Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - The Iran Ceasefire Has…Ceased + How Will America Remember Football in 200 Years?

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Full Episode - The Iran Ceasefire Has…Ceased + How Will America Remember Football in 200 Years? · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: e Thos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary
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Speaker 1: and rates may vary. Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd and
1:47
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of the Apply named Chuck Podcast.
1:52
Speaker 1: It is our Thursday edition. This means this will be
1:55
Speaker 1: the last time I'm here this week until our Monday episode.
1:59
Speaker 1: And let me give you a quick rundown of what
2:01
Speaker 1: to expect. I've got a fascinating new report to share
2:06
Speaker 1: with you. That explains in America is more than red
2:09
Speaker 1: and blue. It is a tapestry when it comes to
2:13
Speaker 1: our politics. Red and blue do not describe it accurately,
2:17
Speaker 1: progressive versus MAGA doesn't describe it accurately. Some stunning results
2:23
Speaker 1: from what is a report that I look forward to
2:26
Speaker 1: every four years, brought to you by our friends at
2:29
Speaker 1: the Pew Chediable Trusts. It's an amazing It's basically the
2:32
Speaker 1: sensus of political beliefs for America, and it properly puts
2:37
Speaker 1: us into the categories that we are not the ones
2:40
Speaker 1: we think we are. And I'll get into that, but
2:43
Speaker 1: that's the meat and potatoes. The data nerd in me
2:47
Speaker 1: a little bit. But it also the report will provide
2:50
Speaker 1: the blueprint of you know, does what does America really want? Right?
2:55
Speaker 1: And I think what this report does is properly let
2:59
Speaker 1: you know that the two bases of the two political
3:01
Speaker 1: parties are the ones that are out of touch. And
3:04
Speaker 1: I know many of you probably believe that and thought
3:06
Speaker 1: that for a long time. I have the numerical data
3:09
Speaker 1: to prove it. So that is an important item that
3:13
Speaker 1: we're going to live in. We're going to simmer in,
3:14
Speaker 1: and we're going to understand. It will help you understand
3:19
Speaker 1: today's American political electorate. My interviews with Chuck Klosterman, I
3:26
Speaker 1: guess at this point you'd call him just sort of.
3:29
Speaker 1: He's been the voice of gen X on culture for
3:32
Speaker 1: a long time. I'm a fan of a lot of
3:34
Speaker 1: his books. He wrote a We booked him for his
3:38
Speaker 1: book about football, which he describes, and I think it's
3:41
Speaker 1: a fair assessment of this would be the obituary for football,
3:46
Speaker 1: to explain to people one hundred years from now, if
3:49
Speaker 1: football doesn't exist, why it was an obsession for America.
3:54
Speaker 1: So in some ways it is. Certainly it is not
3:57
Speaker 1: an antagonistic book about football. Klosterman loves football. I love football.
4:02
Speaker 1: We have a nice discussion on that. The conversation is
4:05
Speaker 1: about a lot more than football. So let's just say,
4:08
Speaker 1: if you are at gen x er, you're going to
4:10
Speaker 1: love the conversation. And if you're trying to understand us
4:14
Speaker 1: gen Xers, then this is also the conversation for you.
4:17
Speaker 1: If you miss CDs, if you think rock music is
4:21
Speaker 1: not dead and your wish it was more alive than
4:24
Speaker 1: it is, this might be the conversation for you. And yes,
4:28
Speaker 1: we might talk a tiny bit about media, politics, and books.
4:34
Speaker 1: But I'm going to begin with what we're in the
4:37
Speaker 1: middle of still, and that is the never ending conflict,
4:45
Speaker 1: incursion war with Iran. It's now active again, fully active again.
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Speaker 1: There's I guess we're going to have a debate and
4:55
Speaker 1: whether the White House is going to claim that the
4:57
Speaker 1: warp that the sixty day clock begins anew But I
5:01
Speaker 1: don't believe that anybody believes that that is sort of
5:06
Speaker 1: in the spirit of the law when it comes to
5:08
Speaker 1: the War Powers Act. So in theory, we are now,
5:12
Speaker 1: you know, at a point where he should be asking
5:14
Speaker 1: Congress for permission to do this. And I think that
5:16
Speaker 1: it's possible that what's happening at the moment, the decision
5:22
Speaker 1: to restart the bombing campaign against Iran, could restart the
5:27
Speaker 1: debate inside of Congress about whether what the president's doing
5:32
Speaker 1: is even legal. But let's talk about the situation he's in.
5:36
Speaker 1: He is in some ways nothing has changed on Iran
5:40
Speaker 1: based on what and it certainly hasn't my take on this,
5:45
Speaker 1: in the current situation that we're in hasn't changed since
5:49
Speaker 1: he was begging for a deal thirty nine days ago, right,
5:55
Speaker 1: And it feels like in the last thirty eight days,
5:56
Speaker 1: we've been this close to a deal. It's around the corner.
6:00
Speaker 1: It's coming soon. Don't worry the price of oil, buy
6:05
Speaker 1: your stocks. You know you can't help but wonder how
6:08
Speaker 1: much this has been manipulated. Right, The deal is coming,
6:11
Speaker 1: it's tomorrow, it's going to be here. And lo and behold,
6:14
Speaker 1: not only are we not closer to your deal, we're
6:16
Speaker 1: we're so far away from a deal that he now
6:19
Speaker 1: realizes he actually has no leverage, and he's got to
6:22
Speaker 1: figure out how to get leverage, which is why the
6:24
Speaker 1: bombing campaign has restarted. Look, he has mismanaged this war
6:30
Speaker 1: from beginning to end. Right, what's still unclear is what
6:38
Speaker 1: what is he trying to achieve? And if the goal
6:45
Speaker 1: is to make sure they don't have a nuclear weapon,
6:51
Speaker 1: he was on a path to that, we were on
6:53
Speaker 1: a path to that, we had a nuclear deal that
6:55
Speaker 1: could have been used to continue that path. But whether
7:00
Speaker 1: it's his own stubbornness, his own realization that the deal
7:04
Speaker 1: he was about to agree to with the Iranians was
7:07
Speaker 1: basically going to be the nuclear deal two point zero,
7:11
Speaker 1: and he was embarrassed or he can't you know anything
7:15
Speaker 1: that looks like what Obama did is going to like
7:18
Speaker 1: the easiest way you can get him not to do something,
7:20
Speaker 1: it's by saying, well, if you do that, it's something
7:22
Speaker 1: Obama did, He'll stop it in his traction. No matter
7:26
Speaker 1: how rational an idea it is, no matter how good
7:28
Speaker 1: of an idea it is, he just won't do it.
7:30
Speaker 1: He's got this is he does have a few things
7:34
Speaker 1: that trigger him. Obama is one of them. Right. He's
7:37
Speaker 1: obsessively competitive with Obama. And it's hilarious because I don't
7:41
Speaker 1: really think Obama gives you know, MoMA's no fan. He's
7:44
Speaker 1: got a lot of issues with him. In fact, he
7:46
Speaker 1: feels I think he's got his own sense of guilts
7:50
Speaker 1: that somehow his presidency delivered the Trump presidency. I don't
7:56
Speaker 1: think he views himself as this, you know, And I
7:58
Speaker 1: think that also drives Trump, that Obama doesn't really care
8:02
Speaker 1: as much of what Trump thinks of him as what
8:05
Speaker 1: he thinks of Trump. But needless to say, he has
8:08
Speaker 1: this phobia on anything Obama. And it just so there's
8:15
Speaker 1: a part of me that's suspicious that the whole reason
8:17
Speaker 1: why they didn't end up with the deal that was
8:20
Speaker 1: probably going to be more favorable to the Iranians than
8:22
Speaker 1: he ever wanted it to be. But it was looking
8:24
Speaker 1: a little too much like the amand nuclear Deer. But
8:28
Speaker 1: it goes back to what objective are you trying to get?
8:31
Speaker 1: And the problem is he started this war in tandem
8:35
Speaker 1: with Israel, who had their own objectives which were not
8:37
Speaker 1: our objectives. Their objective was regime change. Our objective supposedly
8:43
Speaker 1: was not. But Trump got talked into doing this and thought, well,
8:50
Speaker 1: regime change would be a nice feature. If it all
8:53
Speaker 1: worked out, then I'd be a hero. I would solve
8:56
Speaker 1: a problem that other presidents couldn't solve. Well, now he
8:59
Speaker 1: realized why every other president didn't do what he ended
9:02
Speaker 1: up doing, because he ended up handing the Iranians more leverage,
9:06
Speaker 1: not less. Right, we're dealing with a couple of problems here.
9:09
Speaker 1: Problem number one is that the Iranians care less about
9:12
Speaker 1: their population than we do ours. That is, that is
9:18
Speaker 1: a huge and that is you know, it's frankly one
9:21
Speaker 1: of the problems with the Russia Ukraine war, right, the
9:23
Speaker 1: Russians don't care about their soldiers. Putin doesn't care about
9:26
Speaker 1: his people, Ukraine does. And so there's always got there's
9:30
Speaker 1: that asymmetric aspect of things. That's problem number one. Problem
9:35
Speaker 1: number two in this case was just a lack of planning.
9:42
Speaker 1: And I don't know who didn't. You know, it's clear
9:47
Speaker 1: nobody wants to own the idea that that the that
9:51
Speaker 1: that he wasn't warned about the strait of hormus. That
9:55
Speaker 1: be careful here. This is this is their trump card,
9:58
Speaker 1: so to speak. And I'm using the word trump card
10:02
Speaker 1: not as a pun but literally as a reference to
10:07
Speaker 1: the card game bridge. I am old enough to know
10:09
Speaker 1: how to play bridge. I am one of the weirdos
10:12
Speaker 1: in gen X that knows how to play bridge. I
10:15
Speaker 1: actually like bridge. And it's a pretty big trump card.
10:23
Speaker 1: It's not enough to win the war, but it's enough
10:24
Speaker 1: to make this war incredibly painful for the globe. By
10:29
Speaker 1: the way, we got another inflation report that once again
10:33
Speaker 1: showed third straight month inflation is going up. And now
10:36
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is trying to say I love inflation in
10:39
Speaker 1: some convoluted way that somehow it's going to help him
10:42
Speaker 1: help the country make more money because we're taking Iran's
10:45
Speaker 1: oil reserves. He's got some convoluted line of thinking that
10:49
Speaker 1: only his beautiful mind understands. But the bottom line is
10:54
Speaker 1: this economy is getting more unaffordable, This war is now
10:59
Speaker 1: further away from being solved, and the energy crisis that
11:03
Speaker 1: is hitting the globe is we don't have there's no
11:11
Speaker 1: hope on the horizon that this is going to obey
11:13
Speaker 1: anytime soon. But Trump didn't have leverage. I mean, this
11:18
Speaker 1: is the you know, this goes to, don't start a
11:20
Speaker 1: war that you're not comfortable trying to finish and you're
11:24
Speaker 1: not comfortable trying to do whatever it takes to win.
11:28
Speaker 1: And that's the problem with this, with this decision, He's
11:32
Speaker 1: been trying to have his cake and eat it too.
11:33
Speaker 1: He wants he wants to try to air strike his
11:37
Speaker 1: way into victory, which of course we know never works
11:40
Speaker 1: and never has worked. And he's hoping that somehow that
11:48
Speaker 1: the Iranians are going to behave like the Venezuelans have
11:50
Speaker 1: been behaving, right, and that this is just all There's
11:53
Speaker 1: going to be some transactional Iranian leader that's going to
11:58
Speaker 1: see the world the way Donald try season and he's
12:02
Speaker 1: magically going to cut this deal and everybody's going to
12:05
Speaker 1: live happily ever after. And he's learning the hard way
12:09
Speaker 1: that this is not how this exists. So in some ways,
12:18
Speaker 1: And this is where I think when people politicize war
12:23
Speaker 1: you sometimes overlook sort of, well, look, he never should
12:31
Speaker 1: have started it, and if he was going to start it,
12:34
Speaker 1: he should have been more overwhelming with it. Like to me,
12:37
Speaker 1: if you weren't ready to commit ground troops to at
12:39
Speaker 1: least securing the straight of horn moves, you shouldn't have
12:43
Speaker 1: started this war. And I get it. Politically, he had
12:45
Speaker 1: no interest in committing ground troops because he knew that
12:49
Speaker 1: is probably where MAGA would leave him and there would
12:53
Speaker 1: be full abandonment on that. So he was trying to
12:57
Speaker 1: essentially keep his political coalition together and at the same
13:00
Speaker 1: time still try to do something about this. And that's
13:04
Speaker 1: the thing he's and this is in some ways, this
13:07
Speaker 1: is a metaphor for Trump's entire You know, here's this
13:11
Speaker 1: guy who's both wildly successful and wildly unsuccessful. Right, Trump's
13:15
Speaker 1: wildly successful in that. Hey, he's bullshitted his way to
13:18
Speaker 1: the presidency. So man, congratulations, Right, he has failed his
13:24
Speaker 1: way up to the ultimate powerful job on this planet. Right,
13:29
Speaker 1: you hear the phrase failing up? I mean, you know,
13:32
Speaker 1: he's mismanaged casinos, He mismanaged his own father's business, he
13:37
Speaker 1: mismanaged the inheritance. Literally, had he done not touched his
13:40
Speaker 1: inheritance and just let interest payments a crew he would
13:44
Speaker 1: have made he'd be wealthier today, well at least pre presidency.
13:48
Speaker 1: Now he's used the taxpayers to to sort of line
13:50
Speaker 1: his pockets. But this is really an extraordinarily successful failure
13:57
Speaker 1: of a career, right, it is just failure after failure.
14:00
Speaker 1: Not what he's good at is marketing. He's a brilliant marketer.
14:04
Speaker 1: He's a brilliant promoter, and he's a terrific storyteller. Right, which, Look,
14:10
Speaker 1: he has his gifts. If he didn't have him, he
14:12
Speaker 1: wouldn't have gotten here. Well, you can get to the
14:18
Speaker 1: presidency doing this, but eventually and you can half at
14:21
Speaker 1: and so in his mind, right, he's worked hard for
14:23
Speaker 1: these things, but he's really sort of half asked his
14:25
Speaker 1: way through life, and he's trying to half ask. He's
14:29
Speaker 1: always tried to half ask the presidency, right, he sort
14:31
Speaker 1: of he thinks if he sits at the desk, it
14:33
Speaker 1: means he's busy. And so this, this half assery is
14:38
Speaker 1: how you end up doing sort of half measures and
14:41
Speaker 1: trying to conduct a war, complicated war with Iran, he
14:46
Speaker 1: didn't take this as seriously as he should have the
14:50
Speaker 1: people around him. You know, it is, you know, the
14:56
Speaker 1: incredible disappearing act that Marco Rubio plays every time Ronson
15:00
Speaker 1: doesn't go well, and Jade Vance almost in a similar pattern. Right,
15:04
Speaker 1: Neither one of them have been wanting their fingerprints on this.
15:06
Speaker 1: Both of them have made this clear that this was
15:10
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's decision, because my goodness, who would whoever would
15:13
Speaker 1: ever decide anything outside of Donald Trump and a Donald
15:16
Speaker 1: Trump presidency. And boyd, the fact that you see, you know,
15:22
Speaker 1: such light touches on the policy by Rubio and Van
15:25
Speaker 1: should tell you everything you need to know on this.
15:27
Speaker 1: But he doesn't have anybody around him that's telling him
15:29
Speaker 1: this is a mistake. He certainly has people around him
15:35
Speaker 1: that have told him that, hey, be careful here, that
15:38
Speaker 1: this is, you know, not popular, and things like that.
15:40
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's he's not getting any sort of pushback,
15:44
Speaker 1: but you know, he's got a defense department that is
15:50
Speaker 1: staffed with with with with folks that I think are
15:56
Speaker 1: not just sycophantic, they also have their own weird ideology,
16:00
Speaker 1: this Christian nationalism business where I mean, I'm not gonna
16:04
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too sidetracked by that business.
16:07
Speaker 1: But what they've been doing with church and state and
16:10
Speaker 1: essentially obliterating the line between church and state in our
16:15
Speaker 1: military and trying to trying to insert certain religions into
16:19
Speaker 1: the military, trying to decide in a country that literally
16:23
Speaker 1: was founded on freedom of religion. Apparently the Pentagon is
16:26
Speaker 1: going to be a place where there is no freedom
16:28
Speaker 1: of religion. I mean, it is a what the for
16:30
Speaker 1: what it's worth, those new protocols that the Pentagon put out,
16:34
Speaker 1: it's unconstitutional. It's not even like this is it should
16:37
Speaker 1: be a nine to nothing at the Supreme Court. Completely unconstitutional.
16:40
Speaker 1: What they've done, every move that he has made on
16:44
Speaker 1: religion is absolutely massive violations of the First Amendment. I mean,
16:49
Speaker 1: it's open and shut. We just need some more aggressive
16:53
Speaker 1: lourying here. But that also means you're getting a certain
16:57
Speaker 1: type of individual there that really isn't clearly not a
17:01
Speaker 1: very strategic thinker, and maybe a bit too. You know,
17:07
Speaker 1: if you're a relig if you're a bit fanatical about
17:10
Speaker 1: your faith, then you may view the issues with iron
17:15
Speaker 1: in religious terms, which create these exits, you know, which
17:20
Speaker 1: which basically mean all common sense goes out the window.
17:25
Speaker 1: And that's that should be a concern to all of us.
17:29
Speaker 1: So this is now, I mean, this has been a quagmire,
17:33
Speaker 1: but now it's back to being a quagmire. Thats exchanging bonds.
17:37
Speaker 1: We are in a full on this the Q word
17:40
Speaker 1: it now applies. He is you know, he had boxed
17:43
Speaker 1: himself in. He created this box. This was a problem
17:48
Speaker 1: of his own making. All of that is true. And
17:50
Speaker 1: now he's got his own quagmire. He's got no way
17:53
Speaker 1: out of it because the Iranians know he wants a
17:57
Speaker 1: deal worse than they want to deal. Point they need
18:00
Speaker 1: a deal to But the Israelis are certainly have their
18:07
Speaker 1: own agenda here that is different than the agenda of
18:09
Speaker 1: the United States, and now it is certainly gotten in
18:13
Speaker 1: the way of what Trump wanted. But Trump's the one that,
18:19
Speaker 1: you know, he opened up this can of worms, right,
18:22
Speaker 1: He's the one that greenlit the attack in the first place.
18:24
Speaker 1: He's the one that let BB talk him into I mean,
18:27
Speaker 1: and that's what he's embarrassed about. And that's why he's
18:29
Speaker 1: Remember the more the louder Trump screams about things that
18:33
Speaker 1: he that he's doing, usually it means he's done the opposite.
18:39
Speaker 1: I tell BB what to do. Translation, he knows BB
18:43
Speaker 1: talked him into something, and now he's kind of embarrassed,
18:45
Speaker 1: but he can't admit that BB talked him into this.
18:49
Speaker 1: And I know that's part of my job here is
18:50
Speaker 1: to help you understand how Trump thinks. And I'm I'm
18:55
Speaker 1: not wish casting here. This is who he is. And
18:59
Speaker 1: you'll just have to you either. You're listening here, so
19:02
Speaker 1: you trust that that that I'm I'm giving you what
19:05
Speaker 1: I believe, my honestess. What I believe is an honest
19:08
Speaker 1: assessment here of him. And so at some point Congress
19:14
Speaker 1: is going to have to step in because this is,
19:16
Speaker 1: you know it is, because he's got to do one
19:20
Speaker 1: of two things. He's either got to truly escalate here
19:24
Speaker 1: and be willing to put ground troops and maybe take
19:27
Speaker 1: the straight in order to have the leverage that he
19:30
Speaker 1: wants to get the outcome that he wants, or he's
19:33
Speaker 1: going to have to agree to a modified version of
19:35
Speaker 1: the era of the of the original I Ran nuclear
19:37
Speaker 1: deal that's probably more favorable to Iran than the Obama
19:40
Speaker 1: ever was, because the Iranians have more leverage and it's
19:46
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's fault that the Iranians have more leverage, and
19:51
Speaker 1: that's why we're here, you know, here's hope. We know
19:56
Speaker 1: the markets are going to probably pull Trump back at
20:02
Speaker 1: some point over the weekend. Uh in fact, maybe he
20:06
Speaker 1: pulls back by Monday. Right, He's going to do this,
20:09
Speaker 1: let the markets tank on Friday, have sort of this weekend,
20:13
Speaker 1: and he's going to hope that he can that they
20:15
Speaker 1: can restart talks, and I'm sure they will happen in
20:20
Speaker 1: some form or another, and they're going to keep dragging
20:24
Speaker 1: it along because until he somehow and the only way
20:31
Speaker 1: this changes is if we could control the straight And
20:35
Speaker 1: I say this, I'm not advocating this, but the but
20:40
Speaker 1: he's not you know are they? Is he willing to
20:42
Speaker 1: escalate enough to try to take control of the state.
20:49
Speaker 1: And I think we know the answer to that too.
20:50
Speaker 1: So he's, like I said, once, he's half assing this,
20:53
Speaker 1: and here's where we are. But I'm not going to
20:58
Speaker 1: pretend to know how how this other than we know
21:01
Speaker 1: it's going to be a negotiated settlement. It is still
21:03
Speaker 1: probably going to look like their Man nuclear deal, but
21:05
Speaker 1: he's trying desperately to make it clear that it isn't
21:07
Speaker 1: that and you know, I still think that outcome is
21:13
Speaker 1: the one that's most likely. But I'll tell you this, politically,
21:18
Speaker 1: he's already lost the midterms because there is no way
21:21
Speaker 1: any of this recuver. There's no way this gets better,
21:26
Speaker 1: that it creates a better situation financially for the country,
21:31
Speaker 1: or anything like that. By the time we start voting
21:33
Speaker 1: in November, we are nearly in mid June, and we
21:39
Speaker 1: are now going to start actually feeling the effects that
21:42
Speaker 1: everybody said was going to happen when this war began
21:46
Speaker 1: in early spring. And so that's why it's it's in
21:53
Speaker 1: some ways, but there's a reason Trump keeps saying I
21:58
Speaker 1: don't care about the midterms. I don't care about the things.
22:00
Speaker 1: It's his own coping mechanism, because in that sense, he's
22:04
Speaker 1: at least speaking truth in that he knows he is.
22:10
Speaker 1: He has made this impossible for his party to succeed
22:14
Speaker 1: in the midterms, especially now, and now he's probably divided
22:17
Speaker 1: his own party. There's going to be more Republicans that
22:20
Speaker 1: will vote with the Democrats on the War Powers Resolution
22:26
Speaker 1: the next time it hits the floor, and I promise
22:27
Speaker 1: you it's about to hit the floor again as soon
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Speaker 1: quints dot com slash chuck use that code. Well, what
24:42
Speaker 1: I really hope you simmer in today is I'm going
24:45
Speaker 1: to do my best to describe this. Essentially, it's the
24:49
Speaker 1: It's it's where we all sit politically, and I have
24:52
Speaker 1: good news for you. What you think you know about
24:55
Speaker 1: the country is actually true. Most of us live in
24:59
Speaker 1: this mess. Middle there is and I'm going to put
25:02
Speaker 1: the specific yard lines. Somewhere between the twenty yard lines
25:07
Speaker 1: is where most of us live. And it is now twenties,
25:10
Speaker 1: not thirty fives, for what it's worth, but most of
25:12
Speaker 1: us live inside the twenty yard lines. If we're going
25:16
Speaker 1: to use the football field as our sort of political
25:20
Speaker 1: spectrum here, and the base of the democratic part of
25:23
Speaker 1: the progressive base that gets that it is the defining
25:26
Speaker 1: feature of the left leaning party in this country is
25:30
Speaker 1: seven percent of the electorate, and the defining feature of
25:34
Speaker 1: MAGA is about nine percent of the electorate. And by
25:38
Speaker 1: the way, both parts of those electorates, the most progressive
25:44
Speaker 1: left and the most MAGA right are the least diverse
25:47
Speaker 1: groups in this entire political census. They are the whitest
25:53
Speaker 1: groups wiwhite white, by the way, not right white. They
26:00
Speaker 1: are white male on MEGA and they are white women
26:03
Speaker 1: on progressive left. That is they they talk about punching
26:09
Speaker 1: above their way. They are the defining features of what
26:12
Speaker 1: people think are red and blue, and they're not even
26:15
Speaker 1: a majority within their own coalition. So that's the most
26:19
Speaker 1: important thing. If you take away one thing from what
26:22
Speaker 1: I'm about to go through, that's the one thing that
26:27
Speaker 1: are two loudest, most committed, most quoted bases in American politics. Right,
26:35
Speaker 1: that mega core on the right and the progressive left
26:38
Speaker 1: together are not even a majority in this country. And
26:41
Speaker 1: it's not even closed. Ironically, the super left is seven
26:51
Speaker 1: percent of the country and the super hardcore right is
26:53
Speaker 1: actually twenty one percent. And that's important. There There is
26:59
Speaker 1: a bit I've always said, right, the Republican base is
27:01
Speaker 1: larger than the Democratic base, which is why Democrats have
27:04
Speaker 1: to win more moderates in order to win. They got
27:07
Speaker 1: to win more of the middle to get to fifty
27:08
Speaker 1: percent than the right does. And that's why you have
27:12
Speaker 1: this asymmetrical fight in the middle about the two parties.
27:16
Speaker 1: So remember I've been saying this before, Well, this we
27:20
Speaker 1: actually have numbers to put to it. And if you
27:23
Speaker 1: add in the most committed groups on both ends of
27:27
Speaker 1: the spectrum, the total number of committed partisans is thirty
27:33
Speaker 1: eight percent. It's about twenty one percent on the right
27:35
Speaker 1: and about seventeen percent on the left. So what that
27:38
Speaker 1: means is that the other sixty two percent of us,
27:41
Speaker 1: and I say us, because I'm somewhere in the middle here,
27:43
Speaker 1: the actual majority in this country. We sit in this messy,
27:47
Speaker 1: cross pressured, exhausted middle that does not fit cleanly into
27:52
Speaker 1: either party, which is being shaped by this out of
27:57
Speaker 1: touch base of each of both parties. The bases are
28:02
Speaker 1: not the country. The bases don't even account for a
28:06
Speaker 1: third of the country according to this Pew survey. So
28:09
Speaker 1: tonight we're going to use the best baseline we've got
28:11
Speaker 1: to tell you and who actually lives in this country politically,
28:15
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to talk about what it means
28:16
Speaker 1: for twenty six, twenty eight and for any campaign that
28:20
Speaker 1: thinks yelling at its own base is a strategy. All right,
28:24
Speaker 1: So let me give you a little bit of history
28:26
Speaker 1: about what is this Pew Typology report. And I know
28:30
Speaker 1: it's going to sound academic, yat and a little skill,
28:32
Speaker 1: and I don't want it. I'm trying to deacademify it
28:34
Speaker 1: for you. I love my academic friends, but I'm trying
28:37
Speaker 1: to put this in American, not just English. So let
28:40
Speaker 1: me just describe what this Pew typology is, because I
28:43
Speaker 1: think it's the single most useful tool in American political
28:49
Speaker 1: science right now that measures where where most people live.
28:54
Speaker 1: And it's an incredible too that most of you have
28:56
Speaker 1: never heard of because every few years Pew does this.
29:00
Speaker 1: It's not a normal horse race poll, and they don't
29:03
Speaker 1: ask who you're voting for. They start they ask you
29:07
Speaker 1: a series of questions about what you believe thirty questions government, economy, immigration, race, religion,
29:15
Speaker 1: foreign policy, and then they run what they call a
29:17
Speaker 1: cluster analysis. They let the answers sort people into groups.
29:23
Speaker 1: They don't ask people what group they think they belong to.
29:27
Speaker 1: They let the actual answers, and then they sort people
29:31
Speaker 1: into these groups. So it's not done by party registration
29:33
Speaker 1: or by yard sign or whatever. And the result is
29:37
Speaker 1: a map of American politics that guess what has more
29:39
Speaker 1: than two colors in it. This is the ninth time
29:42
Speaker 1: that Pew has done this survey. The first time they
29:45
Speaker 1: did it was back in nineteen eighty seven. The methods
29:48
Speaker 1: have evolved over the years. Nineteen eighty seven was done
29:51
Speaker 1: face to face, literally in people's homes. From nineteen ninety
29:55
Speaker 1: four through twenty seventeen, it was done by telephone, and
29:58
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty one they've been doing it online with
30:01
Speaker 1: a standing panel. It's how the Pew now does all
30:04
Speaker 1: of its survey work is through this panel. This year's
30:08
Speaker 1: edition over ten thousand adults. We survey and they were
30:12
Speaker 1: surveyed late November last year, so before the Iran war,
30:15
Speaker 1: there's no so it's there's a little bit of space here, right,
30:19
Speaker 1: So this was done as of November. Okay, it's a
30:24
Speaker 1: massive sample, much bigger than any national poll that's normally
30:27
Speaker 1: one thousand people, maybe two thousand people. This is basically
30:30
Speaker 1: ten times the size of that. So when we use
30:34
Speaker 1: numbers like telling you the progressive base in this country
30:38
Speaker 1: is seven percent or the core MAGA is twenty one percent,
30:42
Speaker 1: we're not round We're not giving a rounding era based
30:45
Speaker 1: on a small sample of one thousand people. This is
30:47
Speaker 1: a baseline number based on this massive sample of over
30:50
Speaker 1: ten thousand people. So that's why I want to refer
30:54
Speaker 1: to it's the closest thing we have to a census
30:56
Speaker 1: of political voters in this country. So now here's the
31:01
Speaker 1: part that many of you, if you've read the top
31:04
Speaker 1: lines of this, you probably missed this part of the story.
31:08
Speaker 1: Because every it's approximately four years that Pugh does this,
31:12
Speaker 1: they change the categories a little bit because maybe there's
31:16
Speaker 1: certain people just disappear, certain groups disappear. So these typology
31:21
Speaker 1: categories change every cycle. As the country changes and the
31:25
Speaker 1: disappearances are actually the story that tell So you go
31:29
Speaker 1: back to the very first ones. In nineteen eighty seven
31:31
Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety four, Pugh had a category called New Dealers.
31:36
Speaker 1: This was literally the last living echo of the old
31:39
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Coalition. It was still measurable in American politics through
31:44
Speaker 1: the early nineties. They're gone now, they're long gone now.
31:49
Speaker 1: And for thirty years nineteen eighty seven all the way
31:51
Speaker 1: through twenty seventeen, there was a group that they called bystanders.
31:57
Speaker 1: These were the totally checked out. They were unregistered and uninterested.
32:02
Speaker 1: Pugh stopped breaking them out as their own bucket. In
32:05
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, they've sort of dispersed them, and there's
32:08
Speaker 1: some similar groups here that I'm going to get to.
32:11
Speaker 1: But here's the disappearance that really, I think explains why
32:16
Speaker 1: our politics have gotten so weird in the last ten years.
32:21
Speaker 1: From twenty twenty one, Pew had a group that they
32:25
Speaker 1: called the committed Conservatives. It was seven percent of the
32:28
Speaker 1: country in twenty twenty one. These were pro business, pro traded,
32:31
Speaker 1: small government, hawkish internationalists. Essentially, it's your chamber of commerce, Republican.
32:37
Speaker 1: It's the true the Reagan Republican met Romney, Paul Ryan,
32:42
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal editorial page, right, like this is
32:45
Speaker 1: that's who the committed Conservatives were, and this year's report
32:48
Speaker 1: they don't have a group. That group doesn't exist. It's
32:51
Speaker 1: not a group that is shrunk. It has not been
32:54
Speaker 1: renamed with an asterisk. It's just gone. As a measurable cluster,
32:59
Speaker 1: Reagan Republican is no longer big enough or a coherent
33:03
Speaker 1: enough group for a cluster analysis like this one to
33:07
Speaker 1: even find it. So the Reagan Republican Coalition is dead.
33:12
Speaker 1: We knew it was. We've been a lot of people
33:15
Speaker 1: have been saying it. My friend Bill Crystal over the
33:17
Speaker 1: Bulwark has been saying it in a while, and here
33:19
Speaker 1: it is. It's now measurably gone. Okay, the model Republican
33:24
Speaker 1: president for forty years doesn't have a constituency anymore in America.
33:29
Speaker 1: That's astonishing. But as we saw right FDR's coalition it
33:34
Speaker 1: basically died. It took you know, it lasted almost fifty years,
33:38
Speaker 1: and you could say this Reagan coalition lasted about forty years, right,
33:42
Speaker 1: So maybe that's what we take away from this, right,
33:46
Speaker 1: and that means this Maga coalition you know, as another
33:50
Speaker 1: thirty years minimum. That doesn't mean it will be as
33:54
Speaker 1: large as it is today, but it will exist. The
33:59
Speaker 1: party didn't not reorganize around a philosophy. A reorganized around
34:03
Speaker 1: a mand right. I'm going to get back to that now.
34:07
Speaker 1: Let's meet this year's nine archetypes. Americans fall under nine
34:14
Speaker 1: categories politically, so I'm going to quickly go through the
34:19
Speaker 1: archetypes and I put them into these nine archetypes are
34:23
Speaker 1: in three buckets, left, middle, and right, because there are
34:27
Speaker 1: three that are firmly on the left, three that are
34:29
Speaker 1: firmly on the right, and three that are essentially the
34:32
Speaker 1: deciders of which side gets power, the left or the right.
34:38
Speaker 1: The three on the left are about thirty percent of
34:40
Speaker 1: the country. One is what I've been talking about at top.
34:42
Speaker 1: The leftward progressives is what Peugh calls them. They account
34:46
Speaker 1: for seven percent. Here's what you need to know about them.
34:49
Speaker 1: They're socialists curious. Two thirds of them say they like
34:53
Speaker 1: politicians who call themselves quote democratic socialists. So these are
34:57
Speaker 1: not self described socialists, but they're socialist curious. This is
35:02
Speaker 1: the youngest group of the nine typology groups. They're the
35:05
Speaker 1: furthest to the left on the political spectrum. And oh,
35:07
Speaker 1: by the way, they're the most skeptical of the institution
35:11
Speaker 1: that is called the Democratic Party itself. So you could
35:15
Speaker 1: argue that this progressive wing of the electorate is the
35:19
Speaker 1: party's both conscience and its biggest headache. The second group
35:24
Speaker 1: on the left is what Peugh calls the loyal liberals.
35:29
Speaker 1: It accounts for about eleven percent of the overall electorate.
35:33
Speaker 1: The best weight to call the these are Obama Democrats
35:36
Speaker 1: is probably the best way to come it. In fact,
35:37
Speaker 1: they're age group wise, they're sort of in the millennial
35:40
Speaker 1: age group. They're institutionalists. They believe the system can work
35:44
Speaker 1: and should work. Highly educated. Sixty one percent in this
35:47
Speaker 1: group have a college degree. It's the highest of any
35:50
Speaker 1: group of these nine archetypes. And these are the Democrats
35:55
Speaker 1: that think about electability, right. They're the ones that look
35:59
Speaker 1: at Tallerico and Crocket and said, well, Tella Reco has
36:01
Speaker 1: a better chance of winning type of mindset. They're the
36:04
Speaker 1: ones in a primary who do think about, well can
36:06
Speaker 1: this person win? And so they can be decisive in primaries, right,
36:12
Speaker 1: And this is why they don't always they will side
36:15
Speaker 1: with a progressive if they think the progressive can win,
36:18
Speaker 1: but they will go against the progressive if they think
36:21
Speaker 1: someone else has a better chance of winning. The third
36:23
Speaker 1: group on the left is what they literally call the
36:26
Speaker 1: left out left. It's twelve percent. They're overwhelmingly Democratic, but
36:30
Speaker 1: they're financially stressed, they're feeling ignored. They're deeply pessimistic about
36:37
Speaker 1: the country, and they just they feel left behind by
36:43
Speaker 1: the Democrats. They're sort of culturally not as focused on
36:47
Speaker 1: cultural issues. They're a little more economically focused. They do
36:51
Speaker 1: vote blue when they vote, but they're not that motivated
36:54
Speaker 1: to vote, and they're They have the lowest turnout among
36:59
Speaker 1: the left leaning groups. Now, let me tell you about
37:02
Speaker 1: the three on the right. Collectively, they you know, so
37:05
Speaker 1: the left is at thirty percent. Collectively, these three groups
37:07
Speaker 1: on the right are thirty three percent of the electorate.
37:10
Speaker 1: So the no apologies right is what they call maga.
37:14
Speaker 1: In this case, this is nine percent. But this is
37:16
Speaker 1: the purest maga. This is the own the Libs vote.
37:20
Speaker 1: In fact, a majority, a majority enjoy it when their
37:25
Speaker 1: side humiliates the other guy. Literally, they asked the Pole
37:28
Speaker 1: question on that. This is the only group where a
37:30
Speaker 1: majority said they loved it when somebody they support humiliates
37:34
Speaker 1: somebody on the other side politically, and more importantly, highest
37:39
Speaker 1: voter turnout group there is. They're the single most likely
37:43
Speaker 1: group in America to vote. I would probably say this
37:48
Speaker 1: is the Elon musk Avatar seventy four percent or male.
37:51
Speaker 1: No other group is that lopsided on gender. And like
37:55
Speaker 1: I said, and seventy percent say it's not important to
37:57
Speaker 1: avoid offensive language. So this is pure MAGA. This is
38:01
Speaker 1: again nine percent core MAGA. Now the other part of
38:05
Speaker 1: this hardcore sort of MAGA coalition, this other twelve percent,
38:10
Speaker 1: is what Pugh calls faith first conservatives. They're the pew
38:14
Speaker 1: and pulpit right, the Christian nationalists, if you will, the
38:18
Speaker 1: most religious group by far, and it's the most rural,
38:21
Speaker 1: so geographically they live in rural America. They backed Trump
38:24
Speaker 1: universally on policy. But the one distinction between them and
38:30
Speaker 1: and what and essentially the MAGA group, the no Apologies right,
38:34
Speaker 1: is that they actually get uncomfortable with his conduct. Now
38:38
Speaker 1: it's not enough for them to ever make them vote.
38:40
Speaker 1: In fact, they say they will never vote for a Democrat.
38:43
Speaker 1: So they're committed partisans. But the only difference between them
38:47
Speaker 1: and the MAGA right is they don't love his behavior.
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Speaker 1: am a customer. The next group here, that's twelve percent
40:35
Speaker 1: of the electorate is what Pugh calls the unconventional right,
40:40
Speaker 1: basically soft backup. They're younger, much less religious, but they're
40:45
Speaker 1: also a bit checked out. They voted for Trump in
40:48
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, but they don't always show up in midterms.
40:52
Speaker 1: His approval with them has already fallen. It was at
40:55
Speaker 1: seventy eight percent when the presidency started. This group is
41:00
Speaker 1: sitting at fifty three percent. When Pugh looks at him
41:02
Speaker 1: as a demographic group, and it is the group that's
41:06
Speaker 1: cracking first, right, This is the group that has dropped
41:10
Speaker 1: his approval rating from low forties to high thirties. They're
41:15
Speaker 1: the biggest risk of peel off. They're more likely to
41:18
Speaker 1: sit home than they are to actually vote per Democrat,
41:23
Speaker 1: but they're not that committed to the movement at the moment.
41:27
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about the other thirty eight percent. So
41:29
Speaker 1: you have thirty percent represents these left leaning groups, thirty
41:32
Speaker 1: three percent represents these right leaning groups. So that's at
41:36
Speaker 1: sixty three and because of rounding, we add up to
41:39
Speaker 1: one hundred and one thirty eight. These three in the
41:41
Speaker 1: middle are thirty eight percent of the elector. This is
41:45
Speaker 1: obviously where elections get decided. So who are these people? Well,
41:48
Speaker 1: let me tell you about this first group, the Order
41:52
Speaker 1: and Opportunity Left is what Pugh calls them, because they
41:55
Speaker 1: are left leaning. But i'll explain, eighteen percent of the electorate.
42:00
Speaker 1: The single biggest group in the country, so this is
42:02
Speaker 1: the largest political group in the country. Is this sort
42:05
Speaker 1: of center left group. They're worried about crime, they believe
42:11
Speaker 1: in strong borders, and are even open to immigration restrictions
42:18
Speaker 1: in a way, it's what makes them different than the
42:20
Speaker 1: rest of the left. It's why it's hard to put
42:22
Speaker 1: them with the Left coalition because on law and order
42:25
Speaker 1: issues and even on some cultural issues, they're much they're
42:28
Speaker 1: a bit more right of center. What keeps them in
42:31
Speaker 1: the left column is economics, and I get to that
42:34
Speaker 1: in a little bit. The point is is that they're gettable,
42:39
Speaker 1: and in fact it was these voters that peeled off
42:42
Speaker 1: and voted for Trump which flipped those swing states. The
42:48
Speaker 1: next group is what they deem This is sort of
42:51
Speaker 1: where the Reagan Republicans used to be, I guess, or
42:54
Speaker 1: where they live now. Pugh calls it the pragmatic and
42:57
Speaker 1: polite right. It accounts for eleven This is the remnants
43:03
Speaker 1: of the Reagan coalition. This is where my friend Jonah
43:05
Speaker 1: Goldberg lives, Stephen Hayes, Paul Ryan, It's the It's it's
43:11
Speaker 1: probably the closest thing left to that vanished committed conservative
43:16
Speaker 1: typology that Hugh had the last couple of cycles. This
43:21
Speaker 1: is the oldest group age group wise. They're civility obsessed,
43:27
Speaker 1: so think Mett Romney, pro NATO, pro Ukraine. In fact
43:32
Speaker 1: of the they are much there. Of all the groups
43:35
Speaker 1: on the right are much less pro Ukraine than this group,
43:40
Speaker 1: and they actually view their own party more negatively than positively.
43:45
Speaker 1: So this is why they're kind of the mirror image
43:48
Speaker 1: of that of the order and opportunity left right. This
43:51
Speaker 1: is literally the center right what I described to you before,
43:54
Speaker 1: the center left, and it is I think that the
44:00
Speaker 1: center left would say they were Bill Clinton Democrats, and
44:02
Speaker 1: this center right would say they were Ronald Reagan Republicans. Right.
44:05
Speaker 1: Where did Reagan and Clinton overlap, Well, they were overlapped
44:10
Speaker 1: arguably on law and order, they overlapped on unfeigned policy.
44:15
Speaker 1: They and they arguably over overlapped on business right on
44:20
Speaker 1: free trade. That's that's where you would see that. And
44:24
Speaker 1: then the last group in the middle here, this is
44:29
Speaker 1: by the way, that previous group, the pragmatic and polite right.
44:32
Speaker 1: It is I mean, this is bulwark. Is that this
44:35
Speaker 1: is the homeless establishment republican lives here. And then the
44:39
Speaker 1: ninth group here in the middle is nine percent of
44:42
Speaker 1: the electorate, and it's the tuned out middle. And this
44:45
Speaker 1: is the this is the one that they used to
44:46
Speaker 1: say was just like the disaffected, that they didn't pay attention.
44:50
Speaker 1: They're generally checked out. Just thirty two percent of them
44:53
Speaker 1: voted in twenty twenty four. Sixty eight percent of this
44:56
Speaker 1: group say most people can't be trusted. So they don't
45:00
Speaker 1: don't just don't. They don't trust parties, they don't trust
45:02
Speaker 1: the system, and guess what, they don't trust each other.
45:05
Speaker 1: All right, they're nobody's voters and they're probably not worth
45:09
Speaker 1: trying to get, all right. So of all the so
45:13
Speaker 1: you really have here the two swing groups in America.
45:18
Speaker 1: This sort of center left is eighteen percent of the country.
45:20
Speaker 1: The center right is eleven percent of the country. So
45:23
Speaker 1: there's your twenty nine percent. Right, that extra nine percent
45:26
Speaker 1: that gives you the thirty eight they're probably not voting
45:29
Speaker 1: or if they're voting, they're voting libertarian, they're voting Green Party,
45:31
Speaker 1: they're voting anything other than the two major parties because
45:34
Speaker 1: they just borderline nihilistic. But that's your So there's your
45:41
Speaker 1: swing votes twenty nine percent of the country. So let's
45:44
Speaker 1: you similar with that a minute. Now, what does this
45:47
Speaker 1: mean for twenty six and twenty eight. Let's start on
45:50
Speaker 1: the left. So if you look at those three groups,
45:52
Speaker 1: those thirty percent, the civil war inside that thirty percent
45:55
Speaker 1: has already begun, right, and it's going to be the
45:58
Speaker 1: entire democratic story. Eight is going to be this fight
46:01
Speaker 1: essentially between the progressives who want to remake the Democratic
46:05
Speaker 1: Party into their own image, very similar to how essentially
46:07
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did with the Republican Party versus the instant.
46:11
Speaker 1: The loyal Democrats who want to, they won't say they
46:14
Speaker 1: want to restore things back to the Obama way, but
46:16
Speaker 1: they essentially they want to. They want to reanimate the
46:19
Speaker 1: Obama Democratic Party, and that's going to be the fight.
46:23
Speaker 1: Think of it as Pete Boutage's versus AOSI right, Bernie
46:28
Speaker 1: Sanders versus Pete Buotages right, or frankly, Bernie Sanders versus
46:31
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. But here's the thing that jumped out of
46:35
Speaker 1: me in this right, the biggest difference between leftwood progressives
46:37
Speaker 1: and loyal liberals is just is not policy. It's just
46:40
Speaker 1: simply loyalty to party. The progressives are skeptical of the
46:44
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. Hence Bernie Sanders still has never become a
46:48
Speaker 1: member of the Democratic Party, despite making that promise multiple
46:52
Speaker 1: times when he ran for president. That is something that
46:54
Speaker 1: he is renigged on. Multiple times. He claimed he would
46:59
Speaker 1: become a member of the already, and he refused to.
47:01
Speaker 1: But I know why he won't. He believes not conforming
47:06
Speaker 1: to that is what gives him his superpower a little bit.
47:10
Speaker 1: Loyal Liberals are devoted to their party, and that's going
47:14
Speaker 1: to be your twenty twenty eighth primary. Right, it's not
47:16
Speaker 1: going to be left versus center and the issues. It's
47:19
Speaker 1: going to be rebel versus institution. Right, burn it down
47:22
Speaker 1: and rebuild versus The system can deliver if you'll let
47:25
Speaker 1: it in. And guess what. Neither faction is big enough
47:29
Speaker 1: to get what it wants. The party can't be the
47:32
Speaker 1: rebel in the institution. At the same time, somebody's going
47:34
Speaker 1: to have to break the tie. And you've got this
47:36
Speaker 1: third group, the left out left right, who feel just
47:40
Speaker 1: pinched right now, economically pinched by the system, and really
47:45
Speaker 1: they don't have the luxury to argue about ideology, which
47:50
Speaker 1: is why they when they vote, they'll vote for the
47:52
Speaker 1: pragmatic Democrat if the pragmatic Democrat knows how to make
47:55
Speaker 1: that case to them. Because these voters are overwhelmingly Democratic.
47:59
Speaker 1: They just are not interested in the ridiculous fights between
48:05
Speaker 1: left versus far left. But the reason they just don't
48:09
Speaker 1: have the luxuries are financially stressed, they're pessimistic, and they
48:11
Speaker 1: feel alienated. The good news for Democrats is these folks
48:15
Speaker 1: are never going to vote Republican, but they might not vote.
48:21
Speaker 1: And then we have an engagement gap with this group
48:23
Speaker 1: that the right progressives seventy percent of them voted, loyal
48:27
Speaker 1: liberals seventy nine percent of them voted. The left out
48:30
Speaker 1: left was, you know, in the forties much shakier. So
48:34
Speaker 1: that and that's you know, this is going to be
48:36
Speaker 1: a real challenge for them in the midterms. And yes,
48:40
Speaker 1: it's a bigger challenge than the right. But if Democrats
48:43
Speaker 1: want to win control the House in the Senate, they're
48:44
Speaker 1: going to have to get those left out liberals off
48:47
Speaker 1: the couch. They have to figure out how to mobilize
48:52
Speaker 1: that part of their coalition. Even in some ways it
48:55
Speaker 1: might be a better use of their money than trying
48:59
Speaker 1: to persuade. But we'll say, but of course it creates
49:03
Speaker 1: a messaging trap. Because the things that fire up the
49:06
Speaker 1: progressives fighter disruptor democratic socialist energy. It's the exact thing
49:12
Speaker 1: that costs Democrats the group that we're going to get
49:14
Speaker 1: to here in a minute. So stick with that. Now,
49:17
Speaker 1: let's go to the right side of the aisle. The
49:20
Speaker 1: thirty three percent that make up the right wing in
49:24
Speaker 1: this country. Two of them are a fortress right, the
49:27
Speaker 1: faith based right and the MAGA right, but one of
49:30
Speaker 1: them has a leak right. That's sort of the other
49:34
Speaker 1: Republican group here, the unconventional right. The fortress here is
49:37
Speaker 1: the no apologies right plus the faith first. It's twenty
49:40
Speaker 1: one percent. It's the core MAGA vote, totally loyal to Trump.
49:45
Speaker 1: Highest engagement in the country, by the way, in voting.
49:47
Speaker 1: They are more committed to voting, this group than anything
49:51
Speaker 1: on the left, believe it or not. And they're not moving.
49:54
Speaker 1: They're impossible to peel away, to persuade or shame them,
49:58
Speaker 1: give up, stop trying. It ain't happened. But the third
50:03
Speaker 1: leg of the Republican coalition is that unconventional right. That's
50:08
Speaker 1: where there's vulnerability. Because this group of Republicans is younger,
50:13
Speaker 1: they're a bit less attached to the party, they're not
50:15
Speaker 1: very religious. They voted for Trump, but they never were
50:21
Speaker 1: bought right. And the proof is simply in that collapse
50:24
Speaker 1: of his approval. Right. They started out hopeful, seventy eight
50:27
Speaker 1: percent approve. It's down down to fifty three percent earlier
50:30
Speaker 1: a year. And the more this economy sours, the more
50:34
Speaker 1: the war doesn't go well. This wears on this group
50:38
Speaker 1: of Republicans the most, and this makes this is the
50:41
Speaker 1: group of voters that he will lose and that he
50:43
Speaker 1: has been losing. This is the group of voters that
50:45
Speaker 1: moved his job of berivalating from forty five down to
50:48
Speaker 1: thirty eight. Now circle back to the group of Republicans
50:57
Speaker 1: that has completely disappeared, right, the Reagan Republican, the Committicanservative.
51:02
Speaker 1: They never got replaced, they just got exiled. And the
51:05
Speaker 1: closest survivor is this pragmatic and polite right, the center
51:09
Speaker 1: right that I was describing. But they have a net
51:11
Speaker 1: negative on the Republican Party. Not all of them thinks
51:14
Speaker 1: the Republican Party should hold power because they're pro ukra
51:18
Speaker 1: in a party that's gone isolationists and their pro civility
51:20
Speaker 1: in a party that rewards cruelty. So the establishment right
51:25
Speaker 1: is actually politically homeless at the moment, and homeless voters
51:29
Speaker 1: are available voters. So the GOP's job in twenty six
51:33
Speaker 1: and twenty eight is to somehow hold the SOFTMAGA vote
51:38
Speaker 1: and at the same time convinced the old Reagan coalition
51:43
Speaker 1: that is not happy with Trump that somehow the Democrats
51:47
Speaker 1: are worse it's sort of been the right. You sort
51:52
Speaker 1: of see that. That's how the how they've gotten that
51:55
Speaker 1: Republican back right, that Nicki Haley voter, that's probably the
51:59
Speaker 1: best person is right, the pragmatic and polite right is
52:02
Speaker 1: the Nicky Haley voter. Nicky Haley ended up supporting Trump,
52:04
Speaker 1: but she hated that she had to do it in
52:06
Speaker 1: her mind. All right, now, we're going to talk about
52:11
Speaker 1: the group of voters that nobody campaigns to anymore because
52:15
Speaker 1: it's not on TV, and it doesn't tweet right, and
52:18
Speaker 1: it doesn't ride an algorithm. It's this thirty eight percent
52:20
Speaker 1: in the middle, the order and opportunity left. The eighteen
52:24
Speaker 1: percent the biggest group in America. They want the economic
52:28
Speaker 1: stuff that the left wants, but they're a lot more
52:31
Speaker 1: worried about law and order issues. Crime is a big one.
52:34
Speaker 1: They want to secure the border, and they want to
52:37
Speaker 1: secure it in ways that will make progressives wins. It's uncomfortable.
52:41
Speaker 1: So yes, they lean blue, mostly on economics, but they
52:45
Speaker 1: are the most winnable big group on the board. And
52:47
Speaker 1: this is also a very diverse group, for what it's worth,
52:52
Speaker 1: is much less white than some of the other democratic
52:56
Speaker 1: leaning groups. Well, who did Trump pick off in twenty
52:59
Speaker 1: four A lot of nine non white Democrats, particularly in
53:04
Speaker 1: the Sun Belt, and he sounds like he espouses economic
53:12
Speaker 1: populism that sounds leftish, So you can see why he
53:16
Speaker 1: was able to make inroads with this specific group of people.
53:22
Speaker 1: So there's your twenty eight fight, right, Can Democrats hold
53:25
Speaker 1: this economic message without scaring this group away on crime
53:29
Speaker 1: and immigration? And can Republicans build an economic pitch that
53:34
Speaker 1: isn't wrapped in mega cruelty and somehow pull them across.
53:40
Speaker 1: So that's that's how you that's how you're going to
53:43
Speaker 1: see campaigns try to talk to that eighteen percent. Then
53:48
Speaker 1: you've got the pragmatic and polite white the eleven percent.
53:51
Speaker 1: And you know, one interesting thing about this group, while
53:53
Speaker 1: they are old, the oldest group demographically, they're the one
53:56
Speaker 1: that looks the most like America. Thing like sixty five
54:00
Speaker 1: percent white, it's like thirteen percent la teen oh ten
54:04
Speaker 1: percent Black, nine percent Asian. That's kind of the census
54:08
Speaker 1: of the country. So it's it actually in some ways
54:12
Speaker 1: on demographics, you know, outside of age, it is the
54:17
Speaker 1: most the closest thing to sort of the American average.
54:27
Speaker 1: The point is this group as civility voters. They're the
54:32
Speaker 1: ones who will vote against whoever offends them last. So
54:37
Speaker 1: a normal, non threatening Democrat, I think Josh Shapiro, Andy
54:41
Speaker 1: Basheer can win these people. James tollerco is betting that
54:45
Speaker 1: he can win these people in the suburbs of Dallas,
54:48
Speaker 1: suburbs of Houston, et cetera. Allowed democrat is not going
54:53
Speaker 1: to win these people over right, That's why Jasmine Crockett
54:56
Speaker 1: may actually have been ideologically to the right of Tall Rico,
54:59
Speaker 1: but temperament she was sounded more like one of the
55:03
Speaker 1: louder people on the left, which is not what this
55:05
Speaker 1: voter would support. And then you have the tune out middle,
55:09
Speaker 1: that nine percent. And let's be honest here, they're not persuadable.
55:14
Speaker 1: They're barely reachable. Sixty eight percent of them trust nobody,
55:19
Speaker 1: a third of them vote. They're not a target. They
55:22
Speaker 1: are a reservoir of people who've quit on all of us.
55:27
Speaker 1: Now here's what I guess, here's some broad conclusions here. Right,
55:33
Speaker 1: the voices that dominate our politics, the only Libs right,
55:37
Speaker 1: the Democratic Socialists left. These are the exact voices that
55:41
Speaker 1: repel the middle that decides these elections. And yet the
55:46
Speaker 1: middle is essentially got a gun to it, said to say,
55:48
Speaker 1: you've got to pick a side. We're not going to
55:50
Speaker 1: cater to the middle anymore. And arguably American politics used
55:54
Speaker 1: to be middle out. Now it's out to the middle,
55:58
Speaker 1: and they feel like in all of the voters feel
56:00
Speaker 1: like they have a gun to their head deciding well,
56:02
Speaker 1: which is the least bad option for them? And the
56:08
Speaker 1: problem for the Republican Party with these voters it's that
56:11
Speaker 1: the Mega brand is poison to these pragmatic Republicans. They
56:15
Speaker 1: hate it. The progressive socialism is poisoned to that center
56:19
Speaker 1: left wing of the middle. There the order and opportunity left.
56:25
Speaker 1: So the base isn't just not the country right. And
56:29
Speaker 1: this is on say the base, the base of the
56:30
Speaker 1: left and the base of the right. The base is
56:32
Speaker 1: actively costing its own party, the country right. The base
56:36
Speaker 1: is the right of the left is the reason why
56:38
Speaker 1: Democrats are struggling, and it's the base of the right
56:41
Speaker 1: is why Trump is struggling. So look, I wanted to
56:48
Speaker 1: go through this in sometimes excruciating detail, I'll confess. But
56:53
Speaker 1: the next time you watch a ridiculous Twitter feed twitter feud,
56:57
Speaker 1: you know you see some algorithmic driven streaming rant by
57:02
Speaker 1: you know somebody used to see on cable TV, or
57:07
Speaker 1: if you watch What's Left of Legacy TV and you
57:10
Speaker 1: see two giant armies, one red and one blue, locked
57:14
Speaker 1: at fifty to fifty, screaming across a trench, right, the
57:18
Speaker 1: idea that that, you know how sometimes the CNN panel
57:21
Speaker 1: can look like that. Somehow it's Van Jones and Scott
57:24
Speaker 1: Jennings and they represent it all right, Remember this typology report.
57:29
Speaker 1: Remember that there is a trench, sure, but the armies
57:32
Speaker 1: that are insighted are actually super small. The most committed
57:37
Speaker 1: minorities are the whitest, loudest, and most online people there are.
57:45
Speaker 1: That's who makes up the progressive left, and that's what
57:47
Speaker 1: makes up this cormaga, right according to Pew. And in
57:50
Speaker 1: between them is the rest of us, a giant, diverse, tired, broke,
57:55
Speaker 1: skeptical middle that doesn't trust either side and mostly wishes
58:01
Speaker 1: everybody would just knock it off. So here you go.
58:07
Speaker 1: That's the American political census right now. Look when you
58:11
Speaker 1: look at this, you know, if I look at it
58:14
Speaker 1: through the prism of running as an independent, it has
58:17
Speaker 1: never looked more opportunistic. There are all these abandoned folks
58:24
Speaker 1: there are all. There's an entire sort of common sense
58:27
Speaker 1: middle platform that you can run on that I'm convinced
58:33
Speaker 1: if you don't have a party label, you might have
58:35
Speaker 1: you might have a bigger potential constituency, but I don't.
58:41
Speaker 1: The problem is what breaks through is the loud and
58:46
Speaker 1: the performative, and that's what the committed left and the
58:48
Speaker 1: committed right are really good at. And they are defining
58:52
Speaker 1: their parties. They are creating a perception of the two
58:57
Speaker 1: parties that is turns out not the it's not what
59:00
Speaker 1: the country wants, and it's not what's what's real. Right,
59:04
Speaker 1: there's an entire like this, this two base, this this
59:07
Speaker 1: seven percent base on the left, and this twenty one
59:10
Speaker 1: percent based on the right. This is one in four
59:14
Speaker 1: Americans total, right, twenty eight percent. They are force feeding
59:19
Speaker 1: us a political system that literally seventy two percent of
59:23
Speaker 1: the country wishes weren't the case. So what I hope
59:29
Speaker 1: people will do with this information is realize, hey, all
59:33
Speaker 1: is not hopeless. What happens online is online, and yes
59:38
Speaker 1: it matters to a point, but it is not representative
59:42
Speaker 1: of real people. The rest of us do live in
59:45
Speaker 1: this messy middle and a politician that can both capture
59:49
Speaker 1: the imagination with a little bit of showmanship or show womanship,
59:55
Speaker 1: but has a common sense just you know, don't do
59:59
Speaker 1: dumb sh shit platform, has has constituencies begging to be
1:00:05
Speaker 1: talked to by this entity. The question is whether our
1:00:10
Speaker 1: political system can allow someone like that to actually exist, right,
1:00:18
Speaker 1: whether our media ecosystem can make room for something like this.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what's so both reassuring about this report
1:00:30
Speaker 1: for me and frustrating at the same time. It confirmed
1:00:34
Speaker 1: everything I already knew and believed about what the country
1:00:37
Speaker 1: actually is versus the perverted ways the basis of the
1:00:41
Speaker 1: two parties have painted our politics, and so I get
1:00:47
Speaker 1: hope and frustration at the same time. But hey, I'm
1:00:53
Speaker 1: here to offer a little hopium and I will tell
1:00:56
Speaker 1: you take a look it is. We know we have
1:01:00
Speaker 1: the electorate that this country needs to keep this republic
1:01:03
Speaker 1: on the right track. We now just need the political
1:01:05
Speaker 1: leaders to actually talk to the electorate that exists, not
1:01:10
Speaker 1: one that is manufactured through grievance online. And with that,
1:01:15
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sneak in a break and when we come back,
1:01:18
Speaker 1: one of the one of my favorite people to just
1:01:20
Speaker 1: have them have a great conversation with Chuck close to
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Speaker 1: is somebody who I'd like to think I've consumed just
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Speaker 1: about everything. He's ram I'm not going to sit here
1:04:00
Speaker 1: and say I know his days from his magazine era.
1:04:03
Speaker 1: But it's Chuck Clusterman and he's got a new book out.
1:04:07
Speaker 1: I know there's a new new book out. We'll talk
1:04:09
Speaker 1: about that at the end. But a book out that
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Speaker 1: many of you may have seen some and probably are
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Speaker 1: think you want to buy it for me. I already
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Speaker 1: have two copies. It's football, and I'm going to hesitate
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Speaker 1: to describe it. It really is more of a I think,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: trying to explain football's popularity to aliens. I don't know
1:04:37
Speaker 1: if Chuck will like that description or not, or to
1:04:40
Speaker 1: people who unearth the United States of America in twenty
1:04:44
Speaker 1: three twenty four year. I'm talking about the year twenty
1:04:48
Speaker 1: three hundred and go what were some of the cultural
1:04:51
Speaker 1: events that united the country? And they may find his book,
1:04:55
Speaker 1: So he joins me now, and Chuck fair description of
1:04:58
Speaker 1: the book itself.
1:05:00
Speaker 2: Oh it's fair enough. That doesn't bother me. I It
1:05:03
Speaker 2: is a hard thing to describe, I realized, because you
1:05:06
Speaker 2: know it's there's like.
1:05:07
Speaker 1: Not a history of football, right, That's right.
1:05:10
Speaker 2: Aren't there. It's partially memoir, it's partially criticism. I mean,
1:05:15
Speaker 2: it's a little bit in some ways similar to the
1:05:18
Speaker 2: very first book I wrote, when I wrote this book
1:05:20
Speaker 2: about heavy metal and growing up in North Dakota, and
1:05:23
Speaker 2: it was like these things I thought about for years,
1:05:26
Speaker 2: like I'm just going to all put this into one thing,
1:05:29
Speaker 2: and then the next twelve books or whatever are about
1:05:31
Speaker 2: different ideas. You know, I would own it on. But
1:05:33
Speaker 2: this again was something where you know, I've been thinking
1:05:36
Speaker 2: about football unconsciously for like forty five years and maybe
1:05:42
Speaker 2: consciously journalistically for twenty years, and this is just kind
1:05:45
Speaker 2: of the culmination of that. You know, I just had
1:05:49
Speaker 2: wanted to do a book that was where sports wasn't
1:05:52
Speaker 2: just part of it, where it was about the sport,
1:05:55
Speaker 2: about the game, and you know, it was just as
1:05:59
Speaker 2: a once. It was incredibly enjoyable. Rite. I mean, it
1:06:02
Speaker 2: was very fun to do in a way that book
1:06:04
Speaker 2: writing usually is not.
1:06:06
Speaker 1: Why is that because I'm look, I've done a few books,
1:06:09
Speaker 1: not like you, and I have viewed them all as
1:06:12
Speaker 1: chores by the end, like fully chores, and you know,
1:06:18
Speaker 1: I'm proud of them, but I remember I didn't get
1:06:21
Speaker 1: out of it when I thought I was going to
1:06:23
Speaker 1: get out of it. Now you've done eight x of
1:06:26
Speaker 1: the amount of books. What are you up to or fourteen? Yeah,
1:06:31
Speaker 1: so seven x of what I've done, and so you
1:06:34
Speaker 1: must I'm guessing of a different experience. Some books have
1:06:38
Speaker 1: been healthier for you and others haven't been.
1:06:40
Speaker 2: I'm guessing, well, yeah. I mean I say this a
1:06:45
Speaker 2: lot when people ask me like the process of this,
1:06:47
Speaker 2: if they do, I always kind of think of it
1:06:50
Speaker 2: like in your mind, you have a ball of yarn,
1:06:54
Speaker 2: which is in the case of football, like everything I
1:06:56
Speaker 2: know about football, everything I've thought about football, stat I
1:07:00
Speaker 2: remember from third grade the experience of having played in
1:07:03
Speaker 2: all of these things, and that's sort of in this
1:07:05
Speaker 2: ball of information, and then writing is just straightening it out.
1:07:10
Speaker 2: And that's what kind of what the writing process is now.
1:07:11
Speaker 2: For a lot of times with the book, it's like
1:07:13
Speaker 2: first you have to build the arn ball, like you
1:07:15
Speaker 2: know you're going into something and you're like, well, I
1:07:18
Speaker 2: have to do all this research, I have to learn
1:07:19
Speaker 2: all this I have alo I have to become put
1:07:22
Speaker 2: myself in this position where I can sort of write
1:07:25
Speaker 2: a book about this idea kind of theoretically for like
1:07:29
Speaker 2: a version of me that existed five years ago or whatever,
1:07:31
Speaker 2: like you know. But this is different in the sense
1:07:34
Speaker 2: that I wasn't trying to acquire information about football over
1:07:38
Speaker 2: my life. I mean I was, but not because I
1:07:41
Speaker 2: thought I'd write a book that's just what I loved
1:07:43
Speaker 2: and just what I liked. And what was easy about
1:07:46
Speaker 2: it was like it was just there were almost too
1:07:48
Speaker 2: many ideas, Like I almost had too many ideas. I
1:07:51
Speaker 2: guess I could have even made the book longer, but
1:07:54
Speaker 2: I did fear, you know, it could bleed into being
1:07:57
Speaker 2: repetitive or whatever. I just felt. Really, I mean, I
1:08:00
Speaker 2: wrote this book fast, Like it was written fast. You
1:08:05
Speaker 2: do something with your writing style. I find fascinating in that.
1:08:09
Speaker 2: The only other times I feel this are when I
1:08:11
Speaker 2: actually read oral histories, and that is I feel like
1:08:14
Speaker 2: you're having a conversation with the reader.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: You're not informing the reader. I mean, is that your
1:08:20
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I don't know how's to
1:08:21
Speaker 1: put it, meaning I feel like I'm reading conversational Chuck Closterman,
1:08:26
Speaker 1: not some edited version of him, you know, because sometimes
1:08:31
Speaker 1: you'll repeat a point and just like you would in
1:08:33
Speaker 1: a conversation, Like when I'm reading the book, I feel
1:08:35
Speaker 1: like it's in conversation with you, not necessarily you presenting
1:08:39
Speaker 1: this formalized, edited a piece of work.
1:08:46
Speaker 2: A long time yeah, a long time ago, someone was
1:08:50
Speaker 2: criticizing me and they said, it seems like he's trying
1:08:53
Speaker 2: to build a brain in public, like build his own
1:08:56
Speaker 2: brain public. But you know there's some truth in that, Like, yeah,
1:09:00
Speaker 2: a lot of people have said this. I'm not the
1:09:02
Speaker 2: first person. You don't really know how you feel about
1:09:04
Speaker 2: something and tell you create like a piece of art
1:09:07
Speaker 2: or a book about it.
1:09:08
Speaker 1: Right.
1:09:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, My goal, I guess is to make it. I
1:09:14
Speaker 2: want the reader to feel as though they are writing
1:09:18
Speaker 2: the book with their mind, like they're always like like
1:09:20
Speaker 2: the books and this is the conversation and they read
1:09:24
Speaker 2: a sentence and then like somehow they build the next
1:09:26
Speaker 2: sentence and there it is or whatever. Yeah, you know,
1:09:30
Speaker 2: I do. I do a lot of arguing with myself
1:09:32
Speaker 2: when I'm not writing a book. I probably do even
1:09:34
Speaker 2: more when I am. It's just I don't know, I
1:09:38
Speaker 2: think it in this again might sound like it's a
1:09:41
Speaker 2: bad thing to say it. But I think because I
1:09:45
Speaker 2: was educated so differently than the fast majority of people
1:09:50
Speaker 2: who write books, that it was it's so autodidactic, and
1:09:54
Speaker 2: donald was just bizarre that I don't sometimes know the
1:09:58
Speaker 2: things you're not supposed to to do. So when some
1:10:00
Speaker 2: people read these books, I think they're saying, well, this
1:10:02
Speaker 2: seems novel. It seems like another writer wouldn't do that.
1:10:06
Speaker 2: And it might be because I don't know any better.
1:10:08
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not.
1:10:10
Speaker 1: No I get exactly.
1:10:11
Speaker 2: It's like I just kind of do it like if
1:10:13
Speaker 2: I was a musician. It's not somebody who never said
1:10:17
Speaker 2: a lesson. I just played by how.
1:10:18
Speaker 1: I got you?
1:10:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got you.
1:10:20
Speaker 1: This is just how you communicate and it has always
1:10:23
Speaker 1: been how you communicate it. Yeah, your mind is fascinating
1:10:28
Speaker 1: to me. I can't tell you to this day. I'm
1:10:31
Speaker 1: obsessed with something you said in an interview once with
1:10:33
Speaker 1: Simmons about how and it's about and it feels like
1:10:36
Speaker 1: this you were. You entered this book with the same mindset,
1:10:40
Speaker 1: trying to trying to look at what how football would
1:10:44
Speaker 1: be explained or used two hundred years from now. And
1:10:47
Speaker 1: in fact, I remember you went through this exercise with
1:10:49
Speaker 1: Bill once about rock and roll, and you were saying,
1:10:54
Speaker 1: three hundred years from now, there's only going to be
1:10:56
Speaker 1: one song or one artist that will be representative rock
1:11:00
Speaker 1: and roll. And and I just remember, I can't tell
1:11:03
Speaker 1: you how often I've gone back to that conversation in
1:11:06
Speaker 1: my head that I heard you have and sort of
1:11:08
Speaker 1: almost like retest the premise, well, what would it be
1:11:11
Speaker 1: for pop culture? What would it be for this? What
1:11:13
Speaker 1: would it be for that? And you know this reminder
1:11:16
Speaker 1: that when Mozart and Beethoven, why did they get elevated
1:11:18
Speaker 1: but nobody else around them did? Right? And it's sort
1:11:21
Speaker 1: of like, you know, you went through this. I don't
1:11:26
Speaker 1: really have a great question about it, but you your
1:11:29
Speaker 1: mind seems to be you're you seem to be obsessed
1:11:31
Speaker 1: with what sticks, what's lasting, and what isn't.
1:11:34
Speaker 2: Is that it I appreciate you saying that first of all,
1:11:37
Speaker 2: but also it is that what you're describing is something
1:11:40
Speaker 2: that from my view, this seems to be the way
1:11:43
Speaker 2: culture works over like the long term, you know, using
1:11:47
Speaker 2: just rock and roll as the example or whatever, you
1:11:49
Speaker 2: start with all these different possibilities. If the Beatles, the
1:11:52
Speaker 2: Stones and the Zeppelin, the kings. You have all of
1:11:54
Speaker 2: these things, and as it moves through time, you know,
1:11:57
Speaker 2: some stick and some fade away and by the wayside,
1:12:01
Speaker 2: and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller than the
1:12:03
Speaker 2: people who first consume the original art they die, and
1:12:05
Speaker 2: then the second class of generations data, and it gets
1:12:08
Speaker 2: smaller and smaller and smaller. Intel there's just one thing left,
1:12:12
Speaker 2: and then that becomes hyper amplified, you know, where it's
1:12:16
Speaker 2: like it all wheels down to one and then that
1:12:18
Speaker 2: one thing becomes massive. I mean, like you can see this.
1:12:20
Speaker 2: I think is gonna happen with like reggae music, that
1:12:23
Speaker 2: it's going to eventually get to the point where it's
1:12:25
Speaker 2: like it's really only Bob Marley. Bob Marley will be
1:12:28
Speaker 2: what you're saying with that, you know, John Philips SUSA
1:12:30
Speaker 2: represents all marching music, like that will happen with reggae.
1:12:34
Speaker 2: So I do think about that a lot because I
1:12:37
Speaker 2: think what happens is people you know, want to understand something.
1:12:41
Speaker 2: Uh it's it's easier to understand like a singular narrative
1:12:47
Speaker 2: and have that sort of be the stand in for
1:12:49
Speaker 2: every other experience.
1:12:53
Speaker 1: I guess spoiler alert, you're you. You you believe Chuck
1:12:56
Speaker 1: Berry will be the lone person, and right, you're actually
1:13:00
Speaker 1: with you did this whole exercise. I didn't want to
1:13:03
Speaker 1: leave the listener handing it.
1:13:04
Speaker 2: Well. My argument with that was, like, it should be
1:13:07
Speaker 2: the Beatles, really, like everything about modernity tells us it
1:13:10
Speaker 2: will be the Beatles. The Beatles are really the only
1:13:12
Speaker 2: thing now that I can think of.
1:13:13
Speaker 1: How they made a movie about what would happen if
1:13:15
Speaker 1: the Beatles didn't exist, like, you know, like they were
1:13:18
Speaker 1: not making movies about Chuck Berry the same.
1:13:20
Speaker 2: Warns has often talked about this. So it's sort of like,
1:13:23
Speaker 2: you know, something exists, you know, it's twenty years old,
1:13:25
Speaker 2: and people still know what it is, and when you
1:13:27
Speaker 2: get to thirty years old, there's you know, an it
1:13:29
Speaker 2: goes and then sixty seems to be the cutof that.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: When something's sixty years old, it typically means that every
1:13:35
Speaker 2: person who consume the original thing is gone now, and
1:13:37
Speaker 2: the Beatles kind of contradict this. The Beatles are arguably
1:13:41
Speaker 2: more popular now in a weird way than they were
1:13:44
Speaker 2: in the late sixties or were, so like, it's is
1:13:50
Speaker 2: it is. It's an interesting thing. I guess, I guess
1:13:52
Speaker 2: I am interested well, what will last, because that's you know, well, I.
1:13:57
Speaker 1: You know, to translate it to what I do most
1:13:58
Speaker 1: of the time in politics, I think about the following
1:14:01
Speaker 1: fact all the time, and nobody talks about it, which is,
1:14:05
Speaker 1: we're about twenty years away from where we We'll no
1:14:07
Speaker 1: longer have a single American who grew up in segregated America.
1:14:10
Speaker 1: And that's going to mean something that's going to matter.
1:14:13
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure how yet. I think it's going
1:14:16
Speaker 1: to matter, you know, I'm not saying and it's going
1:14:18
Speaker 1: to be a good thing, but that is going just
1:14:20
Speaker 1: we're going to change. Our politics will change, the what
1:14:24
Speaker 1: moves people to vote will change, simply because people with
1:14:28
Speaker 1: certain memories will no longer be around to remind you
1:14:33
Speaker 1: of the importance of set events well or.
1:14:36
Speaker 2: To sort of have an understanding of a before and
1:14:38
Speaker 2: after period that once once all those people are gone.
1:14:42
Speaker 2: It's almost as though the state that, you know, the
1:14:45
Speaker 2: way the world is now we just almost feel like, well,
1:14:47
Speaker 2: its existed that way in perpetuna. I mean, it's going
1:14:50
Speaker 2: to be very we were already seeing like an accelerated
1:14:53
Speaker 2: version of this, like with the internet, you now have
1:14:57
Speaker 2: the only people who are kind of consumed with what
1:15:02
Speaker 2: life was like before the internet and what life is
1:15:04
Speaker 2: like after. Our people like our age, like I really
1:15:07
Speaker 2: experienced both realities fully. There's an increasing number of people
1:15:11
Speaker 2: who have no memory of a world without that. So
1:15:13
Speaker 2: therefore this idea, it's almost if like it'd be like, well, yeah,
1:15:17
Speaker 2: I have an argument about why, you know, before we
1:15:19
Speaker 2: had you know, combustion engines or whatever. It doesn't seem
1:15:22
Speaker 2: in any way.
1:15:23
Speaker 1: I wonder are there books about the pre electricity days
1:15:27
Speaker 1: and the post you know that people wrote around then,
1:15:29
Speaker 1: or we just didn't have books written like that.
1:15:31
Speaker 2: I see that with television that there was a lot
1:15:34
Speaker 2: of sort of discussion about what is television going to
1:15:37
Speaker 2: do and how is it going to affect the culture?
1:15:39
Speaker 2: You know, there was a book I remember from like,
1:15:41
Speaker 2: you know, the late seventies called Four Arguments for the
1:15:43
Speaker 2: Elimination of Television.
1:15:45
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with this but unfamiliar with the the
1:15:49
Speaker 3: It was a guy who came out of advertising, I mean,
1:15:51
Speaker 3: and it was like, this is not a metaphor, we
1:15:54
Speaker 3: should eliminate television for all of these reasons.
1:15:56
Speaker 2: And you read the book now, it seems crazy that
1:15:58
Speaker 2: the book could have even existed. And yet in many
1:16:01
Speaker 2: ways the arguments he makes in that did come to fruition.
1:16:05
Speaker 2: I mean, when MTV was new, everybody was like, oh,
1:16:09
Speaker 2: it's going to shorten attention spans people are going to
1:16:11
Speaker 2: you know, and people are like, well, that's a reactionary thing.
1:16:13
Speaker 2: The world always changed, it did happen. I mean that
1:16:16
Speaker 2: that did happen from nineteen eight and nineteen ninety. It
1:16:20
Speaker 2: was a different kind of consumer because of that experience.
1:16:23
Speaker 2: So I mean, I do I think a lot of
1:16:26
Speaker 2: times that that there is a kind of a natural
1:16:29
Speaker 2: inclination to sort of disagree with people who say like, oh, well,
1:16:33
Speaker 2: you know the world's getting worse. You like, well, everybody
1:16:35
Speaker 2: always said that, But there is some truth in it.
1:16:37
Speaker 2: In some ways, the worst is just maybe the wrong word.
1:16:40
Speaker 2: I mean, it's going to be different, and difference feels
1:16:43
Speaker 2: bad to people.
1:16:44
Speaker 1: Right well, it all depends on what metrics you're using,
1:16:46
Speaker 1: right you know. I mean, in some ways, right were
1:16:49
Speaker 1: there's we're so dumer, we're so doom and gloom. Yet
1:16:52
Speaker 1: if you look at the last fifty years, more people
1:16:54
Speaker 1: have been pulled out of poverty, more people, you know,
1:16:56
Speaker 1: fewer people die of certain diseases like the world has
1:16:59
Speaker 1: never been safer, right Like, you know, there's these things
1:17:01
Speaker 1: that the world has never.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: Been as safe as it is right now, and yet
1:17:04
Speaker 2: it does. No one feels feels It's also you know,
1:17:09
Speaker 2: everything is relative, you know, It's like once something exists,
1:17:14
Speaker 2: it becomes normal. Like a crowbar was only an amazing
1:17:17
Speaker 2: tool to the first generation of people who had a
1:17:20
Speaker 2: crowbar for the first time, They're like, this is incredible.
1:17:22
Speaker 2: I can't believe this. Nobody else would look at that
1:17:24
Speaker 2: and think like, oh, technology, you.
1:17:26
Speaker 1: Know, so are you. If somebody if you have to
1:17:31
Speaker 1: do the eleven second describe what you do for a living,
1:17:33
Speaker 1: what do you tell people?
1:17:35
Speaker 2: Well, now, I mean I'm just a writer.
1:17:37
Speaker 1: I just what's your beat? You know, here's a guy
1:17:40
Speaker 1: that used to be, you know, music critic, used to
1:17:42
Speaker 1: be this. What what is your beat in your head?
1:17:45
Speaker 1: Forget what other people think? What's what do you feel
1:17:47
Speaker 1: like your beat is? In the American psychist, my beat
1:17:52
Speaker 1: is reality.
1:17:54
Speaker 2: It just seems like a lot of times in a
1:17:56
Speaker 2: lot it doesn't matter what I'm writing about. Somehow, almost annoyingly,
1:18:02
Speaker 2: the question of like is this real though? Comes up?
1:18:06
Speaker 2: Like what is the authentic experience? I mean, I'm just
1:18:10
Speaker 2: like one of these guys who's obsessed with you know,
1:18:14
Speaker 2: you know what what what is real? What is a construction?
1:18:17
Speaker 2: All of the things that in some ways I feel
1:18:21
Speaker 2: like I have lost a little bit of traction in
1:18:26
Speaker 2: the American discourse. It was more of a nineties early
1:18:29
Speaker 2: two thousand sort of thing to question this. Now I
1:18:32
Speaker 2: think there is more this idea that, oh, that's kind
1:18:35
Speaker 2: of a stonery thing to waste your time on. Don't
1:18:37
Speaker 2: worry about what is real?
1:18:38
Speaker 1: What is not real?
1:18:39
Speaker 2: Nothing is real? So like in this in this completely.
1:18:44
Speaker 1: A what's going to be? Yeah, I mean and that
1:18:47
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I'm on social Anything
1:18:49
Speaker 1: on social media I assume is fake until proven real
1:18:52
Speaker 1: to me instead of the other way around.
1:18:54
Speaker 2: Well it is. But it's a really difficult way to
1:18:57
Speaker 2: go through life and through consumption with that idea, you know,
1:19:01
Speaker 2: because then there's this, you know, there's a second question.
1:19:04
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, so you're seeing something on social media
1:19:06
Speaker 2: and you suspect it is unreal and you drew maybe
1:19:12
Speaker 2: do like like a little check of it, and you
1:19:13
Speaker 2: can't really tell yet, but there's part of your mind
1:19:16
Speaker 2: that saying, like, well, most people are consuming this passively.
1:19:20
Speaker 2: Most people just assume that this is real if they
1:19:22
Speaker 2: see this, you know. So therefore, if if a majority
1:19:26
Speaker 2: of people believe something, does that then make it a
1:19:29
Speaker 2: reality even if it's just a cognitive thing. You know,
1:19:32
Speaker 2: it's like you can fight.
1:19:33
Speaker 1: Over the whole The whole expression is when does perception
1:19:36
Speaker 1: become reality?
1:19:37
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well when does? I mean? I think it's when
1:19:41
Speaker 2: the consumer is unable to think that equation is in play,
1:19:46
Speaker 2: that they're they're preceding something, and that question is not
1:19:49
Speaker 2: being asked.
1:19:50
Speaker 1: You know, I've gone seventeen minutes and I don't think
1:19:54
Speaker 1: I've asked you a question about the book. So my
1:19:56
Speaker 1: apologies for that, but that's the sometimes the podcast experience.
1:20:02
Speaker 1: So I sort of best understood the book description better
1:20:06
Speaker 1: now when looking back that it's a living obituary for
1:20:09
Speaker 1: a sport that you assumed, like every sport in culture,
1:20:13
Speaker 1: will eventually go away. We just don't know when.
1:20:17
Speaker 2: Well, I just I think that it will stop being
1:20:19
Speaker 2: the center of the culture, which it is right now.
1:20:32
Speaker 1: They begin with Monday night football. Like if you were
1:20:34
Speaker 1: to say, what's the starting point? Is it the nineteen
1:20:36
Speaker 1: fifty eight game? As you point out, we all have
1:20:39
Speaker 1: to answer by rote that it's the greatest game ever played,
1:20:42
Speaker 1: when you're like, it's not remotely close to being the
1:20:44
Speaker 1: greatest game ever played, but it was something that it
1:20:46
Speaker 1: was the first time millions of Americans experienced a football
1:20:50
Speaker 1: game the same way.
1:20:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in a sense it was because of
1:20:54
Speaker 2: the modern understanding of football kind of begins with that
1:20:58
Speaker 2: experience of that game, in the sense that there was
1:21:01
Speaker 2: like you know, you say, like, did it begin with
1:21:03
Speaker 2: me nine football or whatever. So by the nineteen seventies,
1:21:06
Speaker 2: football was already the most popular sport in the United
1:21:08
Speaker 2: States by a pretty strong margin. The perception was still
1:21:12
Speaker 2: somehow baseball was the national pastime. Now we don't really
1:21:17
Speaker 2: think of it in that way. We would like it
1:21:21
Speaker 2: would be people think I'm a contrarian. I'd like to
1:21:24
Speaker 2: see someone make the argument that football is not the
1:21:26
Speaker 2: most popularly sport in America. I'd be very fascinated by
1:21:29
Speaker 2: how they would argue that. So it, like like a
1:21:34
Speaker 2: lot of things like it kind of happened kind of
1:21:36
Speaker 2: gradually and persistently until a point when it was kind
1:21:39
Speaker 2: of you couldn't remove it. There is no like that
1:21:44
Speaker 2: fifty eight game is a hinge point in this it
1:21:47
Speaker 2: really is. And maybe the dawn of Monday night football
1:21:50
Speaker 2: simply because it made football prime time experience is maybe
1:21:53
Speaker 2: another hinge point. It's I just I really just think
1:21:58
Speaker 2: that you know, in this if you ask me like
1:22:01
Speaker 2: to give you like the you know, the elevator picture
1:22:03
Speaker 2: of this book. I I think if you're trying to
1:22:06
Speaker 2: understand the last half of the twentieth century, and you
1:22:11
Speaker 2: can't use everything, right, you can't talk about politics, you
1:22:14
Speaker 2: can't talk about movies, you can't talk you have to
1:22:15
Speaker 2: talk about one thing. I think football probably is the
1:22:20
Speaker 2: best sort of material to understand.
1:22:22
Speaker 1: More common than music, even because music has so many
1:22:24
Speaker 1: different tastes, right, it's all you.
1:22:26
Speaker 2: Know, and it's so paradoxical, like there's so many things
1:22:30
Speaker 2: about football that if you describe it to someone and
1:22:33
Speaker 2: that you don't know what they're they don't know what
1:22:35
Speaker 2: you're talking about. You're saying like, Okay, this is what
1:22:37
Speaker 2: it's going to be, this is how it's going to operate,
1:22:39
Speaker 2: this is what the television experience is going to be.
1:22:41
Speaker 2: Like all of those things will sound like like a disaster,
1:22:45
Speaker 2: like you would never get out of a focus group.
1:22:47
Speaker 2: So I think that's also was part of makes it
1:22:49
Speaker 2: interesting to see how it's sort of many ways mirrors
1:22:52
Speaker 2: the way culture move of the last half of the
1:22:54
Speaker 2: twentieth century, because there's a lot of that as well,
1:22:56
Speaker 2: like these paradoxical things that happened that like it shouldn't
1:22:59
Speaker 2: have happened, but it did, and now we understand the
1:23:01
Speaker 2: world do that going forward. I don't know if this
1:23:05
Speaker 2: will be the case. I believe sometime in you know,
1:23:10
Speaker 2: twenty sixty, twenty seventy, I do think that football is
1:23:13
Speaker 2: going to no longer be the center of sort of
1:23:17
Speaker 2: our society in terms of like how like like the
1:23:19
Speaker 2: shared experience. What I find really interesting is how troubling
1:23:25
Speaker 2: people seem to find that idea. Like I've given a predict.
1:23:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the equivalent of you predicting the
1:23:33
Speaker 1: end of boxing as a relevant sport in the United
1:23:35
Speaker 1: States or the world, would it have gotten you the
1:23:38
Speaker 1: same level of criticism?
1:23:43
Speaker 2: I can't imagine it. I mean, like, you know, if
1:23:46
Speaker 2: you to me, if somebody was like trying to sort
1:23:49
Speaker 2: of criticize this and be like, oh, basically, you know,
1:23:51
Speaker 2: you have a section of the book where you're saying,
1:23:53
Speaker 2: in fifty years, the world will not be the same
1:23:56
Speaker 2: as it is now, like, of course it'll be. But
1:23:58
Speaker 2: yet when you give this specific it really I always
1:24:02
Speaker 2: use this like like if I said to you, it's like,
1:24:04
Speaker 2: is there a likelihood that in fifty years somebody we
1:24:07
Speaker 2: currently consider a great canonical US president will no longer
1:24:11
Speaker 2: be seen in that way? I think you would probably
1:24:14
Speaker 2: say probably, that could easily happen. But then you say, okay,
1:24:17
Speaker 2: it's going to be Lincoln, and then people.
1:24:19
Speaker 1: Are like, no, no, we have a real world example
1:24:22
Speaker 1: of this. I'll give you a real world example of
1:24:24
Speaker 1: a president who's completely been changed in death the perception
1:24:29
Speaker 1: of it. Woodrow Wilson. Yes, that's where I thought you
1:24:32
Speaker 1: were going to say. I mean, it is astonishing to
1:24:35
Speaker 1: me how quickly he got erased from certain campuses, how
1:24:38
Speaker 1: quickly his name got taken off of buildings right.
1:24:40
Speaker 2: Well, the school right next to us, it used to
1:24:42
Speaker 2: be Woodrow Wilson High School. Now it's Yeah High School.
1:24:45
Speaker 1: The public high school closest to NBC's DC headquarters. Woodrow
1:24:49
Speaker 1: Wilson High School is now Jackson. Reed. It is no
1:24:51
Speaker 1: longer Woodrow Wilson High There's no way anybody predicts that
1:24:56
Speaker 1: thirty years ago I mean, you know the president we're
1:24:59
Speaker 1: going to erase. It's gonna be Woodrow Wilson, what Legal
1:25:03
Speaker 1: Nations guy exactly?
1:25:04
Speaker 2: Now, now the League of Nations have seems like a
1:25:06
Speaker 2: negative associate.
1:25:09
Speaker 1: And then you know the guy have any good ideas.
1:25:11
Speaker 2: You know, when I was in college, he was common
1:25:14
Speaker 2: for people to say, well, the two worst presidents are
1:25:16
Speaker 2: either Granted Buchanan. You know, Grant has definitely moved.
1:25:19
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Grant. Well, I mean, we all we
1:25:22
Speaker 1: all need uhh ron we all, we all am drawing
1:25:27
Speaker 1: a blanket his last name. Turnout. We all want Turnout
1:25:30
Speaker 1: to do our biography because apparently once she does your graphy,
1:25:34
Speaker 1: you rock it up in relevance, right. I mean, Hamilton's
1:25:38
Speaker 1: never had a p R better.
1:25:39
Speaker 2: People than exactly people think now he's not even president,
1:25:42
Speaker 2: but he's you know, he's talking about now.
1:25:46
Speaker 1: I do think you can't, you know, I do think
1:25:48
Speaker 1: you can't. It still, you know, gets to occupy you
1:25:50
Speaker 1: lose the union.
1:25:51
Speaker 2: Still down there, Richard, are still down there like it's not.
1:25:54
Speaker 2: But I would not you know, I wouldn't have thought
1:25:57
Speaker 2: Grant would have moved up that much, you know, but regardless,
1:26:00
Speaker 2: this is yeah.
1:26:01
Speaker 1: No, and Look, it's interesting to watch LBJ over the years.
1:26:05
Speaker 1: Suddenly Vietnam doesn't matter to some people as much as
1:26:08
Speaker 1: you know, there was a time all he was was
1:26:10
Speaker 1: defined by Vietnam. And I don't think if you told me,
1:26:12
Speaker 1: you know, by the time we hit the fiftieth anniversary
1:26:15
Speaker 1: of a bunch of stuff having to do with what
1:26:17
Speaker 1: what Lyndon Johnson, He's going to be revered by Democrats
1:26:20
Speaker 1: as the second greatest Democratic president after FDR. And I'm like,
1:26:23
Speaker 1: no way, And you're like, now there's the you know,
1:26:27
Speaker 1: he's another one that we've changed a little bit.
1:26:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that used to be this sort of the
1:26:31
Speaker 2: assumption that as soon as the president leaves office that
1:26:36
Speaker 2: it proceeded more positive, right, And now that that's not
1:26:39
Speaker 2: how it is now. Like now now it's that that
1:26:42
Speaker 2: hasn't happened with Clinton, that hasn't happen with a bomber.
1:26:45
Speaker 1: When I've asked this of people that write history books,
1:26:49
Speaker 1: when do you think is the soonest you should write
1:26:53
Speaker 1: about a historical event?
1:26:54
Speaker 2: Well, there was some question that when I did that
1:26:56
Speaker 2: book the nineties that came out in twenty.
1:26:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, now I wondered about that.
1:27:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, we helpish her the fifties and it comes out
1:27:05
Speaker 2: in the nineties, right, and that seems about the right time.
1:27:09
Speaker 2: I guess I was sort of.
1:27:13
Speaker 1: Ten years too early.
1:27:14
Speaker 2: Well, I think with what had happened with the acceleration
1:27:20
Speaker 2: of culture over the end of the twentieth centuries, the
1:27:23
Speaker 2: past seems their relationship to it is different. And it
1:27:27
Speaker 2: didn't It did not seem as though putting out a
1:27:30
Speaker 2: book about the nineties in twenty twenty one did not
1:27:34
Speaker 2: seem I mean, I was conscious about it. Putting practice
1:27:39
Speaker 2: that was never a criticism, for example, like I didn't
1:27:42
Speaker 2: hear people saying too soon on that. But I feel
1:27:45
Speaker 2: like that's about about as close as you want to get.
1:27:49
Speaker 2: Although I mean, also it depends if you specify something
1:27:53
Speaker 2: like okay, so you know, just speaking of sports or whatever,
1:27:56
Speaker 2: like you know, Michael Jordan was still playing for the
1:28:00
Speaker 2: Wizards at the turn of the century. When The Last
1:28:02
Speaker 2: Dance came out, it felt as if we were talking
1:28:04
Speaker 2: about something that was farther back than it actually was.
1:28:08
Speaker 2: I do think that, I mean, I think this is
1:28:12
Speaker 2: something that you know, it's a much bigger idea, But
1:28:15
Speaker 2: I think that that one thing the Internet has really
1:28:18
Speaker 2: done dramatically as kind of underrated is how it has
1:28:21
Speaker 2: changed our relationship to time. And I think that in
1:28:25
Speaker 2: some ways that might be that might be the deepest
1:28:28
Speaker 2: impact it has, because it.
1:28:29
Speaker 1: Is I've been chalking it up to COVID. You think
1:28:32
Speaker 1: it's bigger than this COVID because everything you know there's well,
1:28:37
Speaker 1: you and I are about the same age. There's two
1:28:39
Speaker 1: events where there feels like there's a before and after.
1:28:41
Speaker 1: And I'll give you one example. Recently. It was talking
1:28:45
Speaker 1: about the world of pre nine eleven versus post nine
1:28:48
Speaker 1: eleven with somebody and then I tried to remember what
1:28:52
Speaker 1: security lines were like at the airport pre nine eleven,
1:28:55
Speaker 1: and I actually couldn't. I remembered vaguely, Well, we still
1:28:59
Speaker 1: went through something, there was still a security check, there
1:29:02
Speaker 1: was still sort of some you know, it was more
1:29:06
Speaker 1: similar than different, but I could tell, but it was.
1:29:10
Speaker 1: But I you know, all I could say was, well,
1:29:12
Speaker 1: you used to be able to meet your family or
1:29:14
Speaker 1: friend at the gate right and anybody could go through security,
1:29:17
Speaker 1: regardless of whether you were ticketed or not. But that
1:29:20
Speaker 1: is something that if you're if you've never experienced at
1:29:22
Speaker 1: pre nine eleven, you know, So we have two big things.
1:29:25
Speaker 1: I think arguably, and maybe the older you get you
1:29:28
Speaker 1: have more of them. There's a real distinction between life
1:29:31
Speaker 1: pre nine eleven and post nine to eleven. And I
1:29:33
Speaker 1: think there's a distinction between life pre COVID and post COVID.
1:29:36
Speaker 1: But I'm curious you think about this stuff more. You're
1:29:39
Speaker 1: more consumed by these things than anybody I've come across.
1:29:43
Speaker 1: Where do you fall on that?
1:29:46
Speaker 2: I mean, nine eleven was because it happened so suddenly,
1:29:49
Speaker 2: and it was a dramatic event, you know, this kind
1:29:53
Speaker 2: of break, you know, is a day, it's in a
1:29:55
Speaker 2: morning or whatever, this has happened. There was this one
1:29:57
Speaker 2: reality and then there's this different reality, and there was
1:29:59
Speaker 2: also sort of the added edition to you know. Again,
1:30:03
Speaker 2: it's really hard to get back into how we thought
1:30:06
Speaker 2: in the past. You just can't do that in a way.
1:30:08
Speaker 2: But there is now, I think, a belief and probably
1:30:11
Speaker 2: somewhat justified that there was an idea that something like
1:30:14
Speaker 2: nine to eleven could not happen, like there would never
1:30:17
Speaker 2: be sort of a terrorist attack that successful that large
1:30:21
Speaker 2: in the United States. It was like something that didn't
1:30:23
Speaker 2: even seem.
1:30:24
Speaker 1: Like even in America, where you know, we saw they
1:30:26
Speaker 1: tried this in ninety three and we stopped them like that.
1:30:29
Speaker 1: Nobody can pull that off.
1:30:30
Speaker 2: So so it was sort of like a this this
1:30:32
Speaker 2: unknown or kind of unimagined thing happening really suddenly COVID
1:30:37
Speaker 2: there was you know, I remember interviewing Jonathan Franzen in
1:30:41
Speaker 2: like twenty twelve or something, and he was like, I
1:30:45
Speaker 2: worry about global pandemics, Like there was this idea that
1:30:48
Speaker 2: this band like a bird flu pandemic, everything could happen.
1:30:51
Speaker 2: And then, you know, the COVID experience was slow. It
1:30:57
Speaker 2: was like, you know, it's like, well, what is going
1:31:00
Speaker 2: to be like this for two weeks? Oh, no, it's
1:31:02
Speaker 2: going to be like this way two months? Oh what
1:31:03
Speaker 2: could be two years? So maybe it's just going to
1:31:05
Speaker 2: be this way for it?
1:31:06
Speaker 1: Is it a ridiculous that we thought when the shutdown,
1:31:08
Speaker 1: we all thought, well, this is just going to be
1:31:09
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. And you know, in hindsight, that
1:31:12
Speaker 1: was like among the dumbest things we could have thought.
1:31:15
Speaker 1: And yet look, I grew up in hurricane country, meaning
1:31:18
Speaker 1: in Florida, So I the only time I ever was
1:31:21
Speaker 1: you ever were at home for something, it was because
1:31:25
Speaker 1: oh a storm knocked everything out, Oh the power is
1:31:27
Speaker 1: going to come back on or this is you know,
1:31:29
Speaker 1: you're like, what are we waiting on? You know, in
1:31:31
Speaker 1: hindsight now it seems ridiculous that we because I think
1:31:34
Speaker 1: everybody went into the attitude during the shutdown with like, oh,
1:31:38
Speaker 1: we're just going to go a couple of weeks, and
1:31:40
Speaker 1: you're like, how are we doing that? And looking back
1:31:43
Speaker 1: that seemed like a ridiculous idea, But at the moment,
1:31:45
Speaker 1: we all, I think, thought it right.
1:31:47
Speaker 2: I mean, and again it's like we I think in
1:31:49
Speaker 2: the same way for those two weeks after nine to eleven,
1:31:53
Speaker 2: we've kind of forgotten how weird it was and how
1:31:56
Speaker 2: like there'd be people you'd talk.
1:31:58
Speaker 1: My living in a city that was attacked. It was.
1:32:00
Speaker 1: I think it was super weird here in DC. Like
1:32:02
Speaker 1: I worked. I worked at the Watergate right across the
1:32:05
Speaker 1: street from the Saudi Embassy. You think I wanted to
1:32:07
Speaker 1: go into the office any day of the week. I
1:32:08
Speaker 1: thought for sure they were a target, you know, that
1:32:11
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and people were convinced to this. I
1:32:14
Speaker 1: remember I had created a go bag. You're like, oh,
1:32:17
Speaker 1: Washington is one hundred percent of target. You know. It
1:32:19
Speaker 1: was just this mindset of yeah, you better know how
1:32:22
Speaker 1: you're leaving when the when the when stuff comes.
1:32:26
Speaker 2: You know, it is it is, I mean, it was,
1:32:29
Speaker 2: it was. It was so strange. In fact, maybe it's
1:32:31
Speaker 2: not support I mean just the idea of how common
1:32:33
Speaker 2: it was for people to say during that period, maybe
1:32:36
Speaker 2: they just won't be popular culture anymore, like maybe we'll
1:32:39
Speaker 2: never again be interested in Frivola, we'll only think about Syria,
1:32:42
Speaker 2: we'll only think about these things. And then in truth,
1:32:45
Speaker 2: and it went further the other way, like when the swing,
1:32:48
Speaker 2: when the pendulum swung back, culture was actually almost more
1:32:51
Speaker 2: superficial than prior to that, you know, in the first
1:32:54
Speaker 2: couple of weeks of COVID, you know, and we're doing
1:32:56
Speaker 2: all these weird things, like all of a sudden, people
1:32:58
Speaker 2: are like, we need to have zoom conversationations to connect
1:33:01
Speaker 2: with friends. And you're having zoom conversations with people who
1:33:03
Speaker 2: normally you would never talk to, you might go two
1:33:06
Speaker 2: years without talking to. But now it's like we need
1:33:07
Speaker 2: to do this right, And and it was it was
1:33:11
Speaker 2: just I mean, it's embarrassed. I'm almost embarrassed when I
1:33:14
Speaker 2: think about it. There was one time when like I
1:33:16
Speaker 2: went into a grocery store. Everyone's masking or whatever, you know,
1:33:21
Speaker 2: And I got home and I felt really good. I
1:33:25
Speaker 2: felt really good, and I was like, does this mean
1:33:28
Speaker 2: I have COVID? The fact that I feel good like
1:33:30
Speaker 2: I was just like anything made like it was so
1:33:33
Speaker 2: weird you were so thinking about I mean, and it was.
1:33:36
Speaker 2: It was also sort of a bizarre time when for
1:33:39
Speaker 2: the only this is the only time this has happened
1:33:42
Speaker 2: to me in my life, which is that what I
1:33:45
Speaker 2: was thinking about was what everyone in the world was
1:33:47
Speaker 2: thinking about, and that's so rare, even nine to eleven.
1:33:51
Speaker 2: I remember going to Australia after like or New Zealand,
1:33:54
Speaker 2: I guess it was like six months after nine to
1:33:57
Speaker 2: eleven or something and talking to someone there and they're like, oh, yeah,
1:33:59
Speaker 2: that was interesting that happened. I was like, you know,
1:34:01
Speaker 2: but it was COVID was every.
1:34:04
Speaker 1: Let me drill down on that, because I, you know,
1:34:05
Speaker 1: there was a part of me that wondered, was this
1:34:07
Speaker 1: going to be the ultimate global event? Meaning it was
1:34:11
Speaker 1: really the first time with the communications that we have
1:34:13
Speaker 1: where we we're somebody in Senegal and somebody in Portland
1:34:18
Speaker 1: and somebody in d C were all experiencing the same
1:34:21
Speaker 1: exact disruption in their life. The disruptions were different, right,
1:34:25
Speaker 1: you know, because we all live different lives, but all
1:34:28
Speaker 1: of our lives were being disrupted by the same thing.
1:34:31
Speaker 1: And I know what I I think I'm sure I
1:34:35
Speaker 1: went't alone and thinking this is like, this is going
1:34:37
Speaker 1: to have to mean, This will mean something going forward.
1:34:40
Speaker 1: The fact that we now have a shared experience for
1:34:43
Speaker 1: the globe in a way that we had that yes,
1:34:46
Speaker 1: we've all had in some ways. You know, the more
1:34:48
Speaker 1: you travel, the more you realize everybody, everybody's lives are
1:34:51
Speaker 1: more similar than different, YadA YadA YadA, but that you know,
1:34:54
Speaker 1: that comes with everybody's personal experience. But I always I
1:34:57
Speaker 1: thought that was going to mean more than it turned
1:34:59
Speaker 1: out to me.
1:35:00
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if we really know yet, because
1:35:02
Speaker 2: I think that meaning that you're talking about is going
1:35:07
Speaker 2: to be seen in the manifestation for the most part,
1:35:10
Speaker 2: with like people who experienced this when they were in
1:35:12
Speaker 2: like eighth, nine, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade.
1:35:14
Speaker 1: Oh that's my son and daughter. I mean I am
1:35:17
Speaker 1: fastinary by them.
1:35:18
Speaker 2: My kids were really young when it happened, and I
1:35:21
Speaker 2: can absolutely see a situation where I later look back nostalgically,
1:35:25
Speaker 2: almost because it was like we were all in the
1:35:27
Speaker 2: house together. They were actually at an age where it
1:35:30
Speaker 2: wasn't that terror. It wasn't like they.
1:35:33
Speaker 1: Didn't love me, Chuck, I take about it's the best
1:35:36
Speaker 1: two years of my family's life. Yeah, I became my
1:35:39
Speaker 1: kids and us we are we're I've had other relatives
1:35:42
Speaker 1: say to me, you guys are too close or you know,
1:35:44
Speaker 1: but COVID I had no. I thought we were a
1:35:48
Speaker 1: pretty normal close family. No, no, no, no, this and they were.
1:35:52
Speaker 1: My kids are probably a little bit older than years.
1:35:54
Speaker 1: I got one to just graduated college and one in college,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: and so we were basically is seventh grade and tenth
1:36:02
Speaker 1: grade is with I mean we we We We created TV,
1:36:06
Speaker 1: we introduced each other to TV shows, we taught watch
1:36:09
Speaker 1: certain movies together. We created new eating habits. In fact,
1:36:12
Speaker 1: we ate we now we have we now religiously eat
1:36:16
Speaker 1: together at the same time, all thanks to COVID. So
1:36:18
Speaker 1: I look at COVID as an tremendous positive in my
1:36:23
Speaker 1: personal family connections in life. And I would never utter
1:36:27
Speaker 1: that and assume that everybody else had I know, and
1:36:29
Speaker 1: I always felt, I, in fact feel a little bit
1:36:31
Speaker 1: guilty about how how important that that period. Now I
1:36:37
Speaker 1: think has turned out to be for.
1:36:38
Speaker 2: Me, Well, I mean that sort of then kind of
1:36:41
Speaker 2: just kind of demands the question and how important though
1:36:44
Speaker 2: do you view the I guess what would have traditionally
1:36:48
Speaker 2: been considered the normal experience of the seventh grader and
1:36:51
Speaker 2: a tenth grader who they did not have those things,
1:36:54
Speaker 2: you know, And I uh, I just I wonder if, like,
1:37:00
Speaker 2: you know, because it was we were moving in this
1:37:03
Speaker 2: direction where it was like it was totally possible for
1:37:06
Speaker 2: every member of the family to really be isolated even
1:37:09
Speaker 2: in their own house. You know, everyone's on different screens
1:37:12
Speaker 2: or whatever. It seemed like everything about the culture would
1:37:14
Speaker 2: indicate that people were becoming more kind of animized or
1:37:17
Speaker 2: whatever it like, split up, and then we suddenly had
1:37:19
Speaker 2: this like little house on the prairie reality where everyone
1:37:22
Speaker 2: was in the house all the time or whatever. Now,
1:37:26
Speaker 2: it will be fascinating if it turns out that in
1:37:29
Speaker 2: the future there is sort of a consensus that well,
1:37:32
Speaker 2: this was actually really good for families that like and
1:37:35
Speaker 2: that maybe like the divorce rate will be lower, so
1:37:38
Speaker 2: something will happen that will like this will change their way.
1:37:43
Speaker 2: It will almost have moved back the familial experience of
1:37:46
Speaker 2: experience being family to like the way it might have
1:37:48
Speaker 2: been in the forties or whatever. I don't know.
1:37:51
Speaker 1: Well, I remember reading about life pre nineteen seventeen eighteen pandemic,
1:37:56
Speaker 1: things like bringing your own silver where to a restaurant
1:38:01
Speaker 1: was a normal thing to do and sharing a cup.
1:38:03
Speaker 1: After that, everybody watched everything and there was like a
1:38:07
Speaker 1: little weird like and I didn't realize that that was
1:38:09
Speaker 1: you brought your own silverware, if you ate at a house,
1:38:12
Speaker 1: you know, at a restaurant, that what we call today
1:38:15
Speaker 1: a restaurant wasn't quite there, oh at the inn or
1:38:17
Speaker 1: wherever you were going. So there will be things that
1:38:20
Speaker 1: massively change that we don't fully appreciate, probably until someone
1:38:25
Speaker 1: like you looks back on it and says, don't you
1:38:26
Speaker 1: remember this and now that's totally changed to this?
1:38:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, but then it's also was complicated by the
1:38:33
Speaker 2: fact that then does the person looking back actually have
1:38:36
Speaker 2: the better understanding that we do experiencing it. I don't know.
1:38:39
Speaker 2: I think sometimes, yes, I mean I sometimes think about this,
1:38:42
Speaker 2: like how you know, you know, when when like the
1:38:46
Speaker 2: Tailorscrift Ariostro was happening and you had you saw these
1:38:49
Speaker 2: situations where tickets were this insane price. But it was like,
1:38:52
Speaker 2: you know, it's like moms and their daughters going or
1:38:54
Speaker 2: dads and their kids going, you know.
1:38:56
Speaker 1: And they also had a deadhead vibe to it too,
1:38:59
Speaker 1: right where there was like you had to be there,
1:39:01
Speaker 1: you had to experience Taylor Swift, but concert you couldn't
1:39:06
Speaker 1: to really experience her.
1:39:07
Speaker 2: But the but the thing is, this was an experience
1:39:10
Speaker 2: that seemed to be of interest to both the kid
1:39:12
Speaker 2: and the parent. Where it's like, you know, in the
1:39:15
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties or whatever, the idea that like, oh, yeah,
1:39:17
Speaker 2: your dad wanted to go to Motley Crue with you,
1:39:19
Speaker 2: or that didn't really.
1:39:20
Speaker 1: Happen, or it I've had a broken promise. Randy Rhodes died,
1:39:24
Speaker 1: My dad was going to take me to for and
1:39:26
Speaker 1: Randy Rhads died before and the tickets got avoided, right
1:39:30
Speaker 1: Like that was the one time I convinced Sad to do.
1:39:32
Speaker 2: Buy Trucker song addresses this almost directly. But then I
1:39:35
Speaker 2: was thinking about this though. If you go all the
1:39:37
Speaker 2: way back, so you go to like to the late
1:39:39
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, the early nineteen hundreds, like what would be entertainment,
1:39:43
Speaker 2: entertainment and culture would be something the whole family would
1:39:46
Speaker 2: experience the circus is here or whatever. It's like, there's
1:39:49
Speaker 2: a So it might be that it's just the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
1:39:56
Speaker 2: twenty tens. That might be the only, like fifty years
1:40:00
Speaker 2: sixty year period where the idea of what the parents
1:40:03
Speaker 2: experienced and what their kids experienced were these two completely
1:40:07
Speaker 2: bifurcated things that had no relationship. Because I see more
1:40:10
Speaker 2: and more that parents watch movies with their kids and
1:40:14
Speaker 2: they both and they're almost made for both people. They're
1:40:16
Speaker 2: only all these you know that, like all these like
1:40:19
Speaker 2: Marvel movies and all these things, they seem to be
1:40:22
Speaker 2: created so that there's like, well there's material for kids,
1:40:25
Speaker 2: and there's material for adults, and they can bolt it.
1:40:27
Speaker 1: So like I look at Phineas and Ferb and I
1:40:30
Speaker 1: always thought, sure, you know, my kids loved it, and
1:40:33
Speaker 1: it clearly every once in a while there were a
1:40:35
Speaker 1: few jokes for.
1:40:35
Speaker 2: The parents, and yeah, and I guess you know, The
1:40:38
Speaker 2: Muppet Show was a little bit like that, but for
1:40:40
Speaker 2: the most part of your kid was watching Sesame Street,
1:40:43
Speaker 2: like there was the idea that somehow you would both
1:40:46
Speaker 2: have this shared experience. So I sometimes think it would
1:40:48
Speaker 2: be really interesting if it turns out in a great
1:40:51
Speaker 2: expanse of history that it was only one window of
1:40:55
Speaker 2: time when there was this generation gap in terms of
1:40:59
Speaker 2: culture consumption, that it will be that that maybe we
1:41:02
Speaker 2: just happened to live through this period, which it almost
1:41:04
Speaker 2: seems like it must exist. It feels to me like
1:41:08
Speaker 2: somehow the way that what a teenager wants and what
1:41:11
Speaker 2: a forty year old wants or whatever, it should just
1:41:14
Speaker 2: inherently be different. And maybe we're just the one section
1:41:16
Speaker 2: like the sixties made that happen in a lot of ways.
1:41:28
Speaker 1: So back to football book, and I sit there and
1:41:31
Speaker 1: I think this originally was a question I was asking about.
1:41:34
Speaker 1: You know, what is what is? What is history? You know?
1:41:37
Speaker 1: When is it a When is the perfect time to
1:41:38
Speaker 1: do this? So to go? Is there a is is football?
1:41:47
Speaker 1: And as a cultural sort of glue for us? When
1:41:53
Speaker 1: television itself ends as a cultural glue? Or is the
1:41:57
Speaker 1: visual medium so powerful that you know what? What? You
1:42:02
Speaker 1: and I? When I'm saying television, you and I might
1:42:05
Speaker 1: be thinking one thing. My son, you know, he just
1:42:08
Speaker 1: views all TV is on your screen. It's stuff that
1:42:10
Speaker 1: you either visualize or stuff you read. I mean, so
1:42:14
Speaker 1: he had television is just a big monitor as far
1:42:17
Speaker 1: as he's concerned. So I'm just curious, is it when
1:42:19
Speaker 1: that goes away, that football goes away. Is it so
1:42:21
Speaker 1: tied to the visual medium?
1:42:23
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I suppose it comes down to that.
1:42:27
Speaker 2: At some point, I think, you know that the cost
1:42:33
Speaker 2: of television advertising and the effectiveness of television advertising is
1:42:38
Speaker 2: going to reach a point where there is a realization
1:42:40
Speaker 2: that what you know, a company has to put into
1:42:43
Speaker 2: this is not going to equate what they're getting back.
1:42:46
Speaker 2: And they will. It's not that it's like it won't
1:42:48
Speaker 2: work at all, but they're just like, what we're paying
1:42:49
Speaker 2: for these Super Bowl ads or whatever. It's like, there's
1:42:52
Speaker 2: no way that the cost of making this is effective
1:42:56
Speaker 2: enough to justify it.
1:42:57
Speaker 1: It's still seen as a lost leader by many of
1:42:59
Speaker 1: these at companies. They just want the eyeballs they do
1:43:02
Speaker 1: yes and other stuff yes, or just to build to
1:43:06
Speaker 1: validate what their.
1:43:08
Speaker 2: Company is that we're a company that ever, we're a
1:43:11
Speaker 2: household name, even if you're not buying our household products
1:43:14
Speaker 2: or whatever we need. I just I think that there
1:43:17
Speaker 2: is a limit to that as a successful thing. And
1:43:20
Speaker 2: so when that goes away, and even it doesn't have
1:43:23
Speaker 2: to disappear, like it doesn't have to go away entirely,
1:43:24
Speaker 2: it has to go down five percent because the NFL,
1:43:27
Speaker 2: particularly and now I would say probably college football as well,
1:43:31
Speaker 2: is of the mindset that it can only expand. I mean,
1:43:35
Speaker 2: the NFL is not comfortable simply being the most popular
1:43:39
Speaker 2: thing in the United States or I think all these
1:43:41
Speaker 2: games in Rio and Australians and it's like it's just there.
1:43:46
Speaker 2: It's a a. I mean, it's ultimately, I think with anything,
1:43:52
Speaker 2: it's like it could be a huge mistake, but it's
1:43:54
Speaker 2: hard to stop. It's hard to stop doing it when
1:43:55
Speaker 2: you can. But when this happens is idea. Let's say
1:43:58
Speaker 2: that I'm right about this, and that's some It's one point,
1:44:01
Speaker 2: you know, advertising is no longer worth the cost to
1:44:05
Speaker 2: continually have CBS and Fox and you know, Prime or
1:44:10
Speaker 2: all these places, you know, to pay for these games.
1:44:12
Speaker 2: Then it will become is football valuable enough to people
1:44:16
Speaker 2: that they will buy these things all accrd that they
1:44:19
Speaker 2: will just say, like I will pay whatever, you know,
1:44:21
Speaker 2: the twenty fifty five equivalent of twenty five bucks or
1:44:24
Speaker 2: whatever to watch this game. Now, if that would have
1:44:26
Speaker 2: happen now, it absolutely would be enough. Like like if
1:44:31
Speaker 2: football suddenly was something you had to buy per game
1:44:33
Speaker 2: or per day or per week or whatever you know,
1:44:36
Speaker 2: there would be it would have ablutely no problem doing
1:44:38
Speaker 2: that and survivor.
1:44:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what about try another sport? I mean, you
1:44:41
Speaker 1: have a real we have a real world example. Boxing.
1:44:44
Speaker 1: The minute boxing became pay per view, I didn't get
1:44:47
Speaker 1: to watch a boxing match as a kid anymore, and
1:44:50
Speaker 1: they just have.
1:44:50
Speaker 2: To kind of inflate the price of those, like what
1:44:53
Speaker 2: the pay per view is, you know, the boxes especial.
1:44:56
Speaker 1: Story boxing, in my opinion, more than anything else, was
1:44:59
Speaker 1: taking it off.
1:45:00
Speaker 2: Of pro totally. Yes, I mean when it was because
1:45:02
Speaker 2: it was a good television sport in a way too.
1:45:04
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, because you could you can really see.
1:45:07
Speaker 1: I'm a Hagler Leonard. I'm a huge I love the
1:45:09
Speaker 1: Hagler Leonard fight. I've seen replays of it. I didn't
1:45:12
Speaker 1: get to see it a love I heard you, I
1:45:14
Speaker 1: heard the you know, I remember being glued to the
1:45:18
Speaker 1: radio that gave the after round summaries in between rounds.
1:45:23
Speaker 1: It was the strangest radio experience, and I wonder if
1:45:27
Speaker 1: you remember exper It was such a vivid memory for me,
1:45:30
Speaker 1: I was we were a Hagler family. Yes, we were
1:45:33
Speaker 1: all rooting for Hagler.
1:45:34
Speaker 2: I mean I was, you know, I was, I was young.
1:45:36
Speaker 2: I was still in high school. So I was like
1:45:38
Speaker 2: I woke up and found out what happened, you know,
1:45:40
Speaker 2: and then he steals from the fight the Today Show
1:45:42
Speaker 2: for whatever.
1:45:43
Speaker 1: I was an only child. My dad let me stay
1:45:45
Speaker 1: up late with him and listen.
1:45:48
Speaker 2: But just kind of we're saying though this idea of like,
1:45:50
Speaker 2: you know, uh uh, will will people? Could football be
1:45:56
Speaker 2: a product that people will just pay for it out
1:45:57
Speaker 2: of pocket? I'm just paying for the thing, you know.
1:45:59
Speaker 2: And and as I say, like, if that happened now,
1:46:01
Speaker 2: it would not be a problem. I do suspect though,
1:46:04
Speaker 2: that in a future that will be less likely as
1:46:09
Speaker 2: fewer and fewer people have an interpersonal relationship to football,
1:46:15
Speaker 2: Like not just that it's not just that like they
1:46:17
Speaker 2: didn't play or whatever. Lots of you know, the majority
1:46:19
Speaker 2: of people love football didn't play. But it's I can
1:46:23
Speaker 2: see this moving where it's like not only that they
1:46:25
Speaker 2: didn't play, but none of their friends played, their dad
1:46:28
Speaker 2: didn't play, and you know, and it wasn't like something
1:46:31
Speaker 2: that they cared that much about they were in a
1:46:32
Speaker 2: fancy football league, so they followed it. Then you know,
1:46:35
Speaker 2: it's like it's just a kind of distraction. We watched
1:46:38
Speaker 2: football on Sunday or Thursday night or Monday, cause's is
1:46:42
Speaker 2: kind of what you do or whatever. It doesn't mean
1:46:44
Speaker 2: that much. And if there was a dramatic work stoppage
1:46:49
Speaker 2: in say twenty sixty five or twenty seventy five or something,
1:46:52
Speaker 2: I don't know if people would even care that much,
1:46:55
Speaker 2: and all of a sud And I just like I again,
1:46:58
Speaker 2: I always I've said this another podcast, like I'm not
1:47:00
Speaker 2: one of these like anti capitalist people or whatever, but
1:47:03
Speaker 2: I mean supports are I think, in some ways like
1:47:06
Speaker 2: a simulation of how capitalists operate, how capful is it
1:47:10
Speaker 2: operates in a way that's kind of exceedingly dangerous, like
1:47:14
Speaker 2: you know, like the exponential growth of things like like
1:47:17
Speaker 2: what you know, uh just I mean just looking at
1:47:21
Speaker 2: players salaries or whatever, you know, starting from nineteen sixty
1:47:26
Speaker 2: and kind of going through like it's it doesn't like
1:47:29
Speaker 2: if you you say to yourself, like, well, this is
1:47:32
Speaker 2: obviously can't continue this way, like like there's like there's
1:47:34
Speaker 2: no way it can.
1:47:35
Speaker 1: And and I can say that about the stock market,
1:47:38
Speaker 1: I say that about housing prices. This is what a
1:47:41
Speaker 1: million dollar house looks like, now are you kidding me?
1:47:43
Speaker 1: You know, and it's a brownstone and like you know,
1:47:47
Speaker 1: a mid level neighborhood in DC, right.
1:47:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. And like this, I mean, like the
1:47:51
Speaker 2: stock market is an interesting one because it's like like
1:47:55
Speaker 2: so much is dependent, so much of the world has
1:47:58
Speaker 2: depended on this that like if they're if we really
1:48:00
Speaker 2: got to that point, people would step in. But I
1:48:02
Speaker 2: don't know if that's going to happen with something kind
1:48:04
Speaker 2: of a small siloed thing like football, like I mean,
1:48:07
Speaker 2: maybe it would, maybe there would be government intervention of
1:48:10
Speaker 2: this happened, like we need to have this sort of
1:48:13
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I just I again, by
1:48:17
Speaker 2: talking about this, it kind of makes it seem like
1:48:19
Speaker 2: this is what the book is and this.
1:48:20
Speaker 1: Is like one and I know, no, no, no, and
1:48:23
Speaker 1: I know, but.
1:48:24
Speaker 2: Because it really it's really hard for people to sort
1:48:27
Speaker 2: of get around this, like just there there. It almost
1:48:31
Speaker 2: kind of I think that I saw what one person
1:48:34
Speaker 2: I said, like the fact that I sort of bring
1:48:37
Speaker 2: this idea up is disqualifying. Like it's like like I'm
1:48:40
Speaker 2: just because like the I just don't.
1:48:42
Speaker 1: Agree with that, Like I don't think now life's not
1:48:44
Speaker 1: interesting if you can't think, you're just trying to think,
1:48:47
Speaker 1: you know, they could project. I mean, my goodness, if
1:48:50
Speaker 1: you took that away from people, we'd have no reasons
1:48:52
Speaker 1: for podcasts. The NFL, why is football? And I I
1:48:59
Speaker 1: will I'm going to preface this question by saying, maybe
1:49:03
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, and maybe but you brought up earlier about
1:49:07
Speaker 1: how the NFL is trying to you know, play as
1:49:11
Speaker 1: many games now internationally as they can, and you know,
1:49:16
Speaker 1: and I think they're right to be thinking about this
1:49:18
Speaker 1: because the question is is America going to continue to
1:49:20
Speaker 1: be an exporter or culture? Are we going to be
1:49:22
Speaker 1: an importer of culture? And you know, I think there's
1:49:26
Speaker 1: an American and you know, sort of centric view that, oh,
1:49:30
Speaker 1: our culture is always exporting, We're never importing. Please, we're
1:49:34
Speaker 1: always importing and exporting all the time. At this point
1:49:38
Speaker 1: in time, in our and and where we are in
1:49:40
Speaker 1: the timeline of of of world history, American football has
1:49:44
Speaker 1: been hard to export.
1:49:46
Speaker 2: What's your why? Well, many reasons. One is just the
1:49:52
Speaker 2: complexity of the game. Uh, you know, like if you
1:49:56
Speaker 2: if you're watching a football game with a kid. They
1:49:59
Speaker 2: can literally really ask you a question about every single play,
1:50:02
Speaker 2: like what is that? Like what you know? Like it
1:50:03
Speaker 2: is it is overstructured in a way.
1:50:08
Speaker 1: I mean just the fact that like, no, I mean,
1:50:09
Speaker 1: eleven people have to do this, have to all do
1:50:12
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why I do think it's a
1:50:14
Speaker 1: great teacher of teamwork. Like it's there's no other sport
1:50:17
Speaker 1: like it in that sense.
1:50:18
Speaker 2: It's eleven guys are having to do all these things
1:50:21
Speaker 2: based on the instruction given to them by the quarterback
1:50:24
Speaker 2: who read off a wristband a code which was given
1:50:28
Speaker 2: to him through a radio from the sideline that came
1:50:32
Speaker 2: from a landline phone up into the press box where
1:50:35
Speaker 2: an offensive cordner made that go like there is no
1:50:38
Speaker 2: ex temporaneous nature of football except occasionally, within the context
1:50:42
Speaker 2: of a five second play there will be a moment
1:50:44
Speaker 2: of ex temporaneous action and people that's kind of what
1:50:47
Speaker 2: is the thrilling part. But you know, we have sort
1:50:49
Speaker 2: of conditioned to believe and you see this with like
1:50:51
Speaker 2: you know, the player empowerment error, but lots of things.
1:50:54
Speaker 2: The idea that what we want is we want freedom
1:50:57
Speaker 2: for those guys. We want freedom for the players. We
1:50:59
Speaker 2: watch an NBA game, we want freedom of movement. Uh
1:51:02
Speaker 2: you know, we watch a baseball game. We like the
1:51:04
Speaker 2: idea that's sort of that the manager is basically just
1:51:06
Speaker 2: putting the pieces in onto the chessboard, and those guys
1:51:09
Speaker 2: are doing it are we're you know, Soccer is the
1:51:11
Speaker 2: same way. We've been told that what we want because
1:51:15
Speaker 2: just the way society operates is a free, democratic extension
1:51:20
Speaker 2: of something and football is the opposite of that. Football
1:51:23
Speaker 2: is not that way, and that is why it succeeds
1:51:26
Speaker 2: because unconsciously, what we actually want is other people being controlled.
1:51:33
Speaker 2: We want freedom for ourselves, but what we what we experience,
1:51:36
Speaker 2: We want to see their obstructions, like we you know,
1:51:39
Speaker 2: it's so now you try to transfer that to you know,
1:51:43
Speaker 2: Germany or Spain or England or whatever. It's like it's
1:51:48
Speaker 2: pretty easy for someone to watch a soccer game or
1:51:51
Speaker 2: a basketball game or golf or whatever and deduce what
1:51:54
Speaker 2: is happening. It doesn't really work that way. For football
1:51:56
Speaker 2: is almost like a life experience.
1:51:58
Speaker 1: Okay, but what but take rugby, I mean to do
1:52:02
Speaker 1: things on rugby. Hey, why hasn't rugby become more popular
1:52:05
Speaker 1: in the United States? And b how come, American football
1:52:08
Speaker 1: hasn't done as well in rugby centric countries.
1:52:15
Speaker 2: Well, it's doll a little bitter rugby centric countries in
1:52:17
Speaker 2: the center like pro football more than most of the countries,
1:52:22
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I guess like this seems
1:52:25
Speaker 2: kind of self serving, but part of what this book
1:52:28
Speaker 2: is about is the reason American football means so much
1:52:32
Speaker 2: to America. Are these specific things that inadvertently, it was
1:52:37
Speaker 2: not anyone's conscious of them, but it kind of inadvertently
1:52:40
Speaker 2: reflects the kind of in many ways, like we call
1:52:43
Speaker 2: it American exceptionalism, murder or the exception of America, this
1:52:46
Speaker 2: idea that it's like things are different here, so the
1:52:50
Speaker 2: rules are different here, and because you know, we why
1:52:55
Speaker 2: is it? You know? You know in some ways, yes,
1:52:57
Speaker 2: you watch your rugby game, or you're watching Australian rules
1:52:59
Speaker 2: for fotball game, it's like this is the end of
1:53:01
Speaker 2: cal Stanford, but it's the whole game.
1:53:03
Speaker 1: I got thet but I got fought sort of. I
1:53:06
Speaker 1: remember in Johannesburg one time on an extra day and
1:53:09
Speaker 1: I was bored, and I started watching some rugby seven's
1:53:13
Speaker 1: and I got really into it, and I was like, boy,
1:53:15
Speaker 1: if they could just watch a little bit of NFL
1:53:17
Speaker 1: film here, but they have a couple of better sweet
1:53:19
Speaker 1: plays they could do here.
1:53:21
Speaker 2: Is like I guess here's like one of kind of
1:53:23
Speaker 2: the principal arguments I make in this book, which is
1:53:25
Speaker 2: that the things about football that seem as though they
1:53:30
Speaker 2: should be problems are the reason it matters so much
1:53:35
Speaker 2: to us. In particular, Like I referenced this, and I'm
1:53:38
Speaker 2: sure you know I'm talking about this famous Wall Street
1:53:40
Speaker 2: Journal articles the eleven seconds where a guy eleven minutes
1:53:43
Speaker 2: where a guy. They studied all these NFL games and
1:53:46
Speaker 2: they came to the conclusion, I mean, the justifiable actual.
1:53:50
Speaker 2: The conclusion was it's for eleven minutes of football in
1:53:53
Speaker 2: a three hour broadcast. Now you hear that, and you're like,
1:53:57
Speaker 2: that is idiotic.
1:54:00
Speaker 1: By the way, I want to put this in time,
1:54:01
Speaker 1: you note this was twenty twelve. This is a This
1:54:05
Speaker 1: was I would argue, the beginning of what I would
1:54:07
Speaker 1: call peak anti football, meaning that was we were right,
1:54:11
Speaker 1: we were yet that that was that concussions right, Yet
1:54:14
Speaker 1: all of this was coming. Trust me, I had to
1:54:16
Speaker 1: run in with NBC Sports during a Super Bowl year
1:54:20
Speaker 1: over CTE story that I did unmeet the press that
1:54:23
Speaker 1: the NFL objected to, and there was all sorts of
1:54:25
Speaker 1: consternation and and but the point is is that there
1:54:29
Speaker 1: were a lot of pretty smart people going, oh boy,
1:54:32
Speaker 1: football is going the way of boxing. It's just a
1:54:34
Speaker 1: matter of time.
1:54:34
Speaker 2: And there was an active attempt to look for those things.
1:54:37
Speaker 2: And this big examples like it's like, so this sport
1:54:41
Speaker 2: which we to violence ruin these guys' lives. They don't
1:54:45
Speaker 2: really understand it. And there's a racial component to this.
1:54:48
Speaker 2: And also you're watching three hours to see eleven minutes
1:54:50
Speaker 2: of action. But what is the incredible thing is that
1:54:56
Speaker 2: eleven minutes of action in a three hour window is
1:55:00
Speaker 2: the perfect amount because it provides an experience other sports
1:55:04
Speaker 2: do not, Like you have.
1:55:05
Speaker 1: A terrific job of explaining movies and how you would
1:55:10
Speaker 1: actually you sort of zone out if you had too
1:55:12
Speaker 1: much action.
1:55:13
Speaker 2: You know it actually do as somebody who loves action movies,
1:55:16
Speaker 2: what do you want from movies? They want more actions?
1:55:18
Speaker 2: We all the whole action, you know, like you know,
1:55:20
Speaker 2: and for one movie that can work, like like the
1:55:24
Speaker 2: movie furyor Oad or whatever, that's kind of what that
1:55:25
Speaker 2: is and people love, but it can't be this thing
1:55:28
Speaker 2: if you're going to be experiencing something every weekend, all fall,
1:55:34
Speaker 2: much of winter, and then every year for your life.
1:55:38
Speaker 2: What it is is like like there's you know, there's
1:55:40
Speaker 2: hypnotic sports, you know, like basketball and soccer. They're constantly
1:55:44
Speaker 2: in motion, but there's low stakes within every small moment.
1:55:48
Speaker 2: There's totally cerebral sports like golf, baseball, and stuff, where
1:55:52
Speaker 2: most of the action is waiting for something to happen
1:55:54
Speaker 2: and thinking about it, and football combines these things. Football
1:55:58
Speaker 2: is a mostly cerebral sport, but the moments of action
1:56:02
Speaker 2: are so in kinetic and intense. It creates the illusion
1:56:05
Speaker 2: almost of NonStop action, and that is actually what we crave.
1:56:09
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just one of these people who really
1:56:11
Speaker 2: believes most of what people want is unknown to us.
1:56:17
Speaker 2: That what is on the front of our mind, what
1:56:18
Speaker 2: we describe as our desire, what we describe as like
1:56:21
Speaker 2: what we want from things, is mostly the projection of
1:56:25
Speaker 2: what we think will is a way, like it's almost
1:56:29
Speaker 2: us telling people this is what I'm like, or this
1:56:31
Speaker 2: is what I'm supposed to be like, or this is
1:56:32
Speaker 2: what I've learned. Most of what we desire is unconscious,
1:56:38
Speaker 2: and football is perfectly suited a specialize, especially the televised
1:56:43
Speaker 2: version of it, kind of feeds that unconscious desire for
1:56:47
Speaker 2: an ability to step away and disengage and then heavily
1:56:51
Speaker 2: engage for five seconds and then step away again.
1:56:54
Speaker 1: You know, how important is it that football is in
1:56:57
Speaker 1: the fall and winter and not in the spring and summer.
1:57:00
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting question. You know, one essay in
1:57:03
Speaker 2: this book I didn't write that I wished was. I
1:57:05
Speaker 2: wanted to really write about weather because I feel one
1:57:08
Speaker 2: thing that is.
1:57:08
Speaker 1: Very important, so important, yes.
1:57:11
Speaker 2: Because you know, you know, baseball will stop the game,
1:57:14
Speaker 2: Basketball is indoors, hockey is on ice. You know, it's
1:57:17
Speaker 2: like but football, you know, the weather is a variable
1:57:22
Speaker 2: and it is also you know, one of those sort
1:57:26
Speaker 2: of like kind of last vestiges of the old reality
1:57:29
Speaker 2: of you know, living in America where the weather really
1:57:33
Speaker 2: impacted you in this direct way. Like we can easily
1:57:37
Speaker 2: escape weather now it's very easy for most people.
1:57:40
Speaker 1: But it used to define football culture. Right. Why were
1:57:43
Speaker 1: the Midwestern Big ten teams three yards and a cloud
1:57:45
Speaker 1: of dust? Well it was because it was cold.
1:57:47
Speaker 2: And when we're in right November and there's still this
1:57:50
Speaker 2: in the NFL and then in the Florida Great did
1:57:54
Speaker 2: not seem as good at the beginning of the year
1:57:55
Speaker 2: as they did at the end because they were building
1:57:57
Speaker 2: their team for that. The fact that foot ball is
1:58:00
Speaker 2: in autumn and winter, I mean, now it's it's like
1:58:03
Speaker 2: almost hard to you know, distance yourself from this, right,
1:58:05
Speaker 2: Like how it would be sort of like what if
1:58:07
Speaker 2: baseball was in winter? It's like, how do you sort
1:58:10
Speaker 2: of imagine it? I think that, uh, I mean, that's
1:58:14
Speaker 2: certainly the obvious thing is that certainly probably helps the
1:58:20
Speaker 2: the centrality of the TV experience that when you get
1:58:23
Speaker 2: into November and December and Thanksgiving want to be outside, yeah,
1:58:27
Speaker 2: or if you want to be outside, you got to
1:58:29
Speaker 2: still come in there's something that's on or whatever. Right,
1:58:32
Speaker 2: But I just think that it's like I am I
1:58:35
Speaker 2: like the idea a football's relationship to the natural world.
1:58:40
Speaker 2: In this book, at one point, I have a section
1:58:42
Speaker 2: about coaching, and but the idea the kind of the
1:58:44
Speaker 2: caricature of a football coach and how the football coach,
1:58:48
Speaker 2: outside of like a used car salesman, is like the
1:58:50
Speaker 2: most defined sort of personality type.
1:58:53
Speaker 1: No, you think about how they like, you know, it's
1:58:55
Speaker 1: like even how they're portrayed on, Yes, positively or negatively,
1:58:59
Speaker 1: it's the same got the same coach.
1:59:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's but it's this idea that sort of
1:59:04
Speaker 2: they still like in every other, uh profession or part
1:59:09
Speaker 2: of life, the idea of someone screaming at you that
1:59:11
Speaker 2: would be completely off the table, but we expect the
1:59:14
Speaker 2: football coach to do that.
1:59:15
Speaker 1: And the reason, well, I would argue that newspaper, the
1:59:17
Speaker 1: newspaper editor also because of Perry White and super newspaper
1:59:21
Speaker 1: editors no longer a job and not trust me, I
1:59:25
Speaker 1: used to be. I used to participate in a newsroom
1:59:27
Speaker 1: that was loud, and I'll just leave it at that.
1:59:29
Speaker 1: And then culture change, You're not allowed to be loud
1:59:32
Speaker 1: in a new Well.
1:59:34
Speaker 2: Just you know. When I got into journalism, when I
1:59:37
Speaker 2: graduated from University of North Dakota in nineteen ninety four,
1:59:41
Speaker 2: we talked about how the fact that like, you'll never
1:59:43
Speaker 2: get rich being a journalist. None of us would have
1:59:47
Speaker 2: felt like it won't be a job at all unless
1:59:49
Speaker 2: you work for the New York Times. That's the only player.
1:59:53
Speaker 2: But I'm stid the coaching thing. I think that like
1:59:56
Speaker 2: part of that has to do with the assumption that
1:59:59
Speaker 2: football and the people driving football the coaches and stuff.
2:00:02
Speaker 2: They still sort of realize these truths that we have
2:00:05
Speaker 2: been able, for the most part, to completely remove from
2:00:08
Speaker 2: our life, the idea of violent like like I don't
2:00:11
Speaker 2: know it's it will be I assume, you know, like
2:00:14
Speaker 2: I'll probably go the rest of my life and I'm
2:00:17
Speaker 2: never going to be in a fight, like it's gonna
2:00:19
Speaker 2: punch me or whatever.
2:00:20
Speaker 1: You know, it's like.
2:00:22
Speaker 2: And I don't know if that would have been.
2:00:24
Speaker 1: You never know, right, you know, but like it's.
2:00:27
Speaker 2: It's like you can go your whole life. It's very
2:00:28
Speaker 2: easy now to go your whole life without sort of
2:00:32
Speaker 2: the reality of physicality and you know, like power speeding,
2:00:36
Speaker 2: these things that can be avoided in football. It can't be.
2:00:49
Speaker 1: Well, the reason I asked this season thing because you know,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: we've had multiple attempts at spring football, and there is
2:00:58
Speaker 1: one thing that hasn't been tried, which is the NFL
2:01:01
Speaker 1: quality in the spring. And it's the only question I
2:01:06
Speaker 1: would have about It's the only thing we haven't tested
2:01:08
Speaker 1: and given Well wait a second, this it has well,
2:01:11
Speaker 1: I guess what the first two years of the USFL,
2:01:13
Speaker 1: I mean the us because the US like, I mean
2:01:16
Speaker 1: it was I got into it because of Jim Kelly
2:01:19
Speaker 1: be in Miami.
2:01:19
Speaker 2: Yes, game, I mean it was, Yes, it wasn't the
2:01:23
Speaker 2: same level.
2:01:24
Speaker 1: But like, but I guess if you brought the power
2:01:26
Speaker 1: of the NFL marketing right, you know, could you you know,
2:01:30
Speaker 1: before football ends, could you imagine it over expanding, meaning
2:01:34
Speaker 1: you had almost two seasons and you might have the
2:01:37
Speaker 1: spring season champ will play the fall season champ, and
2:01:40
Speaker 1: we'll have a European league and we'll have an Asian
2:01:43
Speaker 1: like if Roger Goodell's dream world. What do you think
2:01:47
Speaker 1: does football become a twelve month experience globally? You think,
2:01:52
Speaker 1: is it?
2:01:52
Speaker 2: I don't possibly, but not on purpose. And what I
2:01:59
Speaker 2: mean by that is that I don't know if it
2:02:01
Speaker 2: can be inorganically constructed. For example, eighty thousand people will
2:02:06
Speaker 2: go to the Tennessee Volunteer spring game. Okay, I don't
2:02:09
Speaker 2: think that you could have done that though. I don't
2:02:11
Speaker 2: think that at.
2:02:12
Speaker 1: The ends, you can't ever get eighty thousand people to
2:02:14
Speaker 1: go to the University of Miami spring game. You will
2:02:17
Speaker 1: for their actual championship games or something big, but you
2:02:20
Speaker 1: never have it for something like that. So not every
2:02:23
Speaker 1: football team.
2:02:23
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but also it's like and Miami can't do
2:02:25
Speaker 2: anything to make that happen. Like it happens. It happens.
2:02:30
Speaker 2: When I was saying like, some of these things can
2:02:32
Speaker 2: just happen, I think that if the NFL has their
2:02:35
Speaker 2: thumb on the scale and they're like, how let's try
2:02:38
Speaker 2: to create a way for there to be, uh, you know,
2:02:42
Speaker 2: some sort of like an international component to pro football
2:02:45
Speaker 2: that's at the level of the NFL that the season
2:02:48
Speaker 2: begins in March and it ends, and you know, I
2:02:51
Speaker 2: don't think you can make that happen. If if somehow
2:02:54
Speaker 2: it did happen and people sort of found it, maybe
2:02:57
Speaker 2: that could possibly happen. But I think there's some like
2:03:00
Speaker 2: the association. I think that was like with the USFL.
2:03:04
Speaker 2: One of these problems is is you know, there was
2:03:07
Speaker 2: just there was something psychologically odd about your watching a
2:03:13
Speaker 2: football game and they're mentioning that it's ninety eight degrees
2:03:17
Speaker 2: on the field and you look out the window and
2:03:19
Speaker 2: it's ninety two degrees where you're at and it's real,
2:03:23
Speaker 2: and you know it's it's it's maybe it's four thirty
2:03:26
Speaker 2: and you typically at four thirty PM when you're watching
2:03:29
Speaker 2: the NFL, like it's getting dark in your house, it's
2:03:31
Speaker 2: getting dark on the screen still's totally bright.
2:03:33
Speaker 1: But don't you think at six, I think we're probably
2:03:38
Speaker 1: only two decades away from every single stadium having a roof.
2:03:43
Speaker 2: That's a and I wonder again, like what and.
2:03:47
Speaker 1: We know what the motivation is for NFL stadiums because
2:03:50
Speaker 1: if you do a roof, yes you get a Super Bowl.
2:03:51
Speaker 1: I mean, and ultimately that's what these owners care about.
2:03:54
Speaker 2: You know, they want to they want to have a
2:03:55
Speaker 2: dome in Philadelphia, they want to have a dome in Chicago.
2:03:58
Speaker 1: And he's or of a dome in DC. I mean,
2:04:00
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, I'm bummed about it. But
2:04:04
Speaker 1: you and I are of a generation when we knew life.
2:04:06
Speaker 1: You know, I remember being my son wanted to go
2:04:09
Speaker 1: experience cold weather and lamebowfield, so we went to a
2:04:11
Speaker 1: game in January.
2:04:13
Speaker 2: I guess in some ways this is all This all
2:04:16
Speaker 2: kind of feeds into this idea of mine. That's like,
2:04:18
Speaker 2: in fifty or sixty years, the relationship in your personal
2:04:23
Speaker 2: relationship people of the football is to be very different
2:04:25
Speaker 2: because so many things happening at both the pro and
2:04:28
Speaker 2: collegiate and the youth levels. You can't find somebody who's
2:04:32
Speaker 2: happy about it. You can't find you can't find many
2:04:35
Speaker 2: people who are happy about putting a dome stadium in Chicago.
2:04:39
Speaker 2: I mean there are, if they're not going to financially
2:04:43
Speaker 2: benefit from it. Personally, no one wants that idea. Nobody
2:04:46
Speaker 2: likes the idea of what's happening to conferences in college football.
2:04:49
Speaker 2: Like there's nobody who's like, I'm glad SMU's in the
2:04:51
Speaker 2: ACC like that. No one wants that, right, And we
2:04:54
Speaker 2: keep doing these things, expanding the college Playoff in twenty
2:04:57
Speaker 2: four games nowt they're probably gonna know.
2:04:59
Speaker 1: Now which they stop it. Say I've decided I'm comfortable
2:05:02
Speaker 1: with sixteen, but don't go any higher them.
2:05:05
Speaker 2: I mean, but nobody wants I mean, I even if
2:05:08
Speaker 2: sixteen was the number, we'd probably still be like, I
2:05:12
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe twelve. But like they're just going to
2:05:13
Speaker 2: keep going and keep going and going, and no one
2:05:16
Speaker 2: likes it. No one thinks it makes sense for organ
2:05:21
Speaker 2: to be playing Rutgers in a Big DAN football game.
2:05:24
Speaker 2: It's just like, you know, all these things that at
2:05:27
Speaker 2: one point because because it.
2:05:29
Speaker 1: Moves, but eventually you and I aren't going to remember
2:05:31
Speaker 1: when Rutgers was a Big East team exactly right.
2:05:34
Speaker 2: Okay, but so then the people coming after us, Okay,
2:05:38
Speaker 2: what are they going to remember these things that we
2:05:41
Speaker 2: were remembering? In some ways, it is almost the perfect
2:05:44
Speaker 2: definition of nostalgia. We're actually injecting our personal feeling back
2:05:48
Speaker 2: into the experience. But that's important, right if you if
2:05:53
Speaker 2: you can, if they continue to make football purely an
2:05:58
Speaker 2: entertaining distraction, it will still have success, but it will
2:06:03
Speaker 2: not have the meaning to people that you need for
2:06:06
Speaker 2: the longest term of of sort of you know, of depth,
2:06:10
Speaker 2: Like it's you some of these things like these these
2:06:15
Speaker 2: things that seem like problems, you know, like they're the
2:06:18
Speaker 2: things that kind of create meaning because they're they're natural.
2:06:20
Speaker 2: They're not things that like it's just sort of uh,
2:06:24
Speaker 2: the who's in what conference or whatever. I can understand
2:06:28
Speaker 2: why somebody from the outside looks at that and goes.
2:06:30
Speaker 1: Like, well, this is what what are you fighting over?
2:06:32
Speaker 2: Who can can all fly planes? Why don't you just
2:06:34
Speaker 2: have the want you have them all together? You know,
2:06:36
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, sure you can do that, but
2:06:39
Speaker 2: these like this is not a math problem we're trying
2:06:42
Speaker 2: to solve. We're trying to sort of I mean, it's
2:06:45
Speaker 2: already insane if you think about pro sports and college
2:06:49
Speaker 2: sports on the surface, it's insane. How this is.
2:06:51
Speaker 1: By the way, doesn't I tell you how rich our
2:06:53
Speaker 1: country really is? Like if you just rub like like
2:06:56
Speaker 1: how much time and energy we spend on.
2:06:58
Speaker 2: This well and you know and we it's going to
2:07:01
Speaker 2: be spent on something, but whatever that thing is almost
2:07:04
Speaker 2: I mean, it is hard to think about many mass
2:07:08
Speaker 2: culture American things that don't seem crazy when you think
2:07:12
Speaker 2: about it, like it it's just like it's like like
2:07:14
Speaker 2: you mentioned Taylor Swift or whatever, it's actually playing Sofi Stadium.
2:07:19
Speaker 2: I saw it was She's played five nights or something
2:07:21
Speaker 2: and the fifth night, the last cheapest seat was eighteen
2:07:26
Speaker 2: hundred dollars. Okay, so that was the cheap. Now, then
2:07:29
Speaker 2: you go to the New York Times, you go to
2:07:31
Speaker 2: the Washington Post or whatever, and it's like the economy,
2:07:33
Speaker 2: it's like people can't get by the candle, like how
2:07:36
Speaker 2: are people? How is this working? Like like there almost
2:07:39
Speaker 2: there is this this split where it's like the the
2:07:44
Speaker 2: the amount that people are paying for things and the
2:07:47
Speaker 2: degree to which people say they have no money at all.
2:07:49
Speaker 2: It almost seems like it can't exist in the same place.
2:07:52
Speaker 1: I apologize, I've gone over an hour, let me go
2:07:55
Speaker 1: another five or so. Sure, okay, And that is because
2:07:59
Speaker 1: the other thing I'm want to get to is the
2:08:02
Speaker 1: best thing to happen when the NFL decided that needed
2:08:06
Speaker 1: to address the perception of safety, and I say perception
2:08:10
Speaker 1: of safety because there's all sorts of ways they could
2:08:12
Speaker 1: really address certain safety issues if they chose to, but
2:08:15
Speaker 1: they've got they want to. They're walking a fine lot
2:08:17
Speaker 1: in their heads. But one of the things they've pulled
2:08:22
Speaker 1: off is that, in an attempt to make the game
2:08:26
Speaker 1: less hard hitting, they've increased scoring. Right. It is. It
2:08:29
Speaker 1: has sort of made the game. You know, University of
2:08:33
Speaker 1: Miami's got this wide receiver who's like five to ten
2:08:35
Speaker 1: and it's just amazing. Its Malachai Tony, and I think
2:08:38
Speaker 1: he's going to become a perhaps a household name. He
2:08:42
Speaker 1: never would have survived ten minutes on the football field
2:08:46
Speaker 1: in the seventies, right because of the way a receiver
2:08:48
Speaker 1: that's small. He'd had to play a different position or whatever.
2:08:53
Speaker 1: And it really is, you know, the safety changes over
2:08:55
Speaker 1: the last twenty years have just changed the nature of
2:08:58
Speaker 1: slot receivers. Right. It's had a huge impact, and it's
2:09:02
Speaker 1: giving a lot more smaller guys opportunities and things like this.
2:09:08
Speaker 1: Can you imagine a scenario where not that the NFL
2:09:11
Speaker 1: goes full flag, but it's most hits are accidental?
2:09:16
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I think in some ways you know,
2:09:20
Speaker 2: that is the dream in a sense, like can they
2:09:23
Speaker 2: slowly move this game?
2:09:25
Speaker 1: I think they want to be arena football, don't you.
2:09:27
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I hate to say most terms, but do
2:09:29
Speaker 1: you remember there'd be a time when you watch arena
2:09:31
Speaker 1: football and it was it was tackle, but the field
2:09:34
Speaker 1: was so small and the scoring was so quick, nobody
2:09:36
Speaker 1: had a chance to get hit.
2:09:40
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, I am of the belief that nobody
2:09:43
Speaker 2: is watching or very few people watch football as a
2:09:46
Speaker 2: blood sport. Okay, they don't want to see someone get
2:09:50
Speaker 2: hurt badly or kill.
2:09:51
Speaker 1: No, we turn away. Now. I think when you and
2:09:54
Speaker 1: I were growing up, they used to market it. Oh
2:09:56
Speaker 1: they know they did. But remember the sports illustrated videotapes, right,
2:10:00
Speaker 1: or like the jam would be like a Lambert after whatever.
2:10:04
Speaker 2: That was an ESPN thing or whatever got chack. But
2:10:07
Speaker 2: even in that case, it was sort of like you
2:10:10
Speaker 2: love the hitting, then you want to see the guy
2:10:12
Speaker 2: get up. You want that to be right. See, I
2:10:16
Speaker 2: think that like what it is is that, like, people
2:10:18
Speaker 2: don't want to see guys get hurt in football, but
2:10:21
Speaker 2: the fact that the possibility of that is so great
2:10:25
Speaker 2: it does increase the meaning of the things that we obstensibly,
2:10:28
Speaker 2: like the guy running patterns, the accuracy of the quarterback,
2:10:31
Speaker 2: the blocking schemes, all these things, they matter more because
2:10:35
Speaker 2: of the kind of their risk inherent there is risk.
2:10:37
Speaker 2: The example I often use, it's sort of like, so
2:10:41
Speaker 2: a guy climbing K two does not want to die
2:10:45
Speaker 2: on that mountain. He does not want to die, and
2:10:47
Speaker 2: yet if there's no chance of that happening, the accomplishment
2:10:52
Speaker 2: means less. It has to be there. So football needs violence,
2:10:56
Speaker 2: not because we want to see violent acts, but it
2:11:00
Speaker 2: makes the rest of the game different, you know, Like
2:11:03
Speaker 2: they changed the kickoff role, right, so now we kick,
2:11:04
Speaker 2: the guy kicks off, and the guys are only running
2:11:07
Speaker 2: ten yards toward each other. In some ways it has
2:11:09
Speaker 2: been fine, right, there's been more interesting returns out of it.
2:11:11
Speaker 1: There was interesting, but here's like the new strategy of it.
2:11:15
Speaker 2: But people generally when that rule was introduced, their immediate
2:11:19
Speaker 2: reaction was, I don't like this, and they would say
2:11:21
Speaker 2: it looks weird, it looks dumb, or whatever, but the
2:11:24
Speaker 2: reality was it was the understanding of why this was
2:11:27
Speaker 2: being done. They know, this is being done to attempt
2:11:31
Speaker 2: to mitigate injury and mitigate hitting and mitigate violence. And
2:11:35
Speaker 2: even though in a practical application it doesn't change the
2:11:39
Speaker 2: experience of watching football that much, it's the understanding that
2:11:42
Speaker 2: this was done to make the thing less physical than
2:11:46
Speaker 2: you remember or that you understood, or that it always was.
2:11:50
Speaker 2: And that's what kind of people push back against. I mean, like,
2:11:53
Speaker 2: you know, part of the reason. You know, you see
2:11:55
Speaker 2: if in the CFL they play with three downs and
2:11:57
Speaker 2: so it's all passed, there's a yard between of guys
2:12:00
Speaker 2: on the line of scrimmage and that kind of uh,
2:12:02
Speaker 2: you know, the linemen are smaller, the game is more
2:12:05
Speaker 2: based around finesse, and it's less popular, and I think
2:12:09
Speaker 2: that that's part of the reason even less popular. Even again,
2:12:12
Speaker 2: well it's it's it's like it's softer. It's still a
2:12:16
Speaker 2: physical collision sport. It's just somehow that you they're they're
2:12:22
Speaker 2: always trying to find the line between how physical can
2:12:26
Speaker 2: we make this and not have it become something that
2:12:30
Speaker 2: is disturbing to people or or or or you know,
2:12:34
Speaker 2: like you.
2:12:35
Speaker 1: Know early look, I think that's a challenge for UFC.
2:12:38
Speaker 1: I'm surprised at how popular it is and at some
2:12:41
Speaker 1: point I think people will WinCE. But I don't know,
2:12:43
Speaker 1: I've been wrong about UFC.
2:12:44
Speaker 2: I've totally missed that timon.
2:12:47
Speaker 1: But what is.
2:12:49
Speaker 2: Interesting about the UFC is I don't know, like I
2:12:52
Speaker 2: can't get more. You can't get more.
2:12:55
Speaker 1: I mean like like they're not going to Yeah, But
2:12:57
Speaker 1: I think the violence is the point, Like I think
2:12:59
Speaker 1: it's the featured might I mean where in football, I
2:13:02
Speaker 1: think violence is still the bug. The risk is the
2:13:04
Speaker 1: feature it is, but the actual violence is a bug.
2:13:07
Speaker 2: I think one factor we often you know, overlook in
2:13:11
Speaker 2: this is that the population keeps getting larger. Right, So
2:13:15
Speaker 2: if there was only one when I graduated high school,
2:13:18
Speaker 2: I believe the number we always used for the population
2:13:21
Speaker 2: of the US was two hundred and twenty million. I
2:13:23
Speaker 2: feel like that was the number. So you go like, well,
2:13:25
Speaker 2: let's say one percent of that group of that two
2:13:28
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty million craves a violent activity to watch
2:13:32
Speaker 2: the most violent thing possible. Well, if that number is
2:13:35
Speaker 2: still one percent, but now.
2:13:37
Speaker 1: It's three hundred numbers bigger.
2:13:39
Speaker 2: We added a lot of audience. I mean, that's one
2:13:42
Speaker 2: of my more kind of radical ideas as sometimes I
2:13:45
Speaker 2: think that that democracy has a like a ceiling of
2:13:49
Speaker 2: how many people can be involved.
2:13:52
Speaker 1: India's testing the price. It's interesting you say that's.
2:13:56
Speaker 2: That's the largest demoryer and now when we look at that,
2:13:58
Speaker 2: it feels unruly and it's not real democracy to us.
2:14:01
Speaker 2: In a whey there's something that does it seem like
2:14:03
Speaker 2: they are faking things or whatever, you know, And I
2:14:05
Speaker 2: do suspect that, you know.
2:14:08
Speaker 1: So I'm obsessed. One of my hobby horses is that
2:14:11
Speaker 1: I think would should be the better response to the
2:14:13
Speaker 1: Building Rights Act decision is we need to uncap the House.
2:14:17
Speaker 1: The House of Representatives, as far as the founders were concerned,
2:14:19
Speaker 1: was supposed to expand with the size and population. And
2:14:22
Speaker 1: yet try to make the case that, you know, America's
2:14:26
Speaker 1: political problems and why we're polarizes because we don't have
2:14:28
Speaker 1: enough politicians, and you're going to just get people looking
2:14:31
Speaker 1: at you. That's crazy. I don't want Congress is four
2:14:34
Speaker 1: than thirty five people. You're saying it should be seven hundred,
2:14:36
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, if we grew at the same
2:14:38
Speaker 1: rate that we grew Congress, Yes, it actually should be
2:14:40
Speaker 1: about eight hundred and ninety if you were to be
2:14:43
Speaker 1: at the same ratio when we shut it down. And
2:14:45
Speaker 1: yet that scares people. It feels unruly. And I'll admit
2:14:49
Speaker 1: when I look at India, I think, oh, man, I
2:14:51
Speaker 1: don't know how they do a billion people and count
2:14:53
Speaker 1: all the votes.
2:14:54
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I mean this is a go another hour
2:14:57
Speaker 2: for all this. But I know what you're saying, Yeah.
2:15:00
Speaker 1: Well, look, I know you have another book out, and
2:15:04
Speaker 1: I know timing. You know what what what is what
2:15:07
Speaker 1: is the next What is the next book?
2:15:08
Speaker 2: Well, this book was actually written prior to the Football Book,
2:15:12
Speaker 2: and for a variety of reasons, the publisher elected not
2:15:16
Speaker 2: to put up and you just kind of thought it
2:15:17
Speaker 2: was too weird. I will just kind of give the premise,
2:15:21
Speaker 2: and that's what I'll say. Basically, it's a fictional history
2:15:25
Speaker 2: of rock music, and it starts from the premise that
2:15:28
Speaker 2: the Velvet Underground's first record comes out and is substantially
2:15:33
Speaker 2: and immediately far more popular than the Beatles and the
2:15:37
Speaker 2: Stones combined, and the entire monoculture becomes based off sort
2:15:43
Speaker 2: of the aesthetics and the attitude and the perception of
2:15:46
Speaker 2: the velvet underground and everything about culture reverses. And it
2:15:53
Speaker 2: also in this book rock music becomes taken much more seriously.
2:15:57
Speaker 2: It kind of becomes the defining art form of the
2:16:00
Speaker 2: United States and of the world. And it ends in
2:16:03
Speaker 2: two thousand and one with nine to eleven being blamed
2:16:06
Speaker 2: on the strokes.
2:16:09
Speaker 1: I see where you're going because this scratches an itch
2:16:12
Speaker 1: of mine, and it just is proof that, you know, essentially,
2:16:16
Speaker 1: culturally we're practically the same age, We're culturally very similar.
2:16:19
Speaker 1: This is the gen x. It bugs me to all
2:16:22
Speaker 1: get out that the electric guitar has basically been confined
2:16:25
Speaker 1: to countrybuse Well, I am, I am I being too
2:16:29
Speaker 1: snarky about that.
2:16:30
Speaker 2: No, I mean well, I mean fine, I guess it's
2:16:33
Speaker 2: I mean, it's still in right.
2:16:34
Speaker 1: It's just fine. It just feels like I don't hear it.
2:16:36
Speaker 1: And what is rock now?
2:16:37
Speaker 2: Is there?
2:16:38
Speaker 1: Does rock still exist?
2:16:40
Speaker 2: Well, it's still I mean, it exists in the way
2:16:43
Speaker 2: that bluegrass exists. It exists in the way.
2:16:46
Speaker 1: That you know, is it just a nostalgic era of
2:16:49
Speaker 1: genre or is there new innovative things happening?
2:16:53
Speaker 2: Rock has one sort of inherent limitation, which is that
2:16:59
Speaker 2: a decision was made in the fifties, not I mean
2:17:02
Speaker 2: that a decision like a group of people voted on this.
2:17:04
Speaker 2: It just sort of worked out this way that there
2:17:06
Speaker 2: were going to be sort of formal like formal limitations
2:17:08
Speaker 2: to rock. It's going to be guitar, bass, drums, maybe keyboards,
2:17:12
Speaker 2: maybe one extra instrument, and vocals. The songs are going
2:17:16
Speaker 2: to be between two and a half and five minutes long.
2:17:19
Speaker 2: There's it's going to be the only art form that's
2:17:21
Speaker 2: specifically geared toward young people. That the whole idea is
2:17:24
Speaker 2: that this is art for young people. And I do
2:17:28
Speaker 2: think that probably by you know, once we probably really
2:17:32
Speaker 2: moved into the nineteen eighties, I think a lot of
2:17:36
Speaker 2: the of of like the potentiality of what rock would
2:17:40
Speaker 2: be was already kind of set in stone, and when
2:17:42
Speaker 2: it reached the nineties, it became a self aware art
2:17:45
Speaker 2: for them that the musicians like Nirvana.
2:17:48
Speaker 1: And Pearl Jen No I know, you go from the
2:17:50
Speaker 1: glam rock of the eighties to the super realist realists
2:17:53
Speaker 1: of the nineties.
2:17:54
Speaker 2: Also not just super realist, but like an understanding of
2:17:57
Speaker 2: like the idea that like there's something kind of idiotic
2:17:59
Speaker 2: about the d of a rock star and all these things. Now,
2:18:01
Speaker 2: rock kind of kept going. Nobody thought this rock in
2:18:05
Speaker 2: a way kind of ends as a meaningful thing in
2:18:08
Speaker 2: the nineties.
2:18:09
Speaker 1: I believe that. I mean, that's why your faked ending
2:18:12
Speaker 1: of this of yes, now it feels about right. I
2:18:14
Speaker 1: mean I joke that The Killers is the last rock band.
2:18:18
Speaker 1: Well as far as for me like that, yeah.
2:18:21
Speaker 2: I think that, like you know, there was you know,
2:18:23
Speaker 2: I after this period, I still loved Radiohead, I still
2:18:27
Speaker 2: look Steady, I still loved all the you know, and
2:18:30
Speaker 2: there are there is no shortage of bands making rock
2:18:34
Speaker 2: music now. In fact, there's probably the number of new
2:18:40
Speaker 2: songs being created by rock artists now it's probably never
2:18:43
Speaker 2: been never been happening more.
2:18:45
Speaker 1: Than ever, right, because the buriered entry is lower.
2:18:47
Speaker 2: But the meaning is different. There was a period when
2:18:50
Speaker 2: it was sort of seen as a way to understand
2:18:53
Speaker 2: what a young person was like and the values of
2:18:55
Speaker 2: all those things and that, and then that that got
2:18:58
Speaker 2: kind of used to so hip hop took that. Hip
2:19:00
Speaker 2: hop Now hip hop is Oh you look at the
2:19:02
Speaker 2: Billboard Top one hundred, you will not find a rap
2:19:04
Speaker 2: song like It's like that.
2:19:06
Speaker 1: What what what is the genre that's winning?
2:19:09
Speaker 2: Wow?
2:19:09
Speaker 1: Pop music, Latino pop too, right, That's just like.
2:19:13
Speaker 2: I mean, because if we just say, you know, in
2:19:16
Speaker 2: some ways pop music always wins because.
2:19:19
Speaker 1: Because it's by definition what's popular, Banks Nodras pop sure,
2:19:23
Speaker 1: and Olivia Orrigo is pop.
2:19:25
Speaker 2: So but but that but in a sense, because it
2:19:28
Speaker 2: always wins, we don't really kind of look at it.
2:19:30
Speaker 2: It's like it's just sort of sure, it's just always
2:19:33
Speaker 2: going to be something.
2:19:33
Speaker 1: I guess the question is is there a pop genre
2:19:36
Speaker 1: today that will Is there a pop when you become
2:19:39
Speaker 1: a genre that isn't pop? Right, when you have a
2:19:41
Speaker 1: specific defined sound.
2:19:44
Speaker 2: Something like like you look, there was like reggaetne was
2:19:46
Speaker 2: that sort of briefly I think people thought that this
2:19:48
Speaker 2: is what, Yeah, you know, these little kind of micro
2:19:52
Speaker 2: genres will come up. It's just like I think it's
2:19:58
Speaker 2: possibly the idea idea of something of any kind of
2:20:02
Speaker 2: art form like that occupying the space that rock music
2:20:06
Speaker 2: once held, or like the film held in the seventies,
2:20:09
Speaker 2: or at least that just might not be how it
2:20:11
Speaker 2: is anymore. I mean, we've we we have succeeded at
2:20:15
Speaker 2: the thing that we said we always wanted right, We
2:20:18
Speaker 2: wanted to have as much choice as possible. We want
2:20:20
Speaker 2: everybody to be able to have their own.
2:20:22
Speaker 1: Always thought, wouldn't it be great if I could get
2:20:23
Speaker 1: any song at any moment in time. I know, and
2:20:26
Speaker 1: I remember thinking how cool that would be. When we
2:20:28
Speaker 1: got those first jukeboxes that were digital, You're like, wow,
2:20:31
Speaker 1: the opportunity here, and then all of a sudden we
2:20:33
Speaker 1: got it in our hand. And I listened to the
2:20:36
Speaker 1: same six hundred songs.
2:20:37
Speaker 2: I mean, for me when when I was in fifth
2:20:40
Speaker 2: grade or eighth grade. It was in eighth grade. For
2:20:42
Speaker 2: a long time, I had five cassettes. I played those five.
2:20:46
Speaker 2: That's all I could afford. And I played those cassettes
2:20:48
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. Now, if you'd have
2:20:50
Speaker 2: told me that, if you want, I can also give
2:20:53
Speaker 2: you a machine that will have every song possible, every
2:20:56
Speaker 2: song that's there is, you know, I would be like, yes,
2:20:58
Speaker 2: there's no one to let me up. And yet, as
2:21:02
Speaker 2: a like almost a predictable consequence, it made music individual artists,
2:21:07
Speaker 2: individual songs, and less important. I mean, those five cassettes
2:21:11
Speaker 2: I had, I was getting I was pulling things out
2:21:15
Speaker 2: of that that weren't even there. To the artist because
2:21:18
Speaker 2: I was so you know, it was just like I.
2:21:19
Speaker 4: Got consumed by it and just repetition, just the repetition
2:21:25
Speaker 4: of hearing the thing over and over again in your
2:21:27
Speaker 4: own And now it's sort of like it has to
2:21:31
Speaker 4: be ephemeral, because it would be very it's it's it
2:21:34
Speaker 4: listen to the same six hundred songs.
2:21:36
Speaker 2: I mean that in some ways, even that I think
2:21:39
Speaker 2: might be like a vestige of the past, because maybe
2:21:43
Speaker 2: in your mind, in truth, the CD or record collection
2:21:48
Speaker 2: in your mind should be you know, you know, fifty
2:21:53
Speaker 2: eight records or something. Well.
2:21:55
Speaker 1: I remember I was real proud I had the four
2:21:57
Speaker 1: hundred disc CD play those suckers for that brief period,
2:22:02
Speaker 1: and a friend of mine talked me into it. He says,
2:22:04
Speaker 1: it's like building your own personal radio station. And I
2:22:07
Speaker 1: did it on shuffle, and you know, back then with
2:22:09
Speaker 1: the little thing it would take. It had about a
2:22:13
Speaker 1: it felt like ten minute lag, but it was probably
2:22:15
Speaker 1: about a fifteen second lag between as it circulated around
2:22:19
Speaker 1: looking for a song, and I thought that was Nirvana,
2:22:22
Speaker 1: you know that ability, And then I already got a
2:22:26
Speaker 1: second one because I decided I'm gonna store all my
2:22:28
Speaker 1: CDs this way. And then it's like and then and
2:22:31
Speaker 1: then iTunes came out and you're like, oh, well, there there,
2:22:35
Speaker 1: this is a waste. It is literally sat in my
2:22:37
Speaker 1: attic for a while until I finally gave it up.
2:22:39
Speaker 2: But although, yeah, you know, I got rid of all
2:22:42
Speaker 2: my CDs during that period, because if you regret it,
2:22:45
Speaker 2: I do. I do, beau too, what I now, you know?
2:22:50
Speaker 2: At first, yeah, my wife was really like, we cannot now.
2:22:52
Speaker 1: We sound like our parents. I remember my father going
2:22:55
Speaker 1: around to with some some we'd be at some antique
2:22:57
Speaker 1: show and he goes, those toy soldiers are worth how much?
2:22:59
Speaker 1: I had a million of those? I should have thrown
2:23:01
Speaker 1: them away? And I almost feel that way about CDs.
2:23:03
Speaker 2: I think more from a practical thing, like okay, so
2:23:06
Speaker 2: like when I got rid of all of those CDs,
2:23:08
Speaker 2: there was only I had, you know, just like you know,
2:23:11
Speaker 2: a few imports or whatever. It's like I can't find
2:23:13
Speaker 2: this song anywhere, so I'm keeping this one or whatever.
2:23:16
Speaker 2: But I is. I don't think anyone out there would
2:23:19
Speaker 2: be surprised if there is some era in the future
2:23:22
Speaker 2: where there are multiple, you know, broken up streaming services
2:23:26
Speaker 2: and none of them have everything, so that either you
2:23:28
Speaker 2: have to have, you know.
2:23:29
Speaker 1: And right, and we're gonna wish we had that and
2:23:32
Speaker 1: some some like.
2:23:34
Speaker 2: You know, CDs were supposed to last forever. Turns out
2:23:37
Speaker 2: they did not. It was but you know, as a consequence,
2:23:41
Speaker 2: if something, you know, some minor act that we don't
2:23:44
Speaker 2: even know should be meaningful, came out in like nineteen
2:23:48
Speaker 2: ninety three, and that CD is one point just not
2:23:51
Speaker 2: going to work anymore. If that isn't somewhere accessible, if
2:23:54
Speaker 2: it's not on YouTube or whatever, it's going to be gone.
2:23:57
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like I think that that.
2:24:00
Speaker 1: Well, imagine dying in the late eighties before the Internet. Yeah,
2:24:04
Speaker 1: well my father died in eighty eight. You can't find
2:24:07
Speaker 1: anything about him on the internet. Oh yeah, nineteen eighty eight. Yeah,
2:24:11
Speaker 1: you know, so it's sort of like what you just described,
2:24:13
Speaker 1: like if you don't survive into the cloud world, you know,
2:24:16
Speaker 1: you might as well have not existed.
2:24:19
Speaker 2: And I think it was in nineteen ninety seven or
2:24:22
Speaker 2: ninety eight that was actually the peak of fax machine sales.
2:24:28
Speaker 2: But we don't think, we don't think of that right
2:24:30
Speaker 2: because we think that's when the Internet was taking over.
2:24:32
Speaker 2: Because the Internet can write it's own history. The fax
2:24:34
Speaker 2: machine can't like in nineteen ninety eighty or whatever, a
2:24:37
Speaker 2: business still needed a fax machine more than Wi Fi.
2:24:40
Speaker 2: With WiFi, I wasn't even there yet, I don't think.
2:24:43
Speaker 2: But it's like, if there's nobody there to write the history,
2:24:46
Speaker 2: it just goes. And if like if there is some
2:24:49
Speaker 2: record on like touch and Go or whatever that's not
2:24:51
Speaker 2: on the Internet, it's just going to be gone.
2:24:55
Speaker 1: I got to stop asking you questions because we end
2:24:57
Speaker 1: up down new rabbit holes. But I understand, And.
2:25:00
Speaker 2: What thanksting me on.
2:25:00
Speaker 1: I appreciate a favorite guest of so many podcast hosts
2:25:03
Speaker 1: because you you've You've got a terrific mind. I always
2:25:08
Speaker 1: enjoy my conversation. I appreciate it much. And go buy
2:25:11
Speaker 1: the book. It is I I enjoyed all parts of it.
2:25:13
Speaker 1: It's both a cultural experience and a sports fan experience.
2:25:16
Speaker 1: And I'm in the middle of doing my own sports
2:25:18
Speaker 1: history stuff and I just read this Dan Rooney autobiography
2:25:22
Speaker 1: right before I read your book, and it just sort
2:25:24
Speaker 1: of Dan Rooney did it. I don't know how many
2:25:26
Speaker 1: books you read to prepare for writing your football book.
2:25:29
Speaker 1: It it really is a pretty good history of the
2:25:31
Speaker 1: NFL book.
2:25:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I've been family is Yeah, tomorrows
2:25:36
Speaker 2: are as important as you're gonna get kind of, but.
2:25:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it was, and it just it's a very
2:25:40
Speaker 1: it's a it was. It's a very rich experience reading
2:25:42
Speaker 1: a book, so please read it.
2:25:44
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, thanks.
2:25:45
Speaker 1: All, my friend talk to me. Well, I hope you
2:25:55
Speaker 1: enjoyed that conversation. If you made it through that conversation,
2:25:57
Speaker 1: then I know you enjoyed that conversation, because yes, I
2:25:59
Speaker 1: went a little longer than I normally go with those interviews,
2:26:03
Speaker 1: but you know, nobody gets me more interested in jumping
2:26:08
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole than having a conversation with Chuck Closterman.
2:26:13
Speaker 1: I do highly recommend the book too, By the way,
2:26:14
Speaker 1: I think he did a terrific job of doing what
2:26:18
Speaker 1: he painstakingly laid out in the book, which is he
2:26:21
Speaker 1: was trying to you know, he figured two hundred years
2:26:24
Speaker 1: from now football wouldn't exist, but there'd be these archives
2:26:27
Speaker 1: of what was this phenomenon called football, and you would
2:26:31
Speaker 1: need a book from its era to explain what made
2:26:35
Speaker 1: it so great and why we were just so in
2:26:37
Speaker 1: love with it. And I think when you realize that's,
2:26:42
Speaker 1: I mean, how hard he tried to do that I
2:26:47
Speaker 1: think he came awfully close. You know, here's the thing,
2:26:51
Speaker 1: none of us, either he or I will be around
2:26:53
Speaker 1: to find out if he got it right. And with that,
2:26:56
Speaker 1: let's do some questions ask Chuck. First question comes from Lucas,
2:27:02
Speaker 1: and I'm very excited about this question Lucas because he says,
2:27:05
Speaker 1: greetings from Bloomington, Illanoya. And here's why I'm excited about Bloomington, Illinoy.
2:27:10
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you about that after I answer
2:27:12
Speaker 1: the question. But greetings from Bloomington, Illinois. It's a very important,
2:27:17
Speaker 1: very important town in mine, in Chuck Todd's history, But
2:27:20
Speaker 1: I will tell you after the question. He goes curious
2:27:23
Speaker 1: your take on private equity getting involved in college sports,
2:27:25
Speaker 1: like at the University of Utah with nil transferportal, growing
2:27:28
Speaker 1: money in the system, it feels like the line between
2:27:30
Speaker 1: college and pro sports is disappearing. Do you think college sports,
2:27:33
Speaker 1: especially outside the SEC in the Big Ten, are an
2:27:35
Speaker 1: on an unsustainable path? Thanks Lucas. So the answer is yes,
2:27:40
Speaker 1: this is unsustainable, but I don't want to rule out
2:27:46
Speaker 1: that private equity might actually be more of a help
2:27:50
Speaker 1: than a hurt. Right. Private equity might be the way
2:27:56
Speaker 1: that we can keep more sports alive inside the university system. Right.
2:28:03
Speaker 1: The concern if we if we let's look, look what
2:28:10
Speaker 1: the SEC and the Big ten want is to create
2:28:13
Speaker 1: the English Premier League. They want to create they want
2:28:16
Speaker 1: to put a velvet rope around a smaller league, if
2:28:22
Speaker 1: you will, an elite college league. They haven't quite said
2:28:26
Speaker 1: it yet, but it's you know, Greg Sanke has all
2:28:29
Speaker 1: but telegraphed this, you know, down to the I believe
2:28:32
Speaker 1: there was at one SEC meeting he was talking about
2:28:35
Speaker 1: reading the history of the e p L and how
2:28:39
Speaker 1: how fascinated he was with it, and you know how
2:28:41
Speaker 1: it just made the e p L bigger. You know,
2:28:45
Speaker 1: everybody said, the smaller they make it, it was going
2:28:47
Speaker 1: to drive fans away, and it did just the opposite,
2:28:50
Speaker 1: et cetera. The problem is the Big ten in the
2:28:58
Speaker 1: SEC are not interested in having a national major sport.
2:29:03
Speaker 1: I think what they want is something that they control,
2:29:08
Speaker 1: They keep ninety percent of the pie, and then they'll
2:29:12
Speaker 1: let everybody else share the other ten percent. The irony
2:29:17
Speaker 1: to this is that I think they limit the long
2:29:20
Speaker 1: term viability of the sport. They limit the long term
2:29:22
Speaker 1: viability of making money off of the sport. You know,
2:29:25
Speaker 1: I think the beauty of college football is unlike the NFL.
2:29:29
Speaker 1: You can get a sellout in Pullman, Washington, and you
2:29:31
Speaker 1: can get a sellout in Auburn, Alabama. And you can
2:29:33
Speaker 1: get a sellout in Knoxville, Tennessee. And you can get
2:29:36
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people show up in Happy Valley, Pennsylvania.
2:29:39
Speaker 1: And you get my drift. You know, the NFL is
2:29:44
Speaker 1: not in near the number of markets the college football
2:29:46
Speaker 1: is in. And so the opportunity college football has to
2:29:51
Speaker 1: basically be you know, the NFL is getting harder and
2:29:56
Speaker 1: harder to access. Right, games are more expensive than ever
2:30:00
Speaker 1: they're you know, the red zone is expensive, all this stuff.
2:30:03
Speaker 1: College football has an opportunity to be the people's football
2:30:08
Speaker 1: league essentially, right, Look, and I think that's something we
2:30:11
Speaker 1: got to stop. Look, this is it's it's two pro leagues.
2:30:14
Speaker 1: You have the you know, the big pro league, the NFL,
2:30:16
Speaker 1: and then you have this essentially younger professional league that
2:30:22
Speaker 1: is college football. And I think ultimately we probably have
2:30:27
Speaker 1: to separate out college football from everything else. You know,
2:30:32
Speaker 1: it's funny if you separated out college football from everything else,
2:30:35
Speaker 1: if you went if you went to seventy you know,
2:30:39
Speaker 1: sort of the Super League model, but it was an
2:30:41
Speaker 1: expansive version of it, seventy teams, maybe maybe with relegation,
2:30:46
Speaker 1: and you know, I think there's some there's a lot
2:30:49
Speaker 1: of interesting ways you could do that. One of the
2:30:52
Speaker 1: private equity firms running around there with money has has
2:30:55
Speaker 1: has a few plans on this. But I think if
2:30:58
Speaker 1: you did the super League on football all and had
2:31:00
Speaker 1: divisions and made them geographically aligned, then you could almost
2:31:03
Speaker 1: go back to the traditional conference format for all other
2:31:06
Speaker 1: sports basketball, baseball, volleyball.
2:31:08
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
2:31:10
Speaker 1: Uh, And it's probably one of those things where everybody
2:31:13
Speaker 1: would be happy and you could, you know, still generate
2:31:16
Speaker 1: revenue across the board in different ways. If this continues
2:31:22
Speaker 1: to be conference driven, where all sports are essentially are
2:31:27
Speaker 1: at the mercy of how this football decision goes down,
2:31:30
Speaker 1: then yes, all college sports are at risk. So I'd
2:31:34
Speaker 1: like to see a de risking of of the non
2:31:37
Speaker 1: football sports here by figuring out a way to separate
2:31:40
Speaker 1: it out. So but look, you know, it's probably too
2:31:47
Speaker 1: late for the powers that be to create a system
2:31:50
Speaker 1: that they get to have their fingerprints on. I think
2:31:52
Speaker 1: I think they what I think collective bargaining is coming,
2:31:56
Speaker 1: and what and and once collective bargaining happens, we're going
2:31:58
Speaker 1: into a whole other area. And then I you know,
2:32:02
Speaker 1: look this is where I think, Like I said, I
2:32:04
Speaker 1: think private equity can be a net positive if depending
2:32:10
Speaker 1: on like, not every private equity deals the same, Right,
2:32:14
Speaker 1: what does what does the cash out look like? You know,
2:32:17
Speaker 1: a private equity deal that gives you some front end money,
2:32:21
Speaker 1: you know, based on potential revenues down the road, sort
2:32:24
Speaker 1: of similar to how the pension funds were investing. You know,
2:32:27
Speaker 1: had had that idea to invest in the Big ten.
2:32:30
Speaker 1: That feels like a more righteous way to do it
2:32:33
Speaker 1: than if you just have sort of a more you know,
2:32:37
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the negative perceus, and the private
2:32:40
Speaker 1: equity comes in, extracts the value and then leaves everything
2:32:43
Speaker 1: in tatters. Right Like, you don't want that version of
2:32:45
Speaker 1: private equity nest around college sports. But look a lot
2:32:49
Speaker 1: of universities operate dollar in, dollar out, and you need
2:32:53
Speaker 1: you might need a little excess cash in order to
2:32:55
Speaker 1: build out what you need to create long to create
2:32:59
Speaker 1: revenue down the road. So I'll give you an example
2:33:01
Speaker 1: where private equity could be that positive. So say you're
2:33:05
Speaker 1: Florida State football and you want to build a not
2:33:09
Speaker 1: just a stadium, because what you're seeing is the major
2:33:11
Speaker 1: college programs are actually wanting to do what some NFL
2:33:16
Speaker 1: teams have done and create an entire sort of of
2:33:21
Speaker 1: like a a an area, a gathering space that includes
2:33:26
Speaker 1: the football stadium, maybe a premier hotel, maybe restaurants, maybe shopping,
2:33:31
Speaker 1: you know, almost like an entire sort of ecosystem that
2:33:35
Speaker 1: you know, people might spend an entire weekend, you know
2:33:38
Speaker 1: at it's almost like a college football resort in Tallahassee
2:33:42
Speaker 1: and one in Tuscaloosa when you can see where this is.
2:33:45
Speaker 1: And that's a case where you need you need the
2:33:47
Speaker 1: private equity to fund the build out of that, to
2:33:51
Speaker 1: get the infrastructure in to build this incredible sort of
2:33:55
Speaker 1: mecca to the Florida State football and what I'm describing
2:33:58
Speaker 1: or you might see. You do see that similar things
2:34:01
Speaker 1: being done at Clemson and Happy Valley, et cetera. And
2:34:04
Speaker 1: I think that's the case we're private equity because that's
2:34:07
Speaker 1: a that's an investment now that you hope would pay
2:34:09
Speaker 1: dividends down the road. Right. So that's that's just an
2:34:12
Speaker 1: example where it could be in that positive. So that's
2:34:15
Speaker 1: why I don't want to be. I don't want to
2:34:17
Speaker 1: be knee jerk negative on it. Again. I go back
2:34:21
Speaker 1: to just the the economics of college sports is there's
2:34:24
Speaker 1: just not a lot of available cash, and that's why
2:34:27
Speaker 1: it's it's where essentially private equity is a bank in
2:34:31
Speaker 1: that sense, and so it isn't, but it's a I
2:34:39
Speaker 1: do think the biggest impediment to any of this, though,
2:34:42
Speaker 1: is is Greg sank and the SEC and the Big
2:34:45
Speaker 1: Ten and whoever the hell's in charge there. I'll admit
2:34:49
Speaker 1: Sankie is. I don't know mister Sankee. I actually like
2:34:52
Speaker 1: to meet mister Sankeye because I use him as a
2:34:54
Speaker 1: punching bag sometimes. On this look he's looking out what's
2:34:57
Speaker 1: in the best interest of the SEC, but what's in
2:34:59
Speaker 1: the best rest and so SEC is not in the
2:35:01
Speaker 1: best interest of college football as a whole. And I'd
2:35:04
Speaker 1: be happy to debate him on this forever doubt he cares.
2:35:12
Speaker 1: But Lucas Bloomington, Illinois is where my mother was born,
2:35:17
Speaker 1: and ironically today my grandmother was returned to Bloomington, Illinois
2:35:24
Speaker 1: to lay next to my grandfather in a cemetery of Bloomington, Illinois.
2:35:28
Speaker 1: So my producer Nasa doesn't realize what she did by
2:35:34
Speaker 1: ordering this up top there, but she she gave me
2:35:37
Speaker 1: a little way to make that acknowledgment. So thank you NASA.
2:35:42
Speaker 1: I don't think you realized that, but I appreciate it.
2:35:44
Speaker 1: And Lucas, thank you for writing, and thank you for
2:35:47
Speaker 1: saying you were from Bloomington. By the way, my uh
2:35:51
Speaker 1: my grandfather started a clothing store that was once a
2:35:54
Speaker 1: big part in Bloomington. It was called Marvin's. For any
2:35:57
Speaker 1: of you that will do we be asking O. Next
2:36:01
Speaker 1: question comes from Brian Dee and he writes, Hey, I
2:36:03
Speaker 1: followed you for years and appreciate your perspective. I've noticed
2:36:06
Speaker 1: that ballot counting often gets overcovered by the media, even
2:36:09
Speaker 1: when the process seems to be moving smoothly. Why do
2:36:11
Speaker 1: you think news outlet's focus so heavily on this? Does
2:36:13
Speaker 1: it reflect reality or is it more about the media environment? Yeah,
2:36:18
Speaker 1: you know, I certainly don't spend a lot of time
2:36:20
Speaker 1: on the process itself. I do think you have a
2:36:22
Speaker 1: lot of new media that spends time in the process.
2:36:25
Speaker 1: I think Donald Trump has certainly made the process seem nefarious.
2:36:30
Speaker 1: So then you know if you're the right thing to do,
2:36:33
Speaker 1: if you're in the press is to just bring sunshine
2:36:36
Speaker 1: to the situation. And so look, I think you know,
2:36:41
Speaker 1: you know, two things can be true at the same time.
2:36:42
Speaker 1: California is doing everything by the book and is making
2:36:46
Speaker 1: sure access to the polls and everybody's vote that should
2:36:49
Speaker 1: be counted as counted, and they can do a better
2:36:52
Speaker 1: job at figuring out how to do it faster in
2:36:53
Speaker 1: a more efficient system, right like, and I think unfortunately
2:36:56
Speaker 1: now in our politics, right if you somehow a agree
2:37:00
Speaker 1: with a criticism that the president has, then you know,
2:37:04
Speaker 1: f you and your family, right, that's what the left
2:37:06
Speaker 1: would say, and if you at all acknowledge that, no,
2:37:10
Speaker 1: what they're doing, there's no nefarious here. Spencer Pratt did
2:37:13
Speaker 1: as did as well as any Republican can do in
2:37:16
Speaker 1: a county that's seventy thirty democratic. And you know, then
2:37:19
Speaker 1: you're not towing the line. Then you're you're some sort
2:37:22
Speaker 1: of rhino or you know, you've you're captive, captive of
2:37:27
Speaker 1: the of the crazy left or something like that. But look,
2:37:32
Speaker 1: I think the instinct of the media coverage of it
2:37:34
Speaker 1: is to make is to is to make it clear
2:37:37
Speaker 1: if there was something nefarious, we'dn't see it. And it
2:37:39
Speaker 1: would be plainly obvious. There's a lot of really people
2:37:44
Speaker 1: that I used to say, we're responsible actors on the
2:37:46
Speaker 1: right who are exploiting the current, you know, sort of
2:37:50
Speaker 1: frustration with California, and I say to these guys, come on,
2:37:54
Speaker 1: you know, everybody, Spencer Pratt was not screwed. If Spencer
2:37:58
Speaker 1: Pratt wanted to make the run off, he'd have run
2:38:00
Speaker 1: a campaign that wasn't megacentric and AI fueled. He'd have
2:38:05
Speaker 1: actually tried to be a bit more centrist. There was
2:38:08
Speaker 1: a path to victory, there was a path to second place.
2:38:11
Speaker 1: He chose a performative path. That was a choice. He
2:38:16
Speaker 1: could have gone in another direction that would have gotten
2:38:19
Speaker 1: him in. You know, you know, if the electorate rejected you,
2:38:23
Speaker 1: then you didn't do a good job, meaning the electorate
2:38:26
Speaker 1: where it's at. So you either had to persuade them
2:38:28
Speaker 1: to come to where you are or you need to
2:38:30
Speaker 1: meet the elector at where it was at. But I
2:38:34
Speaker 1: do think that both things can be true here about California.
2:38:37
Speaker 1: They're doing everything by the book, and there's got to
2:38:42
Speaker 1: be a faster way to do this. Matt from Upstate
2:38:47
Speaker 1: New York rights, Hey, big fan of the pod, Keep
2:38:49
Speaker 1: up the great work. With social security shortfalls now projected sooner.
2:38:52
Speaker 1: How do you see this shaping the twenty twenty eight election.
2:38:54
Speaker 1: Do you think candidates will offer real solutions or default
2:38:56
Speaker 1: to blame the other side. Let's say you think's Matt
2:38:58
Speaker 1: from upstate New York, Well they really you know, first
2:39:02
Speaker 1: of all, all the solutions are there, and this is
2:39:04
Speaker 1: what frustrates me, both about our debt and about funding
2:39:07
Speaker 1: social security? You know, And how do you improve the
2:39:10
Speaker 1: trust fund? The donut hole folks?
2:39:14
Speaker 3: Right?
2:39:15
Speaker 1: The cap on social security taxes? Right, if you make
2:39:18
Speaker 1: a million dollars, you only pay social Security taxes up
2:39:22
Speaker 1: to the first I think it's one hundred and eighty thousand, right,
2:39:25
Speaker 1: There's a simple solution to improving you know. And I
2:39:31
Speaker 1: promise you when you say, would you like to see
2:39:36
Speaker 1: social security benefits cut? Or do you want to see
2:39:41
Speaker 1: social security benefits fulfilled? Even if it means raising taxes
2:39:47
Speaker 1: on people that make more than one hundred and eighty
2:39:50
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year up to you know, whatever it is.
2:39:54
Speaker 1: Or you can create a donut hole and make it
2:39:56
Speaker 1: where you know, nobody that makes you know, whoever makes
2:40:00
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars or less only pays solid security
2:40:03
Speaker 1: taxes on the first one hundred and eighty and if
2:40:05
Speaker 1: you make more than five hundred thousand dollars a year,
2:40:07
Speaker 1: you pay those security taxes. Maybe you get a carve
2:40:10
Speaker 1: out between one eighty and five hundred, and then you
2:40:13
Speaker 1: pay it all the way to whatever you make. The
2:40:15
Speaker 1: point is, the solution is simple. It's sitting there. It's
2:40:18
Speaker 1: the cap. It's the social Security tax cap. Right, It's
2:40:22
Speaker 1: the simplest solution to this problem because the only other
2:40:30
Speaker 1: solution is to start. You know, you get eighty percent
2:40:33
Speaker 1: of benefits, you get seventy five percent of benefits, et cetera.
2:40:38
Speaker 1: But nobody's going to be the party that institutes that.
2:40:41
Speaker 1: So it is the one. This will be the most
2:40:44
Speaker 1: fascinating issue in this look. I think you're going to
2:40:47
Speaker 1: see nothing, but as far as twenty twenty eight, twenty
2:40:50
Speaker 1: twenty six are concerned, it's going to be a lot
2:40:52
Speaker 1: of sky is falling type of rhetoric. And you know this,
2:40:56
Speaker 1: you know, the solution isn't e isn't hard. You know,
2:40:59
Speaker 1: the right, it's probably going to just default to saying, well,
2:41:02
Speaker 1: if we just purge the social security roles of people
2:41:04
Speaker 1: who shouldn't be there. There would be plenty of social
2:41:06
Speaker 1: security for you. So they'll probably do a little bit
2:41:08
Speaker 1: of of sort of of sort of manufactured scapegoating on immigrants,
2:41:13
Speaker 1: of which the numbers actually don't add up to back
2:41:16
Speaker 1: that accusation up. It's like I said, it's a you
2:41:20
Speaker 1: know there, you could means test, right, we could means
2:41:23
Speaker 1: test and or race, you know, race taxes. So it
2:41:27
Speaker 1: is going to be one of the others. So actually,
2:41:29
Speaker 1: the solutions to this aren't very difficult, and they're kind
2:41:32
Speaker 1: of they're not painless, but they're not they're not catastrophic.
2:41:43
Speaker 1: But you know, here's the other problem. We have a
2:41:47
Speaker 1: we have a declining birth rate, and we're deporting people constantly.
2:41:53
Speaker 1: We're shrinking our population. So if we continue to shrink
2:41:56
Speaker 1: our population, we're gonna have to jack up taxes. If
2:41:58
Speaker 1: you don't want to hire taxes, we're going to need
2:42:00
Speaker 1: more people. Next question comes from Denise, a Boston public
2:42:11
Speaker 1: radio listener, which means I see around Jim and Marjorie,
2:42:15
Speaker 1: resident of Marlboro, mass and a Bostonian at heart. God
2:42:19
Speaker 1: bless you, Denise. I'm usually just a listener, but the
2:42:23
Speaker 1: conversation surrounding Platner raised a question for me, how do
2:42:25
Speaker 1: you reconcile supporting a candidate who seems well suited for
2:42:27
Speaker 1: the job with concerns about their personal conduct. It often
2:42:30
Speaker 1: feels like the most polished candidates don't always translate into
2:42:32
Speaker 1: effective leaders. Something has to give. Look sometimes at the
2:42:38
Speaker 1: end of the day, it's your own gut check. I
2:42:40
Speaker 1: can't you know, I think everybody wants a definitive answer
2:42:43
Speaker 1: here on Platner. A plenty of us look at Platner
2:42:48
Speaker 1: through the prism of Trump. Whether that's fair or unfair,
2:42:51
Speaker 1: it just is. I think we both know that in
2:42:55
Speaker 1: the pre Trump era, Platner never would have gotten off
2:42:58
Speaker 1: the ground, right, the decratic left wouldn't have supported that
2:43:03
Speaker 1: the permission slip that voters have given Trump. And that's
2:43:07
Speaker 1: what I always say, it's the voters that give the
2:43:09
Speaker 1: permission slip. Right. The voters tell us what's acceptable and
2:43:11
Speaker 1: what's not. You know, it isn't me in the press,
2:43:14
Speaker 1: it isn't our political leaders, right. The voters decide what's acceptable.
2:43:18
Speaker 1: And so the voters have made and have made this
2:43:20
Speaker 1: character exception for Trump. That is something I don't think
2:43:24
Speaker 1: any of us saw coming. And so the voters have
2:43:29
Speaker 1: changed this, and the voters are likely to change it again.
2:43:31
Speaker 1: You know, I think I shared this earlier. I happen
2:43:34
Speaker 1: to believe it'll eventually come, but we're probably it's probably
2:43:38
Speaker 1: going to be take about ten or fifteen years post
2:43:41
Speaker 1: Trump for us to sort of return to a time
2:43:45
Speaker 1: when when character will matter. Like, you know, I think
2:43:48
Speaker 1: character is destinying all this stuff. I think I think
2:43:54
Speaker 1: everybody looks at Platiner through a lens of their own
2:43:59
Speaker 1: experience with people that they may know that have a
2:44:02
Speaker 1: similar background to him. If you're if you have a
2:44:06
Speaker 1: military veteran in your family who's served multiple tours, you know,
2:44:10
Speaker 1: maybe you look at that behavior and you're like, I
2:44:12
Speaker 1: get that, I know that, I know that's work, you know,
2:44:17
Speaker 1: And you may decide is that experience that should make
2:44:20
Speaker 1: him a better US senator or does that experience make
2:44:25
Speaker 1: mean he's still got more work to do before he
2:44:27
Speaker 1: should go into public service. But that's I can't I
2:44:35
Speaker 1: can't reconcile it for you, and you can't reconcile it
2:44:37
Speaker 1: for me. Right, I think it's it really is a
2:44:40
Speaker 1: judgment call, right, And look, in Virginia, we face something
2:44:44
Speaker 1: like this in twenty twenty five with J. Jones the
2:44:47
Speaker 1: attorney general. Now he's the attorney general. He won, but
2:44:50
Speaker 1: he was running against a sitting attorney general Republican named
2:44:53
Speaker 1: Jason Miras and J. Jones use some awful language, sort
2:44:57
Speaker 1: of wishing, you know, sort of dreaming about the idea
2:45:00
Speaker 1: that a political opponent might die be a random gun violence,
2:45:05
Speaker 1: so that his family would understand the pain of gun violence.
2:45:09
Speaker 1: I you know, something that felt disqualifying. You're like, really,
2:45:14
Speaker 1: you're you want to be the attorney general? And this
2:45:16
Speaker 1: is the way, you know, it's it wasn't just any
2:45:19
Speaker 1: position he was running for, right. So the point is
2:45:22
Speaker 1: is that I I'm not going to sit here and
2:45:25
Speaker 1: say that my morals are your morals and my and
2:45:28
Speaker 1: I think that that's what makes Platiner very subjective. What
2:45:32
Speaker 1: is more offensive to you? Right? Is it Platner's character?
2:45:37
Speaker 1: Is it Susan Collins votes right? You know? And and
2:45:41
Speaker 1: I you can make I'm sure there are voters that
2:45:44
Speaker 1: will make both cases ultimately, you know, I do. I've
2:45:52
Speaker 1: look I'm looking at the data, and the data tells me.
2:45:55
Speaker 1: And we're seeing now that a majority of voters in
2:45:58
Speaker 1: both parties are willing to overlook character problems if it
2:46:02
Speaker 1: prevents the other side from winning something. That's where our
2:46:05
Speaker 1: politics are. That's the world Donald Trump was trying to create,
2:46:11
Speaker 1: and he did it. He has bent the character of
2:46:14
Speaker 1: the country to him. He's bent the character of politics
2:46:16
Speaker 1: to him. I'd like to fight that. It is hard
2:46:24
Speaker 1: to fight it, you know. And this is the dilemma,
2:46:26
Speaker 1: right If you want to fight that politics, you've got
2:46:30
Speaker 1: to defeat that politics. Now, you know. That's Susan Collins. Certainly.
2:46:37
Speaker 1: I think there are some things. You know, I think
2:46:40
Speaker 1: she carries herself with grace, but if you don't like
2:46:45
Speaker 1: her votes, you may not think she does, you know,
2:46:48
Speaker 1: And you may think that what she did with Kavanaugh
2:46:50
Speaker 1: was a bridge too far. And I'm not going to
2:46:54
Speaker 1: judge you on that, and I'm not going to say
2:46:55
Speaker 1: you're wrong for that. I understand that. So the point
2:47:03
Speaker 1: is is that and I think that's where you get
2:47:07
Speaker 1: to that. And then there's the hardcore political conversation where
2:47:11
Speaker 1: I don't know whether Platner is going to be a
2:47:13
Speaker 1: good or bad public servant if he wins. There's a
2:47:16
Speaker 1: lot of yellow flags, and will the yellow flags be
2:47:21
Speaker 1: red flags at some point? I don't know, and that's
2:47:27
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like risk, just not the game,
2:47:30
Speaker 1: but sort of risk management. Some people have a higher
2:47:33
Speaker 1: tolerance for risk than others. Some people will gamble, some
2:47:36
Speaker 1: people won't. There is some risk with voting for Platner.
2:47:42
Speaker 1: The question is whether you think it's high risk or
2:47:44
Speaker 1: low risk. There was real I think there's real risk
2:47:47
Speaker 1: with voting for Trump, and it all depends on your
2:47:50
Speaker 1: risk tolerance, right, So I know character is a bigger
2:47:58
Speaker 1: deal for me in a vote, but I will confess
2:48:01
Speaker 1: that I have the luxury that character counts, and I
2:48:06
Speaker 1: have a luxury to worry about those things because I'm
2:48:08
Speaker 1: not feeling economically squeezed at the moment. And that's why
2:48:13
Speaker 1: I want to be careful here, not to presume how
2:48:16
Speaker 1: you should feel or other is real. But I get
2:48:19
Speaker 1: the dilemma. I understand the dilemma, and I think it
2:48:22
Speaker 1: would be cleaner if the Democrats had a generic candidate here.
2:48:27
Speaker 1: But life isn't Life isn't easy, is it? And generic?
2:48:31
Speaker 1: You know, if we could find generic politician, generic politician
2:48:35
Speaker 1: would have would be winning in a landslide every cycle,
2:48:40
Speaker 1: in every race. That's not a lot of how life works.
2:48:55
Speaker 1: Next question, comes from Mattam. He says, Hey, what's your
2:48:56
Speaker 1: take on concerns about the potential bias and coverage of Platinum,
2:48:59
Speaker 1: particularly around who is reporting the story? How should audiences
2:49:01
Speaker 1: think about evaluating reporting versus possible underlying perspectives or conflicts?
2:49:05
Speaker 1: Do you see any of that as worth considering when
2:49:07
Speaker 1: assessing the broader narratives? Sincerely, Matt Amm. Look, you know,
2:49:12
Speaker 1: whenever I've been asked about questions of bias in the
2:49:15
Speaker 1: reporting itself, I always do this check my pulse. Okay,
2:49:20
Speaker 1: still a human being. Everybody's born with original bias. Okay,
2:49:26
Speaker 1: where you're from, who you're born to? All right, what
2:49:29
Speaker 1: ethnicity are you? Right? Some of this stuff you're just born. Right,
2:49:33
Speaker 1: you're born with a bias. You learn about them as
2:49:38
Speaker 1: you grow. Which you're born with a bias. So that's
2:49:42
Speaker 1: always the I always want to get that out of
2:49:43
Speaker 1: the way whenever I get a question about bias. Look,
2:49:50
Speaker 1: I am a obviously, I've been doing this a long time.
2:49:53
Speaker 1: So I think of myself as a sophisticated news consumer
2:49:56
Speaker 1: and I feel like I know how to I know
2:49:59
Speaker 1: how to find the information I need, no matter if
2:50:02
Speaker 1: it's packaged in something that is pro platiner or antiplatiner.
2:50:06
Speaker 1: I know how to find the stuff that's factually correct,
2:50:09
Speaker 1: and whether I trust the reporter to report facts. You know,
2:50:12
Speaker 1: I'm fine if a reporter has a left bias or
2:50:14
Speaker 1: a right bias, but they're always they always care about
2:50:17
Speaker 1: the facts, right, you know that that that so there's
2:50:21
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of ways that you can evaluate this.
2:50:29
Speaker 1: So you know, I I'm gonna be honest with you, Matt.
2:50:34
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that you that there might be
2:50:37
Speaker 1: something else you're trying to ask with this question. But
2:50:40
Speaker 1: I also don't want to try to read into something
2:50:43
Speaker 1: that maybe you didn't intend. But I do think that
2:50:52
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of online commentary that takes somebody's
2:50:57
Speaker 1: presumed faith and assume there's a bias towards what they're
2:51:01
Speaker 1: reporting and how they're reporting it. Be careful treading in
2:51:06
Speaker 1: that territory. I just you know, it is there is
2:51:13
Speaker 1: no monoculture like that, it doesn't exist. And a reporter's
2:51:19
Speaker 1: personal faith it is, it is, it is. I would
2:51:25
Speaker 1: just I hope that's you know, I hope that's not
2:51:28
Speaker 1: where you're going. I'm going to presume you're not going there.
2:51:32
Speaker 1: But the reason I was wondering if you were is
2:51:34
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of this lately. I've seen somebody
2:51:38
Speaker 1: try to dismiss a report about Platiner simply because the
2:51:42
Speaker 1: person once worked for an organization that was supportive of
2:51:47
Speaker 1: an organization that is a critic of Platners, and that
2:51:52
Speaker 1: just like, where are we going here? That that type
2:51:55
Speaker 1: of you know, that's sort of guilt by association, and
2:51:58
Speaker 1: guilt by association. It's pretty un American, you know it
2:52:01
Speaker 1: should be. I say, it's an American. It's practiced all
2:52:04
Speaker 1: the time, but it's essentially a form of McCarthyism. So
2:52:07
Speaker 1: let's be careful on that. Evaluate what you're reading based
2:52:12
Speaker 1: on the words that are there, not presuming based on
2:52:17
Speaker 1: what you think folks are running. Now that said, I'll
2:52:21
Speaker 1: tell you a place that I'm always wanting to know
2:52:24
Speaker 1: someone's bias. But the bias, again, it isn't about a
2:52:28
Speaker 1: political bias. It is about a It is about an
2:52:32
Speaker 1: academic bias or an ideological bias. It is when when
2:52:34
Speaker 1: I read history, did you come at this from a
2:52:37
Speaker 1: left perspective or a right perspective? Because how you interpret
2:52:41
Speaker 1: older stuff, are you interpreted it through today's prism of
2:52:44
Speaker 1: left and right? Are you doing your best to ground
2:52:47
Speaker 1: yourself in what left and right looked like back in
2:52:49
Speaker 1: that day. So I'm not saying somebody's bias isn't isn't
2:52:54
Speaker 1: helpful to understanding why or how they're covering a certain story.
2:52:59
Speaker 1: But you know, I think that in mainstream news organizations,
2:53:06
Speaker 1: you know, it's it is. There's usually the story itself
2:53:09
Speaker 1: is not. Usually the bias is. And how frequently a
2:53:12
Speaker 1: story gets covered is almost more of a bias sometimes,
2:53:16
Speaker 1: and the topic that gets covered about a certain person
2:53:19
Speaker 1: can can be influenced by the bias of a reporter,
2:53:22
Speaker 1: meaning they keep wanting to cover the same angle to
2:53:24
Speaker 1: the same story, but the angle is factually correct at
2:53:27
Speaker 1: these news you know. So that's what I mean when
2:53:29
Speaker 1: you just this is a I don't think it's a
2:53:34
Speaker 1: fulfilling road to go down other than you know, just
2:53:39
Speaker 1: just learn how to discern how you read a story
2:53:42
Speaker 1: knowing that look, there's plenty you know, there's plenty of
2:53:45
Speaker 1: facts to pull out from this, And I know what
2:53:48
Speaker 1: I do. I try to look at this and say, Okay,
2:53:50
Speaker 1: what's the best version of the story based on the
2:53:52
Speaker 1: facts that are available, and what's the politically worst version
2:53:56
Speaker 1: of this and looks and just as your own exercise,
2:53:59
Speaker 1: read your next platinum story and then say, Okay, how
2:54:03
Speaker 1: would somebody have written this if they really didn't like them?
2:54:05
Speaker 1: What would what more would they do it? And vice versa.
2:54:10
Speaker 1: Julie from Portland organ RTEs Is it right that eggs
2:54:12
Speaker 1: and poles used to help call racist quickly even though
2:54:14
Speaker 1: vote counting always looked took longer with more mail in voting.
2:54:17
Speaker 1: Now dogs and poles still play the same role. Do
2:54:18
Speaker 1: you think the shift and how results come in is
2:54:20
Speaker 1: contributing to public confusion? And could the media do a
2:54:22
Speaker 1: better job of explaining it? What do you think? Yes,
2:54:26
Speaker 1: the media can do a better job explaining it. I
2:54:27
Speaker 1: think the media is trying to do a better job
2:54:29
Speaker 1: explaining it. I know I focus on this. I always
2:54:33
Speaker 1: constantly want to let people know, Okay, how is the vote?
2:54:36
Speaker 1: How is how is the vote being reported? How does
2:54:39
Speaker 1: it get counted? What's being counted? First? I want people
2:54:42
Speaker 1: to understand when they see blue mirages and red mirages
2:54:46
Speaker 1: early on in a vote count, why it happens that way? Right? Look,
2:54:51
Speaker 1: it's one hundred percent of the vote. When a one
2:54:53
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the vote is in. That's your total.
2:54:55
Speaker 1: What happened with fifty percent of the vote in depends
2:54:58
Speaker 1: on which fifty percent I counted first, right, Like, So
2:55:01
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a reporting bias, which is something
2:55:06
Speaker 1: to be Warrey of. Look as to exit poles, So, yes,
2:55:12
Speaker 1: an exit pole is a tool. But I'll explain to
2:55:16
Speaker 1: you how how we used to use the exit pole
2:55:18
Speaker 1: as a projection tool. So it is a piece of
2:55:21
Speaker 1: the tool. So you'll get your exit pole, and then
2:55:24
Speaker 1: what you'll do is we'll we'll have people at the
2:55:27
Speaker 1: precincts that we know are the most you know, a
2:55:32
Speaker 1: representative sample of the precincts of that state, and then
2:55:35
Speaker 1: we actually a physical people on the ground to get
2:55:38
Speaker 1: the first returns reported from those precincts, and then you
2:55:43
Speaker 1: match it up and if it if it matches with
2:55:45
Speaker 1: the exit pole, then the exit pole becomes a confidence
2:55:48
Speaker 1: builder and helps you in the projection. But I want
2:55:53
Speaker 1: to mystify the exit pole itself was never used to
2:55:56
Speaker 1: call It was never the instrument that called the race.
2:56:00
Speaker 1: You were still getting real data in and the exit
2:56:04
Speaker 1: pole was essentially like is it how far off or
2:56:08
Speaker 1: on is it? You know? It was sort of like one.
2:56:11
Speaker 1: It was just like one more extra tool. I My
2:56:16
Speaker 1: frustration is I think exipoles are very important to understanding
2:56:19
Speaker 1: why people voted, and they're not accurate when we report them.
2:56:24
Speaker 1: We always report them at the start of an election night,
2:56:26
Speaker 1: when they actually you need to wait until you see
2:56:28
Speaker 1: the votes come in and the exit pol needs to
2:56:30
Speaker 1: be rewaited, rewaited to the actual electorate and then you
2:56:33
Speaker 1: have a more accurate exipole. You ever notice that you'll
2:56:36
Speaker 1: see exitpole reporting and it gets quote updated, well, it's
2:56:39
Speaker 1: because it gets reweighted based on actual votes. So what
2:56:44
Speaker 1: I hate is it is it the first wave of
2:56:46
Speaker 1: exit poles. They'll report data out of it and they're
2:56:49
Speaker 1: just misleading everybody on this, So it really should never
2:56:52
Speaker 1: be reported. Ideally, an exit pole should be conducted solely
2:56:56
Speaker 1: to find out why people voted the way they voted,
2:56:59
Speaker 1: and it isn't ready for consumption for at least forty
2:57:02
Speaker 1: eight hours. But that is not the way we've operated
2:57:04
Speaker 1: with exit poles. Now, we don't really have any out there.
2:57:08
Speaker 1: The exit pol Consortium is defunct and all the networks
2:57:12
Speaker 1: are now just going to AP, which is why an
2:57:14
Speaker 1: AP's vote counting operation is okay, But there's a reason
2:57:18
Speaker 1: all the networks wanted their own and this is why
2:57:21
Speaker 1: I'm doing work with Decision to SHQ. They're their own
2:57:24
Speaker 1: entity and they've been building their own vote counting system
2:57:28
Speaker 1: now for about a decade now, and it's outstanding and
2:57:32
Speaker 1: it's better than APS, it's faster than APS, it's more
2:57:35
Speaker 1: nimble than APS, and I think there's more to be
2:57:40
Speaker 1: done there. As for your specific question, I'm mail in voting.
2:57:44
Speaker 1: So for states that are predominantly mail ballots, we would
2:57:49
Speaker 1: do a telephone pole in lieu of an exit pole.
2:57:52
Speaker 1: Exit polls are conducted with literally people after they walk
2:57:54
Speaker 1: out of voting physical voting place. We would have exit
2:57:59
Speaker 1: pole takers during early vote and you know, the actual
2:58:03
Speaker 1: polling places, there's basically, you know, you basically survey every
2:58:07
Speaker 1: eight voters or every five voters, whatever, whatever the number
2:58:10
Speaker 1: you decide to use on a given day. But for
2:58:13
Speaker 1: the majority of those states that are predominantly done by mail,
2:58:18
Speaker 1: Oregon is the biggest one. Is is U. You've pointed out.
2:58:26
Speaker 5: Is UH.
2:58:28
Speaker 1: Is just a more substantive telephone pole, but you have
2:58:33
Speaker 1: a higher margin of error. I mean, you know, we
2:58:35
Speaker 1: we do our best to then wait the that poll
2:58:38
Speaker 1: to the actual vote when you get the when you
2:58:40
Speaker 1: get the returns in. So that's how we've been doing
2:58:43
Speaker 1: exit polls in states. When I say we the collective
2:58:45
Speaker 1: political community, but it's a little less accurate these days.
2:58:50
Speaker 1: But look not to give away too much, but I'm
2:58:53
Speaker 1: in the middle of of of helping to figure out
2:58:56
Speaker 1: how to build a new exit pole, one that won't
2:59:01
Speaker 1: may not cost an arm and a leg, but it
2:59:02
Speaker 1: might actually be be able to make a dollar or
2:59:05
Speaker 1: two and also improve the entire ability of the political
2:59:13
Speaker 1: community to actually understand why people vote the way they vote.
2:59:17
Speaker 1: Last question comes from Scott from Pennsylvania ten. I like
2:59:21
Speaker 1: that more people. I want you to identify your congressional
2:59:25
Speaker 1: district with the questions. I like this. Let's make this
2:59:28
Speaker 1: a trend. Scott from Pa ten. Today's polarized environment, even
2:59:32
Speaker 1: a president attending a sporting event can become a political flashpoint.
2:59:35
Speaker 1: How do you think president should approach these appearances and
2:59:37
Speaker 1: what's a reasonable way for fans and players to react?
2:59:39
Speaker 1: Thanks for you continued great content. Man, I don't know,
2:59:44
Speaker 1: I you know. I think our presidents, if they want
2:59:50
Speaker 1: to go to these big events, should go to these
2:59:52
Speaker 1: big events. I don't know why we have to make
2:59:56
Speaker 1: a big deal that they're there. Let them make the
2:59:58
Speaker 1: big deal. I don't think the event itself should make
3:00:00
Speaker 1: the big deal, right, Why should the event? You know,
3:00:04
Speaker 1: let people know all the famous people that have decided
3:00:07
Speaker 1: to go, because it does. You know, look, mayors get booed,
3:00:13
Speaker 1: Governors get booed, Presidents get booed. Right, It's it's not
3:00:16
Speaker 1: always the best politics in the moment. You're always gonna
3:00:19
Speaker 1: get booed because we all everybody just doesn't want politicians
3:00:22
Speaker 1: in the way of sports. I mean, everybody else wants
3:00:24
Speaker 1: to read more into it than sometimes that it is.
3:00:27
Speaker 1: But I will say this, Man, if the Knicks don't
3:00:30
Speaker 1: win this championship, Trump is Knicks fans are gonna hate.
3:00:33
Speaker 1: They're gonna blame Trump for decades, For decades.
3:00:36
Speaker 5: They were on their way to a four game sleep
3:00:38
Speaker 5: and then Trump came to the garden and took away
3:00:42
Speaker 5: all the mojo. Right, Like you could just picture how
3:00:44
Speaker 5: that's never Knicks fans are never going to get over.
3:00:47
Speaker 5: It's gonna be like, it's gonna be like the oj
3:00:49
Speaker 5: you know, I read a recent I didn't realize this
3:00:52
Speaker 5: at the time, but I read a recent that apparently
3:00:55
Speaker 5: there was conspiracy theories back during.
3:00:57
Speaker 1: The OJ era. Right famously, the Knicks were in the
3:01:01
Speaker 1: finals during the OJ Bronco Chase, and it's the famous
3:01:04
Speaker 1: split screen wasn't even a split screen. It's like three
3:01:07
Speaker 1: quarters of the screen was on OJ and a tiny
3:01:10
Speaker 1: little box with the basketball game, and the Knicks were
3:01:14
Speaker 1: up to to one, and then OJ happened and then
3:01:17
Speaker 1: they lose it. And I guess the theory is because
3:01:20
Speaker 1: Akeim Elijahan was a foreign national, he didn't really know
3:01:23
Speaker 1: or care about OJ Simpson. But because the Knicks were
3:01:26
Speaker 1: made up of more American players, they were more obsessed
3:01:28
Speaker 1: about OJ and it got into their heads more than
3:01:30
Speaker 1: it did the I don't know if I buy it,
3:01:33
Speaker 1: but it's like the Welcome to the Snake Bit Nicks,
3:01:36
Speaker 1: right where these outside events and these giant personalities steal
3:01:41
Speaker 1: their championships from them. Anyway, Look, I want I like
3:01:48
Speaker 1: the idea that our championship teams get to be honored
3:01:51
Speaker 1: at the White House. That should be seen as a thing,
3:01:54
Speaker 1: whether you're left to right. I've shared the story before.
3:01:57
Speaker 1: You know, Donald Trump politicizes everything worse than any other president.
3:02:01
Speaker 1: Why do I know this, Barack Obama honored the eighty
3:02:03
Speaker 1: five Bears, and you know who showed up and was invited,
3:02:06
Speaker 1: Mike Ditka. And Mike Ditka was being recruited to run
3:02:09
Speaker 1: against Barack Obama in two thousand and four during that
3:02:11
Speaker 1: Senate race and Mike Dick cave and brought up. He goes, hey, man,
3:02:14
Speaker 1: I didn't vote for him, but I'm here, and he
3:02:17
Speaker 1: said it. Then he goes, I'm here because I respect
3:02:19
Speaker 1: the presidency. I respect the president, and I love the
3:02:22
Speaker 1: Chicago Bears and he loves the Chicago Bears. You know,
3:02:27
Speaker 1: why can't we all behave like Ditka?
3:02:29
Speaker 5: You know.
3:02:32
Speaker 1: It's it is. Look, there's a fine line obviously, and
3:02:38
Speaker 1: we know that. Look, why are politicians open sporting events
3:02:41
Speaker 1: because they want the reflected glory? And no, we've never
3:02:44
Speaker 1: had a president in some need of reflected glory more
3:02:47
Speaker 1: than this one, right, So I it's it's it's going
3:02:51
Speaker 1: to happen. All I would say is, you know, the
3:02:58
Speaker 1: to me where presidents mess up is when they try
3:03:01
Speaker 1: to get involved in sports they know nothing about. And
3:03:07
Speaker 1: that's all that would be. That would be the one
3:03:10
Speaker 1: thing I would say on that is sort of make
3:03:12
Speaker 1: sure you know your you know your sport, or make
3:03:15
Speaker 1: sure or lean into what you don't know about it,
3:03:18
Speaker 1: and lean into the fact that, hey, I'm here because
3:03:20
Speaker 1: everybody's loving them and I grew up and I loved it,
3:03:23
Speaker 1: and that's it right. Don't try to make it a
3:03:26
Speaker 1: political event. Act and behave like a fan, and nine
3:03:31
Speaker 1: times out of ten you might get more respect for it.
3:03:36
Speaker 1: Scott from PA ten, We'll talk to little Penn State
3:03:38
Speaker 1: Football the next time you write. By the way, I
3:03:43
Speaker 1: used my soapbox last episode to say that the Big
3:03:47
Speaker 1: twelve needed to step up and what Texas Tech was
3:03:50
Speaker 1: doing was just wrong. I saw that the Big twelve
3:03:53
Speaker 1: did step up. They haven't made a decision yet, but
3:03:56
Speaker 1: I'm glad to see that there is public outcry about this.
3:04:00
Speaker 1: But let's be let you know, I would like to
3:04:02
Speaker 1: see and you know, ESPN needs to get off its
3:04:05
Speaker 1: ass on this because they're controlling entity of the CFP.
3:04:08
Speaker 1: But the College Football Playoff entity can end this tomorrow.
3:04:13
Speaker 1: We know the NCAA has no teeth, but the CFP
3:04:15
Speaker 1: can decide who's eligible and ineligible for the College Football Playoff.
3:04:19
Speaker 1: And if you've admitted to gambling on your own team,
3:04:21
Speaker 1: you're ineligible to play in the CFP. And how that
3:04:25
Speaker 1: is not just a standard by law for participating in
3:04:31
Speaker 1: the CFP is beyond me. If it's not, it should be,
3:04:35
Speaker 1: and it should be done yesterday. Do I think Brendan
3:04:39
Speaker 1: Sorosby should have access to college education? I do? Should he?
3:04:42
Speaker 1: You know, if the judge decides that he should be
3:04:44
Speaker 1: able to be on the team, if he wants to
3:04:45
Speaker 1: be on the team, that's fine, and that's up to
3:04:47
Speaker 1: Texas Tech. But other teams can decide not to play him,
3:04:51
Speaker 1: and other tournaments can decide he's not eligible, and that's
3:04:56
Speaker 1: okay too. With that at enjoy the weekend. I'll see
3:05:02
Speaker 1: in seventy two hours until we meet them, Let's hope.
3:05:08
Speaker 1: Let's hope we're somewhere closer to a resolution with a run,
3:05:14
Speaker 1: but I fear by Monday we won't meet