Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Bari Weiss Burns The Credibility Of CBS News + The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust

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Full Episode - Bari Weiss Burns The Credibility Of CBS News + The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: that code. Well, hello there, and Happy Christmas Eve. That's
1:54
Speaker 1: when this episode is dropping. I am recording on Tuesday,
2:00
Speaker 1: est of us, right, so it's Grievance Day actually when
2:03
Speaker 1: I'm actually recording this, but you'll be hearing it for
2:07
Speaker 1: the informal start of the Christmas holiday season with Christmas Eve.
2:12
Speaker 1: So I appreciate it. I'm Chuck Todd another episode of
2:15
Speaker 1: the Chuck Podcast. If I hadn't said that, get that away,
2:18
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. It's been I have had a blast
2:22
Speaker 1: these last eight months. We got started, I believe on
2:25
Speaker 1: April second was our first episode, and this has been
2:29
Speaker 1: just such a joy. So I appreciate it. And you know,
2:33
Speaker 1: I've scratched itches that I've always wanted to scratch in
2:37
Speaker 1: a semi public form, including all of the various sports
2:41
Speaker 1: updates that I enjoyed doing. So let me give you
2:42
Speaker 1: a rundown of this episode, a little bit of reaction
2:46
Speaker 1: of some headlines over the last forty eight hours. I
2:48
Speaker 1: want to get to a little bit on Epstein, a
2:49
Speaker 1: little bit on the CBS Mets with sixty Minutes, but
2:54
Speaker 1: a sort of larger view of sort of taking a
2:56
Speaker 1: step back and what has changed in our politics and
2:59
Speaker 1: what actually hasn't changed in the last year, and I
3:03
Speaker 1: want to go through that a little bit. My interview
3:05
Speaker 1: is with somebody who I just really enjoy talking with,
3:08
Speaker 1: Mike Pesca. He is the just List former Slate. Many
3:11
Speaker 1: of you are probably listeners. He is somebody that has
3:15
Speaker 1: I really have appreciated how he's tried to attack news
3:19
Speaker 1: of the day, current events. He has really tried to
3:23
Speaker 1: attack these stories from the outside looking in, from a
3:27
Speaker 1: more detached way, and we dig into the future of journalism,
3:32
Speaker 1: we dig into what's going on at CBS, though we
3:34
Speaker 1: our conversation happened before this specific incident was sixty minutes,
3:38
Speaker 1: just to let you know, and then we spend a
3:40
Speaker 1: lot of time on the on what is this sort
3:43
Speaker 1: of uncomfortable moment we're in in the gamification of everything, right,
3:47
Speaker 1: particularly sports and the prediction markets, and where this is headed.
3:51
Speaker 1: So in general, I think it's a great conversation. By
3:55
Speaker 1: the way, if you don't subscribe to the Just List,
3:57
Speaker 1: you should. It's a lot of fun. Even the free
4:00
Speaker 1: version is a lot of fun. He's really good at
4:03
Speaker 1: sort of finding those stories that you're not going to
4:08
Speaker 1: get in the headline newsletters that you subscribe to from
4:12
Speaker 1: a news site. Right, it's that next story that you're
4:15
Speaker 1: like back in the old days for us old guys here,
4:18
Speaker 1: it was when you actually read a full newspaper and
4:20
Speaker 1: you let it. Oh, I never would have sought that
4:24
Speaker 1: headline out, but I'm glad I read the story. That
4:27
Speaker 1: is what I think Mike's true gift is when it
4:30
Speaker 1: comes to informing informing folks on that. I will do
4:35
Speaker 1: some questions, we will have more mail bag that you
4:37
Speaker 1: guys have just a lot of fun and smart questions.
4:41
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to do a little twist on
4:42
Speaker 1: my little sports page here a little bit which is
4:45
Speaker 1: frankly trying to help you have the conversation during the
4:49
Speaker 1: holidays with the person that you don't want to talk
4:52
Speaker 1: about current events with. But you figure, I got to
4:55
Speaker 1: be a little smarter about sports, so you can have
4:57
Speaker 1: fun little storylines where you can just ask a question,
5:00
Speaker 1: let other people talk. But if it's a way to
5:03
Speaker 1: sort of you know, how to change a conversation, how
5:06
Speaker 1: to look more fluent in a sports conversation that maybe
5:08
Speaker 1: you don't want to remember, we're going to be We're
5:11
Speaker 1: gonna have some tremendous I mean, there's nothing I love
5:13
Speaker 1: more than these next two weeks because on a random
5:16
Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon, you flip on ESPN and there's a bowl game.
5:20
Speaker 1: So this is the part. As much as these meaningless
5:22
Speaker 1: bowl games are becoming more meaningless, all the time when
5:27
Speaker 1: you're at home with relatives and you need that distraction
5:31
Speaker 1: of noise in your gatherings. There's nothing like throwing a
5:35
Speaker 1: football game on. So even these bad Netflix games that
5:38
Speaker 1: the NFL for Netflix, right, they'd like to swap those
5:42
Speaker 1: out or get a refund for these, right since they
5:46
Speaker 1: barely had any playoff teams eventually in their matchups. But
5:51
Speaker 1: so that's how I will orchestrate that sports update. But
5:54
Speaker 1: let me just kick off a little bit with this
5:56
Speaker 1: mess that is sixty Minutesry Weiss and the controversy around it.
6:05
Speaker 1: For me, this is a welcome to welcome to the
6:09
Speaker 1: NFL moment for Barry Weiss. Look, she is not the
6:13
Speaker 1: first news executive brought in to run a television network
6:16
Speaker 1: who has no clue how television works. And I say
6:19
Speaker 1: this not trying to take a shot at her being snarky,
6:21
Speaker 1: but this is her inexperience as a newsleader sort of
6:26
Speaker 1: to me shown through here from what we know, first
6:29
Speaker 1: of all, not understanding sort of the intricacies of what
6:32
Speaker 1: it takes to put together a television piece. I thought
6:35
Speaker 1: it was fascinating. There was a little bit of new snobbery,
6:38
Speaker 1: which is something that I used to have until I
6:41
Speaker 1: got into the TV business. But one of her critiques
6:44
Speaker 1: of the piece was that all of this was reported
6:48
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, as if if the New
6:50
Speaker 1: York Times reported it, you shouldn't bother sharing it with
6:53
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Maybe the whole point of
6:56
Speaker 1: why she started the free press, right, the whole point
6:59
Speaker 1: of you know, it's sort of we're trying to broaden
7:02
Speaker 1: the aperture of news consumption in a news consumption in America, right,
7:07
Speaker 1: not narrow it down. So, yes, New York Times readers
7:10
Speaker 1: might have known this story, what about everybody else? No
7:14
Speaker 1: offense to New York Times readers. I'm one of them.
7:16
Speaker 1: I'm a subscriber. But it's a very narrow set of Americans.
7:20
Speaker 1: It's a it's an influential set of Americans. The New
7:23
Speaker 1: York Times has influence, and there is a reminder that
7:25
Speaker 1: when The New York Times reports something, eventually other news
7:29
Speaker 1: organizations are going to do with their own version of
7:31
Speaker 1: the story and making a putting a vision. Putting a
7:36
Speaker 1: story that appeared in the New York Times, but putting
7:39
Speaker 1: giving visual elements to it can be sometimes more powerful
7:44
Speaker 1: than the original story itself, so that critique really struck
7:48
Speaker 1: me as her not understanding what her mission actually is
7:53
Speaker 1: at a news division. Right, is you there to broadly
7:56
Speaker 1: inform everybody that is there, or are you there to
8:00
Speaker 1: make an assumption that people already know certain things? And
8:03
Speaker 1: that to me is a bit of a yellow flag
8:06
Speaker 1: on her news instincts. Now, she may have just said
8:08
Speaker 1: that as part of an email that she knew to
8:12
Speaker 1: go public. Obviously, what doesn't look good for her on
8:16
Speaker 1: this is the fact that she missed four screenings of
8:20
Speaker 1: this piece and then weighed in very late, basically less
8:25
Speaker 1: than forty eight hours than when the piece was going
8:27
Speaker 1: to air. So it rings of Oh, she got a
8:32
Speaker 1: whole bunch of complaints from people inside the administration, and
8:37
Speaker 1: there were a few complaints that she thought ran pretty true,
8:40
Speaker 1: like hey, they didn't have a voice in the piece,
8:43
Speaker 1: or they didn't have this. And I think she's right
8:46
Speaker 1: that it could use a voice. It certainly would improve
8:49
Speaker 1: the piece. But when you come in that late in
8:51
Speaker 1: the process, it certainly looks like you've let outsiders manipulate
8:55
Speaker 1: the process, whether or not that's true, and it's her
8:59
Speaker 1: timing now, So I think a few things here. Let's
9:02
Speaker 1: take her at face value. I don't think she wants
9:06
Speaker 1: to be seen as a political pawn. Okay, so I
9:09
Speaker 1: have some of you may have a very snarky view
9:13
Speaker 1: of her that she just wants to be an apparatic.
9:16
Speaker 1: I don't believe that. I believe she thinks she can
9:19
Speaker 1: do this better. What I do believe is she does
9:22
Speaker 1: not understand how the television network works. She may very
9:26
Speaker 1: well want to change how network television works and how
9:29
Speaker 1: news gathering works. I think God bless her. Okay, I've
9:32
Speaker 1: certainly had my share of inexperience. I dealt with my
9:34
Speaker 1: share of inexperienced news executives. The ones that came in
9:38
Speaker 1: and experienced, who wanted to who were good, actually spent
9:42
Speaker 1: time trying to get to know parts of the news
9:45
Speaker 1: division that they knew themselves they wanted to get rid of.
9:48
Speaker 1: But you actually have to try to work and figure
9:50
Speaker 1: out how they were. The bad news executives that I
9:53
Speaker 1: dealt with, and I had quite a few of them,
9:56
Speaker 1: I would say about half figured it out the right
9:58
Speaker 1: way and half figured it out the wrong. About half
10:01
Speaker 1: of them came in thinking they already knew how to
10:03
Speaker 1: do this, and they were going to come and they
10:05
Speaker 1: were there to break eggs, and they weren't going to
10:09
Speaker 1: bother worrying about institutional norms, etc. But you're going to
10:15
Speaker 1: get pushback, right, You're going to get resistance when you
10:19
Speaker 1: have a lot of particularly at a broadcast news network
10:21
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of really smart, talented people who
10:24
Speaker 1: frankly probably would be more qualified to run the news division,
10:28
Speaker 1: but they're on air personalities, and you know, they're not
10:34
Speaker 1: just to be treated like actors in a sitcom. And
10:37
Speaker 1: there's sort of two types of news executives I came across.
10:39
Speaker 1: There was the news executive that assumed people that were
10:42
Speaker 1: on air just read the reporting of other people's work,
10:45
Speaker 1: and then there were those that actually respected the fact
10:48
Speaker 1: that the people that could narrate a story could also
10:54
Speaker 1: work a story behind the scenes as well. And so
11:00
Speaker 1: this rings of somebody who just didn't fully understand how
11:05
Speaker 1: the system worked. Now, this is where you can't you
11:09
Speaker 1: have to you cannot discount the outside atmosphere that was
11:14
Speaker 1: developing over the last month. You had President Trump twice
11:18
Speaker 1: complain about sixty minutes pieces that he didn't like, and
11:23
Speaker 1: he said the new owners haven't made a difference. It
11:25
Speaker 1: was in some ways when he said nice things about
11:28
Speaker 1: the Netflix bid to acquire Warner Brothers. It was almost
11:32
Speaker 1: implied he didn't. He's mad at the Ellisons anyway, type
11:35
Speaker 1: of mindset. So you have the fact that he's already
11:39
Speaker 1: complained about two specific pieces, the Marjorie Taylor Green one
11:42
Speaker 1: from a couple weeks ago being the most prominent. Then
11:45
Speaker 1: you have the situation where the Ellisons are desperate to
11:49
Speaker 1: see if they can get their hands on all of
11:51
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers. They're trying to up their bid. They're trying
11:54
Speaker 1: to make their access to government approval for their bid
12:00
Speaker 1: as a sweetener to the Warner Brothers shareholders in order
12:04
Speaker 1: to say, hey, look, Netflix is going to have a
12:05
Speaker 1: harder time with this. Well, in order for that to happen,
12:09
Speaker 1: they've got to appease this administration. So, whether this stuff
12:13
Speaker 1: is having an impact or not, there is a perception
12:18
Speaker 1: that it is going to and there's certainly that perception
12:21
Speaker 1: could turn into questions that come from Democrats in Congress.
12:25
Speaker 1: The point is, a smart leader tries to get ahead
12:28
Speaker 1: of this somebody who and I have no doubt that
12:31
Speaker 1: Barry Wis is a smart person here, but she just
12:34
Speaker 1: how do you not you know, there's really only one
12:38
Speaker 1: program that CBS News is going to be judged on
12:41
Speaker 1: as far as anybody is concerned, right, critics of CBS News,
12:45
Speaker 1: supporters of CBS News, critics of the President, supporters of
12:50
Speaker 1: the President. It's sixty minutes, So how are you not
12:54
Speaker 1: more involved in understanding every piece that they're working on.
12:59
Speaker 1: So to weigh in as late as she did to
13:01
Speaker 1: kill the peace just screams of outside interference and the
13:05
Speaker 1: fact that she didn't see that coming. Either maybe she
13:08
Speaker 1: did see that coming and she had no choice in
13:10
Speaker 1: the matter, or she didn't see that coming and she
13:14
Speaker 1: was a bit unprepared for the situation, which would tell
13:17
Speaker 1: me that's a bit naive. Look, there's a few things
13:20
Speaker 1: that you that I think are going to be fair
13:22
Speaker 1: questions to raise. Can she run CBS News and the
13:26
Speaker 1: free press at the same time? Is is she over?
13:29
Speaker 1: I mean, CBS News is not a large operation compared
13:31
Speaker 1: to NBC News, CBS News and a lot a large
13:33
Speaker 1: operation compared to ABC News. It's it's a much smaller operation, So,
13:39
Speaker 1: you know, so to me, not being able to be
13:43
Speaker 1: on top of what they're producing. They don't have a
13:44
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news channel. Yes, they have a CBS
13:46
Speaker 1: Digital But her not being on top of this, you
13:50
Speaker 1: have to ask, is she distracted by other stuff? Why
13:54
Speaker 1: hasn't she figuring this out? Why hasn't Why didn't she
13:59
Speaker 1: know what was happening inside these stories quickly and know
14:05
Speaker 1: the rhythm of it. So I think it exposes Look,
14:09
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's plenty that we don't know,
14:13
Speaker 1: but she is. You know, she's now in a really
14:16
Speaker 1: rough position. She's lost the trust of the journalists at
14:21
Speaker 1: the single most important institution inside of CBS News in
14:24
Speaker 1: that's sixty minutes. Anything they do now is going to
14:29
Speaker 1: be seen through a political lens, no matter what that
14:32
Speaker 1: they're appeasing one sided. They're in the worst of all
14:34
Speaker 1: worlds now, And you know, I go back to to
14:40
Speaker 1: this simple inexperience, and that's what this screams up. Look,
14:44
Speaker 1: I could there's a there's another part of me that's
14:48
Speaker 1: could easily be celebrating this moment. Once again, corporate owned,
14:55
Speaker 1: corporate owned media is going to let you down. I
15:00
Speaker 1: did not think this was the case, but this is
15:02
Speaker 1: now the case in the Trump era, where these parent
15:05
Speaker 1: companies do not care whether their journalistic institutions have credibility
15:11
Speaker 1: with the whitest swath of Americans or not, that they
15:14
Speaker 1: only want to cater to one side politically, and they
15:18
Speaker 1: want to be a part of essentially influencing the country
15:23
Speaker 1: rather than reflecting and reporting on the country. So yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that would love to sit
15:31
Speaker 1: here and gloat and just say, look, this is yet
15:33
Speaker 1: another reason you're going to have some skepticism of this
15:37
Speaker 1: corporate media structure that we've seen. I will be honest
15:42
Speaker 1: with you, I'm skeptical. I'm mostly impressed with Washington Post reporting.
15:49
Speaker 1: I'm very skeptical of its editorial page. It feels like
15:52
Speaker 1: it's been it is not an honest editorial page, that
15:55
Speaker 1: it is essentially manipulated with a point of view that
15:57
Speaker 1: the owner that somebody wants to appease in owner or
16:00
Speaker 1: a piece somebody. You now are going to have skepticism
16:05
Speaker 1: about what CBS News does. I already know that there.
16:09
Speaker 1: We've already seen Disney do what it did with the
16:11
Speaker 1: George Stephanopolis situation, calling into question their support of ABC News.
16:18
Speaker 1: We've seen what Comcast did with MSNBC, trying to spin
16:21
Speaker 1: it out and get rid of it and separating it
16:23
Speaker 1: out from NBC. You can look at that through the
16:27
Speaker 1: prism of their just looking to appease and playcate the
16:31
Speaker 1: current administration. So we are in a situation where all
16:37
Speaker 1: of these stories have added to the public's distrust. And
16:44
Speaker 1: it's frustrating to me because I many people look at
16:47
Speaker 1: me and still see me as a quote member of
16:49
Speaker 1: so called mainstream media. I promise you I I tried
16:55
Speaker 1: really hard. I spoke out when I thought it was necessary.
16:58
Speaker 1: So I know that moment that Sharon I'll Foncie. You know,
17:01
Speaker 1: you make that decision. It's not an easy decision because
17:04
Speaker 1: you're never you know, her career is never going to
17:06
Speaker 1: be the same at CBS. You know, we'll see does
17:11
Speaker 1: she out last Barry Weiss or does Berry Weis's outlast
17:14
Speaker 1: her on that front. I have no idea what her
17:18
Speaker 1: contract situation is or anything like that, But ultimately, executives
17:22
Speaker 1: don't like to be shown up by their employees, and
17:25
Speaker 1: so eventually that's you know, but at the end of
17:28
Speaker 1: the day, you feel the need to stick up for
17:31
Speaker 1: the journalists and the organization. And this is what makes
17:34
Speaker 1: when you're a publicly traded company owning a journalist, journalistic institution.
17:39
Speaker 1: You have a choice to make, right are you going
17:41
Speaker 1: to stand by? Journalism is not meant to be popular.
17:45
Speaker 1: I always say this, journalists are not meant to be
17:47
Speaker 1: if you are doing this to be popular. And this
17:49
Speaker 1: is why this whole, in this whole algorithmic driven nature
17:54
Speaker 1: of our news consumption really bothers me because it it
17:59
Speaker 1: it it's fuses popularity with news consumption, which is a
18:03
Speaker 1: huge mistake for journalism. If you're doing your journalism based
18:06
Speaker 1: on what you think is going to be popular, you're
18:08
Speaker 1: not going to do good journalism because you're going to
18:10
Speaker 1: be constantly worried about what an audience thinks, either an
18:13
Speaker 1: audience of one, whether in the case of the White House,
18:15
Speaker 1: or a larger audience in the case if you're a
18:17
Speaker 1: partisan news channel MS NOW or Fox News, where you
18:21
Speaker 1: don't want to quote alienate your viewers and alienate that
18:25
Speaker 1: the audience that you have. I think this is a
18:27
Speaker 1: huge concern with YouTube influences. I think it's a huge
18:31
Speaker 1: concern with some substackers where you have essentially audience capture
18:37
Speaker 1: on this front. So, if you're going to be in
18:43
Speaker 1: the journalistic space and you want to be a journalist,
18:47
Speaker 1: grow a thick skin and don't worry about being popular
18:51
Speaker 1: or not. Over time and honest, straightforward, no bullshit talking
18:57
Speaker 1: journalists is going is going to accumulate trust. Trust is
19:01
Speaker 1: more important than popularity. That I promise you trust is
19:06
Speaker 1: more important popular. So at the end of the day,
19:08
Speaker 1: that's what I think about. I'd rather I'd rather tell
19:12
Speaker 1: you honest information that make you feel good when I
19:14
Speaker 1: don't think what you want to hear to feel good
19:17
Speaker 1: is actually accurate, you know, do I want to present
19:23
Speaker 1: it in such a way where it's easy to consume,
19:26
Speaker 1: where it isn't doesn't feel like your own personal points
19:30
Speaker 1: of view are being attacked when you're hearing information that
19:33
Speaker 1: runs counter to your beliefs. Yes, I think there are
19:37
Speaker 1: better ways to present information. I think there are more
19:41
Speaker 1: detached ways to present information. I think one of the
19:47
Speaker 1: things that we collectively didn't do well and we let hey, look,
19:51
Speaker 1: Donald Trump can make anybody emotionally. You know, go Jesus,
19:59
Speaker 1: you know that. But you got to do your best
20:03
Speaker 1: sometimes to check yourself and try to detach yourself from
20:06
Speaker 1: certain things. Right, if you really want to be a
20:09
Speaker 1: referee like journalists, where you're just calling it like you
20:12
Speaker 1: see it, pure in something and at the end of
20:15
Speaker 1: the day, that's what I'm doing here. So that's why
20:17
Speaker 1: I'm saying it. In some ways, if you're in the
20:19
Speaker 1: independent space, you know nothing like the self destruction of
20:23
Speaker 1: more corporate owned media like CBS News as being helpful
20:27
Speaker 1: to the cause. But I will tell you this, there's
20:29
Speaker 1: a reason why independent media is growing the way it
20:33
Speaker 1: is growing because I think you have corporations that don't
20:36
Speaker 1: care about their news divisions anymore, and at the end
20:39
Speaker 1: of the day, they will use them if it helps
20:41
Speaker 1: them for their business, and they will discard them the
20:45
Speaker 1: second they become they interfere with their business. And look,
20:50
Speaker 1: I get it. They have a fetishare responsibility their shareholders,
20:53
Speaker 1: not to you. The American public ultimately independent own journalistic operations.
20:57
Speaker 1: I do think have more more concern about the public
21:04
Speaker 1: as a whole than any donor any subscriber, any shareholder.
21:11
Speaker 1: And so in that sense, yesterday was just another bad
21:16
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21:19
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21:41
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23:03
Speaker 1: think about, especially if you've got a growing family. Speaking
23:10
Speaker 1: of the obsession of independent media, I would say the
23:13
Speaker 1: Epstein files are certainly falling into that category. And look,
23:19
Speaker 1: we're seeing, as I outlined to you a couple of
23:21
Speaker 1: days ago, you know, none of us should be shocked
23:25
Speaker 1: that the Justice Department front loaded all things Bill Clinton
23:29
Speaker 1: on day one and are going to release whatever it
23:33
Speaker 1: is that might be damning to Donald Trump much closer
23:36
Speaker 1: to Christmas. Okay, but look, everybody's still pouring through it.
23:42
Speaker 1: This is you know, I have my you know, I
23:45
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't think this is going to somehow
23:51
Speaker 1: change minds and what people believe regarding Epstein. But I
23:56
Speaker 1: do think it What it has done to create division
24:01
Speaker 1: inside the Trump coalition certainly makes it extraordinarily politically relevant.
24:06
Speaker 1: But the fact that on Tuesday, on Festivus Day, the
24:13
Speaker 1: airing of the Grievance Day. The Justice Department put out
24:15
Speaker 1: the following statement after they released Another Earth, and I'm
24:18
Speaker 1: just going to read it to you as a whole,
24:19
Speaker 1: because the fact that the Department of Justice put out
24:22
Speaker 1: this statement is both laughable and notable. Here it is
24:28
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice is officially released nearly thirty thousand
24:31
Speaker 1: more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of
24:34
Speaker 1: these documents contain untrue and cessationalist claims made against President
24:39
Speaker 1: Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the
24:41
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election. To be clear that the claims are
24:44
Speaker 1: unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility,
24:47
Speaker 1: they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already. Nevertheless,
24:52
Speaker 1: out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the
24:54
Speaker 1: DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections
24:58
Speaker 1: for Epstein's victims. The year began with a huge opportunity
25:01
Speaker 1: for Trump on this front. Excuse me, no, that was
25:05
Speaker 1: one other line that I had written for myself. So
25:11
Speaker 1: there you have it. The Department of Justice put out
25:15
Speaker 1: a statement that sounded like it came from Trump's defense attorney.
25:18
Speaker 1: Oh wait, Trump's former defense attorney, is it the Department
25:21
Speaker 1: of Justice as a deputy attorney general. The point is
25:24
Speaker 1: there's a lot of today. The release on Tuesday is
25:28
Speaker 1: a reminder that there's a lot more damaging allegations and
25:32
Speaker 1: inn window and so we say unresolved what would you
25:42
Speaker 1: call them? Sort of unclear rationales for why Donald Trump
25:46
Speaker 1: spent so much time with Jeffrey Epstein on his plane
25:48
Speaker 1: and things like this, and the various accusations that came
25:51
Speaker 1: with him. But it's interesting because think about this. In theory,
26:00
Speaker 1: everything in that's been released should fall under Hey, some
26:05
Speaker 1: of these documents contain untrue, in cessationalist claims. It made
26:08
Speaker 1: against President Clinton, some of them made against Alan Dershowitz,
26:13
Speaker 1: against Prince Right. Not every allegation made against any of
26:17
Speaker 1: these folks, not all of them have been proven. But
26:20
Speaker 1: it's notable that they only single out Donald Trump, which
26:24
Speaker 1: tells you it was a statement for an audience of one.
26:28
Speaker 1: But in some ways the note itself actually perhaps and
26:32
Speaker 1: maybe this was by design, and maybe I'm naive on
26:34
Speaker 1: this one, but actually the statement oddly says, Okay, today's
26:40
Speaker 1: the day you're going to see a lot more Trump stuff,
26:43
Speaker 1: and it's not going to be a great day for
26:48
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. But I do think this is one of
26:50
Speaker 1: those stories that is more of an obsession with people
26:54
Speaker 1: that are obsessed with this story, and it's hard to
26:56
Speaker 1: imagine it's going to change the larger narrative, but clearly
27:00
Speaker 1: it rattles Donald Trump. And that brings me to before
27:04
Speaker 1: I get to the conversation with Mike Pesco, where we
27:08
Speaker 1: sort of talk about a lot of things that I've
27:10
Speaker 1: already mentioned now, future of journalism, independent media versus corporate
27:14
Speaker 1: owned media, things like that, it sort of step back
27:19
Speaker 1: a little bit and think about how the year began
27:22
Speaker 1: and think about the opportunity, and it goes back to,
27:26
Speaker 1: you know, and why I think this has been such
27:29
Speaker 1: a disastrous year politically for Donald Trump and the Republicans
27:32
Speaker 1: because it began with such an opportunity. He came into
27:39
Speaker 1: office within some ways, more of a mandate than he
27:43
Speaker 1: had gotten in his first election in twenty sixteen. He
27:48
Speaker 1: had extraordin there was an extraordinarily unpopular president he was following.
27:53
Speaker 1: That's a big difference in twenty sixteen, right, Barack Obama
27:56
Speaker 1: was a popular president personally in some way, probably you know,
28:00
Speaker 1: he left with a pretty high job rating and a
28:02
Speaker 1: pretty high personal rating. This case, right, he's following a
28:06
Speaker 1: president with a pretty low job rating in a pretty
28:10
Speaker 1: low personal rating, you know, the way Biden laughed really ugly.
28:13
Speaker 1: Just a terrible last six months being pushed out of
28:19
Speaker 1: his of office, just looking weak. And then of course
28:23
Speaker 1: the return of Donald Trump. In some ways he his
28:26
Speaker 1: fingerprints are as much on Trump's ability to get back
28:29
Speaker 1: here than any other. So the point was Trump came
28:32
Speaker 1: in with a huge opportunity, sort of like Ronald Reagan
28:35
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty. You know, people just found the Jimmy
28:38
Speaker 1: Carter presidency unpopular. They were ready to turn the page.
28:41
Speaker 1: So the opportunity for a honeymoon was big. And if
28:46
Speaker 1: you look at sort of frankly, I think Joe Biden
28:49
Speaker 1: had the same opportunity. And it is interesting to me
28:52
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump's second term and Joe Biden's one term
28:57
Speaker 1: in the first year of their presidency pretty much much
29:00
Speaker 1: are mirror images of each other. They both had sort
29:03
Speaker 1: of one issue that sort of quickly severed whatever mild
29:12
Speaker 1: hope voters, at least swing voters had that the presidency
29:16
Speaker 1: could be somewhat successful right with Joe Biden, it was
29:21
Speaker 1: the Afghanistan withdrawal, and for Donald Trump, it was Liberation Day.
29:25
Speaker 1: And there's no doubt Liberation Day was sort of the
29:28
Speaker 1: first hit and he never recovered from Liberation Day because
29:31
Speaker 1: the economy didn't really the economy just kept getting sort
29:37
Speaker 1: of uneven and those that were not doing well continued
29:41
Speaker 1: to not doing well. Those that were doing well could
29:43
Speaker 1: continue to do well thanks to the superinvestments of AI.
29:48
Speaker 1: So the opportunity Trump had at the start of his
29:53
Speaker 1: term versus he where he is now, I think you
29:57
Speaker 1: should and at this point it becomes it becomes hard
30:00
Speaker 1: to recover without sort of an outsized event to sort
30:05
Speaker 1: of change the narrative. Right. And when I say outside event,
30:09
Speaker 1: you know, to me, it's it's outside even the broad
30:12
Speaker 1: brushes of what you might be predicting, right, it's just
30:15
Speaker 1: something you know, out of the ordinary. The way the
30:17
Speaker 1: pandemic hit that it was not on anybody's BINGO card,
30:21
Speaker 1: and it ended up exposing Trump's inability to be a
30:24
Speaker 1: leader in a moment of crisis, and that, you know,
30:27
Speaker 1: it's it is why I think he lost that first reelection.
30:32
Speaker 1: So I think when you look at sort of the
30:36
Speaker 1: big picture here, he really he had an opportunity. He
30:39
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to solidify his imprint on the conservative movement.
30:47
Speaker 1: He had a chance to sort of keep Democrats sort
30:51
Speaker 1: of fraying. He could have done some things that could
30:55
Speaker 1: have potentially splintered the Democratic coalition. A good leader would
31:01
Speaker 1: have actually looked for Democrats, you know, he had very
31:04
Speaker 1: small majorities, and he'd have tried to find some Democratic
31:06
Speaker 1: allies more as an attempt to try to splinter the party,
31:10
Speaker 1: you sort of break people off to try to work
31:12
Speaker 1: with him, And he chose not to do any of
31:15
Speaker 1: that right. Instead, he came in a lot of retribution.
31:18
Speaker 1: It's clear that that was much more front and center
31:23
Speaker 1: for him. The pardons, the naming everything after himself, the bulldozing.
31:30
Speaker 1: I mean, in that sense, he's he's made it really hard.
31:37
Speaker 1: He's made it really hard to look at this as
31:39
Speaker 1: anything other than through the prism of his own narcissism.
31:44
Speaker 1: And the irony is that had he been sort of
31:48
Speaker 1: a leader with a vision, had he cared about sort
31:52
Speaker 1: of building a Republican party that could last beyond his years,
31:59
Speaker 1: he would have i think, governed a lot differently. In
32:03
Speaker 1: the first six months. How they you know, he was
32:06
Speaker 1: so anxious. And maybe this has to do with him
32:09
Speaker 1: feeling that he waited too long to do things in
32:12
Speaker 1: the first term, and maybe it's mortality getting to him
32:15
Speaker 1: and he's afraid that, you know, he doesn't have a
32:17
Speaker 1: full four years. I don't know what it is, but
32:19
Speaker 1: how he's gone about this where he's obsessed with quickly
32:22
Speaker 1: putting his name on things, quickly being able to get notoriety,
32:29
Speaker 1: desperate for a Nobel Peace Prize, desperate to see his
32:32
Speaker 1: name associated with some sort of legacy thing like putting.
32:36
Speaker 1: You know, right now people are up in arms about
32:38
Speaker 1: the renaming of the Kennedy Center after him. Remember he
32:43
Speaker 1: did this with the US Institute of Peace, a institute
32:48
Speaker 1: that he defunded and tried to get rid of, but
32:50
Speaker 1: instead slapped his name on it so that he could
32:53
Speaker 1: have the words peace and Donald Trump in the same sentence.
32:56
Speaker 1: So when you look at this year in total, when
33:00
Speaker 1: you look at him with a job rating in the
33:02
Speaker 1: very low forties, rating on the economy in the load
33:06
Speaker 1: to mid thirties, it is a reminder that Donald Trump
33:09
Speaker 1: did not win the twenty twenty four election. Kamala Harris
33:13
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden lost the twenty twenty four election, just
33:16
Speaker 1: like Joe Biden made the mistake of believing he won
33:19
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty when that was not the case. Donald
33:22
Speaker 1: Trump lost in twenty twenty, just like Hillary Clinton lost
33:24
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. All Right, obviously, what do I mean
33:28
Speaker 1: by that? Well, the voters knew who they didn't want
33:31
Speaker 1: as president, and the voters were willing to roll the
33:34
Speaker 1: dice with an unknown or roll the dice with what
33:37
Speaker 1: they thought was a known quantity the second time. Right
33:40
Speaker 1: the first time, Hey, let's disrupt things. We kind of
33:43
Speaker 1: know what a Hillary Clinton presidency is going to look like.
33:45
Speaker 1: We have no idea what a Trump president's going to
33:47
Speaker 1: look like. And we're kind of in a cranky, grumpy mood.
33:49
Speaker 1: This economy kind of sucks. I wish it were better.
33:52
Speaker 1: I don't like this. I don't like that. I certainly
33:54
Speaker 1: don't want to return to some sort of Clinton status quo. Okay,
33:58
Speaker 1: so you understood that. Then incomes, you know, the pandemic happens.
34:03
Speaker 1: You're like, oh my god, we're in a moment of crisis.
34:05
Speaker 1: This guy can't make the trains run on time. And
34:07
Speaker 1: it was just like, can you just give me a
34:08
Speaker 1: functional bureaucrat. Joe Biden thirty plus years experience, seemed like
34:12
Speaker 1: that functional Democrat to just make sure we can get
34:15
Speaker 1: some COVID shots, make sure we can, you know, keep
34:20
Speaker 1: our allies our allies, and go from there. And now
34:27
Speaker 1: we see that that was the case. So I do
34:29
Speaker 1: think when you see the political standing of the president,
34:32
Speaker 1: you see where Democrats look like a resurgent party, because remember,
34:36
Speaker 1: this is a party that's still very unpopular. This is
34:38
Speaker 1: a party where swing voters don't really trust Democratic leaders,
34:43
Speaker 1: don't really trust even some democratic stances, particularly on some
34:50
Speaker 1: social issues, but they don't like the party in power, right,
34:54
Speaker 1: they don't like what they have, And so we have
34:57
Speaker 1: been voting, I would argue since to nine. Right, the
35:02
Speaker 1: last time we voted for a president was Barack Obama
35:07
Speaker 1: in twenty oh eight. Everything else has been more of
35:10
Speaker 1: a vote against type of election. Twenty ten a vote
35:12
Speaker 1: against sort of Democrats expanding the size of governments. Right,
35:17
Speaker 1: the Tea Party surge got fired up that wing of
35:22
Speaker 1: the party, Republicans win the House, but it was a
35:24
Speaker 1: vote against, right, it was a vote against the Democrats.
35:27
Speaker 1: Twenty twelve many ways was not an easy re election
35:31
Speaker 1: for Barack Obama when you looked at the state of
35:33
Speaker 1: the economy, well, they did a successful job saying, oh, yeah,
35:37
Speaker 1: you're not gonna want met Romney's economy. You're not gonna
35:39
Speaker 1: want met Romney deciding these policies. You're going to be
35:43
Speaker 1: better off with Barack Obama policies than you will Bet
35:46
Speaker 1: Romney policies. And they painted him as an outsourcer, as
35:49
Speaker 1: a guy in the pocket of China, and that played
35:51
Speaker 1: well in the Midwest. It's also the last time Democrats
35:53
Speaker 1: were able to carry Iowa, Ohio, in addition to Michigan, Pennsylvania,
35:58
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin. Not a small deal. But again, I look
36:04
Speaker 1: at twenty twelve, not necessarily as a vote for but
36:07
Speaker 1: really when you look at how he carried those Midwestern states,
36:11
Speaker 1: he was not promoting himself. They were attack ads against
36:14
Speaker 1: Mettroney twenty fourteen, Another vote against election twenty sixteen, Another
36:19
Speaker 1: vote against election twenty eighteen, another vote against election right
36:23
Speaker 1: twenty twenty another vote against election twenty twenty two is
36:26
Speaker 1: the weird one where it was mostly an electorate that
36:30
Speaker 1: wanted to put a check on Biden, but you had
36:34
Speaker 1: an awful sort of slate of Republican candidates that minimize
36:40
Speaker 1: the gains that they should have made. And now it
36:42
Speaker 1: gave some false hope to Joe Biden. You had a
36:45
Speaker 1: Biden white House that totally misinterpreted what happened in twenty
36:48
Speaker 1: twenty two and fully not appreciating that that was just
36:53
Speaker 1: a case of really bad, really bad Republican primary outcomes.
37:00
Speaker 1: It wasn't as if the country was saying no, no, no, no,
37:03
Speaker 1: we want more Biden cow Bell. That was not what
37:06
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two was about. And of course now we
37:09
Speaker 1: know twenty twenty four was a vote against elections. So
37:12
Speaker 1: here we are again after one year of Trump, where
37:15
Speaker 1: he had an opportunity and I would argue he had
37:18
Speaker 1: a you know, he you know, no honeymoon periods very
37:21
Speaker 1: long anymore in American politics. The war information ecosystem works.
37:24
Speaker 1: But he had a good three months and Liberation Day
37:29
Speaker 1: in April just destroyed any hope he had. And he's
37:33
Speaker 1: been he's not really recovered from that moment. You know,
37:38
Speaker 1: even the good economic news that he gets, like the
37:41
Speaker 1: recent news about the GDP over the summer, when you
37:44
Speaker 1: look at the details, you realize, oh, most Americans aren't
37:47
Speaker 1: benefiting from that expanded GDP. It is really about the
37:51
Speaker 1: investments in AI. So look, it certainly sets up what
37:57
Speaker 1: appears to be another vote again election, which we could,
38:01
Speaker 1: you know, argue, now this will be we're going to
38:04
Speaker 1: hit what is nearly twenty years of this, right, our
38:07
Speaker 1: eighteenth year sort of our let's see here ten twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty,
38:14
Speaker 1: twenty two, twenty four be our ninth straight national election
38:19
Speaker 1: where basically the voters that decide who wins or loses
38:24
Speaker 1: not about the two bases, but those of us that
38:28
Speaker 1: live in the messy middle. You're going essentially to the
38:33
Speaker 1: polls with a vote against rather than something to vote for,
38:39
Speaker 1: and that our collective I understand some of you saying no, no, no, no,
38:42
Speaker 1: I always vote for an individual candidate. Yeah, but it's
38:44
Speaker 1: binary choice. Right, Ultimately we have a binary choice, and
38:49
Speaker 1: that we're having our ninth straight election where we're we've
38:51
Speaker 1: been living in this a generation of a political recession.
38:55
Speaker 1: And you know, I would argue this, You know I
38:57
Speaker 1: can make the case this goes back at least through
39:04
Speaker 1: even in two thousand, right, we were starting to see
39:06
Speaker 1: the first pieces of this. So look, I want to
39:10
Speaker 1: spend a little bit of Next week, I'll have a
39:14
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a podcast. We're gonna do another We're
39:17
Speaker 1: going to two this week with also a special edition.
39:20
Speaker 1: I'm gonna you know, if it's if you haven't heard it,
39:23
Speaker 1: it's new to you, as I used to say an NBC.
39:25
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna re up the Jasmine Crockett interview I
39:28
Speaker 1: did a few months ago, with a little bit of
39:31
Speaker 1: a little bit of a Texas introduction to it later
39:35
Speaker 1: this week. But next week I'll have another new episode
39:38
Speaker 1: and we'll do a little bit of sort of where
39:41
Speaker 1: the two parties are going. But I think, just briefly,
39:43
Speaker 1: what we're watching I touched on it before. I do
39:46
Speaker 1: think we're seeing Trump's coalition. As I've said for the
39:51
Speaker 1: last three or four months, it is the coalition is cracking.
39:54
Speaker 1: The cracks are showing. Now they're not just cracks anymore, right,
39:57
Speaker 1: They're chasms in some cases. I think you're going to
40:01
Speaker 1: see more of this. I think what we saw in Heritage,
40:04
Speaker 1: this is sort of this is going to show itself
40:07
Speaker 1: up more in twenty eight than it is in twenty six.
40:10
Speaker 1: I mean sure, I think you'll see some hints of
40:13
Speaker 1: this divide inside the right in the Texas Senate primary.
40:17
Speaker 1: You'll see some of this perhaps in the Georgia Senate primary,
40:24
Speaker 1: but for the most part, Republicans have avoided They're going
40:27
Speaker 1: to avoid some messy primaries. So most of this infighting
40:32
Speaker 1: is going to continue to take place online, continue to
40:35
Speaker 1: take place in podcasts, and really start to ramp up
40:39
Speaker 1: as the presidential candidates of twenty eight start to start
40:43
Speaker 1: to rise, whether it's Cruise Pants Paul, all three of
40:47
Speaker 1: them very much sort of coming at the mega coalition
40:52
Speaker 1: in different ways, each wanting a piece of it, but
40:55
Speaker 1: very critical to some parts of it. Right, and how
40:59
Speaker 1: that can continues to splinter, I think is going to
41:01
Speaker 1: be an animating force inside the Republican Party for the
41:04
Speaker 1: next easily for the next two years. And I do
41:08
Speaker 1: think you see that the online MAGA world, right, this
41:14
Speaker 1: world of Eric Kirk, Meghan Kelly, Ben Shapiro. You know
41:19
Speaker 1: some of you that listen to this podcast, maybe you
41:21
Speaker 1: know these names are familiar. You may see him online.
41:25
Speaker 1: It strikes me as this is, as I said in
41:27
Speaker 1: an earlier podcast, that this is the rights version of
41:30
Speaker 1: the groups. Right. You have democratic politicians who were afraid
41:34
Speaker 1: to sort of connect with voters in the middle because
41:36
Speaker 1: they didn't want to alienate certain groups. I think it's
41:39
Speaker 1: pretty clear the Biden White House in the first two
41:42
Speaker 1: years totally mismanaged the border, put restraints on Ali Mayorcis
41:47
Speaker 1: and dhs from being able to do their job the
41:49
Speaker 1: way they did it. May Orcus did with Jay Johnson
41:51
Speaker 1: during the second Trump second Obama term because they didn't
41:55
Speaker 1: want to offend the groups when the voters, you know,
41:58
Speaker 1: were the ones that were making this this quote unquote,
42:01
Speaker 1: not the groups, right. Well, I think now you're seeing
42:04
Speaker 1: something similar happen in magaworld where they're where you have
42:08
Speaker 1: Republicans seem to be more concerned about what's being said online,
42:13
Speaker 1: who's saying it online, appeasing some online activists, rather than
42:17
Speaker 1: actually talking to the voters. And I think that they
42:20
Speaker 1: are detaching themselves from the mainstream of political debate by
42:25
Speaker 1: being so consumed about what's being said at a turning
42:27
Speaker 1: Point convention or what's being said on a Megan Kelly
42:30
Speaker 1: podcast or any of this stuff. And like how the
42:35
Speaker 1: I think the Democrats got consumed with appeasing progressive groups
42:40
Speaker 1: and social justice groups at the expense of alienating swing
42:45
Speaker 1: voters in the suburbs and the excerps. I think you're
42:47
Speaker 1: seeing the same thing start to take place on the right.
42:54
Speaker 1: But make no mistake, the Democrats also, there's a chance
42:57
Speaker 1: they're having their own tea party moment. And you know,
43:00
Speaker 1: the twenty ten midterms for Republicans were a huge success
43:04
Speaker 1: on the House side of things, but they came up
43:06
Speaker 1: shortened Senate races because of their own infighting. They had
43:09
Speaker 1: primary challenges. They had sort of this tea party surge
43:13
Speaker 1: which sort of was sort of Maga before we were
43:15
Speaker 1: calling it. Maga was challenging the establishment wing of the
43:19
Speaker 1: Republican Party, and it upset you know, you had the
43:22
Speaker 1: which nominee. You know, at one point, you had the
43:25
Speaker 1: bad nominee in Indiana. You had the bad nominee in
43:28
Speaker 1: Nevada against Harry Reid. Right, you had all those things
43:31
Speaker 1: both in the ten cycle and the twelve cycle, which
43:33
Speaker 1: held them back. You can't help but wonder if the
43:36
Speaker 1: Democrats are going through the same thing that they have.
43:38
Speaker 1: You know, the quote, is there a liberal tea party
43:40
Speaker 1: moment happening? Right? It's a little cliche to say it
43:43
Speaker 1: that way, but there's definitely something. There's something happening here,
43:46
Speaker 1: right the establishment of the Democratic Party doesn't have a
43:50
Speaker 1: lot of credit, credibility with Democratic voters right now, doesn't
43:53
Speaker 1: have a lot of credibility with Democratic donors right now,
43:56
Speaker 1: and that's leading to what appears to be some terrible
43:59
Speaker 1: primaries that are probably going to nominate less electable nominees,
44:03
Speaker 1: whether it's Texas Senate, Michigan Senate, Main Senate. Those would
44:08
Speaker 1: be catastrophic, right and you could see Democrats end up
44:14
Speaker 1: in a similar scenario situation that Republicans were in twenty ten.
44:19
Speaker 1: They went a ton of seats in the House and
44:22
Speaker 1: actually come up short in the Senate. You know, they
44:24
Speaker 1: only win, you know, only they come up one or
44:26
Speaker 1: two seats short from winning the majority, just like Senate
44:31
Speaker 1: Republicans did in twenty ten. So, you know, it's interesting.
44:37
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty four, you know, sort of ended with a
44:43
Speaker 1: divided Democratic Party and a more united Republican Party than
44:48
Speaker 1: we'd seen since the beginning of the Trump era. Twenty
44:52
Speaker 1: twenty five ends still with a divided Democratic Party, though
44:56
Speaker 1: with a unifying force that is Trump for the midterms,
45:00
Speaker 1: but the divisions are still pretty pretty out. But you
45:03
Speaker 1: now have a pretty divided Republican Party and that is
45:07
Speaker 1: what we're dealing with as we kick off for twenty
45:10
Speaker 1: twenty six. There's actually a bunch of the other small
45:15
Speaker 1: things I wanted to get to here, but you know what,
45:18
Speaker 1: I've gone forty minutes here. It's Christmas Eve, and as
45:22
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you want to get back to
45:25
Speaker 1: your family, others of you are out for that walk,
45:28
Speaker 1: taking a few minutes with yourself, going when is Chuck
45:30
Speaker 1: going to get to his college football up date? Well,
45:32
Speaker 1: let's get to the Mike Pesca interview and then we'll
45:34
Speaker 1: talk some sports on letters. There's a reason results matter
45:41
Speaker 1: more than promises, just like there's a reason Morgan and
45:44
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45:47
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45:54
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45:57
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46:00
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46:03
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46:11
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46:37
Speaker 1: is free unless they win. So joining me now with
46:43
Speaker 1: frankly without a I'm not going to sit here and
46:46
Speaker 1: say we have a specific reason we're talking other than
46:49
Speaker 1: I like to talk to smart, interesting people, and Mike
46:52
Speaker 1: Pescott is smart. You'll just decide how interesting he is.
46:56
Speaker 1: But he seems to be interesting enough. I kid in
46:59
Speaker 1: that many of you may be listeners to his podcast,
47:03
Speaker 1: maybe subscribers to his newsletter to things that I am
47:07
Speaker 1: so with that, mister Pesca, who I blew it? I
47:12
Speaker 1: thought I was thinking fish is your last name, and
47:15
Speaker 1: you're like, no, it's Italian for peaches, right.
47:18
Speaker 2: That's why the GISTs Production Company is peachfish productions because
47:22
Speaker 2: the peach is literally Italian. Yeah. Many Spanish verb forms
47:26
Speaker 2: of two.
47:27
Speaker 1: Fish are the fish. So yeah, you know what, you know,
47:30
Speaker 1: two things I wouldn't want to eat together.
47:32
Speaker 2: I think that probably a good chefish marmally glad.
47:37
Speaker 1: But you would have to make the peach. You'd have
47:39
Speaker 1: to make it more like mango and like create a salsa.
47:42
Speaker 1: I guess you could say you could probably create a
47:44
Speaker 1: peach salsa that's on your fish taco.
47:48
Speaker 2: It's a challenge, right, It would definitely be something that
47:51
Speaker 2: would break most contestants on cooking shows.
47:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, so first of all, I appreciate you. You seem
47:58
Speaker 1: to be always make content, so I appreciate that you're
48:02
Speaker 1: helping me make content. How how many how many side
48:07
Speaker 1: hustles do you have? And what do you what do
48:09
Speaker 1: you say you do these days for a little bit.
48:11
Speaker 2: Sometimes you have so many side hustles that you say
48:13
Speaker 2: is they're a real hustle. I've been doing the Gist
48:16
Speaker 2: for twelve years, almost twelve years. The longest running news
48:20
Speaker 2: and analysis podcast, and that is daily. It's actually six
48:23
Speaker 2: days a week.
48:24
Speaker 1: That's what I used to say about Meet the Press,
48:25
Speaker 1: the longest running television show You're Longest that's documentable.
48:30
Speaker 2: With podcasts, there is a little bit of wiggle room
48:33
Speaker 2: because no one's taking account in the beginning.
48:36
Speaker 1: And the fastest growing podcast in the in the two
48:38
Speaker 1: two two zero seven zip code. I don't know about you,
48:40
Speaker 1: but anyway.
48:41
Speaker 2: Wow, you know, the bragging chock is a little it's
48:46
Speaker 2: a little bit unbecoming, is what I'm saying here. Yes,
48:48
Speaker 2: so I do that, and then I have the sub stack,
48:51
Speaker 2: which is every day we have THEI just list, which
48:54
Speaker 2: are a bunch of stories I maybe can't get to
48:56
Speaker 2: on the gist. And then I do a written piece
48:59
Speaker 2: on When's day and I'm taking over. I can't announce it,
49:03
Speaker 2: but I'm taking over a new podcast where maybe maybe
49:07
Speaker 2: you'll be on asking people how to refurbish your second floor.
49:12
Speaker 1: Let's just say that, Well, all right, well I have
49:15
Speaker 1: refurbished the second floor. I need to clean up my
49:17
Speaker 1: second floor. How do I accomplish my exercise refurbishing sweep
49:22
Speaker 1: of all of that? What if I thought of one
49:24
Speaker 1: theme I wanted to speak with you about. It is
49:26
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, it's interesting I sort of
49:29
Speaker 1: began my calendar year getting started in this world of
49:32
Speaker 1: independent media. Going on your podcast early you were sort
49:36
Speaker 1: of very, very gracious with that. But it's been quite
49:43
Speaker 1: a year in media in general, especially legacy media, and
49:48
Speaker 1: sort of like, if you think about where we began
49:51
Speaker 1: and where we ended, is the information ecosystem at the
49:55
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty five worse or better than at
49:58
Speaker 1: the start of twenty twenty five?
50:00
Speaker 2: Okay, just twenty twenty five. I say it's potentially better,
50:06
Speaker 2: maybe because so much of the degradation is baked in
50:10
Speaker 2: and priced in, and it's not getting worse and we've
50:13
Speaker 2: been habituated to it. But a couple of the big trends,
50:17
Speaker 2: one that is often decried by my left leaning friends
50:21
Speaker 2: is what's happening with CBS and Barry Weiss and full disclosure,
50:25
Speaker 2: I've written a couple pieces for the Free Press. The
50:28
Speaker 2: way I look at that is two things. I know
50:32
Speaker 2: that people will slam Barry Weiss for that. They say
50:36
Speaker 2: bringing more of a right leaning sensibility to CBS, to
50:40
Speaker 2: which I say, there are three broadcast networks and five
50:45
Speaker 2: all news networks or quasi news networks with significant budgets.
50:49
Speaker 2: I'm not counting OAAN and the like, although News Nation
50:52
Speaker 2: does some nice things, and four of them. If we're
50:56
Speaker 2: being fair, before Barry took control, we're somewhere in the
51:00
Speaker 2: center to left leaning. So I know, as you know NBC,
51:06
Speaker 2: the NBC, NBC very much tried not to be but
51:09
Speaker 2: of course MSNBC was left leaning to be honest, and
51:13
Speaker 2: CNN will I think they tacked more to the center,
51:17
Speaker 2: Fox being right leaning. But what I'm saying is just
51:20
Speaker 2: in terms of if you take away everyone's strong feelings
51:23
Speaker 2: about politics, if you're just looking at them as businesses,
51:28
Speaker 2: and four businesses on the block were selling ice cream
51:31
Speaker 2: and kind of not doing that great, and one business
51:35
Speaker 2: on the block was selling cotton candy and doing quite well.
51:38
Speaker 2: Wouldn't some combo cotton candy ice cream business maybe be
51:42
Speaker 2: the smart play. So this is all I'm saying. If
51:45
Speaker 2: you want to call Barry right wood or center right,
51:49
Speaker 2: she would call it. She really tries to say she's
51:51
Speaker 2: trying to keep it between the forty yard lines. It
51:54
Speaker 2: seems like a smart enough repositioning. And to that, I'd add,
51:58
Speaker 2: if you were to hire a person and to do this,
52:01
Speaker 2: why not hire the only person who's built the truly
52:04
Speaker 2: successful media business from scratch in the last five years?
52:07
Speaker 2: There's a case that Ben Smith of Semaphore is doing
52:10
Speaker 2: something similar. I think on smaller scales, even big Barry
52:14
Speaker 2: White's critics like Oliver Darcy, I think, is making a
52:16
Speaker 2: million dollars with his substack, And there are some substacked successes,
52:21
Speaker 2: but Barry's the biggest success. So add that up a
52:24
Speaker 2: little bit differentiation in the news business and a track
52:28
Speaker 2: record of success. I'm more interested than concerned. Let's say
52:33
Speaker 2: I think she could do good things. I don't know,
52:35
Speaker 2: what do you think?
52:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've not I am all four. I am sort
52:39
Speaker 1: of rooting for the disruption, right, you know, I've seen
52:43
Speaker 1: and I benefited from a disruptor coming into NBC, a
52:46
Speaker 1: woman by the name of Debora Turnas, who I still
52:50
Speaker 1: find to be one of the best network executives I
52:54
Speaker 1: ever worked with, because she wasn't afraid, she wasn't afraid
52:59
Speaker 1: to break things, and look, it got her the BBC job.
53:03
Speaker 1: And then of course she had a fall on her
53:04
Speaker 1: sword for something that happened below her. But that's also
53:07
Speaker 1: says something about her, meaning like she sort of she
53:10
Speaker 1: gets it. Okay, that's on me. You know, I'm the
53:14
Speaker 1: buck stops with me, So I'm all for seeing disruption,
53:17
Speaker 1: because I've seen network executives that just try to placate
53:23
Speaker 1: the bosses right don't succeed. And so my only question
53:29
Speaker 1: of her decision was you left the Times because you
53:34
Speaker 1: didn't like working for the Salzburgers. Are you sure you
53:38
Speaker 1: wanted to give up your independence to work for the Elesons? Right?
53:41
Speaker 1: Like that that would be and that's like, to me,
53:44
Speaker 1: the biggest It's funny. I also think this has been
53:48
Speaker 1: a turning point for the collective media, meaning that you're
53:53
Speaker 1: starting to see the audience feel more comfortable in the
53:56
Speaker 1: independent spaces. You're seeing more people feel more comfortable trying
54:01
Speaker 1: to launch in the independent space. And you know, I'm
54:07
Speaker 1: pessimistic that any of the legacy media companies can be
54:11
Speaker 1: They have good brands, and they can certainly tweak shows
54:14
Speaker 1: and use their resources, you know. Specific I just don't
54:17
Speaker 1: know if any of the legacy news divisions are ever
54:19
Speaker 1: going to be what they were right, because there's no
54:22
Speaker 1: money in it, right, there's no financial incentive. It is
54:26
Speaker 1: really it's just about whether you know, in the case
54:29
Speaker 1: of the Ellison's, like, here'd be my fear if I
54:31
Speaker 1: were Berry, if Wes Moore is the next president of
54:35
Speaker 1: the United States, do the Ellison's care about the news
54:39
Speaker 1: division anymore, right, you know, because Wes Moore isn't like
54:43
Speaker 1: on top of them, you know, helping them with other
54:47
Speaker 1: business deals. And in order to get those business deals,
54:49
Speaker 1: they've got to placate the president with certain things with
54:52
Speaker 1: the media business, with the new side of things, right,
54:55
Speaker 1: and that would be something which is does all of
54:58
Speaker 1: the you know, right now I'm getting what if I'm Barry,
55:01
Speaker 1: I'm getting some running room, I get to do a
55:02
Speaker 1: special on Saturday nights, and which is the lowest, you know,
55:06
Speaker 1: the lowest rated portion of network television, which is why
55:09
Speaker 1: a lot of times you will see town halls and
55:11
Speaker 1: special news presentations either on Friday evenings or Saturday evenings. Yes,
55:14
Speaker 1: because literally those are the two nights that they can't
55:17
Speaker 1: sell ads.
55:18
Speaker 2: For or counter program with a Charlie Brown special from
55:21
Speaker 2: twenty years.
55:21
Speaker 1: Ago, exactly exactly. So that would be my concern whether
55:26
Speaker 1: there is really an interest in allowing CBS to stay
55:31
Speaker 1: disruptive CBS News beyond sort of what feels like performance
55:37
Speaker 1: art for the man in the Oval office.
55:40
Speaker 2: So yeah, a couple points, did Barry and I've never
55:44
Speaker 2: talked to her about the Sulzburgers per se or ae.
55:48
Speaker 2: Did she defect? She defected from The New York Times.
55:50
Speaker 2: Was it a Salzburger thing? The way I analyze what happened.
55:53
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, that's my point, but you
55:55
Speaker 1: are the Salzburgers. Do care about that opinion page.
55:59
Speaker 2: I think at a time which was the height of
56:02
Speaker 2: the New York Times being sort of redefined away from
56:05
Speaker 2: the idea of objectivity, it had gotten out of control
56:09
Speaker 2: and out of the hands of a Salzburger. And you
56:14
Speaker 2: probably read I don't know how many out.
56:16
Speaker 1: Of the hands of Dean Bckay. I mean, who was trying.
56:19
Speaker 1: He couldn't manage his own You know, you had basically
56:22
Speaker 1: a revolt. I believe you let the And this to
56:25
Speaker 1: me has been something I've been obsessed with, which is
56:28
Speaker 1: be careful of the audience you build, because you may
56:32
Speaker 1: become captive of your audience subscribers.
56:35
Speaker 2: I think at a certain point Nicole Hannah Jones was
56:38
Speaker 2: more important in the New York Times than Dean Buckay.
56:41
Speaker 2: And she's done great work. But this is a bad situation.
56:46
Speaker 2: You know, these are we know from sports, when the
56:48
Speaker 2: star becomes more important than the coach who you defer to.
56:52
Speaker 2: My point with the Salzburgers is I see a lot
56:54
Speaker 2: of evidence that he specifically was uncomfortable with where his
56:59
Speaker 2: newspaper had gone, and he wrote a large piece in
57:02
Speaker 2: the Columbia Journalism Review, which is only going to be
57:05
Speaker 2: read by journalists, but it was a signal we are
57:07
Speaker 2: getting back to the idea of objectivity. He knew he
57:10
Speaker 2: couldn't use the word objectivity. It's a really interesting essay.
57:14
Speaker 2: He even said that word is so toxic among so
57:19
Speaker 2: many people in news, which I think is really interesting
57:22
Speaker 2: and alarming that I'm not even going to try to
57:25
Speaker 2: defend the word objectivity. We just believe in independence journalism.
57:29
Speaker 2: And then he goes on to define independent journalism as
57:32
Speaker 2: objectivity or something like objectivity. So that's point one. I
57:37
Speaker 2: think that where The New York Times is now is
57:40
Speaker 2: a place that is a bit more aligned with maybe
57:44
Speaker 2: Barrywise's worldview. The other thing I'd say about the Ellisons is,
57:48
Speaker 2: you're right if Wes Moore, if someone calm and soothing
57:52
Speaker 2: or at least just not don.
57:53
Speaker 1: Just sort of like less a little boring, Let's be honest, right,
57:57
Speaker 1: Andy Bisheer and I say this though, you know that
58:00
Speaker 1: sounds like a big criticizing. It may be that America
58:03
Speaker 1: wants boring come twenty twenty nine.
58:04
Speaker 2: So you're saying not Gavin Newsome, Like Gavin might be
58:07
Speaker 2: a lightning rod.
58:09
Speaker 1: I would, I would be surprised if we go from
58:11
Speaker 1: big personality the big personality. Yeah, I actually think you know,
58:15
Speaker 1: usually what we do as a country, if you think
58:19
Speaker 1: about it, when we elect a new president and we
58:21
Speaker 1: will be electing a new one in twenty eight, we
58:24
Speaker 1: usually elect somebody who has more of a character trait
58:28
Speaker 1: that the previous one is missing.
58:30
Speaker 2: Right after that week got Pope, a skinny pope. All
58:33
Speaker 2: that's sort of mindset, Like I go through it right. H. W.
58:36
Speaker 1: Bush was kind of detached. Bill Clinton was fiel your pain, right.
58:41
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was a bit of a party animal. George W.
58:44
Speaker 1: Bush was the reformed alcoholic that wasn't going to you know, stray.
58:49
Speaker 1: George Bush saw everything in black and white. Barack Obama
58:52
Speaker 1: was nothing but gray area nuanced, right, you know. So
58:55
Speaker 1: we do have this tendency, and so that's why I
58:58
Speaker 1: am I would. You know, this is not personal to
59:01
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom. I'm bearish on his chances to be the
59:04
Speaker 1: next president more out of character and temperament, sort of
59:09
Speaker 1: comparisons to Trump. Well, do we want another big personality
59:13
Speaker 1: that's constantly a where the world revolves around the personality
59:17
Speaker 1: rather than the country as a whole.
59:20
Speaker 2: Good analysis, as always, this is what we expect from you.
59:23
Speaker 2: But my point was was this, if people I know
59:27
Speaker 2: you don't think this, I assume you don't. If people
59:31
Speaker 2: took your analysis about if it's Wes Moore, do they
59:34
Speaker 2: become unengaged? It is not the case that, especially David Allison,
59:39
Speaker 2: who has more hands on control of the newsroom, is MAGA.
59:44
Speaker 1: Is even against MAGA.
59:46
Speaker 2: I'm not a Republican conservative. He gave one hundred million
59:51
Speaker 2: dollars to the Joe Biden Fund. So it is not
59:54
Speaker 2: if people hear that and say, oh, unless the unless
59:58
Speaker 2: CBS is allowed to run an ideological newsroom, he's going
1:00:02
Speaker 2: to become uninvolved. That's not the case, and that's not
1:00:05
Speaker 2: what you're saying. It's just if things calm down and
1:00:07
Speaker 2: politics aren't the way to get people's attention or for
1:00:11
Speaker 2: him to make money. Because a politician donald Trump will
1:00:15
Speaker 2: be so involved in our regulatory schemes, he might get
1:00:19
Speaker 2: less involved but it's not because that he's ideologically committed.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: No, I think it's more of that, And I've never
1:00:25
Speaker 1: thought I think, you know, I don't think Silicon Valley
1:00:27
Speaker 1: is ideologically aligned with Trump. I think they are just
1:00:31
Speaker 1: seeing it as the fastest way to get from A
1:00:34
Speaker 1: to B.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think many in Silicon Valley are, if not
1:00:39
Speaker 2: ideologically aligned with things like tariffs, were extremely upset with
1:00:44
Speaker 2: DEI and wokeism, and also thought that there were elements
1:00:48
Speaker 2: of the Biden regulatory scheme that were challenging what they
1:00:53
Speaker 2: were trying to do to improve society.
1:00:55
Speaker 1: And I'll give you a shorter version of that. Biden
1:00:59
Speaker 1: did allow the bureaucrats to play a role. Trump will
1:01:04
Speaker 1: allow you to shortcut in getting around regulatory issues.
1:01:09
Speaker 2: Yes, but of course it's just had not because of
1:01:11
Speaker 2: some well thought.
1:01:12
Speaker 1: Out planned No, it's transactions. And that's my point, right,
1:01:17
Speaker 1: is to go back to the original point. Will Barry
1:01:21
Speaker 1: have a budget in twenty nine? If the Ellisons decide, hey,
1:01:25
Speaker 1: they don't need to placate a president with the news
1:01:29
Speaker 1: division anymore, we'll spend our lobbying dollars another way, Essentially,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: it's sort of like it's almost as if the news
1:01:36
Speaker 1: division is part of your lobbying budget, right, And if
1:01:39
Speaker 1: you're Frankly, if you're Disney, if you're Comcast and your
1:01:46
Speaker 1: paramount skuidant, you kind of are operating that way.
1:01:50
Speaker 2: And the other thing to say is that this is
1:01:53
Speaker 2: all fascinating to us in some portion of your audience.
1:01:56
Speaker 2: But with the CBS news viewers, we're talking about five
1:01:59
Speaker 2: percent of them America.
1:02:00
Speaker 1: Well, and we're also talking about generationally only one demographic group.
1:02:04
Speaker 1: I mean, have you seen the average age of the
1:02:07
Speaker 1: cable newsviewer.
1:02:08
Speaker 2: It's not seventy They died three years ago. And the
1:02:13
Speaker 2: other thing with CBS, well, they have these amazing properties,
1:02:16
Speaker 2: these legacy properties. Sixty minutes. I love sixty minutes, but
1:02:21
Speaker 2: I'm not convinced that sixty minutes. The reason that they're
1:02:26
Speaker 2: so popular is because of who they are and their
1:02:29
Speaker 2: attention to detail and their story selection. But I think
1:02:32
Speaker 2: it all comes down to there after football of it
1:02:36
Speaker 2: comes down, By the way, do you know what they
1:02:38
Speaker 2: never do? They never They never saved their best stuff
1:02:41
Speaker 2: for the spring.
1:02:42
Speaker 1: No, okay, which, by the way, you know, it's like,
1:02:46
Speaker 1: why do you what do they ask? Is it? Is
1:02:48
Speaker 1: it the Bonnie and Clyde. Why do you rob banks?
1:02:52
Speaker 1: That's where the money is. It's like, you know, why
1:02:54
Speaker 1: do you why do you save your stories for the
1:02:57
Speaker 1: faults where the audience is right. It's where it's right
1:02:59
Speaker 1: after ball, So of course you do. Yeah, but i'd
1:03:04
Speaker 1: look at do I think. I will say this about
1:03:06
Speaker 1: CBS if you think about it, they have between Sunday
1:03:12
Speaker 1: Morning and sixty minutes, they have two of the more
1:03:15
Speaker 1: interesting brands that have a chance to survive even if
1:03:19
Speaker 1: the network doesn't.
1:03:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, distinct brands, brands that mean something. And not only
1:03:25
Speaker 2: will people be sad that they go, but if you
1:03:29
Speaker 2: took them and put them somewhere else, it's very clear.
1:03:31
Speaker 2: Their DNA is so unique that you could have a
1:03:35
Speaker 2: turnkey operation.
1:03:36
Speaker 1: We know, I think sixty minutes, I think, and so
1:03:39
Speaker 1: I have this, We're about to see. The next big
1:03:42
Speaker 1: shake up in the way people consume information is going
1:03:45
Speaker 1: to come at the local TV affiliate level, right where
1:03:47
Speaker 1: you have the So we have this mega merger coming
1:03:50
Speaker 1: up between Tegna and Next Star, and what that is
1:03:55
Speaker 1: going to create is a lot of overlap in a
1:03:56
Speaker 1: lot of their markets, and you're going to have these
1:03:58
Speaker 1: duopolies that are going to start popping up, and you
1:04:01
Speaker 1: already see him. My hometown of Miami is now the
1:04:03
Speaker 1: largest market in the country with the duopoly. The person
1:04:06
Speaker 1: that owns the you Know channel, the Fox affiliate, also
1:04:09
Speaker 1: owns now the ABC affiliate. But he's only gonna have
1:04:12
Speaker 1: one news division, right, and there isn't going to be
1:04:15
Speaker 1: local news for the ABC affiliate. It really is just
1:04:18
Speaker 1: sort of a digital channel that will just you know,
1:04:21
Speaker 1: provide the ABC programming, which for most people in South
1:04:24
Speaker 1: Florida is football. But what you're going to have is
1:04:28
Speaker 1: I actually think we're about three or four years away
1:04:31
Speaker 1: from what I call ala carte, where everything becomes a
1:04:34
Speaker 1: la carte, where you might have a local affiliate say
1:04:37
Speaker 1: you know what we want. We want Savannah Guthrie in
1:04:40
Speaker 1: the morning. We want I want the Tony diacoppole in
1:04:47
Speaker 1: the evening. I want Meet the Press on Sunday, but
1:04:51
Speaker 1: I want CBS Sunday Morning. Right, It's good. I have
1:04:55
Speaker 1: a feeling we're going in the same way we're watching
1:04:57
Speaker 1: this with with people in our space here in the
1:04:59
Speaker 1: end dependance space starting to license their content on a
1:05:03
Speaker 1: Pluto or on a Netflix or on Amazon. I think
1:05:06
Speaker 1: we're about to see the same thing explode in the
1:05:08
Speaker 1: local TV Atfilly Market, which means we're going to find out,
1:05:12
Speaker 1: you know, how big of a brand is Good Morning
1:05:14
Speaker 1: of America, Good Morning America? How big a brand? I
1:05:16
Speaker 1: think Today's show's pretty big. You know what about the
1:05:19
Speaker 1: Sunday morning programming right where the brands will matter more
1:05:23
Speaker 1: than the network itself that they appear.
1:05:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the reason is this is how the consumer,
1:05:28
Speaker 2: the under seventy three average age consumer, programs their own
1:05:32
Speaker 2: news already. They you know, my kids don't know what
1:05:35
Speaker 2: a network is or what a channel is.
1:05:38
Speaker 1: The channel numbers meaningless to my kids. I have an
1:05:40
Speaker 1: eighteen year old and a twenty one year old. They
1:05:42
Speaker 1: don't know the numbers any They know.
1:05:44
Speaker 2: News for that's it. Yeah, I just I get PV
1:05:47
Speaker 2: and there aren't numbers assigned, So news for is just
1:05:51
Speaker 2: I mean, they could have called themselves news Purple. It doesn't. Yeah.
1:05:56
Speaker 2: So yeah, it is all changing. And we haven't even
1:05:59
Speaker 2: talked out print. We haven't even talked about what we
1:06:03
Speaker 2: really need, which is investigative journalism and journalism with a
1:06:09
Speaker 2: lot of teeth, and journalism that can stand up to pressure.
1:06:12
Speaker 2: And I think that their pro publica does a great job.
1:06:15
Speaker 2: Some of the nonprofits want to do a good job,
1:06:18
Speaker 2: but I think and I think there is a certain
1:06:20
Speaker 2: amount of appetite for it. But what the great newspapers,
1:06:24
Speaker 2: especially newspapers, used to be able to do was fund
1:06:27
Speaker 2: these efforts from their advertising, from their car advertising, from
1:06:31
Speaker 2: especially their want ads and their classifieds. And that's all done.
1:06:36
Speaker 2: So not only do you have these, you know, all
1:06:38
Speaker 2: these city councils not being covered. You just don't have
1:06:42
Speaker 2: the great investigation that the Indianapolis Star or the Kansas
1:06:45
Speaker 2: City Star or the Sacramento Bee was going to do
1:06:47
Speaker 2: as a matter of course, because that's what you did.
1:06:50
Speaker 2: And we don't even know what the price of having
1:06:52
Speaker 2: all that lost is. And maybe it's just local and
1:06:54
Speaker 2: maybe it doesn't get above the you know, land commissioner
1:06:58
Speaker 2: for Albuquerque, but it's a big loss.
1:07:02
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1:08:24
Speaker 1: I guess I'm like, A, I'm optimistic because B I
1:08:27
Speaker 1: want to try to build something that scales that because
1:08:29
Speaker 1: I think that's a gap in the market. I completely agree.
1:08:32
Speaker 1: And you know, what I worry about is that some
1:08:36
Speaker 1: journalism can be done independently in solo. You and I
1:08:39
Speaker 1: are proven this, But there are some things I could
1:08:42
Speaker 1: I would love to do, but I need more resources.
1:08:44
Speaker 1: I need literally more physical human beings. I don't care
1:08:47
Speaker 1: how many Geminis or chat Gypts you're going to give me.
1:08:50
Speaker 1: They all can't walk the street, right, They can't do
1:08:53
Speaker 1: the door knocking that you sometimes need in an investigative journalism.
1:08:57
Speaker 1: And I think that this this is what you know,
1:09:01
Speaker 1: My hope is that we'll start to see new consortiums,
1:09:06
Speaker 1: you know, after the sort of you know, if you
1:09:08
Speaker 1: look at the history of UPI, which was a wire
1:09:11
Speaker 1: service before the AP existed, and AP was a different
1:09:13
Speaker 1: type of wire service they really were. They started off
1:09:16
Speaker 1: as attempts to try to allow local news organizations to
1:09:21
Speaker 1: share resources and share material. It was in some ways, hey,
1:09:25
Speaker 1: oh that might be of use to our readers too.
1:09:27
Speaker 1: You know, we can trade off and if you figure
1:09:30
Speaker 1: out how to ban these folks together that maybe they
1:09:32
Speaker 1: can start working together on collaborative investigative pieces. Right. Pro
1:09:36
Speaker 1: Publica does this a little bit, Well, they'll team up
1:09:38
Speaker 1: with a with a news organization. Notice is doing this
1:09:42
Speaker 1: with some small independent locals. They're being the Washington Bureau.
1:09:46
Speaker 2: I do you like what that?
1:09:47
Speaker 1: I do too? Oh my gosh, I just had two
1:09:50
Speaker 1: of their founders on, two of their young folks on,
1:09:53
Speaker 1: because for me, Mike Notice is suddenly the only news
1:09:58
Speaker 1: organization based in Washington, d C. That covers Washington, d C.
1:10:02
Speaker 1: The Washington Post might as well be called the Post.
1:10:06
Speaker 1: They have decided to no longer as in former former
1:10:09
Speaker 1: right they knew longer need to be. They have gotten
1:10:12
Speaker 1: rid of everything that made them Washington right, even the
1:10:16
Speaker 1: food critic there, you know, their their sports page has
1:10:20
Speaker 1: never been smaller and less impactful, and that was so vital.
1:10:24
Speaker 2: The Post and the Boston Globe, just the two great
1:10:28
Speaker 2: regional sports pages, launched so many stars. And now they
1:10:33
Speaker 2: just and even before that the style section, which was
1:10:35
Speaker 2: such a great section and oh no it wasn't about styles. Yeah.
1:10:39
Speaker 1: It really frustrates me because it feels as if Bezos said,
1:10:42
Speaker 1: I want to be the Wall Street Journal And you're like, well,
1:10:45
Speaker 1: we already have one, and they're better at it than you.
1:10:47
Speaker 2: Guys, I think you said I want to be Reason magazine.
1:10:50
Speaker 2: I mean, he's stole their.
1:10:51
Speaker 1: Entire Can I can I get I have one? You know,
1:10:54
Speaker 1: we were talking about different editorial pages. Here's something I
1:10:57
Speaker 1: wish Jeff Bezos had thought of, and I wish mister
1:11:01
Speaker 1: Salzburger would think of. Why does an editor? Why do
1:11:04
Speaker 1: you have to have one? Who set the rule to
1:11:07
Speaker 1: say you only are allowed to have one? Why not?
1:11:10
Speaker 1: You know, Look, we live in a world where partisanship
1:11:13
Speaker 1: is in stereo. Do I wish we didn't? Maybe I'd
1:11:17
Speaker 1: wish we didn't, But you know what, two hundred of
1:11:18
Speaker 1: our two hundred and fifty years we have lived this way.
1:11:20
Speaker 1: Our media has been partisan much longer than it has
1:11:24
Speaker 1: been nonpartisan. Okay, we had a brief window between World
1:11:27
Speaker 1: War two and nine to eleven where we had basically
1:11:31
Speaker 1: a media that attempted to not affiliate with a party.
1:11:36
Speaker 1: But before that and frankly after, it's actually been par
1:11:40
Speaker 1: for the course that media sort of identified with a movement.
1:11:45
Speaker 2: This is why the papers are called the Rochester Democrat,
1:11:48
Speaker 2: This free right.
1:11:48
Speaker 1: I try. It's sort of one of these things that
1:11:50
Speaker 1: I tell journalism schools all the time. Hey, guys, this
1:11:53
Speaker 1: is not new right. The Waterbury Republican, the Arkansas Democrat
1:11:56
Speaker 1: is at the Tayle Assi Democrat. You brought up Rochester
1:11:59
Speaker 1: is another one. What's wrong with having two editorial pages?
1:12:03
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it been great? Wouldn't it be great if the
1:12:05
Speaker 1: New York Times had, you know, basically had a conservative
1:12:10
Speaker 1: editorial essentially section and a liberal editorial section and frankly
1:12:19
Speaker 1: allowed them to be side by side.
1:12:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:12:23
Speaker 1: Back in the nineties, the Atlanta Journal Constitution when they
1:12:26
Speaker 1: had to do their joint operating agreement on Sundays, printed
1:12:30
Speaker 1: one news newspaper and their editorial page on the left
1:12:35
Speaker 1: was the Atlanta Constitution and on the right was the
1:12:37
Speaker 1: Atlanta Journal.
1:12:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I lived in Atlanta then and it the greatest.
1:12:41
Speaker 2: Tell you it covered Dixie like to do. But how
1:12:45
Speaker 2: great is that? Like?
1:12:46
Speaker 1: Why is that? Why is that not?
1:12:48
Speaker 2: Like?
1:12:49
Speaker 1: That's the world I lived in. My father was a
1:12:51
Speaker 1: conservative who always wanted to know what the liberals were saying,
1:12:54
Speaker 1: so he subscribed to National Review and New Republic all right.
1:12:58
Speaker 1: He thought the nation was too far of the left,
1:13:00
Speaker 1: but he was in the New Republic. It was like,
1:13:01
Speaker 1: that's aw Gores. It was like I remember him saying, yeah,
1:13:04
Speaker 1: the guy is a big algore guy. And you know,
1:13:06
Speaker 1: you know back in the day Marty parts and you had.
1:13:09
Speaker 1: But the point was he wanted both sides of an argument.
1:13:13
Speaker 1: He wanted to hear both sides of the argument. I
1:13:15
Speaker 1: don't know why newspapers decided they only should have one voice.
1:13:19
Speaker 2: That's how I was raised. My dad was a social
1:13:22
Speaker 2: studies teacher, the consummate social studies teacher. When I got
1:13:25
Speaker 2: into news, he said, let me subscribe you to I
1:13:28
Speaker 2: swear the two magazines that I got from the age
1:13:30
Speaker 2: of twelve to eighteen, where the National Review in the
1:13:33
Speaker 2: New Republic. I mean, those were trailblazing magazines then, and
1:13:37
Speaker 2: I learned the latter from them. I think one of
1:13:39
Speaker 2: the reasons it doesn't work is that what you just said,
1:13:42
Speaker 2: audience capture, and that the audience you and I want that.
1:13:46
Speaker 2: And if you poll people, they would say they want that, but.
1:13:48
Speaker 1: I say they want it, yeah, but they don't.
1:13:50
Speaker 2: I think I feel dedicated news consumers are they Some
1:13:54
Speaker 2: are news consumers, many are ideology consumers. Many are tell
1:13:59
Speaker 2: me the world, give me reflection of the world as
1:14:01
Speaker 2: I see it, consumers, And I don't know this is
1:14:04
Speaker 2: overly harsh a criticism, But what if The New York
1:14:07
Speaker 2: Times did a liberal or conservative editorial page. I'm sure
1:14:11
Speaker 2: someone listening to this would say they tried it. And
1:14:13
Speaker 2: then James Bennett got fired based on publishing the Tom
1:14:17
Speaker 2: Cotton op ed. I think that, yeah, that's an ideal.
1:14:22
Speaker 2: I don't know that we'll ever regain that time.
1:14:25
Speaker 1: No or not. But the reason I'm disappointed in Bezos
1:14:28
Speaker 1: in this is that if he had actually applied the
1:14:32
Speaker 1: lessons he learned from building Amazon the Everything Store, imagine
1:14:36
Speaker 1: imagine if he behaved as if I want to build
1:14:39
Speaker 1: the Everything information store.
1:14:41
Speaker 2: Yes, but he wants to maximize profit with Amazon, and
1:14:45
Speaker 2: the post is a different consideration.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: Well, he bought a trophy. I thought he wanted to
1:14:50
Speaker 1: help the business, and it turns out he just wanted
1:14:52
Speaker 1: a trophy. And then suddenly it wasn't cool to own
1:14:55
Speaker 1: the trophy, and he was like, oh shit, I either
1:14:57
Speaker 1: think he's here to the trophy or do I now
1:15:00
Speaker 1: just use it for my own benefit.
1:15:02
Speaker 2: And that's why he's using it as he uses his
1:15:05
Speaker 2: contract to do a biopic of Milania Trump. He uses
1:15:09
Speaker 2: it for lobbying. Although when he bought the trophy, I remember,
1:15:12
Speaker 2: I think it was a two hundred and fifty million
1:15:14
Speaker 2: dollar purchase. Was that the price? I remember the Jacksonville
1:15:17
Speaker 2: Jaguars went for I think three seventy five, and I
1:15:20
Speaker 2: remember thinking, what are we doing with society that the
1:15:24
Speaker 2: Jaguars are worth only one hundred and twenty five million more? Now,
1:15:29
Speaker 2: the Jaguars, like every NFL franchise, is probably worth a
1:15:32
Speaker 2: billion in the post, could be sold for parts. I
1:15:36
Speaker 2: keep Meghan.
1:15:37
Speaker 1: I remember there's only thirty two trophies available in the NFL, right,
1:15:43
Speaker 1: even the least valuable trophies, probably a five billion dollar
1:15:46
Speaker 1: trophy now.
1:15:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, five billion. Yeah.
1:15:49
Speaker 1: So let's talk about AI, because you know, I bet
1:15:55
Speaker 1: I can vacillate. I am. I am a long term
1:15:57
Speaker 1: AI optimist, meaning I'm betting on human beings that we're
1:16:02
Speaker 1: not We're a species that has survived quite a bit
1:16:05
Speaker 1: over a million years and we're not going to let
1:16:07
Speaker 1: robots replace us. So I am, but I am mindful
1:16:11
Speaker 1: that the transition is going to be quite painful, and
1:16:15
Speaker 1: I do think that increasingly. The next three years are
1:16:19
Speaker 1: going to be about fear of AI displacement, even though
1:16:22
Speaker 1: again I think, you know, we'll, we'll probably. My guess
1:16:26
Speaker 1: is the fear is a little too soon. Like anything,
1:16:28
Speaker 1: it's probably coming sooner than we should actually be fearing it.
1:16:33
Speaker 1: But that's how I try to comfort myself and how
1:16:36
Speaker 1: I remain optimistic in the long run about AI, even
1:16:38
Speaker 1: though this is going to be extraordinarily disruptive in the moment.
1:16:42
Speaker 1: Where's your head on this?
1:16:44
Speaker 2: There was just a pull out that showed a huge
1:16:47
Speaker 2: decline in optimism or even excitement about AI. They expect,
1:16:52
Speaker 2: I mean, the vast majority of people expect AI to
1:16:55
Speaker 2: harm human abilities by twenty thirty five.
1:16:59
Speaker 1: Do you blame them thinking that? By the way, no,
1:17:02
Speaker 1: given what social media, given what the tech companies did
1:17:05
Speaker 1: to us with social media.
1:17:06
Speaker 2: Right people. And also science fiction and our storytelling plays
1:17:12
Speaker 2: a role, and so there's I'd say the ratio of
1:17:16
Speaker 2: dystopian to utopian science fiction is something like one hundred
1:17:19
Speaker 2: to one. It's more easy to tell stories about destruction,
1:17:22
Speaker 2: although Star Trek is utopian science fiction. So you know,
1:17:25
Speaker 2: our mind goes to threats. The reason that we are
1:17:28
Speaker 2: here as the people who've evolved over a million years
1:17:31
Speaker 2: is because we understand threats, right. We evolve from the
1:17:34
Speaker 2: people who were best position to understand the threats and
1:17:38
Speaker 2: flee the sabertooth tiger, whereas our would be ancestors who
1:17:42
Speaker 2: were like, no big deal, they got eaten. They didn't
1:17:44
Speaker 2: get to reproduce that. All that said, there are three
1:17:47
Speaker 2: camps with AI. The accelerationists who say, bring it on,
1:17:51
Speaker 2: it's going to change humanity. A lot of them have
1:17:54
Speaker 2: money involved, right. The doomers, who some prominent people who
1:17:59
Speaker 2: could have made a lot of money with AI, give
1:18:01
Speaker 2: it a twenty percent chance of killing us all one day.
1:18:05
Speaker 2: There are a couple prominent people give it a ninety
1:18:07
Speaker 2: eight percent chance. Then in between, and this is a
1:18:09
Speaker 2: phrase invented by my friend Andy Mills, who just made
1:18:12
Speaker 2: a good podcast, great podcast about this called the Last
1:18:15
Speaker 2: Invention the Scouts. And this is where I am, which
1:18:18
Speaker 2: is pay attention, don't be afraid, be very afraid, but
1:18:23
Speaker 2: understand the transformative power of this. When Sam Aaltman testified,
1:18:28
Speaker 2: maybe you remember in twenty twenty three, he was greeted,
1:18:32
Speaker 2: he shocked the Senate Commerce Committee because he said, yes,
1:18:36
Speaker 2: please regulate me and this was a message that they
1:18:39
Speaker 2: wanted to hear. That was a message I wanted to hear.
1:18:42
Speaker 2: It was refreshing and unusual for a captain of industry
1:18:46
Speaker 2: to ask for regulation. Cut to two years later, the
1:18:50
Speaker 2: big concern is China, and he said, well, I don't
1:18:53
Speaker 2: know about all this regulation. We've got to beat China.
1:18:56
Speaker 2: So what changed? Was it just China? Was it Samman?
1:19:00
Speaker 2: In both cases trying to play cat or meet Congress
1:19:03
Speaker 2: where it was. I'm definitely not a doomer. I think
1:19:07
Speaker 2: it can be totally transformative, especially when it reaches what's
1:19:12
Speaker 2: called artificial general intelligence. This is the computers teaching themselves
1:19:17
Speaker 2: and accelerating and accelerating. But man, do we need more
1:19:22
Speaker 2: visibility into how it works? And I'll add this, they
1:19:24
Speaker 2: don't even know how it works. The people who program AI,
1:19:27
Speaker 2: who invented AI will tell you, Ye, it's kind of
1:19:31
Speaker 2: a black box and we can't exactly pick it apart
1:19:36
Speaker 2: and tell you why it did that, not just beforehand,
1:19:38
Speaker 2: but even afterwards. And that is legitimately.
1:19:42
Speaker 1: Scary, No, it is, especially when we realize that also
1:19:45
Speaker 1: we're I mean, we've not had the correct generation matched
1:19:50
Speaker 1: with the technological regulatory demands that we've had. Right when
1:19:57
Speaker 1: the Internet first came along, we had a whole bunch
1:19:59
Speaker 1: of people that were very analogue right by the time
1:20:02
Speaker 1: social media.
1:20:03
Speaker 2: Came at, saying the Internet was a system of tubes.
1:20:05
Speaker 1: Right, and then you go to you know, as we
1:20:08
Speaker 1: go to social media, you have people that are still
1:20:10
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to use email with their
1:20:13
Speaker 1: Aol dot com. You know, they're still figuring out text.
1:20:16
Speaker 1: By the time we've got an AI, you have people
1:20:18
Speaker 1: that are still just now getting comfortable with the iPhone premise. Right.
1:20:24
Speaker 1: So that's that's what's scary, is that the people we
1:20:29
Speaker 1: elect to be the watchers may not are probably not
1:20:32
Speaker 1: qualified to know what to watch for. Yeah, even if
1:20:35
Speaker 1: adds to the concern.
1:20:37
Speaker 2: Right, and even if they were, I mean, some of
1:20:38
Speaker 2: these people have backgrounds in the extractive industries. They don't
1:20:42
Speaker 2: seem too keen on regulating them. There is a Congress
1:20:46
Speaker 2: doesn't seem keen on being Congress. You know, even Nancy
1:20:49
Speaker 2: Mace is writing op ads what is Congress for? They've
1:20:52
Speaker 2: willingly abdicated their regulative responsibilities. One of the things though,
1:20:57
Speaker 2: that gives me pause. I have great hope for it,
1:21:00
Speaker 2: and I always think even with the Internet, I'm more
1:21:03
Speaker 2: in favor of it than opposed. I owe my life
1:21:06
Speaker 2: to the idea of podcasting. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't
1:21:09
Speaker 2: be able to get my voice outside wherever a radio
1:21:12
Speaker 2: tower would take me. Maybe satellites would exist. But I
1:21:15
Speaker 2: look at the history of big innovations, and there's always
1:21:19
Speaker 2: the doomer. There's always the person who's an expert, who
1:21:23
Speaker 2: gets a lot of attention, because, like I said, our
1:21:26
Speaker 2: minds go towards, well, what's the worst thing that can happen.
1:21:29
Speaker 2: And at one point it was this guy named King
1:21:32
Speaker 2: Hubbert who predicted peak oil. And he was an expert.
1:21:35
Speaker 2: He worked for Shell. He had many people with their
1:21:38
Speaker 2: colorful charts written in you know, nineteen nineties fonts, We're
1:21:43
Speaker 2: gonna run out of oil. That was a big concern.
1:21:45
Speaker 2: I think cuts it Today. A lot of environmentalists would say,
1:21:48
Speaker 2: thank god, we're going to run out of oil. But
1:21:50
Speaker 2: we're not going to run out of oil. Shell gets invented,
1:21:52
Speaker 2: fracking gets invented. Paul Erlik, who is the most frequent
1:21:56
Speaker 2: guest on Johnny Carson, wrote the population bomb. It seems lausible,
1:22:00
Speaker 2: we're going to outstrip our means of production. So throughout history,
1:22:04
Speaker 2: Greta Tuneberg, throughout history, there have always been these doomers.
1:22:08
Speaker 2: It's a long tradition of dumers. I'm not even talking about,
1:22:11
Speaker 2: you know, the people who said that the hell Bop
1:22:14
Speaker 2: commet was going to So.
1:22:15
Speaker 1: I guess Jeffrey Hinton would be the AI doomer in
1:22:17
Speaker 1: this case, right, isn't he the inventor who says, be weary?
1:22:20
Speaker 2: Right if there s a twenty percent chance? But there
1:22:23
Speaker 2: are for every hint in there is one hundred people.
1:22:26
Speaker 2: Many of them have their fortunes tied to AI. But
1:22:28
Speaker 2: I'll tell you something else I learned from Andy series,
1:22:31
Speaker 2: The Last Invention. Many of the people working in the
1:22:34
Speaker 2: companies are not doomers, but they're really worried, and they
1:22:37
Speaker 2: say to themselves. Maybe they don't say I'm a genius,
1:22:41
Speaker 2: they're geniuses. They're good at this, and they're involved in
1:22:45
Speaker 2: the work with the knowledge that if it goes wrong,
1:22:49
Speaker 2: it could go very very wrong in a way that
1:22:51
Speaker 2: goes way beyond, you know, replacing menial labor and not
1:22:56
Speaker 2: having some substitute for that, it could I'm not saying
1:22:59
Speaker 2: death of yourn, but maybe they are. So there are
1:23:01
Speaker 2: a lot of people within the industry who don't want
1:23:04
Speaker 2: the industry just to go off the rails. I don't know,
1:23:07
Speaker 2: Maybe you can make an analogy. I don't know the
1:23:11
Speaker 2: people who work in bioweapons research. I would assume a
1:23:14
Speaker 2: lot of them think the same thing, and every once
1:23:17
Speaker 2: in a while bad stuff happens there too.
1:23:20
Speaker 1: There's one phenomenon that I'm fascinated by that is taking
1:23:25
Speaker 1: place sort of simultaneously as we're having this sort of
1:23:28
Speaker 1: race towards AI, and that is it is the one
1:23:31
Speaker 1: issue that unites left and right, which is should we
1:23:34
Speaker 1: get this technology out of the schools?
1:23:36
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:23:37
Speaker 1: I had a woman on from an organization that she
1:23:40
Speaker 1: founded called Mama Mothers Against Media Addiction, And it's not
1:23:45
Speaker 1: just about, you know, getting rid of phones and classrooms.
1:23:48
Speaker 1: It's also about should we stop hanging out iPads and
1:23:51
Speaker 1: laptops in schools? Right?
1:23:54
Speaker 2: Like?
1:23:54
Speaker 1: Do we?
1:23:55
Speaker 2: You know?
1:23:56
Speaker 1: And boy, I'm pretty torn on this, yes, because on
1:24:02
Speaker 1: the one hand, I think we should evolve with technology.
1:24:06
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I understand the concerns and fears,
1:24:08
Speaker 1: and there's no doubt there's plenty of study on screen
1:24:11
Speaker 1: time and what that's done. But does fear of screen
1:24:15
Speaker 1: time in the social media aspect, mean you should toss
1:24:19
Speaker 1: away all technology you know in the classroom, and that's
1:24:23
Speaker 1: where that's where I get concerned. But what I find
1:24:27
Speaker 1: fascinating is that we have a collective fear of what
1:24:30
Speaker 1: our kids, of how our kids learn, and we're actually
1:24:33
Speaker 1: it seems like it's the one place where we think
1:24:35
Speaker 1: we can try and do something about it where there's
1:24:38
Speaker 1: almost like the least amount of political combat over too.
1:24:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would remember, I remember the big issue
1:24:49
Speaker 2: was the digital divide, the fear that not enough people
1:24:52
Speaker 2: would have technology.
1:24:53
Speaker 1: And now we're going the other way. We're like, no, no, no,
1:24:55
Speaker 1: we don't want it in the classroom. It's terrible.
1:24:57
Speaker 2: So where I come down is just because there is
1:25:00
Speaker 2: junk food doesn't mean there shouldn't be culinary schools. Just
1:25:04
Speaker 2: because there are bad Just because there is pornography doesn't
1:25:09
Speaker 2: mean we shouldn't teach art or figure drawing in school
1:25:12
Speaker 2: or even knew drawing on the college level. So I
1:25:15
Speaker 2: definitely think that this is where the world is today.
1:25:19
Speaker 2: You have to there's always been panics about technology. I
1:25:22
Speaker 2: don't know if this is a panic. There are legitimate concerns,
1:25:26
Speaker 2: right the corruption of the Innocent was congressional hearings about
1:25:30
Speaker 2: comic books.
1:25:31
Speaker 1: I do think that video games or Tipper Gore in
1:25:35
Speaker 1: the music industry, I'm an have to remember when Twisted
1:25:38
Speaker 1: Sister with something that our parents thought was warping the
1:25:43
Speaker 1: minds of people like myself.
1:25:45
Speaker 2: Sure Dee Snyder testifying on Capitol Hill in his Twisted
1:25:50
Speaker 2: Sister Regelia did not wear a suit.
1:25:52
Speaker 1: Yeah we did.
1:25:53
Speaker 2: I also remember Blackie Lawless from a group called WASP,
1:25:56
Speaker 2: and I can't even quote on a podcast what his
1:25:59
Speaker 2: big songs were. But yes, so this is a perennial.
1:26:02
Speaker 2: These are the tools that we use. I think a
1:26:06
Speaker 2: flat out ban would not serve our children well, especially
1:26:10
Speaker 2: as we compete against China in Singapore. But you know,
1:26:13
Speaker 2: we saw another version of this where the answer is
1:26:17
Speaker 2: never just take off the guard rails and trust in technology.
1:26:21
Speaker 2: With the legalization of sports gambling, it has been a disaster.
1:26:35
Speaker 1: You went to the place I wanted to go because
1:26:37
Speaker 1: I want to go to prediction markets here And what
1:26:39
Speaker 1: CNN and call She are doing, which I think is
1:26:42
Speaker 1: I say this. I love gambling, Mike, I love football gambling.
1:26:48
Speaker 1: I have also my own biases about what you should
1:26:51
Speaker 1: be allowed to gamble on and what you're not allowed
1:26:53
Speaker 1: to gamble on. For instance, I don't gamble on player props.
1:26:58
Speaker 1: You know why because I don't feel like it's an
1:27:02
Speaker 1: honest market because at the end of the day, you're
1:27:06
Speaker 1: relying on one person versus a team sport. Like I
1:27:09
Speaker 1: don't like to bet on individual sports. I don't bet
1:27:11
Speaker 1: on tennis. I don't bet on golf because again, one person.
1:27:16
Speaker 1: You know, it's it is known that tennis players just
1:27:21
Speaker 1: take an acceptance, you know, take an appearance fee and bail. Right,
1:27:24
Speaker 1: That is just sort of how it works. And it's
1:27:26
Speaker 1: like it's like betting on the NBA what players are
1:27:29
Speaker 1: sitting out. You know, that's no You know, I enjoy
1:27:33
Speaker 1: betting on a team sport when I know there's maximum
1:27:35
Speaker 1: effort and I know that it's really going to be
1:27:37
Speaker 1: about somewhat of a game of chance but also a
1:27:40
Speaker 1: game of strategy. But you're right, keep going, it's interesting,
1:27:46
Speaker 1: Bourn you out.
1:27:47
Speaker 2: I mean, look at the NBA gambling scandal, Look at
1:27:50
Speaker 2: the baseball gambling scandal.
1:27:53
Speaker 1: Where why is this offered? Why are you allowed to
1:27:56
Speaker 1: bet on the first pitch?
1:27:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, an e manual class, say can throw the ball
1:28:01
Speaker 2: directly into the dirt and think he's going to get
1:28:03
Speaker 2: away from with something.
1:28:04
Speaker 1: And think about this, right, these guys, some of them,
1:28:06
Speaker 1: Let's say you come from a community that didn't have
1:28:09
Speaker 1: a lot of money. You don't have enough to throw
1:28:12
Speaker 1: money around to them, but you want to throw them
1:28:14
Speaker 1: a bone, all right. You know, I see how these
1:28:18
Speaker 1: individual players rationalize it. I'm just trying to help on
1:28:20
Speaker 1: my pials. I want to help them make a couple
1:28:23
Speaker 1: of bucks. This is something I can do for them,
1:28:25
Speaker 1: No harm, no foul, Right, that's I really think that's
1:28:28
Speaker 1: the rationalization.
1:28:29
Speaker 2: And yeah, the idea was that the gigantic salaries played
1:28:33
Speaker 2: to paid to these players would protect or indemnify them
1:28:38
Speaker 2: from ever being tempted. However, at the same time people
1:28:41
Speaker 2: were making these arguments and believing it, they weren't just
1:28:43
Speaker 2: self motivating. Yeah, we also know about the gigantic rates
1:28:47
Speaker 2: of bankruptcy among professional athletes. They don't always take care
1:28:51
Speaker 2: of their money so well, so you have guys like
1:28:53
Speaker 2: Johntay Porter in the NBA who apparently owed a lot
1:28:56
Speaker 2: of money to a lot of people, and so all
1:28:59
Speaker 2: he has to do is claim an injury, take himself
1:29:02
Speaker 2: out of a game, and then everyone who bet the unders,
1:29:05
Speaker 2: which for the audience, I'm sure you know, it's if
1:29:07
Speaker 2: you think he's going to get less than four rebounds
1:29:09
Speaker 2: or less than three assists or whatever the statistic is.
1:29:12
Speaker 2: If you fake an injury, you're definitely going to get
1:29:15
Speaker 2: less than that. He has been thrown out of basketball.
1:29:18
Speaker 2: Terry Rogier is another one who's on the hook. There's
1:29:21
Speaker 2: the separate gambling scandal with this is so fascinating. The
1:29:24
Speaker 2: mafia and and some coaches and poka gigs that can
1:29:30
Speaker 2: be read with essentially X ray vision. But yeah, the
1:29:33
Speaker 2: prop bets, now, I think that the form of let's
1:29:38
Speaker 2: just get rid of these silly little prop bets that
1:29:40
Speaker 2: we're not making that much money on that is that's
1:29:44
Speaker 2: the deminimus that they have to do. The real problem
1:29:48
Speaker 2: with sports gambling or gambling on the phones isn't even
1:29:51
Speaker 2: sports gambling or gambling on games where a lot of
1:29:55
Speaker 2: millionaires have a stake. There are you can still gamble
1:30:00
Speaker 2: college games where even though kids are paid the nil money,
1:30:03
Speaker 2: it's not that much. And there are a lot of
1:30:06
Speaker 2: very very low level Division one games that were clearly
1:30:10
Speaker 2: thrown a couple of years ago, and some enforcement though
1:30:13
Speaker 2: not criminals been brought against players on I think Mississippi
1:30:17
Speaker 2: Valley State and some other schools. The huge problem there's
1:30:20
Speaker 2: been a lot of good reporting on this is the
1:30:23
Speaker 2: online casinos on phones and this is we maybe you
1:30:27
Speaker 2: and I focus on sports gambling. This is just sad
1:30:31
Speaker 2: and should never been allowed. And you have home Healthcare
1:30:34
Speaker 2: AIDS losing fifteen thousand dollars because they're constantly betting slot machines.
1:30:39
Speaker 2: And if you look at the amount of revenue that
1:30:43
Speaker 2: the states have taken in sports, some of them didn't
1:30:46
Speaker 2: make good deals with the sports companies. And by the way,
1:30:49
Speaker 2: a lot of these sites maybe not Fan Duel and DraftKings,
1:30:52
Speaker 2: but a lot of these other sites are not making
1:30:55
Speaker 2: anywhere near the money. And they thought they would on
1:30:57
Speaker 2: sports gambling. But if you look at the casino gambling,
1:31:00
Speaker 2: it's just a roundabout means of addiction. Now on Calshi,
1:31:05
Speaker 2: we thought we were talking about the prop bets. What
1:31:07
Speaker 2: about this prop bet? I have my calshilp app open.
1:31:10
Speaker 2: I don't know if you can see it. Who will
1:31:12
Speaker 2: be the first member of Trump's cabinet to leave? Now?
1:31:17
Speaker 2: My update is since that Vanity Fair piece came out,
1:31:22
Speaker 2: rocket Yeah, but.
1:31:23
Speaker 1: Then you know, well, it's what's funny about the prediction markets.
1:31:26
Speaker 1: It's like, look, I am, I'm trying to keep an
1:31:30
Speaker 1: open mind about the prediction markets. We used to call
1:31:34
Speaker 1: the prediction markets the stock market, but I'll set that
1:31:36
Speaker 1: aside here a minute. Like I would argue that that
1:31:39
Speaker 1: kind of served as the prediction markets at least when
1:31:41
Speaker 1: it came to nonsports events, right, certain stocks went up
1:31:45
Speaker 1: or down based on oh, the economy. Economic numbers are
1:31:49
Speaker 1: based on oh, like remember when when ozepic first took off.
1:31:53
Speaker 1: Suddenly what didn't freedom lays stock collapse or something like,
1:31:56
Speaker 1: you know, oh, no, nobody's gonna nobody's gonna eat snacks anymore.
1:32:00
Speaker 1: Snacking is dead, you know, or good luck with Edmans,
1:32:04
Speaker 1: like that's a brand that might disappear with everybody taking zempic.
1:32:10
Speaker 1: But it's the it's it's the fact that CNN signed
1:32:15
Speaker 1: to deal with cal Shei like incorporating Like is it
1:32:20
Speaker 1: what does this fact tell you about Susie wilds Now
1:32:25
Speaker 1: being at the top of this prediction market. Is it
1:32:27
Speaker 1: just a whole bunch of people wanting to react to
1:32:30
Speaker 1: something that happened in the news, or is there somebody
1:32:34
Speaker 1: with insider information right now during I will, I will confess.
1:32:38
Speaker 1: So I made my first Calshy trade the morning of
1:32:45
Speaker 1: the college football playoff show. I'm a University of Miami guy,
1:32:50
Speaker 1: and I was curious to see if things were going
1:32:54
Speaker 1: to leak the way the Pope, not the Pope, the
1:32:57
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize leaked, and all of a sudden, the
1:33:00
Speaker 1: prediction market spiked for Machado, and you're like, oh, what's
1:33:04
Speaker 1: that about. Somebody must know something right here was somebody
1:33:07
Speaker 1: that didn't have any other reason to spike it. So
1:33:10
Speaker 1: I was curious to see, and I was watching, and
1:33:13
Speaker 1: I literally did it to see if it would leak.
1:33:15
Speaker 1: Now it turned out it didn't leak. Miami's number was
1:33:18
Speaker 1: fluctuating up and down somewhere between. It got as low
1:33:21
Speaker 1: as six, got as high as thirty eight, But it
1:33:24
Speaker 1: was in the range of what was what would you
1:33:28
Speaker 1: would expect if people didn't know the outcome, okay where
1:33:32
Speaker 1: they were trying to project, rather than there wasn't anything.
1:33:36
Speaker 1: But that's why I did it. I didn't do it
1:33:38
Speaker 1: because I thought I did it because I thought somebody
1:33:42
Speaker 1: might know the answer. I didn't do it because I
1:33:45
Speaker 1: thought crowdsourcing was going to tell me what the answer.
1:33:48
Speaker 2: Was, right, I do it because I like to bet
1:33:54
Speaker 2: eleven dollars on the Jets while they're losing, to give
1:33:58
Speaker 2: myself somebody enjoyment of the game. My average bed is
1:34:01
Speaker 2: like six dollars, so you don't have to worry about me.
1:34:04
Speaker 2: But the same thing happened with the Time Person of
1:34:07
Speaker 2: the Year whenever it's a non random outcome, and who
1:34:13
Speaker 2: will make the college football playoffs. But that's a well
1:34:15
Speaker 2: guarded outcome, the sort of outcome that someone would get
1:34:18
Speaker 2: fired if at Leaf they leaked in I don't know
1:34:22
Speaker 2: if Vanity Fair or Time magazine, but if you were
1:34:25
Speaker 2: a copy editor at Vanity Fair and you knew about
1:34:27
Speaker 2: this market, you knew this Susie Wild piece, don't you.
1:34:30
Speaker 1: Buy Susie wildstock yesterday?
1:34:32
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?
1:34:33
Speaker 1: And then you sell it now?
1:34:35
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:34:35
Speaker 1: Right right, That's what you're doing is that's insider trading.
1:34:39
Speaker 1: And that's where, ultimately, I don't know how you can guarantee,
1:34:45
Speaker 1: you know, other than are we going to have apply
1:34:48
Speaker 1: insider trading rules to copy editors now in the same
1:34:50
Speaker 1: way we apply insider trading rules to people that work it,
1:34:54
Speaker 1: say it JB.
1:34:55
Speaker 2: Moore thing, can you articulate a difference?
1:34:58
Speaker 1: I can't. That's my point.
1:35:00
Speaker 2: Market with material information that the PO.
1:35:02
Speaker 1: Do we have enough to do. We have enough regulators
1:35:05
Speaker 1: to keep track of all this.
1:35:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. To me, the big concern this is a concern.
1:35:09
Speaker 2: You articulated a concern. The other big concern is when
1:35:12
Speaker 2: you look at sports coverage and now that all the
1:35:16
Speaker 2: sport although ESPN has gotten out of it, most of
1:35:19
Speaker 2: the networks are in bed with this or.
1:35:22
Speaker 1: That they didn't get out of it. They just read
1:35:24
Speaker 1: they just did their deal with DraftKings.
1:35:26
Speaker 2: Right, it's shake got out of it in terms of
1:35:28
Speaker 2: it's not ESPN bets.
1:35:30
Speaker 1: Sure, but they're doing it's no, I mean, you know,
1:35:33
Speaker 1: they're just they just took a bigger check from DraftKings.
1:35:36
Speaker 2: Right. So now it really affects the coverage. And maybe
1:35:39
Speaker 2: you can make the case that CNN could just take
1:35:43
Speaker 2: some hail Mary's to borrow football term and it's not
1:35:46
Speaker 2: like their coverage will affect ratings on the downside that much.
1:35:49
Speaker 2: But it does affect the coverage, and it gears the
1:35:52
Speaker 2: coverage towards the relatively few people who really care about
1:35:56
Speaker 2: this stuff. And even if you do care about sports
1:35:58
Speaker 2: gambling in general? Do you really care in the start
1:36:03
Speaker 2: of the fourth quarter when they flash what fan Duel says,
1:36:07
Speaker 2: the Knicks all.
1:36:07
Speaker 1: My gods winning It Just really I find that's so annoying.
1:36:12
Speaker 1: Do you know why I watched? In fact, this gets
1:36:14
Speaker 1: it to my frustration with the college football playoff, with
1:36:19
Speaker 1: the idea of the subjective committee, where you're like, hey,
1:36:21
Speaker 1: give me what the statistically best teams are. When I'm like,
1:36:25
Speaker 1: I've said this to various people who are sports fans,
1:36:27
Speaker 1: and I'll ask you the question, min do you watch
1:36:30
Speaker 1: sports to see the most probable outcomes happen? Or do
1:36:34
Speaker 1: you watch it enjoy sports because every once in a
1:36:37
Speaker 1: while there's an improbable result and you're like, wow. My
1:36:41
Speaker 1: son will tell you why is he a college football fan?
1:36:44
Speaker 1: Because the first college football memory he has was from
1:36:48
Speaker 1: watching my wife and I go crazy over the kick
1:36:51
Speaker 1: six the Auburn Alabama game where he kicks a few
1:36:54
Speaker 1: where it attempts the field goal and the guy runs
1:36:56
Speaker 1: it back to when the You're like, oh my god,
1:36:58
Speaker 1: I've never seen a game end like that. Unbelievable. Alabama
1:37:03
Speaker 1: was the better football team. Alabama always is the better
1:37:05
Speaker 1: football team. Nine times out of ten, Alabama wins that game.
1:37:08
Speaker 1: So why do we bother playing the games? Because we're
1:37:10
Speaker 1: kind of we're kind of curious to see if the
1:37:12
Speaker 1: improbable happens, which is why when they do stupid things
1:37:16
Speaker 1: like lee Florida State out a couple of years ago,
1:37:17
Speaker 1: you're like, you're actually taking away the opportunity for a
1:37:21
Speaker 1: sports movie. Which, Oh, by the way, what do we love.
1:37:25
Speaker 1: We love a good sports movie. We love a grandpa
1:37:27
Speaker 1: that takes a snap in an NFL game. That's pretty interesting.
1:37:30
Speaker 1: I kind of want to see that.
1:37:31
Speaker 2: Right, like Mule the kicks a field goal?
1:37:35
Speaker 1: Hey, I know that movie. I know exactly the one
1:37:38
Speaker 1: you're talking about. The god I forget was what the
1:37:42
Speaker 1: name of it was? The Donkey.
1:37:43
Speaker 2: It was not Gladys the kicking Mule. It was yeah,
1:37:47
Speaker 2: it'll hit me someone.
1:37:48
Speaker 1: That's a don Knots, Right, wasn't like coach don Knots.
1:37:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he made a sound like whoosh every time
1:37:54
Speaker 2: he kicked. Oh what do you think of James Madison
1:37:57
Speaker 2: and Tulane both in the college football playoff but not
1:38:02
Speaker 2: Notre Dame.
1:38:04
Speaker 1: So I'm of two minds, right, I want the center
1:38:06
Speaker 1: and I know this is what and I this is
1:38:08
Speaker 1: where I wish college football had a commissioner, because I
1:38:11
Speaker 1: think the conferences, nobody that leads a conference or an
1:38:15
Speaker 1: athletic director has the best interests of the entire game
1:38:19
Speaker 1: in mind. Right, there is no what's best for college football.
1:38:22
Speaker 1: It is great for college football. If there's an opportunity
1:38:26
Speaker 1: for a Cinderella, we want to. You know, it was
1:38:29
Speaker 1: great to see George Mason make that run to the
1:38:31
Speaker 1: final four, right, that was really cool. It was awesome
1:38:34
Speaker 1: when Butler got to the end the final of the
1:38:36
Speaker 1: NCAA tournament, Right, that was something we were curious about.
1:38:40
Speaker 1: That was great. And yet we also want to see
1:38:42
Speaker 1: Kentucky in North Carolina or Kentucky and Duke because that's
1:38:45
Speaker 1: awesome too. So I get the need for that. I
1:38:49
Speaker 1: do think people don't realize and the coverage of college
1:38:52
Speaker 1: football is terrible. The reason they had to do that
1:38:56
Speaker 1: is they were preventing a lawsuit from the other conferences
1:39:00
Speaker 1: from basically, you know, they can't legally keep these other
1:39:04
Speaker 1: They had to give a pathway to prevent a lawsuit
1:39:06
Speaker 1: from all these group of five conferences. Who would have
1:39:08
Speaker 1: said that the big four schools in ESPN were essentially
1:39:14
Speaker 1: violating you know, violate. We're a monopoly, right, violating antitrust.
1:39:19
Speaker 1: So that's why it exists. And they had to put
1:39:22
Speaker 1: the rules in wrote the rules the way they did it,
1:39:24
Speaker 1: that was a lawyer telling them, well, you need to
1:39:27
Speaker 1: at least give the group of five conferences a chance
1:39:31
Speaker 1: that hey, if your champion is in the top five
1:39:34
Speaker 1: of all champions, right then then you can say no, no, no,
1:39:37
Speaker 1: we're not blocking them out of it. I'd personally like
1:39:44
Speaker 1: to see a group of five playoff, like you take
1:39:47
Speaker 1: the four top group of five conferences and they play,
1:39:51
Speaker 1: you know, they play a little mini tournament and the
1:39:54
Speaker 1: winner gets to come in. It's actually how the NIT
1:39:56
Speaker 1: and the NCAA used to work way back in the fifties.
1:40:00
Speaker 1: There's one school that has that has won both the
1:40:04
Speaker 1: n T and the NCAA in the same year. Do
1:40:05
Speaker 1: you know the name?
1:40:06
Speaker 2: City College of New York.
1:40:08
Speaker 1: I knew you would know.
1:40:09
Speaker 2: It's so very interesting.
1:40:10
Speaker 1: You're one of the few guests I could have that
1:40:12
Speaker 1: would be like, he knows more minutia than I do,
1:40:15
Speaker 1: and it's you do you know their nickname? The Cooney nickname?
1:40:19
Speaker 2: I do not think. I think they were the Beavers.
1:40:21
Speaker 2: But I'm going to check that. So here's where I disagree.
1:40:26
Speaker 2: Your analysis was right. You set the stage, you laid
1:40:29
Speaker 2: the predictor correctly. I don't think you want both James
1:40:32
Speaker 2: Madison and tu Lane in.
1:40:33
Speaker 1: By the way, you don't want one.
1:40:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, my son's a freshman at Tulane. I was never
1:40:37
Speaker 2: a college football fan. I got so into them this year.
1:40:40
Speaker 2: He stormed the field.
1:40:41
Speaker 1: It's fun. Oh, my son's a freshman at SMU. I
1:40:44
Speaker 1: was at the goddamn Miami SMU game where he did
1:40:47
Speaker 1: what storm the field? So yes, my son stormed the
1:40:50
Speaker 1: field on a Miami game.
1:40:51
Speaker 2: I do I do think the analogy between you want
1:40:54
Speaker 2: George Mason or Butler to make it. Those schools were
1:40:57
Speaker 2: legitimately better, and not only does the record show they
1:41:01
Speaker 2: could hold their own against the power schools. You know
1:41:04
Speaker 2: in the final where I was there was covering a
1:41:06
Speaker 2: f endpr the best player in that Duke Butler game
1:41:10
Speaker 2: was Gordon Hayward of Butler. So that is not the
1:41:14
Speaker 2: case with Tulane and James Madison. Those schools, I don't know.
1:41:17
Speaker 2: Maybe tou Lane is a chance.
1:41:19
Speaker 1: Tulane is I would look at least Tulane played a
1:41:24
Speaker 1: couple of power for schools, right, They played Duke and
1:41:26
Speaker 1: they played Old Miss right, Like you know, they're put
1:41:30
Speaker 1: it this way, when the ACC breaks up, they're going
1:41:33
Speaker 1: to become a member of whatever's left of the ACC. Yeah,
1:41:36
Speaker 1: they're the next, They're the next. They're sort of next
1:41:38
Speaker 1: in line, right, Tulane and Memphis are probably in ut
1:41:42
Speaker 1: San Antonio or probably the next three schools to get
1:41:46
Speaker 1: the call up into the Power for if there's room.
1:41:48
Speaker 2: For more road runners. So yes, well I can.
1:41:51
Speaker 1: Oh, oh absolutely. I don't think people between UTSA and
1:41:56
Speaker 1: USF by South Florida being the other one. These are
1:42:00
Speaker 1: schools that basically have been created by the population booms
1:42:02
Speaker 1: of those two states over the last thirty years. Where
1:42:05
Speaker 1: these are commuter schools and now they're just substantials in
1:42:09
Speaker 1: state universities.
1:42:12
Speaker 2: TSA B Tulane quite handily this year. So I can't confirm.
1:42:17
Speaker 2: The City College of New York's are the Beavers. Their
1:42:21
Speaker 2: mascot is Benny the Beaver. And I will also give
1:42:24
Speaker 2: you this, do you know what other prominent though Division
1:42:28
Speaker 2: three school is nicknamed the Beavers? Division one would be
1:42:31
Speaker 2: Oregon State State, right which Division three And I'll give
1:42:34
Speaker 2: you a hint. The reason they're the beavers is that
1:42:37
Speaker 2: the beaver is nature's engineer.
1:42:42
Speaker 1: The beaver is nature's engineer. Interesting is it? Mit, that's
1:42:49
Speaker 1: excellent work?
1:42:50
Speaker 2: Correct?
1:42:51
Speaker 1: Okay?
1:42:51
Speaker 2: Mit? Beavers?
1:42:53
Speaker 1: That is that feels like that feels like an idea
1:42:57
Speaker 1: they came up with, Hey, what's a good reason for
1:42:59
Speaker 1: us to have beavers? That isn't what we what everybody's
1:43:02
Speaker 1: going to assume? What could we what could we actually?
1:43:07
Speaker 1: What can we say that would be plausibly an explanation?
1:43:11
Speaker 1: You know?
1:43:11
Speaker 2: I mean and when they when they face the Presbyterian
1:43:14
Speaker 2: blue hose.
1:43:16
Speaker 1: H all right, let me so prediction markets are you?
1:43:22
Speaker 1: Do you think they will be legal? Or do you
1:43:24
Speaker 1: think we will when we have a sober up moment
1:43:28
Speaker 1: on sports gambling that the prediction markets are in trouble too.
1:43:34
Speaker 2: They shouldn't be legal. I don't mean normatively, I mean
1:43:37
Speaker 2: according to the law there. Their reason for not being
1:43:41
Speaker 2: the reason for being legal is something other than entertainment.
1:43:45
Speaker 2: Is that they try to make the case that they're
1:43:49
Speaker 2: like more like a commodities market. Uh, there is no
1:43:53
Speaker 2: viig so that's something in their favor. But I don't
1:43:56
Speaker 2: know who's playing what commodity, or what business is benefiting
1:44:01
Speaker 2: from the existence of a prediction market. Maybe you could say,
1:44:04
Speaker 2: if you're the if you're the sports bar in Kansas
1:44:08
Speaker 2: City and you bet against the Chiefs to make the
1:44:11
Speaker 2: playoffs because you know it's going to impact business in January,
1:44:14
Speaker 2: and that's a hedge. But that is so far fetched.
1:44:17
Speaker 2: So as I look at the law, it doesn't seem
1:44:20
Speaker 2: that they have a better case to not be regulated
1:44:25
Speaker 2: than any traditional sports books. And it's not the big
1:44:28
Speaker 2: isn't the big or the you know, cut and percent
1:44:32
Speaker 2: isn't the big reason there?
1:44:33
Speaker 1: You know, let me get you out of here on
1:44:35
Speaker 1: the following. It's sort of a historical fact that I'm
1:44:40
Speaker 1: curious if you'll turn into a prediction. Ever since the
1:44:45
Speaker 1: end of the pandemic, I've had a different view of
1:44:47
Speaker 1: prohibition because you now realize how did prohibitions start. You know,
1:44:52
Speaker 1: it always had a small group of people arguing to
1:44:55
Speaker 1: ban alcohol. Right that you watch the TV show guilded Ay, Right,
1:45:00
Speaker 1: Cynthia Nixon's character is actually holding meetings, right, the Temperance
1:45:04
Speaker 1: movement and all that stuff, But we don't actually do
1:45:08
Speaker 1: it until just after the nineteen seventeen and eighteen pandemic,
1:45:12
Speaker 1: which tells me that like pandemics sort of make us
1:45:15
Speaker 1: do crazy things, right, we sort of we go to
1:45:19
Speaker 1: our extremes, we do certain things, and within a decade
1:45:23
Speaker 1: we decide, WHOA, this was a bad idea. Whether it's gambling,
1:45:30
Speaker 1: whether it's the legalization of marijuana. What's something that we've
1:45:34
Speaker 1: been letting happen right that we'll look back on and
1:45:39
Speaker 1: say in twenty five years and say, yeah, we ended that.
1:45:42
Speaker 1: After a decade experiment, we realized that's not good for society.
1:45:45
Speaker 1: We sobered up. Is it sports gambling, is it marijuana?
1:45:51
Speaker 1: Is it something else?
1:45:52
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think the casino gambling there's just so little
1:45:56
Speaker 2: justification for it, and it's creating more victims that states
1:46:00
Speaker 2: have to take care of. So sports gambling, I don't know.
1:46:04
Speaker 2: I'm not willing to make that prediction, but I think
1:46:06
Speaker 2: being able to since only a few states allow it,
1:46:09
Speaker 2: you know, bang slot machines on your phones, I do
1:46:11
Speaker 2: think that will end. I think another one is I
1:46:16
Speaker 2: think there's going to be massive regulation of the nil
1:46:20
Speaker 2: business because it's not a business and it doesn't help
1:46:24
Speaker 2: anyone everyone. You know, there are obviously a few people
1:46:26
Speaker 2: taking advantage of it, but they do. Why do big
1:46:29
Speaker 2: time college sports exist. It's it's the fan experience, right,
1:46:33
Speaker 2: It's not the student athletes. It's so schools can make
1:46:37
Speaker 2: money because the fans enjoy watching them. And I think
1:46:41
Speaker 2: it is getting in the way of the fan experience
1:46:44
Speaker 2: to some extent, so there's going to be major reformation there.
1:46:48
Speaker 2: I would also say that there's no reason just to
1:46:50
Speaker 2: pay kids for nil with their ability to go on Instagram,
1:46:55
Speaker 2: get hundreds of thousands of followers and just sell their advertising. Maybe.
1:47:03
Speaker 2: I've also always thought that puppy mills should be illegal,
1:47:07
Speaker 2: but that's not in the that that didn't happen recently.
1:47:10
Speaker 2: I see that trend maybe coming. But you know, prohibition
1:47:15
Speaker 2: was a big progressive movement, wasn't it. It was said
1:47:18
Speaker 2: to be a leap forward, and all the suffragists and
1:47:23
Speaker 2: all the people who were associated with the progressive causes
1:47:27
Speaker 2: were most in favor of it, and it turned out
1:47:29
Speaker 2: to be a mistake. So in that way, you know,
1:47:32
Speaker 2: marijuana legalization or whatever the extremely flawed rollout was, it
1:47:39
Speaker 2: reminds me of it. Though I don't see us going back.
1:47:41
Speaker 2: I mean, I see I don't think it's.
1:47:43
Speaker 1: So on marijuana because we're not having there isn't you
1:47:46
Speaker 1: know it is It turns out that you know, it
1:47:48
Speaker 1: isn't any more or less addictive than alcohol. And it
1:47:53
Speaker 1: might be arguments that's slightly less addictive in alcohol. What's
1:47:59
Speaker 1: not been true and you've die. You know, we don't
1:48:01
Speaker 1: know yet that it really has. What benefits there are
1:48:04
Speaker 1: there may be seems like almost none. It seems like
1:48:07
Speaker 1: there may be of killing benefits. I could see that,
1:48:10
Speaker 1: you know.
1:48:12
Speaker 2: Payment half people like maybe your rope is higher.
1:48:15
Speaker 1: Well, I will say this, I've had two people in
1:48:18
Speaker 1: my life with MS and they swear by it. They
1:48:22
Speaker 1: swear by.
1:48:22
Speaker 2: It, but is there nothing else that they would There's
1:48:25
Speaker 2: nothing else that that allows them to Everything else makes
1:48:30
Speaker 2: them too loopy or makes them too sick.
1:48:32
Speaker 1: Right Like, for whatever reason, weed is the right amount
1:48:35
Speaker 1: of it actually helps them with an appetite right when
1:48:38
Speaker 1: they need, and at the same time still doesn't totally
1:48:42
Speaker 1: fog up their brain. It's this fine line, right. I know,
1:48:46
Speaker 1: if you take too much weed, it can fog up
1:48:47
Speaker 1: your brain. But some of the the you know, the
1:48:50
Speaker 1: painkillers you're getting from the from the pharmaceutical cover.
1:48:52
Speaker 2: But I think the argument to the medical marijuana argument
1:48:55
Speaker 2: wasn't that the people with glaucoma or ms were lying.
1:48:59
Speaker 2: It was that every and claim to have back pain
1:49:01
Speaker 2: in order to qualify for medical arijuana. And so eventually
1:49:04
Speaker 2: the states just said let's just legalize marijuana. But they
1:49:07
Speaker 2: didn't do it in the right way, and the rollout
1:49:10
Speaker 2: was done so inexactly. And this is where execution comes
1:49:13
Speaker 2: into effect, and this is where our state capacity. You know,
1:49:17
Speaker 2: what the abundance agenda and what Dunkleman wrote about about
1:49:21
Speaker 2: why nothing works, like for all our arguments about this
1:49:24
Speaker 2: should or shouldn't be done, and what are the normative changes,
1:49:27
Speaker 2: whatever you decide, doing it well is as important as
1:49:32
Speaker 2: just doing it. So there's a way to legalize marijuana
1:49:36
Speaker 2: where it works well. And I think there's probably a
1:49:39
Speaker 2: way to get some version of the prediction markets work
1:49:42
Speaker 2: that help more people than they hurt. I just I'm
1:49:47
Speaker 2: skeptical that our government is capable of that way in
1:49:51
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five.
1:49:52
Speaker 1: Well, here's the problem, right we I've always said, you know,
1:49:55
Speaker 1: I think being libertarian is in the DNA of Americans. Right,
1:50:00
Speaker 1: It's sort of like no, no, no, no. The whole point
1:50:01
Speaker 1: of this country was no, no, no, We want to we
1:50:04
Speaker 1: want to decide for ourselves what religion we do, and
1:50:07
Speaker 1: we want to decide for ourselves and all this stuff.
1:50:10
Speaker 1: But unfortunately when we make it, we're making a libertarian
1:50:14
Speaker 1: We're sort of following through a libertarian idea about, Hey,
1:50:18
Speaker 1: you smoke what you want to smoke, or you take
1:50:19
Speaker 1: what you want to take. But you do need a
1:50:23
Speaker 1: highly regulated delivery system, right in order to fulfill this
1:50:28
Speaker 1: libertarian demand, right, And that's I think the problem is
1:50:32
Speaker 1: that that's probably they just run into each other. Right. Our
1:50:38
Speaker 1: DNA is like a live and let live to a point,
1:50:42
Speaker 1: but you kind of need a highly structured system in
1:50:46
Speaker 1: order to deliver this problem, or at least somewhat structured.
1:50:48
Speaker 2: And the libertarians I know would not say they're against
1:50:52
Speaker 2: liquor licenses. They're just against liquor licenses that are given
1:50:58
Speaker 2: via corruption, are suppressed, or are given maybe even to anyone.
1:51:03
Speaker 2: You know. Libertarians are always will also admit that their
1:51:07
Speaker 2: arguments well I don't know they'll always admit it, but
1:51:09
Speaker 2: the honest ones will say, our arguments do tend to
1:51:11
Speaker 2: fall apart when it comes to kids.
1:51:16
Speaker 1: Mike, I always enjoyed my conversations with you. Are you
1:51:19
Speaker 1: still you still read hard copies of things or are
1:51:23
Speaker 1: you all digital?
1:51:24
Speaker 2: I mean I could reach for like my it's all
1:51:28
Speaker 2: it's all New Yorker in print and New York Times
1:51:31
Speaker 2: in print, and yes.
1:51:32
Speaker 1: Yes, because I miss remembering where I read something, and
1:51:37
Speaker 1: when I read everything on digital, when I read everything
1:51:40
Speaker 1: on the same machinery, it doesn't matter whether I'm reading
1:51:44
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, the Times, the Post, the gristlit it doesn't matter, right,
1:51:50
Speaker 1: it all looks the same. And I miss the being
1:51:53
Speaker 1: able to differentiate visually where I read stuff.
1:51:55
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was curious if I remember where on
1:51:58
Speaker 2: the page I read things, And that's like really important.
1:52:01
Speaker 2: And I keep some of these books behind me because
1:52:03
Speaker 2: I have to get to them and I will be
1:52:05
Speaker 2: doing the interviews. But a lot of them are I
1:52:07
Speaker 2: don't know if they're cherished. They just gave me a
1:52:09
Speaker 2: lot of information. And even though I say abstractly, I
1:52:12
Speaker 2: suppose I could try to find it on the kindle version,
1:52:15
Speaker 2: I can't. I definitely could find it in the physical version.
1:52:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I wonder if prints has been more resilient
1:52:25
Speaker 1: than I think many book publishers thought. And I'm wondering
1:52:31
Speaker 1: if there's something there on local news that maybe that
1:52:34
Speaker 1: maybe there's a way to bring print back selectively, even
1:52:37
Speaker 1: in the local level.
1:52:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know Tablet has a print play that's
1:52:43
Speaker 2: going pretty well for them. It's it's maybe like vinyl
1:52:47
Speaker 2: with among the music offficionados.
1:52:50
Speaker 1: Well, we're starting to see.
1:52:51
Speaker 2: But I read something where said it's pretty it does
1:52:53
Speaker 2: pretty well for the record companies they're vinyl divisions.
1:52:56
Speaker 1: Well, especially when you're charging forty dollars an album. I
1:53:00
Speaker 1: don't know if you Bespoke, Yeah, bought one of these
1:53:03
Speaker 1: newly new this new way that hey, get a Taylor
1:53:07
Speaker 1: Swift album for your daughter on vinyl, you know, and
1:53:10
Speaker 1: it's like fifty bucks even at Target. Anyway, Mike, enjoy
1:53:15
Speaker 1: the holidays you too. Do you travel or do you host?
1:53:19
Speaker 2: I do a little of each. I think I usually
1:53:22
Speaker 2: take my vacation two weeks later to beat all the crowds.
1:53:26
Speaker 2: But as always, as always, Chuck, thank you for having
1:53:29
Speaker 2: me and go Beavers.
1:53:32
Speaker 1: Go be If you learned anything, it's the fact that
1:53:34
Speaker 1: the only person that knows more minutia, particularly sports mandusia,
1:53:38
Speaker 1: than myself, it's you, mister Pesca Cooney lifts. Go Beavers.
1:53:42
Speaker 1: Thanks problem well, I always enjoy my conversations with Mike.
1:53:52
Speaker 1: I hope you do too. And again check out the gist.
1:53:55
Speaker 1: It's say it is one of those it does not
1:53:59
Speaker 1: it's a great news that it does not waste your time.
1:54:01
Speaker 1: It is just a it is a great it's sort
1:54:04
Speaker 1: of you know, it is that the second set I
1:54:07
Speaker 1: had lines that you that sort of make you a
1:54:10
Speaker 1: little bit smarter at that holiday party, a little bit
1:54:12
Speaker 1: smarter at that cocktail party, et cetera. That little extra
1:54:17
Speaker 1: nugget that not every news junkie seems to know. Mister
1:54:23
Speaker 1: fishy peachy guy uh does a good job with that.
1:54:26
Speaker 1: I always loved my conversations with Mike. It is notable,
1:54:31
Speaker 1: by the way, before I get to Q and A
1:54:33
Speaker 1: and I know, I spent the first part of this
1:54:35
Speaker 1: monologue telling you about Trump's future and all this stuff.
1:54:39
Speaker 1: There was some breaking news while I was taping my
1:54:43
Speaker 1: monologue that I missed, and he put out the following tweet,
1:54:47
Speaker 1: and he was very excited. I was. I was taping
1:54:49
Speaker 1: before the CBS airs the Kennedy Center, excuse me, the
1:54:54
Speaker 1: Trump Kennedy Center honors. Right, I'm sure we'll hear plenty
1:54:57
Speaker 1: of jokes and in fact, Trump tweeted the following on Tuesday,
1:55:04
Speaker 1: on Festivus Day before Christmas Eve. The Trump Kennedy Center
1:55:07
Speaker 1: Honors is what he called it. The Trump Kennedy Center
1:55:09
Speaker 1: Honors will be broadcast tonight on CBS in stream on
1:55:12
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus ten at at apm Eastern. At the request
1:55:15
Speaker 1: of the board and just about everybody else in America,
1:55:17
Speaker 1: I am hosting the event. Tell me what you think
1:55:19
Speaker 1: of my master of ceremony that's in quotes abilities if
1:55:23
Speaker 1: really good, would you like me to leave the presidency
1:55:25
Speaker 1: in order to make hosting a full time job. We
1:55:27
Speaker 1: will be honoring true greats in the history of entertainments
1:55:30
Speaker 1: of Wester Sloan, Michael Crawford, Kiss, George Strait, and Gloria Gainer.
1:55:35
Speaker 1: So is this the soft launch for Trump's resignation strategy
1:55:40
Speaker 1: from the president? You didn't get to kick me out.
1:55:42
Speaker 1: I left on my own terms. You know, here's the irony.
1:55:45
Speaker 1: Donald Trump as dinner party host, Donald Trump as sort
1:55:49
Speaker 1: of the roast master, if you will, to take the
1:55:54
Speaker 1: place during those old Comedy Central rows, that's kind of
1:55:58
Speaker 1: what America wanted out of Donald. I don't think. I
1:56:01
Speaker 1: think now it's fair to say most of a recond
1:56:03
Speaker 1: did we really want this guy as president or did
1:56:06
Speaker 1: we just want this guy to be sort of not
1:56:09
Speaker 1: even necessarily the MC of the Center Ring, of the
1:56:13
Speaker 1: three Ring circus. We just kind of wanted to tune
1:56:15
Speaker 1: into him every once in a while because he was
1:56:17
Speaker 1: kind of amusing, and he was kind of strange, and
1:56:20
Speaker 1: he was kind of outlandish and sort of all of
1:56:23
Speaker 1: those things. And a little bit of Donald Trump was amusing,
1:56:26
Speaker 1: and a lot of Donald Trump is exhausting. Right, So
1:56:30
Speaker 1: we know he's not totally serious about this, but you know,
1:56:35
Speaker 1: in his own weird way, he probably realizes even his
1:56:38
Speaker 1: haters are going to say, yes, please go be a host,
1:56:41
Speaker 1: go leave the presidency of be a host, and then
1:56:42
Speaker 1: he will take that and say, people loved all of
1:56:45
Speaker 1: my hosting. Anyway, all right, let's get to some questions,
1:56:50
Speaker 1: ask Chuck, And by the way, next week I'm going
1:56:55
Speaker 1: to do I'm gonna do as forty minutes of questions.
1:57:01
Speaker 1: I'm going to tackle that much of my mail bag
1:57:05
Speaker 1: to try to clear it out from the year. But
1:57:08
Speaker 1: in the meantime, let's slip in a few. All right,
1:57:13
Speaker 1: first question, it comes from Michael Dallas, Texas. Help you
1:57:16
Speaker 1: found some good barbecue in College Station. When you're in
1:57:18
Speaker 1: Dallas for the Cotton bowlt checkup barbecue spotch Hutchins and
1:57:21
Speaker 1: PKM Lodge.
1:57:22
Speaker 2: I did do.
1:57:23
Speaker 1: PKM Lodge and it is great. That is great. It
1:57:27
Speaker 1: is hard to find bad barbecue in Dallas. I'm sure
1:57:29
Speaker 1: it exists, but even the bad barbecue places are good
1:57:32
Speaker 1: compared to almost any other city outside of Texas. So
1:57:35
Speaker 1: but PKM Lodge, I had forgotten the name of it.
1:57:39
Speaker 1: Thank you for reminument. Then he asks this. This twenty twenty
1:57:42
Speaker 1: eight gets closer by the day. As of late December
1:57:44
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, what wing of the party do you
1:57:46
Speaker 1: do you believe the Republican Party will lean towards? Will
1:57:49
Speaker 1: it embrace someone from the Romney Bush era I e. Rubio,
1:57:52
Speaker 1: or will it be a Trump air apparent I advance
1:57:54
Speaker 1: have a hold over the voter. Keep up the good content.
1:57:56
Speaker 1: Thanks Michael, Dallas, Texas. I think if you look look
1:58:02
Speaker 1: take the law, I just look at. Let's just look
1:58:04
Speaker 1: at sort of post World War two history of two
1:58:08
Speaker 1: term presidents. Right, Eisenhower's vice president was the Republican nominee
1:58:14
Speaker 1: in sixty you have lbj's vice president, Hubert Humphrey was
1:58:19
Speaker 1: the Democratic nominee in sixty eight. Ronald Reagan's vice president
1:58:28
Speaker 1: was the nominee in nineteen eighty eight. Now, the one
1:58:36
Speaker 1: time where the party literally went further away from the
1:58:40
Speaker 1: outgoing sitting president is arguably John McCain inaight from George W. Bush. Right,
1:58:48
Speaker 1: there was nobody really running as the Bush air parent. Now,
1:58:52
Speaker 1: McCain was the guy that finished second to Bush in
1:58:55
Speaker 1: two thousand, so in some ways was following the traditional
1:58:58
Speaker 1: Republican pattern of who finished second get this nomination the
1:59:01
Speaker 1: next time. We saw it with Bob Dole after Bush,
1:59:04
Speaker 1: we saw it with Bush after Reagan, We saw it
1:59:05
Speaker 1: with Reagan after Ford. You get my drift. But you
1:59:12
Speaker 1: could argue that the nomination of McCain was a way
1:59:15
Speaker 1: of Republican primary voters going no, no, no, we're looking for
1:59:17
Speaker 1: something different too. We want to we want to turn
1:59:19
Speaker 1: the page on on Bush. I don't think with the
1:59:27
Speaker 1: with as much as I think that there is a
1:59:31
Speaker 1: an appetite for it within a good chunk of the
1:59:34
Speaker 1: Republican Party. Right, We've seen, you know, the move Mike Pence,
1:59:38
Speaker 1: pretty bold move Mike Pence made to to sort of
1:59:41
Speaker 1: stake his claim and I think what I still think
1:59:45
Speaker 1: those I still think Mike pen sees himself as a
1:59:47
Speaker 1: person who can bridge the old Romney Bush wing of
1:59:52
Speaker 1: the party with the new Trump Maga wing of the party.
1:59:57
Speaker 1: I still think Penn sees himself is a better bridge
1:59:59
Speaker 1: to that then say a Marco Rubio. But the most
2:00:06
Speaker 1: likely result is Trump's air. Trump's VP is the nominee,
2:00:11
Speaker 1: right it is. It is very hard to deny a
2:00:14
Speaker 1: sitting vice president nomination. Hubert Humphrey wasn't denied at al
2:00:18
Speaker 1: Gore wasn't denied at Kamala Harrison her own odd way,
2:00:20
Speaker 1: wasn't denied at George H. W. Bush wasn't tonight. It
2:00:23
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they don't have to work for it. They
2:00:25
Speaker 1: got a Walter Mondale even as an ex VP, right,
2:00:27
Speaker 1: it gets it. It is just very difficult. They When
2:00:32
Speaker 1: you think about how state parties are sort of filled
2:00:36
Speaker 1: with loyalists, you know you're going to have, you know,
2:00:43
Speaker 1: it's not like you know, look who runs the state
2:00:46
Speaker 1: Republican parties right now. There's not many people from the
2:00:49
Speaker 1: Romney Bush wing of the party sort of in charge
2:00:53
Speaker 1: anymore anywhere. So I don't know where you would get
2:00:56
Speaker 1: a base of support to actually win a majority of
2:00:59
Speaker 1: Republican primary voters to pull this off, you'd need it,
2:01:02
Speaker 1: you know, McCain pulled it off because there really wasn't
2:01:06
Speaker 1: a consolidated conservative to stop him. I mean, had Romney,
2:01:11
Speaker 1: had Romney been a more trusted conservative in OA, right,
2:01:15
Speaker 1: and he just wasn't yet he was the guy still
2:01:17
Speaker 1: four years frankly, only two years removed from from romney Care,
2:01:22
Speaker 1: only two years removed from flipping on the abortion issue
2:01:26
Speaker 1: as he left the Massachusetts governorship, So he wasn't. He
2:01:31
Speaker 1: couldn't consolidate conservatives completely. So there the sort of the
2:01:35
Speaker 1: social conservatives were splintered, the sort of more Bush Ryan
2:01:40
Speaker 1: wing of the party was kind of splintered, and it
2:01:42
Speaker 1: gave a room for McCain. Look, it's possible, right, but
2:01:48
Speaker 1: the more probable outcome is that you know, Vance gets it,
2:01:54
Speaker 1: and you know, look, you I'd rather be the Democrats
2:02:01
Speaker 1: than Vance, But every nomination's worth having because the Democrats
2:02:04
Speaker 1: could end up nominating someone who's less selectable than Jade Vance's.
2:02:09
Speaker 1: But I think Vance is it's interesting that what he
2:02:14
Speaker 1: did over the weekend in his decision not to you know,
2:02:18
Speaker 1: he he will not condemn hateful rhetoric on the right.
2:02:22
Speaker 1: He goes out of his way to appease or apologize.
2:02:26
Speaker 1: If somebody on the left says something hateful, they should
2:02:29
Speaker 1: be ostracized from their job from society. When some of
2:02:33
Speaker 1: the are right does it, Oh, they're just kids. Nobody
2:02:36
Speaker 1: should be judged by one thing they do. He is
2:02:40
Speaker 1: really and this is why I think he's going to
2:02:42
Speaker 1: be somebody who appears to spend too much time online
2:02:46
Speaker 1: and not enough time in the real world. This is
2:02:48
Speaker 1: a guy that needs to touch Republican grass roots, not
2:02:53
Speaker 1: just Republican internet grasstops. So I'm skeptical of him, but
2:03:00
Speaker 1: he has to be considered the heavy favorite, and he
2:03:03
Speaker 1: already has some institutional advantages that others are just not
2:03:07
Speaker 1: going to have, and frankly having turning point as an
2:03:11
Speaker 1: organization which right now will certainly be a financial juggernaut.
2:03:14
Speaker 1: We'll see how influential it can remain if it is
2:03:19
Speaker 1: as influential in two years as it feels like it
2:03:21
Speaker 1: could be now. But he's already beginning there. It's hard
2:03:25
Speaker 1: to see another wing of the party winning in twenty
2:03:28
Speaker 1: eight now. If Vance does not win the presidency in
2:03:32
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Then the twenty thirty midterms are going to
2:03:36
Speaker 1: be something else. Then you're going to have they may
2:03:39
Speaker 1: look what we're watching with the Democrats right now in
2:03:42
Speaker 1: twenty six, which is we're getting a preview of the
2:03:45
Speaker 1: fight in twenty eight between essentially fight or unite. You
2:03:49
Speaker 1: know what kind of Democratic party should Democratic nominee? Should
2:03:53
Speaker 1: they have a fighter or somebody that's going to try
2:03:55
Speaker 1: to bring the country together or a united Right now,
2:03:58
Speaker 1: the grassroots of the Democratic Party wants a fighter, right
2:04:01
Speaker 1: and I think that you'll have some of those same Well,
2:04:04
Speaker 1: you'll have some of this same sort of intra party
2:04:07
Speaker 1: fighting and thirty, especially at fans loses all right. Next
2:04:11
Speaker 1: question comes from Travis and see, hey Chuck, hope you're
2:04:15
Speaker 1: enjoying the holiday season. I really say I had a
2:04:17
Speaker 1: vivid dream where I dropped a college class only to
2:04:19
Speaker 1: run into you as the professor. You gave me a
2:04:21
Speaker 1: urt time and it stuck with me. Oh good, Look,
2:04:25
Speaker 1: I will share the celibates. It's called how Washington Works,
2:04:28
Speaker 1: so I'll give you an idea of what. So basically,
2:04:30
Speaker 1: it's the class called how Washington Works. I have two assignments.
2:04:36
Speaker 1: You know that everybody that it participates in this class
2:04:39
Speaker 1: has a full time job, all right, so we meet
2:04:42
Speaker 1: once a week. This is a special USC program. I
2:04:45
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. Essentially, instead of spending a semester abroad
2:04:49
Speaker 1: at USC, you spend a semester in DC. You get
2:04:52
Speaker 1: a full time job, you work nine to five, and
2:04:54
Speaker 1: then at six o'clock you have a class Monday through Thursday.
2:04:57
Speaker 1: I am the Thursday class, right, I am the last
2:05:01
Speaker 1: class before the start of their weekend. Though they do
2:05:03
Speaker 1: have to work Friday, usually on Fridays. So I say that,
2:05:07
Speaker 1: and I'm I am. I am mindful that this is
2:05:10
Speaker 1: They're there too, They're there to learn. I am not
2:05:14
Speaker 1: beating them up over assignments, though I do make them.
2:05:18
Speaker 1: There are two assignments, a midterm and a final that
2:05:22
Speaker 1: I do expect them to do. But essentially what I
2:05:24
Speaker 1: do is I have a variety of speakers. You know,
2:05:28
Speaker 1: I've I've had John Kasick, I've had Mark Short, I've
2:05:31
Speaker 1: had Brendan Buck on the Republican side, Jake lett Turner,
2:05:34
Speaker 1: I've had Jeff Science. I've had near a Tandent, I've
2:05:39
Speaker 1: had Debbie Dingle. So I try to have a good
2:05:42
Speaker 1: balance of I try to I want to have a
2:05:45
Speaker 1: couple of lobbyists, including those that lobby from the right,
2:05:49
Speaker 1: uh for the excuse me, from industry and those that
2:05:52
Speaker 1: lobby from activist groups so people can get an understanding
2:05:55
Speaker 1: how both types of lobbying work. Again, I view the classes.
2:05:59
Speaker 1: Actually the intent is how Washington works. And my joke
2:06:03
Speaker 1: is doesn't work for everybody. It's always working for somebody,
2:06:08
Speaker 1: and yes, this year it's going to change and how
2:06:11
Speaker 1: it works. And then I you know, the assignment I do.
2:06:14
Speaker 1: I do this. Last time, I offered a choice of
2:06:19
Speaker 1: books to read during the midterm that I think best,
2:06:24
Speaker 1: and in fact I posted some of those books. But
2:06:26
Speaker 1: I think that best sort of helped explain why we're
2:06:29
Speaker 1: in the political moment we're in. So, you know, had
2:06:34
Speaker 1: I've assigned the McKay Coppin's book on Romney and sort
2:06:39
Speaker 1: of that campaign from twenty twelve and sort of Romney's
2:06:41
Speaker 1: view of sort of how the party went from his
2:06:45
Speaker 1: wing of the party to the Maga wing of the party.
2:06:47
Speaker 1: I think it's an incredibly insightful book on that front.
2:06:53
Speaker 1: The Wolves of k Street by Brodi and Luke Mullins,
2:06:57
Speaker 1: their brothers, their investigative reporters I think it's the currently
2:07:04
Speaker 1: the new best sort of guide to how lobbying in
2:07:07
Speaker 1: Washington works these days? Where have all the Democrats gone?
2:07:12
Speaker 1: Which is a roy to share a book about sort
2:07:15
Speaker 1: of how the Democratic coalition shifted from the Obama era
2:07:19
Speaker 1: to what it is today. All of it is designed
2:07:22
Speaker 1: so that I think these are books that best explain
2:07:25
Speaker 1: how we're in the situation that the current political electorate
2:07:28
Speaker 1: is in. I am not I do actually stay away
2:07:32
Speaker 1: from assigning books that how to quote make it better.
2:07:36
Speaker 1: I want people to understand where we are and then
2:07:38
Speaker 1: their final exam is their way of making one thing
2:07:43
Speaker 1: work better. What's a way to if there's something in
2:07:46
Speaker 1: Washington doesn't work right? How would you change it? Is
2:07:48
Speaker 1: it through the power of Congress? Is it through the
2:07:50
Speaker 1: power of the executive? Is it through outside influence? Is
2:07:54
Speaker 1: it through small d democratic reforms? So it's a it's
2:08:01
Speaker 1: a mix of guest speakers who have had real world experience,
2:08:04
Speaker 1: because everybody that's in this class is somebody that is
2:08:08
Speaker 1: animated about public service. That's a little bit different than
2:08:11
Speaker 1: the average person. I would say, in my two years
2:08:15
Speaker 1: of teaching this class, half of them want to run
2:08:17
Speaker 1: for office. Someday, and so I want to give them
2:08:22
Speaker 1: speakers that have done it themselves the ups. I mean,
2:08:25
Speaker 1: John Kisa came in in here and said, don't run
2:08:28
Speaker 1: for office in your twenties, which is exactly what John
2:08:30
Speaker 1: Kaisack did. He basically admitted that for the first thirty
2:08:33
Speaker 1: first ten years of his political career he did not
2:08:36
Speaker 1: have enough life experience to be a good public servant.
2:08:39
Speaker 1: And he said, I didn't know that then. You know,
2:08:42
Speaker 1: thirty five forty years later, you know that now. It
2:08:45
Speaker 1: just the tyranny of wisdom of the middle aged. We
2:08:47
Speaker 1: all realized once we hit our fifties and sixties all
2:08:50
Speaker 1: the mistakes we made in our twenties and thirties, and
2:08:52
Speaker 1: we're desperate to convince others in their twenties and thirties
2:08:55
Speaker 1: not to make these mistakes. And most of you never listen.
2:08:58
Speaker 1: We are at peak wisdom in our fifties and sixties,
2:09:01
Speaker 1: which is why probably all of our presidents should be
2:09:04
Speaker 1: in their fifties and sixties, and we shouldn't let anybody
2:09:06
Speaker 1: seventy plus be president. Is that that's my age cutoff
2:09:10
Speaker 1: on there, because I do think peak wisdom is somewhere
2:09:13
Speaker 1: in your fifties and sixties, and perhaps I say that
2:09:16
Speaker 1: out of necessity since I'm in my mid fifties.
2:09:20
Speaker 2: But that is and.
2:09:23
Speaker 1: Discussing the current events. I always spend about It's a
2:09:26
Speaker 1: three hour class, so iways spend about the first twenty
2:09:28
Speaker 1: or thirty minutes just discussing what happened that week and
2:09:32
Speaker 1: sort of. I also explained the new cycle a little bit.
2:09:35
Speaker 1: But they take a separate media class. Mine is very
2:09:38
Speaker 1: much more of how the institutions within Washington worse with
2:09:42
Speaker 1: a little bit of the influence of the press. But
2:09:45
Speaker 1: they have a separate class on that that is fully devoted,
2:09:49
Speaker 1: fully devoted to that. So I hope that gave you
2:09:52
Speaker 1: an idea of what class with me. So come on
2:09:58
Speaker 1: over to USC Dornsife. It's anybody is eligible for this
2:10:02
Speaker 1: class if you take, if you get involved in this
2:10:04
Speaker 1: DC program. So there you go. All right, next question,
2:10:11
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to make this the last question
2:10:12
Speaker 1: because I went long on that other one. I'm going
2:10:14
Speaker 1: to do three more. These are all good because I
2:10:16
Speaker 1: can be quick.
2:10:16
Speaker 2: All right.
2:10:17
Speaker 1: First one comes from Dan Pinehurst, North Carolina. Ah, I
2:10:23
Speaker 1: did a Pinehurst Boys trip once. I loved it. I
2:10:26
Speaker 1: loved it we did three courses. It was amazing. I
2:10:28
Speaker 1: don't think i've golf since then, but it was awesome. Pinehurst,
2:10:32
Speaker 1: what a great place, Lieutenant Colonel retired Lieutenant Colonel Dan
2:10:36
Speaker 1: lucky you that Pinehurst golf courses are your backyard, and
2:10:41
Speaker 1: he goes, hey, I really enjoyed your take on how
2:10:43
Speaker 1: we mismanaged the end of history after the fall of
2:10:45
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. Made me wonder how my things have
2:10:47
Speaker 1: played out differently At Bush forty wanted one a second
2:10:49
Speaker 1: term with the administration's strong national security team and less
2:10:52
Speaker 1: political pressure to catch in the peace dividend. Could a
2:10:55
Speaker 1: Marshall Plan style approach for Russia and Eastern Europe have
2:10:58
Speaker 1: worked better than the short term thinking we saw the nighties.
2:11:00
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the great programming, and go Clemson this weekend. Yeah,
2:11:03
Speaker 1: it's a it's a good matchup on paper. You're like, boy,
2:11:06
Speaker 1: that would would be a better game, right, I think
2:11:08
Speaker 1: it's Clemson Penn State'd be better if it were game
2:11:11
Speaker 1: one of the year and my recalibrated schedule of making
2:11:16
Speaker 1: all the bowl games happen actually as as preseason game
2:11:19
Speaker 1: one of the following season. You know, that's an interesting one.
2:11:24
Speaker 1: If on George H. W. Bush. I think you're right.
2:11:28
Speaker 1: I think it would have been a very foreign policy
2:11:31
Speaker 1: heavy second term where Bill Clinton won on domestic issues,
2:11:36
Speaker 1: so he'd make it all that so it you know,
2:11:39
Speaker 1: in some ways though I don't think you know, remember
2:11:42
Speaker 1: Clinton kept a lot he kept calling Pal's national security
2:11:45
Speaker 1: advisor no excuse me as chairman of the Joint Chiefs
2:11:50
Speaker 1: my mistake there, and and in some ways, even though
2:11:56
Speaker 1: he had democratic you know, players from the foreign policy community,
2:12:02
Speaker 1: they were really of the Cold War uniparty, if you will,
2:12:06
Speaker 1: right Warren Christopher, I would argue, was that Tony Lake
2:12:10
Speaker 1: and then later Sandy Berger On the national security side,
2:12:13
Speaker 1: I would argue, was that Al Gore as a vice president?
2:12:18
Speaker 1: Remember he was basically the Washington hand for for the
2:12:22
Speaker 1: inexperienced Arkansas in Bill Clinton. So, I you know, I
2:12:29
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't know if our foreign policy
2:12:31
Speaker 1: would have changed all that much, but I do agree
2:12:33
Speaker 1: with you the emphasis might have been different. There may
2:12:37
Speaker 1: have been a more methodical approach that Bush and Baker
2:12:42
Speaker 1: would have had. I mean, essentially, what you're saying is,
2:12:44
Speaker 1: what if Jim Baker had been running things here right
2:12:47
Speaker 1: in helping democracy in the Eastern Europe. Maybe it's not
2:12:52
Speaker 1: a it's it's an interesting what if that I'd like
2:12:56
Speaker 1: to put a little more of my own efforts into.
2:12:59
Speaker 1: I need to familiar I need to go back. And
2:13:02
Speaker 1: there's a great Jim Baker memoir not a memoir, excuse me,
2:13:07
Speaker 1: a biography that was written by my friends Peter Baker
2:13:09
Speaker 1: and Susan Glasser. It had some cooperation from Baker. It
2:13:15
Speaker 1: is a really look I think Jim Baker's Jim Baker
2:13:20
Speaker 1: and Leon Panetta are probably the two great equally the
2:13:23
Speaker 1: greatest Republican and greatest Democratic public servants that weren't the
2:13:29
Speaker 1: best politicians, right. I think Baker ran and lost a
2:13:32
Speaker 1: state ag race in Texas. Leon Panetta obviously was a
2:13:37
Speaker 1: member of Congress, wanted to run for governor, never could
2:13:40
Speaker 1: find a way to do it. But boy, they.
2:13:42
Speaker 3: Were really good at they they they were They had
2:13:46
Speaker 3: a politician's I with a with sort of CEO capabilities,
2:13:51
Speaker 3: kind of like Cheney, you know, I meaning they knew
2:13:53
Speaker 3: how not all all politicians want to run an institution,
2:13:56
Speaker 3: know how to actually have employees.
2:13:58
Speaker 1: You get the sense of Panetta and or did, and
2:14:00
Speaker 1: this is why they were sort of the super staffers
2:14:02
Speaker 1: of their era, one one on the D side, one
2:14:05
Speaker 1: on the R side. But I I almost needed would
2:14:08
Speaker 1: want to go back and reread the Baker books, both
2:14:11
Speaker 1: his and then the one he cooperated with with Glassner
2:14:14
Speaker 1: uh And and Peter Baker. No relation by the way
2:14:19
Speaker 1: to sort of answer that question fully, But but there's
2:14:23
Speaker 1: no doubt they're needed. We we we. It is clear
2:14:27
Speaker 1: we rushed through the democratization of the former Soviet republics
2:14:32
Speaker 1: and and really screwed and it was really divving up industry,
2:14:38
Speaker 1: is ended up creating the oligarchs. And in that sense,
2:14:41
Speaker 1: I think you could say we had a hand in
2:14:42
Speaker 1: creating the oligarchy that now essentially runs too much of
2:14:47
Speaker 1: the of of Russia and much of and many of
2:14:50
Speaker 1: the former Soviet republics on that front. So great question.
2:14:56
Speaker 1: Next one today comes from Gavin Brady. Loved your deep
2:14:58
Speaker 1: dive and how post World War One decision still shape
2:15:01
Speaker 1: global politics today. Such an overlook part of history, the
2:15:03
Speaker 1: way Western powers redrew borders in the Middle East continues
2:15:06
Speaker 1: to have serious repercussions, yet it's barely discussed. You've talked
2:15:09
Speaker 1: a lot about media decline, but how do we address
2:15:11
Speaker 1: the erosion of historical education and understanding it feels essential
2:15:14
Speaker 1: for making sense of modern challenges. Gavin Brady, Brisbane, Australia.
2:15:18
Speaker 1: This is my frustration, right we look, I imagine you know Australia,
2:15:25
Speaker 1: world history is certainly taught through the prism of Australia,
2:15:29
Speaker 1: just like world history is taught through the prism of
2:15:31
Speaker 1: America in American schools, etc. But I think we do
2:15:40
Speaker 1: there's no doubt we have done a poor We don't teach,
2:15:44
Speaker 1: We don't think about creating historical curriculums through the prism
2:15:49
Speaker 1: of today's issues. Right. So if you were to create
2:15:53
Speaker 1: a curriculum on history, and I almost wonder if there's
2:15:56
Speaker 1: a class to be made which is current of the
2:16:00
Speaker 1: history of current events. Okay, I need to come up
2:16:03
Speaker 1: with a better class of that. But so that Okay,
2:16:07
Speaker 1: the Middle East is in the news, let's teach history
2:16:09
Speaker 1: of the Middle East to understand that, right, And it
2:16:14
Speaker 1: seems like a simple thing to do. Here's the context
2:16:17
Speaker 1: and we go. But that's really what's missing in our curriculum.
2:16:22
Speaker 1: We probably would be in this and I think this
2:16:26
Speaker 1: is what's look the politicizing of of of education curriculums,
2:16:34
Speaker 1: particularly in Middle schools and high schools is a real
2:16:37
Speaker 1: problem when everybody wants their point of view reinforced in
2:16:40
Speaker 1: how history is taught rather than just getting getting people
2:16:45
Speaker 1: more knowledgeable. I mean, when you look at how many
2:16:47
Speaker 1: times we've been drawn into a hot conflict in the
2:16:50
Speaker 1: Middle East, and how little in high school we spend
2:16:53
Speaker 1: in history classes teaching how World War One created this
2:16:58
Speaker 1: mess and the fall of the Ottoman it seems to
2:17:00
Speaker 1: be kind of messed up when we you know, today
2:17:05
Speaker 1: sixteen and seventeen year olds may end up fighting a
2:17:08
Speaker 1: war in the Middle East, may end up fighting a
2:17:10
Speaker 1: war in China. What do we teach about Taiwan? What
2:17:14
Speaker 1: do we teach about the rise of communist China? You know,
2:17:18
Speaker 1: we're tero you want to talk about you know, I
2:17:20
Speaker 1: complain about our lack of of how we just gloss
2:17:24
Speaker 1: over World War One and just teach it through the
2:17:25
Speaker 1: prison of World War two? What kind of thing about
2:17:29
Speaker 1: your own For those of you ask yourself how well
2:17:32
Speaker 1: you feel like you were educated about China? Say pre mao, okay,
2:17:38
Speaker 1: and even then, you know, we we do a little
2:17:41
Speaker 1: bit of mao, right, But it's really quickly there's a
2:17:44
Speaker 1: Nixon goes to China, YadA, YadA, YadA. We kind of
2:17:47
Speaker 1: kind of fight China a little bit during the Korean War,
2:17:52
Speaker 1: there's some normalization with then Chao Ping, YadA, YadA, YadA.
2:17:55
Speaker 1: Then there's the Olympics, and you know, we don't really
2:17:59
Speaker 1: teach the history of China and Asia in general. And
2:18:04
Speaker 1: yet I could argue the twenty first you know, if
2:18:07
Speaker 1: the twentieth century was all about sort of the re
2:18:15
Speaker 1: it was all about sort of the I guess you
2:18:19
Speaker 1: could call it the the de empiring of Europe. Right,
2:18:25
Speaker 1: Europe was sort of nothing but a series of sort
2:18:28
Speaker 1: of of empires trying to control it in some form
2:18:31
Speaker 1: or another, and the twentieth century was sort of an
2:18:34
Speaker 1: attempt to put an end to that, right, And it's
2:18:36
Speaker 1: sort of and it did. I think the twenty first
2:18:39
Speaker 1: century is going to be all about sort of reshaping
2:18:44
Speaker 1: the power structures in Asia. And yet our education system
2:18:48
Speaker 1: does very little in making sure we're fairly informed about
2:18:53
Speaker 1: the history of Asian civilizations, of Asian governments of China
2:18:56
Speaker 1: in particular. So yeah, we need to we need to
2:19:02
Speaker 1: think about our history. Curriculums should be tied to active
2:19:08
Speaker 1: current events, you know, sort of within a ten year
2:19:11
Speaker 1: period in order, because frankly, if students, I know, I
2:19:17
Speaker 1: got more animated about something, if I learned something and
2:19:20
Speaker 1: then I saw something related to it in the paper
2:19:22
Speaker 1: or you related to it in the current events, it
2:19:25
Speaker 1: actually sunk in more. So it would just be better teaching. Look,
2:19:29
Speaker 1: the best teachers figure this out, you know. I remember
2:19:32
Speaker 1: having a great government teacher who was who did this
2:19:34
Speaker 1: really well? But the best teachers figure figure that out.
2:19:38
Speaker 1: All right, last question, uh for for today before I
2:19:41
Speaker 1: get to my uh my sports viewing guide slash conversation
2:19:44
Speaker 1: starters for you, per your suggestion, I watched Death by Lightning.
2:19:48
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it, but found it too short, so I
2:19:50
Speaker 1: read the book. I kept rolling my eyes at how
2:19:52
Speaker 1: often it mentioned national unity around Garfield. Made me sad
2:19:54
Speaker 1: to realize I can't imagine that kind of unity today.
2:19:57
Speaker 1: Was the country really that united in grief and anger
2:19:59
Speaker 1: over its assas nation? Or did the author take some
2:20:01
Speaker 1: license loving the podcast? So just a reminder there are
2:20:03
Speaker 1: other sports besides college football and baseball, Melanie, I hear you,
2:20:06
Speaker 1: and I've got plenty of baseball takes. They're coming. This
2:20:09
Speaker 1: is just the heart of college football season, trust me.
2:20:12
Speaker 1: Pictures and catchers report, what do we add like less
2:20:14
Speaker 1: than ten weeks? So I'm there, right, pictures and catchers
2:20:17
Speaker 1: are I think we're like eight weeks away. I got you, Melanie,
2:20:20
Speaker 1: don't worry, So can I can I recommend another book
2:20:29
Speaker 1: that I think would because I you know, do I
2:20:33
Speaker 1: think there was definitely real unity around Garfield because think
2:20:37
Speaker 1: about this? Okay, what I think? What? What the what?
2:20:40
Speaker 1: The movie did a terrible with the mini series terrible.
2:20:44
Speaker 1: I'm too strong. I just I was glad it was done,
2:20:48
Speaker 1: and it's so disappointed in the execution, okay, because I
2:20:52
Speaker 1: thought it was short. It gave short shrift to too
2:20:54
Speaker 1: many things. But there were two aspects to the story
2:20:59
Speaker 1: that the death by lightning, as the mini series just
2:21:01
Speaker 1: never really did a good job of showcasing. One was
2:21:05
Speaker 1: the fact that he gets shot, he lives for months.
2:21:10
Speaker 1: So that's why there was this sort of national think
2:21:13
Speaker 1: about it. Okay, there was this was what's the latest
2:21:16
Speaker 1: on the president? You know, is he running the country
2:21:19
Speaker 1: or not? Like, how does it? So there was it
2:21:22
Speaker 1: did become a national obsession. And while he's still alive,
2:21:27
Speaker 1: we have the trial of Gauteau, and the trial was
2:21:30
Speaker 1: the first trial of the century that everybody paid attention
2:21:34
Speaker 1: to and in d C. Just to get a ticket
2:21:37
Speaker 1: to attend the trial was like a was a big
2:21:41
Speaker 1: deal in society. People wanted to be able to say, oh,
2:21:44
Speaker 1: I was at the Guitou trial today, I saw him go.
2:21:46
Speaker 2: Crazy again today.
2:21:48
Speaker 1: I don't think it captured sort of that aspect of it.
2:21:51
Speaker 1: So it I think in the book and sort of
2:21:55
Speaker 1: destiny of the Republic, which is what Death by Lightning's
2:21:57
Speaker 1: based on. Technically, this other Garfield book is called Dark Horse,
2:22:02
Speaker 1: written by a Senate staffer some twenty five years ago,
2:22:06
Speaker 1: but very you know, I like the more detail it
2:22:10
Speaker 1: goes into the Republican convention, gives you a lot more
2:22:14
Speaker 1: on that, which is a political junkie. I just love
2:22:16
Speaker 1: and I do always want to remind people, you know,
2:22:19
Speaker 1: the mythology that just anybody could become the nominee at
2:22:23
Speaker 1: a convention is the Garfield story. And it was sort
2:22:28
Speaker 1: of because it happened once it became the myth that
2:22:30
Speaker 1: sort of made political conventions. We've all dreamed of a
2:22:34
Speaker 1: convention taking over the process, when only time that happened
2:22:41
Speaker 1: was in the eighteen eighty Chicago Republican Convention. So I
2:22:46
Speaker 1: think the book does a good job of that, but
2:22:48
Speaker 1: I do think the series gave short shrift to the
2:22:51
Speaker 1: fact that this was a that he was alive for
2:22:55
Speaker 1: months and it was due to poor medical treatment that
2:22:57
Speaker 1: he died. Right. The bullet didn't kill him, poor medical
2:23:01
Speaker 1: treatment killed them. Uh. And then the second thing was
2:23:04
Speaker 1: the the the circus, that was the Goodeau trial itself,
2:23:10
Speaker 1: and I think it didn't necessarily capture that what what
2:23:14
Speaker 1: the public was feeling. But there's a reason Chester Arthur flips.
2:23:18
Speaker 1: There's a reason Chester Arthur right. And oh, by the way,
2:23:21
Speaker 1: the public blamed Arthur at first as part of you know,
2:23:27
Speaker 1: sort of this this that that this was all due
2:23:30
Speaker 1: to Roscoe Conkling and all of that. So yeah, let's
2:23:37
Speaker 1: just say that I am That's why I was disappointed
2:23:41
Speaker 1: it because I think two of the more fascinating parts
2:23:43
Speaker 1: of it. Look at they did an okay job at
2:23:45
Speaker 1: the convention, and they allowed that process to play out.
2:23:49
Speaker 1: I want to I got I'm obsessed with I'm going
2:23:51
Speaker 1: to end with this here. I'm obsessed with Purvis. And
2:23:54
Speaker 1: so during my during this long car trip I just
2:23:57
Speaker 1: took last week, I listen to a whole bunch of
2:24:01
Speaker 1: sort of companion. Pluribis podcasts, not some with the official podcast,
2:24:06
Speaker 1: but but some on our friends. The Ringer love those guys.
2:24:09
Speaker 1: The watch their enthusiasm is a lot of fun. And
2:24:17
Speaker 1: what Vince Gilligan is known for is showing you methodical process.
2:24:24
Speaker 1: Right Like if you watch Pluribus, every time she calls
2:24:28
Speaker 1: the phone spoiler lo Art and she's calling, you know,
2:24:33
Speaker 1: the hive mind for stuff in the show, you have
2:24:38
Speaker 1: to hear the entire message tape, recorded message play over
2:24:45
Speaker 1: and over. Right. He wants to show that process. He
2:24:48
Speaker 1: doesn't give you short shrift, he doesn't speed through it.
2:24:51
Speaker 1: He wants you to absorb the process of living. Having
2:24:55
Speaker 1: every time they have a conversation, she has to listen
2:24:57
Speaker 1: to that recording over and over again. And you have
2:25:00
Speaker 1: to do it too. I think what Death by Lightning
2:25:04
Speaker 1: didn't do is it was so rushed in trying to
2:25:07
Speaker 1: put everything that should have been an eight to ten
2:25:09
Speaker 1: episode mini series into four episodes. Because the folks that
2:25:14
Speaker 1: I don't know this, but I'm going to have an
2:25:16
Speaker 1: educated guest, folks at Netflix didn't think Garfield was going
2:25:19
Speaker 1: to be that interesting to people, that he was not
2:25:21
Speaker 1: a known character. Guiteau was not a known assassin all
2:25:24
Speaker 1: of those things. So they said, let's do this it
2:25:27
Speaker 1: as an experiment. It did well, and it shows it
2:25:29
Speaker 1: could have done eight, not four. But they took eight
2:25:32
Speaker 1: to ten episodes of content and shoved it into four,
2:25:37
Speaker 1: and they rushed things. They didn't show the process, show
2:25:40
Speaker 1: me the trial, show more of the medical care, show
2:25:44
Speaker 1: more of the convention. That's what Vince Gilligan would have
2:25:47
Speaker 1: done with the content, and that's not what was done here.
2:26:02
Speaker 1: All right, let me get to a little bit of
2:26:06
Speaker 1: my weekend, of my week ahead. In college football, we
2:26:10
Speaker 1: have no college football playf I will be I will
2:26:13
Speaker 1: be uploading two more at least three more drops before
2:26:19
Speaker 1: we get to the MIAMU Ohouse Gate game on December
2:26:23
Speaker 1: thirty first, so I will have a lot more to
2:26:25
Speaker 1: say about that game, I am. What's funny is that,
2:26:29
Speaker 1: you know, we fans, we never forget the slights against teams.
2:26:34
Speaker 1: We play like you know, Catholics versus Convicts. When it
2:26:37
Speaker 1: comes to Notre Dame, we'll shoot that happened in nineteen
2:26:39
Speaker 1: eighty eight. That's over thirty years ago, right, almost forty
2:26:42
Speaker 1: years ago. Now on that front, I brought up the
2:26:47
Speaker 1: Penn State game. I think that you know, my frustration
2:26:50
Speaker 1: back during that national title game, Well, that happened in
2:26:52
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, okay, and now we have Miami winning
2:26:56
Speaker 1: eleven games this year. It's the first time that's happened
2:26:57
Speaker 1: since before my daughter was born. And she's one years old,
2:27:00
Speaker 1: so you know this, you know, so my bitterness about
2:27:04
Speaker 1: Ohio State feels very recent. My bitterness about the Big
2:27:08
Speaker 1: twelve official who threw the unnecessary flag that handed Jim
2:27:12
Speaker 1: Tressel the controversial national title that year. Terry Porter is
2:27:19
Speaker 1: a name I'll never forget. I'm sorry, mister Porter. If
2:27:23
Speaker 1: you're a listener, you're you're you're probably tired of us
2:27:27
Speaker 1: Miami fans harassing you by name. Let's just say be
2:27:32
Speaker 1: glad that that that the the bad flag didn't happen
2:27:35
Speaker 1: in the social media era, and that that had happened
2:27:38
Speaker 1: back in January of two thousand and three. So, you know,
2:27:43
Speaker 1: Miami Ohio State is a quote unquote rivalry just lives
2:27:46
Speaker 1: in the minds of Miami fans twenty five years ago
2:27:50
Speaker 1: who were alive back then. It is not with today's
2:27:53
Speaker 1: Miami fans even you know, I have to explain it
2:27:56
Speaker 1: to my daughter, you show it. Okay, that's why it's
2:28:00
Speaker 1: not you know, it's not inherent on that front. So
2:28:04
Speaker 1: but needless to say, I'll have some interesting I'll have
2:28:08
Speaker 1: more to say about that game. But look, we're there
2:28:14
Speaker 1: are a few things that I actually wanted to bring
2:28:16
Speaker 1: up in the sports world that are off the field
2:28:19
Speaker 1: that I think are worth having a conversation about. First
2:28:23
Speaker 1: of all, are we suddenly moving? You know? One of
2:28:27
Speaker 1: the things in sports stadium developments was we've always go
2:28:32
Speaker 1: back and forth we go, and you can sort of
2:28:36
Speaker 1: see it in the landscape if you go to older
2:28:38
Speaker 1: major metropolitan areas. Right. So, when I first moved to Washington,
2:28:45
Speaker 1: all of the basketball games and hockey games were played
2:28:48
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. It was called the Capital Center. It
2:28:51
Speaker 1: was in Landover, Maryland. And back then you had arenas
2:28:56
Speaker 1: in suburban locations because there was this movement out of
2:29:01
Speaker 1: the cities and the rise of the suburbs. So sports
2:29:04
Speaker 1: owners thought they wanted to be where the people lived
2:29:07
Speaker 1: at night, not necessarily where the people worked in the day. Well, then,
2:29:11
Speaker 1: of course, another generation happens, and then there's a movement
2:29:13
Speaker 1: to bring all of the arenas and football stadiums back
2:29:17
Speaker 1: into cities, right, And we had this movement in the
2:29:20
Speaker 1: nineties and in the aughts where everything was being brought
2:29:26
Speaker 1: back into the cities. Well, in Washington, we're still trying
2:29:30
Speaker 1: to bring a stadium back into the cities. But if
2:29:35
Speaker 1: you've noticed, we are kind of in a period now
2:29:38
Speaker 1: where there is as much movement out of cities again
2:29:42
Speaker 1: as there is in sports stadiums coming into the cities.
2:29:45
Speaker 1: The first of this was Atlanta, where they decided they
2:29:48
Speaker 1: don't play in Atlanta anymore. They play in Cobb County, right,
2:29:51
Speaker 1: They left the city of Atlanta, and it's weird. It
2:29:55
Speaker 1: bums me that baseball is there, But it turns out
2:29:57
Speaker 1: it was the right business decision. They did this based
2:29:59
Speaker 1: on where are the majority of their fan base, and
2:30:02
Speaker 1: they decided it was Cobb County and it worked. You've
2:30:05
Speaker 1: got certainly Dallas, all right, You've got the hockey and
2:30:09
Speaker 1: basketball are in downtown Dallas, but the baseball and football
2:30:13
Speaker 1: are in the suburbs. And they continue to be in
2:30:14
Speaker 1: the suburbs. But then again, the sort of the Dallas metroplex.
2:30:18
Speaker 1: Is there a suburb anymore or is it just a
2:30:21
Speaker 1: series of cities. Arlington is growing like crazy, Frisco and
2:30:24
Speaker 1: Denton is growing like crazy. So it may be that
2:30:28
Speaker 1: those are forward looking things, but it is notable to
2:30:35
Speaker 1: me if the Chiefs made the decision to leave Kansas City, Missouri,
2:30:38
Speaker 1: and they're going to go to Kansas City, Kansas, which
2:30:41
Speaker 1: means I don't know how many of their fans are
2:30:43
Speaker 1: going to do that, but I'm guessing they got a
2:30:45
Speaker 1: better deal from Kansas to develop in Kansas than in
2:30:48
Speaker 1: Kansas City, Missouri. You've got the Chicago Bears threatening to
2:30:53
Speaker 1: move to another state and to pull what the Washington
2:30:57
Speaker 1: then Redskins now commanders did by moving from the district
2:31:01
Speaker 1: to the suburbs. Now they want to go back to
2:31:04
Speaker 1: the district because that's where their fans wanted them to be. Meanwhile,
2:31:07
Speaker 1: the Bears, who have this incredible set up Soldier Field,
2:31:12
Speaker 1: in some ways is in the perfect location in a
2:31:14
Speaker 1: city on the lake. I think it should be a
2:31:18
Speaker 1: tremendous home field advantage. Obviously, they want more luxury boxes,
2:31:21
Speaker 1: they want to make more money out of these things.
2:31:24
Speaker 1: But now they're talking about moving into Indiana to northwest Indiana.
2:31:29
Speaker 1: Is this really a good idea? Do you really want all.
2:31:32
Speaker 2: Of this there?
2:31:35
Speaker 1: This is a case where I bring this up because
2:31:38
Speaker 1: I think the NFL as a league does not get
2:31:41
Speaker 1: involved enough in these stadium decisions.
2:31:44
Speaker 2: Right.
2:31:44
Speaker 1: The most egregious thing that they let happen that I
2:31:47
Speaker 1: still think is a stain on the NFL is letting
2:31:50
Speaker 1: the Chargers leave San Diego. I mean, we now have
2:31:53
Speaker 1: a zombie franchise in LA. There is nobody that cares
2:31:56
Speaker 1: about the Chargers in LA. Unfortunately, I wish there were more.
2:32:00
Speaker 1: Know there's a handful of fans. Don't get me wrong,
2:32:02
Speaker 1: you all five LA Chargers fans. My apologies, but the
2:32:06
Speaker 1: San Diego fan base was tremendous. All right. You had
2:32:10
Speaker 1: an owner that had no trust with the community, and
2:32:12
Speaker 1: you have a community that didn't believe in taxpayer funding
2:32:14
Speaker 1: the stadiums. Okay, well, then the NFL should have stepped in.
2:32:17
Speaker 1: What's in the best interest of the NFL keeping their
2:32:21
Speaker 1: fan base in San Diego, not diluting this mess in LA.
2:32:24
Speaker 1: But instead, what did they really want? Well, they wanted
2:32:26
Speaker 1: to help an owner who couldn't afford a stadium he
2:32:29
Speaker 1: was building in so far and he wanted a second
2:32:32
Speaker 1: tenant in order to be able to have this magnificent stadium.
2:32:38
Speaker 1: So the NFL prioritized having this incredible stadium. God love
2:32:42
Speaker 1: it so fi. It's a beautiful stadium. It's a great,
2:32:45
Speaker 1: you know, host stadium for Super Bowls, for National title games,
2:32:49
Speaker 1: for Taylor Swift concerts, you name it. But without the
2:32:54
Speaker 1: guarantee of a second tenant, it was going to make
2:32:56
Speaker 1: it really hard for the owner to make that work.
2:33:01
Speaker 1: And so and so the NFL prioritized sort of an
2:33:05
Speaker 1: owner's needs over what was in the best interests of
2:33:09
Speaker 1: the fans. And I be really careful here, NFL letting
2:33:13
Speaker 1: the If the Bears end up moving to Indiana, I
2:33:18
Speaker 1: would argue the move out of the Washington to Maryland
2:33:21
Speaker 1: was a mistake and that was a Jack Cank Cook.
2:33:24
Speaker 1: Can't blame that one on Dan Schneider, all right, that
2:33:27
Speaker 1: was a Jack can Cook situation that turned out to
2:33:31
Speaker 1: be a bad business decision. Not just a bad fan decision,
2:33:35
Speaker 1: but bad fan decisions are bad business decisions. And in
2:33:40
Speaker 1: this case, I think the NFL needs to be smarter. Look,
2:33:44
Speaker 1: I know the only way owners can make money outside
2:33:47
Speaker 1: of the socialistic enterprise that is the National Football League,
2:33:51
Speaker 1: where you sort of have a salary cap and use
2:33:53
Speaker 1: all the shared revenue et cetera. Right that the only
2:33:57
Speaker 1: the differentiator for individual owners are the luxury boxes, are
2:34:01
Speaker 1: the season tickets, is the stadium experience, is parking, is concessions,
2:34:05
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I get that, but at the end
2:34:11
Speaker 1: of the day, the owners to me are not you know,
2:34:13
Speaker 1: these are not small businessmen. These are not the many
2:34:16
Speaker 1: of them are not the best in price when it
2:34:18
Speaker 1: comes to business decisions, and they're not always looking out
2:34:22
Speaker 1: for the interest of the NFL or the interests of
2:34:23
Speaker 1: the NFL fan base, and the league I think needs
2:34:27
Speaker 1: to get more involved in these stadium decisions because these
2:34:29
Speaker 1: are NFL facilities as well as team facilities. And considering
2:34:34
Speaker 1: you are a socialistic enterprise, this is not a free
2:34:37
Speaker 1: market system. It just isn't. Don't pretend it is every
2:34:42
Speaker 1: once in a while when it comes to stadium development.
2:34:46
Speaker 1: And I do think the NFL, you know, needs to
2:34:49
Speaker 1: preserve you know, it's it's kind of embarrassing that the
2:34:52
Speaker 1: New York teams don't play in New York. I think
2:34:54
Speaker 1: it would be embarrassing that the Chicago team didn't play
2:34:56
Speaker 1: in Chicago. And is it going to matter? Maybe in
2:34:59
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, maybe it doesn't matter in
2:35:01
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, but you sort of tear
2:35:04
Speaker 1: away at the fabric and at the culture of a town,
2:35:07
Speaker 1: and so you know, whether it's you know, making sure
2:35:14
Speaker 1: that Kansas City move isn't going to alienate a big
2:35:17
Speaker 1: chunk of the fan base, making sure the Bears going
2:35:20
Speaker 1: to Gary, Indiana isn't going to alienate the fan base,
2:35:24
Speaker 1: making sure that you don't abandon and basically lose out
2:35:28
Speaker 1: on a bunch of fans in San Diego that should
2:35:33
Speaker 1: still be its own fan. I mean, you have the
2:35:35
Speaker 1: Chargers are having a tremendous season and no one cares
2:35:38
Speaker 1: right and you know, look, you barely can get Angelino's
2:35:42
Speaker 1: to care that much about the Rams. But at least
2:35:44
Speaker 1: the Rams have some sort of identity and history in LA.
2:35:49
Speaker 1: And I do think I've got friends in LA whose
2:35:53
Speaker 1: kids have adopted the Rams. You have not seen the
2:35:56
Speaker 1: same adoption of the Chargers. Look, the Clippers shouldn't be
2:35:59
Speaker 1: in LA sharing a market with the Lakers. They should
2:36:02
Speaker 1: also probably be in San Diego, and the Chargers shouldn't
2:36:05
Speaker 1: be in that market because you realize the Chargers are
2:36:08
Speaker 1: the third team in that market. The Rams are one
2:36:13
Speaker 1: the raiders in Las Vegas are two because of their
2:36:16
Speaker 1: old ties to Los Angeles when they're good. USC is three,
2:36:21
Speaker 1: and then you finally get to the LA Chargers. But
2:36:27
Speaker 1: that is something that needs to go in there very quickly.
2:36:31
Speaker 1: Your weekend guide to viewing and conversations you want to
2:36:35
Speaker 1: have to change to look like you're on top of
2:36:38
Speaker 1: things in the sports world. One thing you can mock
2:36:41
Speaker 1: and make fun of is how Netflix did a terrible
2:36:45
Speaker 1: job of guessing which games would be relevant and which
2:36:49
Speaker 1: ones which ones weren't. So other than gamblers, there really
2:36:55
Speaker 1: is no reason to watch The Christmas games are Chris
2:37:00
Speaker 1: get Cowboys Commanders totally meaningless Commanders. Maybe with a third
2:37:04
Speaker 1: string quarterback, we won't even have Tyler Hennike Heinike to
2:37:09
Speaker 1: root for or enjoy. Lions Vikings. Lions need a lot
2:37:14
Speaker 1: of help. They got to win two games and hope
2:37:16
Speaker 1: the Packers lose two games on that front. In Broncos Chiefs,
2:37:21
Speaker 1: Broncos are playing for a piece of the one seed
2:37:24
Speaker 1: and they should annihilate the Chiefs given the Chiefs are
2:37:28
Speaker 1: now going to be on a third string quarterback on
2:37:30
Speaker 1: this front, So you know what that means. It means
2:37:36
Speaker 1: and I can't believe I'm saying this, but the Christmas
2:37:38
Speaker 1: Day NBA games are more watchable than the Christmas Day
2:37:43
Speaker 1: NFL games. Look, the NFL tried to basically bully the NBA,
2:37:47
Speaker 1: and it really did ruin NBA last year the NBA
2:37:50
Speaker 1: Christmas Day games last year. But guess what karma is
2:37:53
Speaker 1: a you know what, and the NFL thought, we're putting.
2:37:56
Speaker 2: On the Cowboys and Patrick.
2:37:58
Speaker 1: Mahomes, We're going to be great. Whoops, not so much, right,
2:38:04
Speaker 1: not so fast. So instead you get what I think
2:38:08
Speaker 1: is that I'll give you three games all. Look, the
2:38:12
Speaker 1: five games are good, but I would argue three stand apart,
2:38:16
Speaker 1: and you could say four of the five are worth watching,
2:38:18
Speaker 1: but they're even an opening game Cavs Nicks. I love
2:38:21
Speaker 1: watching Jalen Brunson play basketball, and if you haven't seen
2:38:24
Speaker 1: him play this year, this isn't a waste your time.
2:38:28
Speaker 1: But the best game is the one, hopefully that starts
2:38:31
Speaker 1: before you eat your Christmas dinner, and that is Spurs
2:38:34
Speaker 1: Thunder Wemby Baby, the best team in the league against
2:38:38
Speaker 1: the best player in the league or the most unstoppable
2:38:41
Speaker 1: player in the league. I don't know if he's the
2:38:42
Speaker 1: best yet, but my God when it is just he
2:38:46
Speaker 1: does things you don't see other ordinary human beings do.
2:38:50
Speaker 1: He's the alien, right, He's the one of one, whatever
2:38:52
Speaker 1: you want to call it, it is amazing. Go watch
2:38:56
Speaker 1: some Wemby if you haven't been a fan of the NBA.
2:38:59
Speaker 1: Watch this is the future Oklahoma City as a team
2:39:04
Speaker 1: and Wemby as an individual. This is the future of
2:39:07
Speaker 1: basketball being played on heights. We've never seen the game played.
2:39:12
Speaker 2: Go watch it.
2:39:13
Speaker 1: The next game Mavericks Warriors. You get to see a
2:39:16
Speaker 1: little bit of Cooper Flag. This dude is for real,
2:39:19
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to watch. Plus you get Steph Curry,
2:39:21
Speaker 1: so you get old and new, young and old Steph Curry,
2:39:24
Speaker 1: I think technically old enough to beat Cooper Flag's father,
2:39:27
Speaker 1: that's the age difference between the two. But it was like,
2:39:30
Speaker 1: you know, getting to watch the brief period. We got
2:39:33
Speaker 1: to watch the overlap between Kobe and Lebron. You get
2:39:36
Speaker 1: to see this overlap between Cooper Flag and Steph Curry.
2:39:40
Speaker 1: Rockets Lakers. Hey, it's Luca versus the All Star team
2:39:44
Speaker 1: that is the Rockets with Kevin Durant and all these
2:39:48
Speaker 1: new young players that are absolutely worth watching on that front,
2:39:52
Speaker 1: and then the nightcap is Nuggets Timberwolves, and there's nobody
2:39:56
Speaker 1: that there are two people I really enjoy watching play
2:39:59
Speaker 1: basketball these days. One is Victor one Banyama and the
2:40:02
Speaker 1: other is NICOLEA. Jokic and Nuggets timber Buls And and
2:40:06
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a I've got a soft spot for
2:40:08
Speaker 1: Anthony Edwards. So I think this is a day and
2:40:11
Speaker 1: I'm normally you don't hear me as a big proponent
2:40:13
Speaker 1: of regular season NBA, but good for the NBA, this
2:40:17
Speaker 1: is a great showcase. The NFL blew it thought they
2:40:19
Speaker 1: were showcasing some of their some of their best teams
2:40:23
Speaker 1: and some of their most marketable teams, and it imploded
2:40:26
Speaker 1: in their face. They get that. As far as bowls
2:40:29
Speaker 1: over the next few days that are worth you disrupting things,
2:40:37
Speaker 1: take a look at the Cal Hawaii game. Hawaii's been
2:40:40
Speaker 1: sneaky good this year. It's not gonna look good for
2:40:44
Speaker 1: the ACC, but this will be a semi home game
2:40:46
Speaker 1: for Hawaii. That'll be a fascinating fun day after Christmas.
2:40:52
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, none of the games are worth watching.
2:40:54
Speaker 1: There's no if you're saying I've got to watch college
2:40:57
Speaker 1: football the day after Christmas on the twin six. You're
2:41:01
Speaker 1: either an alum of Central Michigan in Northwestern that's the
2:41:04
Speaker 1: noon game. You're an alum of Minnesota New Mexico, although
2:41:08
Speaker 1: watching New Mexico beat Minnesota would be a lot of
2:41:10
Speaker 1: fun seeing the Big Ten lose to a team like
2:41:12
Speaker 1: New Mexico. And then there's you know, the Fighting pit
2:41:15
Speaker 1: Bulls aka FIU in its first Bowl game in a while,
2:41:19
Speaker 1: playing the football program that was created by a former
2:41:24
Speaker 1: University MIMI head coach, Larry Coker ut San Antonio. But
2:41:28
Speaker 1: let's be honest, none of those are worth it. I
2:41:30
Speaker 1: will say this. The Saturday games are a lot of fun.
2:41:34
Speaker 1: You've got Penn State Clemson would be a lot more
2:41:36
Speaker 1: fun as a meaningful game, but still not a bad
2:41:40
Speaker 1: game that's going to be played in Yankee Stadium. You've
2:41:43
Speaker 1: got Georgia Tech BYU. This should be Notre Dame BYU,
2:41:46
Speaker 1: but we're going to get Notre Dame BYU is a
2:41:49
Speaker 1: series which, by the way, what a great series. The
2:41:51
Speaker 1: Mormons versus the Catholics, Right, that'll be a lot of fun. Sorry,
2:41:55
Speaker 1: USC that you guys are afraid of your playing nine
2:41:58
Speaker 1: Big Ten games and you don't want to play note
2:42:00
Speaker 1: name every year. God bless you. But you know what,
2:42:02
Speaker 1: BYU Notited Dame feels like a pretty good series. But
2:42:04
Speaker 1: b WHYU Georgia Tech isn't a bad second place? And
2:42:06
Speaker 1: I think both teams will care never bet on the
2:42:09
Speaker 1: grown ass men of BYU. Remember they're all in their
2:42:13
Speaker 1: early twenties because they've all done their missions, so you
2:42:17
Speaker 1: don't have the misspent youth if you will. And then
2:42:20
Speaker 1: the other game that I mildly interested in is whoever's
2:42:24
Speaker 1: suiting up for LSU playing the Houston Cougars. Houston's a
2:42:30
Speaker 1: school that I have a feeling is only going to
2:42:33
Speaker 1: become more of a player in college athletics. They already
2:42:37
Speaker 1: are in college basketball. There's real money down there at
2:42:40
Speaker 1: that campus. There's real enthusiasm, it's a growing alumni base.
2:42:44
Speaker 1: I just have a feeling Houston has a chance to
2:42:47
Speaker 1: be to be interesting there. So there's your weekend guide,
2:42:51
Speaker 1: a little bit of a few little nuggets to have
2:42:55
Speaker 1: fun conversations with about sports, to make it look like
2:42:58
Speaker 1: you have an athletic subscription. But be careful trying to
2:43:03
Speaker 1: use some of these games as an excuse to to
2:43:06
Speaker 1: avoid relatives, because honestly, there's the NBA is really the
2:43:12
Speaker 1: only thing that's worth worth saying. Hey, let's set let's
2:43:16
Speaker 1: let's set the snacks down a minute, let's check this out.
2:43:20
Speaker 1: So enjoy, enjoy your holiday. Like I said, I will
2:43:24
Speaker 1: have one more feed drop this week. It's sort of
2:43:26
Speaker 1: a repackage of an interview I do with Jasmine Crockett.
2:43:30
Speaker 1: But I do have some new information at the top
2:43:31
Speaker 1: of that, so it is worth your time there. And
2:43:34
Speaker 1: with that I will I'll see you next week after
2:43:39
Speaker 1: the Christmas holidays. I hope you have a safe, happy
2:43:42
Speaker 1: and healthy long Legion