show to give them a supportive space to argue against basic legal protections for trans people — with virtually no pushback from Rubin; additionally, while he’s had a couple trans people on, they’re “pick me”s who’ve essentially adopted the right-wing stance on whether or not trans people should be legally protected from employment/housing/health care/public accommodations discrimination]. But the conversation that the two of you had was really interesting, because it was focusing on these commonalities and how to agree on the goals and maybe disagree on the methods of getting there. What's the secret to doing that, to breaking through to people? Because I think that's something where I find myself hitting a wall when speaking to people who have extremely different political views than me, but you seem to be better at it.Well, I think it's a couple things. The first is, part of what I learned on Twitter was you got to understand what you're trying to accomplish. If you're just trying to rile up people that's easy to do and fun and funny, and you'll absolutely be successful at that, no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, no matter... If your goal is just to upset people, that's super easy to do. And sometimes that is absolutely my goal. Sometimes that is just the funniest way for me to get through my day is just to upset people. And sometimes, incidentally, people on my side. Sometimes just I'll say something that I know is just going to rile up my political allies and watch them go nuts, because it's funny to me. If the goal is to actually have a conversation and engage with people, and that is absolutely sometimes the goal, I think you said it yourself in the question, just listen, just listen.And before you listen, take the leap of faith that that person has sincere beliefs that they think are reasoned and logical and come from a good place, that they think that their worldview is the correct worldview, that they're not inherently malicious people. And I think if you do that, those two things, you'll tend to have a pretty good conversation with somebody. And I think most people aren't malicious. I think most people aren't malevolent. I think most people do believe what they're saying. Now there are some people whose beliefs are so abhorrent that I couldn't have a conversation, a reasoned conversation with them, I don't think. Or there's some people who I think are so far up their own a*****e that you can't get them to crawl out of there to even sniff around anything else.I don't know how productive it is to have those conversations. I went on Steven Crowder once and we couldn't even agree, we couldn't agree on anything. We couldn't agree that... He kept using the term rape culture, which I agreed with him wasn't a helpful term, because I wanted to broaden out what the conversation was to include the sort of petty indignities that women, mostly, mostly women, have to deal with on a day to day basis, purely on the basis of their sex. And we couldn't even get there. We couldn't do anything. And I think he's a good example of a guy whose head is just so far up his own a*****e that it's impossible. And this is before Me Too, by the way, this was sort of in anticipation of Me Too happening.Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a great example of someone who I think is, maybe doesn't... Maybe he believes what he says, but he also seems to enjoy making people angry. That kind of seems to be-And that's a good business model. That's absolutely a fantastic business model. And I wish I could do more of that. I wish I was capable of that, but I don't think I could live with myself.Yeah. Every once in a while, I'll kind of think to myself, I'll be like, “Man, I could be making absolute bank if I was one of those people who was like, hey, I'm a trans person, and I don't think I should have rights.” You know, it's like, there—Oh my god, are you kidding me? If you want to run the biggest grift in the world, that's it.Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And there are a few people who do that, to immense success and that's...Candace Owens, case in point. I mean, she's not trans, but...Yeah, right. But yeah, that sort of thing, that was kind of... I forgot who made this video, but someone took... It was a video of right after Candace Owens was hired by Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA group. And it was [after] criticism of the group, which had been falling into this cycle of “accidentally” hiring white supremacists, as one does, and then they hired her. And basically, it was the same stuff that the white supremacist that they just had to fire were saying, but the messenger was different. And so it gave everyone permission to go, “No, see? I'm not saying it, she's saying it. And she's a member of this group and therefore it's fine.”It's beautiful moral licensing. Just a beautiful example of it.Yeah. And that's what frustrates me, because it makes me feel so cynical about all of this. Because I like to think that my writing is decent or that I make decent content, whatever that means these days. But my income is modest. And if I spent all day writing rage posts on the newsletter and sending it out and picking Twitter fights with people, I'm sure I could be doing much better than I am right now, but that's not why I want to do this. I don't want to be someone who just makes the world an angrier place, which I understand that sometimes we're all angry. Sometimes I'm angry, at things that are both, real, imagined, totally in my head, worries about the future, just all sorts of stuff. But I want to make the world a nicer place, a place where we can all coexist, even though that seems to be-That doesn't pay as well.Yeah, it doesn't pay as well. And also it's too easy to say, well, why can't we all just get along? Because some beliefs are incompatible with others. If someone believes that it being illegal to fire someone based on them being gay, because of their religious beliefs say that they cannot have someone who is gay working for them, for whatever reason, I don't know how that's compatible with basic human rights and basic legal protections. And that's where there's those frustrations that come in, because I don't know how you reconcile these things. And because one side needs to win, I guess, or because these aren't necessarily things you can compromise on. You can create cutouts and laws and stuff like that, but when you're really breaking it down to on a societal level, it's difficult to have these conversations because no one wants to do that in good faith.Because it's not helpful to their cause, especially if the people you're talking to are political activists and not just people hanging out, or someone on a podcast or something like that. It's a lot of really hardcore, I have my lines to say, I'm going to say them, and that's it. I am not going to accept whatever comes into my ears. This is all a performance. And that's what so many of those debates are, when people are like, oh, well, we're going to have a debate on my YouTube channel. No one's ever listening to each other, they're just shouting over each other.Yeah, of course.It's exhausting. And I feel like that's part of the problem that we're in these days, is just that that is what is popular and that is what sells, and that's not... there are negative consequences to that. And your style of humor has always been either snarky, deadpan kind of stuff, or just really great storytelling. And I forget what it was, I think when I saw you at... when you came here to Chicago in 2018, that was it, you had a joke about... It was this lengthy joke about Subway sandwiches, that just like... I can't remember it, but I just remember being like, this is just excellent storytelling. This is perfect. This is great. And I guess it would be better if I remembered it, but...There's nothing to remember. It's about a half hour long story about getting my sandwich made at Subway. And what the appeal of it to me was that I was taking half an hour to describe getting a sandwich made at Subway.Yes, exactly. And it was good, it was fun. And I can't do that. That's a skill that someone has to have, to be able to make people laugh by talking about something so bland, something so every day, and in my view, I imagine that has to be kind of difficult, in a world where there's a lot of really intense things happening around us. And to be like, hope everyone's ready for my discussion about sweeping the floor today, something like that, where you really just kind of take all of that tension that people have going into a room and you can feel it release with the crowd. But I feel like that might not transfer to settings that aren't a bunch of people in a room, which has to be—Yeah. You're going into a space where people are there to laugh, and they're very specifically wanting you to take them wherever you want to go. They're inclined to follow, they're inclined to be lost in it the same way you would be lost in a good movie. You don't forget your troubles just because you're watching a Star Wars movie, but for that hour and a half or two hours, you're like, okay, I'm willing to invest in Anakin and Palpatine and whatever. I think a comedy show is similar. There are comedians who obviously really specialize in political comedy and you're going there because you want to be riled up, and because you want to laugh at politicians and the state of the world and everything else. And that's all great, and I do a little bit of that. The gift of it, if it is a gift, it's a craft, is in just taking the room and sort of bringing them along. That's the job.Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Are you working on anything right now? What's up in your world?Nothing. I'm so unemployed.You're so unemployed.I'm so unemployed. I'm touring a little bit. I'm doing a couple podcasts. And I'm desperately trying to figure out how to make a living. What does this pay by the way?Making a podcast? Not much.My appearance on your podcast specifically, what does this pay?Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, remember how we gave you a ride to your hotel after that show... We drove you?Yeah, yeah, yeah.So, there. This is just you paying me back.Oh s**t. So I was in the hole? Oh my god.Yeah, you were, We drove you a whole five minutes from Thalia Hall to wherever you were staying that one time. That's really all I've got. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today. I really appreciate it and hope that... I hope things can get back to normal for the sake of comedians and musicians and just society. I think we all want that. That should be one goal that we can all rally around is-Apparently not.Yeah. Hey, wouldn't it be nice if this pandemic thing was over? Yeah. 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Parker Molloy: So you've been writing this awesome newsletter over on Substack, called The Sword and the Sandwich. Can you tell me a little bit about that?Tal Lavin: Yeah, so I launched, actually, this month, October 4th, and it's a really odd... It is an odd mix. Like, I recognize it's an odd mix. The sword is first of all, because I own a bunch of swords, and love them, but also, it sort of symbolizes like I'm writing about the American right and far-right, and then the sandwiches are very literal. Like, for a really long time, I have been obsessed with Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches, which has hundreds of sandwiches on it, from all over the world, and I have wanted to address this in some systematic way. I love projects that have structure that I can f**k around within, like a sonnet.So the premise is I'm going through every sandwich on that list. It's very arbitrary, you know? Obviously a Wikipedia thing, so it's... But I'm treating it almost like a sacred text, and then going through it and writing essays, or interviews, or recipes, or stories about each sandwich. We've covered the American hero, the bacon sandwich, and bacon, egg, and cheese, and now this week, we're on to bagels, which is exciting for me, so yeah, this week's content is harrowing tales of child abuse and bagels.That's just such an interesting combo. And just to be... Like, those are separate posts. They're not-Oh, yeah, it's not-They're not one in the same.Yeah, so it's like Monday is the s**t that will horrify you, and then Friday, we're riding into the weekend--is the stuff about the American right.No, Friday is the-Horrifying bagels.No, I really aim not to traumatize anyone with my sandwich posts. These are nonviolent sandwiches. It's like I need the break, psychically. Maybe readers do too. Sometimes, it's really hard to shift moods, when... Like, the current series is about corporal punishment in evangelical households, and the sort of ways it impacts people as adults. So it's really hard for me sometimes, to switch modes. I almost resent it. I'm like, "Ugh, now I have to write about bagels," but then I spend an hour researching and writing about bagels, and I feel better, and then dive back into hell.Yeah. Well, as you mentioned, you published the first of a three-part series on corporal punishment, evangelicals, and the "doctrine of obedience," as you write in the piece. I found it fascinating because I honestly didn't... I've never really thought about the history involved in all of that. I'm used to people on Twitter being like, "I don't think it's wrong to hit kids. I got hit, and I'm fine," and then you look at them, and you're like... They're not fine.No. Yeah.No, it's like, "Oh, you think you're fine. But are any of us, really?"I'm not.I'm definitely not.I'm so not fine, and I wasn't raised evangelical. I'm a Jew, and I'm a childless Jew even, so it's not... I can keep some distance from the material. Well, obviously so many people shared their pain with me for this series, lots of different facets of their pain, their stories, how they're coming to terms with it, how they're healing, and to me, not to be melodramatic, but it felt like, "Oh, this is why I became a journalist," and like, I have to hold this pain gently, and treat it well, and treat it as the sacred trust it is. I mean, I don't believe in any god, but whatever. Sometimes I think of things as holy or sacred, as just a stronger word for like really important. Feels necessary.I've been astounded at the response. I mean, I tried to... I have a tic about historical research. Like, almost every piece I've ever written has some element of history in it. I also dove a ton into primary sources for this piece, which in this case was Christian parenting guides, of which I read big swaths or the entirety of like three or four books, and then tons of people's testimony about how these doctrines affected them.And then, I looked at what's the historical context? Like, why did all these books start getting written in the '70s and updated in the '90s? I mean, corporal punishment obviously has been around forever, but like, corporal punishment as sort of a political necessity and as a theological doctrine really arose as like... and the evidence is pretty clear, in the books themselves, and also in like the historical record, that they arose as basically a backlash, both to the work of Dr. Spock, who wrote Baby and Child Care, and he was super popular, and everyone loved him, and he was also an antiwar activist in his later years, and got arrested protesting Vietnam. And he said don't hit your kids, right?It's hard to overstate how much these authors hate Dr. Spock. Like, they hate him. They think he sucks, and he's the reason everything's wrong, but anyway, you have this Dr. Spock influence telling you not to hit your kids, and then essentially what these books posit, or what they feel they're reacting to is like, a lot of the movements in the '60s were student-led. The antiwar movement, the gay rights movement was a youth-led thing in many cases, or perceived as a youth-led movement, the feminist movement was really led by young women, and the sort of curative, the corrective force is writing these books.James Dobson, of Focus on the Family fame, his first book was called Dare to Discipline, like he's like, "We're fighting against this godless heathens that tell us not to hit our kids." So basically, they're saying chaos and social disorder starts in the home, and you have to hit your kids to get them in line.I cannot wait to read the second and third piece of this, because the first one is great. It really starts to get into Dobson, and The Pearls, and all of that stuff, and the responses have been heartbreaking, that I've seen from people, where they are talking about how it affected them on a personal level, and on one hand, it's amazing that the story has resonated with that many people, and that that's clearly captured what they're feeling and what they're going through, and I mean, that's just you being a great writer, and interviewer, and researcher. I mean, beyond that, it's just so profoundly sad that there are so many people in this world who have been hurt in that sort of way. They haven't felt able to express these ideas themselves, for fear of backlash or for fear of coming off as weak. That was another thing that I saw in some of the replies here, but-Or because they were taught that it was holy, that it was ordained by God, and a lot of the people, the people who spoke to me, have left evangelicalism. There's a process, it's like a very common term, and sort of ex-evangelicals. Basically, it's just calling it deconstruction, sort of tearing down the doctrines you were raised up with and figuring out a new way forward, and I really applaud people who are doing that work. It's very difficult. It's very painful.My Substack's really new. Like, I have 3,000 subscribers. It's small. The post, as of now, it's been out for less than two days, and it's gotten 50,000 views almost. I think to me, that's just an indicator of how it resonates, how people... I mean, first of all, I think there are a lot of outsiders who are sort of horrified, and then there are a lot of people who are like, "This was my childhood. I've never heard it discussed this way. I've never connected these dots." And the heartbreaking thing is like people are so grateful, grateful, that someone cares, anyone, about what happened to them. Generations of kids, generations. Like, the people who talked to me ranged from 22 to 65. It's very much a live issue, and it's still happening, although spanking is, thankfully...I hate the term spanking, actually, because spanking, I think has a lovely place in kink, but when you're talking about it in child-rearing, you are talking about hitting kids, so I've actually sort of very consciously, in my public speech about this stuff, stopped using that term, because it feels like a euphemism to me. You're talking about hitting children with the intent of causing pain.That's exactly it. I made the mistake of not writing down any questions, because I was like, "I know you. We're going to just-"We're just going to vibe about-Yeah, and it's like, "Oh, man. This is so dark and hard," you know? But that's what I love about your writing. You wrote this amazing book, Culture Warlords.And yeah, it was about basically me f*****g immersing myself in online Nazi life for like 18 months, and it was hard. It was a hard thing to do, as a Jew, as a person, who doesn't like seeing clips of murders on my phone all the time, presented as just and right. But I guess yeah, my beat is like looking into darkness and coming back out with a report.It feels weird to be like, "You're so good at this," you know? This thing that involves hate, and darkness, and pain, but your book was my favorite book of last year, and it's one of those books that I recommend to anyone who's at all curious about what's happening in the world, because I don't think you could talk about any current event without talking about how so much of our lives is affected by the far right, and white supremacist groups, and antisemitic people, and it's really kind of scary how much all of that overlaps, you know? You have the white supremacist groups.They tend to overlap in their beliefs with a lot of the evangelical groups, which tend to overlap with a lot of the anti-LGBTQ groups, these sorts of things where there's a very powerful and strong coalition of people that, I don't know, they just make the world a worse place by what they do and what they say, not by existing. I mean, I'm all for people existing. I want to make that clear, but I think that their actions and what they do just makes things so much harder. Is there anything in going into writing that, or in just your work generally, that surprised you? Were there any ideas that you had, that you had to challenge and rethink along the process?Well, so one of the big... How do I put this? Okay. I will answer your question after, but this is something that... Culture Warlords was my first book. I had never written one before, and it has some first book syndrome, which is like I put too much of myself in it, you know? Where it at points bordered on the memoiristic in ways that I now look back on with a little bit of regret, just in the sense that it feels a bit self-indulgent sometimes, like we didn't need a chapter on my childhood.The other major regret I have is not including... I did address transphobia in these contexts. I didn't address it as much as it deserved. Like, it should have had its own chapter, and I'm working on a second book right now, called Lone Wolves Run in Packs, which is about sort of debunking the sort of Lone Wolf theorem that people radicalize in isolation, that sort of white supremacist terror arises because individuals make choices. It's much more about the communities that these kinds of extremism arise from.And I know transphobia is going to be at the center of a lot of what I write, because it is, at the moment, as Judith Butler very eloquently articulated recently in The Guardian, at the forefront and center of all of these rising fascist movements. And I mean, it is all interconnected. Like, that's what makes it sort of endlessly fascinating and sometimes a bit overwhelming, is like you don't know when to stop researching.For example, part two of this series is about basically how child corporal punishment affects romantic relationships in the future. Essentially, it's like if you grow up in an environment where you're told... where you accept pain as your due, and specifically in an environment where God is invoked constantly, your sinful nature is evoked constantly, and one of the more terrifying aspects of this whole Christian corporal punishment thing is like, there's a very strong recommendation in all of these parenting books. It's like, "After your kid gets spanked, first of all, if they cry too much from spanking, they're trying to manipulate you, so spank them again. And then also, like hold them, and tell them you love them, and explain, like whisper to them gently about obedience."It's creepy as f**k, to me, but it also is like, this is trauma bonding. Trauma bonding is a concept in psychology. It's a big way of how abusive relationships work, where basically, you're traumatized by someone. They hit you, they belittle you, whatever, and then they make up with you afterwards, and hold you, and comfort you from the trauma that they inflicted. So, these parental doctrines are essentially... And they're not unique to evangelicalism. I think the unique part here is that sort of theologically mandates in some circles and some biblical interpretations, but like it is pretty common, and the people that I see, who are defending hitting kids in my mentions, are like, "My parents always apologized after, and told me they loved me, and I turned out great," and like, "Did you? Because you're defending hitting kids to me. Like, you're pro-child assault, so I don't know how fine you turned out."But at any rate, at any rate, basically my A thesis of the second part, and this absolutely bears out in the 150 people that talked to me, many of them, and most of the people who responded to my questionnaire, which is a smaller subset, said like, "I was primed for abusive relationships. Like, I was primed. I knew how to pretend. I knew how to conceal my emotions. I was taught that I was worthless. I was taught that I deserve violence, and I could expect it from the people that loved me. Like, that was the lesson of my childhood, and of course, it went on to affect what I accepted as proper treatment in romantic contexts." And there's tons of other s**t. I mean, sorry. I'm babbling at this point, but it's like...You know, now I'm like reading a whole new set of primary sources, with Christian homeschooling materials, and these doctrines about patriarchy and submission, and like specifically it affects girls very strongly. Men are also affected, boys and men are also affected for sure, in slightly different ways. And I mean, of course it's all connected, right? If the people that I talked to did some really brave work in moving away from the ways they were raised with this kind of brutality, many people don't do that work, for many reasons, and go on to reproduce it in their lives.Like, it's really, really hard to say, like, "My parents, who loved me and who I love, hurt me, and did wrong," or like, "I hit my kids, and I was wrong to do that." It's like really, really, really hard, to make those moral distinctions, to assess your past and present critically, and a lot of people are neither inclined nor able to do that. And with all the empathy and respect that I can muster, I think one of the roots of authoritarianism in our country, and especially among the Christian right, is...And this is a nascent understanding. It's not backed with science. It's more just like what I've been researching lately. I think there is a current of tremendous violence that undergirds this culture. It's like, because hierarchies of sex, of gender, of spouses and children as property, you know, are at the core of this doctrine, and enforced by often brutal, often daily physical violence. So it's a self-reproducing ideology in that sense.Right. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's a great point. You know, one other thing I wanted to kind of touch on here, not to change gears too sharply, but one thing that I think that both... Because we both worked at Media Matters for a little bit, and one of the things there is just sort of examining the right-wing media ecosystem, which exists on big and small scales. You have Fox News, which is large, but you also have weird little networks of right-wing bloggers, that coordinate very closely, and that's not something you see on the left as much, or at all. That's why there's this ability of people on the right to really get people who oppose them to be quiet, to shut up, to go away, to not bother them because it becomes not worth it.And I know that there have been times where I've seen something, and I'm like, "I want to write about this," and then I have to think, is it worth it? And when you wrote your book, that was after you had already not only been targeted by randos online, but you had ICE giving you s**t. You had DHS upset, because you tweeted about an ICE agent's tattoo, which you were not the first person to tweet that, and you were really one of the few people who actually said, "Oh no, I mistook that tattoo. I am sorry. My mistake."But it was clear that there was this idea that you were influential in a certain sense, and they wanted to just make your life kind of hell. What was that like, and how does that affect what you write about and how you write about it? I mean, in the sense that there has to be sort of this fear that every time you go into writing these stories that you're going to get targeted. And I know that it can take a major toll on you, and I think that... I don't know. Just any time I see something like that happen, it just breaks my heart, because you do such great work, and yet you've had the federal government giving you a hard time, and trying to push you out of your job.Yeah. I mean, it sucked. That was back in 2018. But it recurs daily, in this very warped way. I got Ken Klippenstein in The Nation, to kind of tell my story through... We sued ICE under FOIA to be like, "What do you actually have?" And they didn't have my tweet, because I had deleted my f*****g tweet, which by the way, didn't say, "This guy's a Nazi." It was just a picture of the tattoo that ICE had tweeted out, without the guy's name, and it looked like an Iron Cross, and then like a picture of an Iron Cross. It was sort of like a question mark. Whatever. It was a late-night thing. I'd seen it tossed around in different circles already online.And I deleted it after 15 minutes. I was like, "I made a mistake," you know? People pointed out it might be a Maltese Cross. And the next morning, ICE issued a press release, blaming me. We FOIA'd their emails, and they were like, "Ah, we don't have her original tweet." No one had it. Like, given all the people that picked over every aspect of my life, you think someone would have screenshotted that original tweet if it truly virally influenced a trend. It didn't. It straight up didn't. That's not factual. But at the time, I mean, I was very young. I mean, not very young. I was younger, and naïve.You're like, "It was three years ago."I've aged 40 million years in the interim because that was my first... I had written a bit about the right. I'd started writing about it. I wrote my first piece about the far right in 2017, so I was pretty new in that realm. I'd had a couple of Daily Stormer pieces about me or whatever, but... It sucks, it hurts, it's weird, but when you are public, you kind of expect it. I was public on a much smaller scale than I am now, and I was employed. I was a fact-checker at The New Yorker.Oh, god. It was just like we were getting so much... The fact-checking department was getting hate mail, and at the time, right? I was very earnest. I loved my job. I loved my coworkers. It's still the best job I've ever had, probably ever will, because it was fascinating. I was learning something new every week. Like, I got to do research all the time, and it was great. Great. I called fascinating people constantly. But like, I really was like, this is... I was very like, this is impacting poorly on the company. This is impacting poorly on my peers. Like, I must sacrifice myself, because I just don't belong here anymore.And of course, like I was getting so much hate mail, and segments on Fox about it, because ICE painted a giant target on my back over a lie, because I was a convenient target. I mean, it's like The New Yorker. She's a Harvard graduate. She's Jewish. She's fat. She's the media. Whatever. Like, I was a very convenient culture war proxy. It was also at a time of very intense outrage at the whole babies in cages thing, so it's like let's throw some meat to the lions or whatever, and the meat was me.I mean, so it's like, I was so naïve, and so traumatized frankly, that I was... It was an awful week. Like, I self-harmed for the first time in ages. Like, you know? And it still comes up constantly. Any time I say anything, someone will be like, "Didn't you accuse a veteran of being a Nazi?" I'm like, "No, I didn't." Anyway. But like then you sound all tinfoily, when you're like, "The government was lying." Like, it's hard to... And I was stupid. I was stupid to resign, and thus cement a narrative that I'd done something wrong. I have so many regrets about how I handled all that s**t, like now, now that I've been through the fire a bunch more times.I will say, though, it severed me from traditional journalism, at least staffed traditional journalism. Like, I've written in a lot of publications, from The New Republic, to Vice, and whatever. I've had freelance bylines all over, but I've basically, besides a brief stint at Media Matters, which I got laid off for pay, for like money reasons, like they were trimming down their extremism department, which seems like a weird decision in retrospect.Yeah.Like, I haven't had a staff job since, and now I'm Substacking. I appreciate the stability of Substack. I also am like, obviously there's TERF ambivalence. Like, the first Substack experience I had was like Glenn Greenwald being like, "How dare you tweet," you know? And saying like I think Substack shouldn't have these outspoken TERFs on it anymore. Which f**k Glenn Greenwald. He's just like a troll all the time. I call him “Glerb” in my head.Glerb.Anyway. Whatever. It's not so interesting. I've written about... One piece that kind of goes into my reflections, and what I'd learned from that whole shitty, depressing incident, and its various ripple effects, like Laura Ingraham calling me a terrorist and stuff. I had a conversation with Lyz Lenz, who writes the Men Yell at Me newsletter, where we talked about kind of what it feels like to get these kinds of mobbings. They are absolutely techniques to silence. They are very frequently employed by the right, because the right has a much stronger villain of the day kind of methodology. That's what they do. That's like... We've studied right wing ecologies of information, and like, essentially it's like, yeah, a villain of the day can go through so many iterations, from all of these ideologically completely uniform, like punitively distinct media brands. It's a little like the five minutes of hate thing from 1984, and when you're the subject of it, it's very... And I've talked to a lot of women particularly, and transwomen, women through queer women, just women, basically, through... I'm sorry to make that... I didn't mean to make that as a distinction. It's just more like the different loci of vulnerability.We're good.It's like been almost exclusively women, through the process of like, "How do I get my information offline? How do I deal?" I have some practical tips, mostly just sign up for DeleteMe. It's a useful service. Anyone who's a journalist, frankly I think should be signed up for it, because you'll have... Chances are, you'll have your time in the hopper, especially if you are not a conservative white man. But like, a lot of it is emotional guidance. Like, the way I describe it sometimes is like having the roof ripped off your life. Like, you feel like you're just toddling along, a relatively insignificant figure, and suddenly, you're in a national spotlight as villain of the day. It's a f*****g traumatizing experience, really. I feel like this podcast is you asking reasonable questions, and then me like just rambling.No. I mean, it's all very fascinating, because it's hard to explain to people who haven't gone through anything like this, because on a smaller scale, I've gone through this. Like, there was one time, I was at home, and I was just sitting there, and Andy Ngo posted a thing that was... It was like a photo that showed his backpack, with white dots on it, and I said that it looked like a pigeon pooped on him. I thought that was just kind of funny, and I closed Twitter, and I took a nap. Then when I woke up, I had people who were like, "Wow, you were cheering for him to be poisoned with cement milkshakes and beaten to death," and I'm like, "What the f**k?"So then I delete my tweet, and I say, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to be taken that way," et cetera, et cetera, and one thing I've learned is if you publicly acknowledge something and if you publicly apologize for it, they go, "Ha, we've got you." And that happened with... I remember there was one time, there was a trump rally, where David Weigel at The Washington Post tweeted out a photo that showed the rally kind of half empty, but he took it from a weird angle. It was an accident. He accidentally showed the rally looking small, and Trump himself, who at the time was the president of the United States, tweeted out a demand for an apology, so Dave responds by saying like, "Yeah, sure. I'm sorry. That was a mistake. Here. Here are some other photos from the event. We're good, right?"And then the response to that was Trump then said, "You should be fired," you know? It's this whole thing where if you ever acknowledge that maybe you got something wrong, that is what they just cling onto and create their narrative around.Yeah, I mean-That's why it's so frustrating.... it's “don't show the whites of your eyes” kind of vibe.Yeah.Oh, Andy Ngo is such a putrid f**k. I really hate him. I called him a... I think I called him a fascism-adjacent dipshit in my book, like down on paper. I wish it was in the index as like, "Ngo Andy, fascism-adjacent dipshittery of,"See also.Like, yeah. Right? He sucks, and he's so deeply transphobic and racist. Like, all of his... It's interesting. Like, he's a very big purveyor of the five minutes of hate format, and he always highlights gender-nonconforming protestors. He highlights black protestors. It's very calculated. It is very... obviously comes from very deep-seated bigotry on his part, and to me, that is just factual. It's the way he works, and he knows who his audience is, and he is who he is. We met once, because I was covering this conference. It was like him and-Oh, I remember that.It was in the book, yeah. It was like him and Tim Pool, like organized this conference to prove how tolerant they were, and I wound up being chased out.Yep.Which to me was pretty... And then they were like, "You were chased out? You just walked away, while being followed by people." And like, okay.Well, and also you were live-tweeting it at the time, so it was very clear what was happening, you know? It's like anyone who was reading your tweets saw that you were... they were... There were people there who were treating you horribly, and then you-Well, Ngo said I look like a pigeon, and that I'd waddled away, which like, pigeons are very noble birds. They can eat garbage without any adverse effects, and they successfully hide their young offspring such as I've never seen a baby pigeon. So, I admire the pigeon as an urban bird, and I don't find it offensive. And you know what? But whether I waddled, or sauntered, or whatever, people were screaming at me, and I would describe that as being chased... It's so surreal. You wind up in... I think I opened the chapter on that rally by just being like, "I'm sitting at home, arguing about whether I was chased or not." Like, you wind up in these obscene, stupid semantic scenarios, and they were like, "We're going to get security footage from the casino." It was held at a casino, "Like to prove that you weren't chased." And they never produced the security footage. They found like one security chief guy who was like, "No one was chased, probably." Because of course he would say that, right?Yeah. They're not going to be like, "Yeah, someone was chased, and we just kind of sat back and were like, huh."Like, "Yeah, people routinely get ideologically run out of our casino." Like, you know? And they're so enamored of gotchas. They also love choosing the most unflattering pictures of me online. I think also when you're a woman, and like, so they inherently see you in this sexualized way, the sheer amount of fucked up s**t that's happened with my photos... Someone posed as me on 4chan, and it was like, "I'm Talia Lavin, a journalist, and here's a bikini photo of me to prove it," and three separate times. I had posted one bikini photo in the history of time on the internet, and like, it's just weird s**t, like saying, "You look like a neanderthal," or weird Photoshops. You know what I'm talking about.Oh, absolutely.Like, it's very sexualized, and it's also this mix of like, "You're disgusting, and I'm going to sexually demean you, and..." Like, I will say, that's one of the things that I know has left some residual psychic s**t. Like, I've had periods of my life where I look in the mirror, and I'm like, "Am I the monster they think I am?" You know? And it really depends. It's like, if I'm having a good day, mentally, it all just slides off my back. If I'm having a bad day, it can sink in. And this, "Don't feed the trolls" s**t, like they're not going to go away.No.If you feed them or not.Yeah.Like, you know? It's not... You can't blame people who are targeted for how they react.Right. Yeah, and that's the thing. It's like, I still don't know what the right way to respond to-There isn't like-... harassment is, because there's not, yeah. It's just a bad situation, and it's... I mean, that's part of the reason... I don't know. I felt there came a time where I couldn't just mentally commit to having a full-time job, if that makes sense. I mean, I kind of got to this point where my mental health had just deteriorated from a lot of the same stuff that you were just kind of talking about, where-Also Media Matters specifically is like, look at horrifying and traumatic s**t all f*****g day.Yeah. It's like, I love the-Write it up in these little bulletins that no one reads. Like, I mean, it's great, and they do great work, but like-Great work, but-... it is a tough organization to work in.Yeah. I mean, and I feel like it's only gotten harder over the years, because it used to be like, "Hey, look, Bill O'Reilly said something that wasn't true." And now it's like, "Oh, Tucker Carlson invited the grand wizard of the KKK to..." You know, and you're just like, "How did we get here?" And especially the people there who have to do so much of the research on 4chan and all the online stuff. That is-Well, I mean, that was my job.Yeah, that was you.Every time I talked to... Every time someone would say to me like, "Oh wow, I can't believe that you have to do..." I'm like, "At least I don't have to watch NRATV every day. I don't have to go through 4chan." I mean, people would point out to me whenever something I tweeted would end up being screen-capped and posted to 4chan, which was sometimes helpful, and sometimes I was like, "I don't need to know this," you know? And it's just-It's like, "Just FYI, they're posting pictures of you on 4chan."It's like, "Oh, cool, cool, cool." But yeah, I mean, it's tough, and it takes a toll on you that I don't... I don't know. And it's hard to just go, "Well, it's only a few people. It's only 10 people or 100 people out of millions out there," you know? Or something like that. But I mean, if 100 people are tweeting about you nonstop, or messaging you, or trying to start a harassment campaign, it feels like it's the whole world. It really does, and it eats away at... It was eating away at my ability to stay focused on work, and doing what I wanted to do, so I mean, that is personally why I was like...You know, it's like I had a lot of reservations when it came to making a jump to trying to do a newsletter, and especially with Substack, but ultimately, I was like, I think this is the better option for me personally, because it provided a certain level of stability, a certain level of just me being able to write a bunch of things in advance, and if for two days, I can't work or can't function, essentially, then I'm okay, you know? That's kind of one of the plus-sides there.Yeah, I mean, freelancing is super “publish or perish.” It's like, if I don't write, I don't get paid, and sometimes it's hard. I mean, yeah. I mean, that resonates so much, and I think like, I mean, people have asked me, or concerned family members have been like, "Why don't you write a cookbook? Like, why don't you do something different?" I'm like, "Yeah, no I will." Like, my third book is definitely going to be like a food-focused memoir. That's the plan. But I have... And when I'm talking about my current work, I'm...Oh. Oh, now I remember what I was going to say, about why it feels so powerful when even a relatively small number of people are coming after you. My therapist, not to be like, "My therapist," but my therapist, who I started seeing just before the whole ICE thing, and he's lovely, and we've been in this therapeutic relationship for years, he's like, "It's evolutionary." There's a reason why we selectively remember bad things, selectively prize, or sort of focus and obsess on bad voices about us. It's because there is an evolutionary mandate to be aware of criticism, so you don't get kicked out of the tribe and lose your security and your food. Like, there is an evolutionary mandate to keep an eye on criticism, and it's a self-preservation mechanic in its way.It only becomes maladaptive in this completely unprecedented context, of like within a minute, a million people can see your stupid thing. Like, Twitter I think in particular, is very the sort of, "I'm talking to my sphere, and then suddenly it gets catapulted into a much larger one." Like, that's a unique feature of the platform. It's part of what makes it fun, is being able to see voices that you never would have heard, and people from all over the world, and all that stuff, but it can entail this relatively traumatic leap from like, "I'm just talking to my buddies," to like, "Now everyone's criticizing me for something," and sometimes, it's from people who are leftier than me, and sometimes that can be more painful, because I'm like, "I probably agree with you. I just wish you weren't being such a dick about it."Yeah.Or, "Am I wrong? Should I retire and become a Benedictine monk?" And then it's from the right, and to be honest, that's less painful for me most of the time, because I'm just like, "Ah, I'm used to genocidal f*****s being horrible, because I'm anti-genocide."Whoa, bold position, anti-genocide.I mean, like I don't... Yeah, and like, I... Ugh, whatever. So, context collapse is a major thing, but also, there is an evolutionary... Not that I'm so into evolutionary biology, because I think it's a lot of b******t sometimes, but there is a survival value in looking at critique. It's just the level, and ubiquity, and immediacy of that critique. Like, these are not your tribe. They're not going to imperil your food, but you're still wired to be like... You know?Yeah.To keep it in mind, because they also might kill you, or whatever.Yeah. I mean, it is good to... There is that line, of is it good to be aware of criticism or not? There are obviously things, you know, threats to your life, and those are important to know, and to be aware of, because you don't want to be harmed by someone, you know?Or your family.Yeah, or that is another one. I mean, I've had situations where it's been... I've gotten messages from people who were talking about my family, and where they live, and stuff like that. It's like, "What is wrong with you? Why would you do this? Because you disagree with something I wrote online? Because you disagree with me?" Those sorts of things, it's... A lot of it's-It's very... Yeah.Yeah, it's a product of this time of hyper-connectedness that we live in, you know? And the way we communicate, which is kind of... I mean, that's kind of the angle that I'm trying to think about a lot of things. I mean, that's kind of the premise of my newsletter, is just-The present age.Yeah, it's like here we are, and everything is insane, and I don't know what to do, you know? But we're trying to get through it. I mean, with the pandemic especially, so much of our communication has shifted to the internet, that might not have been before, but I mean, in my case, and maybe yours, it's like, yeah, it was already on the internet, but you know? It's like, I was already spending way too much time on social media before the pandemic, before it was cool.It's like, I'm a weird recluse.Yeah, exactly.Like, half my friends are online. Like, yeah.Yeah.I mean, I think it just helps me to reframe. I think a lot of people who are in this experience, especially in the first time or first several times, are like, you know, "Am I weak for feeling bad?" I'm like, "No." It's human nature, you know? You're not weak. Like, please don't beat yourself up about having feelings about people saying terrible things about you. Like, you know? That's part of my like Talia's pep talk for traumatized victims of the right-wing hate complex thing. You know, and there's also the like, "Am I wrong for seeking it out?" I'm like, you know, it can be a discipline thing, to try to not seek it out all the time. Well, yeah, it's also human nature. Forgive yourself for that, for wanting to know. That is also a very natural impulse.In my case, I mean, stuff does happen that I need to be aware of. You know, when literally the organizer of Unite the Right, Jason Kessler, posted my mom's office address on a Nazi blog. S**t like that, like I need to know. I need to warn, and I feel so f*****g guilty that my family has to suffer for my choice to traumatize myself every day. I mean, it is interesting. I do feel like the evangelical series that I'm working on now is like... is interconnected with a lot of this stuff, in ways that are maybe less explicit, maybe less overt, but I think it is interconnected. I also think these are just stories of pain that deserve honor and telling, and careful telling.But I do think it's interconnected. I also think like, you know? In my experience, if you deep dive and learn a lot about one thing, you see the way it shows up in lots of other places. I've rarely regretted learning a lot about a subject in my time. Like, could I be focusing on the Charlottesville trial? Could I be focusing on militias? Could I be focusing on what are the Oath Keepers up to lately? Like, could I be focusing on the antivax white nationalist nexus? Of course. There's so many topics. There's like-Yeah, there's no shortage.Yeah, I had to explain to someone, when I'm talking about like I study the far right, there's a massive range of topics, covering tens of millions of people. It's not like, "How could you have such a narrow beat?" It's not narrow.No.And it almost mirrors in that sense, like my experience of academics. I was very serious as a student, and I didn't do a PhD. I thought about it, but it was like I was studying one poet, and all their works, and how they came to translate things the way they did, and the deeper you dive into one topic, the more of a world it encompasses. Like, you learn one thing, and you learn the history of it, and something else, and something else, and something else, so I rarely regret my sort of history-based and deep dive model of things.It's sometimes very intensive. It requires a lot. I think I've bought, for this project, I have bought eight or nine books already, including some that are only available on paperback, so I'm going to get a copy of God, The Rod, and Your Child's Bod in the mail, which I then... Once I read it and use it, I plan to publicly burn it.Yeah. I mean, that's going to... I feel like buying that is something that ends up getting you on a watchlist or something.You'd think, but you know what? Like, corporal punishment is legal in public schools in 19 states.Yeah. I mean-It's legal in private schools in 48 states. My home state of New Jersey is one of the two that's banned it in private schools.There you go. See? “New Jersey. We've banned something.”Jersey pride.Yeah.Jersey pride. And I feel conflict when I'm talking about should it be... Like, many countries have outright banned corporal punishment, of any kind, even by parents. You know, even by parents, whatever, including by parents. Sweden was the first, in 1979, and like, is that what I'm advocating for in the US? If we had a less s**t justice system, and a less racist justice system, and whatever, it's such a punitive and carceral society, maybe. That's not what I'm advocating for when I'm just saying like, "Don't hit your kids" on social media a lot lately. I do think it's a very reasonable demand to say like, ban it in schools. Like, because people get paddled in schools every day, and it's disproportionately black students that get paddled.And that's-By paddled, I mean struck with a board to cause pain.Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, that's another issue in itself, is that you know, with any policy, with any sort of action, it's the enforcement of said action or policy tends to affect marginalized groups more than everyone else basically, but I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. You are one of the smartest people I know, one of the best writers I know, and I cannot recommend enough that people subscribe to The Sword and the Sandwich for both sword and sandwich posts, because-Yeah.... you will learn something in both.Yeah, I'm like looking at all this stuff about the history of the bagel right now. I found this New York Times article from 1960, that called bagels... What was it? "An unsweetened donut with rigor mortis."Like, okay, first of all, it's so good. I'm unabashedly pro bagel in my life, so-I don't trust anyone who's not pro bagel, to be honest, so-Yeah, so there is the sandwich part. The sword part is, you know, rougher, but they're both valuable in their own way, and thank you so much for having me on.Of course. Any time.Yeah. And I enjoyed this kind of loose, wide-ranging conversation.Yeah, it was great! It was so much fun. I really appreciate it. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Parker Molloy: Joining me this week is Pete Croatto. Hey Pete.Pete Croatto: Hey Parker. How are you?I'm doing okay. I'm hanging in there. I'm surviving. It's becoming fall. It's getting cold outside. I love it.Me too.It's rainy right now. It's fine.Matches my mood. I love it.So you wrote a book about the NBA and how it became so entwined with pop culture. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and your book?Certainly. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'd consider myself to be a sports writer. I mean, I've written about sports for years and for Slam and the old good Deadspin and Grantland and various outlets. But I've always been driven kind of by my curiosity about certain topics and yeah, and that's kind of kept me afloat, but I've never really been a beat reporter or a sports reporter. And I'm pursued by my curiosity more than anything.So about eight years ago... Wow, it seems like a long time ago, I wrote a piece for Grantland on Marvin Gaye's National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. And that piece was about... I interviewed 25 people and it was 2,500 words and it was a piece I'm very proud of and it's still on the Grantland site. But in writing and reporting that story, there were just a lot of unanswered questions. And the one thing that I kept going back to was how did the NBA get to a moment where Marvin Gaye went from being this scandalous choice, who does this rendition of a national Anthem that is soulful and R&B flavored and really is unlike anything anyone has ever heard before, where that becomes normal, where that becomes like where someone like Fergie singing the National Anthem is normal or...How did the NBA become the cool sport? That whole point in the market transition between the old stodgy NBA and the NBA that we see today. And I couldn't really explore that in a 2,500-word piece. And I kind of became convinced that this was a book. So through several years later and a lot of false starts and a lot of questionable decisions on my end, I wrote this book. But yeah, never really been a sports writer. I've been a freelance writer for 15 years now. I started off in newspapers and just by happenstance and good fortune, I got into sports writing.Well, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, I really liked your book because it- It really took this... Which, up until I've moved a few months back I had it next to my desk, but now I don't. It's a good book it's called From... I don't want to get it backwards. From Hang Time to Prime Time, right?There you go. Yeah.Yes. From Prime Time to Hang Time, to whatever time to... Yeah.The orange book. That's what I call it.It’s the orange book with the TV head and the dunking. I'll be sure on the transcript of this to include a photo of the book cover so people will know what the hell I'm talking about. But yeah. The book is filled with a ton of really interesting stories and it's something that I kind of thought about, but haven't necessarily put in much research trying to look some of the stuff up. Because I mean, I remember it was just... I mean, it seems like it was just a few years ago, but it's possible it was longer, where players would be fined for not wearing the proper attire to the pre-game stuff. It was very uptight and fairly recently, and now it seems like it's gotten to this point where the players have really taken it upon themselves to express themselves and to kind of ease out of that sort of era. What do you attribute to that?That's a good question. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that if you look at the NBA's demographics now, it's mostly African American. And I think as time has gone on hip hop culture has really become mainstream more so. With each year that passes by, it becomes more and more ingrained into the culture. And that's really what you see now is you see things that would've been, again, dismissed 15, 16 years ago are now just sort of... It's normal. It's the way things are. I mean, it takes a long time for things to become embraced into the culture. And I think what you're seeing now, again with the whole fashion element of the NBA becoming a very hip hop league, a league that isn't very suit and tie like the NFL. That I think that's a very much a reflection of who's in the league and also how the culture's changed.You made a good point just now with the dress code. I really think that had everything to do with David Stern being the NBA Commissioner at the time. And David Stern is a key figure in this book, but at the time of the dress code ban, I think he was in his mid sixties, early sixties. And he was at a time in his life, like a lot of people where you get older and you don't understand things. And when you don't understand your first reaction is to chastise or to ban, or to make a rule, instead of asking questions and understanding what the intentions are. To me, David Stern's failings as a commissioner kind of came to light as he got older. And he got older and the players kind of stayed the same age, they're all still men in their twenties and thirties for the most part and younger as the NBA draft became more about getting high school kids in there.Yeah. Definitely. For some reason when you said that, the first thing that popped into my head was David Stern doing Matthew McConaughey's line from Dazed and Confused. He's getting older, they stay the same.Yeah. I'm not going to even adventure to do impression of David Stern doing Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. I have so much collateral as a public person. I'm going to make sure to stop right there.Yeah. You don't want to become known as the guy trying to do David Stern as McConaughey.No, nobody wants that.But yeah, I mean, so one thing that I do is I... A few years ago I started to get into video games again. Because that's the thing, whenever the world gets crazier, I pick up a hobby that seems to be from my childhood. I was just showing you earlier. Baseball cards, that's my new one. Picking up baseball cards. So a few years back, I just kind of on a whim was like, "I'm going to buy a Nintendo Switch because that way I can play games" because I was playing a lot of games on my phone and what would happen is I'd get popups that were always terrifying. It was always like, "Hey, Trump just did this crazy thing." And it was like, "oh no, that is not relaxing. I can't relax when I'm holding this thing that constantly tells me what's happening in the world."I bought a Switch. And then from the Switch, I ended up getting a PlayStation. And once I had the PlayStation, I started buying all the sports games as they came in. Madden and MLB: The Show and NBA 2K, that series. And so in the latest one, latest NBA 2K game, which came out just, I don't know, like a month or two ago. It's really interesting how the cultural elements plays into the whole thing. If you do the MyCareer mode. Yeah. There's this thing where you can do certain things and get points toward becoming a music mogul. Or you can do something else and, and start your own fashion line.And it's really interesting how much non-basketball stuff plays into it. But it seems to work. I mean, a while back, I was tweeting about playing it where I'm like, "there is basketball in this game at some point." But the player that you are in the MyCareer mode, it's like a guy who made videos and he's a YouTube star and now he's basketball star. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense because it's not actually a path to the NBA that you actually seem to take, but it's a lot of fun. And I thought that it was really interesting to see how that kind of worked in. One thing I have been thinking about, which is also kind of represented in the game in the sense that there are a lot of, really not so subtle, advertisements built into that like the dude who plays Jake from State Farm.I saw that. That was crazy.He's in the game. And he shows up several times. At one point he's in your apartment. You come back from a game and he's like at your table. It's weird. It's very strange.Do you think any player in any sport wants to hang out with Jake from State FarmProbably not.I can't imagine anybody like Russell Westbrook or Aaron Rodgers actually wanting to spend their spare time with Jake from State Farm.Yeah. So he's in there, but then I thought, "Oh man, that's not really subtle," but that reminded me of how now on the uniforms for the past few seasons, there have been all these ads. What are your thoughts on the advertisements on the uniforms? I'm not a fan. And I mean, I feel like it'd be weird to be like, "yes, I love this," but how much?See, I'm not a giant fan of them, but I understand why the NBA does it. And what you mentioned before about this whole... The marketing being folded into NBA 2K, which is delightfully absent from the NBA Jam console arcade game that my family got me, that's what the NBA's always done. The NBA has always had an alliance, sometimes an uncomfortable alliance with his advertisers and it's been this way forever, starting back to. I mean, how many leagues have advertisements for their own product? The NBA action, it's fantastic. So that has been baked into the NBA for years. So the logos don't really bother me. I don't like them aesthetically, but to me, this is what the NBA's always been about.One of the guys I spoke to for the book, Joe Cohen, who founded MSG Network, he delivered the quote, which I think explains everything about the NBA and why we're able to roll with the punches as well as we do. He said that the NBA's tradition is that it has no tradition. So all these things that you see with the video games and the patches, and even the advertisements on the floor, have you noticed this, where it kind of switches over every quarter? Those things seem weird and kind of Orwellian, if I hope I'm using that term correctly, but they-Well, no one else is, so.I'm going to hop on. It all seems doomed because the NBA has always been about never staying still. I'm curious to hear your thoughts of this, because the one uniform thing that bugs me to death is the whole home and away concept, now. Teams don't seem to wear a light color for home or dark color for away, now it's reversed. And it takes me five minutes to figure out who the hell's playing who. Is this in Phoenix or LA? I don't know. That annoys me more than the patches, but the patches, it's a bit much. But the NBA is in it to make money and that's what they do year after year after year.Yeah. I mean, I was glad to hear that there was a tweet earlier, right before the season started, from the Bulls that were like "white uniforms are back at home" and it's like, "Finally. Finally."It's a relief, isn't it?Because yeah. It was weird, because, I mean, growing up in and around Chicago, the Bulls were everything to me, especially in the nineties.Oh God. Yeah.I was 14, 15 years old. And Michael Jordan doing all that stuff. It was great. It was wonderful. And yeah, I was like "the red uniform is better, but white at home." And it was just sort of tradition that kind of kept going on. In other sports they have their traditions. Football, darker colors home and white away, which I think is kind of... Really makes sense in the sense that you've got the away team all muddy and...Yeah, I love it.They look like they've taken a beating, which is kind of I think somewhat of the idea behind that. And then there've always been exceptions like the Dallas Cowboys would always wear white at home and white on the road. So almost always white. But yeah, it's been interesting to see the uniform sort of flip around like that. I mean, I'm a big fan of the interesting and kind of out there throwbacks and remixes and all of that stuff. I mean, some of them are better than others. What are your thoughts on those?And there's a lot of thought because in the few moments that I have to myself, my mind kind of goes in these weird directions and I'm of the belief that there hasn't been a great uniform in any major sport that has been created past 1985. I mean, if you look at the classic NBA uniforms and even NFL, Major League Baseball, the four major sports, I can't think of a... I am hard-pressed to think of a great uniform that came out after 1985. So I love seeing the throwbacks. I love seeing in any sport. I mean, there are some exceptions that are horrible. I remember the Eagles a few years back had that horrible blue and yellow combination. And the Steelers had one that where they looked like barber poles with black... Or bumblebees.But for the most part, I love throwbacks. And the thing too with throwbacks is that for all these leagues, it's a money maker because you can now sell like all this stuff online or at Mitchell & Ness. And everyone comes to go about that happy. But with the NBA, every time they unveil a new uniform, especially those ones that were, was it the city uniforms that came out? I just cringe. I love the classic seventies, eighties, even early nineties uniforms. And those Bulls' uniforms are a good example. They're classic.Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, that Bulls can't really change them because not much has changed about their uniforms over the years. I mean, they've had some differences, they introduced the black uniforms in the nineties. That was one. The black-Those I like.The red stripes.I liked those pinstripes. Yeah. Those are cool.Those were cool. And then they replaced those with an all-black that didn't have the pinstripes, which is fine. My favorite uniform growing up, I mean, was always the Sonics' uniform. The green with the white stripes across. It just said Sonics.Love those uniforms.Those were my favorite. And I was very disappointed when they updated those in, I think it was, '95 or '96.So you're more disappointed about the uniforms being updated. Were you more upset about the uniforms being updated or the Sonics being stolen from Seattle? Is it a toss-up?It's a little of both because it's like... I don't know. The Oklahoma City Thunder? Come on. That's...And those are terrible uniforms.Yes.I don't know. The Sonics' uniforms in the seventies are great. Those are great uniforms. The Bucks' uniforms in the seventies with sort of their kelly green with red, they're gorgeous. I don't know. I'm trying to think of a uniform from like... You know who has good uniforms now in the NBA? I think the Warriors have really good uniforms. I think they're clean. The logo pops. The color scheme is great. It's a beautiful uniform. But yeah, most uniforms now, I look at them and it just looks like, I don't know, it looks like something a middle-age dad would wear to a picnic. And not the cool middle-aged dad, but the dad who's maybe been divorced, trying to find their way, they pick up this cool tank top at, I don't know, Kohl's or another gentleman's store. And it is just not a good fit.But look, I'm very different. I'm not the market for the NBA. I'm a 44-year-old white dude. The NBA's not looking for my dollars. So I don't think Adam Silver or anybody else in Olympic Tower is going to be returning my phone calls about the uniform. So.Yeah. I have suggestions, just screaming those out there. I remember in the nineties, there were a lot of really drastic shifts in uniforms. Especially mid, late-nineties, the Rockets adopted that—Awful.Weird blue with 3D silver.Awful. It was awful. Awful.It was a mess. You had the Detroit Pistons, that was one that was a big change.Yeah. There-I didn't hate it, but it was just so different that you-It was very different.Where did this come from?And I think I remember reading somewhere, and I could be wrong about this, but I think all those designs that you saw and there are only a... And look, a few of the teams kind of stuck to the traditional ways of having their uniforms, the Lakers, the Celtics, the Knicks to a certain extent. I remember reading this and I could be wrong, but around 1996, which is when the shift started to happen, there was sort of a movement to make the logos more kid-friendly and to make it more eye-popping. So again, that meant that 85% of the teams, the logos, and the jerseys got bigger and bolder and more colorful, and they weren't as subdued as past, but the Rockets' one was awful.So the Rockets on the box was another example. The Jazz with that airbrushed mountains, which looks like the fun of an off-brand Seltzer company. It became, again, geared toward the kids. It's funny, in perusing Twitter, which is never a good idea.No.No. As you know better than anybody. Perusing Twitter, you do see a lot of older NBA fans, which I think is great, but the thing is those fans are going to stay no matter what, like "I'm going to be an NBA fan, regardless of who's wearing what." But again, the entry point, I think the uniforms and the logos and the court design stuff, those are sort of gateway drugs to get casual fans involved because like, "I'm not going anywhere." So, if the Bucks want to actually put on deer uniforms in two years and play, they can do that and get away with as long as the game doesn't fundamentally change. So yeah.Yeah, that's good. That's a great point. I mean, and really interesting. I guess I hadn't really thought about the fact that it was kind of more kid-friendly. I was just like, "it's really in your face." It was like-It really is. Yeah.It was like the Mountain Dew generation.That's a good point though. Those logos and those uniform designs, let's say from like '98 to 2004, 2005, they could go on an energy drink can.Yeah. Oh, absolutely.The colors are the same. The logo. And again, if you're a traditionalist who grew up with Dolph Schayes and two-handed set shots, that angers you because it's unfamiliar and it's ridiculous. But if you're someone who grew up in that era, in the eighties and nineties where it's like, "well, every year there's something different." Like, "it's all right." It's the same old stuff. It's the same. Change becomes consistency. When you get used to that, it's golden.Yeah. Definitely. One non-uniform thing I wanted to ask you about, which— Actually, one more point on uniforms. My favorite uniforms of all time are actually not an NBA team's uniform, but my favorite basketball uniforms of all time, it's a two-way tie both from the year 1996. You've got the Olympic uniforms, which I love them.Those are good. Those are with the cursive USA.Yeah.Those are nice.And I love the font that they use for the numbers.That's a good one.And also the 1996 All-Star uniforms, the...teal. It was when they were playing, I think it was in San Antonio. So it used to all be like-Oh, God. Yes.Be like... The... teal and the pink and the orange were the alternate colors down in this first list.See, those uniforms are so bad they're good. They go around. Those uniform... Yeah. I think Mitchell & Ness now sells them. But they look like they're playing for a Mexican food league.I guess. Kind of.But that's the appeal. But that just goes to show you too, if baseball did that, the s**t would just be nonstop about like, "you're denigrating the game," but the NBA can deck their teams out in uniforms where it looks like team Taco Bell playing against like [inaudible]. It didn't really bother anybody. It was like, "that's odd."It was fun, it was different.But then we went about our business. And that's kind of the whole NBA right there. Again there's going to be stuff, but if you get to see Michael Jordan play who cares? And I'm sure that— that was the Jordan All-Star Game '96. So yeah, I'm sure. So you weren't caring about what he was wearing, right? It was just, he's Michael Jordan, that's all that matters.Exactly. And yeah.I have to ask you, do you have either one of those jerseys?I have the USA one. It's a Shaquille O'Neal jersey — number 13.Right. He was 13. Okay.Yeah. Two years ago, actually, I went back to my parents' place to kind of just rummage through their basement for a little bit. And one of the things I did was I was picking on all the old NBA jerseys, those old Champion jerseys and-I love those jerseys.Yeah. Those are always great. The one thing that always bothered me was that they would never be accurate, the Sonics' jersey didn't have the white stripe across the front. It just said Sonics. And it's like, "What is going on? Why don't you look good? How are you?" It made me want to shell out the money to get the actual replica jerseys. But then again, I was like 10 years old, so I didn't have any money at the time.So you didn't have $300 to put down on a Kendall Gill Sonics Jersey. You didn't have—Exactly. It was Shawn Kemp that was that- That was the one who was close to my heart. His dunks were amazing.The embarrassing jerseys that I have. Every once in a while, I'd go to outlet malls and I would just sort of buy whatever was around when I was a kid. The one Jersey that I have that I think is probably... I wish I had kept it because I think it was just so... Again, it was like the All-Star Game jersey for 96, so bad it was good. I actually spent like 20 bucks and I got a Sean Bradley, 76ers jersey with the 76 on the back. And I wore it playing pickup. And I was terrible. When you're playing pickup, you should never wear jerseys, I just think you always look like a chump.So that went right back into the drawer. I wish I had kept that though because that's one of those classic hipster jerseys. And I had a Tim Hardaway Jersey that I got rid of. Yeah. I had a few of them, but Sean Bradley is probably my prize in terms of get a load of this.Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Always fun to kind of keep up with the jerseys. But yeah. So anyway, so the one thing I wanted to ask you about was that, in the course of your reporting because... How many people did you interview for this book?Oh man. 350 for the original interview. And then you throw in the ones from previous reporting, it probably adds up to about 350, 360 total.So who was the most interesting interview you had and what was something that, before you started writing the book, you didn't know, that you learned and surprised you, that you found interesting in the course of reporting it out?I'll answer the second question first if you don't mind because it's always easy to come with that answer. I mean, I feel like I learned something every day. That was the joy of writing this book. And also the joy of just reporting anything is you get paid to learn and you get paid to, expand your horizons and get some perspective. So, I mean, every day I would go to my wife and be like, "Hey, you're not going to believe this. David Stern actually toured MLB studios to kind of get ideas for NBA entertainment." And after a while, my wife tuned me out and got back to reading her book.I feel like every day I was learning something. And every day there was another nugget I wanted to include, another nugget I felt I had to get in. But the thing that I think really stuck out in the reporting was just how important Larry O'Brien, the original commissioner was to the NBA's ascension. And that's for two reasons. The first reason was that at the time Larry O'Brien was a major political player. He was a two-time head of the Democratic National Committee. He was a member of JFK's inner circle. He was LBJs Postmaster General. So when the NBA hired him in '75, it was almost like a step down for him. I mean, now, if you're the commissioner, that's the summit. That is a career highlight. But for Larry O'Brien, it was a step down.But with Larry O'Brien, his hiring gave the NBA instant credibility, which is what it needed. The other thing too with Larry O'Brien was that he hired David Stern to work full-time. And he basically had David Stern be his right hand man saying, "Hey, look, I don't want..." Basically, Larry O'Brien was more of a figurehead. He was somebody who was just sort of there to keep things moving along. But David stern did all the dirty work. So by Larry O'Brien getting David stern out there to work with the GMs, talk to the labor people, talk to the owners, by time Larry O'Brien retires in 1984, David stern has a five year head start on the job. And on top of that he not only has that, but he has free rein to do whatever he wants. It was just a perfect setup, kind of like in baseball where the setup man leaves right into the... Is closer. That's really what it was with O'Brien and Stern.In terms of the most interesting person I spoke to. That's the thing, there weren't a lot of duds. It's funny, when you talk to them, many people think, "Oh, well, this guy's an a*****e or this person, does he have anything interesting to say?" But really, 95% of the people I spoke to were just great and they had amazing revelations. But the person who I thought was most interesting was a guy by the name Mark [inaudible 00:29:53], who was a former Nike executive, because to me, he had insights into Nike's dealings with the NBA and how they kind of brought Michael Jordan to the forefront and how they turned him into this sort of commercial property that I didn't know. I mean, I thought were just invaluable.But yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's so hard for me to say, "Well, this person was by far the best person or the most interesting person," because when you talk to all these people who spent years, either working for the NBA or working for the NBA. And a lot of these people were in their thirties or twenties, a formative time in their lives. They're going to have interesting stories. They're going to have amazing memories. So really talking to just about anybody for this book was just a treat. And it was an honor to have them share a part of their lives with me, because it was a big part of their lives. It was a part that they were proud of, for the most part.Yeah, definitely. That's really interesting. And yeah, I mean, your book is filled with so many really interesting stories. And I really recommend it. If anyone who cares about basketball or sports generally, or even just culture, how we live our lives, it's a good book to pick up.And I definitely recommend that people check it out. I will, of course, include links to it and all of that in the transcript of this on my website. But yeah. The last thing I wanted to ask you was just, if you had to try to convince someone to check out pro basketball, to watch the NBA today, is there one story from the past that you think would be like a good bridge into the present?Oh man, that's a great question. To me, I think the social history of America can be told through the NBA because to me, that is... Look, if you start off with Bill Russell and his social justice moves in the 1960s, it moves on to the seventies, which becomes a more marketing-driven, more image-conscious time. Then it feeds into the rise of television, the rise of cable TV, and then with the 1990s you have the shoe industry becoming this colossal cultural force, which the NBA tied into, the same with hip hop. There are so many storylines and so much history that is imbued into NBA's history. To me, it's one and the same.I mean, we always talk about how you can fall. Who is it that said, I think, was it... Kind of forget who said it, but someone once wrote or said that to understand the history of America, you should follow baseball. I really think with modern American history, follow the NBA, because you see everything, not only in terms of just cultural history, but also in terms of African American history. And in terms of just the change in the athlete becoming an activist. I mean, that is a huge part of the NBA's history, is in the sixties, seventies, and today with LeBron James and other athletes kind of stepping up to the forefront. So to me I wrote this book in the hopes that someone who hates sports, who doesn't know, who can't tell Michael Jordan from Barbara Jordan could read the book and gain an* understanding as to the NBA's place in the modern American culture.And I think that's the beauty about sports is that sports really aren't about sports. So anybody who says, "well, the players should shut up and dribble." They're not getting it. They're not understanding the players as people and that this is a league. Every sport's about people. People shape the narrative, and this is what we're watching right now. We're watching people stand up and speak out, which was something that's always been part of, I think, the narrative in American sports.Great. That's an excellent point. We'll have to leave it there. Pete, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about this. I really appreciate your insights on this issue and so much more. Is there anything other than the book that you want to plug?I don't know. I mean the book, yes. I mean, if you can... Oh, well actually, yes, you can buy my book at any major retailer. But also my brother, Dave has written a wonderful children's book called Batbot!, Which is from Golden Books. And it's out now. My soon-to-be five-year-old daughter had me and my wife read the book to her repeatedly for about two weeks. So it's really good. So if you're a Batman completist or you have a little one who loves Batman, please buy my brother, Dave Croatto's book, it's called Batbot! And can get it at any major online or brick-and-mortar retailer. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

On this week’s edition of The Present Age podcast, I chat with writer Thor Benson about some of his recent work covering mental health and the pandemic.Parker Molloy: Hey, joining me is the Thor Benson. Hello.Thor Benson: Hi. Thanks for having me.Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to join the podcast. I am very interested in some of the things you've been writing over at... I read the two pieces you wrote for NBC. Can you tell me a little bit about those and how they work into your larger work basically? Also, let people know who you are.For sure.I'm an independent journalist. I've been doing this for about a decade now. Started as a freelancer, have been a freelancer most of the time, but I've had staff jobs here and there. I've written for Daily Atlantic, Rolling Stone, NBC, Business Insider, all kinds of people. And during most of the time I've been writing, psychology has been a pretty big focus of mine, all kinds of science writing and tech writing, and neuroscience also interests me. And when the pandemic started, I was very worried about how it was going to affect people mentally in terms of being quarantined, and isolation is not good for people. It was necessary, of course, because it was God damn pandemic happening.So I was thinking about that a lot and I started researching it and talking to experts and writing about it here and there and then I connected with an editor at NBC at some point, and we were talking about different ideas or what articles we could do together. And I was like, "I've been really wanting to write this big all-encompassing article about the psychological effects of the pandemic, and I feel like we've been in it long enough now that we can have some observations." So I reached out to a ton of psychologists and finally found some that actually had data and stuff to share about how people are dealing with things, and it's really interesting. And then we parlayed that one into another one about people were being crazy on airplanes, they're still doing it, because of mask rules and I think just from being cooped up with each other and being stressed. And so I did an article about that too.Well. That's cool. So what kind of stuff did you find when you were talking to these people? Was there anything that surprised you or was it what you expected?I would say the effects of it were expected, that people would have anxiety and depression and maybe even PTSD from these experiences. What was shocking was how confident everyone I talked to was about if these effects would be long-term and they all seem to think for a lot of people there are going to be long-term effects that won't go away when things go back to, quote-unquote, normal.Well, that's something that when we were first chatting about this, about doing the podcast, you sent over your articles and I thought this is perfect because my mental health has been absolute s**t since the pandemic started. It wasn't great before the pandemic, but that's a different story for a different day. I don't know, there's something about just the whole world having similar issues that make me feel slightly better, but also really worse. It's that weird oh, I'm not alone. Oh no, the whole world is falling apart, that sort of attitude.Part of the reason I was inspired to write about this and why care about these things is because I've dealt with anxiety and depression in my life, so I get it. And so I wanted to hear what other people have to say about it and what you can maybe do about it. I don't know.So what can people do about it? Is there anything to keep themselves from stressing out too much?I could give my personal advice based on what I know of psychology. I think it's good to make sure you're not isolating. Don't constantly be ingesting the news and just try to have some perspective. I feel like things are better now than they were the worst of the pandemic. At least I'm vaccinated now, I can see people and not be so worried.I don't know about you, but I'm still terrified of catching COVID.Yeah, I definitely don't want to.I don't know. I see people post online, Twitter, being like, "Oh, got a breakthrough infection, this sucks." And then there'll be like, "Well, I was really sick for three days, but I didn't go to the hospital." Great. That's good. But also I'm going to do whatever I can to not get sick for three days, just generally speaking. In normal times I'm not going around licking doorknobs or whatever, just being like, "Well, what's the worst I'm going to catch? The flu? Meningitis?" That would be bad, but that sort of idea. And I understand that I'm lucky in a sense that I live with my wife and my dog and my cat, I have not been alone as so many people have been.And I even begin to imagine how frustrating and bad for my mental health it would be if I were alone. And it's something that I'm trying to understand, trying to understand how we communicate in times where we're apart. And that's one of the general ideas of the newsletter that I'm doing, the podcast, that sort of thing, how we communicate in times of hyper-connectedness where we're not in the same room, we're not in the same city, that sort of thing. And so can you tell me a little bit about what's happening on airplanes?So I've often been called overly empathetic. When I see people acting this way I'm like these are douchebags, but I feel bad for them because obviously, something's not going right with them. And so I was like, "I'm not going to excuse any behavior, it's wrong to be aggressive on airplanes, but I'd like to figure out if there's maybe a reason they're behaving this way."Reminder: The Present Age is a reader-supported newsletter. If you enjoy this or other posts, please consider becoming either a free or paid subscriber:And so I found these two psychologists who had done a lot of research into how the psychological effects the pandemic were playing out in people's behavior and they said that, "Yeah, essentially when the pandemic started, it was really stressful and we didn't know what's going to happen and then it just kept going, and so we just had this acute stress response all the time, chronic stress. And so you're always on alert. You're always a little stressed out, even if you don't notice it. And when that builds up over time, people just start lashing out, especially when things like masks have been so politicized and everyone's it's us versus them. It's not surprising that people, when they're asked to put on a mask or something, if they have these views would get really aggressive maybe in ways that they wouldn't otherwise through a pandemic."And I understand that to a certain extent. I don't think anyone likes wearing a mask. Some people might not mind it. Personally, I don't mind wearing a mask because I've always worried about how my face looks when I'm in public.Try having a beard. It looks so weird with the beard.I like wearing sunglasses too, because I like people not being able to see my eyes. It's very strange, but the combo is perfect. It's basically being totally in disguise. I was thinking back to a few years back, I remember there were some cities responding to protests about... I can't remember what the topic was. I think it might've been Confederate statues possibly. I don't know. It sounds like a thing people protest, but there were some cities around the country they were implementing these rules that banned people from wearing masks for a while, which is funny in hindsight where it's now we're like, "No, no, no, please wear a mask. Please cover your face, please don't let us see who you are." But that's interesting.And one thing I've also been thinking a lot about when it comes to the pandemic and how we're adapting to all sorts of things, even just on my end, we got a puppy in January 2020, and so it wasn't the plan for us to be constantly around. And now he has these extreme separation anxiety issues where we have to make a point of leaving to try to condition him to be okay with that sort of stuff. And I can't even imagine how that affects people with children or people with their extended family members who need in-person care, that sort of thing. Is there anything that you've been reading about or anything that came up about those sorts of worries or is that beyond—Well, no, there's definitely been some research into it. I haven't read a time, but as far as I can tell this whole situation has been very traumatic for parents and children. Parents because they're trying to take care of their kid and that's already stressful enough and then you add the pandemic stressors, worried about the kid getting sick and are you getting sick and not being able to take care of the kid. And then for the kids, if they're quite young they don't know why they're putting this thing on their face and they don't really understand something as large in scope as a pandemic and maybe they weren't able to go to school and see their friends. So it's been really tough.I'm sure. And that brings me a little bit to the other piece you sent me, the one for the new station that was about climate anxiety and declining birth rates. Can you tell me a little bit about that piece?So I want to say, as I do in the piece, right away that I think the biggest factor in the declining birth rates is economics. It's really expensive and income inequality is bad, but there's also, I believe, some psychological components there. We just have a really uncertain future we're facing, and especially when you're going through a pandemic you think about climate change and you're like, "Things are only going to get worse from here," and that make you less likely to have children or maybe have fewer children. Research seems to show that people are okay with the idea of replacing themselves, but they don't want to go beyond that, so maybe they'll have two kids and a lot of people seem to be worried about if by having kids there'll be contributing to climate change because kids use up resources like we all do.I don't know. I think the one thing that came out of the pandemic for me is just the fact that I think... Let me see, how do I phrase this? I think the one thing that really hit home when it came to the pandemic, that really stuck with me, is just those existential questions of humanity living... Because for a while, for a long time, I didn't really think about that much and I didn't think anything. I thought oh, a thousand years from now there'll be people doing whatever, but now I'm honestly like, "I don't know, maybe we got 100, 200 years left tops."These sorts of things that obviously will not personally affect me in the sense that going extinct, but there is that aspect of it where my mind has been blown by these sorts of existential threats to humanity that stick around. And I don't know, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is just the fact that at some point in the future, no matter how famous a person is, there will come a time where no one remembers that person. Whether it's 500 years, 1,000 years from now, and it's just weird and I blame the pandemic for sending me down a philosophical rabbit hole that has ended up there.Well, I think one of the things that pandemic did to people's minds, and I feel this all the time, is it makes us think about such big things. And it's hard to think about big things all the time. Throughout the day I'm like, "Oh, how our infection rates in France? I'm never looking up health stats in France or Japan or something pre-pandemic, unless I'm working on an article like that. But you constantly have to think globally, and same with climate change, it's we're all screwed kind of feeling. I think your best mentally when you're very focused on just what's around you, I'm walking down the street, I'm going to meet up with my buddy, grab a sandwich on the way. That's very simple and easy to think of, not like the end of humanity.God, that is something I'm trying to work towards, to be more in the moment rather than thinking about how everything could fall apart. But it's difficult.It's easy to spiral.Yeah. One thing with the pandemic that I can't quite get over is just the fact that... I don't know. My one hope for climate change was that hey, there's this big problem we'll come together and solve it. And it seemed maybe a little bit of wishful thinking, but now there's this big problem and we found a way to make it so much worse with the pandemic, people refusing to wear a mask, which is the mildest inconvenience possible, people being asked not to go to Applebee's or something for six months, these things, people were like, "This is tyranny and I will fight it."And you're just like, "What are you even doing, man? Why?" And I think that part of it comes down to just that there are people who a big part of their personality is they don't like being told what to do, even if it's beneficial for themselves and others. And honestly, if it was just themselves, I wouldn't really care. I would be like, "Fine, make the decisions about your life that are going to affect your life," but when we have 30% of the country that refuses to get vaccinated or refuses to wear a mask, that sort of stuff, it just drags this whole thing on. So I'm worried about climate change and that's something that, while I was certainly worried about before the pandemic, has only gotten more intense. Any word or words of wisdom or anything you've learned along the way on that topic?To start, I'll say, let me just say, I may or may not be writing an article you'll be very interested in. Secondly, everything's so polarized these days and it infects everything, you would think certain times we could come together and I think we've seen that doesn't seem to be the case.I'm trying to think of who wrote this thing. There was an article that some conservative dude... Let me just find it. Damn. No, can't find it. I Googled won't get vaccinated because it makes you mad, and it didn't turn up what I wanted to, but it was this conservative dude who wrote an article right when vaccines got made available and was just like, "I'm not opposed to vaccine, but I'm not getting it because it makes you mad," and that's what I want.Oh, it makes us mad?Oh yeah, it makes us mad.I was like you get the injection, suddenly you're raging.28 Days Later vibe. But it's that “own the libs” ethos.There are a lot of people on that side of the aisle. It's the “own the lib” thing being contrarian as a personality somehow or... I think a lot of them work at The Daily Wire.Well, I feel like if I leaned into the contrarian angle on things that I would have significantly more subscribers. Every once in a while I'm just like I should just sell out, I should just start advocating against my own rights and stuff, make bank being like, "Trans people shouldn't be allowed blah, blah, blah." Stuff like that, and there are trans people that do that and they do well for themselves. So I don't know, I guess that speaks to our extremely broken media ecosystem.Yeah, definitely. You and I both tweet about that a lot.And that's why when the advice is maybe don't follow the news all the time... When I was at Media Matters, that's what happens. I reached that breaking point where I was like, "I can't watch the news everyday all day.," And then when you get into 2022, it's just going to be non-stop election stuff for the entire year. And then beyond that, once you're past the midterms, it becomes presidential election season. So it's just never going to end.Right after Biden was inaugurated, they're like, "So is Trump running in 2024?" I was like, "Can we have a moment?"God, it's so exhausting, but at the same time I feel like it's important. And I feel like the work that we do, the type of journalism that we do, these pieces by you are very important in that regard, they make the world a better place by existing because they help explain the world and your work doesn't sit there and say, "Republicans are morons."No, that's my Twitter.But these articles are great and I wish that the stuff that you wrote was as popular as whatever the hell Ben Shapiro's writing today on his blog. And you could pick any day, any day, whatever Ben's writing is probably bad. So that sort of idea.All I ever see is a little bit of video clips.He's something else. I'm trying to think. I was going to ask you something, but then I totally forgot. Let's see if it comes back to me.How's it been going doing the newsletter thing and all that?Yeah, so doing the newsletter, it's slow going. It's been very gradual, it's steady growth, but I'm not quite where I need to be financially.For sure.But that may change. Before I left my job at Media Matters, I made sure that I had a little bit of stability underneath me to hold me over while I tried to build this thing. And so it's been slow going, but I really like the freedom to write about whatever I want and not have to pitch it and not have to make it fit some editors idea of what I should have, but sometimes that results in my pieces just being long and rambling, chaotic for no reason.I tried to do the newsletter thing and I just couldn't seem to pick a lane. I was just like, "I'm going to share a fiction piece and then I'm going to write about something Republicans are doing." And I was like, "This is not cohesive."That's another reason that I decided to pick something that was just super broad, communication, that means everything. Everything is communication. Sending emails, communication. Watching TV, sure. That sort of stuff. But I don't know. I'm excited about the future of journalism in that sense, that there are these avenues that are outside of traditional publications. Because I know free freelancing, which was initially my plan, was to freelance, it's just so annoying having to pitch things and to get rejected or to not even hear back. That's always the worst where...I almost never get a response to my first email, I always have to follow up.It's so frustrating. And so it finally got to the point where I stopped pitching op-eds to places like New York Times, Washington Post, not Wall Street Journal, they would never do that. But it's these sorts of things where I'm just like, "If someone wants me to write a freelance piece for them, they will reach out and then I will assess it." How's freelancing going?It's good. So you probably saw I was in Europe for a while. So while I was there I was trying to keep it going but also enjoy the trip. So I was doing half as much work as usual. And so now I've been back for three weeks and had to ramp things up again and things are going well, I'm doing some good freelancing with... I don't know if I'm allowed to say but basically it's someone who I used to work with a lot is bringing me back into the fold.Well, that's cool. That's cool and cryptic, but is there anything else before we wrap this up? Is there anything else you want to add or where can people find you online, anything you want to plug?Yeah, just follow me on Twitter, friends, it's Thor underscore Benson B-E-N-S-O-N, Thor like the superhero because everyone thinks it's Thorn for some reason when I say it.I was debating when I was setting up, I was like, "I should just come prepared with all sorts of questions as though I thought I was scheduling an interview with Chris Hemsworth or something. I'm sure that doesn't get old.I'm used to it. It's just part of my life.Cool. Well, that's great. I'll be sure to link to all of your work in the transcript of this. To do that, people can go to readthepresentage.com. Cool. Thanks for stopping by.Good to be here. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

My guest on this week’s podcast is singer-songwriter and [checks notes] king of Halloween Nick Lutsko. I’m really excited for this episode, and I highly recommend checking out the audio version if you can, as there are a few song clips in there (as well as a live/acoustic version of one of Nick’s songs at the very end).You can follow Nick on Twitter at @NickLutsko. His Patreon can be found here, his Bandcamp here, and his YouTube channel here.As always, if you enjoy the podcast and/or the newsletter, please consider subscribing and sharing my work on social media. There are free and paid subscriptions available. The Present Age is a reader-supported newsletter, and I appreciate your support!Parker Molloy: Nick Lutsko! Thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it.Nick Lutsko: Yeah, thanks for having me.So you just released the third installment of your Spirit Halloween trilogy, I guess.Yes.So how'd that come into existence for people who are familiar with the first two, but not the third?So, I did the first one mid-September of last year, unsolicited. This is the Spark Notes version. And the whole, I guess, kind of joke about that song was it's a theme for Spirit Halloween, but really it was more just a ploy for them to pay me for writing. The song was about my payment for the theme.Right.So, they reach out and they actually did pay me some money and they were really cool about it. And then they got in touch, said they wanted to do another one. So then after the unsolicited first entry, I did a sequel that they paid for. I guess technically they own it. And then they reached out early this year and made it pretty clear they wanted to do something again this year and they wanted to up the stakes. I think the language they used was, "How do we top last year?"Yeah.And my response initially was like, "If we're going to top last year, I think we need to get a significantly bigger crew." And when I say significantly bigger, that's more than me and my little brother who shot it. The first one was just me on my cell phone. The second one was me and my little brother in my house. And then for this one, I was proposing like, let's get a crew and a production team that can actually work on this thing and make it legit and cinematic and all that.And their response was sort of, "We don't want to lose the weird guy in his basement vibe." Which is fair. It might have also been a, "We don't want to spend way more money on this." So it just kind of forced me to get creative. At that point, I think I'd already kind of had the idea that I wanted to set the song as like, "We're coming out of the apocalypse," and like, "Things will return to normalcy," or not even that, "It'll be a utopia because Spirit Halloween is back."Yeah.And that was kind of the gist of what I was pitching to them. And I really didn't know how I was going to be able to shoot an apocalyptic wasteland in my basement, or I really dug myself into a hole because I wrote the song and I was happy with the song and then I had no idea how to shoot it. And I reached out to Brielle Garcia, who has been a follower of mine on Twitter.And it's kind of funny because she pulled my own card of me making stuff for Spirit Halloween unsolicited and she started doing unsolicited Snapchat filters for this dumb, fake gremlins movie that I made. And so I knew that she was way more technically savvy than I am. So I reached out to her and said, "Could you help me out with some of these visuals?" And I had no clue what I was getting myself into because she was able to do things that I could have never done in a million years.Sounds cool.So, yeah, yeah.How long did that take you guys to film and because it definitely seems like a larger production than anything else you've put out.For sure. Yeah. Well, I shot it all in my garage. My wife shot me in my garage as our baby was like chilling in a playpen in the corner. It felt very silly because I'm supposed to be interacting with this apocalyptic world, but I'm actually in my garage.And I have no idea if she's going to be able to do the things she says she's going to do because usually that stuff's done on a green screen.Yeah.But yeah, I think it was all done in about a month. I shot the footage in my garage. I sent it to her and yeah, it was insane, the amount of work that she did and how quickly she did it.That's cool.The way she explained it to me is, I think she uses video game engines maybe.Technology has just really advanced to where people are capable of doing things out of their bedrooms. It would've cost millions of dollars and tons of time, just a few short years ago. And I guess a lot of people haven't even figured out how to do some of these things and she's just on the cutting edge and yeah, it's pretty crazy that it was only her and I working on it and opposite sides of the country. She's in Seattle, I believe. And I'm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So it was a cool project.Yeah, definitely. And I think that, because I was going to say, the first time I heard your music was all the Super Deluxe stuff that you did.Yeah.I guess, one of, sort of the benefits of Super Deluxe kind of disappearing or going away or whatever is the fact that then you kind of like, you were not just hidden behind the sort of the curtain there.Right.It was like, "Oh, hey, this is the dude who did the emo Trump songs or the Alex Jones thing."Yeah. Exactly.Because that was the thing. And I think it, that stuff resonated with me because it's like, so I'm 35, so the early-mid 2000s were high school. And at the time I was really into bands like Taking Back Sunday and Thrice and Thursday and all that. And there was this sort of holy s**t moment for me, where it clicked for me that Trump's tweets and sort of self-pitying statements were about being unfairly attacked and whatnot really read the type of the bands that were trying to make music like that, not them but the weird knockoff where it's like, "Oh man, you're trying too hard." You know?Right. Exactly.And from that moment on, anytime I'd see something stupid he said, I'd be like, "Oh man, this is like some kid with Hawthorne Heights lyrics as their AOL instant messenger way thing." You know? So I'm glad that that made it into my timeline because then that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole where-Nice.Then I was checking out your other music that is not comedy and-Cool.... so I was kind of, can you kind of tell me what are some of the differences between Nick Lutsko serious singer-songwriter and Nick Lutsko, weird guy in his basement singing about Spirit Halloween?Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question that I feel like the lines become a little more blurry all the time. Especially as we're planning live shows and it's like it's a smaller set of people, but there are definitely people who were into my stuff before I started doing these sweaty frantic songs on Twitter. And there's a subset of people who are going to come to the show expecting to hear that. And there's going to be people who are coming essentially only expecting a comedy show. And then there's a lot of people who've reached out a bit similar to you that said, "I really enjoyed your comedy stuff and I dove deeper into your other albums and I really enjoy that as well." So it's like trying to figure out how to frame both of these things and I wish I had a better answer. I think once we start playing shows, I'll get a better feel for how those two worlds can kind of coexist.I did this Vulture article. They did the premier of the Spirit 3 song and I said something like, "The shiny sheen of sweat on my face is like my Spiderman suit to my Peter Parker." And it's obviously just a dumb joke, but it's interesting in that, like even though I've done albums that are not comedic whatsoever. And even this goes for my Super Deluxe stuff as well, I think it all kind of comes from the same place. And it always comes from my frustrations with the absurdity of the world. And especially the last album I did Swords before I started doing these Songs on the Computer. All of those songs were just a direct, almost involuntary response to the Trump administration and the Trump campaign.And it was all written 2015 to 2019. And the whole album just kind of has a sense of like, "Am I the only person that is seeing what is happening? And is this a weird fever dream nightmare, or is this reality?" And I finished doing that album and I really was anxious to create something that was fun and happy. And I just wanted to do a 180. It's like, "Okay, I've spent the last few years just really hyper-focusing on all these things that just really distressed me and bummed me out." And it's like, I want to write some fun music. And then 2020 happened, we went into a global pandemic and George Floyd happened. And it was just all, it was like all these gut punches over and over.And it became abundantly clear that I wasn't capable of sitting down and writing fun, happy, quirky music. And the one song I did that was non-comedic was called Spineless. And it was just even darker and than all the stuff from Swords. And it's funny because it wasn't until I retroactively looked back and realized that through the Songs on the Computer project, I was able to do what I wanted to do, but it's not like I sat down and I'm like, "I'm going to take all these dark, angry feelings and just do the most absurd, silly version of these things." It was just something that I just instinctively started doing, and I never really analyzed too much whatever I'm doing in the moment, it's usually other people telling me what they like about it.And then I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's what I did there." There's not a lot of, I don't know, analyzation happening as I'm... Because I moved so quickly when I do them, which initially just started out of necessity between juggling multiple jobs, it would be like, "Okay, I have a free day this week so I know I need to put something out on this day." And yeah, that essentially became like waking up, seeing what was driving me crazy in that moment or what was going on in the news of that day and writing a song as quickly as I could, recording it as quickly as I could, shooting a video as quickly as I could, and trying to get a video out that evening. So that was sort of how this whole thing started and it's something that I've tried to keep in the spirit of the project as I've moved forward because the Swords album was like, I would spend months and some of them even years on rewriting lyrics and re-tracking different instrumentals and mixing things differently. And I'm really happy with how that album came out but I do think there's been a real benefit to realizing that I can kind of go with my first instinct and still elicit a response from people.Yeah, definitely. The interesting thing about like, for instance, because you've made some really cool videos for some of the, I hate to say serious songs, but the non-comedies because-Yeah, that's kind of-But not necessarily serious-Yeah.... but it's just like-Right.It's not making a joke, you know?For sure. Yeah.But the music video for the song, I think it's Sometimes where it's like, it's just this gigantic production of, it's like a concert and you have and your band is wearing all sorts of costumes.Yeah.It's an experience in itself. And it's like, I'd love to see that live. There's a band here in Chicago. Oh God… Ah! Mucca Pazza, that's their name.Cool.They're a marching band.Oh, wow.They're a marching band that plays regular concerts.Cool.And it's just weird and over the top.Yeah.And that music video reminds me of their live shows, which were always so fun and everything like that. So I'm a fan.Awesome. Yeah. Thank you.Yeah. It's cool. It's kind of funny because yeah, we did that album Swords and we had the big album release party in Chattanooga in 2019, October of 2019. That's where we shot all of that video for some time. That basically was just like a highlight from the album release party, like a highlight reel. And the plan was to get that video, get our EPK, and then 2020 really try to get a booking agent and try to tour and obviously, 2020 happened and then none of that happened.Yeah.And then Songs on the Computers stuff happened and now it's in this weird place of like, as you mentioned my band before, when they were called the Gimmix and it started as like... I feel like anytime I try to explain one thing, I have to explain 10 other things. Basically, when I first started making albums under my name, I didn't have a band but I did have these hand puppets. So I used the hand puppets as the backing band for my music video Predator. And then when I finally did get a band, it was like, "Hey, what if we tried to recreate that vibe of having a puppet band?"So then we started making puppet costumes for the bandmates and those kind of just evolved into creatures over time. But anyway, when we started talking about doing Songs on the Computer live, I've kind of built this world and this mythology, and it was like having my band in these weird puppet costumes on top of all the Songs on the Computer stuff kind of felt like wearing a hat on top of a hat. So we're kind of resetting and approaching the shows from a totally different place, which is just cosmically hilarious, because we spent years and years and years trying to build to this place where we were ready to go off into the world and see what we could do with it. And then all of it just kind of got knocked down on and now we're kind of starting this new thing. So-Yeah. Well, I mean that's kind of the general idea behind this newsletter that, because in June I quit my job and I was like, "I'm going to go start doing a newsletter." And that was, I don't know if that'll be a good decision in the long run we'll see. And then decided, "Oh, I should turn this into a podcast because..." One of the things I've been thinking a lot about has just been the way that people had to adapt because of the pandemic and everything that changed, that all their plans had to shift. And the first interview I did for my newsletter, was with Will Butler from the band Arcade Fire.Oh, wow.And he was telling me about how he had all these plans because he was releasing a solo album in 2020 and so he was planning on touring in swing states right before the election. It was a whole idea for him and then he just couldn't do any of it because COVID and other bands have tried to figure out different ways to communicate with their audiences or approach things from a different sort of direction and that's why I'm just really interested in just how people are communicating with each other. I mean, because as it is, I mean the music industry's kind of chaos as it is. I mean, I went to school for, well at first I went to school music performance, classical and jazz guitar.Oh wow.But that lasted a semester before I switched to commercial music, but then I switched to music business.Oh, right.So the business side, talent management, and then after college, I was like, "Okay, cool. Now to get into the music industry." It was like 2009 and suddenly it's like, "Oh, everything is just streaming now and everything has changed."I had a teacher who was convinced that the future of the music industry was ring tones and I'm just like, "I don't know, man. I really, really do not know."Right. That's hilarious. Where did you go to school?So at first, I went to Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois. Which is just kind of a small school with a decent acting program, which has nothing to do with music. And then I dropped out and then went to Columbia College here in Chicago and finished my degree, so it was interesting. And I still like making weird little songs and I've got Logic Pro and a bunch of weird plugins that do all sorts of crazy things.Nice.It's like that stuff is a fun hobby for me. But the more I think about it, the more I'm like, "Oh man, I should have gotten a degree in something, anything else."Oh my gosh. Well, it's really funny because just by... I have a degree in commercial songwriting from Middle Tennessee State University and it's really funny because a lot of people, I just see people in the comments, and this is really kind, I'm not saying that this is true, but people will be like, "Man, you can tell that this guy went to school for songwriting." And it's like, I learned nothing. And not to knock the school that much, it was the first year of the program when I went there and my major was recording industry and they had three emphases, music business, which it sounds like you ended up getting yours in.And then audio fundamentals, which is engineering and producing and all that. And then commercial songwriting. Commercial songwriting was a new one and it just had songwriting in the name so I'm like, "Oh cool. I want to write songs, I'll do that." But it really was a very underdeveloped program at the time and it basically was how to make it as a songwriter in Nashville.So how to write for pop country, which I had no interest in. And basically what they taught was like, "Listen to the radio, find what's hot and repeat. And repeat enough without getting sued."And they teach you how not to get sued and how to still take those. It seemed like they just like juiced all the creativity out of songwriting and it really made me very bitter. And I really, I had to take a lot of secondary classes in music, business and audio fundamentals. And I gained a ton more from those than I did from the songwriting aspect and I wish I would've explored more of those things because I think that those, the songwriting part always kind of came naturally to me.But I do think just learning how to use social media as a way to connect with your fans was huge. And the few classes I took on Pro Tools opened a lot of doors for... I do everything in my home studio. So I knock my degree a little bit just because it's not something that I can hold up this piece of paper and be like, "Hey, hire me for my songwriting degree."Yeah.It's like, "No, people want to hear your songs and they'll judge whether they should hire you based on the work you've done." It's a whole lot of complaining for nothing because things worked out pretty well. I'm pretty happy where I'm at, but I don't know how much of it attributes to my education.Yeah. Well, I mean, same.Yeah, yeah.It's like all things considered, I think I'm okay. But in hindsight, it's like, "Man, maybe I should have taken more writing classes because that's what I'm going to end up doing and..." Here I am like, I don't know, does a comma belong there?Yeah.My writing mistakes are just really stupid, fundamental things that I should have learned in eighth grade.Right. Yeah.But yeah, with guitar performance, the first major I had, it was like, "Cool, all right. What do I do with this when I graduate?" It's like, "You can work on a cruise ship. That's a job." And I'm like, "Wait, wait, no, no, no. That?"That's funny. I actually explored that for a minute. And I was like, I looked up what you needed to be able to do that. And they were like, "You need to be able to play 500 songs." And I was like trying to count all the songs I knew and it's like, "Damn!"Yeah. Yeah.In another world, I could have been sweating on a cruise ship somewhere singing my heart out day after day.Yeah. My brother has a degree in musical theater and he had a job for a while on a Disney cruise ship where he played Peter Pan and Aladdin and all of that. It sounds cool but then he's like, “Yeah, and then they put us in these like tiny rooms with a bunch of us together. I was like, "Oh good. So it's like Titanic." You're in like the boiler room. No windows. Oh, great. Sweet.Yeah. The more you think about it, the less fun it seems.Yeah. I'm like, "Wait, this is the best-case scenario for this degree? I don't think so." So, I'd rather just not.Right.My first pivot away from doing music business stuff to doing more writing stuff was an internship at Pitchfork, which was kind of hilarious because it was transcribing interviews with bands that sometimes just… they were bad interviews.Yeah.One thing wanted to ask you about is just the thing that sort of holds, I think Songs on the Computer altogether is just the lore of it all that kind of all connects. You have your cast of characters that all, they all kind of work together. Where did some of this stuff come from? So it's like, you're like grandma, Mel, Dan Bongino, Jeff Bezos, man in the stairs, you know?Yeah. It's funny. I was thinking about this the other day and I think the RNC song, it was kind of the big bang of all of this. It's the first mention of grandma and her basement and man in the stairs. And I think back to writing that song, and it was one of the first times, I remember very specifically, I had one day to make it, I started that morning, I posted it that night and it was like, okay, the RNC is starting today, I got to do something. I remember, my studio's here in my basement and behind this wall is an unfinished nightmare world of a basement and it has a toilet with the messed up American flag hanging behind it. It has the creepy stairs. I remember thinking like, "Here's what I have to work with. Okay. I can work in that." You know what I mean?It's like almost using my surroundings as characters in this song. And as far as working Dan Bongino in, it could have been anybody, but his name just was the funniest to sing.And it was really funny too because I remember my buddy and bandmate, John, who, I kind of bounce all my ideas off of, I pitched him the idea and he was like, "I have no idea who Dan Bongino is." And I was like, "I think the only reason I know who he is because Vic Berger was fighting with him at some point. And maybe a lot of people won't know who he is, but it obviously was the right choice because it's by far the most popular thing I've done. And he just continues sadly to be a rising star in the GOP.Yeah. Well, and on the topic of Dan Bongino, I mean, so I was working at Media Matters, which is this progressive media watchdog group, so we had people there who would do nothing except watch NRA TV all day. Which, awful. I mean, and Dan Bongino came from NRA TV before he went to Fox News and the whole... We just mocked him mercilessly and he blocked a bunch of us on Twitter but then he would be like, "Oh, so and so blocked me." It's like no, you blocked us.Yeah.But yeah, there's always been something that's funny about his character because he's kind of dumb. There was one time where he was talking about making lemonade, but he had these lemons-Whole lemons, yeah.... weren't peeled.Yeah.He put it in a blender. It's like, "What the f*ck are you doing, man?”Yeah. Yeah.But yeah. So I thought that was a hilarious sort of addition. Yeah. It's kind of a very sort of niche reference, which kind of makes it better, you know?Right. Yeah. I think that's how it was received. And sadly, it's becoming less niche just because he's climbing the ranks at Fox News now it seems, but yeah. So I kind of started with that and I think the next, I don't know if it was the next one, but one of the next popular ones I did was the Spirit Halloween theme and again, that was just something like I had noticed Spirit Halloween was opening up as everything else was shutting down. And it was just something that was kind of stuck in my brain. And I made that theme really quickly again. And I did that turn towards the end with Jeff Bezos and it wasn't until I was editing it, I realized like, "Oh, I have this picture of this bald, creepy mannequin that kind of looks like Jeff Bezos."And oh, the man in the stairs also kind of looks like Jeff Bezos. And it's like, I'm connecting all these dots on the fly and I'm not thinking it through whatsoever. And luckily it's kind of unfolded in a way that's captivated people up until this point and I just continue to build on it. The really tricky part is not writing something that becomes so convoluted that it's just total nonsense to anyone who's listening for the first time. I really try to find something that is like... I think Joe Biden's inauguration was a good example of like, "Okay, if you've been following me on Twitter, you know why I look like I've been badly beaten, but you don't need to know that to enjoy this song."Right.Like that and I'll squeeze in a couple of lines to keep the story going, but I don't want to make it a full song about how Mel beat my ass and I'm running from a mobster called Big Pizza and whatever else. I like to just kind of sneak those things in when I can. But yeah, it becomes challenging as the story gets deeper and more complicated.Have to start mapping it out.Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.So what are you working on these days? Any projects or anything?Well, I am actually, I don't know how long this will last, but my wife just went back to work, we have a four-month-old daughter and three days a week, I am staying at home with her and I'm having to squeeze all productivity into Tuesday-Thursday while my mom and her mom watch the baby. And so far, it's kind of worked out. I had three weeks in a row where I was able to write a full song and post it on Thursday. I think I did the School Board Meeting song and then the Brendan Fraser song and then the Ernest P. Worrell song. I had a three-week run, I think. And it's funny because I think having these consolidated amounts of time forces me to be super productive. Whereas, over the span of a week, I just kind of twiddle my thumbs and wait for inspiration. But I work so much better under pressure and under deadlines and all of those things.But anyways, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm trying to keep developing the Songs on the Computer saga. I think I'll have another collection of songs I'm going to release in a couple of months. I have some freelance work that I've been doing for Netflix that should be coming out pretty soon for their socials, like promotional work. My producer at Super Deluxe, when they shut down, he moved to Netflix and that's kind of how I formed that relationship there which was... Yeah, it's been awesome. Which by the way, I just wanted to say this quickly, since you mentioned it, my producer, Jason, who is also @Seinfeld2000 on Twitter.Oh, okay. Yeah.Yeah. He was my producer at Super Deluxe. I've told this story in pretty much every interview I've done, so not to bore you if you've heard it, but basically, I did an unsolicited theme song for Tim Heidecker and Vic Berger's election specials that Super Deluxe was producing and then that kind of got the relationship started at Super Deluxe. And I basically told them like, "Hey, I'm attempting to make some kind of a career in music and if you guys ever need music, let me know." And that got a conversation going with me and Jason and he eventually pitched the emo Trump concept.So I do got to give him credit in that department and that he was like, "Hey, Trump's tweets have been, especially emo this afternoon. Do you think you could make it like an early 2000s emo pop-punk song?" And I had a Tom Delonge Fender Stratocaster, that was like one of my first guitars and like-Same.Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't touched it in like 15 years probably and I dusted it off and recorded that song so fast. I remember it just felt like this is my calling. Like everything has been building to this moment and that's what set off that whole path in Super Deluxe.Yeah. It's like, "Bring me the seafoam green guitar-”Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.“... with one pickup."Yeah. Yeah. No, it's so funny. I thought that was so punk rock at the time and now it's like-Really it's just like, "Oh man, you can't do a lot with this, can you?"You can't do anything! Yeah.But cool. Yeah. Is there anything I've missed? Anything you'd like to make sure I put here or tell people? Or-Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting about. Obviously I'll be in Chicago and April.We're going to be in there October 8th and 9th, which is this weekend. I don't know when this comes out, but yeah, we had to reschedule due to COVID for the 22nd and 23rd, the 23rd I believe is sold out. But the 22nd has a lot of tickets left.I mean, that's pretty... Because it's at Lincoln Hall now, right?Yeah, yeah. It is. Yeah.I mean, that's like a decent-sized venue too, if you're selling out that's good.It's really exciting. Yeah. I mean, we had two nights at Schubas and we sold out both, which was just amazing because before the pandemic we couldn't even sell out our hometown.Yeah.And it's like to go to another city and sell out two nights in a row was just mind-blowing and then they move us to the bigger venue and we sell out there and then they want to add a second show and it's like, we kind of feel like we could be flying a little too close to the sun here, but we're definitely down to give it a try. And we've definitely, we've sold a decent amount of tickets for that Friday night and we have months until it's-Yeah.We haven't even really promoted it that much. The first two shows sold out within hours of announcing them. So we're hoping to do more shows next year. I did just launch a Patreon, which has been fun. It's just a place for me to dump all the stuff where people are interested in not just the character of sweaty Nick Lutsko and they want to know how I do what I do. And so that's been a cool little community I started growing. I think I posted it or yeah, like less than a week ago and it's had a pretty good start. I'm enjoying that.Yeah. That's how I really like seeing Patreon being used. Like, "Oh, here's this, you want cool behind the scenes? You want cool, raw? This is just me and my process kind of thing.'.Yeah.Or, "Just writing things, straightforward." Tim Kasher, who's in the band Cursive and The Good Life — he has a Patreon where he's just like, "Here's an alternate take of a song I recorded 15 years ago." And it's just like-Oh, cool. Yeah. I love that stuff.... this is the best.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of different ways to use Patreon, some people just use it as a virtual tip jar for people that appreciate the work that they do continuously and then other people turn it into an enterprise where it's like, "Okay, if you want to see anything I do, you got to come in both." I'm trying to figure out like where this thing is going to to live. But I think it's going to be more behind-the-scenes stuff and we're actually doing... I hope I'm technologically competent enough to pull this off, but we're just going to do a Zoom hangout where I play some songs because the, like I said, the Chicago songs shows would've been this weekend. So it's just a way to, I don't know, give those fans who were looking forward to come to see us this weekend to hang out and hear some songs.Cool. Well, that's great. Thanks so much for coming by, Nick.Yeah, definitely. It was a lot of fun. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Present Age podcast [and transcript]. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me today on the show is Aaron Rupar, the author of the new Public Notice Substack. Let’s get started.Parker Molloy: Hey, Aaron. How's it going?Aaron Rupar: I'm good. Thanks for having me on the podcast.Yeah, of course. As soon as I heard that you were starting your own thing, I wanted to get you on here to talk about it, so that anyone who's listening to this can go read your new Substack. Can you tell me about it?I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm viewing my Substack, which I'm going to call Public Notice, as basically an extension of the sort of coverage I've been doing for four or five years now, I guess maybe six. Boy, I started, well, early 2016, so five and a half, going on six. Which is basically coverage of Trumpism, right-wing media, and where they fit into the broader sphere of American politics. As with any of these Substacks, I think things have a tendency to evolve as you go, and you get a sense of what works with your audience, what doesn't work, what sort of things people are interested to read more about. And so I'm viewing it, at least initially, as a more conversational and iterative version of the sort of writing I'd been doing at Vox, with at least three newsletters a week to begin with. Actually, to begin with, it'll be more. I think I'm going to be doing a daily one for the first couple weeks and then scaling it back to more of a normal schedule after that.But, yeah, I'm hoping that it'll be a place that people can go to get up to speed on what the big media stories of the week are, how right-wing media in particular is covering the broader picture of American politics. And a lot of good stuff that you're familiar with too, from your background at Media Matters. So that's how I'm viewing it going in. Like I said, I'm sure things will evolve. And it's always daunting when you're at the beginning stages of something like this. But I'm hopeful that a lot of the audience that I've developed over the years will come with me and check out the newsletter, and hopefully enjoy it. So we'll see how it goes.Yeah, definitely. Most people, if they're not familiar with your writing at Vox, they're probably at least familiar with the videos you post. You post constantly. Videos from all sorts of political events, Trump rallies, et cetera, et cetera. One question I had about that was, are you still going to be posting videos, and is your Twitter feed going to change at all?I don't think it's going to change at all. It took a lot of outlay, in terms of money, to get some of the services that previously I had organizations paying for, whether that's SnapStream or TVEyes, things that I rely on to be able to do live posting and media monitoring. Again, all stuff that I'm sure you're familiar with from Media Matters, which also is very active in that space. But that's the idea, is to keep Twitter pretty constant. And so for people who just enjoy the video tweets and the video threads, not too much should be changing on that front. But then for people who do enjoy my writing, I'll be doing at least a couple of free newsletters a week, and then one paid one that I'm imagining at this point will be a summation of the most buzzworthy segments and news stories from media. More of a media-focused newsletter than the other two, which I'm thinking will be more focused on politics.But I know that that's been a huge thing for me in terms of developing an audience, has been Twitter. And so it's expensive. And that was kind of a thing as I was leaving Vox and planning this next stage of my career. I felt kind of exhausted from all of the negotiations that I had to do just to try and strike deals with SnapStream, TVEyes, places like that. But I think I'm pretty geared up at this point to have all the same services that I've come to be used to, and to come to rely on to some extent, to do the type of media coverage that I do. So, for people who are just interested in my tweets, I think people, even if they have that level of interest in my work, and that much shouldn't be changing too much.Cool. And also anyone who's a fan of your tweets should probably subscribe to the newsletter, which I'm not sure if you mentioned, it's called Public Notice, right?Yeah. I thought Public Notice, it works for the type of stuff I'm going to be doing, trying to surface stories that are in the broad public interest, kind of in the sense that a public notice, as we historically think of it, is like a broadsheet that you'd see in a town square or something like that. I thought that dovetailed nicely with the idea that I have for this newsletter being a broadsheet summarizing, again, the things that I'm paying attention to in the sphere of media and politics.It's like trying to name a band. I've played in enough bands where the band name can always be kind of a fraught item to agree on, to come up with. And so for a while, I was just going to go with the Rupar Report, and I still may incorporate that as the name of the paid newsletter that I do, or I might use that as a section of the newsletter. But yeah, I like the ring of Public Notice. I think it works for the type of work that I'm going to be doing, and so, yeah. That's going to be the name of it.Oh, yeah. Whenever I hear one of these really good names, I'm just kind of like, "Dammit, why didn't I think of that?" You know?Yeah.I like mine. I like The Present Age, but also-Yeah. I like it too.I kind of wish it was something that felt... Because in my mind, I pictured it like, "This would be a great title for a magazine," or something like that. But then as time goes on, I'm just like, "Man, I wish it was just something that was like, boom, here's what you're getting," that sort of thing, instead of having to be like, "So if you read some philosophy, blah, blah," having to go into detail on that sort of stuff. But, yeah, Public Notice is just a great name.Thought so.And is that going to be at publicnotice.substack.com? [ed. note: the address is aaronrupar.substack.com]Yes, that is what it's going to be. So, for many, many years I owned aaronrupar.com. I was just paying for it in case. And then I ended up just earlier this year letting that lapse. And of course it was snapped up. I no longer own it. And so that is still actually, as we record this here, that is still a little bit unclear exactly what the URL is going to be. But I believe it will be aaronrupar.substack.com to begin with. I'm still debating if I want to pay for the aaronrupar.info, or something like that. Yeah. One of those things where, for many, many years for GoDaddy, I just had money going out the door to hold this URL. And then, I don't know if I was trying to cut costs or something, but I let it lapse about a year ago, and here I am. I went back to see if I could purchase it and it's been snapped up, it's no longer available.So, yeah. It'll probably have Substack in the title to begin with, but from what I understand those are things that are pretty easy to change down the line. The main place to find me will just be check out my Twitter account, I'll have a link there. But I'm guessing that for people who are listening to this who maybe aren't on Twitter or something like that, aaronrupar.substack.com should be the place to go to find that.Absolutely. Yeah. God, that sort of reminds me of, a while back I was looking for an email address or something like that. And I was just like, "I am going to sign up for a Gmail address that's just my name, Parker Molloy." And it was taken, and I'm like, "Who the hell took this?" I kind of want to send an email to it and just be like, "Who are you? Why'd you take my name?"Yeah. Well, there might be another Parker Molloy out there.It's possible. I-Yeah. There's an Aaron Rupar in Wisconsin. My last name is fairly... There's a few of us, but... I mean, with all of the people out there, odds are there might be another Parker Molloy.Yeah. Yeah. One thing kept coming up on searches, something like an 18th century Irish immigrant or something was named Parker Molloy. I'm like, "That sounds about right. That's perfect."I don't think that person would've opened a Gmail, but-No, probably not.Unless they did some time travel or something like that.Who knows? Who's to say? So you were recently in Chicago. Right?I was, yes.I saw on your Twitter.Yeah. It was amazing. Right now, I've been spending a lot of time during the pandemic here, I'm in Minnesota, presently. And so we, my two younger brothers and myself, decided to go to Chicago for... The main thing we were going for was the AEW All Out show, which was amazing, and actually worked out quite well for us because it was in Hoffman Estates. Which, for people who aren't familiar with Chicago, was way in the northwest of the metro. But if you're coming from Minnesota, it lopped an hour off of the drive, so it made it actually even an easier drive. When you're in Minnesota, a five hour drive is actually... seems like not that of a deal, because we're so isolated here in terms of other metros.But yeah, we ended up making a really fun weekend out of it. We did a Cubs game and we hit up the barcade in Wicker Park and all that fun stuff. And my family, we've been quite diligent about COVID stuff, so we were kind of worried about that. But when we got back we did the rapid test just to make sure that everything was on the up and up. And now at this point it was weeks ago, so I think we're in the clear. But one of those things that we had planned, in the very bright and sunny days of June, when it seemed like we were kind of pulling out of this pandemic. And then of course by the time the trip actually happened, COVID was much more of a concern. But it was actually, given how much time we've all spent at home over the past year and a half, it was really fun to get out there.I'd never really done a trip like that with my brothers either. So to do a brothers road trip, and we saw some really fun wrestling, and of course Wrigley is always a joy as well. So, it's always fun to get to Chicago. I've done that trip from Minnesota when I was living here permanently through college and then a little bit beyond, I used to travel to Chicago quite regularly. But it had been a bit since I had been there. So, kind of reminded me how vibrant and fun the city is. And it was a great time.Yeah. Because I saw this, I saw that you came to Chicago. First, well, it was on your Twitter. But besides that, the Washington Free Beacon decided to write about you. Did you see that?Oh, God. Yeah. Well, what happened was... And I don't know if people follow @RedSteeze, but he and I... he was kind of needling me over... I posted a photo from one of the wrestling... We went to two wrestling events, but the first one that I was at. And we had gone to the wrestling show and we were back at the hotel and I had had a couple of drinks. So I was feeling just feisty enough to engage. And so it was sort of good-natured, at least on my end. But it's kind of that pipeline of people, right-wing media figures, where it went from @RedSteeze to the Washington Free Beacon, and it became kind of this... Again where people on the right love to own the libs for being hypocritical or not practicing what they preach.And so the idea was that I was a huge hypocrite because I was in this indoor setting. And granted, the mask compliance at AW was actually pretty good. It seemed like people generally, with exceptions of course, but when they were sitting down in their seats were masked up. But yeah, it kind of just became one of those things where whenever you're kind of a prominent liberal online and right-wingers have a chance to shame you for being a hypocrite, or not following the rules that you profess to find important for people in society to follow, it's kind of a fun thing for them to do, I guess.So. Yeah. I'm sure you've experienced that sort of thing too, where you kind of become the story. And at this point I've been enough times where I can just shrug it off and it's not a big deal. But yeah, that whole weekend I was kind of... My Twitter notifications, I was getting notifications that, oh, this or that right-wing figure was teasing me or trying to shame me for the fact that I was out and enjoying life, at least for that weekend.Yeah. Every time that happens with me it's usually one of those sites, Free Beacon. Or Twitchy, that's another one.Ah, Twitchy, oh my goodness.witchy, when they put me in headlines, they don't qualify it or say who it is. And I'm just like, guys, no one knows who I am. If you're going to write an article about a movie star, you can just say their name and people will know who you're talking about. But if you're just like, "Parker Molloy said this on Twitter," it's like, who the f**k is Parker Molloy?Right. Because your title, I think, at Media Matters was editor at large. Is that right? So yeah. I mean that... Oh, Media Matters editor, people kind of understand what Media Matters is. But that's kind of the case now for me too, where it's like... When I was at Vox that was always... People love to own Vox, so it was like, oh, this Vox person. And now, it's so new that I'm independent that I'm not quite sure how that's going to work, if I have enough... If my brand is strong enough where people will still care or not. But yeah, when you're just doing a newsletter, it's kind of like, newsletter writer so and so. It doesn't quite have the same kick that, oh, Vox person or Media Matters person has.Yeah. Sometimes I miss being part of the target that is Media Matters on Twitter. Like when Lara Logan had like-Oh my God.Last week, where she was like, "They're like the Taliban," or something like that. And I was like, I've been gone for like two months, and if they turned into a paramilitary organization, I don't know. That seems a little out of character, but okay.Well, that's kind of... Because, yeah, Media Matters is interesting in that respect because a lot of it, including yourself when you were there, but Bobby Lewis or Andrew Lawrence, people who have such voice on Twitter, but then you read the posts on the Media Matters site and they're so straightforward. They're very factual and quotes. And that's like for me at Vox, Media Matters stuff on your site, and on Twitter too but especially on the site, was such a great resource because it was very factual. And so yeah, whenever you see people portraying Media Matters as this rogue... like a paramilitary organization or something like that, it's so over the top that you just kind of roll your eyes at it, but I don't know.Some people, I guess, are kind of ashamed of things that they say on TV or they don't want people... That was kind of always the thing that I felt with the long-running feud that I've had over many years now with Glenn Greenwald, which kind of the origins was me just calling him out for being on Tucker and posting video clips. And obviously, other people at Media Matters have been targets of him as well, where he kind of... I think the term that he's used is we're hall monitors or something like that. Like we're narcing on him or something. But oftentimes you're just conveying things that he's saying on Tucker Carlson's show, and if that's enough to set someone off, then I think the problem is probably more with them than anything else. So it's a little bit of people like Lara Logan telling on themselves with stuff like that.Yeah. See, now that could be one way to get your Substack off the ground. You could just start a big fight with Greenwald.Oh man, I'm kind of drained.That might be the path. Just be like-Yeah, I mean, I've tried to rise above, I guess. Yeah. Over the years you mellow out a little bit. And I don't know, there was a time where Twitter fights were a lot more appealing than they seem to be to me now. I think maybe part of that was just being at Vox, which obviously doesn't really want their staffers engaging in bare-knuckle combat on Twitter. But I still think it's worth calling these people out at times. But with someone like Greenwald, I think it's become so normal for him to go on Fox News, it's not really newsworthy anymore. There was a time where he was getting a lot of grief because he would proclaim that the idea was that he was going on Fox and telling viewers, sharing perspectives that they wouldn't see normally.But any pretense of that is so far... it's become so absurd to even claim that something like that is going on that I just don't see a lot of news value in highlighting that stuff. And that's sort of the thing, more broadly, with Tucker Carlson's show, which I still try and keep an eye on most nights. But I find myself grappling with just the extent to which it becomes kind of self-perpetuating, where if you make a big event out of every one of his shows, does that help create this perception that they're big events? Because a lot of what he says is so predictable at this point. Obviously he has millions of viewers. And so you can't discount that nor can you really understand what's going on on the right if you ignore people like Tucker Carlson, or if you ignore the Trump rallies.I don't think that's really a hugely constructive way to approach them, but... And obviously people at Media Matters, that's their job is to document. But for someone like me who is kind of dipping in and out to try and get a sense of what people are talking about on the right, if you're live clipping every one of his monologues there is a sense in which you're kind of promoting him or validating him to your audience as well. And I don't have any great answers for that, but it's something, as I'm kind of immersed in right wing media, that I find myself almost on a daily basis wondering what the correct way to handle situations like that is.Yeah. I totally agree. I find myself grappling with that same sort of, okay, is this really important to focus on? Is it not? But when it comes to someone like Tucker Carlson, for example, he is essentially setting the platform for the Republican party moving forward. On his show he pushes Great Replacement theory kind of stuff. And then you'll see a member of Congress on Fox and Friends talking about that. That's the same thing that the Charlottesville Nazis chanting that they won't be replaced. That's the same thing. We've come that far to where now that's mainstream.Or the El Paso shooter. And there's a dynamic where you get kind of numb through the sheer repetition of it, where the first time you hear Tucker Carlson invoke Great Replacement theory, it's this big news event, because it's like, wow, this is a far-right talking point that's made its way onto Fox News. But then after like 10 broadcasts of that, it becomes kind of numbing where it's like, okay, this is just another bit on his show. And you're right. There was a congressman from Texas who was on Newsmax, pretty much word for word saying a lot of the same things that Tucker Carlson says on his show about how the Dem immigration policy is to bring immigrants in who vote for Dems. And this idea that it's this conspiracy to change the electorate in a way that dilutes the power of traditional, with air quotes, American voters sort of thing.And yeah, it's a tricky thing to know how to handle that, because again there's kind of a novelty the first few times you hear something like that. I think back, the El Paso shooting, which happened, I believe that was in 2018. And at that time, Trump was really hammering the caravan talking points and this notion that immigration was tantamount to an invasion of the country. And that came out in the manifesto that the shooter released at the time of the shooting. And now that we've fast-forwarded three years and it's just kind of a normal Republican talking point. And so there are consequences to things like that, but it also is just a difficult thing to cover on a day in and day out basis because it's kind of exhausting.And again, it loses some news value. So that is where I think that it's the type of work that Media Matters does is so vital in terms of just shedding light, to a largely progressive audience, of what people are talking about on the right and raising awareness in those ways. But you hear, and I noticed this recently with Chip Roy, who is on Tucker Carlson's program. And I clipped this because it, to me, kind of rose to the level where he was saying that Democrats are sick and twisted individuals, and this sort of dehumanizing and incendiary rhetoric. And that's kind of like a nightly thing on Fox. And so you try and imagine if you're someone who's earnestly watching this stuff, what your views about politics would be.And it's not a pretty picture. But it's part of the complication of being a journalist covering media at this point. Political media is just knowing how to handle these very difficult subjects in a responsible way that doesn't perpetuate problems. And so, Trump had a rally just this past weekend in Georgia that I live clipped and added some commentary on Twitter. And I got a number of DMs from people who were like, you're part of the problem, you're promoting them. And I try to be sensitive to that. I think there is news value in knowing what Trump is talking about, because he's the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee at this point and obviously he's setting the agenda for the Republican party.So I don't really think ignoring is the way to go. And again, I don't have any perfect... You could probably teach classes on this stuff, but it's difficult. And these are kind of new problems because we live in such a media-saturated environment now that it's just inescapable. And you have to find a way to cover this stuff if you're going to cover politics, and it's dicey. So I don't pretend to be perfect, but these are things that I am going to try to continue to grapple with in the newsletter as well.Great. Yeah. I think for me, one of the points that pushed me into trying to do this newsletter and doing a Substack thing, just like you are, is the fact that when I was at Media Matters there were several times where I watched something happen and then I was like, I'm going to write about that. And then I'd write about that. And then I'd watch the same thing happen six months later. And I'm like, I'm going to write about that. I've already written about that, but I'm going to write about it again. And then the same thing would keep happening and nothing was changing. And I'm just like, okay, maybe I'm not writing this correctly. Or maybe I'm not getting through to the people I need to get through to. Or maybe I just need a change of scenery.And I think that that's been helpful for me. I still think political media is kind of a disaster at the moment. But you also have all of these new sorts of outlets to go to, and to try to... One thing I like about Substack, or email lists generally, is the fact that you don't have to worry about what some algorithm is going to do or what some... Like if Twitter shut down tomorrow, they could do that, and then I would lose everything. I wouldn't have anyone in my contact list. With this, people sign up, and they get emails directly from me.And Substack can fall apart and I would still have those email addresses to be able to continue to communicate with people. And I think that as time goes on it's going to be more important to be able to reach people directly. And so that's one reason that I thought, yes, this is the path to go for me. This is the chance to get out of that. And also, a chance to just write about whatever I wanted. Sometimes it's on point. Sometimes it's just, here's something I've been thinking a lot about. The most recent piece that I wrote had to do with just kind of this general feeling of dread that's going on. And that's not something that Media Matters would've published, because they'd be like, this is nothing to do with our mission. I'd be like, I know. But it's a chance to express myself in a more personal way without having to... There's a level of not necessarily bad self-censorship, but just staying on topic at a job.Yeah. And you still do some media analysis on your Substack. So it's not like that's completely gone away. But I totally hear you with the sort of banging your head against the wall aspect of covering these recurring issues in right wing media that never seem to improve. And that can be very frustrating because it's like, well, why am I even bothering? And obviously it's important that people do that sort of reporting, because not everyone, like myself, people can't spend hours each day immersing themselves in right wing media. And so it's important that there are trusted sources who can report on what's going on there. But I think you're also right, because one of the things that I was debating, whether or not to do this newsletter that I was thinking about is, oh maybe I should just go the route of doing the Twitter super follow thing. But, as you were just touching upon, ultimately I concluded that putting that many eggs in the Twitter basket might be a bad idea.We've seen this with Facebook and the whole pivot to video thing that it's good to not become too reliant on one platform for your professional livelihood. And so obviously Substack is a way to diversify and to also leave space to do more writing than threads, or 280 character tweets, that sort of thing. So yeah, there were a couple different considerations with that, but I do think having a home for your work off of Twitter is probably a good and healthy thing overall.Oh, absolutely. Anything that gets you a little bit further away from Twitter? Probably healthy.Probably healthy. I have kind of a hard time with that because Twitter has become... I have it broken up into lists now where I have a news tab and a sports tab and a friends tab. But it really has become kind of my pipeline. Back in the day, 15 years ago, it was like, okay, I'm going to go read the newspaper to get up to speed in the morning with what's going on. And now Twitter has become my entire gateway. And that might change a little bit as I get more immersed in Substack, or as I spend more time on Substack. Because there's a lot of stuff across a wide range of topics going on, on Substack.So I'm sure I will incorporate that more into my information consumption routine. But it is kind of amazing how all of us as working journalists have, for the most part, been sucked into this vortex of Twitter, for better or worse. And I do think there are a lot of good things about Twitter, but just how ubiquitous it's come and kind of inescapable, when you take a step back, it's like, wow, I do spend a lot of time on it. So, for better or worse. Probably for worse.It's one of those things where I look at the usage stats on my phone and it's just sad. It's like, hey, your screen time for this week. And I'm like, don't tell me. I don't want to know.I'll get the ones where it's like your screen time, your average per day, is seven hours per day, down 40% from last week. And it's like, I guess that's progress. But yeah, I've even gotten bad enough in recent years, now I read books on my phone or my computer. Even at night I'm trying to unwind with my family and I've got the multi-viewer to see what's on Fox News and Fox Business and Newsmax. Definitely I'm overstimulated constantly, and I'm sure that does have... it affects you. But again, I view that as part of my coverage area as well as just sort of being aware of what's happening, not just on TV but on the Hill.And so I'm watching C-SPAN all the time too. But yeah, it does kind of lead to... Even when I'm reading a book on my computer, I usually have a multi-viewer in the other half of the screen where I'm paying attention to everything on cable news. So, 50 years ago that would've been kind of unheard of, I guess, but there are upsides to that too. But yeah, I definitely feel very overstimulated all the time.Yeah. That's the general theme of my newsletters, just we're hyper connected and at the same time, so I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I just can't relate to any other human being. But I'm like, it's so weird that at this moment I can send out something to 200,000 people, but still not be able to actually feel like I'm communicating with anyone.It's interesting to think about if we would've lived through a comparable pandemic 50 years ago, before there was the internet. To me, I feel like it would've been a lot more isolating, just in the sense that we use... Like you and I can do this video call and talk, and granted we could have talked on the phone back in the day too or something like that. But even though we basically spent like a year of our lives holed up at home, I never really felt starved for interaction, although it's a little bit more of a shallow interaction than actually hanging out with people or getting together with friends, that sort of thing. But so I don't know, I guess I kind of view that as a upside to this hyper online world that we live in, that I do feel like... I have relationships with people... You and I have never before today, even though I feel like I know you, we've never really talked ever.We've DM'd and stuff like that, but we've never hopped on a call together or anything like that. So, it does lead to these kind of strange relationships or sort of different sorts of relationships with people. So, I think in some ways to me, I feel like I would've had a harder time enduring the sort of social conditions that in some ways we still are enduring, but this kind of like... the separation that we've all had from each other. Although just before we got in this call, I was talking with Casey Michel. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work, but he's a political journalist who just sort of book on kleptocracy. And I was doing a Q&A with him for the newsletter, and he was kind of like... I was just congratulating him on finishing his book and stuff. And he was like, oh yeah, my wife likes to say that's how I spent the pandemic was writing this book. And I was like, man, that's so much more constructive than getting into drinking whiskey and daily fantasy sports that I did.I was going to say, I started collecting baseball cards. That's what I did during this. That's how I spent my pandemic, just picking up random hobbies here and there. I was like, yeah, baseball cards again. I did that when I was like 12. Let's bring that back. That's a thing now.I have a mutual friend who's really... I don't know Phil Hughes, the former major league baseball player at all, but I have a friend who's really good friends with him. And Phil has become on Instagram, kind of a baseball card celebrity. He does this thing on Instagram where he opens packs of cards. And so I've kind of vicariously... Because at my parents' house, we still to this day have boxes and boxes and boxes of cards from when we were kids, myself and my brothers. And actually one of my brothers recently went through them. And I guess there really weren't that many cards that are worth anything, because even back in the day you needed to buy the premium packs or whatever. And that was totally lost on me. I thought all cards were kind of the same or you could get good cards in any pack.But you know, everything is so digital now that I guess it kind of... Baseball cards have kind of become this transgressive analog physical item. And so I think it's kind of cool that they're back in vogue now. So I guess, I don't know. We'll see, if this pandemic goes on for another six months, I guess the next variant wave that we have, maybe I'll cave in and buy a box of cards too, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.Yeah. I'm definitely going the baseball cards and video games route to pandemic survival.Oh, I love your tweets. Yeah. I absolutely love your MLB The Show tweets. I have friends who are into that game, as well.It's fun!Yeah. It's cool that you're savvy enough to post little videos and stuff.Yeah. So when I was working at Media Matters, I had a separate Twitter account set up that was just following all of the right-wing accounts, just so I can keep up with whatever nonsense they're up to. And so that's the one I connected to my PlayStation. So the feed, the only thing in it is just... Because I never tweet from it, but that's where I have all the photos and videos sent to, to pull from. So yeah, the feed over there is just all of my PlayStation things and nothing else. So it's pretty great. But yeah. You know what, thank you so much for stopping by to talk about your newsletter. Is there anything else that people should know if they're on the edge about whether or not to... Well, first off, if you're on the edge about whether or not to subscribe for sign up for free, you should totally do that. That's without a question. Worst case scenario, you just ignore the emails.I'm guessing if you made it this far into this podcast, you're probably willing to sign up for free. And so I encourage people to check it out. I've got a couple... As we sit here, I'm a week out from launch, as Parker and I are talking, and I already have a couple posts that I'm excited about that are ready to go. And so I'm hoping that ultimately the content will speak for itself. So yeah. Check it out. Like I said, aaronrupar.substack.com, and check out my Twitter account. I'll certainly be tweeting things out from there as we go. And appreciate you having me on. And at some point we'll have to return the favor. I'd be interested to talk with you about your personal immersion in right-wing media and coming out of that. And perhaps the scars that that left.Oh, and there are many.You were at Media Matters maybe three years, right? So you were there a pretty good chunk of time.Yeah. About, about two and a half years, I guess. Because it was right before the 2018 midterms was when I started over there. And then was there for the midterms, there for the 2020 election. And I was under the impression that after the election there might be a couple weeks of chill-out time. No, of course not.No. God, no.It just went right on, right on being crazy.I've been kind of thinking because yeah, it did kind of calm down there. After Biden's inauguration, there was a brief moment, I guess. Then there was the impeachment though, but I felt like I was breathing easy about how things were going for a couple months, I guess, as the vaccination rollout was kind of successful and things economically seem to be going pretty well and stuff. But now that we're approaching the midterms and there's been Biden's approval numbers are kind of shaky where it seems... And his agenda is somewhat imperiled at this point. I feel some of the old anxiety creeping back here a little bit. So I guess you probably got out at kind of the right time. I'm still planning on covering the same old stuff for the newsletter.But I guess I do at this point... I've been doing it long enough where I feel a sense of almost duty to cover this stuff. I'm sure it's leaving some scars on me too, but I guess I'm willing endure it a little bit longer to... Because I feel like the story of Trumpism and the struggle to protect the integrity of elections here in the States, it's still an ongoing and very active story. So at least for now I kind of feel obligated to continue to see it through.Absolutely. And people should 100% follow your newsletter for more on that. Thanks. Thanks again for stopping by. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

On this week’s podcast, I interview my friend and former co-worker Eddie Geller. Eddie is running for Congress in Florida’s 15th district. If elected, he would have the best taste in music of anyone to ever hold office. Just throwing that out there. Let’s get started!Parker Molloy: Hey Eddie, how's it going?Eddie Geller: Hey, thank you for having me. It's going pretty well.Well, that's good, it's always good to hear. So you're running for Congress?I am running for Congress in the 15th district of Florida. I don't know, when you say it, it sounds so serious.I'd like to just add a question mark at the very end. Congress?Congress? Yes. I mean, I'm a big believer that good people got to run for office. So it's something I've been thinking about for a while and it really is January 6th, it's just was so appalling and just felt like, all right, I've been thinking about doing this and Republicans don't seem to be able to find the bottom and so I wanted to throw my hat in the ring.All right. Well that, I mean, seems like as good a reason as any.Thank you.It would've been a little strange if you were like, well, January 6th settled it because I really want to know what it's like to be under siege.“That will just look like a lot of fun. And I just-”“That looks so fun!”“... thought if I could get in there. No, I wanted to send people endless fundraising emails, that was truly the impetus.”Yeah. That's one thing I think that you and I have in common, I mean, you ask people for money for your campaign, I ask people for money for my newsletter, it all works out and both of us do not have as much money as we would like to have. So.Yes, fair enough to say. My campaign account is very different than my bank account.Yeah. So one thing I'm curious about, how did Chuck E. Cheese prepare you to be a member of Congress?That sounds like a silly question but to me, it is very real. So when I first started working at Chuck E. Cheese I was a 15-year-old young man looking for guidance, looking for a life, and of course, the big mouse came calling. The thing about Chuck E. Cheese and I talk about this with some folks is, my boss at Chuck E. Cheese, this guy named Jeff I'm still good friends with today, Jeff sort of took me under his wing and he introduced me to punk rock because I was playing a lot of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and was very into Papa Roach at the time. Don't laugh, it hurts when you laugh.Right there that disqualifies you.That's the part you can't use, that is the true oppo. Now, he heard me listening to Papa Roach and he's like, "Eddie, we got to fix this," and he made me a mix CD. I remember Alkaline Trio, Saves the Day, Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil were on it. And so, I mean, punk rock and music is such a huge part of my life but I think what I really still hold on to, I mean, I still love those bands, but is that there is a world outside the mainstream that you can absorb and take in and there are ideas and thoughts that you won't hear on cable TV. And that blew my mind because this was before the internet, the internet was there and it was there awhile but hadn't really blown up. And then it was like, oh, there's so many cool and interesting perspectives so then it was actually hugely influential. And I also learned how to make a pizza, I mean, that didn't hurt either.Yeah. Those are life skills.Life skills. And now there's arguably too many perspectives out there.Yeah. Now it's like, “Oh no, we went too far. Now literally anyone can just pop up on the internet and claim that their cousins, brothers, friends, uncles, testicles have exploded or something.”Yeah. Or that there's a conspiracy that so-and-so stole an election or whatever, I mean, did not see that one coming.Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that is I think the most predictable thing ever.Yes. Well, I mean I guess I just mean back in the days of AOL and, I'm in a chat room, isn't the internet fun? And I'm meeting new people and here's these bands and then a little bit of everything all the time.So tell me a bit about yourself. I mean, we know each other but for the listeners at home or wherever.Sure. Let's see. So the funny thing is, I'm trying not to go into candidate pitch which is so front of mind and just give the real stuff. I feel like, Parker, we're friends and you deserve the real deal. Who am I? I did grow up in Florida and went to the University of Florida. And when I was in high school I was the class clown and got in a lot of trouble for it and I was a fat kid, which there's nothing wrong with that, everyone should love their body or if they want to change their body also wonderful. But in any case, I was a fat kid that was very effecting and made me very depressed as a child and so being a class clown was sort of the manifestation of trying to navigate that. And so when I was around 17 or 18, like I said, I'd make jokes in class and my friends would encourage me and be like, oh, you should do stand up. And for whatever crazy reason after enough prodding I was like, okay, this is a good idea, again, question mark.But I actually think that when I decided to do that, again, I don't remember if it was 17 or 18, I think that was a defining moment of my life to step on that stage and tell some jokes just because it was like, oh, you can face your fears and you can overcome them. And then I think everything since then it's just been like, well, I'm not stepping on stage to do stand up for the first time in my life, so sure I can run for Congress. But anyway, so yeah. So I started doing comedy in high school and I think I found this identity and then I went to the University of Florida and I did improv with this group theater strike force, changed my life because I really found my people.But I remember sort of my friends would give me s**t because I was the person who was always like, I care about politics and I care about this thing, and folks were like, I just want to do improv, and I'm like, but we should pay attention to the war in Iraq and all that stuff. And so I feel like I had these dual sides of me, it saw like, oh, I'm a performer and I love doing that but also I really care about what's happening in Washington or whatever, and feeling so frustrated, I mean, I feel the Iraq war was the defining political event of my life. I remember in 2003 just seeing us go to war and just feeling this can't be happening, how can we be doing something so terrible and there's so much energy behind stopping it and yet we can't stop it and it still just happened. And I think that took a toll on me in the sense that, we have to be able to do something.So anyway, so I'm still doing my comedy thing, I go to Los Angeles, I started doing improv and comedy out there. I do not hit it big but I enjoyed performing on a regular basis, I was in a few commercials, I had a line in a movie and it was really fun. And I think anyone who has the opportunity to get paid to act or paid to do their art form is really gratifying and I loved it, but still, I felt that I wanted to do more or wanted to do something with my creativity that wasn't selling Dr. Pepper. Not that there's anything wrong with Dr. Pepper, I just feel like that's a problem we've solved in our society is how to get people to drink Dr. Pepper. So I fell into the world of-You're going to lose the coveted Dr. Pepper drinker vote which is a large lobby.I don't know, they're going to come after me, the Dr. Pepper folks. I mean, I haven't had a Dr. Pepper in a long time, third grade.I had one yesterday.Oh, really?And they are great.They are great.There are two things I drink all day, Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper.I was just going to ask if you were a regular Dr. Pepper or Diet Dr. Pepper.Diet.Yeah. No, I've rocked a number of Diet Dr. Peppers in my life. Okay. So, okay, I've realized I'm monologuing a bit and you're so gracious to let me do it. But in any case, I found this merger of creativity and politics and activism and so I've been running with that ever since. And you and I were together when we were at Upworthy but also I spent time at the Democratic National Committee, I worked with MoveOn. And so anyway, so then we get to me now who's like, I'm going to run for office because I think ultimately again, I've been on the outside doing my best to make a difference and this is me saying, I want to take a shot of being on the inside and represent folks and do some good from Washington.All right. And your announcement video took the form of a jingle?Yes.Yeah. How did that happen?I launched with a jingle video. Well, once I decided to run I knew being a former comedian and being a video producer I had to do something interesting. And so I had been thinking about it and then I was watching this show, I don't know if you've ever seen it, Somebody Feed Phil, and if you haven't seen, it doesn't matter, but it's this traveling eating show hosted by the guy who started Everybody Loves Raymond, his name is Phil. And anyway, the intro to the show is, a happy hungry man, and it's kind of a vibe, it's like a Full House type vibe, and it just dawned on me like, oh, that would be a fun way to introduce myself.[Clip of Eddie Geller’s announcement jingle plays]And then as soon as I thought of that, I was like, well, it should be a full-on pair, let's just go there, let's just do the pair.Go full Full House.Go full Full House. And I listened to all those, the Family Matters, Full House, Step By Step, you name it, I was listening to it and trying to figure this thing out. But in any case, so then I had this idea and I reached out to a mutual friend of ours, Eric March, who also worked at Upworthy, just a brilliant writer and comedian and he helped me write the jingle because I'm not a musician. And so yeah, so we worked on it, came up with the music and the lyrics and then we reached out to a producer named Alison, she did a great job taking it from a piano piece with lyrics into the full-blown jingle and then filmed all these funny bits around Brandon where I live, Brandon, Florida and I was so nervous.I mean, this is not how you're supposed to launch a political campaign, you're supposed to launch a campaign with, my father when I was four years old took me out to the pond and we went fishing and I knew when I caught that salmon that that salmon was America, and I couldn't do that. I mean, more power to folks who do but it wasn't me and so yeah, so the jingle happened. And also, even if I had done something that's like, I'm Eddie Geller and here's all the very earnest reasons why I'm running, which I have a number of earnest reasons why I'm running but it would get six views, right? I mean, so it's finding the balance.Yeah. Well, I mean, there have definitely been some people who've tried the creative video, hey, let me introduce myself kind of thing, and sometimes they just kind of stick around. I mean, there's one that I was thinking of, oh, there was a candidate that recreated the scene in Top Gun-Yes. I know exactly the video you're talking about.... yeah, except that it was an attack ad against Barbara Comstock I think, and they had someone who kind of looked like her sitting there. It was so weird but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of the candidate, which is probably bad.I don't want to take shots at any other Democrats and especially someone who's trying to do something different. So I remember who he is but I wish him all the best because he's fighting the good fight. But yeah, it's hard to do and that was definitely my fear, once I decided there were so many moments where I was like, oh my God, am I really doing this? And there were demos I listened to of it and I was like, is this good? And eventually folks I trusted told me, hey, this is fun, this is good, and so yes, I put it out there. And fortunately folks are pretty kind about it and enjoyed it and I appreciated your sending it out there into your world.And I also use the jingle as, I'm going to do more fun stuff like that, I think that is going to be my campaign as like, we can make this fun and then also talk about the real things. But it's an opportunity and a challenge, right? It's like, I think being able to do fun things and get attention is really helpful because that's a very hard thing in this world, but then people are like, hey, are you for real? And I've had those conversations, I've been in local democratic meetings and they're like, we want to meet you because are you just the guy who does the jingle or are you actually going to talk about the desalination plants that are being built in our county and what are we going to do about that? And so it's, you got to do both, but yeah, I'm happy to jingle and maybe there's another one down the road.Putting the “fun” into “funding our social safety net.”I love it.Another thing I wanted to ask you about was, back in 2015 you made a video for ClickHole explaining Bitcoin, it's you mumbling for a minute and 15 seconds and I love it because I still don't understand crypto stuff at all. But I did want to point out that if on the day that that video got posted on YouTube, if you had invested just $100 you would have $18,000 now, so it's just something out there.But also cryptocurrency is now a huge contributor to our climate crisis. So hopefully I didn't do any damage by doing that ClickHole video, but no, that was fun. And there was a good friend of mine, Leo Garcia, he worked at The Onion, I was visiting Chicago and he was just like, hey, do you want to do this video? I had no idea what it was going to be. And I came to the studio and they just put a teleprompter in front of me with the actual script and they were like, do your best to mumble this and so I did a few mumbly takes. And that might've been my peak, I mean, I think the work I'm doing now is more important but let's be honest, I mean, the Bitcoin mumble video.I just love it, it's great. But yeah-Oh, thank you.... I did want to point out how much richer we both would have been if instead of making that video we invested in Bitcoin. But alas, we did not so here you are trying to raise money for Congress and I'm trying to fund a newsletter, so that's our lives.That is our lives.So you're running in Florida's 15th district, right?Correct.Are you at all worried about redistricting?Yeah, redistricting is absolutely something that is top of mind. But it's going to either get a little bit harder, get a little bit easier, stay the same, I know that is super obvious to say. But in any case I still have to work really hard and I still have to convince people to vote for me no matter how the lines are drawn. Sort of who you're talking to and how you're getting to them changes a bit and donors and the media will perceive the election differently based on that cooked rating. But that all being said, I knew this was going to be really hard regardless so I don't want it to get much harder, I think that would be silly if I did.But I'm really excited because currently it's an R plus six district so it favors Republicans by six points. But I really like talking to Republicans, I mean, that's not to say people who have extreme conspiracy theories about elections, I entertain those, I don't, I think that's terrible for democracy. But I play on a hockey team that is almost all Republicans, a rec hockey league, and they know I'm running and we sit at the bar after games when we drink beer and we shoot the s**t and we talk a little bit of politics. But I think it is good to remember that, yes, there is a world out there where things are getting so tense and so heated but there is a place, at least I hope, that there's a place that we can maybe slowly but surely bring it back down.And I think to be someone who runs for office you have to be an optimist and you have to have hope and I think that describes me. And I think doing comedy is kind of part of that because I think to do comedy you have to be aware of where people's emotions are going to go and where they're at. So that's all just to say that I like the challenge of being in a place where there are a lot of Republicans because I think there's winning my race, which I'm in it to win it and there's also, how do we just untangle the knot that has been created, and it's really intimidating and really despairing and you worked in Media Matters, I mean, you know this stuff.Oh, absolutely. Just thinking about it, one of the challenges I think that you face that obviously I kind of witnessed when I was at Media Matters, especially is just the right wing media machine which is just pumping out a lot of either false info or conspiracy theories or just getting the right wing base really, really riled up which presents a challenge. Because the thing is that when policies are polled, the ones that the Democrats run on are way more popular, just generally. But you have to overcome the ads and the Fox News and the OAN and Newsmax and all of that stuff, which is its own challenge because I've watched as great pieces of legislation have just been shut down because of that.I mean, in Illinois here we had, I think it was, was it 2018? One of those, 2018 or in 2020 there was a referendum on the ballot that was, should we essentially adopt a more progressive tax system? Because right now Illinois has a flat tax for state taxes which is 5% which is kind of steep if you're not making a lot of money and not anywhere near steep enough if you are making a lot of money. So there was a really well-funded opposition to this bill which would have changed the entire state's tax structure.And the whole thing was based on this idea that, well, what if you one day become super successful? You may benefit now but what about 10 years from now? It's like, that's a great problem to have, oh, no, I moved up into a higher tax bracket, it's like, that's fine. But it failed because it just was blown out of the water with the ads that were everywhere and that I think is kind of a unique challenge. I mean, I don't know, you say that to run for office you have to be an optimist and that's one reason that I will never in my life run for office. It's my nature to be extremely pessimistic about everything because personally I would rather be pleasantly surprised than let down. When was it that you left Upworthy? Was that before the 2016 election?That was 2015 I think.2015. Okay. So throughout 2016 Adam Mordecai had a little room in a slack channel that was like, “I will reassure you about the state of the election.” And you go in there-Just hearing it makes me feel sad.... Yeah. You go in there and you would be like, “I don't know, man, I saw the story, the polling or the polling dropped,” and he would go, “Well, here's why you don't need to worry — because it's all going to be fine.” And so everyone kind of went into election day 2016 feeling optimistic, not me, I was like, “I'm 90% sure Trump is going to win this thing.” And when it happened I was devastated but not because I was surprised but because it was Trump, he was not the person I voted for, let's put it that way.That is so sad to hear.Oh, it's so sad. That is really bad.One thing I think a lot about is I feel like Republicans are better storytellers than we are and they don't think we give them enough credit for that because I think you can be a millionaire someday is a version of a story and I think they understand their audience really well of what is going to connect with the amygdala, is that the lizard brain? I don't know. We don't need to Google it. But in any case, I think they understand that storytelling really well and they bang that drum. And I think I am persuaded by be a better person, get in for your community, we're all in this together, we got to make a sacrifice for the fight, that resonates to me but there's a lot of people that it doesn't resonate with them.And I think we need to be more creative to find different ways to tell these stories about how we make a better America that have a broader appeal and understand that not everyone is persuaded by let's all pitch in together, which is a really important message. We do actually all need to pitch in together but that can't be the only way we're talking about taxing the rich or climate change or health care, we can just be more creative. And, I mean, that is certainly what I'm hoping to do, again, in my small corner of Florida 15, is thinking about messaging in that way and trying to get through to people in a way that is different than has previously been done.So one of the last things I wanted to ask about was policies. What issues are you passionate about? What issues do you think your district is passionate about?Well, I mean, I like many folks, I mean, it's not just necessarily our age group but definitely folks in our age group are just so distraught about is climate change. And we have passed the point of getting out of this thing without doing any damage and now it's like, we still have so much to do to mitigate and to avoid the worst of the worst, so that is absolutely top of mind for me. Another one is, finding a way to get to universal healthcare. My mom was a doctor and I remember when I was young and we talked about this issue, I was maybe 15 or 16, and there were other problems about I think reimbursements rates or something. I was talking to her about some specific thing and she's like, the way to fix this is just to get everyone covered, we just need a system that covers everyone.And so I'm not dictatorial about what that needs to look like, I think there's a number of ways of getting there but we have to do something about it, whether it is Medicare expansion, whether it is a public option. I think Medicare for all is great but if it's Medicare for all or nothing then we might be waiting a long f*****g time to get everyone covered. So yeah, so those are two. And I'm a member of a union and so good jobs is something I do think about and seeing stories about the gig economy and, I keep thinking about the DoorDash story about taking tips out of, I forget exactly what it was, but it's a way of screwing the workers out of their tips. And the bar just continues to lower in our economy of what a job looks like and what it should look like and so I want to be able to help push that back in the other direction.Yeah. I mean, that makes total sense. And the gig economy creates all sorts of issues when it comes to who's an employee, who's whatnot. Speaking of DoorDash I was thinking about when New York flooded recently and there was an image of someone trying to ride their bicycle through two and a half feet of sewage water-Yes. I saw that.... with the DoorDash thing. And someone reported out a story on that and it was afterward, they were like, “This was the worst night of my life and I made a $100” or something that, something ridiculous. And it's just, I don't know, there's always been this idea that the higher paying job, the more work you're doing, but I've found the exact opposite to be true. I mean, the hardest jobs I've ever had have been minimum wage jobs, the easiest jobs I've had are the ones that pay better. A lot of people like to feel like they're earning their living which is great and fine, but they look down upon people who do DoorDash and people who work at McDonald's or whatever, and it's just wrong. What we should do in my opinion, is to make sure that we're taking care of everyone no matter what their job is and make sure they have safe conditions. And here I am talking like a candidate, whoops.Well, anyway, we have this-Now just watch, I'm going to move down to Florida 15 and take you on.... we have this moment during the pandemic in which, I mean, we are obviously still in, but at the beginning of the pandemic where we were like, oh my God, essential workers, thank goodness for these folks who are out there whether it's delivering groceries or whatever, just realize like, oh, these folks are so important and then we just kind of forgot it. And then we're like, oh, we're going to take away your hazard pay and all these extra protections and bonuses we gave you we're going to start to roll them back, and it's so maddening.Yeah. I mean, it absolutely is. Just the same thing where we had all those commercials for a while that were, “In these unprecedented times, blah, blah,” basically this “we're all in it together” kind of messaging but then that sort of faded by last summer, yeah, summer 2020 and then after that it was just sort of like, “Screw you! buy a Lexus!”Actually, I tested that messaging and it failed but I was thinking about “Screw you, Geller! Buy a Lexus!”“Screw you, vote Geller,” I think it works. And on that note, thank you, Eddie Geller.Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me Parker, this was a delight. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

This week on The Present Age Podcast, I chat with Franchesca Ramsey. You may know her from her YouTube videos, her time on Comedy Central’s Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, her web series MTV Decoded, the recent iCarly reboot, NBC’s Superstore, or even a Maroon 5 video.Parker Molloy: Hey, Franchesca, how's it going?Franchesca Ramsey: Hi Parker. I feel like the standard answer is it's going good, but the realistic answer is taking it day by day.Yeah, it's a challenge.It is a time. It's a time, but we're here we are doing the best that we can. I'm trying to hold on to the fact that I'm healthy and I'm working and I'm working on stuff that I'm excited about, so those are the things that are getting me through.Yeah. And when did you move? Because you said you're out west now, right?Yeah. I'm in L.A. I had such a strange journey here. I technically was here in September working on Superstore for three months, but I still had an apartment in New York, so I was subletting an apartment here for three months. Then I signed a lease, went back to New York, packed my apartment, and then physically moved everything here on December 1st. So technically I've been here a year, but I'm counting December as my full anniversary in Los Angeles.Cool. Well, congratulations on the move.Thank you.And also, and so here's kind of the funny thing with Superstore, I watched Superstore since the first episode.Oh wow.And then I didn't see that you had posted online that you were, pardon me, I'm just at home watching, and I was like, okay, cool. And I'm like, wait, hold on. I know her. We worked together.That's so funny. A number of people said that. I mean, social media is so strange because sometimes it feels like you're getting all the updates from someone, and then suddenly you get none and you realize like, oh, this person's just not in my feed anymore and I'm not sure why. I've been taking a lot of extended social media breaks and I took a big one right when I booked Superstore. So I wasn't even online for a while. I don't hold it against anyone if they're not up to date with what's happening in my life.It was a pleasant surprise! You were great on that show!Thank you.One thing I like about the show is it really seemed to show...it was a very labor-focused, it shows from the worker's perspective talking about unions and stuff. That's not something you see on TV much.I think a lot of times so many shows you can see the transition when the people making the show start making lots of money, become very out of touch, and you see it with celebrities too, where either their stand up or their Instagram posts or their interviews are really about normal people s**t. And then there's like this moment where they become celebrities and that happens in TV shows too. And with Superstore, it was very much the opposite. It really felt like, oh right, the people that are working on the show have worked in retail, they know what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck. They know what it's like dealing with customers. And that's why the show, I think really spoke to a lot of people because it just felt really real.Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And that was one of the coolest aspects of it because you always have shows like Friends where people are working these kinds of low-wage jobs, but then are living in these fancy apartments.Beautiful apartments while working at a coffee shopWell then you'd have like on Superstore, it'd be oh, someone is sleeping in the tunnel under the stores, something like that where it's just, that's more realistic, I guess. But, yeah, that was cool. And I mean, you've done so much. You had a really big YouTube following for a long time, and then had your own MTV web series.Yes, which Parker wrote for, yes!Yes!So many episodes, Parker.Thank you.You turn those around and it was so delightful that I got to work with you again.That was so much fun. Yeah. It really was.It was really great. I just had to hype you up because... I always showed up that you worked on that show, but I think people don't know, it really does take a village. It's not just me.Yeah and I mean, and the thing I appreciated about that is I've wanted to write TV for a while, and that was a nice opportunity to really kind of get into that sort of quick writing scripts and stuff. So I really appreciated that opportunity when you offered it to me.No, cool. So great to work with you!But yeah. And then you worked on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, which got canceled far too soon.Yeah.You wrote a book, you made a pilot for Comedy Central. I already mentioned Superstore. You worked on iCarly reboot. And you were in a Maroon 5 music video with Ilhan Omar.Oh my God. Yes. Before everybody knew who she was. I mean, it's just, yes. Well, I have done all of those things!You're done a lot of stuff. So what are you up to now? Like, work-wise, what are you doing?I'm writing on Yearly Departed again...Oh great!On Amazon, which is the end of the year comedy special. And it was so wild because it was the first thing, the first job that I had during the pandemic.So it was a remote writers' room. There was no vaccine when we shot that. So it was stressful going to set and getting tested all the time. And this was a time when the rat rapid tests weren't really available. So you had to go get tested like five days before that. And then you had to come a day before and get there super early. And it was just like a whole process.So this time around things are a lot different. We're actually going to have an audience this year. My mom is going to come and sit in the audience, which is going to be really fun. So I'm working on that.And then I sold a pilot to a streaming service. I sold two pilots. So I won't say who they are because I hope they're listening and they're like, oh, she's talking about no week. She's talking about us. Yeah. Pit you all against each other. So I am like racking my brain right now. I'm trying to hit my deadlines, which is not fun, but I'm making it work. And yeah, that's it, that's it.Your average person is doing like a little bit, a little bit of everything. You’re doing four, five people's worth of work, that sort of stuff.I’m an overachiever, but here's the thing is I realized that I thrive when I'm busy and that I will complain the whole time, but if I'm not busy, I will complain because I'm bored. So I would rather be busy than bored is the thing that I've been saying to myself.That's a good point. I think that I kind of have that, that same issue, but I ended up convincing myself that it's better to be bored.There is power in taking time off, and I'm actually kind of juggling all of these projects and a big part of why I've taken on lots of things is especially in an industry like television, where so much is out of my control. I find that it's better to have multiple things in development so that when, and if one thing does not come through that my whole world doesn't fall apart.So I'm right now looking at all the things I have in development, what's most important to me, what am I okay with if it falls apart and also what will I do in the event that nothing goes.And so a part of me is kind of like, I hope these things happen, but if they don't, I'm kind of, because I had to take some time off. I might just take the end of the year and just not do anything, which I have not done in a long time.Yeah. Yeah. And it is nice to take a break. And that was one thing that I, when I first started doing this the podcast and also the newsletter that I was with, I quit my job in June and was just, I'm just going to kind of dive into this and hope for the best. And it's scary, but I'm trying.Yeah. But I think a lot of people did that this year. It either, they were forced to do it because their job ended or they needed to move back home or their living situation shifted in whatever way.But I think also it's just been a huge time of reflection where people are saying like, I could die. Do I want to do this thing that I'm putting all this time and energy into? Isn't making me happy. Is it paying my bills? Is it contributing to the world? Or whatever your priorities are. And so it's really brave to say, well, this isn't working out for me and I'm just not going to do it. And if things need to change, you can go back and get another job.Yeah. Well, exactly and hope for the best. It's not like working in media was, is particularly stable. Anyways. It's not I was leaving some super stable job that I know will be there 20 years from now. it's entirely possible. I could have gotten laid off two months later anyway. So I might as well be something that I like.Yeah, It's true.But one thing I kind of wanted to talk to you about is back when you were on YouTube a lot and also I do appreciate that, your, the most recent YouTube video you uploaded was from like a couple of years ago.Yeah, I don't do YouTube videos anymore.Yeah. And it's just you and Michelle Obama, here I am just me and Michelle just chilling here and then, “I'm not going to update anymore.” That is such a perfect flex.Oh, that's so funny. I didn't think about it that way, but yes my last video is myself and Michelle Obama.But one thing, one thing that sort of happened when you were really putting a lot of time into YouTube was you got a lot of...you kind of were one of like the early targets of those response videos, which for people who aren't really familiar, first off, you're lucky. But second, it's like, there's this whole genre of video where someone will just watch someone else's YouTube video and then offer their commentary or to debunk in argument or however they try to frame it. But I mean, in your case, it was just someone, it was kind of a lot of people just being really mean and racist and...Oh, yes.Which is awful.Yeah. It was a perfect storm. I mean, the internet has changed so much since I started creating content. And it seems like it just gets faster and faster, but in many ways, Decoded, and what I was doing before Decoded was really new.People were not talking about social justice, the way that we talk about it now, I kind of stumbled into it. And that's really what my book is about that I accidentally started these conversations about race and privilege and microaggressions truly without any knowledge beyond my own personal life experience. And I don't regret it. I'm glad that I did it. But at the time I really felt like I was on an island making this content and not getting support.And so when my content started taking off, a number of people realized, oh, I can just react to this and piggyback off of the views and saying incendiary things will always get you views just saying something heinous, even if you don't believe it, because honestly, I'm not sure some of these people even really believe the stuff they're saying, not that that excuses it, but just say something wild or racist or sexist or transphobic or whatever, and you will rack up views.So a lot of people did that. I paid a lot of people's rent for many years.Yeah, you did.I don't know what they're doing now. A lot of them are “pivoting” quote-unquote, and are now “liberal” quote-unquote, I clocked it. But, it's one of those things that if you haven't been through it, it's so hard to understand. And no one who hasn't been through it really knows how to support you when it's happening. But I got through it and a big part of my reasoning for leaving YouTube and just pivoting to other things was realizing I'm not happy doing this. The reward is not worth the risk to me. And I think there's a better use of my time and talents. And so that's what I've done. I'm so sorry about that. One other thing I wanted to talk to you about and ask about was that you are really great at taking these social media breaks and I have tried and I have failed. And I just want to know is there anything specific that you do that, that helps you not check Twitter or whatnot, again?Yeah. I have a whole strategy. I take all the apps off of my phone and I don't just log out of them. Like I delete the app off of my phone. I log out on my desktop. I enable my parental controls and I put on my parental controls, all of my social media of choice. So Instagram, Twitter, I even put some gossip sites that I, I love celebrity gossip. I don't indulge the way that I used to, but I just like to know what's going on. I put those on there and I just, I do that because even when I consciously decide I'm taking a social media break, it's just embedded into my daily routine that I wake up and I check Twitter.I don't even think about it anymore. I'm just, oh yeah, I'll just check Twitter. And if it's not there, if my popup on my desktop says, this site is blocked. I can remember, oh right, I'm not doing that right now. And I usually set a time limit for myself. I don't just arbitrarily pick a date, I say, okay, I have a script that's due, or we're going into production or it's pilot season or something like that, I'm going to take off for two months. I'm just not going to do it. And I think I'm trying to prime myself to eventually quit social media full-time. I'm just not there yet, but oh, I want it so bad to taste it.Well, one of the reasons that I personally struggled to take these breaks and keep these breaks and all of that is just the fact that I worry if I'm not on social media, that I'm missing out on an opportunity or that I am just missing out on anything. I mean, but especially when it comes to work-related stuff, I...You need to know. You need to know what's happening in the world, especially if your job is to quote-unquote “report” on it or react to it or commenting on it or whatever. I totally get it. That has been a big part of the reason that I haven't been able to quit.Social media does not pay my bills the way that it used to, but it pays a few. There's a few. And so, sometimes I'm like, Ooh, should I take this brand deal? Should I take this? Whatever it is. And a lot of it comes through social media. Yeah. So I get it. It is really hard, but that is one of the conscious choices that I've been moving towards is making sure that I don't rely on social media for income and just bring it full circle.A number of people made their careers off of talking about me, right? And then when I wasn't there anymore, they were fucked. So I sometimes I check on people just I really wonder what that person is doing. And I realized that their channel is tanked. Why? Because they built a brand off of what somebody else is doing. So I looked at my career and I said, “If Twitter went away tomorrow, would I be fucked the same way that when Vine went away?” there were a lot of people that were, that they were in trouble, when there was talk about TikTok no longer existing there were people who were freaking out because they had put everything into TikTok.And I told myself, I never want to be in that position. Social media has been really good to me. I love it and I hate it, but I don't want to be handcuffed to it. And so I've been weaning myself off. So I think if that's something that you want to work towards, it's really trying to find opportunities off social media so that you've got a little diversity in your streams of income, but also in your entertainment and how you connect with people. The internet has been fantastic, but it can't be for me, the be all end all is it's, it's just not healthy for me.Right. And there's another level of challenge to it when everything is in this pandemic and you're kind of, everyone's kind of cooped up in their own little spaces.And that's what Clubhouse was popping up. People were lonely, people on Clubhouse falling asleep because they were just like “I need to talk to people.”Yeah. A social media network that's created … conference calls.Oh my god.People are sitting there willingly dialing into conferences.So I didn't even think about that. We hated conference calls so much and then people were selling their access to Clubhouse on eBay. Will you spend a thousand dollars for a Clubhouse invite to be on a freaking conference call? That's so funny. Yeah.Well, and then obviously, as it goes with social media, every other company was quick to create their own version, now Twitter has its own spaces. I think that...Twitter has, I've never used it before, but.I like it. I listened to someone in there and I like it better than clubhouse because it transcribes what's being said in like super fast, it's not perfectly accurate as those types of things are, but I was just reading a conversation as it was going. And it was cool. And I was this is cool. This is what was missing from Clubhouse.Yes. Absolutely. Accessibility.Yeah. And that's another thing I tried with this podcast is, I either find the time to transcribe the whole thing, or, which is 99% of the time, I send it to one of those transcription services. The charge is like a dollar a minute and I'm like, it's worth the 30 bucks to...Franchesca Ramsey:Yeah this is write-off too, I mean, it's for work.But yeah, when doing that, I've talked to so many people who were like, I don't listen to podcasts, but I really appreciate that this is accessible. Not just, not even just for people who need to read things, but just people who don't want to listen. Which is fair.Yeah or you're multitasking. I am a chronic multi-tasker. And so being able to read the captions on a video when I'm supposed to be doing something else. Is really, really helpful. So I get it. I can only assume that other people are doing that with podcasts.Yeah. It's a lot easier to sneakily read something on your phone than to listen to the podcast or watch a video, but...Absolutely.Yeah. And so as you were kind of saying when, with trying to wean yourself off of social media and thinking about the question of how screwed am I if Twitter shut down today or something like that. It's, that's kind of what went through my head before I quit my job, because for some reason I succeed on Twitter and don't succeed out of it.I know why you succeed, because you're a good writer. And because you're smart.I'm not good on Facebook or...They're all different skillsets, that's why, because it's so funny because you and I met through Upworthy...I always tell people how weird that was of a fit, that was for me, if they're like “Upworthy? The place to post happy things?” I'm like, “Yes, I know. Right. Yeah.” It wasn't always happy.Okay. But it wasn't always happy things and...But It's what people associate it with.Yes, but you and I specifically, I think we honed our voices at Upworthy and kind of like changed the culture of what Upworthy was doing because it was just fluffy. A son says something to his mother and you'll never believe dah, dah, dah, whatever. But like we started doing things that were kind of pushing people to think differently about race and gender issues and things that the platform wasn't doing before.But to that point, the way that we had to learn how to shape our voices was very specific to Facebook. What was it called? the information gap or...The curiosity gap.The curiosity gap, right? Facebook really lends itself to these long personal inviting topics and conversations that you like want to engage in, where Twitter is more like a bullhorn. It was like, listen up, I have something to say.Yeah. And that's fair, that's a fair point about like the differences between those two. And another thing on Upworthy, that sort of, that sticks with me to this day is the fact that Facebook give, if Facebook can take it away.I mean, it's, listen, it's all connected. Look at what happened to Upworthy.It’s not that the content changed.No, it's definitely it's Facebook changed. Facebook changed.And then they tried to change the content to match Facebook, which to match what they thought Facebook wanted, which...You can't predict what Facebook is going to do. And that's why I think it's really smart, but so many people are pivoting to newsletters, right? Where they like...It's your mailing list.I want to have access to my fans or my audience. I want to connect with them directly. I want to go right to their inbox. I don't want to have to rely on, I mean, I've seen it too many times where people are like, I never see your Facebook post in my feed. And I'm well, I can't control that. I don't know why.Yeah. That is one of the frustrating things to watch. And in the few years that, because after I left, after Upworthy, I went on to work at Media Matters, this progressive media watchdog, where basically it was like watching a lot of Fox News and stuff like that, where the whole time they would on Fox and on all these other right-wing kind of sites they would complain about tech bias. They would say it's against conservatives.It's happening to everyone.But they would do it so constantly that you could tell when Facebook would kind of start just artificially, like boosting some of these pages. And so now if you look at the top pages on Facebook, it's Ben Shapiro, Breitbart, all of these right-wing goodness.It's the same thing that I was talking about on YouTube though. It is chasing rage clicks. Like Upworthy, we talked a lot about empathy and heartwarming and feel good, that's what's making people share.Those outlets are relying on people sharing because they're mad and you can be mad on both sides of the issue, right? You can be, I agree with this and I'm pissed off about it or you're this is b******t and I don't like it now I'm going to share it to tell everybody how much b******t it is.And both of those are very profitable for them. People don't share, we are more vocal about things that we hate and I'm guilty of this too. The things that we love, it goes on Yelp and it's, this salad was amazing. No, they're like the salad had a rat in it, burns places look great.Yeah. I mean that's totally it. I remember when I was in college, someone was, one of my teachers was talking about that, just being something just expect a 10 to one negative to positive experience kind of what drives you to respond to something and l kind of think about that in shaping writing and stuff like that, because you want people to respond, but I don't want to make people angry.And that's why I think that, I feel, I every once in a while, I think about the fact that if I wanted to, I could, because there's nothing that people, that the algorithms in, all of these, on all of these platforms love more than people who will advocate against their own rights. Or if I was a trans person who was saying, “Oh, I shouldn't be allowed to use any public restrooms. And here's why,” I would become, I would get to...We had examples of that, right? People love, they're called a “pick me, pick me, pick me.” They love a pick me. They love a token. I mean, there is, I get people a lot of times I ask how do you go viral? how do you do it? And there's not really like a trick to it, but there is a recipe that the internet and the algorithm likes, it likes hot girls, it likes cute babies, it likes cute animals, it likes weird-looking animals.As we both have our dogs.So we both have terrier dogs.Both cute and weird looking.Very cute and weird looking, the internet loves them, but it also favors outrage, anger and things that are surprising. And again, the surprising element was what Upworthy was really good at. But if you are a marginalized person saying something that people don't expect, you're going to blow up because people are going to be mad that you said it, people are going to be like "finally someone said it." It's going to be a bunch of people that are just like so confused. Is this a bit, is this like that Christian Walker guyYeah.Oh, been like, “Isn't this a performance? This gay black man is seeing, he doesn't like gay people and he doesn't like black people. This is real?”Yeah. It's like, “What is this guy?” and at first I was, “Oh, he's probably, maybe he's just doing this making cash, making a lot of money.”I think it's maybe a little of both.I mean, but also his dad is a former professional football player who is now running for Senate in Georgia, so.Yeah. I mean, again, I think it is a little bit of both. I think he, maybe he does believe some of it, but I also realize that he is embellishing a lot. Like he's always in a Starbucks drive-thru doing these rants and ordering, he's always, "hey, look, blah, blah, blah" and then he will stop and order his frappuccino. And I'm like, you're doing a bit, you're doing a bit, he knows that is ridiculous. And he knows that people are going to think it's cringy, but they're also going to think it's hilarious because, but he's doing that on purpose.And people who agree with him will share it because they agree with him. And here is the, this is the thing I'm trying to dial back on is sharing content that I disagree with to say how bad it is and that is...Look, I am guilty of it too. Like, it is a hard line because ultimately you are preaching to the choir. People who believe that terrible thing are not going to be swayed by you sharing it.…And explaining why such and such thing is wrong. And then the algorithms, the social media platforms, they see that something's being shared and they're like, guess people like it, like to them a share as a share and it's all the same. And I try to think about that one.It's totally true. It's totally true. I really have tried to kind of move away from like education forward. Like the types of stuff I was doing it to code it or Upworthy or even Nightly Show, which was still a lot of like infotainment and be more comedy forward, just because I think that it personally is less taxing for me.I'd rather make people laugh than just straight-up lecture them. So that's kind of been my personal compromise and also picking my battles. Sometimes I have nothing to say that someone else hasn't already said, so I'd rather just share something someone else's said rather than add my voice to the chorus. That's just saying the same thing.So if I have a fresh take, then I'm more likely to share it. Not because I think I'm going to change the perspective of the misogynist, but hopefully arm my audience with the information so that they're better prepared for these conversations or so that they can be better informed about the issues and really know what's on the line and what we're fighting for rather than I'm not going to, we're not going to change the minds of bigots, especially not on social media. It's just...It could happen, but it's highly unlikely.I used to try to justify arguing with people online by going well, I'm not really arguing with this person. I'm arguing for the sake of others.I believe that can be true.Sometimes it can work, but...Sometimes.Sometimes it doesn't.Yeah, but sometimes it doesn't and you know what? I have gotten to a place in my life where I am, I'm not going to dunk on myself because sometimes I've done shitty things, I'm human and yes, sometimes I'm having a bad day and somebody harms them and mention and says something racist and then like, you got to learn to think, motherfucker. I'm going to like clap back. I'm going to clap back and guess what? It's going to make me feel good in the moment and that's what I needed today.There's a pandemic. I have enough s**t on my plate, If I get a little serotonin boost from this thing, to me I'm like, it's fine. Right? The internet moves so fast, this person, they're troll, they don't care, they're, we all win, right? They got my attention, I got to dunk on them, a few people got to laugh and then I move on. So, I do think that there is value in it too, because there are people who will reach out and say I was having a terrible day. And then you said this funny thing, and it really made me laugh. And I'm like, okay, cool, great.Every time I get a nice email, it's always like, I'm sure you get a ton of emails saying that people like your stuff, no, I don't get anywhere near it. I remember every specific one that I get because, because I do get lots of emails from people, but they're usually from people who are very angry about some, it's so that's one thing that I try to do a little more of is reach out and tell someone, I really liked this article, or I really liked this video you did, or I'm your, I appreciate your work because it helped me do something.Oh my gosh. I love that. I try to do that too. It's funny because strangely enough, when I'm having a bad day is when I like to do that, I'll randomly go on Twitter and just say like, if you're having a bad day or you need support tweet me and I'll sign up in your DMS and I'll just spend an hour going in people's DMS and being like, you're amazing. I know you're upset about losing your job, but f**k those guys, you can get another job. And then they're like, thank you, this helps me so much and I'm, you being appreciative that I did this for you is as great for me as it is for you.I mean, and that's, that's I think maybe is the lesson Fitbit. If social media was just a little more, if the way our attention worked was that we could get more attention by saying positive things and not necessarily trying to be extreme or surprise people that, that maybe the world would be slightly better place, but that's not the world.I also, I forgot who I saw say this, so I'm not taking credit for it. But I saw something that was just saying that as humans, we were never meant to be able to communicate with this many people at one time, it's completely unnatural to, from your phone, speak to hundreds of thousands, If not millions of people, it's just, it's not the way things are supposed to be done. And so of course there are going to be consequences. There's a lot of positive too, but there's a ton of consequences that come from it. And so yeah, these networks and platforms are just capitalizing off of it because they don't care about our wellbeing. They care about selling ads, keeping the lights on. So they're going to chase what works and what works is people being upset and mean and terrible.Well, before we go, is there anything else you want to mention or you want to plug or...No, all of my stuff is still like in that percolating stage, but I will say at like at the moment of warm, fuzzy, cause we've talked about this negative stuff. I do appreciate that the internet has brought some really great people into my life. And I count you as one of those people, even if we don't get to talk all the time, I appreciate your voice so much on Twitter and just the fact that we've been able to stay in contact and find different ways to work together. And I'm hoping that we'll continue to keep doing that and that kind of gives me hope that the internet can be a really positive place. It's not all doom and gloom.Well, thank you. I mean, and that's, there are a lot of times when a project will end or something and I'll be, “Yeah, hopefully, we can work together again sometime. And maybe I mean it, it just kind of like I know we won't.”A thing that people say.Yeah. But when, I remember when you left Upworthy, because you, I think we both kind of had the same attitude about Upworthy, which wasn't that bad. It was like, it's a job. It is what it is. When you left, it was, I hope we can work together on something moving forward.And we've been able to do that a few times. So I'm always happy when that is, that is the case. And I really appreciate your work. You are always the person I, you are someone I look up to immensely, so.That's really sweet. I really appreciate you saying that, Parker!Thanks! 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Welcome to another episode of The Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on this week’s episode is writer and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast.Parker Molloy: Oh, hello, Molly! Molly Jong-Fast: Hi, Parker. It's so fun to get to meet you!Yeah, I know! We followed each other on Twitter for, what? Four or five years or something?I don't know. It feels my entire life, but I know it's not.Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just the past several years have been a lot. So, but yeah, this is the first time we're actually talking and seeing each other. That's right. The people listening cannot see us, but…No, but we exist. Yeah.So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me for this, for my fledgling little podcast. Oh, I'm honored. It is nothing compared to yours, I'm sure.I mean, I would say, the thing with podcasts is you just, you do it. And then people, I mean, unless you have the suspension of disbelief, then you can't do ... you know what I mean? So just, why won't it be fabulously successful?Yeah. It'll be great. It'll be great. Well, so basically with this, so I started, I made the decision to leave my old job and start writing a newsletter, which we'll see how that works out. And then-Bari Weiss is making $8 million a year.I am not making $8 million a year.Honestly, how is she making ... She's not. She's making ... supposedly what the reporting was $800,000, but I was like, "It's possible."It's possible. I do not doubt for a second that there are people making millions of dollars a year with Substacks. But I am not at that point.Me neither, but yeah. But yeah. So when doing that, I was just like, "What else can I do?" And one of the people at Substack who they run my website or not run it, but power it, they were like, "Well, we just added podcasts." And I was like, "That's cool. That's an interesting idea." It's my way of doing podcasts without having to dive too far into it. So here I am trying a podcast, but one thing I always tried to do is I tried to get a transcript of every episode made in full, which is either extremely time-consuming or very expensive, but I think it's worth it.I mean, transcription services are my nemesis and you will see why when you transcribe me, because I have one vocal cord. So I sound very weird. And then I have all sorts of weird affectations that are not necessarily fancy. Some of them are just saying “like” or verbal ticks. And so I come off ... You'll see.Okay, we'll see. I'll send this through the service and we'll see how it goes. But yeah. So when I invited you on, I was just like, "I'm sure she'll write something amazing that I will then be able to be like, 'Yes, let's talk about that.'" So luckily for me, you did, you did recently write something amazing.Oh, thank you.So I want to talk about your new piece for Vogue that's titled, “What our new age of pandemic anxiety looks like and how to deal with it.” Is that okay with you?Yes.Awesome.I am like, this is a topic that I am so well-versed on, I hate how well versed I am.Oh, same, same, which is the thing. So I really related to it, especially in this idea of health anxiety, which isn't actually a term that I've heard before, which you described as the conviction that even though you don't have any symptoms you know deep down that you're sick, and that is just me to a freaking T. Can you talk a bit about your experiences with that?Please. So I had an interesting, I had ... a very anxious, I was very anxious always in my life. And my aunt told me once that my grandmother had said, "I am not religious. I am just profoundly superstitious," which I feel points to a family that has long suffered from anxiety. And I always think you don't get to be the Jews who left Europe in the 1800s without being very stressed. Because not only were you ... you were like, "We're out of here. They're going to murder us." And a lot of my ... on my grandmother's side, I had great grandfathers who had died in the pogroms, and so I do feel like really, the anxious people got out early and because they were like, "We're all going to get murdered." So in some ways it was a good adaptation, right? Anxiety. It saved all our lives. I see a kid here.The kids have no ... they come in and come out. Teenagers. But so in some ways it was good. My grandmother was like, she had worry bagels. She had worry fish. She had when you got on an airplane, you got on with your right foot, you knocked on the side of the plane three times and you got ... right? So I am coming from a very crazy bunch of people. And growing up I traveled a lot with my mother. She would always be crossing herself. I mean, we're Jews, but crossing herself, we get on an airplane, praying, rosary beads, was raised by a Catholic nanny who had lots of rosaries. I had rosary beads on my bed. The craziest stuff in the world.So when I got to be about early thirties, so I had always been very neurotic and I went through a period where I didn't fly, which was complete ... people were like, "What are you in lunatic?" And I was like, "No way." I mean, yes and no. So, but then when I got to my early thirties, I had this best friend who, she was like all of us a complicated person, but she had ... and she had this terrible story where her mother had gotten murdered and then her husband had divorced her. And it just been this terrible story. And then she had gotten this brain tumor. And as soon as she got it, we sort of knew it was like ... I mean, brain tumors already, you don't want one. And this was like the worst one. And it just ... So for a year and a half, she fought and fought and fought and fought, and it was the worst thing I've ever seen. She died right after she turned 40. She was on a walker. I mean, it just was, she couldn't talk. I mean, it was just awful. And basically, the minute she died, I was like, "I have one too." And it was because I just couldn't process that this could happen and that this is just the way life is sometimes, and so I became obsessed that I had one too. So I went down this road of health anxiety. It's funny because if you look at the statistics, it's 5% of all ... it's about half of all anxious people suffer from health anxiety. And if you think about it, so the statistics are 10% of the American public suffer from anxiety.I can't imagine it's that low. I mean, if it is then everyone I know is in that 10%, you know what I mean? And so I went through a period of being convinced that I just needed one more scan. I just needed one more of this. I just needed one more of that. If we could just get through this. Also, during that time I got a melanoma on my back, and it was a zero stage. It was fine. They caught it very early, but that also triggered my ... I was in my mid-thirties, and I said to my dermatologist, I was like, "I can't believe this happened to me." And she was like, "You're totally pale. You grew up in that generation that never used sunblock. And you're 33. I can't believe you didn't have a 10 years ago."But that was good for me because I get stuck in my own head in a very kind of ugly way, so to be able to get someone who says stuff, "Come on, man," to quote Joe Biden, is very helpful for me. So I got the melanoma taken out. I'm very careful about getting a check, but yeah. So it's interesting too, so that was how I got into it. I hope I answered the question.Absolutely. Okay, good.Absolutely. It's just something that I really relate to. And just at the beginning of the pandemic, I used to joke around to myself that this was kind of my Bain in the Dark Knight Rises moment. By that point, I'd been working from home for several years. I was like, "Oh, you're worried about catching a deadly virus every single time you step outside? Welcome to the club." And part of why I kind of struggled so much with health anxiety is that deep down I know that there will come a day where my worries aren't unfounded, where I really am sick, where I really will get worse and where I really will die. And that sort of this idea that floats through my head constantly. You always get better until one time you don't.But the thing that I learned a lot from a lot ... I stopped going to regular therapy and I got this behavioral as to really focuses just on anxiety. And most of his patients are either flying or health or agoraphobia or something. And the thing that he always says is, "With anxiety, it's the inability to live with uncertainty."Ooh. Yeah. That's an interesting way to kind of think about it. And that is again, tragically relatable for me because it's this, I don't know. And I feel I have worked in the wrong industry to have this sort of feeling because I was ... a lot of that kind of carried over to fears of things like getting fired or being laid off and not being able to pay my bills. For instance, I used to sort of worry that I was constantly on the verge of losing my job and then I would convince myself, "Oh no, it's all just in my head. I need to overcome this, and watch, everything will be fine." And it usually is until one time it isn't fine. And one time I did get laid off at a job that was just downsizing.And then I had another job where they laid off a bunch of people and I kept making the cut, and then finally one surge of layoffs I did not. And these things rather than see them as rare occurrences that we just sort of have to deal with and roll with, I kind of kept ... the negative things would reinforce all of my bad habits and all of my bad thoughts. And that was kind of something that sort of played into it with the pandemic, especially as a plays out. Because when in early 2020, there was ... remember back when they were like, "Don't buy masks. You're fine. You don't need masks." And then I went in, decided, I was like, "Screw them. They're lying to us, I'm getting all the masks I can." Which I know that's not helpful. I know that only fuels the toilet paper shortage stuff that we had going on. But I also had a lot of toilet paper because I was "No, screw you guys. You're not telling us the truth." I'm very distrustful of the government generally.Yeah. Well, the toilet paper was a good call because we couldn't get toilet paper. I mean, it was just ... but I would say the cycle ... so one of the things that was problematic for me was that I was in a cycle of reassurance seeking. So I wanted to know that everything was going to be okay and that we were going to be okay. And that you were going to ... that the turbulence didn't mean the plane would crash or ... and what I had to do for me, and I even got into it with my shrink and he was like, "Stop it. I'm not going to reassure you. I am not going to text you back," which is that I had to say it's not that ... even the question of, “Is it going to be okay?” is problematic.I don't need to answer questions. I have thoughts that are going to come into my head that are going to be like, "Will I be laid off?" And I just say, "That is an anxious thought, this is part of my anxiety." You know what I mean? And just, but I don't fight it. I mean, because that's the problem is if you fight it, it gets worse. So I don't fight it. I just merely ... wait, hold on. I got a dog here. I just merely ... here we go. This is Leo.Hello, Leo!Let the record reflect that a very adorable rescue puppy has come into the chat. How is your guy?Oh, he's great. He's currently at the dog park.He's so cute. Yeah. He's just the best. He's tiny and adorable. I feel like he'd be easy friends with Leo.Oh yeah. No, they would love each other. But yeah. So yeah, so to not engage with the thoughts, but not to fight them, which is very hard because even now still a long time later, I want to fix my thoughts or I want to fight with them. I want to say, "That's not true." And the more I can just see the thought, not engage with it. Just be like, "This is the anxious thought." It's an unwinnable proposition because we don't know what the future is going to look like. We don't even know if they're going to be jobs. We could all be Substack millionaires. Yeah. We could.Yeah. Like Bari Weiss.And maybe someday I will. Who knows.Right. I mean, so yeah. So the idea that you can't win a thought.Well, and that's a great point. I mean, because I ... so going into the ... right before the 2016 election I was working at Upworthy at the time, which was a very weird, weird fit for me, but it was fine. And there was someone, one of my coworkers was just, his whole thing was he set up a slack channel and was just like, "Go in here and I will reassure you about the election. I know everyone's worried that Trump's going to win, but let me reassure you. He won't, he won't. It's fine. It's fine. Don't worry. Look, here's what the odds show."And he would even point at 538 or something, and then election night happened and it was like, "How could this happen? We've been reassured repeatedly." And that's the thing it's like we can't be sure of anything in the world. And I feel like this need to be reassured probably does contribute to it. And your piece really hit that point home in a way for me that I haven't been able to kind of ... I hadn't been able to kind of come up with on my own before reading it. So that's why I really enjoyed that.Oh, thank you. And I spend a lot of time thinking about anxiety because it's such a root of my life and my mother's and my children. There's just a long ... So I really do find it ... I don't know. I relate to the struggle with it and I just think about it a lot. So the other thing I would say that I ... just about the 2016 election was I was at an election watching party and I was watching the needle go from blue to red. And I was like, it felt turbulence on an airplane. I had that same feeling of we're going through extreme turbulence, all flight attendants sit.I was like, "Oh," I felt it in my chest. And I couldn't. And usually, I don't have that feeling unless I'm at a doctor's office and they're like, "We're going to want to biopsy this," or something. But and I couldn't ... it was the first time in my life where I thought, "Oh my God, this election." Because you know, Mitt Romney. I mean, no one likes Mitt Romney, but he wasn't going to arrest all Mexicans. And it was the first time in my life where I thought, "Oh, s**t."Yeah. I mean, I had kind of the same sort of idea. I was never one of those people who was very like, "Oh, Trump can't win. He won't win." I always think the worst possible thing that can happen will happen. So going into election night, I was like, "He's so going to win. It's going to be terrible." I was not one of those overcome people. I was sitting there just shaking on edge waiting to see how it worked out, and after the 2020 election when everyone was celebrating and streets and stuff, I'm like, "He's still in office. Give it time. He might try to find a way to stay in there."I wrote a piece that went up at Media Matters the morning after the election, and it was basically, "Now watch, he's going to try to do something." And then they tried-And he did.So I was like, "This thing isn't over as much as we all want it to be," but…Yeah, he never ever, I mean, they got him out, but he never, ever was like, "Okay, I lost."Yeah, no. To this day he still talks about how he won. And I think he's going to run in 2024 and I think he might win, and if he wins after the past, after the four years of being out of power, he's going to be mad and it's not going to be-It's going to be terrible.It's not going to be okay.It's not going to be okay. That's right.I'm trying to take it day by day. And step-by-step and hoping that I'm not ... because there's nothing I can say or do that will change these outcomes. I mean, I may have my tiny little sphere of influence, but anyone who's listening to me is not a Trump voter. I've talked to people who have voted for Trump had constructive conversations because I think those things are important, but I don't think that those are people who take advice from me, which is kind of the challenge here. It kind of brings me to the one other thing I wanted to kind of talk to you about was that for a while you wrote some stuff at, was that The Dispatch or The Bulwark, or?The Bulwark!The Bulwark. I constantly confuse those. Yeah.You can't confuse the two, because The Bulwark is anti-Trump right. And The Dispatch is anti-Trump right. They're the same. Yeah.But at the same time, one thing that I found so interesting about your work there, your writing tended to have this very like someone who is to the left of their usual reader base, trying to kind of get in there and kind of explain where you're coming from and where a lot of people are coming from. And I think that that's extremely helpful stuff. It resulted in a lot of backlash from the pro-Trump folks.Oh, they were mad. I mean, I have never made anyone madder than when I tweeted about this. What's interesting is I come from such a bubble because remember I live in New York, I've always lived in New York, so when I went to CPAC and I heard this anti-choice thing, I was like, "These people are loony." I couldn't even believe. I was like, "This isn't pseudoscience. This is pseudo insane. These people are insane." And people were so mad at me. They were like, "How dare you be pro-choice." I was like, "You guys were ..." I didn't even know.I mean, I sort of knew this, but I don't have any friends who are anti-choice. I mean, it's a basic ... most of the population is pro-choice. I mean, with some caveats, but so when they were so upset about that, I was like, "You guys." And even, and what's interesting is at The Bulwark, and I love them. I'm friends with all of them to this day. I love them. And they're very, some of them are some of the smartest writers and thinkers, but a lot of them are pro-life or anti-choice. I mean, and a lot of them grew up Catholic and that's very something they learned when they were young and they're very attached to it.To me, it strikes me as just ... and it's funny because it's like, I never had an abortion and I never, but I never had strong ... but I did have this one kid who had this ... who we thought I was going to have to abort. And I wrote about this for The Journal, which got people crazy too. But before the Wall Street Journal opinion page lost his mind, which is about four years ago.But I talked about how I had this chance of having a baby that was going to die of this degenerative disease. And it was not even a question to me I would have an abortion. It's like, I'm not going to bring into the world a child that's going to die of a degenerative disease. Life is f*****g hard enough. And they were like, "It's eugenics." And I mean, so it is you're dealing ... and I mean, I'm sure you have you think about this too. It's like you're dealing with a group of people who have no sense of how any of this works.Yeah. I mean, that happens a lot, especially when it comes to trans issues, that's always fun when there are people who are like, "It should be illegal for trans people to get medication and stuff." And it's like, "Wait, why?"Yeah. And I honestly think trans issues, they're so obsessed with it because they were just, they think they can get their people excited about it. Yeah.Well, and that's ... I think it all kind of plays into that. And one of the things that ... I used to try to do more of this, which was just kind of be the like, "Hey, look, I'm the trans person, the big, scary trans person. I am not eagerly sneaking into locker rooms and whatever." The locker room thing. It's so insane.Yeah, well it's first off, locker rooms and bathrooms are disgusting. I mean, that is a problem in itself. But the obsession was always so weird and it's always so frustrating because there's nothing you can say that will change people's minds on a lot of this stuff, which is frustrating. And what always just gets me is that how the people who are weighing in often are the people who have no stakes, no skin in the game when it comes to, "Hey, should your trans kid be allowed to see a therapist, or should a trans adult be allowed to ... should Medicare cover surgeries?" And you know, stuff that.And it's like the people who are very loud, inserting their opinions here, they don't have trans kids, they are not trans themselves. They are just like, "I don't this. It's icky to me. And so it should be illegal." And that's kind of the same sort of thing with abortion that comes up a lot where it's a lot of dudes or a lot of people who not only wouldn't want to have an abortion themselves, which is a very legitimate position. That's totally fine, but want to go out of their way to make it illegal for other people to access whatever.Yeah. Well, the abortion issue is like, I am not radically and profoundly pro-choice for my daughter because I know that I can get her an abortion if she needs one. I am radically and profoundly pro-choice for the woman who lives in Leadville, Texas, or whatever. Wherever, Texas, who can't take a day off work and has to drive 48 miles to get an abortion. You know what I mean? Or really hundreds of miles to get an abortion. I mean, I'm pro-choice for her because those are the women who end up suffering. It's not the woman in the blue states. It's the women in the red states who are underrepresented, who can't ... and that I think is really the important thing. But just to get back to the debate for a second, I had someone come to me earnestly and say to me, "It's all about women's sports." And I was like, "What? When have you guys ever cared about women's sports?"Yep. That happens so much. Well, so the funny thing is, so back in the 70s, there was a tennis player named Renée Richards, she was trans and she wanted to compete in the US Open. And she did, and she won a court case in New York and that was the whole thing. And so she competed in the US Open and the big concern was, "Oh, this person's going to dominate because blah blah blah. Grew up testosterone this, that whatever." And then she lost. And then she was a mediocre tennis player, which there are certain situations where sure, yeah. A trans athlete might have an advantage, but the response is always ... which is my response, which is always super unsatisfying to everyone, is it depends.Oh, do trans athletes have an advantage? Sometimes. Depends on what the sport is, how long they've been on hormones, what their age is. All of these things factor in there, but the people who are arguing the other side of this pretend to care so much about women's sports. They're like, "No, no, we need to make sure that eight-year-old trans kids who haven't gone through puberty," so they very clearly do not have ... puberty is the moment when you start to see it [inaudible 00:27:50] one way or the other. And it's like, if someone hasn't gone through puberty and you're still blocking them, you don't care about fairness. You're just being a jerk. You just want to exclude these people or to force them into a gender box that doesn't quite work for them.And I think that, I don't know, just again, it's something that, I mean, I love sports. I am not very good at sports, and I have no intention of trying to go on to the Olympics or whatever. But I care about this issue because I know a lot of people who do want to compete in sports, and especially when it comes to high school or even college, just people who want to find something that they can make friends, where they can make friends. That's what the point of school sports generally is. Most people don't go on to become pro athletes. And in this most recent Olympics, there was a-Right, I was just thinking about that.Yeah. There was a trans woman who from ... I think she was from New Zealand. She was a weightlifter, and I saw that she qualified. My initial thought, which I felt horrible about was, "Oh God, I hope she loses."Yeah, and she did.And she did, but I couldn't stop thinking about just sort of chaos it would be if she won a gold medal and instead she just didn't even finish. She was not ... but still it was something that there was this anxiety within me and I was like, "Oh God, am I rooting against this person?" And so then I just made a point of not watching her thing, because I didn't want to feel any attachment to the results in that. And then of course in the end, it didn't matter that she lost, they still said, "Well, it's still proof. She took a spot from someone who would have deserved it." And it's just like, "You can never win. They just move those goalposts right along."Right, but the obsession is, I mean, it is proof that a lot of these conservatives are bad-faith actors.Yeah, and it's so frustrating to try to have actual substantive conversations with people where it's, "Okay, let's find that middle ground." I'm always happy to talk with someone who's like, "I have concerns about trans issues. Can you kind of talk me through them?" And it's always like, when I do have conversations with people who maybe aren't on board with all everything in the world or whatever, but I will kind of have it and hopefully we will have a conversation [inaudible] come away thinking, "Okay, I may not agree, but I understand this a little bit better," which is all I asked for when I-I still think you're asking for too little, I mean, f**k them. I mean, like you don't agree with what I want to do with my body? F**k you. I mean, it's like gay marriage. If it offends you, don't go to the wedding. I mean, I don't know. This is like, they're the party of personal responsibility and limited government, and yet they want to make sure that you use the bathroom they like.Yeah, which is always interesting when it's like, "Okay, how would you enforce this?" And they're like, "Oh, we haven't thought that through." Right. Because the only way you can enforce that is if you're looking down people's pants as they're going into the bathrooms, which is extremely weird and definitely not small government.Right. I mean, it's funny because it's the people who rail against the nanny state are the nanny state. I mean, great example is DeSantis fighting with the cruise ships and the schools because he doesn't want schools to be able to make a decision for themselves. Yeah. I think that there's just something in politics that really ... there are so many blind spots there that I don't think are necessarily intentional, but they exist where people go, "Oh, cancel culture's gone too far." And then it'll be, "Oh, okay. Well also we are going to boycott to this channel for airing a show," or whatever. That's one of those issues that's kind of just made me just think, "What universe are some people living in, where they're like, 'Oh, the left cancels everything.'" Well, I just read a story about some church Pastor who got fired for talking about the vaccines being safe, or Tomi Lahren got fired from her show on Glenn Beck's The Blaze channel because she went on The View and talked about how she was pro-choice and they were like, "That is inconsistent with our values. Goodbye." And so hypocrisy, just in the sort of, in terms of politics, it's everywhere. I mean, but I think, given the I'm on the left, I notice it on the right a lot more. But it's something that I don't know if it's intentional, but I also know that pointing out the hypocrisy doesn't seem to do much, which is frustrating, which is something that I want to try to ...I don't know, but the general theme of this newsletter and podcast is communication, and I want to understand communication better. I want to understand how to come back to a single shared reality, at least. We don't have to agree on things, but can we at least agree on the facts of existence [inaudible]. Not tell ourselves these sort of stories that make our side look great and their side look bad. [crosstalk] exhausting.Molly Jong-Fast:I agree. I mean, that is really important. I mean, the idea of a shared reality, and we see because of the media is so siloed and there's this conservative media that is operating in its own, as you know, I mean, you have worked for the sort of pros of this. So you really know what this is about, but I agree. I mean, it's really, it's so ... it's just distressing, and you wonder ... I'm shocked at how bad it's gotten.Yeah. It seems to be getting worse too, which is-Yeah, I'm shocked. Yeah. It's grim, and that's something that hopefully it gets better, but I don't know. I try not to let the anxiety that fuels every part of my life also fueled this part, but it's hard.It's true. That's a good point. And I do think it's like we can only do ... I mean, that's the thing with my anxiety sometimes. I suffer from really bad anticipatory anxiety. So the night before a plane ride, I'll be checking the weather and feeling sick and not wanting to ... And one of the things I'll do is I'll be like, "Where am I right now? Am I in an airplane right now? No. I'm in my house. Am I okay? What number am I in anxiety right now?" I mean, I've literally had to do every basic anxiety trick in the book, which has helped me with the pandemic. I mean, I also think being sober has helped me because I can go to AA meetings and I can talk about my anxiety, but that is really helping. All the mental health stuff has really ... I've had to really use it.Yeah. Same. It's the same way with me if I get ... back before the pandemic if I get a speaking gig scheduled. In the days leading up to, like my flight, I'm like, "Oh no, I think I'm getting the flu. Maybe I should cancel." Then I get there and I get on the plane the whole time I'm going there I feel sick to my stomach and all of the physical manifestations of anxiety just kind of build up, build up. And then I go and do the thing. I give the speech and then it's fine. It's over. It's like, "Oh wait, no, I was fine. Oh, it turns out I wasn't sick. This was all in my head." But being in my head can become real, which is why I think a lot of the distinctions between, "Oh, this is just in your head," and, "Oh, this is just on the internet." Those sorts of things are kind of cop outs from acknowledging that things like your mental health affects your physical health. The internet is part of real life. It might not be all of real life, but it's still there.The internet, there are two things that really get me agitated. The idea that the internet is not real life, and the idea that Twitter is bad. You are lucky. You get to interact with people. It is a privilege. If you don't Twitter, then don't go on it. But there is incredible ... you get to read a book and then find the author and tell them their book is great. It's amazing. It's so cool.Yeah. I mean, I'm 43 now. So when I was ... 20 years ago, you couldn't do stuff that. You'd write a letter to the New York Times and maybe someone would see it and probably they wouldn't. And so this is so cool. This is the coolest thing ever. So if you don't like it, don't go. That thing where people say how much they hate Twitter and also how the internet isn't real, like, "Okay, it doesn't have to be real for you."Yeah. You can step back from it. And I think that part of what gets built into that, then they complain about, "Oh, the internet makes me sad and makes me angry." Which, I mean, that happens to me definitely a lot.True. Yeah, yeah.But they'll at the same time, don't want to log off because there's this sort of fear of being ... if you don't exist online, do you exist? That sort of thing where it's this hyper-realism of the internet that kind of sticks around. But, Molly, just thank you for doing this.Thank you.Please come back sometime. You were amazing.Yes, are you kidding? Anytime. And I'm excited to get this out there too. I'm sure people will really enjoy this crossover.Yeah. This'll be fun.Yeah, and I'm glad, I love ... getting to talk about mental health stuff, especially right now is, I'm thrilled. Thank you.Then I was excited to be able to chat with you about this, because it's just, you know, I think lot of the time people who tend to write about politics a lot, whether it's me or you, we both do that, that there's this feeling that our lives center around this and that there aren't other factors, but I mean, this is a nice, human, surreal conversation and things that we're all kind of dealing with. Maybe that is the key to getting people on the same page, is just to find these weird, little, tiny commonalities cling to, or not. I don't know. Anyway, thank you.Well, have me back. Thank you.Absolutely. All right. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on today’s show is animator and crypto art creator Bryan Brinkman. His work has appeared at places like The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Life, and even Sesame Street. Today, he’s going to teach me a bit about NFTs.Parker Molloy: So, joining me today on the podcast is Bryan Brinkman. Hello.Bryan Brinkman: Hello, Hey Parker.How's it going?It's going very well.So, I wanted to have you on the podcast to talk to you about your art and your work, which I really like and enjoy. And also the one thing that I don't understand, but I want to understand, NFTs. Can you help me understand what an NFT is and how that applies to the art world, basically?I can do my best to try.All right.Because it's an ever-growing description because every week there's something new happening in the space. But just to start out, I would say an NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. Kind of the idea behind it is that you can authenticate digital assets through the blockchain. And so, as a way of storing imagery or content. It's a way of saying, "Hey, I possess this digital asset," and that gives you the ability to trade it and resell it or do whatever you want with it. And so that's kind of the basic idea around what an NFT is, but then what that asset can be is exploding into a million possibilities.Yeah, I was reading something the other day about how people have other applications of the same blockchain technologies. Someone was saying, "Oh yeah, one day we could have contracts and deeds to houses and stuff like that on there". And that's really interesting. And I think that part of the issue is that a lot of people just struggle to understand the concept, because for instance, like in NFT might be something like a video or a GIF, or just a still image. Right?And people might think, okay, well, why would I buy this when I can just look at it anytime I want, I can make my own copy of it. I could just pull up a website that has this on it and look at it. For people who are thinking about trying to kind of explore that space as either a creator or someone who just wants to get involved and support artists. I guess that's another big thing, which I understand that that is definitely one of the reasons someone would want to pay for something as opposed to just looking at it on the internet.I think that's a good question. The first thing that comes to people's minds, when they say it is, why would I pay for JPEG when I can just download it or screenshot it? And I think that same idea can be applied to a lot of art. Why does any art have value? It's because there's a group of people that all agree it has value, and that gives it value.I think you can kind of look at the NFT collectible art market as being similar to what baseball cards were in the 90s. Those cards are printed for probably a penny on a piece of cardboard paper, but the value is whether a lot of people altogether go, "Hey, this Michael Jordan rookie card is worth more than this other card."And so I think it kind of falls into the same thing as that the NFT is just a medium and a canvas for people to create on. And the idea of I could just screenshot that, well, you can't go and sell a screenshot, but you can authenticate that you own the original copy of an NFT and someone will want to buy that.And that's really interesting. And that's a good point. I mean, the only real differences, the fact that there's a physical object to hold onto with, for instance, with baseball cards, which funnily enough, I was recently thinking about maybe getting back into collecting baseball cards because every once in a while, when the world gets too chaotic, I try to pick up a new hobby. So I don't just explode on Twitter or something like that.And a few years back it was comic books. I was like, I'm going to just get really into comic books and that's been helpful. And then it was video games, and it's all these like going back to my childhood kind of things. And so I think baseball cards is the next kind of going down and just looking into the state of that industry right now is really interesting as well. I don't know, I remember growing up and it'd be like, here's this one card, this is the card for this player for this year.And now it's like, “Well this one, if it has a blue border, it's worth more than if it has a multicolored.” And I'm just like, man, it's so complicated now.Well, the sports card, yeah. The sports card industry's kind of changed a lot recently too. I've been looking at like, they have like column like penny cards. When you buy these boxes and they have pieces of jerseys and autographs and all these amazing hand drawn pieces of cards and stuff, they've really upped the trading card game to keep up with kind of the collector mentality in recent years. Which is something I wasn't very aware of until like the past year.Yeah. And just the day I was looking at Topps, the trading card company. They have a section on their website that's now just Topps and NFTs. And it's kind of that same idea of trying to be like, yeah, you can own this rare whatever. And then there are some people who sell like a penguin or something. And I'm trying to understand that. And I don't know, I feel like I'm just like a million years old.No, I think there's, in my mind there's kind of two worlds of NFT collecting right now. There's the art side. And then there's the kind of the collectible side and the collectible side falls into that kind of sports card mentality where there's high volume and there are big communities backing it. And with the penguins, there's 10,000 of those penguins. And so having a feature in the New York Times will give all these people excited and the prices fluctuate, and it falls into more of like kind of a stock market mentality where there's kind of this liquidity to these collectibles. Whereas the art side falls into a slightly different category where it's more of like artists building communities around their work and their style. And that falls into kind of like the auction house world and the New York gallery world versus kind of like the sports card collectors.So there's all these different entry points. And I would say like a lot of the space grew because of a website called NBA Top Shot that came out about a year ago and kind of brought that sports card, collecting mentality into the space. And then all these people did it. They kind of got a sense and they started to wrap their minds around, "Hey, these digital assets hold value". And then they started looking elsewhere. And so that they kind of branch off into what else there is, because I think it was [inaudible] who's an artist in the space. He made a tweet the other day. That was like, "When you used to meet a celebrity, you'd ask for an autograph, but now you ask for a selfie," and that mentality of what has more value to people these days? Is it the digital experience or is it this physical thing you hold? I think that's changing rapidly, especially with video game skins, and how you manage your digital content and video game worlds. For instance, I think translates very one-to-one with NFT world.That's yeah. That's a good point.Kids, these days. They care more about digital assets than putting paintings on their wall. They, they want to show paintings on their phone that they can show their friends.Yeah. And that's really interesting. And I mean, one way I have been trying to wrap my head around that over the past several months. And one thing that I've seen as a criticism of NFTs and just things that involve crypto generally is like the energy consumption of that. But it, everything seems so unclear when it comes to the environmental effect of any of this. Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, I'm sure you have thoughts on that.Yeah. I mean I think it was around January, after I'd been in the space for a year, that article kind of came out written by this guy named Memo and it was kind of this jarring account of how much energy could be consumed at a maximum amount, if everything travels all these places and burns all this energy. And there's certainly different blockchains that consume different types of energies. And there's these arguments of kind of proof of work versus proof of stake. Ethereum is not the best at it. And they are actively trying to move to this new Ethereum 2.0, that will reduce this all by like 99%, but it's a slow process. So in the meantime, there's a lot of these kinds of like, they call them side chains where people can kind of mint on these layers, two solutions that take up less energy.But after that article came out, a lot of the NFT websites made commitments to offset their carbon emissions. So, I mean I've seen in the six months or so I guess it's been maybe eight months since that article came out, that has been a key point of almost every project is to offset that as artists. I did my calculations and offset it and I've done charities to raise money for that. And so there's a lot of ways you can kind of work towards that in the short term while they're kind of finding solutions in the long-term.And then a lot of artists that really feel strongly about it have moved to other blockchains, like Tezos, there's a website called hic et nunc, which is a very silly name, but I consider it to be kind of like the Brooklyn indie comic NFT site. So there's a lot of really cool art there, that's a lot more affordable and they call it clean NFTs. And so there's a lot of different ways people are kind of working to get around that in the short term, but there is certainly a lot of criticisms that are, I think are valid about Bitcoin and other blockchains that aren't working towards solutions in the longterm.Yeah, that's it, it's one of those things where I feel like the backlash to it was so swift where it was, if you buy an NFT, you're destroying the planet and you'd be like, whoa, I don't think that that is necessarily fair. Just saying that to people. I feel like that kind of scared a lot of people away from like really participating in this as either a consumer or an artist. And hopefully, that kind of over time will-I think the math and the calculations were all based on worst-case scenarios. Looking at it, the idea that miners are only going to consume pure energy isn't necessarily true because they're going to want to be using renewable energy just for their own profits’ sake. And a lot of mining happens on kind of solar power and renewable energy consumption. So I think there was a swift backlash and then people started to kind of understand that minting one NFT isn't the equivalent of an entire day of London's energy consumption. Yeah. So I think people started to kind of look into it, figure out what the accurate amount was. I mean, I had places reaching out to me asking me to help them like figure out calculations. Like I'm not a math scientist, but I can do my best to help, but yeah-“Please animate this and also do a bunch of very complicated math equations for it.”But yeah, I think in the end, I think it's somewhere in between the two, it's not, it's not urgent issue and it's also not a non-issue it's somewhere in between and you have to kind of work towards doing your best to address it as you can.Yeah, definitely. And so one of the things I wanted to kind of ask you about was just all of your other work that you've done over the years. I mean, just looking at your website, you have Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street, a music video for The Good Life, one of my favorite bands, which is-We're both big Tim Kasher fans.Yeah. That's very, very cool. Cause I totally forgot you did that one, which it's a good video it's for "The Troubadour's Green Room", right?Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that was such a fun one to do because they basically reached out to me and they were like, do you want to do this video? Here's three songs from the new album. And I just kind of sat and closed my eyes and listened to the songs until imagery came about. And they just let me kind of dream up visuals and kind of make something on my own. And so they were very hands-off and they just let me have fun with it. It was a blast cause I'm such a huge fan. I'm originally from Omaha, Nebraska, so I grew up a big Saddle Creek Records fan.I mean, I'm from Illinois, so it's not too far away, but also grew up a big fan of Saddle Creek. Every band that was on there, I would go out and buy their albums as soon as it came out. Any of the bands that Tim Kasher would be in or Connor Oberst or any of the guys from The Faint, all of those bands are so good.I love The Faint, that they were my entry point to Saddle Creek when I was young, seeing those concerts were such a blast. I mean, they still are, anytime they come around town, I try to see them. But yeah, I think that kind of career path I took, I kind of went to school for animation. And then I found work kind of working in advertising and TV. I worked on some animated series, like the Life and Times of Tim, which was this very small, HBO cartoon, but it was a lot of fun to work on. So I kind of did all these paths before eventually kind of working. I worked at The Tonight Show for like eight years, but in my free time, I would try to do music videos. I would try to do posters for concerts. I would do these pop culture, art gallery shows in LA.And I was always trying to kind of like find ways to be creative because it was just like, that's my hobby. That's what I love doing. And then once kind of NFTs came around, it was like, oh, I no longer have to worry about turning my digital work into physical work to sell. This is a perfect platform for me to create animations. And I don't have to make short films for film festivals anymore. I can just make little short things that tell stories. And I found it to be just like the perfect amalgamation of all these things I've been trying to do for years. Cause I mean, I'm going to date myself, but when I was in high school, I was creating little flash cartoons for newgrounds.com, uploading them and then getting excited when people would be like, I like this one or I get upset when they say I hate this one, but it was that same concept where it's been years later I'm still doing the same thing where I'm just kind of making whatever I want to make and then I put it out there and I see what people think.Yeah. And it's really cool. And I love your style just generally speaking. The colors that you use, the really weird-ass kind of... I mean, just on your website under on the crypto page, there's one of the animations is like a person being ripped in half, but it's weird because it's not in this really gruesome way. It's just sort of like, Hey... unzip, zip back up kind of thing. And I just really enjoy that. How would you describe your art style? Also, just anyone listening to this, you can go over to my website, readthepresentage.com and I'll be sure to include some of your Tweets that have your images and stuff in there, so they can see what on earth we're talking about.Giselle Flores recently said I was a conceptual cartoonist, which I thought was very funny and kind of fitting, but I think the concept behind when I joined the NFTs was I had been doing these kinds of gallery shows and a lot of curators and people in the scene kept telling me "If you want to be a successful artist, you have to do the same style over and over because that's what galleries expect you to do when they put you in a show, they want you to do the work that you're famous for, because that's what sells". And I was kind of hated that mentality of like putting yourself into a corner, especially early on in your artistic career. I mean, I was living out in LA shortly after college and I just thought that's the worst way to get stuck in a style like so early.And so when I started doing NFTs, I kind of wanted to break away from that. I saw it as an experimental area to do whatever in. And so my thesis behind my art was I'm just going to stick with a color scheme and then I can do whatever style I want. I can do 3D, I can do 2D cartoons, I can do paintings. As long as they have those colors in it, it all ties together into this overarching style that I can claim to have. And so that's been kind of my through-line, but then that allows me to do dark neon animations or colorful, bright poppy animations.And that was kind of my way of breaking out of that trap of getting stuck, doing the same thing over and over. Even though a lot of artists do that and they make a great living off doing the same thing over and over, I just found it to be a little... I didn't want to get trapped in that too early. But now a year and a half into it, I'm starting to revisit the same themes and visuals and stuff, because now I've kind of developed a style through this experimental journey.Yeah. The colors that you use are just some of my favorites basically, they all work so well together, it is a really neat throughline for so much of your work. And even though, as you were saying, the style kind of shifts around and whatnot. It's always so interesting to learn about something that I just am so totally clueless about. And that's what this is kind of been, which is great.Yeah. And that's kind of the fun of like NFTs is like, I started doing it as just kind of making GIFs, because back when I started the NFT space, you couldn't even upload videos to the blockchain, the technology wasn't ready yet. And so everyone was kind of making these short looping GIFs, because that's how you could get a lot of mileage out of like a 50 megabyte file size limit. And so that's like kind of where I started. It was like, how can I make things? How can you make it loop nicely so that it keeps going, and it doesn't feel like you're only making three seconds of animation kind of stuff, but then over time, you start to get comfortable with that. And then you find new platforms, whether it's, I did a release on a website called art blocks, which is a generative art where you create art entirely with code.And then when people create it, they get a randomly generated piece of art. And so I did that in January and now that's becoming one of the most sought after platforms and styles of art, because it allows an artist to make an unlimited supply of art, but each one's unique. And I think that's a really cool thing that NFTs can do that can't be replicated outside the space very easily. And then also I did a piece for a platform called like async music, which allows you to sell music in a way that the album art changes and the audio changes based on who owns different layers of the track. And so for instance, you could have a band and you, as an owner of the guitar stem, you could change how the guitar sounds in the song. And when people listen to it, they have to listen to the version you choose as the owner of that guitar track. And then that also changes the visuals of the album. And so there's so many cool ways that like, the technology is creating new mediums altogether for like how music and stuff is released.Yeah. That last thing just sounds so interesting to me, it sounds like a total nightmare for artists to have to be like "Here you go, good luck. Let's be what happens with my work", like that sort of thing. But it's really just cool and different. And I don't know I'm always excited to just see new ways to... I hate saying consume, but enjoy, appreciate work and that's so, yeah. Is there, is there anything else that you want to make sure that people hear or anything you want to plug or talk about, or you know, whatnot.Yeah, well, I think as much as I don't necessarily care to talk about the money of the space. There is a lot of pluses for artists and creators to join the space. And one of those is that with the blockchain technology, as a creator, you can use the smart contracts of NFTs to benefit yourself longterm. And by that, I mean, when I sell a piece of art, you sell it for X amount of money, but through the contract, when it resells down the road, you get 10% royalty in perpetuity. And so something I sold for $200 a year ago could resell for thousands and I'll make more on the secondary royalty than I did on the primary sale. And so that incentivizes this kind of ecosystem of collectors and artists to both want each other to succeed because if someone buys my stuff, I want to grow the value for them, and they want to grow the value for me on the secondary.And so this is kind of symbiosis of support. And so the connection with artists and collectors is a lot deeper in this space than it was in the traditional art world where someone would buy my work. I would have no idea where it went. If they sold it on eBay or something, that's their thing and I've no part in that. But in this, I'm very hyper aware of every transaction, because a little bit will funnel back to me at some point. And I want to see the people that support me early on to succeed later on. And so it's a really a wonderful community of people that are kind of supporting each other.Interesting. I had no clue that that was the thing, because that's how I was looking at it with anything art related or related to collecting things. Once it's out of the original artist's possession, it's kind of like "If I pay for this, I'm not supporting the artist, I'm supporting the person who bought this from the artist", but that's different. And that I did not know. So that's interesting.Yeah. It creates a fun, passive income over time as you continue to grow. And it also incentivizes you to sell things at a cheaper rate early on and build up your community of people, because if it grows, then you benefit from that growing longterm. And so it's really kind of a wonderful solution that they figured out with the space. And a lot of the platforms are really good about including that, but it took years. I mean, I joined the space in January 2020, but space has been building for many, many years before that. And the efforts of all those artists pushing for those royalties and the collectors also that supported the artists early on, I've kind of like helped build this platform now that, in the past year has kind of exploded. And so it's been really awesome to see some of these artists that were making stuff three years ago, sold it for $5 seeing itself for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then they get tens of thousands of dollars on that. Yeah, Absolutely. Now, if someone wants to, I guess I'm kind of both ends of this, if someone is like, okay, I listened to this and I'm interested in NFTs as a creator, how do you get started with like, if someone is a total beginner in this space, total novice, where do you go? Because there's so much out there that is just so I don't know. It's just seems it's very, if the crypto feels complicated and that's been kind of my experience in trying to like move things back and forth between wallets and stuff. And I'm just like, I don't even know what the hell I'm doing.Yeah, no, it's definitely tricky. There's a lot more resources now than there was when I started, when I started, I kind of got intrigued because an artist I collected named Killer Acid was putting stuff out. And I was like, what is this? I don't understand what this etherium symbol is. And I kind of spent a couple of weeks kind of Googling and looking at Twitter and kind of figuring out what this all was. Now there's a lot more resources on YouTube and Google, School of Motion has some great articles on how to get started and set up a wallet. The thing I would say is, there is an entry fee barrier now that wasn't there when I started because of etherium and the currency of the space is worth a lot more than when I started. It cost me like $40 to like get started.Now, I think it would cost a lot more. So I would say when I mentioned earlier, like hic et nunc, Tazos, that's a much cheaper way to get started, build a community before you then branch over to like etherium, which is more expensive right now. So I would recommend new artists kind of look at that. Join Discords, start following people on Twitter. Really spend some time looking at the space, seeing what people are buying, because I think the problem we see right now is everyone kind of sees these headlines about NFTs are worth so much money. And then they kind of dive in, they try to sell something that they haven't been able to sell elsewhere. And they're not really creating for the space necessarily. They're just kind of shoehorning in something they've been trying to sell in another form, whether it's like physical or something else. That is tough.New artists, you have to build trust with collectors that you aren't going to just sell something to make a bunch of money and then leave. And that takes time, you have to continue to put out work. So if, if you're a new artist, I would say like create four or five pieces of art that you feel good about selling and then start to see if people like it, see if it's connecting with people, share it. And then you don't even have to mint and pay the money to make it first. You can just put it out there, see if people want to buy it. And then once you have people that are willing to kind of help fund your initial output or... is that the word? Your initial launch, it's a lot more helpful. And there's also some organizations that will help artists with their first mint. I think it's called Mint Pass. I'll send you the link later, but there's a bunch of these kinds of organizations that help artists that can't afford to get started kind of put out their first pieces of art, which are very wonderful resources.Cool, Cool. This has been so interesting to me and just thank you so much for coming out. I'm so glad we were able to finally get this scheduled cause I reached out two weeks ago and then you said yes. And then my world became crazy for a little bit. So I'm glad we were able to make this work.I really appreciate you having me on here. And yeah, if anybody has questions about NFTs or whatever, feel free to reach out to me. I'm pretty available and I'm happy to help some people understand the space because it is confusing. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me this week is meteorologist and climate scientist Eric Holthaus. Eric operates The Phoenix, a Substack about humanizing the climate emergency.He’s the author of The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming, and he founded Currently, a free subscription weather service.Parker Molloy: Joining me today is Eric Holthaus. So what I wanted to ask you was, after the IPCC released its most recent report, there were a lot of really downer headlines about it. And when you sent me a copy of your book last year, one thing I liked about it was the fact that it was hopeful and that's not something you really see or hear too much on this topic anymore. Yet it was realistic. Can you tell me a little bit about why it's important to not embrace climate nihilism, I guess?Eric Holthaus: Thank you so much for inviting me. I think that we don't really have a choice anymore. Honestly, if we are going to do what we need to do in the time we have left, we have to change the narrative. We have to really unlearn that climate change is an inevitable disaster and that we're all going to die, and instead think about it as a justice issue, just like other justice issues, and get angry. And that comes with the realization that a better world is possible, that there are systemic changes that need to happen in every aspect of society anyway, and that's literally what the climate scientists said this week was we have to change every part of human society at a rapid scale in order to get down to the emissions goals that we need to do to preserve the habitability of our planet. What's more important than that, than being able to live on a planet, right? We don't have anywhere else to go. We have to do this.One thing about that, which the past year has messed with my head a little bit on I guess, is the fact that we're in the middle of this pandemic where you have people who aren't taking these super simple, easy, mild inconveniences to their life, to go get vaccinated or to wear a mask or to stay six feet apart from someone. And I keep thinking to myself, if people won't do that stuff, which feels like the bare minimum, I just don't know how we can expect people to get on board with doing the big things necessary to tackle climate change or tackle any of these larger problems that are facing use, these existential problems, which is something that I've been thinking a lot about lately as it comes to just places that I know that I've lived that have changed for reasons not related to climate.I just wrote a blog post about how my favorite baseball team is the Chicago Cubs and how Wrigleyville, the area right around the stadium, has changed so much in the past decade that it's just almost unrecognizable and there's this sadness that comes with that. In your book, you've written about how that sadness is applying on a global level. A sort of... I forgot. There was a word you used for it. It's escaping me right now, but it basically this idea that nostalgia for a loss...Solastalgia.That's it! That was it. Do you think that we can actually address this? I want to believe that humanity can come around and address these issues, but at the same time, I feel maybe I'm a bit cynical as far as the politics of any of this goes because a lot of my work has been in monitoring media and that has left me jaded.Yeah. First off, there's no parallel or precedent for the kinds of change that we're seeing in the entire really existence of humanity. That's what another thing the report said this week was it's been 150,000 years since temperatures were this high. It's been two million years since we've had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Human civilization is about 100,000 years old and modern humanity, our species is only about two million years old. So we are seeing changes that our species, humans, have never seen before at a rate that is not something that we're built to process. So it's normal for us to feel really weird and uncertain about this time. It's not something that we're built to process to have geological scale change happening in the span of one human lifetime.So it's normal to feel those weird conflicted feelings because we're trying to make sense of it all in the base back part of our brain as well. It's not just wondering what are we going to do about it, how are we going to motivate people, but it's like we're trying to survive and thrive as animals at the same time. So I think that one way that I've been thinking about is that it takes a lot fewer people than you might expect to create that rapid large-scale change. It's not like... What's it called? The critical mask of vaccination or mask-wearing the herd immunity. We don't have to get 90% of people on board with any particular climate action for it to be effective. We just need really honestly to destroy the fossil fuel industry. That's just the largest, richest, most powerful, most profitable industry in human history.Simple.Yeah. So we need to do that, but we also need to embrace the anger and embrace the courage that comes with reading reports like this, knowing that climate change is not something that's just passively happening, it's something that's being done to us. It's an injustice. And right before COVID, we were hitting those critical social movement tipping points of national governments were starting to respond to people in the streets and saying, "Okay, we're going to get on a rapid climate change action trajectory because you're going to shut down the country if we don't." They were afraid, the leaders were afraid, I think for the first time on this issue. And I don't know what it's going to take to get that to happen again, but I know that it will happen again because that is the most effective way of creating rapid change is demanding it. Honestly, in a democracy, that's what we need to do.Do you think that the answer is in government policy or is it in trying to just encourage companies to do better? That's where I'm always lost when, when it's okay, be angry, push for change, but how? Just your average everyday person, if they want to create change, what should we be pushing for? What sort of policies or actions or attitudes? I mean, because I understand that one thing we have going for is on the side of people who want to prolong humanity is the fact that fossil fuels, the profitability just keeps ticking down as compared to some of the renewables. But what should people like me or anyone listening to this do? What's the policy to argue for it?That satisfying answer is that you just need to do whatever will get you up in the morning. Honestly, there are so many parts of building this new society that is not extractive, that is focused on regeneration and resilience. So care work, education, public safety, public health, anti-racism, all of those things have to happen in order to do the slow society-changing work, regardless of whatever, carbon tax or whatever is passed. I'm not personally very motivated by calling a senator or protesting or any of that kind of stuff, because it feels too abstract to me. For me, I enjoy teaching my kids about nature or I enjoy taking a break from the screen and going on a walk outside and just thinking for a little bit as what do I want my neighborhood to be like? What feels achievable?And having conversations with friends, just keeping my motivation up, honestly, because as someone who works on climate change every day, that's a major challenge that I have. I'm in therapy. I couldn't do this without really knowing that there is some hopeful change that's possible. I know everyone needs their time to process and acknowledge what's happening, and there's a place for everyone in the climate movement, you don't have to consider yourself an activist to be someone who's creating effective climate action, but I feel like we have to demonstrate to each other that we can help each other through this time. Because I think for the last couple of 100 years, it's been this every person for themselves mentality in broader society.And that is something that really doesn't match with a more ecological approach, which is the way we're going to have to restructure all parts of society. So the more that you can get yourself into the mindset I'm part of a network, I'm part of a system, I'm part of an organic thing that can respond and be flexible rather than it's just me on my own. Climate change is not your fault. Climate change is not something that you are personally liable for, but you do have a responsibility to show up, just like you have a responsibility to show up to be anti-racist or you have a responsibility to show up to be a part of broader society. You have to pay your taxes, you have to follow the rules of being a pedestrian. You still have a responsibility to each other. That's what happens in being a member of society, but you don't have to do it all yourself.I think that one of the problems seems to be the sense of rugged individualism, that I can lift myself up by my bootstraps and if someone else can't, that's their problem. And that's something that we've seen over and over with the pandemic and why that approach has not been a good one because there are a lot of people who I don't quite understand how, but they just don't seem to care about anyone else. And there was an old Huffington Post blog that someone had that was...I love that.I don't know how to...Explain to you that you should care about other people.I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. That was it. It's something that just sits in the back of my head. Just thinking about that and how true it is. And I think that that's why when you see people angry about the concept of intersectionality, for instance, which is just this understanding that there are all sorts of factors in life pushing in all sorts of different directions. And really the only way out of it is to care about things that don't directly impact you. I'm white obviously, and racism, it doesn't personally harm me in fact. Being white, there are many times in my life without even knowing it, I've probably benefited from racism. The structure of society and so on. But at the same time, I do feel a personal responsibility to push back on that and fight back against that because that's not the way the world should be just because that's the way the world is.And that's the...Basic human rights matters.Yeah. So, that's my view on climate. And I think that that's hopefully a good one. It's hard to tell. It's hard to know what the problems are. Is it that we're living in a world where everyone wants a big yard and they want to spread out and take up as much land and use as much resources as possible or the existence of Exxon? And it's probably more the latter, but all of it plays in together, but sometimes I feel like there's just the sense of okay, I'm doing this to make myself feel better because I can't do anything else. This is the most I can personally do.It feels like it goes with what you were saying about doing whatever helps you get up in the morning to move forward. And God, I don't know. It's so depressing, but I want to feel optimistic. And I know that it's just one of those topics, it's beyond frustrating, but on a totally... Not totally different topic, but a slightly different topic, I wanted to ask you about Currently. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What it is, how it came to be, what you do, et cetera.Yeah. So Currently we're building as a weather service for the climate emergency. So a service in the broad sense of that world word in the sense that we're organizing around the weather, we are talking about the weather because the weather is something that's a least common denominator for people to talk about. But also, the weather is political now. The weather is something that connects us to each other in really important and tangible ways. And it's also a very practical thing in the sense that the weather is the main way that we interact with the climate emergency. If there's extreme weather happening, where we are, or if we hear about extreme weather on the news, that's happening somewhere else, we can directly aid each other. We can also help keep ourselves and our family safe if we are informed about the weather. So my idea is that we're partnering with Twitter on this to create conversation spaces and we're doing daily weather newsletters written by a real person that goes beyond what you can just get in your phone app.It's a real person talking with you about the weather each day. We're also launching an SMS service where in many countries without super well advanced, well-developed weather service like we have in the West, SMS, and WhatsApp are the main ways that people communicate with each other about breaking news or about the weather. So we are in the process of rolling out an SMS weather service for anywhere in the world. You can sign up and we will send you automated messages about if there is an event, some weather alert that's happening where you are, and you can text back to us and we will have a meteorologist respond to you, that will answer your questions. And we're going to do all of this in the context of climate change. So we're partnering with Climate Central, which is a nonprofit that's focused on understanding the connections between weather and climate.Climate science has advanced to the point where we can in real-time attribute climate and weather disasters to climate change to say, "This event was X percent more likely because of global warming." And also have that scientific understanding of how that connection happens and in this week's IPCC report, was the very first time that was traced back to fossil fuel burning activities. So we know that there's a direct causal link between fossil fuels and extreme weather now. We can literally blame hurricanes on Exxon. That's a scientific fact now, which wasn't necessarily the international consensus as of last week. So this is a major advance in terms of building political movements, building communities organizing around climate, but also just informing us of reality, that factual reality now is that the weather is something that can bring us all together and help us to imagine a better world.That's my goal with Currently. You can sign up at currentlyhq.com. All the weather newsletters are free. To get access to the SMS service, as well as... We'll send you a gift basket of merch. You can join at $5 a month. And this is a completely independent thing. We're not funding by Twitter at all. We're trying to prove that independent climate journalism can re-imagine what a weather service could be. We're not going to try to compete with a weather channel or anything like that, we're going to add to it this climate service that currently doesn't exist.It's really interesting to me because one thing I like about it, I guess, one way of saying it, is that places like the weather channel or your evening news telling you the weather, there always seems to be this hesitancy to tie events to climate change because that makes people feel like oh, it's injecting politics into this, but it's not politics. I think that's probably part of the problem, that there's been this reluctance to discuss these things openly in the news. Fox News is going to start its own weather channel now, I guess, that'll be interesting, I suppose.So we'll be the opposite of the Fox News weather channel.You will be the factual opposite there, but I really appreciate the work you do and I think that it matters. It's all depressing, but it matters. And I feel like we all have to fight these fights together. And that's why I'm always interested in hearing new ideas, hearing what I can do personally, what we can do collectively as a country or a planet. And I've found that following you on Twitter is a good way to stay up to date with that sort of stuff.And that's one thing that we're going to try to do with Currently too. We did a couple of reader surveys and the number one thing that people wanted was calls to action, was saying if there's this weather thing that's happening, how can I help? How can I get involved? What can I do? What will actually really matter? What will really make a difference? So, that's going to be one of the main things that we're already doing actually is sending out little prompts to say here's how you can support the Pacific Northwest heatwave. We did a story about farmworkers and Eastern Oregon and how there was a unionization effort that was trying to get cooling centers for farmworkers in Eastern Oregon. So, that was one of the calls to action we had, was support these workers who are literally out there creating our food for us and dying on the job because there's no heat protection. So, that's the kind of stuff that we want to tie into the weather report, which I think is really relevant.Sure. Several years back I worked at the website Upworthy, which is very odd. I was an awkward fit, but one of the things that would happen would be... And this was in the post you'll never guess what happens next phase of that site, it was when they were trying to do more tangible, original stuff but one thing we found when we were writing about tragedies was that people didn't just want to hear about tragedies. People want to go, "Okay, how can I help? What can I do?" And I think that that's a big part of it, that people want to help...People care.Yeah, that gives me hope. The fact that people want to help, but for the most part it's just trying to figure out what to do, where, where should I send money or what should I donate or where should we volunteer? Those are all questions that different people want to engage on different levels. And so that's why I really appreciate that that's what you guys are trying to do.We have 25 cities right now and we have a mix of meteorologists and poets and artists that are writing about the weather every day in those cities. They live in the communities so they can tell us here's the mutual aid network that has just popped up because the guide on my block is the one that's running it. They have that insight, that local insight, which to me has been fascinating as a weather nerd. I'm learning about the weather all over, understanding how the heat index is different in Vancouver, BC, versus in New Orleans, for example. The thresholds that will impact someone who is unhoused in Vancouver is a very much lower threshold than what I am used to. Because there's no air conditioning in Canada because they don't need it. Historically it doesn't get hot there. So that's really been fascinating to learn the ties and to justice in terms of weather. It's really interesting to me.Definitely. I'm really excited to see where Currently goes, because what you guys are working on is so cool and so different that I feel like different is what we need generally. But the last thing I just wanted to ask, is there anything else that you want to add that you want to make sure anyone who's listening to this will actually hear?It's just that everyone has their place. I know it's all depressing and hard to understand and happening too fast, but it's just like COVID, I think, that we were faced with this really shocking, striking change to every aspect of our lives and then we just rolled with it as people were dying around us, we were grieving that, we were loving each other, we were doing all of that work that was necessary as well as learning how to buy the right kind of mask and learning all that stuff. Climate change is that, but for the rest of our lives. It's going to be very hard but it's also very important to understand that we're not doing this just for ourselves, we're doing it because it's the biggest justice issue of our time. It ties in together everything, food, housing, racism, all of that stuff.This is one way that intersects all of it and supporting each other through that. If you're listening to this, you're probably that climate person in your friend group. You are asked these difficult questions and it's okay to not have the answer, and it's okay to struggle through all of this because I do and this is my job. The only thing I would say is that just ask for help when you need it. Send me a DM if you have to, I'll try to chat with you and encourage you. If you're on any path, then you're on the right path.That's a good line. If you're on any path, yeah. I mean, unless you're planning to start an oil company, in which case you are on the wrong path.Exactly. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on today’s show is the man behind what I’ve long referred to as “the only good government Twitter account.” His name is Joe Galbo, and he’s the social media specialist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.Parker Molloy: Joining me today is Joe Galbo. Joe, what is it that you do?Joe Galbo: Sure. Well, I make memes for the government. No, so yeah, I am the Social Media Specialist at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We're a small, federal agency, about 500 employees, with a budget of about $137 million dollars, and we regulate consumer products, so everything from ATVs to toaster ovens, to children's clothing, basically thousands and thousands of things people use every single day, and we're the agency that makes sure those things are safe.It's not just product updates. It's not just recall updates, it's a lot of awesome memes. That is what drew me to the account, not my love of product recall.Sure. You have a bunch of characters in these memes. Can you tell me a little bit about how that got started? How did you pitch the idea of creating Quinn the Quarantine Fox, and your various other ...Handsome Ron.Handsome Ron, yeah.Copernicus Jackson, yeah sure. Right from when I interviewed at the agency, back in, it was June 2016, which is basically a lifetime ago for everyone at this point. I explained to my supervisors at the time, "Hey, I want to join the agency. I want to do public education campaigns, but it's not going to look necessarily the way you all have been doing things." They were cool with that, to their credit. Right from the get go, there was an understanding that, "Hey, we're going to do something and it's going to look a little bit different."I don't think they anticipated so many talking animals at the time, and to be fair, I don't think I anticipated that either, but as I explored the agency's messaging and the types of things we were trying to educate people about, it became very clear to me that our guidance to people, how people could live a little bit safer, all came across very standard, and a little bit boring, so again, wear a bike helmet, when your message is wear a bike helmet, or don't plug your space heater into a power strip, that's good advice, but it's not necessarily the most exciting advice.When you're out there on the Internet, and you're up against celebrities and influencers, and every brand is trying to be funny, if you just go out there and start telling people to make sure they clean their dryer vent lint, the lint out of their dryer vent, you're not going to be very successful. I think the strategy really came out of looking at what our messaging was, and then again, seeing how simplistic it was, and saying, "Okay, if this has any chance at all of making it out there online, we're going to have to go big and bold, and we're going to have to do things in a super fun way."Now, as far as pitching characters individually, it's one of these situations where if I have a good idea for a new character, I'll go try to find a stock photo that supports that. With Copernicus Jackson, who's one of our cat characters, I knew I wanted a great cat character, and it really was just a matter of finding a good stock photo that represented a cat, that looked excited and interested in something, but not terrified of something. That was a lot of time searching through a stock site to find it, and then once I did, coming up with the name, again it's, a lot of times it's about, "Hey, have I heard this character name out there before," and if the answer is no, then okay, can we try it. It's a lot of Googling to make sure I'm not reusing character names that exist anywhere else.Yeah, it is a little bit, I want to say ad hoc, because there's definitely strategy there, but it's very organic. Again, I'll try to leverage training topics a lot, so if there's an animal trending or something, I'll try to come up with a character in that moment. Yeah, it's a little bit a mix of method and then all over the place madness for sure.One of the reasons that I really just love the account, generally, and this is a big part of what I'm trying to do with this newsletter, and this podcast. I'm really focused on the way that we communicate, and yours is one of the most interesting communication strategies I've seen, especially when it comes to something that comes from the government. You really expect, when you think government Twitter account, you think it's sterile, straightforward, just telling you what you need to know. Meanwhile, it's, "Hey, here's an ATV and a T Rex." All of that stuff that really just, it gets people drawn in, the response to your Tweets is just phenomenal.It's always funny seeing people who are encountering it for the first time, going, "Did you get hacked?" Oh no.We do get that one a lot, yeah. I think things have changed. Communication has changed, and I don't want to sound like a cliché, but the past decade, forget about it. Everything's different, and even the past five years it feels, to me, it feels like things are very different. The government, just the way it operates, where everything has to be by the book and by the law. By its nature, it is slower than the private sector. A functional government will be mostly slower than the private sector moves, and in communication, again where things move twice as fast in every other industry, yeah it can feel like, again, a lifetime. I think one thing that we really struggle within government, and I've had a chance to speak to a lot of people in government at this point, who do communication, there is that constant tug of war between, "Hey, we have to be an authoritative voice, and people have to trust us, and we have to get the message out there in a really clear way." What you were just speaking to, which is it's also very boring when you just do that, straightforward. The Internet is not designed for boring content, which I guess is not a thing that people meditate on very often, but I think part of it too is at a small agency like CPSC, where our budget is, again, only about $137 million, which in government money is not a lot at all, compared to the FDA or the CDC, where you're talking billion-dollar budgets and more. You just can't do it the boring way online, you just can't.I do think government helps itself when it’s very relatable to people, and I think that's one thing that we hear a lot about this strategy is that it's not preachy. It's not coming at you in a way where, from a place of high authority. Again, it is advising you on a better way to live your life a little more safely, but it's not doing it from a pulpit. It's not going it from an ivory tower. It's down here with the regular people, where regular people like talking dogs, and regular people like robots that go on picnics with their friends. Again, I don't know, at least those are the things I think regular people like.Like you said, it seems to be working so far, and we're just very grateful for that, honestly.Yeah, of course. I'd say for about a year or two I'd see your Tweets and just be like, "What is going on inside this person's head?" It's great to actually talk to you, and to be like, "Oh look, this is a human being, who seems to share the same sense of humor as me," and other people seem to be into it as well.Yeah. I guess one thing about me, I love working in communication. Back in the day, I wanted to be a journalist, but I graduated from college in 2008, where being a journalist would have been very difficult at the time. I fell into this government communication thing through advertising. In my heart, I always fantasize about being a TV showrunner, like on an animated series. That, to me, is the most fun you could probably have in a job. In some ways, what people are seeing here is the Joe Galbo version of what a TV show might look like.Right.A lot of these memes could easily be turned into PSAs or video products, and that's not an accident. My passion lies in visual storytelling, and I do try to inject a lot of narrative into these things, to a point where sometimes it's like my supervisors are like, "I don't know, is this one maybe too complicated for people?" I'm always like, "No, trust the audience, they're going to get it." More often than not, they let me go that route.Again, it is a delicate balance, and I think one of the things I like about the, I guess you could call it a template we use now, is that at the top there, where we have the narrative or the crazy visual, you can almost do whatever you want at this point, and then as long as at the bottom you're delivering that safety message that's going to help save lives.Yeah.That's one thing that's been super fun, and now it's really just trying to push us in new and exciting ways. We just started doing LGBTQ graphics a short time ago, and that's been very exciting. It's one of these things where, again, not that we've pushed the envelope in government communication, how do we keep pushing it, and how to we keep making sure we're getting these messages in front of people, on an Internet that is constantly more fractured by the year.Yeah, and everything is constantly changing, and what works today might not work next year, next month, or next week. I don't know, have you watched the Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave?No, not yet. I haven't yet.Okay, you should watch that, because it's like the TV show version of what you do, just weird, out there. What you do is a combination of that show and Portlandia, which I mean as a compliment.Thank you. No, you're actually ... One of my very best friends told me to start watching that show, so you are totally in line there. Now I'm going to definitely have to watch it.Yeah, I think you'll like it. I think it will be right up your alley.That's awesome, thank you. I think, again, it is that fine line of being referential to things that are going on in pop culture, because you always, and this is just something everybody's online trying to do, you always want to see you're on top of what's going on. You want to see, again, of the world that people actually live in, and that in itself is a new idea for government.I think a lot of government agencies are just, "Hey, we're important and here's our stuff, and you shall appreciate it because it's coming from us." That's not my, our approach at all. In a lot of ways, it's the exact opposite, where I very much feel like every day we have to prove our worth, and prove our value to the public, so every day people are going to get the best of what we got from a creative perspective.Then yeah, again getting back to how different things are, just trying to keep up with it all. Looking out, I know we should be on TikToc right now.Oh yeah.I know we're going to need a really great video strategy like yesterday, but on a small team it's like, "Okay, what do we do?" There's one person at CPSU who's responsible for producing the social media, and we do have a video production specialist, thank God. They're going to, hopefully, play a big role in what our short-form video strategy is someday. Yeah, it's just, again, thinking about how government tends to move just a little bit slower than the private sector, keeping up is just a constant battle.Well yeah, and with government generally, there's always this sort of worry that you're not getting through to people, that you come off as sterile. Totally.That you come off as preachy and telling people how they should live their life, what they should do, with the exception of, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't have this dresser that's not anchored to the wall," that's fair.Yeah, exactly. Especially at a regulatory agency like us, so we are very similar to the EPA or the FDA, or the CDC in that there are things that we are responsible for making safe. Some agencies don't have that, like NASA doesn't regulate anything. The Interior Department and the National Park System, they don't regulate anything. When you look at the history of interesting government social media accounts, the grandfather of it all was the TSA account, who was run by ... TSA Instagram account, that was run by a gentleman by the name of Bob Burns, who has sadly passed away.I remember reading Bob's captions on the TSA Instagram photos back in 2013, 2014, and at the time it was super innovative for government, because it was super fun and super ... Again, it was for people.Oh yeah.It wasn't a government agency being on social media because it was the thing to do. They were really trying to do something different there. I remember distinctly sitting, I was at the Liberty Stein Center in Jersey City, New Jersey at the time, doing social media there. I remember very distinctly sitting there and reading an article about their Instagram, and thinking, "Oh wow, you can do interesting work in government." Funny enough, just a few years later, I'd be at CPSC, walking into a room, pitching a unicorn, talking about fire alarm safety. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.There's a lot of other great government social happening now. I do hope, I see it sometimes where people will find our account, and then they'll say like, "Oh well this looks like the IRS Instagram," or "This kind of looks like ..." There's a lot of great local government, social media happening. You could do a whole podcast just on that.Oh yeah.Yeah.Well that was one thing I wanted to ask, was what other agencies are doing social media in a good way, I guess?There's interesting stuff happening all the time. You have agencies like NASA, where they are comparable to any of the giant brands you see out there. Their reach and their social media power is just as good as any ... Name any Fortune 500 company and NASA's right up there. Their stuff is very good, obviously. They have a ton of resources. They have a ton of great people who work there. I think the IRS, some of the lesser-known ones, so the IRS has a really fun Instagram account. Another lesser-known one, there's a COVID-19 response committee that was set up to make sure that money being spent through the COVID programs that the government is putting together is being spent wisely and legally. They have a very fun Twitter account, and I'll try to remember the name of that, or I'll send it to you, and maybe you can put it in the newsletter somewhere.Oh yeah.The Interior Department's been doing fun stuff for a long time. They do Fat Bear Week, which is like, again, some of the most fun you can have with government social, where they just have people rate very large grizzly bears. There's other great stuff out there. I think no one's really as absurdest as we are, and I think that's the thing that we brought. Again, when we talk about how we've moved things forward, a lot of people say this is like just a total, they call it a vaporwave, or shitposting, or that type of thing. I guess it does feel like that to people sometimes. Talking about, just to go back to something you were talking about earlier, I'm a big proponent of doing what works, because things do change so quickly, so what I say to people all the time is, "We're doing this strategy now because it works now, but the day it stops working, we will just do something else," because that's how you stay effective in communication. Again, I do think that's the only way to approach it, because things change so quickly.Yeah, absolutely. I have two final questions for you that I wanted to jam into one super question.Sure.That is one, if you could take over any government Twitter account, and implement your own kind of strategy, what would it be, and two, which of the characters that you've created is your favorite, if you have one?Sure, so I'll start with the second question first. Favorite character is tough, because I love all of them, which is a weird thing to say. I think over time, the Pets United for Human Safety, which includes Potato the Dog and Copernicus Jackson, and I think Handsome Ron, over time those three have really emerged as my go-tos, and I guess my most, our most reliable partners in this communication strategy.Some of our older characters, Barks McWoofins was a character we used a few years ago, that retired officially to Hawaii, and I'll always have a special place for Barks McWoofin. Quinn the Quarantine Fox, who again was really not meant to be around this long, but is about to have a rebirth, or have to come back in a bigger way, because of just what's going on these days with the Delta Variant, so yeah. I think those three, Copernicus Jackson, Potato the Dog, and Handsome Ron. If I had to pick three that I'd want on a team at all times, it would be them.Yeah, it's a good choice.Yeah, and then to your first question, CPSC has played a role in the pandemic in making sure consumers are aware of the issues and the things that could hurt them in their home, and obviously with people spending more time at home, that became a very important thing for us to focus on, and we're still very much focused on it. Again, nothing has really changed for us, as far as the pandemic goes. We're still operating in a pandemic first sort of mentality.I think if I could pick any other account, it would be a government account and I probably would pick either the HHS account or some of the CDC accounts. I would like to see what this meme strategy could do with pandemic messaging in a more broader sense. I think that would be, that would be an interesting experiment to me. Again, the people over there are doing amazing work, and I know some of them. I've met a bunch of them at this point, and I have so much respect for everything they've done to date, and I think they're doing an incredible job, so again, it's not, that wouldn't be coming from a sense of like, "Well what they're doing hasn't been effective." I think it's been incredibly effective, but again, I would love to see, if we had some more talking animals around here, with the pandemic, would we win the conversation war in a more resounding way? I think that would be something I'd love to try.“Quinn the Quarantine Fox is very disappointed in you for not getting vaccinated yet.”Exactly, or hey, here's the wild animals united for human safety to tell you about how the vaccine is safe.Yeah.I think that's something that, again, I haven't even seen it at local health departments, but some of that old-fashioned stuff, some of that like, "Hey, here's a friendly animal spokesperson that's going to calmly ..."Yeah, like Smokey the Bear and stuff.Yeah, I think there's still a place for that, and it's funny because so many of our characters almost came out of me wanting to poke a little bit of fun at those traditional characters, like Smokey the Bear, who again is still around. The content they're creating is still very good, if you ever engage with it, but I do think people still have a soft spot for that, and they still like it on some level. I guess it just goes to show you, the more things change, the more they stay the same sometimes. Yeah, so ...Well yeah, I mean in the case of Smokey the Bear, for instance, you have this ... Smokey the Bear, that stands out. That has burned itself into all of our collective memories, everyone knows Smokey. I wonder if 10, 15 years from now people are going to be like, "Man, remember Handsome Ron?" Yeah, oh man I could only hope so. It's one of those things, we have this collaboration with the Library of Congress now, where I send them our memes and the memes get archived in the Library of Congress with descriptions that I've written, that get into the strategy behind them. I do hope, and every creative person hopes that their work has longevity, past their lifetime, and obviously if that were to happen for these characters, that would be incredible. I don't expect that, just to be clear, but I do think when you look, again, Smokey the Bear, that was a campaign created with the Ad Council, one of the best advertising groups in the world, all these years of funding, and especially with climate change affecting things. Smokey the Bear is prime to become much more important in the future than they ever were in the past, which is crazy to think about.Yeah.That's what government can do. It's the longevity of your characters. It's the longevity of commitment of an issue where government can really shine. I do hope that we have some of that. I do hope that, at some point, my time at CPSC will come to an end, and I do hope that people, at least appreciate these characters and keep learning from them after I'm no longer here.Yeah, that's a ... I think that's probably a good way to wrap it up. Is there anything else that you'd like to add to this?Oh, I guess I would just encourage everyone, if you haven't, to subscribe to get recall emails. You can do it right on our website. It's free. It's very easy. Again, if you're not following us on social media, please consider following us on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. We do have an Instagram account where we don't repost things as much. One of the complaints about our Twitter account is I don't constantly repost things. It's just because I'm one person folks. It's not because ... It's not laziness, it's just the ability of one person to come up with stuff on a daily basis.I would definitely encourage you to follow us on Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook, and again, just hope everyone ... One thing we talk about all the time is that we do a very serious thing at CPSC, and on social media it's presented in a very fun way. I do hope folks just take a minute to think about their safety in their own lives. These are small things that you can do that could really, really be lifesaving. Having a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, making sure your carbon monoxide batteries are changed regularly. There's a lot of common sense stuff here that, when you're busy or you're stressed, which we all have been over the past year, if you just take an extra second to think about it, it could save your life down the road. I just really encourage everyone to take those things seriously, and revisit our messaging as much as you need.Yeah, I'm going to be sure to ... I really want to encourage anyone who's listening to this, to go and check out the transcript that I'm going to have in the newsletter itself, because I'm going to be sure to include all sorts of links, all sorts of embedded Tweets in everything, just because this is really one of those things you have to see to understand what on earth we've been talking about today.Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Parker, I do want to thank you for your support over the years. You've been, again, even in my darkest moments, I always thought, "Oh, well at least Parker's out there re Tweeting our stuff sometimes.”Of course, it's always fun. I tried to make a habit of quote tweeting and just being like, "Only good government Twitter account," even though it's not the only good one.Which I very much appreciate. Yeah, thank you, truly. Truly, thank you. Really, we're just so grateful, so thank you.Yeah, thanks so much for joining me today, Joe. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on today’s show is baseball writer and all-around good dude Keith Law. Keith is the author of two books — Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, The New Ones that are Running it, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball and more recently, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves.Parker Molloy: All right. Joining me this week is Keith Law. Hey, Keith.Keith Law: Hey, how are you?I'm doing all right. So one of the reasons I wanted to, to kind of have you on here was A, my love of baseball. B, we've been talking for what, like three, four years or something now.Yeah, I think so.Yeah. So, and you're just a great person to talk to on Twitter and everything like that. But C, a big part of this podcast and newsletter is, has to do with the odd times that we live in.And on that front, there were few things as bizarre to me as baseball during the pandemic, which at first it seemed like the 2020 season might be canceled. And then it came back. It was a shortened season, but without fans. And then watching on TV, there were the cardboard cutouts of fans that was kind of weird. And the fake crowd noise that came with it. To me, it was a bit like watching a deleted scene from an Avengers movie where all the actors you have Mark Ruffalo in a mo-cap suit because it's like, he will be the Hulk here when we finish the CGI, but it's not done yet.Right. “We haven't finished painting in the players yet.”So that's kind of what it felt like. And it was so odd to me. And I can't even imagine what it was like for you, someone who you cover baseball for a living. So what has it been like writing about and covering baseball in such an odd time?Yeah. Last year it sucked from a work perspective. It's the first year, since, before I got into the industry. So my first year doing anything baseball professionally full time was 2002, my first year in the Bluejays front office. And so 2020 was the first time since probably, well, before then, that I went a full calendar year without going to a baseball game. I think if you even just count the high school and college stuff I do, I went something like 380 days between going to games, which was, I mean one, just lousy because I like doing it. Right. It's the best part of job is going to the games evaluating players. But also it was just sort of wait, how do I do this? Right. There's so much of my job is so much of it is driven by the act of going to the game and either seeing the players or it's people I talk to when I'm at the games or afterwards, "Hey, I just saw your AA affiliate. This guy looked really good. What's going on with…, Hey, did this guy get a new pitch?"That's just such a huge part of the rhythm of the job. And then to have basically no minor league, anything, in 2020 and very little college or high school stuff. And I don't really go to major league games much, if at all, because I can watch them on TV and often have better views on TV than I'm going to get at the ballpark. Especially last year where they were like, "Oh, you can come sit in the press box, but you can't go. You can't walk anywhere. We're going to actually physically nail you to your seat."Oh, fun.Yeah. So it was just sort of wait, I have to rethink how I do parts of my job. And I would just watch certain players on MLBTV and write pseudo scouting reports like, hey, this is what I saw so far.It's not great. I don't love it, but this is what we got. At least this year, I did some high school stuff, a couple of college things. I flew once in the spring, once I got my second shot. And then once the minor league started, I could actually go to games. I have been doing that one or two a week, which is less than I would usually do but still at least I'm going out and seeing games. That's been easier. And it's like, "Oh yeah, I remember how to do this. I know what this is." First few were weird. Definitely. But then after a while you sort of get back into the rhythm. It's like, "Oh yeah, I've been doing this for a long time. I think I can do this."When it comes to the actual Major League Baseball sort of experience, I keep thinking back to... There was that game in Baltimore, during the Freddie Gray protests where the White Sox were playing the Orioles. And it was just so surreal with no sounds. And I kind of wanted that to come back. I was kind of looking forward to this like chill, silent thing, but then they pumped in the fake crowd noise and...Well, that game was such... Obviously circumstances were terrible, but just from a baseball perspective was so fascinating. It was like, oh, this is what baseball sounds like with nothing else. And it was like, this is kind of cool. I like this. Yeah, you could really hear the crack of the bat. You can hear the pitch hitting the catcher's mitt. To me it captured some of what I like of going to these low-level games whether it's high school or low minors. And I was at a game the other night. Where the heck was I on Tuesday? On my God, so bad. Wherever I went though... Aberdeen, I went to Aberdeen, which usually they draw pretty well. But for whatever reason, this Tuesday night, there was nobody there at all. I could have had a one-on-one conversation with the second baseman, and it would have been we had no problems hearing each other.And, but there's part of that I absolutely love too, because then I can just hear what's on the field. It actually gets, I don't love all the shenanigans that are there, the music and stuff between. Oh wait, we have a five-second delay. We got to play song. We can't have anybody be bored ever, but whatever, I'm not the audience for them. Right. I'm not the target.But then it was even more glaring to when they have to pipe in five seconds of Fall Out Boy, because they got to play the latest hits, obviously, that are 20 years old. And then it's no, no, no I was listening to the game. I was really into the sounds of the game. And I love that. That to me is a big part of it. And it's actually very comforting to me when I'm at a game, and it's now the real sound is what's on the field. All the other stuff is very, it's like static where it's very distracting to me, because I try to be very focused on. It's usually I'm focused on a player more than I'm focusing on the game itself, but still it's the same thing. It's the sound. The sound is part of the experience and part of what I love about going to games.Yeah. Music playing constantly, constantly having different sort of ways to keep the crowd entertained.Yeah. It's like, they think people are going to leave in the fourth inning if they're not sufficiently entertained. So no, no, no, no, they're here, and many of them have already started drinking, so they're not leaving right now.Yeah. Well, exactly. And also a lot of the stadiums aren't exactly right in the middle of a city. If you drove out there to go to that game, you are there. But also it just strikes me as so odd that minor league baseball players are famously underpaid and can barely kind of scrape by. And it seems so weird that there's this fun house pushed around them as they're really just trying to get by. I mean, one thing I love about minor league baseball are the hats. I have a bunch of just various, I've got the Rocky Mountain Vibes, which it's a s'more that's on fire, and it's just chilling out with sunglasses, and it's just the best thing ever.Sure, that's what I do when I'm on fire.Yeah. No, totally. I mean, that's it. It's perfect. It makes sense. And the reason for so much of that is teams will rename themselves these kinds of goofier things.Oh yeah, the Jumbo Shrimp. That's one I can't get past.Jumbo Shrimp. Yeah.Somebody had me on the radio. I think it was ESPN radio had me on to talk about Cleveland changing their name to the Guardians from an obviously racist team name. And I said, explained why it's a good name. It has a classic feel. It has a local tie-in, et cetera. It's not ridiculous. Right. I at least have this worry that anytime any team's going to have a new name that they're going to pick something that a bunch of people got in a room and they did marketing. And suddenly they're going to, oh yeah, let's... The Jumbo Shrimp is a great name for a minor league baseball team. It would be a horrendous name for a major league team. And that's if you just know baseball, you completely understand. If you don't follow baseball, you'd probably say what is the difference? I don't understand. It's hard to explain. It's just, we have such a dichotomy between what is big league and what is not big league.Yeah. It would be odd if there was a Major League Team called the Cleveland Trash Pandas.Trash Pandas. This is the other one I was going to say. Right. I had a choice, right. A friend of mine he's driving cross country because he's moving to Arizona. And he texted me from the Amarillo Sod Poodles stadium. Which another one, I don't even know what that is. Stadium looks nice though. I got to say. I have never been there, but…See what I've got here. As you can see, I have a bobblehead of the SeaWolves. Nick Castellanos.Yes. “And there's a drive to left field and that'll make it a four-nothing ballgame.”Yeah, there it is.Yes. When I worked for the Blue Jays, the New Haven Ravens I think were sold and the new owners moved them to Manchester, New Hampshire, which they played one year in a temporary field and got a great new stadium. Used to love going up there. And they were the Fisher Cats. What the hell is a Fisher Cat? And turns out it's local. Right. It absolutely makes perfect sense. But it's a weasel. And I would have to say the New Hampshire Weasels probably just wouldn't sell as well. So I mean, I think they made a good choice. That to me also is sort of the difference between it's the same thing. It's the difference between a good name and a bad name. Fisher cat, totally local. Apparently, they're really annoying too, but it's a very distinctly New Hampshire thing. If you're not from there, you don't know what this is. And I, of course, was not. What the hell is a Fisher cat? Oh, it's a screech weasel. But the New Hampshire Screech Weasels just doesn't quite have the same ring to it.Yeah. I mean, that's a... Imagine being paid poverty wages to play for a team and be like, "I played for some weasels." I don't know. The ownership has fun with our name, I guess, at least so yeah.Yes. Oh yes. Well, I'm actually very glad to see there's been, I feel, an exponential growth in just among Twitters' baseball, baseball Twitter of acknowledgment that the way minor league players are treated is totally unacceptable in a multi multi-billion dollar industry. And I don't know why this year we hit the tipping point, but okay, good. I mean it's five, 10 years too late, but whatever. We're there. We're getting there. It's a bit of an optimist bias I guess, but it is that, this is progress. We are finally making progress. It's too late, but at least we're moving in the right direction.Yeah. I think a lot of that sort of comes down to, or a lot of the resistance to some of that you see on Twitter where it's like, oh, well they're playing a game. They should be happy with whatever, blah, blah, blah. That sort of stuff is sort of based on this idea where people will think, oh, well, one person on that team may someday make a hundred million dollars. I mean, yes, one person on that team may do that. Most of them won't. Most of them probably, depending on what level you're talking about, probably won't make it to the major leagues at all. And that's the same discussion we keep having about college athletes as well. Where it's well, they got a free education, which sure, I guess. But at the same time, they're making so much money for their schools and for all the people who go pro, there are so many others too, in football, for instance, just get a bunch of head injuries and have to go about their life.We see this. So baseball's problem in college is to me, it's twofold. It's different that the football and the basketball players, that's men's and women's basketball players now, they're generating so much revenue for their schools. The fact that the money doesn't trickle down to the players is its own, tragedy isn't the word. It's a crime. To me, it is a crime. I think the NCAA is essentially a cartel. And I would love to see an antitrust case around that. In baseball, most of the players, if not all, I mean, there are almost no players with full scholarships in baseball. So they're not getting a free education. They're getting a subsidized education. Okay, sure. But yeah, those players can get hurt, especially college pitchers. I'm sure you've seen me ranting about these high pitch counts. And if a college player blows out his elbow or his shoulder and has to have surgery and obviously a complication... There was a player at George Mason who had Tommy John surgery and then died.I believe he got some kind of infection or something, something. He had a completely unusual complication from the surgery and ended up dying from it. Obviously, that is the worst of the worst-case scenarios, but still these are real people who are not paid, but can incur an actual injury as life-altering life-ending complications. And they get nothing. And there is just this group of mostly people whose Twitter avatars are them in their sunglasses taken while they're in their cars who will say things like, "Oh, it's just a game. Oh, they should suck it up." And you're not even having a conversation at that point. Right. And we see this on multiple issues. Obviously it goes way beyond sports, but it's people who just they're so intransigent that they can't even hear supporting argument for the other side, like saying, pointing out that. They're not playing a game.This is work. They're probably at the ballpark nine to 10 hours a day. And then minor leaguers aren't even paid in the off season, but they have to continue to keep their bodies in shape and continue to at least do things to maintain arm strength or muscle tone or work on their swings on their own, just on their own time for no pay. Very little, no financial support from the team. They may get training support. It is a job. It's a real job, and it's a physically taxing job. And just because what you see... Somebody said this to me on Twitter the other day. "Well, they only work like three hours a day." I mean, that's the game. That's the actual first pitch to last pitch. Hell of a lot more than that. That's like saying an actor who made a movie, "Well, she only worked for two hours." Because the movie was two hours long. So obviously that's all it was. And she should make about 30 bucks, right? $15 an hour, two hours. There you go, that's fair.Yeah. It's interesting to me because it takes this argument that we see all kind of all over the place where so many people are more concerned about someone getting what they deem is more than they should, for any one thing. It doesn't matter who it affects or what it affects. We hear this when it comes up in discussions about should student loan debt be forgiven. Well, yeah, but what about this one? If someone paid it down and then they're not getting something that's someone else is, or a job that pays really well or something along those lines. And really, I think it's just a great example of the way that as society, we kind of hold each other back in the sense that we're fighting the fight on behalf of billionaires to not pay people. And just the other day, Scarlett Johansson sued Disney over how they released Black Widow, because she took a deal that was really heavy on the box office numbers.And Disney cut her out of the Disney plus stuff that they did when they released it. And so many people are rushing to defend Disney in this. Yeah, she's one of the highest-paid actresses on the planet, but she's still the little guy in this situation. If Disney can screw her over, they could screw anyone over. And that's kind of the thing that gets lost so much because so much of us would kill to be in Scarlet Johansson's place, fame and finances and all of that. But we end up defending billionaires and millionaires and all of that.And we defend Corporations. That's the thing I can't understand. And trust me, I'm no socialist here. There is a weird, I can't even call it a capitalist. It's like this weird corporatist status that the people who jump into defend Disney. And I worked for Disney for a long time. Actually, as companies go to work for they're pretty good, actually. Benefits were always very good. And they were progressive on at least many issues. But this idea that first of all, Disney, they're not going to love you back. Right. That's definitely true. I don't know what the goal is of defending a multi-billion dollar conglomerate like that. But I feel like people see an individual who's already rich, Scarlett Johansson in this case already very rich. And they say, well, it's not fair that she gets money.And they can't do the same thing with the company on the other side, the company just not being a person. Although I think Supreme Court said companies are people. So maybe I should rethink this, but that they can't understand that. So they immediately see person asking for "too much" money. I'm air quoting the too much here. And they get mad, "That's not fair." Which I have three kids, and they're all at different ages. And yet, "That's not fair," is just like the common vernacular of the household, right? Nothing is, they're so locked in on fairness. And there is a part of me that just wants to scream. "Hey, the world is not fair. We're just preparing you for this." And that's what I see when I see these people saying it's not fair that Scarlett Johansson wants more money.No, she actually wants what she was contractually entitled to get. And Disney doing an end run around the contract is not legal and something we should all oppose. Right? If companies can just run rough shot over contracts they have signed, negotiated and signed in good faith, then we're all screwed. We absolutely should be reading for Scarlett Johansson. It's not even so much about, I don't care what dollar figure she gets.I want the contract to be upheld because hey, I did sign contracts with Disney, as it turns out. And they upheld their terms of the contracts, and so did I. And we should absolutely want that to be in place. And that's why you should be supporting Scarlett Johansson in this particular lawsuit, but people don't see that. They just see, and probably worse because she's a woman, obviously a woman asking for more money. And that becomes a, that's not fair. I don't like that. And that's the end of it. And you can't argue against, you can't have a conversation. You just laid out the argument of why Disney is acting, probably acting in bad faith here. You can't get to that point because the sunglasses, Twitter, avatar crowd is they can't get past fair.Yeah. They ended up running interference for these companies to avoid having to do that.Yeah, they're like an unpaid social media SWAT Team.Yeah. To me, it's even weirder when you see especially in the Twitter mentions of Elon Musk. His fan base, the dudes who love him, who would jump in front of a bullet for him, they are something else. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the end game is here, because there are people who will be like, "Oh, I love Tesla. I got laid off, but I love Tesla still." And all of this, blah, blah, blah. It's like, "They laid you off, man. You don't have to be happy with them."You get to be mad actually.You can be kind of irritated. That's fine. But they'll do that. And they'll be like, "How dare you speak ill of Elon just because he wanted to put people back in the factories during the middle of a COVID surge." It's like, well, you're there because you just explained why." Yeah. I don't know if they think that someday, like Elon Musk is just going to be like, thanks for defending me, here's a million dollars. Because he could.Yes he could and not miss it.Yeah. I mean, if any billionaires want to just Venmo me a million dollars, I'm cool with it, but I'm not...Elon would pay in dogecoin coin or something.Yeah, “If you hang onto this, just wait 40 years,” yeah.Twitter is toxic to begin with. I think you and I have even talked about this. Anyone who snitch tags, I just block it at this point, because if you tag an Elon Musk, for example, and it's not even specifically about him. You tag someone like that and his followers catch onto it. Forget it. You have to log off for a few days. The site becomes totally unusable at that.Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. And that's kind of the sort of, I was trying to explain why people with larger followings have every responsibility to not be jerks on the internet. Because someone will say, "Well, why is it okay for this small account to be mean? But if Donald Trump picks a fight with someone." And it would be like, well, when Donald Trump would pick a fight with someone on Twitter, he was sending tens of millions of people to go and flood that person with all sorts of horrible stuff that could bleed over into their everyday lives.And it's a responsibility. It's a look at how to respond to things proportionally based on your own position, the position of the other people that you're criticizing. And I tried to explain it once as it's like if you're at a baseball game, for instance, and you're standing there and suddenly a beer spills on your head. And you turn around, ready to fight the person who poured a beer on your head, and you see that it was a baby that knocked it out of their mom's hand or something. Are you going to punch the baby?I mean, some of these people might.They might. And that's where I maybe need to recalibrate that little analogy for a bit. But it's the idea stands up, I think, where don't punch the baby. That's my house.This is where we've sunk as a society that we have to remind people not to punch the baby.See, I'll do that, and someone will be like, well, because you told me not to punch the baby, I am going to punch the baby's so much harder.Oh, yeah. I got that for pointing out that Anthony Rizzo is essentially, he's a vaccine refuser, called him an anti-vaxxer. To me, that is a distinction without a difference at this point. If you have to come out and publicly say, you're not getting the vaccine, you're an anti-vaxxer at this point. And somebody said it's because of people like you, that the rest of us will be defiant about not getting the vaccine. First of all, you're going to get COVID to own, who me? Okay, sure. But if that was all it took, I have many more questions.We're doomed.We are doomed. We are definitely doomed.Well, and that was another thing I wanted to quickly ask you about with athletes. What they say matters and what they say can influence people, because people look up to athletes. I look up some athletes and if they say something I'll go, oh. If Sean Doolittle says something, I'll be like...I was just going to say, he's our guy.Sean is my favorite guy on the planet. And I was at the Cubs game. He did not pitch again. Never seen him pitch in person. I've been to games where he's been on one of the teams several times, which is just so weird. But, yeah, if Sean says something, if he says, check out this band or something or takes a political position or something on something, I'll think about that and I'll consider it. And I'm sure that there are people who look up to Anthony Rizzo or in the NFL, what's his name? The guy on the Buffalo Bills, the receiver...Cole Beasley?Beasley. Beasley, that's it.Who won't stop talking and can't wear his mask properly.Yeah. And then the Bills promoted that tweet that they put up.I saw that.It's just why? But so my question to you is what responsibility do you think that athletes have in these sorts of situations? Because I think if the messaging is the issue with getting people vaccinated, for instance, what moral or ethical responsibility, if any, do you think that athletes have to at very least not spread harmful information?Right. To me, what they say and how they behave is separate from whether they get vaccinated themselves. And I hate even talking about it as a choice because I think there is a huge, personal and civic responsibility to get vaccinated that has been there the whole time. That's been there since April. I think it's even greater now. And now we are seeing, Kay Ivey and Asa Hutchinson, Brian Kemp, Republican governors of states that are now getting pounded by the Delta variant are all coming out and saying in various ways, get vaccinated. I thought, Kay Ivey, look, I'm not going to agree with Kay Ivey on basically anything. But I liked what she said, we got to blame the unvaccinated people here. Good for, yes. Good. You should've said this six months ago, but good.Yeah. Better late than never.Yes. Again, I believe in any progress is good even if it's late. I will take progress over because the alternative is regression. But I think that athletes or anyone with a platform has a responsibility to you would hope to say the right thing, but say the right thing, or just say nothing, just don't, but they're spreading misinformation. They are repeating anti-vax tropes. We're waiting for more data. That's my favorite one. You don't know how much data there is. You have no f****n idea how much data there is clearly, if you start saying stuff like that. You are just repeating something you saw on Facebook or a parlor or whatever. And so some of that could come down to the teams too. I think it would... Anthony Rizzo talked about he made a comment like that back in April. And he was saying his immune system was the strongest it's ever been as another implication of sort of, I don't need this vaccine. This great strong immune system.Which struck me as odd, given that he's a cancer survivor.He's a cancer survivor, 13 years ago. Yes.He knows how this stuff goes.You would think right? But I will also put a little bit on the Cubs in this. And maybe all teams were just unprepared for this, or didn't think about what could happen when you stick a bunch of microphones in front of a bunch of players and ask them what is kind of a science question. You can say, "Hey, you're going to get asked about this. We can't make you get vaccinated. We'd really like you to get vaccinated, but we can't make you. Here's how we would like you to answer questions about vaccinations if you're asked, especially if you are a vaccine refuser." There are way better ways to approach that.Yeah, well absolutely.And I just come down to, if you have a big platform, you have a responsibility. And that includes the responsibility to say less. That is something I've tried to practice myself in the last couple of years is to say less, to make sure I'm not inadvertently sending a swarm of my followers at somebody because I have enough followers. I don't have a huge following, but I have enough of a following that it could happen. Right. And also to not spread misinformation. I wouldn't do it deliberately. I think I try to be a critical thinker, but I'm subject to, I can make mistakes too. And so sometimes the best response is just saying less. And I don't want to misuse the platform. I think it's a privilege to have that many people following me and obviously interested in some things I have to say. And that means being judicious in what I do on the platform. And I would say the same thing to players. This is not actually about whether you're getting vaccinated. It's about what you say in public because it will affect how people think.Yeah, exactly. And that's a great point. That's pretty much all I've got. I just wanted to pick your brain for a little bit before letting you get back to a trade deadline madness.I don't think anybody's been traded since we started talking. So that's good. I couldn't get to sleep last night because every time I was like, "Oh, I finished up." Okay. "Wait, the Dodgers did what?" Yeah.“They're getting who?”Yeah, thank God I knew the prospects because there's always the chance in one of these deals where it's like, oh God, I got to find a scout who saw so-and-so because it's a player who... Players get traded now where they've got almost no pro experience. Guys are getting traded out of the Gulf coast league or whatever, I call it the Florida man league. I think they're calling it the Florida Complex League, which I understand it's at the complexes, but it makes it sound like the league itself is actually complex. And it's like, no, it's really not. It's pretty simple, actually. But the worst part of the trade deadline. I mean, my job is to know as many players that I can, but I can't know them all. And it's like, someone's going to get traded at 3:58 today, two minutes before the deadline and be like, "I don't know who that is." And then it's the mad dash to the phone. Right? Who can I text? Who can tell me they saw so-and-so play for the ACL Padres?Yeah, you've got accountant's tax day and you on baseball trade deadline day.Yes. This is my tax day. That's pretty good. My brother-in-law's an accountant so this analogy works.You're like, "I know how you feel." But thanks so much for joining me again, Keith. Is there anything you want to plug?Can I plug my book? Can I even mention my book?Yes, of course. I already mentioned it in the intro but do it again.Yes. So my second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, came out in paperback this April from Harper Collins. You can buy it anywhere you buy books. And I would say, please find an independent bookstore near you. They are probably partially reopened at this point, but they absolutely need our business. So if you do buy it from the big company that shall not be named, I won't complain, but I try to do all my book buying through indie bookstores because they need us. And we are a better society if we have more bookstores. I strongly believe that.That is a great policy. And what I'll do is I will be linking to some indie bookstores to buy that from.Awesome.I will make it as easy as possible for people to get that.It's a full-service podcast.Yeah, exactly. But yeah. Thanks a lot, Keith.My pleasure. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Present Age Podcast.I’m your host Parker Molloy.On today’s show, I speak with my friend Carlos Maza. As the host of Vox’s “Strikethrough,” Carlos helped shine a light on the way the choices made by the media helped raise Donald Trump and Republicans to power.His videos, with titles like “Why every election gets its own crisis,” “How Trump makes extreme things look normal,” and “The decline of American democracy won’t be televised,” were some of the sharpest pieces of media criticism of the past five years.And then he stopped.After becoming the target of an anti-gay harassment campaign by right-wing YouTubers, Carlos was let go by Vox despite being named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential people on the internet in 2019.I recently had a chance to chat with Carlos about all of this, and I’m really excited for you to check this out. Let’s get started.Parker Molloy: So joining me today is the wonderful, the great, the talented, the prescient Carlos Maza.Carlos Maza: Hey, Parker. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here.Yeah. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on my new podcast-type thing. It's an adventure every day over here.It's badass to watch you evolve over the years that we've been friends and it just feels like getting a front seat at a really cool story. So it's a pleasure.We took a similar path in the sense that we both maybe have gotten a bit cynical over time and not unjustifiably so.I would say my path is one marked by increasing cynicism, for sure. Yeah.Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's part of why I wanted to talk with you because the other day, I was going through and I was looking at old Vox Strikethrough videos and I rewatched all of them because one, they're very good, but two, looking back at them, it's just like, "Yes, everything he said was on point." You really broke down how Trump makes extreme things look normal, how harassment on Twitter became a giant issue, how the narrative around Antifa would keep flying up. And then also, I think this is important. It's you had one that was about the decline of American democracy and about how media generally is not equipped to deal with this.And I think that we've seen that happen more and more over the past year or two, especially and we're at this point where there are people literally trying to overthrow the government, but media still can't stop inviting these people on meet the press and whatnot and treating them like they're totally normal. So I'm just curious, how do you feel about what's happening in the world as it relates to things that you predicted would happen in the world? Things that you were pointing out were happening in the world?You mentioned cynicism, and that's my primary response to all this. Is that when I was making those videos, many of them were right at the beginning of the Trump era and then over, I think the first two or three years and it felt like sounding an alarm bell on a crisis that could maybe be averted. There was this feeling, I think for me during 2017 where I thought this might be a wake-up call. I'm sure everyone felt this way. Every week, this must be the thing that snaps things back into normalcy or back into some realistic sense of how bad things are getting. And now that we're so long away from that initial moment of weird optimism, my sense about it was just like, "Yes. I felt like I accurately described what's going on and I feel a little silly that I had hoped that things would correct themselves.”I think I still had some faith maybe in myself as a media critic, or just more broadly in the media establishment, their ability to react to crises and adjust and course correct, and I think right now, you might feel a similar way. My sense is no amount of good media criticism will change corporate media's incentives. And I think media watchdogs are valuable, but in the sense that you can move the beast, I think there's very little that good-faith criticism can do because the people who make these media calls are not operating from a journalistic priority. They're operating from essentially a business priority. Yeah, I've just become really cynical. I look back at those videos and think, "What a sweet summer child unaware of how hopeless this is."Yeah. That's how I look at a lot of my writing. A lot of my writing that I did over at Media Matters. So it was the same kind of thing. It was, "Tucker Carlson is a fake populist." It was, "Look out for the dog whistles," and stuff like that, but we ended up... Everything just kept going along as it was going along. And I wrote an article about the importance of not letting Trump and his cronies get away with trying to subvert democracy back in December. This was before January 6th, because it was clear what he was doing. And even after January 6th, there was a week or two where everyone was like, "Oh, well, we have to rethink things." And then they just went along doing the same exact things they've always done. So I feel like I am lacking in hope and optimism, which might be called for. I'm not quite sure.We both started in this weird... I think we both got to know each other and we're doing work around queer issues at around the same time and I think... I don't know. I'm curious about how you feel about it, because my sense about it when I was doing it was like, "This could help." I had some real faith that I could alter the language and behavior of journalists and that's what motivated me, and I've had to go through a real shift on my own personal work journey about what I'm trying to do and what I think is possible and what I find useful, and that shifted a lot for me. Have you felt a similar...? We both started off as these fire-brand-y activists and I don't feel like that anymore.No. Yeah. I mean, the past several years, anytime someone's used the word activist to describe me, I'm like, "Please don't. Please just don't." I mean, at one time maybe I would have been fine with it, but the more time has gone on, I went into... When I was writing articles about trans issues at The Advocate, for instance, I did that for about a year and I was operating under this assumption or this hope that by doing this, I could help enlighten the ignorant. I went into things under the assumption that by shining a light on injustices or explaining politely to people, "Hey, don't call trans women men, or maybe you don't need to include the person's former name in this article as they were not famous under that name. So there's no actual reason to add it." And stuff like that would happen constantly. And I think that there was some good that came from that.Some good, but overall the messaging is just lost. And over time, we've seen these queer-specific publications either fold or shrink down to nothingness or just have zero traffic and that aspect of things hasn't been picked up by mainstream outlets. And that's scary to me, but at the same time, I wonder if it even matters and that's where I'm at.Yeah. My sense is like I think I had a very rosy belief in the arc of the moral universe and things always slowly getting better, which is I think a luxury/hangover of the Obama years to some extent, and that feeling has been... I've had to grapple with that sense of I ended up part of some big inevitably successful project. What I do matters very little in the grand scheme of things and how do you try to fight for a better world when you get a sense that it might not matter, or if it matters, it's not because of you? And that's been a real... I was curious to how you felt about it because I think we both went through a collapse of faith maybe around the same time or a collapse of optimism and it's fucked me up as a writer and as a creator and looking back at my old Vox videos, I'm like, "I'm a very different person now in my heart, even if the arguments they make would be singled out."Yeah. I feel the same way. I feel like a lot of my earlier writing, even though it came off in that firebrand-y activist-y approach, even though that was what I was doing then, I feel like I came to it with such a different energy. And now it's just this sort of, "Well, if things are bad, things are always bad. Things will continue to be bad. They'll probably get worse." And I don't want to feel that way. I want to feel optimism, but I want to feel optimism with justification. I want to feel justified optimism and I don't. And I think that the power of media generally is important. And I think that some of the flaws that have happened along the way, really come down to the fact that you'll have places like CNN's Reliable Sources, for instance, that show. They'll have the same people on constantly to talk about, "Oh this newspaper in that town," or they'll have Ben Shapiro or Eric Erickson on or whoever, and what are we learning?What are we doing? What's changing? And I think that there's this reluctance to put people who really challenged the narratives that are pushed in media out there. The whole time that you were making these videos for Media Matters and Vox and on your own as well, it just blew my mind that you weren't being constantly booked on TV, because everything you were saying made perfect sense. And when I would use that to try to show someone who really meant well and wanted to learn something different, it would be effective. The way that you presented arguments was always so straightforward, but not condescending, which I think is really important, and I think it would've done a lot of good for CNN, MSNBC, whatever to put you on air, but that didn't really happen and made me lose a little faith in...Not that I had much faith in corporate media, but it made me lose the remaining amount of faith that I had, because they would rather keep putting the same old, same old people back on and making the same arguments and pretending that they're not seeing what's happening in the world and it's beyond frustrating.What have you been up to because that is something that you were everywhere and in 2019, was it Time Magazine? Said you were one of the 25 most influential people on the internet, which was very impressive. I was like, "Wow, that's awesome." But then you did your own thing and then you haven't really uploaded in quite a while. What have you been up to?Yeah, it's been such a weird experience. I had my big falling out with YouTube and lost my job and everything and I think I just had a period afterward that was right before the pandemic and then I went independent in February and then the pandemic started. And I think honestly, the citizen that we're describing in terms of politics, to me has aligned with the broader anxiety or confusion about purpose and meaning in life. I don't mean to get too heady about this, but the last video I uploaded on my channel on my birthday in April was about Overcome with the Plague and it was like an existentialist reflection on trying to do good in the world that seems inevitably doomed and took me forever to make that video because I was trying to describe something that I think even after making it, I grappled to talk to people about, which is this, I don't know, this grappling with purpose.I think this might just be me, but I certainly feel hyper-aware of living in an era where it does feel a little bit like the world is ending, at least in some meaningful way. I spent, I would say, four years at the end of Media Matters and at Vox working my ass off to make these videos that I thought were so important and truly, they consumed my whole life. My whole identity was making these videos and I was staying late at work every day and my whole sense of self-worth was wrapped up in these videos. And I think to have it fall apart so catastrophically, to very publicly get fired and to lose myself, lose my identity, to get dogpiled, to have everyone worrying about me and to lose it all I think forced a real... It's still forcing a real examination of who the f**k am I? What makes me happy? What do I want to do in this limited time on earth?So I don't have a great answer to the question of what I want to do with my time, but I think to answer your question about where have I been, I feel like I've just been wandering through my life a little bit, trying to figure out what I want to keep. I know I don't want to work as hard as I did when I was at Vox because it made me a really unhappy person. I know I don't want to be as angry as I've been because my anger wasn't making the world better and I don't think it was making me happy, and I know again, sorry if this is a bit too heavy, but I know I can't save the world.I would like to spend a little more time saving myself and that means it's more time taking therapy seriously, growing plants in my apartment, spending time with friends, fostering a cat, doing small things that I think keep me grounded in a world that feels often ungrounded and I'm trying to unlearn the lesson I learned when I was at Vox and I think to some extent, Media Matters, which is your only worth and happiness comes from making a big famous thing and becoming successful, and it doesn't. So I wish I had a really sexy answer. My honest answer is I feel lost and I'm trying to be okay with lostness right now because I don't really know a way out of it.That's not something I've talked to people about, obviously, because it's embarrassing and shameful in some ways, and I think on the internet, or especially on Twitter where you and I spend a lot of time, it's a weird thing to admit. To go from this time person who's supposed to be really successful and popular to being like, "I don't know if I want to be as public anymore. I don't know if I want to talk to people anymore. I don't know if I want to have my identity wrapped up in a performance that I can't control all the time."The Present Age is a reader-supported newsletter. While a free version of the newsletter exists, paid subscriptions make this work possible.Yeah. It's funny that you brought up existentialism just because, I mean, I named my newsletter and this podcast after Kierkegaard's The Present Age. So it's the same sort of idea. It's the same sort of stuff that I've been going through myself and in that same sense of, "Okay. Trying to find meaning in life and purpose, and I don't feel like there's anything that we're supposed to do or that there's anything that we're supposed to work towards. I feel like a lot of the time, it's just nothing and we have to figure out what we want to work towards, what we want our imprint on the world to be. And over time, it's that same situation where I put so much time and energy into writing articles about various issues and then six months later, I find myself in a position where, "Okay, it looks like I need to write that same article again because no one listened last time."And after a couple years of that, it just got to this point where I realized I'm just not making the kind of impact that I want on the world while also leaving Media Matters, I viewed it as a personal failing on my part for not being good enough or persuasive enough or the right personality or the right person to get these messages across that I still believe in and still think are important. I still like everyone over at Media Matters and enjoyed working for them and wouldn't trade that for the world, but at the same time, I felt like I was spinning my wheels. I was telling the same story over and over and over, and I want to tell a new story, a different story, a more important story, a broader story that we can all relate to. And I think first to do that, it's important to really start to whittle away at all the b******t that's out there and that's why I wanted to do this more free-wheeling kind of, "I'm going to write about whatever I feel like writing about.I'm going to interview people about whatever I want to interview them about," type of situation because I'm genuinely pretty curious about what everyone's been doing with their lives in this weird year that the pandemic has brought to us. You have bands that have had to cancel tours and they're playing these weird streaming shows that are odd and I'm not... It's clearly not what they want to do. It's clearly not what their fans want. Everyone's operating at this level of, "Well, the best we can do right now is whatever." Even if it's an in-person concert, it's yeah, sure. But ideally, we would be going to concerts in these places where there isn't a virus just running rampant and that's the subtext of everything I do, is that we're in a world that is just flawed for all of us.And the way that we communicate with each other is the only thing that there is left and it's been really interesting talking to people about this because it makes me feel less alone, if that makes any sense, to know that we're all going through some sort of different levels of horrific world events around us as it does seem like the world is ending in its own ways. And part of me wonders whether this is something that is somewhat unique to our generation, or if this is a feeling that everyone has had along the way, and that is the big question. Am I being too pessimistic or am I seeing things exactly as they are? And I still don't quite know the answer and that's why having these conversations is so important to me and so fulfilling in a different way.Because both of us have had these careers that were very... I mean, we have both been very front-facing. Our names and our identities are wrapped up in our work and writing and I think both of us have personas that we at least for some portion of time performed online that are not totally identical to our real personas. I think we both are much... Especially when we first started working in the same spaces, are much more aggressive online than I think we are as people normally. And I have gone through this feeling and I wonder if you feel too, having this desire to retreat intensely and reclaim my identity and hide away from the rules for a bit.And I'm trying to think about authors who would write a book and then go on sabbatical for five years and be like, "I'm not saying s**t for five years until I have another book at me." Well, we don't really get that luxury because we were just constantly making arguments. Do you feel that desire to retreat and almost protect your identity from even friendly audiences and how have you managed that? Because I get the sense that your relationship to online identity has shifted significantly over the years that we've known each other and I know that mine has too.Absolutely.And I'm curious where your head is at with that stuff.Yeah. I absolutely have felt that and I'm still in that weird position where I mean, first off, if someone is... If you manage a coffee shop or something or a factory, or if you're a CEO at a very successful company, whatever the case may be, it's not about being online constantly. A lot of people are online constantly for their own reasons, but in our positions, it was crucial to making a living is being online. That has been something that through, I mean, the past few years of therapy that I've been doing, a lot of it has centered on this idea of how do I deal with something that is making me feel terrible about myself and feel sad and feel angry all the time, which is social media, the internet, people, while also realizing that that is so core to what I'm doing and what I do with my life?And that's part of why I decided to try this solo thing because at Media Matters, there's no out. You can't just go, "I'm not going to pay attention to Vox this week," because then you're not paying attention to whatever's happening in the world because a lot of the work revolved around what is happening in right wing media. And I still keep up with this stuff, but I've already started to feel less anxious now that tracking exactly what Tucker Carlson is saying every night or what Sean Hannity is saying isn't my job. It's not my core job. It makes me feel better about myself and what I'm doing in the world, even if at the same time, it feels like it's giving up in a sense.Yeah. That phrase, “giving up” really resonates with me, because I think especially at a place like Media Matters or even just monitoring conservative media, there is this impulse I think you have as a media watcher that you need to be constantly drinking from the fire hose and just everything needs to be responded to and everything needs to be corrected. And I think one shift that's happened in my mind over the course of the Trump administration and the Trump campaign was something is happening here that has basically nothing to do with people having correct information and something being fact-checked enough. Know about the fact-checking to me, felt like it made a shred of difference to people who were ideologically committed to this and I think especially going into Media Matters, I had this real belief in people's good faith and the sense that debunking works as a persuasive strategy that I don't have anymore.And I think even my work was built around this sense of, "I need to make a video every three weeks and respond to anything that's coming up, or if it doesn't get responded to, it'll spiral out of control." And I made those videos for three weeks and I was constantly at the office and it did not matter in any meaningful way. So I think I'm in this phrase, this period of if I cannot stop the fire hose, the fire's going to happen no matter what. And the people who I disagree with are not super interested in whether or not I can fact check them or debunk them, what can I do this meaningful? And I think for me making a video like How to be Hopeless, or the video that I'm working on now in critical race theory is starting from this place of I accept defeat when it comes to persuading those who don't see eye to eye with me on this.I know that I cannot win that fight. If I'm talking to those who are interested in what I have to say, what can I do for them? And it's just a very different skill set and objective. Trying to speak to people whose hearts are aligned with yours is a different skill set and I think a little bit tougher. I find it much harder to write now that I've given up on debunking because fact-checking is easy. Really just to point out that something is wrong and find evidence for it. Trying to, I don't know, speak to someone who's in the same place of despair and have them understand the world a little bit better, or even feel less alone like you described is tougher as a writer and as a persuader, and I find that I struggle much more now with figuring out what is there to say that's useful? Because I don't feel like saying, "That's not true, that's not true, that's not true," is useful anymore and I would like to use my time more wisely.So I don't really... Even though we've been doing this for a long time, I feel like an amateur again. I'm not quite sure how to make the argument because I don't know what I'm trying to persuade someone off right now.Absolutely. Oh, that resonates so much. It's funny that so far, us talking has just been a lot of, "Yes, yes." But it's true. It's fascinating to me, I mean, just talking to you about these shared experiences that we had. Even if they were at different times in our lives is helpful and hopeful in a weird way that it doesn't make me feel like a total failure and I think that is what I'm grappling with right now is trying to figure out how to feel like less of a failure in life and less of someone who just does a lot of talking and not a lot of listening and doesn't really make a difference. I've been trying to figure out different ways to connect and that video, that How to Be Hopeless was just a fantastic video.Thanks.I'll be sure to link in the transcript of this. I make a point of getting full transcripts of every interview I do just for the sake of accessibility and whatnot, and aside from being expensive, it's very nice to have and it's a nice way to add little extras in there with links to YouTube videos and whatnot. The one other thing I wanted to ask you about, when it comes to the topic of cancel culture and all of that sort of stuff, when we hear people talk about that and use that, I see that as people talk about, "Oh, well this writer...." Andrew Sullivan got criticized for race science or something ridiculous that yeah, he's going to get criticized for and that was “cancel culture” for criticizing him. So he's going to leave and he's going to take a quarter-million dollars or whatever it was and everyone's going to feel bad for him because he was "canceled". And you see that happen all over the place.Yes.Steven Crowder, for instance, constantly... He's always been “canceled” because he was criticized or YouTube took him offline for a week to say, "Don't do it again." And then he's going to do it again. But when it comes down to it, the people who are affected by these things are the ones that typically don't have the kind of megaphone to get the "Help. I've been canceled," message out to the world and I saw that happen with you and with Vox. I mean, I feel like you were making a good point.You made a video pointing out how Crowder was just attacking you and clearly violating YouTube's rules. And as much as Vox initially publicly came out in your corner, it seems like they hung you out to dry. I'm not sure if you want to speak on that at all, but it depresses me because I cannot believe that it's the fact that they're a company in their corporation, it's not necessarily mission-driven or even worried about what the function of a company is, but in retrospect, do you think the things...? They could have done something different or that they didn't have your back enough or was everything fine? I don't know.Yeah. I mean, the humorously detached view of it is I spent all my time criticizing the way that corporate media prioritizes profit and finances over editorial good judgment. So then when I lost my job because I threatened Vox's financial interests as a partner, it was like, "Right. This makes sense. I should not be surprised." And I think the danger of any media critic at a media organization is invariably the things you're criticizing are going to happen in the place that you work too. My feeling about it is I don't have a ton of confusion about what happened to me. I'm very clear that the argument I'm making was right, the reasons that I was let go didn't really make any sense. Vox's trying to sell a show to YouTube that made them a lot of money. You could not run ads on my show because I was running a political show. So it makes sense. And I don't have a lot of anger because I feel like I've grieved that thing that happens enough that I'm not mad. I get it.You don't get mad at a lion for hunting prey because that's what a lion does. And you of course, think what happened to me, it was really painful, but I don't have any confusion about the fact the lion was hungry and I was prey and Vox did what they had to do. I will say that beyond my anger or frustration with Vox, I had to go through this own reckoning of did I f**k up? Did I do something that was wrong or stupid? And was there something...? The way you described after leaving Media Matters of like, "Was I just not the right person? Could I have said this differently?" And now that I've got some space from it, I can look back and be like, "I am really proud of how I handled myself." That was a very difficult, painful thing to go through and my only motivation in it was, "Fight like hell for what's right, even if you think you're going to lose." And I fought like hell for what was right. I still think I'm right. I still think I did it correctly.I still think my argument is solid and I like who I was during that and I'm still really proud of that person who I am now. The flip side of that is it does not shield you from suffering and punishment. It's been a very, very bad... It was a very painful experience and I think I'm still grappling with the pain of it and this sense of like, "It doesn't matter how good you are. The good people are not always rewarded and this has nothing to do with you being good or bad." There's no way you could've phrased this that would have been different. You just lost. The video of How to be Hopeless is ostensibly about grappling with grief at the end of the world, but for me writing it, it was also about you can't stop the plaque. If you're in the way, sometimes you just die. If this gets for me like dying is like losing my job and losing my identity as a public speaker, and rather than be angry about it forever, I had to just talk to myself and say, "I really like you."“I'm glad you did this. If this is it for my career, that's okay." You're just one person and just live a decent life. So my existentialism is part, me grappling with COVID and Trump, and part of me grappling with feeling like I really tried my best and lost. And how do you make peace with losing it and not use it as a weapon against yourself and say, "I'm such a f**k up. I should have done this differently. I should have phrased it differently." And just being like, "Yeah, I lost, but I did not lose myself and I tried to maintain my integrity and act in a way that was aligned with my moral judgment and I feel like I did that." Even though that doesn't shield you from pain at all. It doesn't shield you from shame or feelings of worthlessness, you just have to work through it. Sorry, that's a very fluffy answer, but it's an answer based on a lot of therapy.No. Yeah, I totally get it. And I get that it's complicated. Part of what to me on the outside stood out was that you were being framed as this... The argument for instance with Crowder and others on the right would push was, "Oh, you are the corporate one and he's just a little guy." I mean, he's loaded. He has so much power and influence and I would assume money. And you were being framed as the big corporate dude, which we both know wasn't accurate and it really hits home how life just sometimes is not fair and it's not right and I don't know. Would you have done anything differently in that particular situation or does it not matter given that we're moving past it? Have you thought about that at all?Yeah. I mean, the only thing I would have done differently was I would say the first eight weeks that it was this big public thing, I was so on the defense and in activist mode that I just had this exterior of like, "Nothing f***s with me. I'm not phased. Everything is funny. These people don't intimidate me. I'm not scared." Part of that is true. You and I had both been in the trenches online for a long time. We've dealt with a lot of harassment and s**t like that. A part of me was very solid and had no doubt. There was another part of me that was being traumatized about what was going on, and there were sessions where my therapist was like, "Are you good? I know you're talking about how you're okay, but this is trauma. Are you good?" And I'll be like, "I'm fine." And my family would be like, "Are you okay?" And I would say, "I'm fine."And I was putting on a brave face for everyone else, but also for myself because I didn't want to admit that I was getting fucked about what's going on, and eventually, I did have a breakdown privately and really have to deal with the fact that I mean, I was getting PTSD and was having all these bananas anxieties about being afraid in public spaces. I just want to... I wish I would've given myself enough compassion earlier on to be like, "Publicly, you're this tough guy and this is fine, privately, you need to let yourself be okay being fucked up by what's going on." You can only fight for so long before your emotions decide to find you and say, "Now we're having a breakdown," but I really just...My only thought when that was going on at first was like, "Survive, survive, survive, survive," and there's just not a lot of room when you're in that defensive posture to be like, "I'm okay, but this really, really hurts and I feel very scared right now." So that's what I would've changed. But in terms of the argument that I made and my choice to make it, I look back and I'm like, "Badass. That was badass," and that's how I think I feel about it. Badass.Yeah. Well, that's great. This has been a great discussion. This has been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed this.Me too.This is wonderful and thanks so much for coming on my new podcast that hopefully more people will listen to as time goes on.Of course. I got to say because we both [inaudible] on similar trajectories or both have been dancing in the same space for a while, I'm like whatever else happens to us, I'm very grateful that you and I have fought on the same side for a while and got to grow up with each other in this space, and convos like this... I think being an online persona can be very lonely in some ways and almost this reminds me that while the experience is often lonely, you're often lonely alongside other very good people. So I'm glad that I'm alongside you in this.Yeah. Thanks. And I mean, I'm just glad that we're friends.Same.In addition to all of that.Yeah. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Parker Molloy: So, I was on your podcast, Well, This Isn't Normal, back in April of last year. And I think at the time I was still under this impression that this was all going to be somewhat temporary, in terms of pandemic-related stuff, that by the fall things would return to a sense of normalcy. And now more than a year later, it seems like we're just starting to get back to whatever normal is. So, I know that the pandemic hasn't exactly helped my mental health, but I'm doing my best to power through. It was wondering, how are you holding up these days?Sara Benincasa: I am doing pretty well, but so much of that is not of my own doing. It's of my own doing in the sense that I've gotten help, I've asked for help and gotten help. But what I mean by that, is that it's not internally generated. I haven't done it all on my own. I am a member of a 12 step program, and I am a person who goes to therapy every week, talk therapy with somebody who specializes in addiction, and also does a lot of stuff with mindfulness, she's also a mindfulness meditation teacher. And then I see a psychiatrist once a month. And all of this happens online, although I did go to an in-person 12 step meeting, which was very cool. For the first time in a long time, that was very special to get to do that.But I've also got family and friends who are engaged in their own self work, whether it's through the work of sobriety, through the work of talk therapy, through fitness for their mental health, whatever, and obviously physical health, too, whatever it may be. I've just started doing pilates, which is very helpful with breathing and just being in my body, which for a lot of people, I know it's hard if you were... Either if you're dealing with some difficult memories of trauma that caused you to disengage from being in the physical body, or if you simply are somebody who mostly has gotten positive feedback from stuff you do with your brain, which your body is your brain too, but you know what I mean. If you got all your pats, and love, and approval from say, getting good grades, maybe the physical aspect of health was not emphasized, or whatever. So what I'm saying is through teachers, facilitators, mentors, sponsors, things like that, that it is a village of humans who help me stay on point. But I also, Parker, cannot believe that was April of last year.That's the thing, I had to look it up, and I was like, oh no. It has been so long, it's been a year and three months, I guess. So, time flies when you're living through a once-in-a-generation pandemic, I guess.Time is different now. Time is absolutely, there's somebody who I met in person after talking to them for four months, and it was the first time we hung out, or maybe the second time we hung out. People said, "Oh, how long have you known each other?" And we said, "Oh, this is just our second time hanging out." And then we said, "Oh, but we talked to each other for four months online. We became friends," and then it made sense. And other people shared stories of the same. Emotional time is different from chronological, calendar time, isn't it?Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it. Because yeah, I'm trying to rework pre-internet days, or where I would make friends in the physical space, where it would be like, yeah, you hang out with someone once a week and then over the course of several months, yeah, you get to know them. But online, you could talk to someone every single day. It's almost like you have a coworker sort of relationship, it's like oh, going into the office today, and by the office I mean Twitter.Yeah. And you have these almost old-fashioned, Victorian era, or pre-invention of the telephone, epistolary relationships. Like it's all going to be in a Ken Burns documentary in a sepia filter, but it's over emails and texts instead. So much of it is through words, where we don't get the visual cue. Right now, you and I are using video, which is great because I can see your visual cues and the movement of your face. But there are still some pieces of information that we could only pick up from each other by being in person. I don't know, like if there's a loud sound. To me, it's not going to sound the same as it does if I were in the room with you, and I could see how you react to that.And I wouldn't intellectually be parsing that, but I would notice, oh, okay. That sound really startled Parker, maybe Parker really just doesn't like that kind of sound. Or maybe it would startle me too, like oh yeah, a bomb exploded down the block, nobody was hurt, in this theoretical example. I'm just pulling real-world experiences from s**t the LAPD did recently, like blowing up a bunch of fireworks and horribly damaging things. But you know what I mean? There's some things, like what if I smell really bad to you? You don't know that right now, you could just think I'm great. And then in person you could be like, this is terrifying.Be like, “oh my God, I can't believe I've been friends with her. She smells so bad, I'm so embarrassed.”“I invited her to my wedding, or the baptism of my eighth child” or something. Or I told my family, "You're going to love her so much," and she smelled terrible.“She's so great, and I bet she smells nice.” That was a weird assumption to make.It is true though for dating, people have said to me multiple times, you have to see if you guys like the way the other person smells. Which I think that's so gross to say it like that, but I also think it's very true.Yeah, that's probably true. Because if someone or something smells, that kind of throws off the entire vibe.Yeah, and pheromones too. I think it might not even be... I might have a perfectly nice perfume or whatever, but there is something chemical that happens that we know about, where people just pick up on cues about each other, and you fit or you don't. And I think that can sort of, it's chemistry. You don't know if you have chemistry, chemistry of friendship, chemistry of romance. I have a friend with whom I have great creative chemistry, it's not a sexual chemistry. Although sexual chemistry is creative, but we get excited about pitching ideas back and forth. And it's fun, and it feels like, kids playing in a sandbox is what it feels like. Very pure delight.And on that note, in terms of pitching ideas and stuff, what have you been working on? You're always working on something cool and different, and it's, oh, she's comedy, writer, on Twitter, and writing books and stuff like that. What have you been up to lately?Thank you.Any cool professional things, or just kind of-Well, I did my buddy Chris Gethard's podcast, which is called New Jersey Is The World. And Chris was saying... First of all, I wish I had Chris's career. Chris's career is above and beyond what I have done in my opinion creatively, which I know we're not supposed to compare, but I'm just prefacing this. Chris said in the podcast, he was like, "I feel like you are a person who has a career that's really similar to mine, in that people are like, 'Are you a writer, a comedian, you act once in while? What do you do?'" We both are very, I think he would probably agree that we are very fortunate to have gotten to have careers like the respective ones that we've had.And Chris is an incredible performer. I am much more of a writer, but I do enjoy performing once in a while. I have a day job, one of my books is called Real Artists Have Day Jobs. So I work in nonprofit digital marketing, which is really fun. And as a sober person, oh my God, what a change. It helped influence me to get sober, just because oh, suddenly my job wasn't showing up to make jokes at 10:00 PM in a club, And then getting wasted and getting paid with booze. It was like, oh, your job is to be on the phone at a very specific time of day, and figure out how to help out people in a certain way that they really need. That's real important. The nighttime stuff is cool too, but if you're hung over at 7:00 AM on that call, that call's not going to go great, and people will suffer. The people we serve through the nonprofit will suffer.So, that was one of the... I still didn't get sober for another year and a half, but it was one of the things that made me go, maybe puking and having hangover diarrhea is not the best move, when I'm having a pretty important phone call. So that was very helpful. But also, a paycheck is great and health insurance. And also I find a lot of meaning in that work. And then I wrote on a couple of episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is super fun and exciting. Just joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, pitching. Like, oh wow, just being on Zoom for hours with 10 hilarious people, just pitching jokes for robot puppets and a human to say, so that was super duper fun.And juggling that with a day job was obviously something else. But there is a benefit to being based on the East coast when you're interested in Hollywood type stuff, which is that if you can do it remotely, if you've got a normal times job on the East coast, chances are you can do your West coast work after hours. You know what I mean? Because of the time difference, sometimes it works out.Yeah, sure. And see, then there's me in the middle in the Central time zone.You're in the middle.I'm just in the middle of everything. I'm close to nothing, but not too far from anything, if that makes any sense. It's like I can actually out West for two hours.Yes, it's perfect And Gethard and I were talking about this on his podcast, New Jersey Is The World, on this most recent episode. Which I don't know when this podcast episode will come out, but this episode of his podcast dropped in, I guess July 17th, something like that, 2021. Anyway, we were talking about things that are Jersey-ish, because we're both from New Jersey and so are the other hosts, Mike and Nick on the show. And I said, Chicago is not the New Jersey of the Midwest. It's like the Manhattan, or the Paris, or the something. But there is an affinity that I often feel for people, this goes from Minneapolis too, but it's more for Chicago, because I think people from Chicago, or who have spent a significant amount of time there, tend to have a little more directness. They still have Midwest nice, but it's not Minnesota nice. You know what I mean?Yeah, that makes sense.It's a little more direct. And for whatever reason, I just tend to vibe with people who are from Chicagoland area or have spent a significant chunk of adult time there. They don't have to live there. And Chris was saying the same, and the other guys on the podcast seem to agree. I don't know what it is, there's something down to earth maybe? I don't know.Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to this not being New York, but still being a big city, that kind of attitude. Where it's just like, yeah, Chicago, it's gigantic and there are a few million people here, but we're not the big city that everyone talks about all the time. We don't appear in Marvel movies. That's how I judge things.We don't get all of the attention that the other guys get, so we get to develop our own thing. Not in contrast to what is considered the standard, but in and of ourselves. And Jersey obviously is so much closer to New York, so Jersey is always the weird stepbrother to Philly, and then the definitely not as cool at all younger sibling to New York City somehow, like the forgotten one. And so, Jersey is full of people who have something to prove all the time, but then also are just really happy to be from Jersey. When where you're from gets s**t on a lot, you probably defensively get some pride around it. But also Jersey, it's the most densely populated state, it is the third smallest state, it is so diverse. So diverse, so many languages, so many countries of origin, so many different areas.Also, it's a blue state, but I grew up in a very red pocket. So, there are parts of Jersey that are extraordinarily progressive and parts of Jersey that are super, super conservative. And then you've got everything in between, although the state as a whole tends to vote Democrat. In general elections anyway, for the presidency.Yeah. And it's kind of the same here in Illinois. I grew up in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, in an area that was super red, but it's like you go an hour North to Chicago and suddenly everything is super blue. It's just a total flip. But I like it here, so I've lived here my whole life, and my big reason for staying in the Midwest has always been, well, if climate change destroys the coasts, we will be kings.I think you're correct. I think that's what's going to happen. I think it's a hundred percent correct. I think California's worse, but New York's going to have its issues.Yeah. And then I read a New York Times article recently that was like, "Oh yeah, B-T-dubs, Lake Michigan is going to destroy Chicago," and I'm like, God dammit. My plans fall out the window. I guess I have to care about this stuff.Yeah. If you're near water, you're fucked, but if you're not near water you're also fucked. Part of my decision, I bought a place in Brooklyn, and part of my decision to do that, first of all had to do with the fact that I absolutely... There was no other time in my life where it would have been possible based on mortgage rates, and based on what homes were going for, also based on the fact that I have been sober for a few years now, so I started to make better decisions and undo some long-term damage and stuff. So I bought a tiny, tiny place compared to what somebody, honestly, from Chicago would be like, "Are you kidding?" And to me I'm like, it's a palace. I can reach out my hands on either side. This is glorious, and the person I bought it from-“I can twirl!”Yeah. And I think, I'm not sure, I don't want to speak for him, but I'm pretty sure the person I purchased from probably went to their other house, or their other, other house, or their other, other, other house. I don't know if this place was a rounding error, but they took an offer that was a lot lower than they needed to, and I'm very glad about that. But anyway, so I bought a place in part because fire season last year was so horrible, this year it's on track to be even worse. Between that, and having been so far from my family for a while, and a desire to see my nephews grow up, and to be closer to my family as my parents get older. I know that this place could very well be underwater, literally underwater, in 10 years. But it's probably not going to be on fire, knock on wood, at least from a wildfire. It could be on fire from something else.But I'm not somebody who's like, "F**k, get out of California. Everything else is better." But it was just like, all right, I love LA very, very much, but I'm waking up coughing and with my eyes swollen all the time, three months out of the year now, and I just don't like that. And my air filter is really good, but there's only so much it can do. So why don't I go home, buy a place that when I tell friends from other parts of the country what it costs, they have a heart attack, but when I tell other people in New York what it costs, they're like, "Oh my God, you're so lucky." Go into f*****g real long-term debt, more debt than I've ever been in, but have something that, God forbid I expire prematurely, I can leave it to my nephews. Or if I expire right on time, I can leave it to my nephews.And that was a real long discussion, I'm babbling a lot. But honestly, if I had tried to buy this place even a month later, I couldn't have done it. Because by then the mortgage rates were going up, and the housing values in this area were going up. I mean, New York lost one percent, not through death from COVID, they lost a lot of people death from COVID. But in the early months of the pandemic, they lost one percent of the population of people moving. And I don't even know how many more people left after. So, I feel very grateful, very fortunate, but also probably we should all move to Indiana.Indiana.I know that's an insane thing to say to somebody from Chicago.It is.Indiana is the New Jersey of Chicago.That is either being way too mean to New Jersey or way too kind to Indiana. One of those two, probably a little of both. But yeah, similarly Kayla and I just moved to a new place in Chicago. Our rent kept going up, and up, and up, and we got to that point where we were like, a mortgage is cheaper.Did you buy a place?We did!Don't tell me how much, because you wouldn't anyway, but how many square feet is it? So I can kill myself. Not really kill myself, jokes about suicide are not usually okay. I'm sorry.It's fine. I think it's like... It's pretty small, it's like 1,500 square feet. [Edit: looked it up after the podcast, and I overestimated. -pm]Excuse me, my place is 523 square feet.Are you kidding me? How, how?I am serious, 1,500 square feet! I'm screaming at the cat, the cat is asleep and doesn't care. God bless, that is so cool, oh my God.It's so exciting. We just moved in, what was it, like two weeks ago? We just moved into this new place two weeks ago, and it's so great. We're still getting unpacked, as you can see. This is my office, I have an office.You have an office? That's so amazing, I'm so happy for you guys. And you're in the city of Chicago?In the city.What an investment. That's awesome.It's kind of funny. It's in the city, but it's like way on the edge. It's like, oh cool, we have a Chicago mailing address and Chicago taxes.Yay. Still counts as Chicago.But when it comes to getting to anywhere in the city that is fun, it is not exactly an easy trip. But yeah, so we did that. And then I also just, was it in June? I left my full-time job.Wow.I've just been floating around.Bought a place, left the full-time job, living the dream. Not in a coastal city that either just had wild floods in some of the subways, or is on fire a lot of the year. You're making good choices.I hope so. We'll see.Look, if we're going to be indoors a lot of the time, which we still are sometimes where we want to have... Well, in Chicago first of all, of course you're going to be indoors. You will freeze for part of the year if you're outdoors.If you're fortunate enough to, through various circumstances, be able to have a place, whether you're renting it or purchasing it, and my mortgage is considerably less than what I would pay in rent on this place, which is nuts. And if you're in a position where that happens, and you can make that happen, or people help you, or however it happens. For anybody who's listening, however it happens, feel blessed and happy about it. And don't do what I did, which is feel guilty that you were able to do a nice thing for yourself, and then potentially your family in the midst of a terrible thing. Because you know what people really hate? I think what people hate more than somebody celebrating their privilege, is people being like, "I feel so bad. I'm so lucky, I feel so bad." That's the most obnoxious thing you can do as a human.Well, also when you remember that 20 years ago, houses were super, super cheap. So even if you got a great deal today, it's still not as good as it used to be. So, there is that.Even buying this place from somebody who I think had three other houses, I don't know. But if he's listening, sir, I don't know if you have three other houses. But even though this person did very well for themself, chose a career where people make lots of money, a.k.a. not a writer, and just unloaded this place for, if you adjust, not much more than they bought it for many, many years ago... I was going somewhere with that. What I will say, is that my family is like, "Wait, that's what you got?" They like it, they're like, "Oh, it's so lovely," but I can feel them trying not to say like, "This is like you got a..." There's midweek hotel suites in Vegas that are three times the size of this, probably.But it's also not just about that. It's like, are you in a place where you feel comfortable? I feel, one reason I wanted to move back to Brooklyn, I've lived in Brooklyn a few times over the past 15 years, and one of the reasons I wanted to move back was that I wanted to live in a neighborhood where when I go on the street, I see everybody from babies to grandmas. If it's a neighborhood where there are people starting families and where there are elders, where there are new people, where there are old people, people from... That sounds funny, it sounds like I'm saying young people are new people. But where you've got families that have been there for generations, you've got people who are starting families new there. I like that, where there's people putting time and energy into the community, that is a community that I would like to contribute to long-term.Yeah, definitely. That makes total sense. I'm happy with how things are, and I think we're in similar situations as far as our housing setups are.Yeah, we don't have the Delta variant yet, that we know of.Fingers crossed.Fingers crossed, knock on wood. It's really, and I know it's hitting the people who are hospitalized and dying from it are un-vaccinated overwhelmingly. I also know that some people who are vaccinated can get it, but they're suffering much, much less. And I feel fortunate that we're vaccinated, and I'm assuming both of us are vaxxed up?Yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely. As soon as that was a possibility for me, I was running to the Walgreens to get it.Jersey made it so easy. They were like, "Oh, do you smoke? Have you smoked?" Jersey was like, they made it the regulations so simple. The BMI is fucked up, it is grounded in not just fat shaming and fatphobia, but in racism and classism and so many different things. It doesn't make sense, it's not scientific, it's stupid. The one time I think anybody I know has benefited from the BMI's dumb ass existing, was that we all were like, "Oh, really? You ate a hamburger once? Time to go get that Rona shot." I was like, f**k it. Let's go. We were like, whatever we need to use as our quote unquote, excuse or reason. You looked at a cigarette once, come on, just go get it. And it makes life better. If you haven't gotten vaxxed up yet and you can, please go get that s**t. I'm sure most of the people who listen to this podcast have, but if you can, go get it.”Do it, just do it.” It's so funny to think about just a few months back, you'd see people constantly being like, "Oh, someone jumped in line, and they got a shot before they were supposed to." And now, you can't really give them away. You're like, please, please go get vaccinated. It's for your sake, and for all of our sakes. Because yeah, there's the Delta variant now, but then-There will be other s**t.If this s**t's bouncing around, what if there's a really scary one down the line that the unvaccinated help create? So, don't be part of the problem. Be part of the solution.My brother is in school, he used to be a nurse, he's in school to get his master's in public health. And I want to find, I'm going into the family group chat to find something he said, because I shared what's happening in Los Angeles County right now, which is really, really bad, with my family. Which is, "LA county hits 10,000 coronavirus cases in a week," this is from the LA Times newsletter. "LA county is now recording more than 10,000 coronavirus cases a week, a pace not seen since March, 2021, an alarming sign of the dangers the Delta variant poses to people who have not been vaccinated." Dot, dot, dot, "LA Times data analysis found LA County was recording 101 weekly coronavirus cases for every 100,000 residents, up from 12 per 100,000 residents for the same seven day period ending June 15th."So, that's pretty bananas. So I shared that with my family, and my brother who's in school getting his master's in public health, said, "Shows how contagious new virus variant is. The so-called Spanish flu went away because of herd immunity, and it weakened. This thing isn't getting more deadly, but it isn't weakening. Only more transmissible. Mask life forever."Well, because in LA they re-implemented the mask mandate, right?They did. And my friend Alex Winter, who's a documentarian and he's an actor, he posted something on Twitter where he was like, basically, I'm paraphrasing. He said, "The only person who's happy that we're working from home again," and it was his cat, his family's cat. Because I know he has a documentary filmmaking company, and they were able to be in the office, and that's really cool for a little while. And my buddy Sam out in Colorado was like, I forget what he does but it's like a tech, web thing. He's like, "Well, we got a full week back in the office before somebody tested positive. So, now we're back at home again.”It's so frustrating. Because at this point, at this point, so much of it is preventable. It's like, we can choose, if we collectively choose to not have it be this way, to not let the virus run free, we could get rid of it. But I guess we're all just doing the best we can, which is how I try to, in my mind, keep from having a rage blackout, thinking about people who make selfish decisions. It's like, well, they're trying the best they can.Yeah. When I think about people who are... I have a friend who is Latinx, was like, "Sara, it's not just," I was ragging on white, con spirituality people, people who think crystals will heal it, or people who are obviously super right wing or whatever. And this friend who's Latino was like, "Listen, it's not just that. There's hesitancy in the Latinx and Black communities." And I was like, "I fully get that, of course I understand. As a white lady, it's a lot..." I didn't say it in so many words, but I was basically like, "I can hold space and understanding for communities that have been directly impacted by medical racism, by experimentation, by the US government, by being treated like s**t at the doctor's office for a lot of different reasons."And I'm not trying to be a condescending, white liberal or whatever. I'm just saying like, if you have people in a room and I'm like, "Eat this peanut butter sandwich," and one person's like, "Somebody forced fed my grandma a peanut butter sandwich and traumatized her forever," and somebody else was like, "Every time I go to the peanut butter store, somebody tells me I'm stupid," and then another person was like, "Oh yeah, peanut butter has never done anything wrong to me. I'm going to eat that sandwich." I'm looking at the person eating the peanut butter sandwich and going, "Yeah, that's cool." And if their cousin is like, "I won't eat it, it's full of poison." I'll be like, "What? F**k you." Basically just white people being like, "Whatever, man. If we just all breathed..." Shut up, get out of here. Jesus is not going to help you with this.And that's what gets me, it's like if there was some... Because I understand not wanting to be the first people to get-Correct, I got that a hundred percent. See how it plays out over six months with these other people.That's the thing when it was like, oh, well here's phase one, phase whatever, and the vaccines. I'm like, well, I don't qualify yet, but that's not bad. That's okay, I'll just kind of watch. And then a couple months passed or whatever, and I was able to get it, and that was great. And now, we've gotten to the point where there have been, I looked it up the other day, something like three billion doses of vaccine that have been administered. I think it's safe to say that it is safe, probably, hopefully.Some people, you're going to always have with any kind of medication, you're always going to have some cases of bad reactions. I got the, back in the day they used to do the MMR, the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine for babies. I think it's called something else now. I got that, all the babies I know got it, all my baby friends.Got it. And if you look at a hundred thousand people taking anything, you're going to have a few who have a poor reaction, and unfortunately, sometimes it can result in death, but these are the risks we are taking. I know people who are allergic to penicillin.My mom is.Yeah, my dad's allergic to it. I know somebody who is allergic to latex. People have allergies that can be very inconvenient, and even life-threatening, nothing in life is a hundred percent safe. So, if the overwhelming chances are that you're going to be all right, go for it.Yeah, the one thing that depresses me about just the collective response to COVID overall, has been just realizing that there are some people that given, they're watching relatives die, and friends die from this preventable thing, and they're, they're still digging their heels in saying, "No, I will not do," whatever small thing, whether it's wearing a mask or distancing or whatever, they will not do it. And I'm thinking to myself, how do we come together to fight these other problems that aren't as fast, and direct, and obvious to us, like with climate change? That's a whole frustrating thing to think about, is just the fact that there are people who when confronted with this thing that is affecting them extremely directly, they're saying no. It's like, how are we going to get so many people on board to take whatever actions necessary, whatever sacrifices are necessary to successfully combat climate change?And that's why I have so much respect for people who work on climate change, or work in trying to find solutions to that. But it's hard to not just be really depressed thinking about it, thinking about how much of a challenge it is.There are people who... My friend's grandma died of COVID, and there are people who read her post about her grandma dying, about a wonderful young man at the hospital, a hospital volunteer who learned her favorite old Mexican songs, Mexican popular songs from the forties and fifties, and learned how to play them for her, saw a post about her saying how the family said goodbye, and who still don't think COVID is real because they are the most selfish people in the world. And there are a lot of people who are real pieces of s**t, who it could happen to their own Grandma, but what's more important to them is their ego. And so, I think that you can't cure selfish. That's what's hard, you can't cure selfish.You can just keep presenting as many... You can penalize selfish. You can say, "Okay, you can't work here." I'm so glad that for a limited time at least, Hollywood productions are banning anybody from set who is not vaccinated. That's very important, because those are hotspots, and there were a lot of productions that had to shut down over time because of COVID outbreaks, and then come back. And so, I think workplaces where you got to be vaccinated to be there, good. Yeah, you can pick what you put in your body, but that doesn't mean that I have to accept it. If you show up to work drunk, I can send you home. If you show up to work unvaccinated, might make people sick and take down the workplace, I can send you home.I think that there are things we can do with communication, with gentleness and compassion, but it doesn't have to mean tolerance always. Not tolerance of potentially harm. Yeah, you can go, "Oh, okay. I can see why you believe that way. You are a racist white person who was raised by racist, white people. You had a lot of early trauma in your life, and you're in pain, and you found a home on the internet among anti-vaxxers, and so that's what you're down for. Cool, cool. Still can't come to work. Go work on yourself, hope things turn out for you." I don't have to curse you out, I don't have to tell you you're dumb. I'll just go, "Oh, okay. See that in context, you're not welcome here."That's why those... There are a few states that are implementing these laws where it's like, oh, you can't force someone to... Come on. If I walk into a business, or for example in Florida, they did that. And the cruise industry which, one, I cannot imagine taking a cruise right now.It's gross.Yeah. So, I took a cruise in December, 2019. It was the first and only cruise I've ever been on. Because my parents were like, "Yeah, we want to take a big family vacation while everyone's still around." And I was like, "That's great, sure." Wasn't thrilled about the cruise, because I'm really weird about germs generally, which has made this whole thing a really interesting time for me.Yeah, because it's confirming all your fears, which is not always healthy.Yeah. But we went on the cruise and it was fun. And I was like, oh, that was a great time. That was fun. But now, I cannot imagine doing that. Just because first off, COVID's still going around. But also in Florida, they're trying to fight to make it so cruise ships can't require passengers to be vaccinated, if they want. I could understand if a cruise company wanted to be like, "Hey, we're just going to be the free for all cruise where you can be vaccinated or not. We don't care." That would be fine, if that's the choice they want to make.Oh, the sexy cruise, "We're the wild and sexy cruise."Yeah, "We're, the virus cruise."That's hot, let's do it. Hey, some people would be very into it for various reasons.Yeah, yeah.I just want to compliment you though. Parker. I know I'm moving around and making audio weird right now, but hey, guess what everybody? I'm plugging in a lamp, because my laptop was dying and now I'm reviving it. But I do want to just compliment you, as somebody with agoraphobia, for somebody who has, if you say weird about germs, I'm not making it a phobia. I'm just saying for somebody who has high anxiety around anything, to challenge that by doing something that's fun, is awesome, and I think you should be proud of yourself that you did that.It was so difficult. For weeks leading up to it, I was in therapy really trying to prepare myself. I was like, "I know this thing will be fun, and it will probably be fine, and I'll survive and we'll get home. And I'll be like, 'That wasn't so bad.'" Because that's how I approach everything in life. I freak out leading up to it, and then every single time I'm like, "Oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." That's what happens with any time I agree to do a speaking gig. I don't know if I want to go, I don't want to take an airplane by myself, and I don't want to have to stay in a hotel, and I don't want to have to be in front of a big group of people. But then I get there, and I do the thing and it's fine.And that's anticipatory anxiety. It's once you actually do it, you're fine. And I think that in some cases, not to endorse or recommend developing anticipatory anxiety, anybody, but... Not that you can really-I would choose not to, if possible.Yeah. You'd have to reverse A Clockwork Orange yourself, or something real weird and be like, "I'm going to make myself afraid of this." But I think sometimes there is more enjoyment as a result, because you're like, oh, I was so scared, and now this isn't so bad. And it helps you for the future. Every time you challenge, even a tiny bit challenge an anxiety thing…Talia Lavin writes a lot about how she deals with agoraphobia right now, and I'm always saying to her privately, I don't think she would care if I said this publicly, "Holy s**t, you're challenging it," because she posts about running and stuff, "You're [crosstalk 00:44:19]." When I was in my worst agoraphobia, I was afraid to leave my bedroom to go into the bathroom to pee. I was urinating in bowls. It's in my memoir, Agorafabulous! If that's your thing.I like that book!Thank you very much.It's very good.So I'm like, "Talia, you're running." Yes, at first it was just one route. She would show me the image of it, and it was just like back and forth across this block. Now it's expanding. Every single day that she runs outside her home, she's challenging a debilitating psychiatric disorder that she's also working on in other ways. And again, I would not share any of this if it wasn't stuff that was shared publicly already, of course. But even if she f*****g walks outside for five minutes, that's like a really big deal. So, the fact that you went on a cruise?I went on a cruise, stuck there for... See, I think the one benefit that I have in life, is that I'm married to an extremely amazing person, who completely understands and completely accepts all of my mental issues. And that's something that, I'm very lucky. Kayla is great, she is wonderful. And she helped me get through the issue with the cruise. She helped me the whole time, just making sure that things were okay. Didn't pressure me into doing the off the boat excursion type things, which was one of my fears. I stayed on the boat for a couple of those, which was still kind of fun. It's nice when everyone else is off the boat, and you're just like, "Ooh, I have the whole thing to myself."If I ever go on a cruise, I might do what you just described. Because I'm listening through it, instantly whenever I hear about a cruise, my agoraphobia brain kicks in. So, it's not making me anxious, it's just I start thinking about it through that disordered lens. But because I have so many years of cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness and stuff, and medication, it still flares up but you get back on the horse, so to speak. And when I hear, I listened to it through that, and then I think oh, well, how could I make modifications so that I could enjoy it? And I never thought about that, but that would be a Night At The Museum, like an empty, magical place. That would be kind of cool.It's like, I'm going to keep going to that soft serve ice cream machine, and no one's going to stop me. No one's going to be like, "You've had five."I'd be like, "Well, I've had a Prozac and now I'm going to have other Prozac, which is what I call that machine inside my head." That's awesome, whoa. But probably, you will never go on a cruise again at least until you're older, considering the concerns about the Rona, Miss COVID.It was a good time. By the end of it, I was actually so okay with the state of things that I just kind of like, "Maybe we should do this again." And then this hit.Immediately it was like, maybe not.Several steps backwards.But maybe one day you will, when it's safer. And it will be safer eventually, we'll just be old as hell by that point.Which those are the people who seem to have the cruises down the most, the elderly who end up on there. They're the ones with these little booklets, like, "This is my 20th cruise, that's all I do for my life now." Which that sounds awesome if that's what you're into, just traveling constantly.Yeah. And the fact that whatever they've dealt with in their life, whatever they've been through, that now they get to enjoy the open sea, and they get to have fun. I do think that, I'm a bit older than you, I'm 40.I'm 35.Okay, so you can run for president now, thank God. So this might apply even more for you. For my generation, which is the same as... Well, you're a full millennial and I'm like a Zennial, on the cusp. But I was in high school when the hit major motion picture Titanic came out, and I think that it definitely made some people I know for into our twenties, I remember a few friends being like, "Yo, my grandma wants to go on a cruise, but I think about Titanic." And I feel like for some of us, it was burned into our minds. Maybe people who tend to be anxious anyway, we were like, "Oh my God. But what if that happens?" And then people seem to have gotten over that, but the indelible performance of a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Ms. Kate Winslet, it really did something for me.It's still so awkward for me. I went and saw a Titanic with my mom, and I was like... I don't know.You were in middle school maybe, you were little.Yeah, like 12 when that came out. And it was just weird, because it was like, oh, and now he's going to sketch her naked. And I'm just like, this is fine, this is fine. Everything is cool.Everything's normal. And then there's the part where they have sex, and you just see the hand up, and you're like, what's happening there?Yeah, and I just have to just keep going, pretend nothing weird is happening on screen. As my mom is kind of, I could see her glancing at my brother and me, my brother was three years younger than me even. And I was just like, no, no, everything's cool.It's cool. My buddy Jenette is in that movie, Jenette Goldstein, she's an actress and she owns my favorite lingerie shop, Jenette Bras. Which you can visit, they've got more than bras, you can visit them in many places in Los Angeles, but also in Atlanta now. But Jenette is an actress, and she's been in a bunch of James Cameron movies. She was John Connor's step-mom in a Terminator deux. And she was Vasquez in aliens, Private Vasquez who was hot and butch. And she was in, in a bit part in Titanic. I think she plays, it wouldn't have been an elderly person because her age wasn't right. But she plays a mom to dying children, where they're like, I think she's the one who's like, "Okay, kids," and puts them to bed and reads them a story as they all die.Oh, God.Yeah. That part, obviously I didn't know her back in my teens, but that part stands out to me. And the old people holding each other. But anyway, we don't have to worry about that so much as we have to worry about coronavirus.Yeah, we just have to worry about the air that we breathe giving us an infection that kills us. Which is cool, that's cool that that's just floating around out there.Yeah, it's a real different kind of bananas. I've noticed in New York City right now, a lot of people wearing masks on the street. Some people don't, but when you go into stores, some stores right now have signs up that say, "You have to wear a mask," other stores don't. We have indoor dining, we have outdoor dining. Some restaurants will say, "Please put on your mask when you go to the restroom," others don't.I think it's going to get more restrictive, because I think that as with climate change, the first time around New York was the canary in the coal mine for this thing, that the rest of the country should have paid attention to and didn't. And LA got to horrific levels of suffering as a result, that were absolutely unnecessary. This time around as with climate change, I think California is the canary in the coal mine, because they got the Delta variant first, so they have gone back into... I think they still have indoor dining as of this recording, but you have to wear masks, and they have a stronger anti-mask contingent out there. They just do, and it's a problem. I don't know, I'm glad that we live in places also where it gets cold, because it's very comforting to have that mask on anyway, in the cold months.Yeah. That's something that in the winter it's like, oh well, that's a cool idea anyway. I am more than okay wearing a mask, especially in the winter. The summer, I get it. I get that masks can be annoying.Yeah, it can. You're schvitzing. I got one of those lighter ones, a restaurant that I went to in Manhattan, Balthazar, I ate outside and then I went in the bathroom, and they had all these free masks and free latex gloves, and anybody could take them and it was really cool. And they had the kind of mask that it looks a little bit like an accordion, and it's very lightweight, but it still does the job and it's not as heavy. And I took one, I wanted to take more, but I was like, no Sara, you can just buy them. Don't take them from the restaurant. And that one is so much more comfortable than the heavy cloth mask. Although I love a heavy cloth mask with a fashion moment for the wintertime, those light ones are really nice for the summer.Yeah, just leaving the restaurant with a handful of masks and some ketchup packets or something.“Hey, sorry, you're in the industry that arguably got hit the worst by this whole thing. Nice to see you surviving, let me steal your things.” People love that.Yeah, “What else can I get for free?”People really connect to that.Yeah, that's their jam. But on that delightful note-Don't steal masks.Don't steal masks, that's going to be the lesson from this podcast. But Sara, thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with me.Yeah, this was awesome. It's so rad to hang out with you.Yeah, of course. We should speak more than once every 15 months or so.On Twitter is cool, but it's also just nice to actually talk to you and see your face and stuff.Yeah, definitely. And that's why we're recording this. I have it set up where it records what we say, but not what we see. Because I just like to be able to see people when I talk to them.I like that too. And I think it helps with interviewing, and it also helps with our mental health. I haven't made a new episode of Well, This Isn't Normal in a few months, because I had to move and write jokes for robot puppets. But I could have made time, I just was very tired, but this is making me want to pick it up again. Because it is just so nice, and obviously it doesn't have, friendship talks should not be recorded most of the time. But it is really nice to just get to talk to your friends face to face through a screen.And also this is Star Trek s**t, I'm still impressed. My grandma told me she never got over, she passed away a few years ago, my grandma, Jean. And she always was still impressed by the technology that just automatically opens doors for you at the grocery store. And I therefore, still think it's cool. But I also think being able to talk to each other in real time through screen, it has absolutely, through my sober people meetings and stuff, that absolutely saved me. To be able to do that online is huge, and just to see friends and family was huge.Yeah, definitely. I think that both of us have this sort of... Because we both are part of that sort of era of people who growing up, we didn't always have the internet. And then when we did, it was super slow and dial up and all of that. And even thinking back then, thinking oh yeah, I'll be able to talk to someone and see them super clear, and there will be no lag and it'll be perfect. It's still amazing to me. I just love thinking about technology as it advances, and try to ignore the creepy aspects of it.Yeah. And sometimes, obviously, we can't. Because we get harassment and different things. But overall, I really like Cal Newport's book, Digital Minimalism. I don't abide by all its principles, but the idea that you don't have to kick it all out the door, you figure out how to maximize your enjoyment. You do a cost-benefit analysis in your own life, which is what I wish more people would do with vaccines. What is the risk here, and what is the reward for not just me, but potentially the humans with whom I interact? And then you make a call based on that. And so, something like this I think is really lovely. Well, thanks so much.Yeah, of course. Let's do it again sometime, without the recording for a podcast.Yay!Friendship! Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Parker Molloy: Joining me today is former Congressman Joe Walsh.Joe Walsh: Hey, Parker. It's awesome to be with you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. This is not a conversation I could have pictured having, I don't know, two years ago, so it's-No, crazy times, and you and I have come together on some things.Yeah.And I've learned some things from you, Parker. So thank you. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you are kind of the rare example of someone who was a very big Trump supporter, going into the election you were fully behind him. Before the election, you said something like-The musket.The musket thing. That was it. "If Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket." And that kind of became like a running thing for you, where'd you tweet that, and even after you kind of turned on Trump a little bit, you were still like, "I'm still holding my musket." So it's been interesting to watch as you grew disillusioned with Trump and then kind of the overall Republican party.Yeah.And I think some people get this wrong and think that because you don't support Trump or because you don't support the Republican party that suddenly your policy positions have changed, which is not the case from what I've seen and from what you've said.Yeah.People are like, "Why don't you join the Democratic Party?" Well, because they probably feel just as uncomfortable a home as Republicans. Actually, less so, but Parker, look, when I write the book one day— You're right in that I don't know anybody else who made my journey from Trump supporter to outspoken enemy of Trump. I wasn't a huge supporter. I voted for him because he wasn't Hillary. I didn't take him seriously. I didn't pay enough attention to him. He blocked me on Twitter during that 2016 campaign, because I would criticize him. And the musket tweets, some of that s**t, I did because it was fun and I love muskets. But, overall, your point is a good one. Sure.I went from a Trump supporter to probably his most outspoken conservative opponent. It cost me everything doing that, so why the hell did I do it? Because he's an utterly horrible human being who I believe is an existential threat to this country. I wish I'd known that in 2016. I wish I'd paid better attention.And that is one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is what's the status of your radio show? Did you say that it got-Gone.Gone. Okay. So radio show, gone, but when you were doing it, you would speak to Trump supporters.Trump supporters, yeah.Constantly. When you would try to push back on the things that they were saying, their defenses of him, what do you think is the kind of the root cause of why so many people are so devoted to that one man and that specific kind of Trumpian movement?Parker, because he fights the people and the things they hate. They get to live through him. He fights their fight. And who are we talking about, Parker? We're primarily talking about older white people, men and women. That's the Republican Party base. These are people who are unhappy. They've got some legitimate grievances, and you and I have talked about this. Their America seemingly was changing overnight and the Republican Party establishment ignored these people. And Parker when I was in Congress and back on the radio and on Fox News, I would tell the Republican Party establishment, "You better pay attention. These older white folks, they're scared about things. They need to be educated." But the party ignored them.So then along came Trump and he said, "I'm going to build a wall, keep the bad people out. You'll be able to say Merry Christmas again. There are only boys and girls, two genders. We'll bring back 1954 America." It was all b******t, Parker, but he was the first politician who said, "I hear you. And I'll bring back 1954 America."Yeah. That definitely seems to kind of track. And that reminds me. So, the thing that you were saying about feeling overlooked, feeling left behind by the establishment and stuff like that, because that's a fair point, but it reminds me of something that in 2008 Barack Obama was asked about how he, as someone who was a first-term Senator, as a black man, could connect with white working class voters. And he responded by saying, "The truth is that our challenge is to get people persuaded we can make progress with. And there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go to some of these towns in Pennsylvania, and a lot of the small towns in Midwest, jobs have gone for 25 years now, nothing's replaced them. Clinton administration, Bush administration, every successive administration has said they'll do something, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera."So far that statement is very much like, yeah, exactly. They felt left behind. And then he made the mistake of saying, "So it's not surprising that they get bitter. They cling to guns and religion."They cling to their, there you go. And so like that became the soundbite, but the overall message was pretty-Was spot on.-spot on. And I think that that's kind of the downside of our political media is all soundbites. Yes.And no one was talking about what he saying. All that people remember from that is, "He said that we cling to our guns and religion." Obviously, should have worded that better on his end, but at the same time, I feel like that might be where political media has failed in a sense that it takes something that's the most incendiary portion of a statement and they just run with it and strip it from context. And that happens to people all over the place. Yeah.I mean, you catch someone saying something, catch Mitt Romney saying that basically 47% of the country is freeloaders or whatever. Right. And that's what stands out and you miss whatever the larger point is. Same thing with-And then Parker, what you get is, and because I was very outspoken, I didn't care about that, but what you get is you get politicians who then are afraid to speak.Yeah.And they're afraid to say what they mean. They're afraid to be honest because of what you call the got you. It's all about the got you. We're so damn tribal. Both sides do this. I think Fox News and the Trump side is a whole nother level now. I mean, I come from the world of conservative talk radio. You know it's all about riling these people up. And I did some of that, but man, that's all it is now. It's just every night, pissing these white folk off. Yeah. Well, and that's something that comes up a lot when I was working at Media Matters and watching way too much Fox News.Yeah.Was this idea you turn on the TV and you're like, "What are we mad at today?" And it would always be some weird little grievance that is supposed to hammer home that message that the America that you know is being taken from you. And sometimes-Typically, Parker, you're right. Typically it's a cultural thing. Not having anything to do with their day-to-day lives. It's “men in women's bathrooms.” It's “Dr. Seuss is gone.” It's “critical race theory.” You name it. And it'll always be something new. Just reminded me when you were talking about how the Trump team at Fox News, they're kind of on their own level there. There was a tweet last year from Trump's campaign account. So Biden was giving a speech and he was saying something like, "Trump and Pence say in Joe Biden's America you won't be safe." And so the Trump campaign account clipped that quote to where it's just Biden saying, "In Joe Biden's America you won't be safe." And it's like, "Come on."I remember that.That was a stretch guys, even for you, but at the same time, like that's not necessarily bad politics. No.It's probably bad for the country, but it's not bad politics if your goal is to get elected. It didn't work. No, Parker, you're so right. And look, there was probably, I'm sure there was, and there's probably a tweet from seven years ago where I probably said something like, "Barack Obama hates America" or whatever, but my God, that's all it is now. I look at Ilhan Omar or AOC, different politics than mine. They don't hate America. They love America, but every night now, still now on the Trump side it's, "These people hate America. They hate America." Yeah, and it's depressing. And I mean, that's part of why I left my job because it was very much just diving into this very depressing cynical worldview. And I think-You're younger than me.Yeah.You are younger than me.I'm 35. So that is younger than you, but that's still-I know. But you are still young. Parker, I don't know how you could, at your age, think, "I'm going to stay in this game for another 10, 15 years."Yeah.It is depressing. And it's exhausting to me.Yeah. And what is really frustrating about it is that so much that you could see coming from a mile away. Was there ever a time, whether it was when you were in Congress, when you were after Congress, that you thought, "Things are starting to go a little over the line?" I mean, because for instance, the Tea Party, which was kind of, you were swept into office on that the big 2010 Tea Party push.Yeah.That was branded as a movement that was against high taxes and against government spending.Right.But there was definitely a lot of other stuff happening. And I know that, for instance, there was a lot of racism. Obama's not American or Obama's a Muslim. That was a lot of stuff that kind of kept coming up, not necessarily from the politicians, but sometimes, but definitely when it comes to the people who were there. I mean, if you showed me a photo from a Tea Party rally from 2010, and you showed me a photo from January 6th, it's easy to kind of connect the dots from one to the other. Do you think that this was a movement that lost its way? Or do you think that it was flawed from the start or that it just kind of somehow ended up there? Parker, it's such a great question. And because I come from the movement, I realized early on in my Congressional career, and I certainly realized when I was done in Congress, that there was real trouble afoot, because I genuinely believe the Tea Party was issues-based, generally, as you say, size of government debt, all of that. That was my motivating principle. That's why I ran. And so once we went to Congress in 2010 and you know like I know the Republicans don't give a damn about spending either. So I figured that out in one afternoon in Washington. And so then because we didn't do anything about the debt and the size of government, a lot of the Tea Party people out in the country became pretty disillusioned. And so then you began to see, and I began to hear, Parker, every day on the radio around the country from Tea Party and the base people moving away from the debt and the size of government and starting to get into more of these populist nationalist issues. They were let down on the debt. And so it's like then they were primed for a demagogue to come along again and spout all the nationalist crap. And I suppose that always was there so it was the other intrinsic strand of the Tea Party. Yeah.Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, during last year's election, I was thinking about all the, all the things that groups like the Lincoln Project were doing with their videos, which the reason they stood out was that they're not like what Democrats typically put out.Right.The very kind of, "Oh, look, Trump can't walk down a thing." That's not something you would see a Democratic politician typically put out there. Right.So it was kind of, I think for a lot of people, this welcome change of pace. But one thing that I kept Tweeting about and kept saying was that if they really wanted to make a difference in all of this, it might help to put out a video that was just the people who are part of the group saying, "Here's the message I pushed and here's why it was wrong." Kind of doing what you did, but just in their own kind of ecosystem that they built. It's hard to tell whether people mean the things that they say.Oh, so true, Parker. So true.And with that, there's been this kind of issue where Republicans will say, "There's voter fraud. We need to put restrictions in place." And Democrats will say "Any and all restrictions are voter suppression." And I mean, some of them, if you take all the voting sites except for like two out of a city, yeah, you're trying to suppress that vote a little bit, but I kept thinking to myself, "Why don't they just put out something that says, 'Hey, for years, I pushed this idea that we should hammer home on voter fraud over and over and over.'" Because that was something that wasn't a surprise when Trump contested the election. Everyone saw that coming from a mile away. In 2016, after he lost in Iowa, he accused Ted Cruz of rigging it. That's just kind of his thing. And for months ahead of the election, he was saying that, "Oh, there's going to be so much fraud. There's going to be so much fraud."So I'm just kind of curious. Why do you think that there's such a reluctance to speak up in situations like that? And I know that's not you, that's them, but at the same time, I think they could have done a lot of good by saying, "Hey, we know this thing was b******t. We pushed it anyway." Shutting down things like ACORN, for instance, that was kind of a stretch. I don't know. Basically, do you think in pushing some of these ideas that they get swept up to it and they actually believe what they're saying? Or that it's just the cynical kind of game? Parker, I think it's a cynical game. There's a kernel of truth in everything. Tucker Carlson to me is just disgusting, but there's always a wee, wee, little kernel of truth in what he says and then he lies about 99.9% of it. There is voter fraud in every election. Inconsequential voter fraud.Sure.I mean, when I ran for reelection in 2012 against Tammy Duckworth, we found instances of voter fraud, not nearly enough to turn around an election. So the idea of rampant voter fraud is b******t. And you're right. So I wish Republicans could be honest enough to say that, but the problem, Parker, is, and I realized this when I primaried Trump and I ended up publicly apologizing for a year for everything I did that helped lead to Trump. It's the hardest thing in the world for a politician to do is to say they were wrong or to say they're sorry.Yeah.I'm genuinely sorry for what I did to help divide the country and bring us Trump. Parker, I've had so many conversations with Republican colleagues of mine. They feel the same way. They'll never say what I say publicly, because, you know, they love their gig, they love their TV show, they want the ratings, they want to get reelected and they hope the Trump s**t blows over.Yeah. And it's a little sad.It is.Yeah. Do you think that as far as the Republicans that are currently in office are concerned, do you think that they're a lost cause? Is there anything to get them back on track, to get them to go, "Okay, we're going to kind of snap out of this."No.You just think that that's-No. No. They gotta go?As long as Trump is still with us, they are beholden to him and Trumpism. Yeah.Most of them, Parker, agree privately with what you and I think about Trump publicly. Most will not say it. Only a few are real big cheerleaders, idiots like Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene. But guys that I served with Trey Gowdy, Mick Mulvaney, guys like that, they do their best to just try to ignore Trump. Most Republican elected officials have done their best the last five years to kind of just look the other way. And, again, this is your area, Parker, but if you look at Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity is a stupid Trump cheerleader. He defends Trump every night. When you really look at what Tucker Carlson does, he does his best to avoid even talking about Trump. Yep.Now when pressed he'll defend Trump, but he'd rather go after all these other cultural issues and not talk about Trump.A couple of years back, I did an analysis of which TV show talked the most about various cultural issues. Because there was this narrative that was, "Oh, the left is obsessed with trans people, transgender bathrooms."Yeah.That was a big one that kept coming up. And, "They're so obsessed. They can't stop talking about it." Et cetera, et cetera. But when you looked at the actual bills that were introduced in various states, and when you looked at what TV shows covered that issue so much, Tucker Carlson covered it more than any other TV show.Yeah.Any network, ever. He was the number one spot to get information about trans bathrooms and stuff like that. He knew that that was a cultural issue he could really drill down on and appeal to that audience.Parker, yeah, you're right. Look, for every Republican and conservative who's a public person in the age of Trump, we always had three roads to go down. We could be a Trump cheerleader. We could kind of ignore Trump as best as we could and look the other way. Or we could publicly oppose him. Very few of us chose to publicly oppose him. There are some legitimate Trump cheerleaders, but most of the public Republicans and conservatives pick that middle path where only talk about Trump if I have to, go after trans people, go after people who won't let us say Merry Christmas. You know who else is the king of this, Parker, is Ben Shapiro.Oh, yeah. Ben Shapiro has made a career out of the last five years doing his best to ignore Trump. I've long said that Sean Hannity is just a dumbass—Dumbass. Idiot.— but Tucker Carlson is … I reviewed the most recent book he put out called Ship of Fools. And reading it I was just like it's kind of genius how so much of this was structured, where he'll do that thing that you were saying, where he'll place a legitimate problem.Yes.”People don't care about the working class.” And then he'll kind of build back some sort of solution that ends up being way off the track. It'll start by saying, "The working class aren't making enough money." And then he'll end up by being like, "And that's why gay people shouldn't be allowed to adopt."Yes.It'll be so disconnected, but he does it, and it's brilliant the way he does it in like a very scary way.Having come from that world, Parker, I did it sometimes, more than I'm proud of, but I didn't do a lot of it. If you look at Rush Limbaugh, Parker, that was his show every night for 30 years, every day for 30 years. He's got these white listeners who, and he feeds their grievances. And that's what Tucker does, again, in a very smart way. That's a challenge that I think that is going to be very difficult for anyone to kind of deal with in the years to come.Because they're radicalized now.Yeah.We're talking about the GOP base, Parker. And it is a base that is fully radicalized now.Yeah. What do you think happens next? You've lived it. You've seen it. You've watched it. You've heard it. What do you think happens next in terms of the country? Again, I'm older than you, and I'm also maybe darker than you. I'm dark Irishman, Parker. I think we're at the beginning. I think we're in for a really, really, really, really rough patch. I think this country is more divided than people think. I go on CNN and MSNBC a lot. I don't think most people on CNN and MSNBC have a clue. And they bring out these Republican consultants from the Nixon era still. They don't know who the fricking base is. I think Trump's going to run again. I know he wants to run again. He'll get the nomination and no Republican will challenge him.No.None. He could win, Parker. Look, if you're concerned about Donald Trump winning again, I'm concerned about Joe Biden being able to run again. And if he can't, who would beat Trump? So one of our two major political parties has become a conspiracy-loving, authoritarian embracing, cult. One of our two major political parties. I don't see that changing.No. And not to end things on a bummer, but-It's a bummer. It is a bummer. I mean, there's no ways two about it. There's nothing to do. Well, what are you up to these days? What are you working on? Is there anything you'd want me to make sure that people, however few actually listen to this or read the transcript.Oh, wow. Millions, Parker.Yeah, millions. We'll go with that. Yeah. What are you doing? So, I, again, for the second time in three years, I lost my syndicated radio show. I was out there trying to reach Trump voters, but you can't be a Trump critic and be in conservative talk radio. So I still reach them via social media.Sure.What I'm trying to do now, Parker, because as you and I began this episode, I mean, look, I helped divide this country. I'm trying now to do something about the divide. I've got a couple interesting projects I'll be launching within the next month that I'll tell you all about. If people want to pay attention to me and find out what I'm doing next, they can follow me on Twitter @WalshFreedom. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Parker Molloy: Welcome to the first episode of the Present Age Podcast. I am your host Parker Molloy.Comic book fans may know today’s guest from his work writing The Amazing Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, and most recently, the Fantastic Four. His name is Dan Slott, and our conversation starts right now.Dan Slott, thank you so much for talking to me. I appreciate it. Thank you!Dan Slott: Oh, thanks for having me on, Parker!…One of the things I'm trying to do with this new venture of mine, this new newsletter/podcast/whatever is this idea that ... Just looking at communication. The various ways we communicate with each other, and I've really been enjoying being able to talk to a wide variety of people, doing different things, and especially coming out of the pandemic, it's just been really interesting.One of my previous interviews was with Will Butler, who plays in the band Arcade Fire, and it's been really interesting. They're used to playing in front of tens of thousands of people and then suddenly the pandemic hits and it's like, "Oh, yeah, it's a bad idea to get in a room with more than five people." Which is fewer than are in their band. I wanted to talk to you because you have a really interesting career that I've appreciated from both afar and up close.For people who didn't bother to listen to my intro on this, Dan writes comics. You've written a ton of stuff, but it's probably safe to say that for most people who are familiar with your work, they're probably most familiar with your decade-long run of Amazing Spider-Man. Would you say that's correct?Yeah. Most people who know me ... It's weird because I've had a career that's had ... I've had the benefit of having multiple runs at this where people forget what I did before. Then I come in all fresh-faced. For a long time, I used to be the Ren and Stimpy guy, then I became the She-Hulk guy. Now people still think of me as the Spider-Man guy because once I got that, that was my dream gig, whenever ... It's kind of neat. Once you become a Spider-Man writer, all the other Spider-Man writers, it's almost like a fraternity. They'll reach out and they'll talk to you, like, "How are you doing? Are you doing okay?" I killed Peter Parker and replaced his brain with Doc Oc's is one of the ways most people know me.For better or for worse people had very, very strong opinions about that.Yes. To the point where Marvel literally hired bodyguards.Seriously?Yeah. For one signing and another signing the NYPD provided them.That is nuts.Yeah. I was brought into a meeting with the NYPD, the DA's office, the NYPD cybercrime division just for all the death threats that we got once we killed Peter Parker.Wow. That-Yeah. It was on the crawl on CNN and I had to tell my dad to make sure my mom didn't watch CNN that day.Oh, man. That's wild and that's ... Geez. I had no idea it got that bad, but I'm glad that that seems to have mostly passed.It dissipated like within two weeks once the next issue came out. The first issue of Superior Spider-Man with Doc Oc in Spidey's brain, and at the end of the issue, spoilers, you see that Peter Parker's ghost is there. All the readers went, "Ah." They could see there was some kind of connected bridge, some way back that maybe Peter Parker could get his body back. Then they were like, "Okay. Okay. We're ..." Once people could see the puzzle pieces in place. For them, grown men were like, "You killed Peter Parker."How could you?That's when the nice ... One of the nice things that came out of that, like I said before, is Gerry Conway, a long-time writer of Spider-Man, reached out to me when all that was going down and he was all ... He's the one who killed Gwen Stacy, Spider-man's long-time girlfriend at the hands of the Green Goblin. It was the first major death since Captain Stacy and Uncle Ben. Gerry said to me ... And it was the first time we'd met, was him reaching out to go like, "Are you okayHe said, "You know what makes you different from every other Spider-Man writer?" I'm like, "No, Gerry Conway."Do tell.This is the guy who was writing Spider-man when I was growing up. I was like, "Oh my God." He went, "You're the writer of Spider-Man during the age of social media." You're like, "Aha." He's like, "If I had killed Gwen Stacy and there had been Twitter and Facebook around, I would have been killed."Oh, I can't even imagine. That would just be ridiculous. That I think is one of the things that has really interested me about talking to you on this, is that yes, it is the age of social media. It is the age where people have direct access to pretty much anyone on the planet. I mean, I try to think about what it would be like growing up and being in my teens and being able to just connect with literally any person on the planet, favorite musicians, least favorite musicians, politicians, and anything. It's fantastic, but it's also terrifying at the same time. I think that when it comes to higher-profile people, especially when you're making these decisions that ... Obviously you can't please everyone with every issue of every story that you write. Obviously, they're going to voice their opinions back to you. What is one thing you love about social media and what is one thing you hate about social media? That's the question.I'm sure you do this too. You throw out some kind of thing to a celebrity you like, and then they like it, or they answer it or they retweet it and then you get that rush, that sugar rush and oh my God. Admit it. You've screencapped it, haven't you?Oh, yeah. Absolutely.You go, "Oh my God, this famous director answered my tweet in real time or this celebrity that I care about." I am huge Whovian. I am a Dr. Who nerd to the nth degree. One of the bizarro things that happened because you and I, we're those awful human beings who have blue checks.Oh, the dreaded blue checks.The blue check. Something happens when you're a blue check and you throw a comment to another blue check. It almost gives you a little bit of validity and they'll look at it. You're like, "Ah." Also, other people will start watching this conversation you're having in real-time. Karen Gillan, who is Amy Pond and Nebula, and in Jumanji too, she was mentioning how she couldn't wait to get back to Scotland and have chips with chippy sauce.I wrote, "For American fans, what's chippy sauce?" Then she started describing it. We were having a brief conversation about chippy sauce, and suddenly it's in the newspaper the next day in British media, "American fans confused by chippy sauce." There is suddenly my tweet in an actual newspaper talking, "What is going on?"Yeah. It's always funny when something I tweet ends up in ... If a reporter calls me and says, "Hey, can I get a comment on whatever?" I'll sit there and I'll think it through and then I'll be like, "Okay. Yes, here's my statement." A lot of times it's just something I tweeted not really thinking about anything and it'll just be in the paper. The way that it's worded a lot of times will just be pretty much the same. It'll still be like-Horrible.... like it's just a quote from me, you know? It's usually fine, but sometimes it's a little embarrassing.I have to be super careful. I praised the Shazam movie and then suddenly Shazam social media is reaching out like, "We would like to use this on a poster." I'm like, "No." I'm a Marvel exclusive guy. I can't have someone at Marvel see my tweet praising Shazam on a poster for God's sake. That'll bring trouble.See, that's the thing. It takes something that should be no big deal to just be like, "Hey, I really like this thing, or I didn't care for this thing." Either way, it should just be something that's small, but social media has this weird way of flattening everything to the point where, whether it was a big comment, little comment, something you thought about for weeks or something that just popped into your head, it's all treated the same and we're in this world where everyone is.You know the Plinko game?Yeah. Where the ball goes down [inaudible], whatever your comment is, however nuanced it is, wherever it dropped on the Plinko, at the end of the day, there's black and white, there's yes and no. Someone will take your very nuanced threading a concept tweet and make it into, "You believe this or you support that." When you're like, "I was threading this." To this day, this is a decades-old problem. Or you could have a situation where there was a writer, Nick Spencer who did a controversial story where Captain America, Steve Rogers, was revealed to be an agent of Hydra through comic book machinations that Cosmic Cube had rewritten it so he was now always a Hydra agent. There were two Captain America comic books coming out at that time, both written by Nick Spencer. The Present Age is a reader-supported newsletter. While a free version of the newsletter exists, paid subscriptions make this work possible.One featured a blonde-haired blue-eyed, Steve Rogers, who is now secretly an agent of Hydra. The other featured Sam Wilson, an African-American superhero, who was also calling himself Captain America. These were clearly two books of one piece taking on two different sides of arguments and everything boiled down to everyone wouldn't even talk about the Sam Wilson Captain America comic. These were sister comics.They would only talk about that and how dare you turn Captain America into something that looks and feels like a Nazi? How dare you? That became the conversation. That's the conversation Twitter wanted and that's the conversation it got. It will always go to the thing that is the most hot-button, the most reactionary. No one wants a well-thought-out nuanced conversation. That's not what social media is for.Yeah. Well, exactly. I mean, that's one thing that I always find really interesting in the way that social media, which is this very instant gratification kind of setup, will respond to things as far as comics are concerned, because in that case you had Twitter freaking out and it turned into, "Oh, well, Nick Spencer's trying to turn Captain America into a Nazi and all this."I mean, have people read comics before? I mean, if all of these characters are around for decades and decades and decades, you need to have some kind of out-there storylines to keep it going in different directions. Generally speaking, you're not going to ... How weird would that have been, had it been like, "Yes. No. Captain America is a Nazi. That's how it is now going forward." It's like, that is not ... Anyone who's paid attention to comics should know what's happening.What it is, is everyone wants the theater of it. Everyone wants to be part of the conversation and things like trending topics mean that suddenly if you're having an argument and things are boiling down to black and white and things are boiling down to ... then it means all these people that aren't familiar, let's say with comics, suddenly jump into the conversation as well, because all they're hearing, like if we use that example, is Captain America's a Nazi.What was Marvel thinking? Now someone's jumping in with that and we get to see over time that someone who's got skin in the game where you see a Russian troll farm will gin up a topic in the middle of ... 3:00 in the morning suddenly everyone cares about Hunter Biden's laptop at 3:00 in the morning.Just like, "Oh." Yeah.Or everyone cares about this, that, or the other at 3:00 AM and it's because people now found a way to manipulate the game.Yeah. Right now there's this push in some states to fight back against what the people fighting are calling critical race theory. It's just this culture war nonsense basically that is being waged by some extremely online figures. There's this guy named James Lindsay, who's one of the big anti-critical race theory dudes. He tweeted, he posted a link to a headline that said, "Marvel reveals Steve Rogers no longer believes in the American dream in first issue of whatever."What?He responds, "Abolish Marvel." That was sent yesterday. Then all the other replies to his are, "Steve Rogers standing for nothing but nihilism is a sad commentary on the woke movement. The left went after entertainment so they could pervert your children's thoughts and destroy your childhood heroes. We are in the propaganda phase of a war. Pay attention and confront this before it's too late.Then ... Yeah. That's it, I'm done with woke Marvel, only the old stuff for me from now on. Everything they've put out post-awokening can go straight in the trash as far as I'm concerned." Now, that is a very tell me you've never read a Captain America comic without telling-Ever.... me you've never read a Captain America comic, you know? It's like-Yeah. We can point to everything from the whole Nomad era of Cap, which was the Captain America books that came shortly after Watergate, where he refused to wear the flag. He did it again for a while when the character that a lot of people have now met through Falcon Winter Soldier U.S. Agent became Captain America. Once again, Captain America threw off the costume and wore this black costume to show that he wasn't supporting certain beliefs.You can look at comic book writers that are very right-wing, like Frank Miller. When he did Daredevil Born Again with Captain America in it, you clearly saw that was a Captain America that stands more for the dream and the ideology than the flag. A lot of this is something will boil up in comic Twitter and it'll make it over to regular Twitter where someone can take it and grab it and run with it. Like when they said Ta-Nehisi Coates is going to write the Superman movie. Suddenly everyone's looking for a fight and it's got to boil down to good or bad. It's got to boil down to I'm against it or I'm for it and there's really no room for conversation. You're going to have a far more fun time on Twitter if you just watch the funny animal videos.Yeah. One thing I've tried to do more of is knowing what I don't know. That is an important skill I think, is to know when you don't know enough to weigh in. That's something that it's like ... I struggled with for a while. It was, I would be like, "No, I think I should give my opinion on this." Then whatever it is, and you see that happen every day. A story will come out about wildlife and suddenly everyone's like, "Well, when an animal is cornered, it does this." Everyone becomes an expert in every single issue that happens. Yeah.Oh, God. I love how much legal expertise everyone has online. Everyone online has gone to law school. In the same way that everyone's a doctor because they can go to WebMD. It's kind of scary. One of the things that's happening a lot in my industry is NFTs and whenever someone comes to me and goes, "What's your opinion?" I'm like Marvin in the back of the car Pulp Fiction. I am like, "I know nothing of this subject. I am not even going to research it. I'm not even going to look into it. It can be all the way over there and I'm out. I am not for or against. All I know is my ignorance."Yeah. I mean, the internet makes it so much easier to connect with others, but one thing I've been thinking about is just that maybe we're not meant to be so connected with others. I'm not meant to know the opinion of a hundred thousand people all at once.You can't unring the bell, but if you say something wrong in a newspaper, your newspaper can get sued. There are certain guard rails, there're certain things that are out there and the internet feels far more Wild Wild West. It also feels far more vigilante where you get that case where this woman, before she goes on a plane, makes a terrible racist joke and by the time the plane lands, that joke has trended. She's been fired from her job. People are waiting to see her as she comes off the plane with signs mocking her.Did she deserve it? I don't know. Probably yes, but then it's also weird. It's all so Wild Wild West. Like Chris Cooper and that woman in the park with the bird. Comics Twitter is way more into that because a lot of us know Chris Cooper because he started off in comics. He's edited comics I wrote in the '90s. We were horrified, and then he didn't press charges and no charges were pressed. Now suddenly she was doing that thing again and we're all like, "Oh, there should have been consequences." During when it was happening, everyone was ready to find this woman and burn her at the stake. Then there were people being all, "Let's not be a mob." Now she's out doing the same thing again with no repercussions. We're like, "Oh, we should have." I don't know.That's kind of ... The issue is that I don't think that there are clear correct answers to how to respond to things happening in the world. One thing that I've been finding extremely odd, especially from the world of news media, is this idea that the HR decisions of every company should be up to a public vote, which it's like someone gets pushed out at a company because they wrote some bad columns or something and then you have half the internet going, "How do they justify this?" That sort of thing, but when you think about it, it's like people get fired every day for no reason at all. Sometimes it's just, "Hey, we're tired of you." That sort of thing. I mean, I've been laid off from jobs before, and that seems to be something that people insert themselves into on this really wide scale when it comes to social media.Yeah. We just saw like four years of an administration where if certain people in certain positions acted that way at a company, they would be fired. They were able to use social media as a way to bolster their power and to go, "We are untouchable because look at all these Twitter followers we have. Look at this public opinion." You'd have people on the news talking about the reaction on Twitter, which is something that can't be regulated, which is something that can be abused, which is something that can have a troll farm in Russia create 80 million tweets overnight or people ... You know what I mean?Yeah.Yet there're some people like that guy who created the whole Pizzagate scandal, he's still online. He's still someone that people retweet and talk about and use as a source. I'm like, "Shouldn't that guy have been ridden out of town on a rail? Shouldn't have no soapbox for the rest of his life? You created and propagated Pizzagate, and yet you still have a platform. How does that work?"It's just so, so bizarre to watch that happen. A month or two ago, I was speaking with Michael Hobbes. He hosts a podcast called You're Wrong About. I love that podcast. It's great and highly recommended. He was talking to me about how some of the most popular episodes of that podcast have gotten a million downloads, which is great. He was trying to think of this. Like if you get a thousand emails all at once, it's going to feel like the world is crashing down on you.It's going to feel like everyone on the planet is laser-focused on you. You might be trending or something like that even, but he put it this way. He's like, "Okay. Imagine one of those episodes that got a million downloads, if a thousand people are extremely angry and they all email you about it and they all start yelling at you online about it, that's 1%. That's not a majority."It's not a ... Or actually, no, that's one-10th of 1% now that I think about it. It's important to put these things in perspective. I think that one thing that social media does is it really flattens that perspective, which is very unfortunate. It makes taking risks and being creative and all of that more difficult. I'm curious. Have you ever pulled punches in your writing? Have you ever held back because you're like, "I don't want to deal with whatever the fallout from this idea that I have in my head is."Like on a tweet?No. No. Like in your work?In my work?Yeah.Yeah. No. Of course.Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we all self-censor in various ways, but-I also have the benefit of having an editor-Yes. Editors are important.... who will go, "You are not doing that. You are not telling that story." One of the issues of Spider-Man that I pitched ... And I wrote like over 200 issues of Spider-Man so you're always throwing out ideas. One of them, there's a Spider-Man villain, Swarm, who was this Nazi scientist, von Meyer, who he had done stuff with killer bees and they became a part of him. He became a living swarm of killer bees with his skeletal remains in the middle, but that's it.He's like a walking pile of killer bees. He would always attack Spider-Man fireman by firing killer bees at him, or turning the killer bees into a giant hammer and hitting him with a hammer made of killer bees. Every swarm story was the same swarm story. He fires bees at you. I go, "I have an idea. I want to do a Swarm story. I know a new way of doing a Swarm story." The editor is like, "What is it?" I go, "We've never seen what's happened to the honey." He goes, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah. He'd be selling the honey at farmer's market and stuff in disguise in a beekeeper suit or something. Everyone who eats the honey, since they're honey made of Nazi bees, become Nazis." They're like, "You want to tell a story about Nazi honey?" I'm like, "Yes. I think this will be really interesting." I'm like, "We'd call it Nazi gold." They're like, "You are never telling that story. You are never telling the story of Nazi honey. We will stop you."It's nice to have someone to tell you no.Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's one of those things that, would it have been interesting? Absolutely. Would people have been like, "Oh, look at this. He's writing a story where they're making Nazi ... where honey turns people into Nazis. What does he have against honey? What does he have against-Yeah. That and a story where Spider-Man was fighting Yakuza or the mob or somebody in a hotel where there was a drop for drugs or blood diamonds or whatever, the Pulp Fiction briefcase. Elsewhere in the hotel was a furry convention. This guy was going to his first furry convention and he was hiding the fact that he was a furry from his family. At one point the police and all these people burst in because they're going after the mob and the guys that Spider-Man are fighting.The guy from the furry convention go, "Oh, my God, I don't want to get caught." He goes running and he ends up in the room with all the mobsters, but it's the Marvel Universe and it's a guy in a giant animal suit so they assume he's a super villain. They go, "Oh, are you the super villain we sent for?" He goes, "Yes, I am." He ends up dragged along in the story as the weasel, and by the end of the story, he has unintentionally become Spider-Man's worst enemy through no means of his own, where he'll have his hand on the giant lever that's going to lower Spider-Man into the pit and Spider-Man's like, "You'll never get away with this, weasel." He's like, "I know. I don't want to be doing this." I thought it was this really funny story. My editor goes, "You're pitching us a Spider-Man story with furries?" I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "You are never telling that story. We will stop you. You can't tell that story." When you wake up in the morning and you go, "Thank you, Marvel. Thank you for not letting me ... I have now slept on it and yeah, that ... No, no. I shouldn't. No, thank you for stopping me."See, I think that would be interesting.This is what people say!I mean, for some reason, I don't know why, but that reminded me of ... There's ... What's that character who was an old human torch villain who was ... Asbestos Man. That was it.Asbestos Man.He made a comeback decades after he was first written. That was basically he shows up and he's just like, "I'm Asbestos Man." Everyone's like, "No, stay back, stay back." They're afraid of him but for the wrong reasons, because he's-When I was writing She-Hulk, it was all like her as a lawyer dealing with superhero problems. I so wanted to do the Asbestos Man case, where, you know, like ... Yeah.Yeah. Asbestos Man lawsuits?Yeah. Exactly. I wanted to do Asbestos Man lawsuits. Yeah. There was stuff I didn't do in She-Hulk for that same reason that people are like "Don't go near there." I was going to do a story of one of the ... She works in a law firm and they deal with superhero cases, like can a ghost testify at their own murder trial? Things that would only happen in a superhero world. I had a story where one of the lawyers in her firm, their high school biology teacher was getting fired for teaching Marvel creationism. Everything he was teaching his students is stuff that you can see in Marvel comics, like Odin coming down from the world tree and the Eternals and the aliens creating the Inhumans and the Deviants. You're like, "We've been having this stuff, this mythology in our comics for years, and to have someone get fired because they were teaching it in a science class." I thought this was really funny. They're like, "Oh, let's not go near this. Let's not. No. Let's not poke that bear with a stick."Dan Slott supports creationism. That's the takeaway.You know the Watcher, right?Yeah.Yeah. They were going to bring the Watcher on the stand in that case and the Watcher was going to go, "Everything he said is true."Well, Dan, thank you so much for talking to me. This has been a lot of fun. What can people check out that you're working on right now?Any issue of the Fantastic Four that's on the stands.Please check out the FF. We're in the 60th anniversary year, we're telling big stories. We're taking big swings to honor the legacy of Stan and Jack, who would tell the craziest stories in the Marvel Universe in the FF. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe