Latest / Books4Guys / The Wolves of K Street | Brody Mullins on Power, Lobbying, and Corporate Influence

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The Wolves of K Street | Brody Mullins on Power, Lobbying, and Corporate Influence · Books4Guys

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know you've been there a long time.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is that where you've been, I mean, most of your life?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I'm actually born and raised in DC, one of the weird people who sort of grew up in DC and hasn't left.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I really tried to leave, but you know, all uh if you're into political journalism, you know, where else do you go?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I guess Nashville would be a good spot.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: But interesting.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I I'm not from here, but when I meet someone that's been born and raised here, it's kind of unique too.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh you you've never left Nashville, but there's so many transplants.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't come across too many people.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sure if you when you tell people you're born and raised and been there a long time, they're like, interesting.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: But Brody, man, thank you so much for coming on the Books for Guys podcast today.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super interested in talking with you as I came across your profile, award-winning journalist, and I saw your book, The Wolves of K Street, and it just caught my attention as it's not it's a book that I it's a style of book and a story that I haven't come across, haven't talked to anyone else about, haven't seen anything written like this before.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started looking at your background and just how long you've been a journalist, investigative, and all kinds of different things.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm super curious just to know more about your work in that space too.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: But but Brody, we kind of dove into it, you know, from the DC area.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: You've been a journalist for a long time.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just to start, what what where did that interest come from?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: How did you how did you get into that space and and what led you to go that route with your career?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, thanks for having me for starters.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not sure.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those uh one of those weird things where like I when I was in elementary school, I'd for some reason decided I want to be a writer, certainly in high school.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in DC, politics, I guess, is kind of in your blood.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my both my parents were not directly in politics, but they worked for the government because, you know, that we're a company town and the company is the government.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they were super political, but like, you know, like the nightly news was on.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so you sort of saw that, and we get the Washington Post in the morning.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, I wanted to read the sports section, but you probably like skip over, you know, bump into some stories along the way.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then in high school, I just sort of liked reading uh biographies of presidents and reading about presidential campaigns.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, you know, it's like, how does anyone like whatever they're doing?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just something that kind of, I mean, it was super fortunate for me that at a young age, I was like, hey, I want to be a political reporter.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even more fortunate is that I lived in Washington, D.C.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So like I was there.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what something that we don't really talk about very often is, you know, DC, like Nashville and like many others, so you know, it's expensive place.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And an advantage I had is I could live with my parents.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're making, you know,$22,000 a year as a young reporter, that was fine because I'm with my parents.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that that does, though, block out a lot of other people from political journalism or more important, our government.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you want to be a Capitol Hill aide at 22 years old and you're making$30,000 a year, well, you can't afford it.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, that's sort of a problem we have in in government these days.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about, you know, like the proximity to things.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Do you ever think that if you weren't raised in DC that you would have done something different?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because you talk about like how influential that was in growing up, but if you grew up in Silicon Valley, do you think you would have gone into tech or just it's interesting to think about?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: If I grew up in Silicon Valley, I'd be a lot richer, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as we all would.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Brody, I'd love to talk, dive into your book, and I want to say the entire title.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So The Wolves of K Street, The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure there was a ton of research you had to do to to uncover, because you go back decades in this book.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Talk talk about just your the journey of research, the journey of Yeah.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So uh great question.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, I'd been a reporter in DC since I was in my twenties.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you know I never really wanted to write a book, but you know, I'm sort of researching reporting every day on the sort of the lobbying world and businesses and kind of like kind of training myself to become an expert in that space just by, you know, doing my job.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I never really wanted to write a book.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, reading a book is such a pain.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's hard hard to find time to read books.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: My book pile is too tall at this point.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so writing a book just seemed uh daunting.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then um the key moment was in uh 2015 when I was at the Wall Street Journal, uh, our main character, Evan Morris, a big time lobbyist for a company called Genentech, was found dead on a golf course outside of DC.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know anything about it and didn't know him and didn't know much about Genentech and didn't really cover him.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought, like, well, you know, this is interesting.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you're if you're a reporter and someone who's sort of in your space, you know, is found dead, he's 38 years old, on a golf course in like a traumatic fashion like that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed like my instincts were like, well, you know, there could be something here.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, long story short, I wrote a story about him and became a front page story for the Wall Street Journal.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when that story came out, I got all sorts of calls from Hollywood agents and movie producers and book agents and uh publishing houses who were like, hey, like you got to do something with this.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I still thought, like, you know what, uh right, I mean, how do you even do a book?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so my brother, Luke, was a reporter at the Washingtonian and is actually a much better writer and and a features writer.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he writes like sort of longer-term features and I was sort of more like doing investigative work.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and he was my brother.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, like, hey, if you're gonna start a project like this, you gotta go in with a friend or a buddy or a brother because it'd just be so boring by myself.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And like, you gotta you need someone to hold you accountable.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like someone like, we need to be in this together.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we decided to do it together, and that ended up being a great decision because it took an incredibly long time, but we kind of kept each other on path.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'd write a draft and he'd make it better, or I'd, you know, he'd be working on something and need more reporting, and I'd go do that for him.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole process took us like seven years.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that was because we didn't have a deadline.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: What we're writing about is the history of corporate power, how companies gain their influence in DC.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't like a story about Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't have to be now.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And our editor at our publisher, Simon Schuster, the editors there kept saying, take your time.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is a book about an era.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: This book is gonna stand the test of time.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to speed it up.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to come out at a certain point.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, we started writing in 2020, which was COVID.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We both have kids and wives and jobs.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, like this was sort of a backburner thing.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, my, if you want to talk more about the process, like my goal once it was time to write, was like, I'm gonna write for two hours a day.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: No more, but definitely not less.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had kids at the time I had a newborn, and when that kid took a nap, I like started writing.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when the kid woke up, like, writing was done.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And my thought was like, after a while, I realized if I can write two hours a day, and anyone can find two hours, like two hours is a lot of time, but like you can figure out how to do two hours, every, you know, weekends, everything.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you do two hours a day and in two hours, you can write 500 words in two hours, which isn't much.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 250 words in an hour shouldn't be much.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: After one week, you know, that's 3,500 words, which that's a deal, you know, two weeks, that's 7,000, that's a chapter.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Two, you know, and then just each, and now that wasn't a good chapter.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't perfectly written, but it was something.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, the hard part is putting the words down.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Once they're there, I I like kind of editing and moving around.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, giving you a longer answer than you want.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is like, it was just like brick by brick by brick brick.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly two years later, we're like, oh, we got a book, you know.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's interesting.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Cause like as an outside person looking at your book, I think journalists, oh man, it should be easy to write a book.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: You write all the time, you know, you're digging in, but you just with this subject and with having to dig back, I can, I can, I, you know, just again, the casual thinking in me, now that you're explaining it, I'm like, oh my gosh, like it it took you a few years.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: It would take me a decade to to start the book.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind though, we had jobs, we had kids.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like, you know, there's this image of like, you know, you you take your typewriter and you go off to a cabin in the woods and you start writing for 12 hours a day.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not what we're doing.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like that would have sped things up.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's a, you know, I think there's a advantage to writing like that, which is that it's it it all comes out faster because you're after two hours, it you mean you're you're into it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas every day we're taking a break, and the next day you kind of got to figure out, okay, where was I yesterday?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But also we didn't have that time.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: We don't, you know, you can't take three months out of your life and go to the cabin in the woods.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's also an advantage of doing it slowly, which is that you sort of see patterns and characters sort of slowly sort of come into existence and you realize, oh, you know, this chapter is great, but we need like a pre like we where did this guy come from?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's other things you think about when you're thinking about a book of seven years, you think about it uh you think of things that you wouldn't think of in seven months.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: What were some, Brody, what were some very, I don't know, just interesting things you learned about while writing this?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, without giving like a ton of things away in the book, but just like a couple of highlights, what are some things where you were like, whoa, this this changed the game?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'd, you know, pe people will be very interested to learn about this.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I mentioned this guy, Evan Morris, the dead body on the golf horse.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote that story for the Wall Street Journal.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I teamed up with my brother Luke, and then we like went to New York to pitch publishers and and we got a book deal.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And our publisher, our editor at Simon Schuster was like, okay, what's the book about?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, Well, was the book about this guy?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, didn't you read the story?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, No, no, no, what's it really about?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that made us think.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she actually said, go spend a year and go figure out what this is about.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not a story about this guy.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's not important enough.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is what does this guy tell us?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I covered lobbying for 20 years and covered how corporations and industries use their power and their political donations and their lobbyists and their influence to shape policy in DC, I never really knew the history of that.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so to answer your question, I found the history to be the most fascinating, even though it was out there.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I just never knew it and never looked at it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you what I mean.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right now we look at Washington, and for my entire life, I look at Washington, and like companies have all this power and influence, whether it's the tech companies or the crypto companies or the big banks or whoever.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: All these companies have this influence.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And little guys, regular people like me and you, you know, don't have much influence.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I and then you remember like in high school and college, you're like, oh, well, uh, you know, a hundred years ago, there was the Standard Oil and there was the JP Morgan and there was the railroad barons and like all that stuff.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, well, companies had all this power back then and they have power now, so they must have always had this power.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the revelation was that that was not true at all.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is that after that period, which was like the 1880s and 1890s, when companies had all this power and influence over our lives and the government society, the American people uh rebelled against that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we elected reformers to Congress in Washington who busted those trusts.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we call them monopolies now.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Back then they were called trusts.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had the antitrust laws were created, the Federal Trade Commission, we had the New Deal under Roosevelt, and from the New Deal to the Great Society under LBJ in the 1960s, the government grew and grew and grew.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And during that time, companies actually had very little influence.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So for that almost hundred-year stretch, maybe 89 years, companies had very little influence.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And starting in the 1970s, companies said, Holy crap, like we have no influence in DC, these rules and regulations have grown, the government's enormous, these companies and industries and business people are spending all their time or lots of their time complying with all these new rules and regulations, the EPA and clean water and you know, protecting all these animals.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, excuse me.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So around the 1970s, companies started building their influence machine.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So our book is really about that period from the 1970s to now, where companies really gained their influence.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what was fascinating is that before 1970, they didn't have influence.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought they did.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe what's more fascinating, which is not in our book, which is when our book came out, it was about how companies were the most powerful force in DC.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden they're starting to lose their influence.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, Donald Trump is increasingly attacking companies, J.D.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Vance is sometimes siding with labor unions and blue-collar workers over companies.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Some Republicans are becoming more populist.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of a sudden, all the influence that companies had it from the 1970s to now, which we write about in our book, are now like they're starting to lose influence.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we see that on trade policy.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like for our entire lifetimes, Republicans and Democrats were like, free trade.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now both sides are like, no, no free trade.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And corporations hate that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um so just one example of how we could be moving back to a progressive era or something different from the way the last 50 years have been.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So interesting.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about that at before this conversation.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, the pendulum seems to be kind of swinging back another direction.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: More fascinating to me right now because like I don't know how old you are, but like the world's always worked one way in my lifetime.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's changing.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's changing so fast.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you look back in history, I'm not like a big history buff, but you're like, oh, there's the progressive era, and that's followed by the roaring 20s, and that's followed by the this, and it's followed.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's always an era that's followed by something.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And right now, like literally this second, we're in the middle of a transition and we don't know what's next.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But like this era of both Republicans and Democrats coming together to support corporate America on globalization and on trade and on lower tax and like all these things, immigration.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like our country has always been like, immigrants, come here.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're like, get out, you know.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we don't know where we're going, but like we're at this pivot point, which is super exciting and scary at the same time.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, all the above.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say the same thing.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, just when people it's so funny the conversations you have with people now, and like nobody knows anything.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Things change so fast.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: We've gone through so much, and it's like, man, I'm just I'm gonna go along for the ride to to whatever today brings because who knows what's gonna happen, or who knows what what I'm gonna see on the news or or what's going on in the world.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is just truly mind-blowing.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And my I totally, my blinders are politics.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, what I mean, what you're saying is like things are changing all over the place.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: But like right now, I mean, literally in the last week, Donald Trump is working on legislation to prevent Wall Street firms from buying single family homes.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a provision that's in a big housing bill that's going through Congress.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's working on that with Elizabeth Warren.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then you've got there's a big transportation bill in the House that no one's ever heard of because it's just a small DC thing, funds government transportation projects, roads, bridges, whatever around the country.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: J.D.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Vance is working on a piece of that to require new regulations on railroads.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like railroads are a really Republican-friendly industry.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans are friends with the railroad industry, the railroad industry loves Republicans.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the vice president of the United States trying to regulate the railroads to require them to have more engineers on each train.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: In doing so, JD Vance is working with the Teamsters and with labor unions against a Republican industry.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not supposed to happen.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there's example after example.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've heard about Donald Trump trying to cap credit card fees.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's another one where it's like, wait, Republicans and Wall Street are together.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: How why are why is Trump going after Wall Street?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's just so many issues like that now that are just like if you're just one of them, you think, oh, well, that's just a one-off.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But like Elizabeth Warren and the mayor of New York are increasingly seeing eye to eye with Donald Trump and JD Vance.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a good point, Brody.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about this because I, from a book standpoint, I talk about this a lot.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I've read Elizabeth Warren's book, I've read Trump's book, I've read Marco Rubio's book, I've read Obama's book, I've met I've read Michelle Obama's book.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the one thing I take away, and I think about this too, because I think that stemmed from even listening to like some Joe Rogan podcast, Bernie Sanders.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like it seems that when people talk or you read about them, they are more aligned than what we portray them to be across news sites.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when you hear them talk and you hear their ideas, all of a sudden you're like, hey, that makes a little bit more sense than what I'm getting fed over here.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people are becoming, we're not dumb.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we're able to, we have all this information at our hands now.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that people are kind of digging in.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's the reasoning for more of this collaboration is that, and and people understand, like, hey, there we can, we we see the same things a lot more than we see different.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: All that to say, it's kind of cool to see some collaboration and not so much, we still see divide, you know, we see it and and you see it and report on it and all that stuff too.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just thinking specifically of like what how I've transitioned my thinking over the last seven or eight years and just being more open to hearing what someone else has to say.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's happening in Washington in a good way.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a great question because I think it shows the problem with with the media.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like the media is still aligned with Republicans and Democrats.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a Republican media with Fox and then Democrat media over here.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if smart people like you sort of use your own brain and not go through those filters, but read Elizabeth Warren's book and read Donald Trump or or Rubio, you're like, oh, you guys are talking about the same thing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's that when you get in the mainstream media, they like push folks apart.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's kind of a the media's not doing its job and they're trying to see things through their traditional blinders.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't noticed that things have changed.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually, to me, more of a like an establishment versus anti-establishment.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Donald Trump is kind of just as big of an outsider as Elizabeth Warren is, but they're just have spent so much time hating each other, they don't realize that they're kind of like supporting the same base.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe not on every issue.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the you know, the other complicated thing is that I'm talking about business issues.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, once you throw in abortion and guns and everything gets all messed up.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But if you remove those and make it impossible to do that and just focus on these business issues, like both parties are trying to support the little guy all of a sudden.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or not both parties, but a lot of the people in in both those parties.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just a you know, just a huge, huge change.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's a great point.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: More specifically talking about just business and economic issues.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I just remember reading Elizabeth Warren's book on how, you know, she's a big proponent of affordable housing.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And before I read it, I thought one way.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I read it, I was like, actually, this makes perfect sense.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I see exactly why you're fighting for this, and and people on this side need to be more receptive to that and in and hear what you're saying.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I always talk about this too.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, man, if you could take senators and Congress and force them to sit at a table in groups of like six to eight and say, you can't leave this room until we compromise.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I guarantee you they could do it, and they'd probably be like, well, okay, let's this we can do this.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So there needs to be that kind of structure, I feel like.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, this conversation is going sideways into a maybe a more interesting topic that I agree with, but you know, you've hinted at an important thing.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple structural problems in DC.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them is that those members of Congress are not at the same table in D.C.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh the media will write about the fact that Senator So-and-so is not at home in Oklahoma, but they're in DC, and Elizabeth Warren is, you know, she should be a master who's not here.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: If these people are together and they live in DC, which, you know, most Americans say, no, get back to if they're living in D.C., well, then they're going to the same kids' soccer games.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're going, they're like, hey, I'm bored tonight.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: You why don't you come meet my wife?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you have, you know, a Republican meets a Democrat.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what we don't have in DC, which is critical for any relationship in business or policy, is trust.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans and Democrats need to know each other.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can say, I disagree with most of what you say, but I do disagree, but I agree with 40% of it because we're Americans, you know, and we disagree on this proportion.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that we're arch enemies.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Republicans and Democrats are never forced to come together.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other problem is the way we have these primaries, where you know, we see a lot, we a lot about gerrymandering these days.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the Republican district that's got 80% Republicans, and the Democratic district's got 80% Democrats.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you elect those people and then you send them to DC and you say compromise.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how can they compromise because they're coming from two different parts of the of the planet?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, they can still compromise over that 20%.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: But because of the way the districts are, when they run for re-election, compromise.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like you compromise, like you cut a deal with the other side, you're out.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, there's no compromise.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the way DC works is compromise.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to like you get 10%, 20%, 30%.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in net right now, you have everyone holding out for 100%.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not gonna happen.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, you made a great point.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Put these people in the same room, they'll get the job done.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're just never in the same room.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I again, I just these discussions, maybe they'll lead to that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're seeing some some again, some collaboration right now.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I know we kind of went a little bit, but it does stem from, you know, some of the the what you've written about and and researched and kind of where we're at.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh, you know, in a at a grander scale, there's a lot under the same umbrella.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Brody, just a couple more questions for you.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it one of them specific to just your your journalism background.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: As far as investigative reporting goes, how does that work?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you you see something interesting, you go say, Hey, I want to I want to cover this and you get permission, or do you just say, like, hey, I'm going down this route and we'll we'll see where it goes?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what does that look like as you know, someone who doesn't understand that world?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting because in journalism, you know, there's there's like no rules.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it Journalists come up with their own, there's no government rules.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's no like this way, you need you need to pass this certification to become a reporter.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, because of the First Amendment, different publications are basically free to do and say and print and report whatever they want.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, in from for most of my career, for almost 20 years, I was with the Wall Street Journal.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, they were the company I work for, and it is a little bit like what you said.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, hey, here's something interesting.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go look into it.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of have to use your instincts and use your brain.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you have to be a curious person.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I find interesting and start looking into that?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I find it really interesting as we're talking, you know, the alliance between the Elizabeth Warren, you know, super progressives and the super right-wing conservatives.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I love the have the fact they're coming together.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I find that curious.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So every time I see them working together, I sort of write a story about it or try to look into it more.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not because someone's telling me to do it, just like I find that interesting.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of it is what individual reporters find interesting, not like what your editor is saying.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, you need permission.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you need to tell my editor, like, hey, I'm thinking of working on this.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, a lot of times they say, you know, that no, I don't like, I don't think that's a good story, or I don't think it's gonna go anywhere.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times, more often than not, you start working on a story and it turns out that it's not a story.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you think this is gonna happen, you're using your instincts, and then it doesn't turn out, and you gotta have the strength to say, well, that stinks, and like, you know, there's not a story here, and not to try to publish something that's not true.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it really is kind of like a you're kind of like a private investigator.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of like looking down rabbit holes, and a lot of them are rabbit holes.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of times you look down, there's nothing there, and you move on.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you hope that, you know, you you uh hit a home run every once in a while and keep your job, you know?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I can imagine too, for someone who's been doing it as long as you, it's kind of like anything.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can't sustain that that term of success without building trust with people that you're talking to and and trying to connect with and making sure they feel comfortable and being interviewed or providing answers and information to you.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's a whole just side of work that goes into this besides just covering the story, writing it, sending it out.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of of due diligence to to get that to publication that a lot of people I I don't think they don't think about and what all that work that goes into that process.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's i i i uh it's a lot of trust, as you said.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's the right word.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: You need to build up sources and credibility because I'm trying to get people to like give me stories that they may not want to talk about and they need to know that I'm not gonna screw them personally.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, no offense to lots of other reporters, but like anyone can write a story about a presidential truth social post or a Twitter feed, you know, like anyone can do that.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and in fact, that's what I think a lot of the AI journalism is gonna take over.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, finding investigative stories and writing them and getting tips and sources is it can really only be done on the on a sort of a human being level.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that requires trust and credibility.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: People need to know that I'm not gonna screw them over, you know, that I'm a good guy and I'm trying to write the right.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they may not always like the story I'm gonna write, but they need to know that uh I'm trying to write the right thing and then I'm not gonna get them in trouble.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm just thinking of just like as a consumer, I've never been more appreciative of like a well-written factual article that you can tell someone spent a lot of time talking with people, getting stories that aren't just out there for people to find on the internet, you know, talking with so-and-so's third person who was at the meeting and could give you this information and just that deep dive of information that you uncover as a journalist and writer.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking across you know, politics, sports, you can always tell when there's that level of work that was put into an article.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people appreciate that now, like you said, with seeing so many AI-generated quick articles, you're kind of like, yeah, I'm so tired of this.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: But we appreciate more of that human aspect to the work that went into certain things.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously that's a good that's good news for you.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know your work's meaningful, and and people can can read and appreciate that.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: But Brody, one last question for you, man.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: This has been awesome because I've not had anyone like you on the Books for Guys podcast.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And again, writing about what you've written.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I know you said it's tough to find time to read.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're always writing and working, but I'm always curious to know, just from a Books for Guys standpoint, what is a book or two that that you have read that has meant a lot to you personally or professionally?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what's one that you would love to recommend to other people?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh great questions.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I think my all-time favorite political book, if you're into politics and like deeply reported stories, is a book called What It Takes by Richard Ben Kramer, which I think came out in 1992 or so.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the 1988 presidential election.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I told you in the beginning, I like reading stories about or books about presidential elections.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: This one was about all the candidates running in 1988.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Michael Dukakis was the Republican or Democrat nominee that year, running against Joe Biden, a bunch of other important Democrats back then, uh Jesse Jackson, I think.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the right, George Bush won, but there was a bunch of other important Republicans.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think Jack Kemp and Bob Dole also was in there.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, to me, the book, which, and by the way, this is a book from whatever it is, 30 years ago.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like 1,200 pages long.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm in like tiny, tiny type, but it's so, so good if you're into political junkies.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I would imagine it's stand the test of time, even though a lot of those characters have you know moved on.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the book to me was about how the six or so Democrats running and the six or so Republicans running in that in those primaries were all kind of a little bit crazy.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you think that you're capable of being the most important person in the world, you gotta be a little bit crazy.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And to then go through the process.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're like, you know what I think I could do is to like subject your life and your family's life and your finances to like the media and the public and everyone thinking that you're a jerk, you know, um, and having to raise all this money, it just sort of shows how crazy the process is and and kind of like how crazy the people are who decide to run.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like I guess it's maybe a terrible thing to say as an American in a democracy, but like people who run for office are a little weird.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I most of us probably agree.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Think that was.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: But no, Brody, man, this has been a fantastic conversation.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Again, thank you for coming on the podcast today.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got your book, The Wolves of K Street, on the Books for Guys website.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: We'll include a link in the notes.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if anyone's interested in purchasing and reading it and supporting Brody, um, you'll have the ability to do that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: But Brody, man, now that we've met, I can't wait to follow your work and see what all you continue to do.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, man, I appreciate it.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for doing this today.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Let me know next time you're in DC.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: We'll do, man.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: We'll do.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Brody.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: All right, take care.