Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / SZEPS WORLD TOUR – COLEMAN HUGHES on Race, Trump & Power

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SZEPS WORLD TOUR – COLEMAN HUGHES on Race, Trump & Power · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Good day, humans. Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. This episode of Uncomfortable
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  Conversations is the audio of a video live stream from the ZEPPS live around the world
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  tour sub-tax first ever live streamed global podcast marathon where I'm crossing two dozen
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  Yeah, streaming. I'm actually not allowed in. That's right. I've seen it many times.
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  I was just up in Provincetown and hello to everybody who's joining us on the live stream.
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  This is yet another fascinating installment of the Zeps Live around the world podcast, Marathon.
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  We're pretty much every day we're just sitting down with a new, interesting person
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  in a different city, sometimes multiple times a day. Colin Hughes is here. I don't even know how
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  to describe you these days, Coleman, writer, podcaster. That'll do. Genius, intellectual,
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  actively. No, I've never thought of myself musicians, but you could argue musician,
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  yep, definitely, although not renowned for it. Yeah, not to the extent of my writing, but
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  you know, I actually am weirdly renowned among a niche community of jazz tribunists. That's
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  great. I would say respected rather than renowned. How many people at your level of jazz
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  tromboning are there in the city? In the city, a couple dozen. Great. At most.
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  Out of 20 million people. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. So yesterday I was up at Provincetown.
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  I was just selling Coleman this before. And I was supposed to do a live stream with Andrew Sullivan.
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  And when I got there, he's such a sweetheart. He was just like, let me show you around. I just
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  want to show you everything. And so we went and we got lunch and then we rented some electric
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  bicycles. Coleman was the gayest thing I've ever done. It was the gayest day I've ever had.
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  It was the gayest. It's like one of the gayest towns in America. Little short shorts,
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  e-bikes, like riding through dunes, cavorting, sun, sand. What's your favorite part about the gay
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  community that isn't related narrowly to being gay? Side effect. I mean, there's very little
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  that I like about any community, qua community, because I don't like conceiving about
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  those that way. Right. And so far as the gay community is culturally in any way distinct
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  from non-gays, like what's your favorite aspect of the culture? Well, probably contrarianism
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  as part of the DNA, writing, a lot of great gay writers. There's nothing about contemporary
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  LGBTQIA plus culture that I think is superior. I don't think. I don't think the music's better.
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  And I mean, if you can't about fashion, some people might say the fashion is better,
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  but I don't. So when you say contemporary, what's the difference between contemporary LGBTQ
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  culture and presumably old school? I think when it was troubled and problematic and complicated,
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  it was more interesting as it's true of a lot of things. And once they become dogmatic and
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  overly, well, proud in like the bad biblical sense, not proud in the positive self-esteem sense,
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  then I think they lose something. I mean, it's probably true of race, racial communities as well,
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  right? Yeah. Like there was something, there was a kind of a grit and determination. Like I feel
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  a little bit about my gayness, the same way I feel about my Jewishness, which is conflicted,
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  like proud to be part of a community that has contributed so much to the arts, but also like,
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  give it a rest a little, people. Yeah. I'm curious. I had a friend that said something like,
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  you know, when the marriage equality movement was at its height, the argument was, we're just like
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  you except instead of attracted to women or attracted to men or vice versa for women,
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  but then when he saw the Pride Festival and the kink displays, he was like, are you just like us?
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  Right. We don't do that stuff in public or celebrate it. Right. And that was an interesting
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  thought to me. Yes. It's also quite conformist in the way that it looks. Like I mean,
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  I don't think there's an terribly courageous about wearing exactly the same thing and talking exactly
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  the same way and listening to the same music and voting the same way as everybody else who has your
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  identity. Is that, is there a herd mentality? Yeah. I think so. But I think much like many communities,
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  there's more descent inside the community than it displays to the rest of, you know, how many people
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  are actually the people who are waving dildos around at the gay pride parade, like it's not that
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  large of a proportion of the gay community. So, yeah, but I do think that historically there was like
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  a resilience and a kind of wit and a kind of a cervic, like I don't know,
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  frustrated genius that you saw come out of parts of the gay community that it doesn't seem like
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  you've got so much anymore. So when you're hanging out with Andrew Solomon in Provincetown,
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  that's only quite dot, dot, dot. No, the sentence could end in so many different ways.
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  Do, do people come up to him on the street? Yes. Say, hey, Andrew Solomon, I'm a huge fan of
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  you thing for everything you've done for the community. Or do they not come up on the street at all?
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  Or do they come up and say, hey, Andrew Solomon, fuck you, I disagree. No one says that. No one says
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  no one said that while I was there, but maybe three people came up and like fanboyed over him.
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  I think partly because it's the summer and so a lot of people are coming there from the mainland
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  who don't know that he's there all the time. And like he's such a fixture of the place because he's
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  been there for 30 years, that he's saying hello to everybody who he knows, who's like it's kind
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  of cool being in a small town, especially if you're famous and successful. Like everyone in
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  a small town almost everyone is famous and successful anyway in a sense that everybody knows you,
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  which is a phenomenon that in a big city only happens to famous people. So here has the double
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  whammy. But I think he feels and I don't think he would mind my saying this that the broader
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  gay community has been somewhat unkind and like un-generous about the contributions that people
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  like him made because he doesn't seem from exactly the same him sheet that you're supposed to
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  in the 2020s. Even though people like him got us marriage equality. Right. Like what percent?
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  So I know Andrew has staked out this position that like LNG are quite a different thing than T
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  that gay and trans are two different issues. Yeah. That shouldn't be assumed to be on the same
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  side of every policy discussion. And in some ways he argues they're at odds because a lot of
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  people that grow up to be trans really they're actually just gay and we're kind of persuaded out
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  of their gayness by the trend of the moment or so there's they could be and they could be and
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  when not investigating it at all because to investigate it is to contradict their you know general
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  identity. I'm curious like how what portion of the LGBT community or actually what portion of the
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  gay community sees that point as valid as opposed to what portion are like. I think quietly a lot,
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  I think quietly a lot. Yeah. Just as you probably have quietly quite a lot of women who are more
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  turfy than they would like to admit because they do recognize that there's something important about
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  women co-hearing together as a biological group but that don't sound like they're on the wrong
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  side of history by saying so. Right. And similarly I mean how do you think it is in the black
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  community like how many people you're essentially the same position to the black community as Andrew is
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  to the gay community or dissenting from the group orthodoxy or as I feel maybe I am towards the
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  gay community and the Jewish community as well. What do you think the proportion of people who agree
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  with you is? It would depend on the specific issue but a lot higher than you would think on almost
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  any given issue. Yeah and again it's a yeah it's a situation where it's just quietly people come up
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  to me on the street and voice their support all the time pretty frequently in ways that are
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  that would be surprising. And I'm mostly back. Not mostly but but probably I don't know
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  probably two out of ten. Yeah well that's the population. Yeah it's roughly roughly the same
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  as you'd expect. And what would you say your how would you articulate to the like one
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  percent of viewers who are familiar with your work already what your position is that they're
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  that is resonating with them. So I would say what resonates with the median black person that comes
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  up on the street and says hi to me is the idea that the racism is everywhere and ever present and
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  permanently defines the country runs in the country's DNA as a black person you're going to be held
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  down the same way our grandparents were during Jim Crow. That narrative is not only untrue but
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  harmful because it encourages you to have an oppositional identity towards the only country
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  you're ever going to live in. It encourages you to buy this idea that you're basically screwed
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  as a black person. It encourages you to jump to anger and accusations of racism in scenarios where
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  that is not at all what's happening and that kind of attitude actually holds you back or causes
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  issues that don't need to arise. And so there's all there's all kinds of ways in which that actually
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  is is unhelpful to a given person's goals in life but also for the country as a whole. Yeah
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  that that was true at one point but we're at the point where we've won a lot of serious battles
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  about racism but we won't acknowledge that we've won them because there are people that want to
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  keep fighting them for really for psychological reasons. And I think that's what people basically
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  yeah it's interesting that you made that distinction between the individual and society. I hadn't
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  really thought about that but it's worth dwelling on that the narrative of systemic inescapable
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  victimization can become a self-fulfilling prophecy both on the personal level because it impede
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  your ability to think that you have you can forge your own existence and you can overcome your
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  setbacks but also on a national or cultural level because it can engender like it can become a
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  self-perpetuating thing where the more that one community feels like it is betrayed and kind
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  of gets its hackles up and man's the barricades and feels like it's in a war of attrition against
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  the other the more that the other is likely to view that community as different and to
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  theoretical the other you know it's like it's not it's the opposite of building bridges.
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  Yeah I wonder whether or not white I've sometimes thought about that whether white people have become
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  like the claim that we that America is more racist than it's ever been which is sometimes here
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  may have more of a grain of truth than we like to admit because of what's happened over the
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  past 10 years in the sense that a person like me finds it harder to ignore race now than I
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  would have 10 years ago. I think there's two threads there one is one is the backlash to
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  call it like 10 years of the BLM era really talk I'm talking about from 2013 to like 2021 roughly
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  that whole era was characterized by a level of identity politics that is is gone right now
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  and probably won't be back for a while but there's a backlash to it what and now the rights
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  is owning the identity now the right is on top and and beyond that there's also just
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  the same thing that created BLM which is the new information super highway social media smartphones
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  pumping like pumping out outrage content into our limbic system 24 hours a day that is also
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  now being used by the right right so they're literally accounts on YouTube that are just catalogs
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  of black people doing crime right right there's people that are just mainlining like videos of
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  of black eyes like beating people up in a way that is you know like they're not getting an
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  equivalent number of of videos of white guys beating people up which are certainly out there on
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  the internet they're not even really getting a balanced picture of the portfolio of crime in the
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  country which is not huge towards black Americans but it's not like they're getting the same
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  breakdown of crime that exists in the country the point of these accounts is to feed you
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  as many videos of black people committing crime um so that race becomes a problem to you whether
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  actually it even would be in your action but are you saying the white rice is to a running
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  those accounts wouldn't be running them were it not for BLM um it's a good question i i don't know
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  i mean i i know that BLM the BLM era rose the salience of the race topic to to a 12 out of 10
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  and uh that that created a demand a level of demand for content on the other side that i don't
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  think would be there i mean certainly there would be white races no matter what but i think the
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  level of it um the level i mean at a certain point if you have the the top journalistic institutions
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  in the nation for years pretty frequently pushing a line about white white people all being racist
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  or you know all having white privilege that's going to engender that feels like an accusation
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  to people and then that creates a need for in a demand for someone to come along and say actually
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  not only is there is there nothing wrong with us as white people were better for for these reasons
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  so and it probably makes them it probably makes them more willing to break the taboo about yeah
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  you know focusing on the salience of race because it's like well if it's good enough for them
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  why isn't good enough for us like why is the only group that isn't allowed to focus on racial
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  difference the whites yes that and and that's that's the argument every white
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  identitarian makes if you actually listen to someone like jerry taylor someone like a white
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  identitarians that actually bother to make arguments what they say is uh you know it's like
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  whatever we don't hate other people it's just we prefer our people just like no one would object
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  to black people identifying as a group and living in the same town if they wanted to it's like
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  i just saw this i don't know if you saw this thing that's happening and i think it's arc and saw
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  um this this guy has purchased a bunch of land privately something like i don't know over 100 acres
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  and it's all part of an LLC and what he's doing is he's accepting applicants to buy part of the
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  LLC and uh which gives them a chunk of the land to and this is like it's a co-op basically that's
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  what that's how co-ops work in a place like New York right exactly yeah so he's he's he's creating
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  co-op and it's whites only wow uh and um i just saw a documentary about this the other day
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  and and his his legal argument is that because it's a co-op the same reason that it would be
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  it would be perfectly legal if you had a house yeah it's not a public allow thing it's not a certain
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  race right your house so therefore it's not like a lunch counter or a boss or something where
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  everybody gets to use it right so so it seems like it's we'll see if it's actually legal because it
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  it might not be um but regardless when you listen to people like that talk they will they'll
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  what they'll say is look every other group has is able to do this we we just want the same cultural
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  rights that every other group has and so they're totally it there there is a tit for tat logic to
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  this whole thing um how do you respond to that argument like i hear i actually wanted to do a story
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  for an Australian television show where i would go to japan and look at um essentially the racism
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  of japan because it's become a bit of a poster child for white supremacists they'd point to
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  japan and they say nobody uses the japanese of being beyond the pale for saying the japan should
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  be for japanese people they haven't incredibly racist immigration policy japan is for japanese
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  people russia is for russians like you know africa is for africans we just want to have a country
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  like why is it why we don't get to have a country what what do you say to that well so the first
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  thing i would say is that i i think it's a bad strategy uh like leave the morality of it aside
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  for a moment japan and in korea are uh they they're literally the worst cases in terms of the
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  low low birth rate crisis right now and their total allergy to immigration
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  takes away the main tool countries have in their disposal to fix the birth rate issue which is
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  not a small thing it's like social security any welfare for the elderly is a pyramid scheme that
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  relies on a certain ratio in demography yeah but that doesn't get you as far as as far as most
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  people would want you to get right because it just assumed that the japanese will start having more
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  sex and having more children it doesn't so i think it was all the problem right to have no
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  immigration if they don't feel it it benefits them i i don't see any problem with that although
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  i would i i would say um making it racial as opposed to cultural i do have a problem with
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  in other words if you want to maintain a certain culture in your country and you understand that
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  not everyone is not every type of immigrant is going to assimilate equally well to that culture
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  which is true uh then then i think it's valid to have immigration preferences based on that
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  but to make it racial narrowly racial is is is to me stupid because race is not a perfect proxy for
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  culture is it maybe stupid but is it wrong oh yeah i think it is immoral yeah i think i think it's
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  immoral to to discriminate solely on the basis of race because race is not a great but but again
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  it's because race is not a great it's immoral because it's stupid is what i'm saying right
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  because race is not like like these guys in Arkansas they're trying to what they're trying to do is
• 21:22
  make the land bloom basically like you know not make the desert bloom but they're they're literally
• 21:26
  out there with saws and drills chopping down trees trying to build houses i don't know if they
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  even have a sea yet like they're doing them back to the land now there's a lot of great people
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  people that would be very effective at that project that they are not going to even consider because
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  they happen not to be white fine but isn't that i would that still sounds like it's there right
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  that that still sounds like what well it's it's their right to to be idiots yeah but is it
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  immoral like i still i still can't quite get like the Japanese have a country uh it's called
• 22:02
  Japan what like why can't they say work i only Japanese people get to live here i think
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  like our english people say only i think english people and that means white people we have a
• 22:11
  moral obligation to to there's a country like japan what you're asking is does japan have a
• 22:16
  moral obligation to take in immigrants that's really the question right and is there and is it
• 22:22
  immoral well i don't think that's quite the question i think if is it immoral for a race or an
• 22:29
  ethnicity or a religion or a group and this comes back to Zionism as well as a good example when
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  you say you know they're making the desert bloom i mean yeah a whole bunch of Jews go to the
• 22:39
  yeah you know go to the Middle East and try to make the desert bloom um is it a legitimate
• 22:44
  chess move to say we're going to carve this out for our tribe and if that is a legitimate chess move
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  then it is difficult to say why it's wrong to have a white supremacist country that's just for white
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  people right but i but i it's like an impossible conclusion because i don't want to get to that
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  conclusion so one of the links in the chain of logic is faulty i think but i'm not quite sure
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  which one so i guess there's a couple different cases one is a case you know like ireland or
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  japan where you have a group of people that have been there for thousands of years that are
• 23:19
  indigenous to to this place and in the transition from the state of nature to nation states basically
• 23:27
  one people that speaks one language and habits one internationally recognized nation state at this
• 23:32
  moment and they want to keep that you know 99.9% of their of one particular ethnicity in their
• 23:41
  democracy so they they absolutely have that right right i mean i think you this is why i ask like
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  do you have a moral obligation to take in immigrants at all um i would argue if you have the if
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  you really have the capacity i i do think you have an obligation to take in refugees in a
• 23:57
  situation greater the alternative for those refugees is death i think it's it's an easier case
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  to say that you shouldn't have yeah you that you you're allowed to have no immigration
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  than to say that you're going to have immigration and you're only going to allow
• 24:12
  the same rights as you to come in right right so if you take that case let's say okay we've decided
• 24:18
  to have uh an immigration policy now we want to have an immigration policy that preserves our culture
• 24:25
  right i say yes so and it is it is arbitrary and discriminatory so for example let's say the
• 24:30
  Japanese say okay we're gonna you get we're gonna you can you can immigrate here but you have to
• 24:34
  speak Japanese fluently well okay right off the bat that's not actually a racial requirement but
• 24:39
  it is a requirement that preserves an aspect of their culture yes they don't want they want
• 24:44
  Japanese Japan to still be speaking Japanese in a hundred years and that's i think that's
• 24:49
  legitimate i mean yeah what what group of people would not want that so um i get why they would say
• 24:55
  okay you got to be able to speak Japanese to come here i do i do think it's a moral for them to say
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  oh oh and you can't be black and you can't be yeah yeah right yeah because that's just a racial
• 25:05
  requirement yes i see yeah also i mean depending on how you define the race it sort of defines the
• 25:11
  problem out of existence because obviously by definition it's almost total logical
• 25:14
  Japanese people live in Japan there aren't a whole lot of Japanese people who are floating around
• 25:18
  elsewhere except for you know Japanese people so the whole immigration thing sort of becomes
• 25:23
  irrelevant if you define the ethnicity that narrowly if you said like you have to be Asian for
• 25:28
  example to move to Japan then obviously it becomes a different question uh common use is uh
• 25:33
  is with us if you're just joining the live stream if you're coming over from common side this is
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  an episode of uncomfortable conversations which is my podcast where we sit down and have
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  interesting conversations about things that would make people uncomfortable if they were to talk
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  about them too stridently at a bar uh but we try to have them in a civil way so subscribe because
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  we're currently on around the world tour where every day we're basically in a different city and we're
• 25:55
  talking to fascinating people so you can get notified by subscribing um a free subscription we'll
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  will take care of it and if you're coming from my side then you should subscribe to conversations
• 26:03
  with colman which is an excellent uh podcast and also to colman's sub-stack on the question of the
• 26:09
  rise in like white supremacy that you were talking about before where like there are these social
• 26:13
  media accounts that will just like pump out racist drivel all the time i saw something where
• 26:19
  there was someone on twitter who was talking about a mayor of some city and it was a black mayor
• 26:25
  and it was labeled by like one of these right wing websites has d i mayor over it right the d i
• 26:31
  mayor of someone's house i was like it so now or i think now d i it was chicago or chicago right but
• 26:38
  that term is being used i mean this is a person who was legitimately elected yes had nothing to do
• 26:43
  with diversity or equity or inclusion it's just an individual and that's basically just becoming a
• 26:49
  new slur right the the whole the whole reason a diversity hire is a real thing is because companies
• 26:56
  don't hire meritocratically right often like it's the same reason that you know if you're if you're
• 27:03
  if your dad's a professor people assume you're a nepo baby right that that's essentially you're
• 27:08
  accusing someone of not being there meritocratically yeah that's actually not possible in a political
• 27:12
  system right if you get elected mayor you literally got elected right well it depends how it works
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  like kind of a Harris might be perceived as being a d i can today i could argue because she
• 27:22
  precisely because she was not elected right but she she she wasn't there there was no democratic
• 27:28
  primary and Biden all everything but said out loud that he was going to only choose between black
• 27:35
  women right for for his for his VP pick he said he specifically said he would choose a black
• 27:40
  woman for the Supreme Court and he said he would choose a woman for VP but i'm pretty sure that
• 27:47
  he only were strongly considered black women how do you look back on that administration from
• 27:52
  on side i mean i was thinking the other day i think it was sam Harris who was talking about the
• 27:57
  that speech that Biden gave to is it westmore the military cadet uh college i don't know if you
• 28:04
  remember this but there it's all the black it's like a black military school i think uh i might
• 28:08
  be getting it wrong oh um you know you know what i'm talking about and he was in Atlanta in
• 28:12
  that nine of nine of military but um is it a black public school about public college or it was
• 28:18
  more house that's right yes exactly and he's talking about how like you're going to need to get it
• 28:22
  you're going to need to be ten times better than anyone else because you're black and because you
• 28:28
  know you're still oppressed you're still trying to sloth off the chains of bigotry and racism
• 28:36
  and it's like i look back on that period and i'm like it really made its way to the very very top
• 28:41
  this whole thing like that narrative that at a time when we all knew that everyone was bending
• 28:50
  over backwards like 2022 or something of course it would be advantageous and at the very least
• 28:57
  just a non-issue whether or not an equally qualified candidate was black or white
• 29:02
  right in 2022 yeah and the president saying it yeah so that the the old black adage that you
• 29:09
  have to do twice is good to get half as far it was true and in in my grandfather's time i mean
• 29:14
  obviously not every part of the country progressed at the same rate but it's been true you know
• 29:20
  there's true in certain parts of the country's decades ago it was probably still true in certain
• 29:25
  parts of the country right i mean probably is true that Obama was held to a high standard than Trump
• 29:29
  is like the if Obama did half the things Trump did you know then white voters would be much more
• 29:36
  critical i mean he Obama was he's this squeaky squeaky clean president we've had and yeah you know
• 29:43
  and you probably needed that for you know certain white suburbs to fight for him that's right yeah
• 29:51
  but yeah i mean Biden was stuck in a narrative he was stuck in a certain democratic playbook
• 30:00
  that has been default since the civil rights movement since black people started voting
• 30:04
  democrat as a majority in the 50s and 60s the the playbook has essentially been
• 30:11
  if you ever feel you're losing black voters you you have to appeal to their racist
• 30:16
  we care about racism racism racism racism is racism is the number one issue and then black people will
• 30:21
  vote for you again it's like this kind of simplified picture where black people have only
• 30:27
  really one or like single issue voters and they vote on racism and as long as we can plausibly
• 30:33
  be the party of anti-racism and paint the other guys as the parties the party that at minimum
• 30:40
  winks towards white racist which is true um to be fair then we can win black voters but Biden does
• 30:47
  all that stuff and what happens black men every year seem to be trending towards the republican party
• 30:56
  in in relative terms which is a trend nobody predicted 10 years ago not a single person predicted
• 31:02
  Trump would run three run three times each time getting a higher proportion of the black vote
• 31:07
  and don't even get started on the Hispanic vote and also when you just poll black voters about the
• 31:13
  things that they care about it's never in the top three or five things that they care about they're
• 31:17
  reasonably socially conservative they're like you know they care about bread and butter staff more
• 31:20
  than the wider population does all of that Biden stick plays well amongst wealthy white you
• 31:26
  know university university educated people in the cities um not so much among like voters um
• 31:32
  so where what's your snapshot of where the politics of america is at the moment it's so headspinning
• 31:37
  that from afar it's just easy to close my eyes and cover my ears and say wake me up in three and a
• 31:42
  half years and we'll see what became of it all but what where's your head and heart at
• 31:47
  oh well it's hard to say i mean the the i think the trump administration the second time around
• 31:54
  is unbound by not that he he's ever really bound by scruples but he he he was bound by responsible
• 32:03
  people last time you know almost everyone in his cabinet was a serious person last time who wasn't
• 32:11
  afraid to say no to him or to say slow down all of those people by the way were treated terribly by
• 32:17
  the mainstream media and called trumpstugers even though they weren't but i i think in a way the
• 32:22
  second term proves that they weren't because the gloves have been off pretty much in every way
• 32:31
  what when it comes to you know immigration policy and deporting people suing and intimidating
• 32:38
  the press but basically not even only the press i mean suing pollsters that released a poll he didn't
• 32:46
  like yeah suing judges suing for damages that don't even exist yeah he won the election
• 32:51
  like it just there's so many things that don't make sense but people are capitulating to him um
• 32:58
  you know except for the south park guys yeah have you seen that episode yeah i've seen it yeah oh my god
• 33:03
  i saw like the two minutes of him in the desert with uh i uh but i heard it was great
• 33:08
  i got stoned with Andrew Sullivan yesterday and he put it on for me on his big screen tv and province
• 33:12
  town and it was one of the funniest things i've ever seen incredible yeah um yeah it's worth
• 33:17
  watching it's an intense entirety because it's more than the sum of its parts it's like so courageous
• 33:21
  it makes me feel like there's a there's some potential for a renaissance of actual descent
• 33:28
  well these are the guys that put the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit yeah you know yeah so then they
• 33:33
  could show him on tv it is interesting that no lack of courage no lack of courage and also probably
• 33:39
  in a in the best place to actually fight back against trumpism in the sense that
• 33:47
  without getting hysterical about authoritarianism it is part of the authoritarians playbook to be
• 33:52
  quite effective at prompting your enemies to come straight at you with attacks because you know how
• 33:58
  to crush like full on descent um but artists authoritarians don't really know how to deal with
• 34:06
  when we saw this in like eastern europe and and during the cold war where like the people who
• 34:10
  were really destabilizing to you know check us liveaqir and places like that when they were
• 34:15
  communist were musicians than like you know people who just didn't give a shit who weren't willing
• 34:19
  who weren't it wasn't like we're gonna march in the streets and we're gonna like you know
• 34:25
  it was like we're just gonna needle you and get under your skin and prove to you that you don't
• 34:29
  own our minds even if you own like the levers of power right and no one that what's really powerful
• 34:36
  is no one can ever accuse the south park people of being like soft on democrats or rather you know
• 34:43
  partisan because just how many how much of their humor over the years has just been absolutely
• 34:48
  skewering people on the left for for whatever reason yeah they're true equal opportunity
• 34:54
  attackers and so it carries a more weight yes and so the other I mean in addition to
• 35:01
  comic comedians the the other place where we're seeing some pushback against Trump is academia
• 35:09
  some people on the left overheard say that the reason why Trump is going after universities is
• 35:14
  because authoritarians always go after centers of descent and intellectual power and try to
• 35:20
  crush them then others say well yeah but the university's been super woke and sensorious for
• 35:26
  years so he had to do something about them and of course he's a bull in a china shop because that's
• 35:30
  the way that he does everything how do you feel about the battle between the administration and
• 35:34
  the universities I think both things are true I think Trump would go after any area of descent
• 35:41
  he goes after the press because the press is against him by and large he goes after universities
• 35:46
  because universities are against him however at the same time it is true that the universities
• 35:53
  need pressure applied in order to reform the the holding pattern they've been in for decades
• 36:01
  which is you know in in many in many subjects you've got 10 to 1 or or in certain certain cases a
• 36:09
  50 to 1 ratio of liberal professors to conservative professors and we know it's just not it's not
• 36:17
  possible to reduce good research if everyone thinks similarly you you need a diversity of thought
• 36:23
  you need people challenging each other because most human beings just aren't that smart
• 36:27
  alone we're we're smart in in contest and healthy competition with with one another
• 36:36
  so and you're also literally teaching the next generation of people so they need to hear from
• 36:41
  a whole bunch of different ideas you know it's not just about the way in which academia cross
• 36:45
  pollinates between the academics there's also about its obligation to present a wide range of ideas
• 36:52
  to yeah for the next generation of thinkers totally and and while that isn't actually a legal
• 36:58
  obligation it's a moral obligation and it's an obligation that's crucial to the political health
• 37:04
  of the country so for an administration that is you know for for for in an institution that
• 37:13
  gets federal tax dollars to to apply pressure on it to be a better version of itself I think
• 37:19
  there's a way of doing that that would be great and necessary but Trump obviously
• 37:26
  isn't capable of that he is a bull in a china shop he is making demands on universities that
• 37:33
  aren't in his narrow legal ability to make right like universities actually don't have a legal
• 37:40
  obligation vis-à-vis civil rights law to hire conservatives they don't they ought to but if
• 37:47
  you're going to say we're going to pull tax dollars unless you you know hire the people I want
• 37:54
  you to hire I mean I suppose you can make the case for it but well I don't have to be breaking
• 37:59
  the law in order not to be worthy of tax dollars right that's true I mean there's there's a good
• 38:05
  argument to to be made that like why do they receive tax what why is a federal government involved
• 38:10
  in private higher education to begin with I mean I think libertarians have been making that
• 38:16
  argument for for a very yeah I mean this is a big debate in regardless of politics totally
• 38:20
  in Australia it's a big debate as well because secondary education as well as tertiary education
• 38:25
  is split into a public private bifurcation that doesn't quite exist here at least definitely
• 38:30
  not the same extent and federal tax dollars go to private schools and of course to the average
• 38:37
  voter that just seems weirdly unjust why you know yeah and then if you look at what's being taught
• 38:43
  at these schools I mean there's a there's a huge number of classes that are just normal classes
• 38:49
  it's like kids learning supply and demand and economics and calculus and coding and all of that
• 38:57
  stuff is most of what goes on yes but there's a solid you know one fifth I don't know if I'm
• 39:04
  pulling that number out of my butt but there's a sizable minority of classes some of which I have
• 39:08
  taken myself at Columbia that are just absolute dog shit in terms of what is being taught there's
• 39:15
  no scholarly rigor it's in like social and cultural studies you mean yeah it's just dogma
• 39:22
  you know teaching that men and women have no biological differences and every behavioral or
• 39:29
  statistical difference you see between men and women is the result of patriarchy right there
• 39:34
  classes that literally teach that as dogma with no counterpoint and you just go through you know
• 39:41
  go go through the topics whether it's gender or race or any anything related to intersectionality
• 39:49
  um like taxpayers are funding that which is a totally political message yeah arrived scholarship
• 39:56
  so they they say okay well the universities are already political so lose me with the critique that
• 40:04
  Trump is making it political because it's been Democrats have been happy to happy for it to be
• 40:09
  political for decades they just don't see it that way because it's their politics yeah that's
• 40:15
  good uh also they don't see it as politics which is part of the which is our problem right they say
• 40:21
  it as true of every partisan it's never politics when it's my values yeah it's it's truth yes
• 40:26
  yes that's right teaching basic yeah well you're gonna say that slavery didn't exist Coleman
• 40:31
  was I waiting to say that there's no racism in the world right you know that's the alternative
• 40:37
  yeah to teaching that racism is everywhere yeah Coleman uses with us he has a great podcast
• 40:41
  conversations with Coleman as a fabulous substrate that you should subscribe to if you're
• 40:46
  tuning in from his side of this conversation I'm Josh Seps and this is uncomfortable conversations
• 40:50
  and every day for two weeks we're going from time zone to time zone talking to different people
• 40:55
  where in New York with Coleman on Friday uh we spoke to Jesse single you can see that chat then on
• 41:00
  Saturday we spoke to Sarah Hader you can see that chat we spoke to Tyler Cowan in Virginia that's
• 41:05
  going to drop uh tomorrow I think and then we're going to Camille Foster's on the show tomorrow we're
• 41:10
  going to Los Angeles and we're talking to Sam Harris and Rich Roll and Megan Downe and then we're
• 41:15
  going to London and Jimmy Carter will be on the show so suffice it to say uh subscribe to
• 41:19
  uncovered conversations on sub-sac and you'll be notified whenever we go live and you'll be
• 41:22
  able to watch them after the fact um strategically the left now if how do we get ourselves out of this
• 41:29
  pickle then uh part of me feels like just don't talk about culture war stuff um focus on bread and
• 41:37
  butter issues be populist economically and pretend that it never happened the pretend the past 10
• 41:43
  years of the culture wars never happened and another part of me feels like you probably need a
• 41:48
  candidate or a set of candidates in the party to actively fess up to what happened repudiator
• 41:56
  I'll take you like a more nuanced vision of what how they see identity intersecting almost
• 42:01
  like Obama's classic race speech um and only then are you going to be able to put it to rest you
• 42:07
  can't just whistle whistle by what's your do you have a sense of what strategy you would get?
• 42:12
  Yeah I had a conversation with this guy Galen Druke on my podcast recently who's a pollster
• 42:17
  he had a New York Times piece where he argued that the Democrats need their own
• 42:23
  Trump or Bill Clinton figure and here's what he meant by that because that could mean a lot of
• 42:28
  different things Bill Flandering yeah right in media yeah um Bill Clinton won by attacking
• 42:38
  towards the center on crime which actually in some ways outflanking the Republicans on crime
• 42:44
  and then attacking to the left on an issue that was popular with Democrats namely health care
• 42:50
  uh Trump won by by attacking to the right of of his own party on immigration uh and attacking
• 43:00
  to the center on social security and all of the kind of libertarian issues that the Republican
• 43:08
  base actually hated but that people like Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz were faithful to it ideologically
• 43:16
  yep so short long story short it's just a version of of popularism or or just like literally seeing
• 43:23
  what is popular in your party and tack towards that what is unpopular in your party and tack
• 43:28
  towards the other party to take take away their thunder really aggressively so if if Democrats were
• 43:34
  to do that it would look something like tacking towards the center on most identity issues um it
• 43:42
  would be like like can there be a Democrat that really says no no more uh boys and girl sports
• 43:49
  no more trans women in women sports that's it they can you you can be an honorary woman in most
• 43:56
  cases um walking down the street we can treat you with respect we can call you what you want to be
• 44:00
  called you're not playing uh you're not MMA fighting against a woman you're not playing
• 44:05
  you know i mean i think we're almost there aren't we when Gavin Newsom is even making those noises
• 44:09
  he's close to making those noises i haven't quite seen him say it in that sister soldier moment
• 44:15
  no that's true i've seen him dip his toe into saying that but so if you can do that on those
• 44:20
  those issues and there's a couple different issues like that um and then lean into the Democrat
• 44:30
  message where Democrats are more popular um on issues like yeah perhaps like health care um maybe
• 44:37
  abortion maybe a handful of other issues i think yeah i mean that the Democrats have a massive
• 44:43
  opportunity in that trump has never been a popular president um he's been popular enough to win
• 44:49
  but he's never been very popular as far as presidents go he's never been like a Reagan to figure
• 44:55
  that is winning massive majorities and and so forth and he's his own worst enemy in that he's
• 45:02
  likely to overreach in it in a ton of ways so and is your suspicion that he is indispensable to
• 45:09
  maga yeah i think so i mean he's he's really hard to replace i mean he has love him or hate him he
• 45:16
  has a particular unique ability and charisma he's uh he's one of a kind so there will be lots of
• 45:24
  imitators just that as there have been Obama imitators um in in the Democrat party but Democratic
• 45:31
  party called yeah Democratic party you know that's like a republican it's like a frank once
• 45:36
  poll tested republican uh thing that has seeked into the broader culture to call the Democrat
• 45:40
  party because it sounds like they're rats or something it just doesn't sound like really i guess
• 45:44
  yeah yeah like Democratic sounds kind of aspirational inherently good yeah that's right Democratic
• 45:49
  country yes but they did like the Republicans did polling and it's like yeah it's like Democrat
• 45:56
  party just sounds worse than Democratic party it's like calling up the Republic party instead of
• 45:59
  the Republican health full though that's true that's true and as an Australian we do like to
• 46:03
  abbreviate things so i should be on board absolutely have a barbie in the arvo right i don't
• 46:08
  have a barbecue a barbecue in the afternoon uh with an abbreviate afternoon yeah arvo that's
• 46:17
  degenerate it's uh it's Democratic it's Democrat Democrat okay um but the question is like
• 46:25
  whether or not there actually needs to be a lion drawn in the sand because my worry i think
• 46:30
  you're right that obviously there's going to be a lot of people who try to impersonate Trump
• 46:34
  and run on his co-tails and john don jr might you know try or whatever they'll never be him uh he has
• 46:41
  this incredible affinity for uh you know he's a shaman but my worry is that the that he's managed
• 46:48
  to actually transform conservatism in america from the george w bush era of conservatism
• 46:57
  a kind of maybe an ison how a conservatism to a much more what i think i was being a european
• 47:02
  style populist thing whereas you say he's actually quite socialist on the in the areas where he
• 47:09
  needs to be he's not even talking about reforming social security which everyone needs knows needs
• 47:14
  to happen or reforming like medicare and medicate i mean he's cussing medicate but he's not
• 47:21
  if you can give the heartland uh the reassurance that you're not fiscally uh mean at the same time as
• 47:29
  you press all of their buttons about foreigners and um then that's a different party than the one
• 47:36
  that existed and so you know that you may need to do but it's not really him transforming it that
• 47:41
  was him sensing where it already was well yes thing where it was going and could go yeah
• 47:48
  but that makes a big difference i mean um you can imagine a universe in which the republican
• 47:53
  party just continues to paper over that part of its flank and turn the volume down on those
• 47:57
  issues right maybe is maybe it or weapons anyway right because after the success of trump they're
• 48:03
  going to try to replicate exactly yes that's right i'm leading into immigration and and all that um
• 48:10
  but strangely i mean we assume they're going to replicate that success i don't see why they wouldn't
• 48:15
  democrats on the other hand i don't think have really tried uh some have tried but like as a party
• 48:22
  have they tried to replicate obama success i don't i don't know i mean it's it seems just as likely that
• 48:29
  every time obama comes out the woodwork he does it like clockwork every couple years and tries to
• 48:35
  remind democrats to stop canceling people and stop being um shrill and sensorious and stuff and
• 48:41
  it's just kind of like i mean someone's going to manage what the most successful person from our
• 48:47
  party of the last 20 years is giving us advice yeah because ever listen to that no that's right
• 48:52
  let's aoc aoc you know so yeah i mean there's there's so much there but i mean all i would say is
• 49:02
  that when obama came along he was not replicating the last successful uh democratic president he
• 49:09
  was sui generous and he was something new so i i'm not as jaded i think that i think something will
• 49:16
  happen there'll be another shift we can't predict what it is but like no one predicted that trump
• 49:22
  was going to be a thing no one predicted that obama was going to be a thing like the next thing
• 49:26
  will be the next thing presumably uh it could be aoc uh what do you think about mandani mandani
• 49:33
  mandani mandani mandani yeah very talented politician he ran a fantastic campaign in terms of
• 49:40
  messaging he had brilliant videos perfectly attuned to the social media age and not even just
• 49:47
  the social media age but the tiktok instagram real age he's a native to that form of communication
• 49:55
  in a way that we have not yet seen from a major politician maybe aoc would be another
• 50:00
  to some of his native to that style of communication um as for the policies i think that they're
• 50:06
  mostly very bad in in terms of uh you know the big issues in new york city as with as with most
• 50:15
  american cities are public safety and crime and building more housing to bring rent down to a
• 50:22
  reasonable level or to prevent it skyrocketing uh simply because of supply and demand his instincts on
• 50:29
  both of those are wrong i think his instincts on the police are that the police are basically
• 50:35
  immoral and bad and should be replaced wherever they can by social workers um i'm not saying that's
• 50:41
  quite his position now because his position has changed over the years but i i pretty clearly
• 50:47
  detect that that's where it is doesn't he talk about community policing which is not i haven't
• 50:52
  looked into it enough so i might i might be wrong but my the gist that i got was that he was asking
• 50:56
  from uh less militarized version of policing but not removing which is not a crazy idea when you
• 51:03
  think about the fact that you know in it to a foreigner it's strange that for example traffic
• 51:10
  stops are conducted in america by the same people who break up gunfights like in a lot of countries
• 51:17
  where i'm from in australia there's a highway people who only do that and then they're like not armed
• 51:24
  and they're just responsible for it so their experience is one of much less hostility and more
• 51:30
  collaboration with the community um in the uk cops don't even carry guns at all so you can't
• 51:36
  imagine dividing police forces up into like you know critical acute people who are responsible for
• 51:42
  um fighting the bad guys and then different ones who have different remits about fostering
• 51:48
  community or whatever it might be yeah i mean the the problem with that in america is that the
• 51:53
  population also has guns including millions of illegal guns stashed in the glove department of cars
• 51:58
  and that cars that are pulled over by police are not infrequently cars that are like
• 52:05
  wanted for other crimes cars that are stolen right person actually does have a pistol in the
• 52:10
  glove compartment so you know like you can look up videos on youtube and i don't know how often
• 52:15
  this happens that's a legitimate question but um where you know someone pulls someone over and
• 52:22
  a routine traffic stop the person just whips out a gun from the compartment and shoots the cop
• 52:26
  and that is something that doesn't happen in the uk i think no it doesn't happen in australia
• 52:31
  yeah yeah and so if you were to talk to an american cop about why they want to gun in a traffic
• 52:36
  stop i can almost guarantee you that's the story they tell you yeah you could question the
• 52:41
  the legitimacy of that story but there's no question that it happens in america um to two
• 52:48
  a degree that it does not in other countries that's true i mean forget about the highway patrol
• 52:53
  example then because maybe that is like unusual but if you think about the relationship between
• 52:58
  communities of color and their local police like it's not a crazy idea that you would put
• 53:03
  the same cops on the same beat and you'd have them walking past the same apartments like
• 53:09
  you know every day at two o'clock and they'd hand out their their apples to the kids or whatever
• 53:14
  and like they'd run little community fairs and things like that and they'd engender trust and
• 53:19
  they'd kind of i mean that seems to me to be sort of basic police work i hope that that's what he's
• 53:25
  thinking about he might be thinking about so totally different my understanding is in 2020 he
• 53:30
  was full defund the police now his thinking has changed okay ironically it's changed in precise
• 53:36
  proportion to fooling the public change beginning the realization by democrats that defund the police
• 53:43
  was a terrible toxic unpopular message right in the beginning really even though in particular
• 53:49
  in the communities by who claimed to be speaking on behalf of yeah so so to just to be honest about
• 53:56
  where his position is now his position as running for mayor of new york city in in 2025 is
• 54:03
  the police are good i'm going to support them like work will maybe we'll work around the margin
• 54:08
  to reform but so so he has a fairly reasonable message on on on police right now but I do think
• 54:16
  you know in so far you know politicians they have their instincts right yeah if there's another
• 54:21
  George Floyd event tomorrow in New York city i think he'll snap pretty quickly back into a certain
• 54:30
  way of thinking and talking about the police that is very dangerous for the interest of the city
• 54:36
  right but very tempting yeah people on the left yeah as for housing you know the rent goes up every
• 54:44
  single year in in in in New York and it sucks and it it's and it's the really ultimately the only
• 54:52
  way to solve that issue is to build more housing right to reason places to let people build upwards
• 54:59
  but problem for for someone with socialist instincts is that that that presupposes that capitalism
• 55:06
  is good that it's okay for landlords to make money and invest in that and then recoup the money
• 55:11
  on on the back end all of mom donny's instincts even more strongly than on the police issue his
• 55:17
  instincts are dyed in the wood socialist like he he feels that capitalism is basically net bad
• 55:24
  and so like for for my point of view those being the two two major issues i i can't support that
• 55:33
  set of policies no matter how impressive the politician right i mean the other sticking point with
• 55:39
  housing and the cost of housing and the cost of men rents going up is not just an antipathy to
• 55:45
  capitalism and to you know the kinds of people and organizations who would build all of this new
• 55:50
  housing but it touches on this kind of abundance agenda uh you know conversation the the left
• 55:56
  is having at the moment as well where there has traditionally since the seventies been this kind
• 56:02
  of Ralph Nader idea of the left where in order to have proper community consultation you have to
• 56:07
  provide a lot of bottlenecks in the process of developing anything so that the local community
• 56:13
  can have their say and there are going to be hearings and they can you know they can try to
• 56:17
  sue the developer and they can make sure that there's little park and this little vegetable
• 56:20
  patch that doesn't get steamrolled and because the big evil capital is going to you know ruin the
• 56:24
  lives of the the little guy and the more of those choke points that you put in place the more
• 56:28
  impossible yeah exactly um Tyler Kalm was saying that like yes you don't want to change the zoning
• 56:34
  rules in the west village yes because it's really unique yes but Hoboken should be to buy
• 56:40
  yeah like you know just find the and build the proper infrastructure so that you can get
• 56:45
  there really quickly 24 hours a day absolutely and and Jersey City has has had a huge come up in
• 56:50
  the past few years because of rezoning I mean there's just there's no reason why we can't build
• 56:56
  massive apartment buildings in a lot of different long island city where where I live I lived for
• 57:01
  years you know 20 years ago there's nothing there there's a couple factories and stuff and then
• 57:06
  it got rezoned and it's one subway stop from Grand Central and and they built just hundreds and
• 57:13
  hundreds and hundreds of new units and to me I want I want a mayor that has the instinct that that
• 57:21
  is the way to bring down rent because 99% of economists would agree the people that study this
• 57:27
  particular issue in great detail for oh you know you know a thousand papers over a hundred years
• 57:32
  in in every city on earth have a pretty strong consensus that supply and demand is is the way
• 57:38
  you bring down rent by increasing supply yes and left and right alike all economists think that
• 57:44
  rent controls are bad because yeah they walk the market so badly um you're off to a music gig tonight
• 57:51
  I'm interested in your creative life and how you write and how music and how music and writing
• 57:57
  intersect with your the rest of your life how did you get into music and I've been into music my
• 58:03
  whole life long before I was ever into writing um I started on island in piano when I was young and
• 58:09
  then trombone when I was 12 which is my best instrument became my best instrument I got serious
• 58:16
  about it around 14 um out of high school went to the july art school for about six months dropped
• 58:23
  out what dropped out when my mother passed away um and was very depressed at that time as a result
• 58:30
  but also the good thing that came out of that was re-evaluating actually asking myself really what
• 58:36
  I wanted in life like did I want to study music at a conservatory for four years when I had other
• 58:42
  interests too especially philosophy and science and I could always you can always play music
• 58:48
  on the side because no one I mean there's an extent to which unless you're in the hard sciences
• 58:55
  most people don't learn what they know in college they they use college to get the rubber stamp
• 58:59
  hmm to show their employers I'm a smart guy that can do homework for four years and show up to class
• 59:04
  on time well to meet people who are beneficial to have a success in other ways yeah exactly and
• 59:08
  for networking um but even more so with music you don't learn how to play music in a classroom
• 59:14
  I mean that's just hmm you learn how to play music by meeting other people who do it and doing it
• 59:19
  with them whether that's in a classroom or not is irrelevant seeking out mentors and learning from
• 59:24
  them and being on the scene and practicing all day so like okay I can do that I can do that and not
• 59:30
  do the music school part and become just as good and sort of have it all going to liberal arts
• 59:37
  education so that's why I dropped out and reapplied to Columbia and that would there and would
• 59:40
  that be true even if you wanted a life as a professional top musician did I actually yeah because
• 59:46
  it's such a meritocracy it's like it's such a meritocracy that let's say I I'm not but let's say I
• 59:53
  were just the very best trombonist in in my in in my kind of lane no one would care whether or not
• 1:00:00
  I want to do the art hmm they would hire of course I was the best yes because it is it is extremely
• 1:00:05
  music is very meritocratic it's almost similar to athletic athletics yeah what makes the best
• 1:00:12
  trombonist the best there's a part of it that's that's essentially an athletic component it's like
• 1:00:21
  can you play extremely clean extremely fast extremely high extremely low
• 1:00:27
  you just you know if you you've ever seen a classical instrumentalist play a difficult concerto
• 1:00:34
  you know like um you know you know like a trumpet player play carnival eventist or something like
• 1:00:41
  if you see Widenmore Salis play carnival eventist it's just incredibly difficult to do
• 1:00:46
  or trombonist play blue bells of scott and it's like these are even many professional trombonists
• 1:00:52
  can't really play it because it's or can't play it up to speed because it's just too difficult
• 1:00:57
  so there's an athletic component just how good is your technique right and part of that is
• 1:01:04
  is just like thousands of hours of practice and part of it is genetic gifts right and then
• 1:01:08
  there's a second part of it that's like how how unique and and lovely is your musicality right
• 1:01:15
  and that's more it's it's almost akin to being a songwriter like when you solo are your ideas
• 1:01:23
  original and enticing and melodic and beautiful and that's a lot more subjective do you mean when
• 1:01:30
  you improvising or even when you're rising yeah and even but even when you're playing a piece that
• 1:01:35
  is written presumably there's just as an actor you know has a script but has a million different
• 1:01:40
  ways of doing it's right yeah and have you found yourself shifting between those two
• 1:01:47
  needs over the course of your your growing expertise which students the the one being the
• 1:01:54
  proficiency the sort of athleticism and the other being the more creative side I only ask because
• 1:01:58
  it's often the case that people will start any pursuit whether it's any creative pursuit that is
• 1:02:04
  with a focus on let me get the athleticism even better and better and better how many big words
• 1:02:09
  can I use in this essay you know how can I I used to play the piano well and when I was in my late
• 1:02:14
  teens I would replace scenes for an Italian restaurant which has this really really really
• 1:02:18
  technically difficult passage and I would play it backwards and it would wow everybody right but
• 1:02:23
  of course that's the most infantile sophomoreic thing to do like now I realize it's actually much
• 1:02:28
  harder to play moonlight sonata really well which is technically simple but requires an almost
• 1:02:33
  amount of heart well your character our theory is one I think almost every good musician goes
• 1:02:38
  through at anyone that's capable of maturing because you're you're totally right like when you're
• 1:02:43
  young you obsess over the technique which is a good thing because if you get that 10,000 hours
• 1:02:49
  not that that's actually a real thing but the proverbial 10,000 hours in in your teens then you
• 1:02:54
  have a base of technique for the rest of your life which can only it can only serve you to have
• 1:02:59
  that ability but as you get older I think one realizes more and more that like what draws people
• 1:03:06
  to music is not really the flashing it's the emotional it's it's it's it's it's something that
• 1:03:14
  just touched you even if it were nominally incredibly simple it's not you know it's not like like
• 1:03:21
  moonlight sonata is actually not that hard to play no piano no but when played beautifully
• 1:03:28
  it can touch you in a way that probably those flashy stuff probably that doesn't really touch
• 1:03:32
  definitely you know that stuff is cool too yeah thing wrong with that yeah but that's not why that's
• 1:03:38
  not what audiences most react to in music or or in film or no that's right and that's really
• 1:03:45
  what it's about I find a great thing when audiences do get welled by the by that as well like
• 1:03:51
  there are certain certain type of theater go I went through a cabaret which is on here in New
• 1:03:59
  York there's a remake of I don't know if you've seen the play of cabaret it's a play that I know
• 1:04:05
  and I actually left it half-time because it was to me the epitome of what you're talking about
• 1:04:11
  but the audience really ate it up because the audience was largely it was a very gay black audience
• 1:04:18
  they're like it's the first time that cabaret has been done with three black the three leads are
• 1:04:23
  all black but I mean it's set in Berlin in the 30s so it had you have to sort of suspend disbelief
• 1:04:28
  in a colorblind way there but micrissism of them is just that the performances have a very
• 1:04:34
  a very very big and brassy and sassy even when it doesn't serve the plot for them to be so
• 1:04:41
  and the characters shouldn't be that way the characters supposed to be vulnerable or beguiling
• 1:04:46
  but they come out with this incredibly proficient like hitting those notes and like it's dazzling
• 1:04:52
  and everybody everybody everybody was roaring and I was like I'm not that simple I'm not that stupid
• 1:04:56
  like don't think that you can distract me with your proficiency in all this color and movement
• 1:05:01
  you're not honoring the story those those kinds of things tend to not be rewatchable though
• 1:05:06
  even if the audience does enjoy them they don't go home and like yeah
• 1:05:11
  pick up the songs and come back and watch again yeah that's probably true and there's
• 1:05:15
  movies that do very well but that no one ever ever wants to really rewatch or upon rewatch and
• 1:05:21
  you realize like wow this actually wasn't good what are you thinking of any um I can't think off
• 1:05:27
  the top of my head but but uh but it's just it's just true that there's certain type of art that
• 1:05:33
  survives longer and uncertain that has like a window of enjoyment that closes but in that window
• 1:05:40
  people are really going to enjoy it and that's okay yeah nothing it's really all okay
• 1:05:44
  I'm allowed to be a commodity calling give me that allow allowing a judge and you're writing
• 1:05:52
  process like how do you if you have an idea to write a book for example how do you do it
• 1:05:58
  uh lots of reading lots of um lots of free writing free writing is very important to me because
• 1:06:06
  free writing meaning what just uh vomiting thoughts vomiting thoughts um
• 1:06:14
  not editing as you go this this is not even mentally you should think none of this stuff is
• 1:06:20
  going to end up in the book this is a separate document this is not even text or draft just
• 1:06:26
  vomiting onto the page following your thoughts wherever they lead being as creative as you want
• 1:06:33
  nobody's ever going to see this um that's very important because um I think it it it refines
• 1:06:41
  I mean the the challenge with a book is like when you set out to write a book you think to yourself
• 1:06:45
  okay I'm going to write 500 pages a day 500 words a day I do that when I write 3000 word
• 1:06:50
  essay it takes me six days I'll just keep doing that for longer and I'll have a book in in however
• 1:06:55
  many months but it doesn't work like that because the kind of concept can the kind of conceptual
• 1:07:02
  argument that can sustain a book is a lot harder to generate in the first place so you have to
• 1:07:09
  spend time generating conceptual arguments that are deep enough to actually sustain the book before
• 1:07:16
  you start um word number one I mean that's actually at minimum that's one way of doing it yeah it's
• 1:07:22
  one way of thinking about it well it's probably a it's probably a necessary way in the sense that a
• 1:07:28
  lot of nonfiction books that don't do it are awful uh like they might become one hit one of this but
• 1:07:34
  like we will know those books that you know you you pick it up and within 30 pages you're like
• 1:07:39
  I get it you don't need to pat up the next time with 50 pages so what I'm what I'm really trying to
• 1:07:42
  say is that uh like a 30,000 word book is not 10 times harder than a 3000 word essay it's more than
• 1:07:52
  10 times harder because the kind of idea or thesis you have to generate to sustain a 30 30,000
• 1:07:58
  word book has to be like an order of magnitude more interesting yeah yeah complicated yes then
• 1:08:05
  one in a 3000 word essay yeah that's much interesting to say nothing of an op-ed you can come up
• 1:08:09
  you can do an op-ed with a very simple idea yeah those are on mum Donnie's wrong about rank control
• 1:08:16
  well I find it great op-ed I do find it hard to write 800 words it's much easier to write 15
• 1:08:21
  hundred words than yeah I mean it's like Mark Twain's one about you know I forgive the length of
• 1:08:27
  the letter but I didn't have time to write a short one yeah the editing if you're trying to say
• 1:08:30
  so anything that is more complicated than one point yeah and almost all good ideas are more
• 1:08:37
  complicated than one point like you need a beginning of middle and an end like it needs to build in
• 1:08:41
  some way um it is tricky I can't imagine having to write a column that's four or five hundred
• 1:08:47
  words which are a lot more yeah yeah anyway um you're watching uncomfortable conversations Coleman
• 1:08:52
  Hughes is with us we're hopscotching around the world um I producer and I sitting down with
• 1:08:57
  fascinating people and talking about uh yeah subjects that people generally don't find it very
• 1:09:03
  easy to express right and opinions about but in more nuanced ways than hopefully the mainstream media
• 1:09:09
  can you should subscribe we're talking about people in well Sam Harris's next week rich roll
• 1:09:14
  keeps the people coming up and if you're tuning into uncomfortable conversation to see me you need
• 1:09:19
  subscribe to Coleman Hughes who has a great podcast conversations with Coleman and an excellent
• 1:09:24
  sub-stack um okay let's just ask some random questions that I would like to get your thoughts on
• 1:09:29
  the time travel question are you particularly excited on any eras you can you you get to go
• 1:09:34
  whenever in the past you want to hmm it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall uh and
• 1:09:45
  know all the founding fathers of of America around the time that they were debating and writing
• 1:09:52
  letters to each other and and all that um that that would be interesting to me um that's interesting
• 1:10:00
  that you pick up a political one another an artistic one yeah for you want to say like
• 1:10:07
  Paris in the 19th century or i don't know i have i know nothing about parents
• 1:10:11
  artistically in the 19th century there were a lot of there were a lot of cool creative cats going around
• 1:10:16
  doing cool stuff i in those terms i would i would love to have been alive you know in the 1940s
• 1:10:24
  50s and 60s and 70s for music throughout that entire era right if you make me born in like
• 1:10:30
  1925 so that i lived through all of that it's a pretty rough first 20 years of your life though
• 1:10:36
  not politically not jazz well oh yeah you know that i'd be you have to go through the depression
• 1:10:41
  and uh the holocaust but i just do heroin through that period and it'll be fun it may be Bob
• 1:10:46
  sure and wake up in 1965 and stop hope that you didn't get uh yeah conscripted uh where have
• 1:10:54
  you traveled and does anyway stand out for you as like an underrated place that people don't
• 1:10:59
  talk about the you particularly like i've been to japan four times i think four times yet
• 1:11:07
  and i i love japan it's a beautiful country um even if i are racist even if they're a bit racist
• 1:11:15
  that's okay most people are um and i didn't abbreviate people very good um so where else have
• 1:11:23
  i been that i what about in the states once i'm just underrated american city you've been to
• 1:11:29
  you know i had a i had a very good time in albuquerque really so it was so it was so years ago
• 1:11:34
  i went but it was so beautiful it was like uh i i was saying this before i think that area
• 1:11:41
  of the country is really the oh geographically yeah yeah this most beautiful area of the country
• 1:11:45
  yeah the way it looks um okay uh next random question should we call a lot of space
• 1:11:52
  probably not i mean i i don't i forget who made this argument but if we haven't even colonized
• 1:12:02
  uh an artica and right which is just space with the without the oxen with problem yeah yeah
• 1:12:11
  yeah then what logic is there behind colonizing morris right it's like well isn't a longs point
• 1:12:18
  that uh you know some whatever cataclysm could before planet earth would before Antarctica
• 1:12:24
  and therefore you know to colonizing mars as an insurance policy for humankind against
• 1:12:27
  remedior or yeah right i think it would it would make more sense to get really really good at killing
• 1:12:34
  asteroids yeah yeah in terms of cost benefit i mean let's face it he gets a hard on for colonizing
• 1:12:43
  mars it's probably not uh yeah it's cool super cool and i think it says something good about him
• 1:12:48
  that he's into it and taking it seriously you know like people that have ambitious
• 1:12:52
  projects that are plausibly for the betterment of human civilization but i don't think it makes
• 1:12:59
  all that much sense to me because um not that i know anything about anything technical but it seems to
• 1:13:08
  me uh it's a lot of effort yes a lot of effort uh the heat death of the universe and the sun is
• 1:13:14
  exploding that's gonna fuck both Mars and earth so really we're talking about asteroids basically
• 1:13:19
  right so isn't it doesn't make more sense to develop anti asteroid tech that yeah you're being so
• 1:13:25
  practical about a common reform mars i think that that but i think that he is the thinking that i
• 1:13:31
  think the thinking is so we can live in bubbles on Mars forever if human civilization flourishes
• 1:13:38
  and thrives like over the long long term then part of that process will be becoming an
• 1:13:44
  intergalactic species an interplanetary species certainly and long term you mean like yeah like
• 1:13:51
  a million like hundreds of thousands or millions of years right then and so we need to take the
• 1:13:56
  first step at some point yeah i think i think that's kind of like the even say that yeah there's
• 1:14:02
  obviously something else going on about the way that they see their role in the trajectory of
• 1:14:06
  human kind that is not undermined by your practical concerns i guess that's less ridiculous but
• 1:14:13
  like there's already no space constraint on earth that's the thing like they're like there's so
• 1:14:19
  much space on earth and where we're not actually even reproducing enough to even plausibly be
• 1:14:27
  running out of space on earth in the next many thousands of years unless we also are having
• 1:14:33
  10 babies a person so really it's about security rather than space and so if if if we'd be in danger
• 1:14:43
  being wiped out by only having our eggs in the earth basket and we need to okay then then you have
• 1:14:50
  an argument but again then we're just like just talking about ashless yeah it is amazing how much
• 1:14:56
  space there is actually when people say we're running out of space the other population in
• 1:15:01
  everything i mean you've ever fly over america i mean yeah in many times you can you can be flying
• 1:15:06
  for minutes at a time at 500 miles an hour and not seeing a single settlement of human trough flying
• 1:15:11
  across Australia it's just as wide as america and there's nothing literally nothing you'll
• 1:15:15
  fly for hours and there's nothing so let's form the deserts first i had an amazing stat
• 1:15:20
  which i think i invented but i mean which no no which i don't mean i made it up i mean i actually
• 1:15:24
  looked at it looked into it which was that if the whole population of the world lived at the
• 1:15:29
  population density of the Netherlands so quite dense like not you don't have those huge areas with
• 1:15:35
  nothing in them but totally pleasant to not high rise then the whole planet would fit in the
• 1:15:41
  United States and Canada yeah yeah so the whole rest would be i remember the fact i mean this is
• 1:15:46
  like three decades old at this point but in the 90s the factoid was the whole world could fit in
• 1:15:51
  Texas with a one everyone getting a one bedroom apartment right yeah if it was me if ever that was
• 1:15:55
  Manhattan before yeah yeah uh and um AI is the last thing i want to get your thoughts on do you
• 1:16:03
  use it every day what do you use it for uh it's my own personal smart best friend that never gets tired
• 1:16:12
  any literally any question that i'm curious about from the most mundane to the most
• 1:16:17
  like like esoteric i just talked to jack chat you bd all the time um i love it do you have a talk
• 1:16:24
  back or do you write mostly writing unless i'm walking yeah i put it on the car and someone
• 1:16:30
  just talked to especially if the kids are in the car we just ask it questions yeah it's amazing
• 1:16:33
  i love it it's so good it's incredible i mean and i think it's uh like if if you if you calculated
• 1:16:40
  you go back in a time machine five years and say government's gonna do a program where we provide
• 1:16:45
  every single person with a super smart tutor how much does that cost like billions um but we're all
• 1:16:52
  getting that for whatever it is well it has cost billions but we don't have to buy it right but
• 1:16:57
  let's say i had to pay right how much that cost to me personally five years ago it would be
• 1:17:02
  prohibitively expensive i'll tell you like that yeah i'm and now i get someone probably smarter than
• 1:17:07
  that tutor definitely better read quicker never gets tired never takes a day off do you use a
• 1:17:14
  for creative for creative pursuits yeah like to take the drudgery out of the creative pursuits because
• 1:17:20
  all creative pursuits have a creative component and a drudgery yeah like a like a puzzle solving
• 1:17:27
  component and like a truly creative component and chatchy pt can help you with like the the puzzle
• 1:17:35
  solving what does that look like well if you're writing if you're writing say you're writing a novel
• 1:17:41
  and you have you know part of the novel part of the novel there's like a chemical factory so you
• 1:17:49
  now you have to know something about chemical factories well chatchy pt can help you write your novel
• 1:17:54
  well it can but it's probably not going to write a fantastic novel what it can do is tell you
• 1:17:59
  everything you need to know to solve a story problem based on a chemical factory yeah right we
• 1:18:04
  wanted to be an iodine factory not this factory because that will link up with this part of the
• 1:18:09
  story much better there's no way to google that right right no way to google you can only google
• 1:18:14
  web pages that already exist you can't google the answers to unique complicated questions yeah
• 1:18:20
  because there's not going to be an article about no certainly certainly a novel should have an
• 1:18:24
  iodine factory for whatever a textile factory I'm looking forward to your iodine factory novel yeah
• 1:18:30
  I don't have enough like this but this is like the idea that like you can't use this with creative
• 1:18:35
  pursuits is totally dumb yeah I mean I just probably shouldn't have it say write me a novel I'm still
• 1:18:42
  in the process though of of learning what kinds of creative stuff it can do well I hadn't really
• 1:18:47
  thought of that like use case I mean I use it every day as well and it's quite useful if I want to
• 1:18:54
  like punch up a pitch or something like that like if I'm doing a one-page you're about the fact
• 1:19:00
  that we're going on this world tour and we're talking to all these people and it's much easier for
• 1:19:03
  me to just explain to it what we're doing and then say and can you write it can you write a pitch
• 1:19:09
  explaining this there would be sent to producers of radio shows for example and then it'll
• 1:19:13
  spit something out that's a bit cheesy but then I can edit that it's a great place to start yeah
• 1:19:17
  but I find that for um the creative stuff that I really want it for it's not quite there yet like
• 1:19:26
  I don't need to prep questions for someone like you because I know you've spoken a lot but
• 1:19:30
  but like with someone like Tyler Cowan for example I'll write all my questions and then I'll I
• 1:19:35
  put it in the other day put it into chat you pretend said can you just take a look at this see
• 1:19:40
  if you can come up with anything it's more interesting would you lose any questions would you
• 1:19:43
  rearrange it or anything like that it was really not good it was like it gave me a bunch of questions
• 1:19:47
  that were generic yeah really uninteresting and that it thought were edgy but yeah but weren't so
• 1:19:55
  it would be interesting to see what happens to are you bullish or bearish are you like what's
• 1:19:58
  your p-dume are you is this going to kill us all eventually or are you just I don't think it's
• 1:20:03
  saying what about no I'm pretty saying what about it I think we obviously should be smart and
• 1:20:08
  like any other new technology and be be really responsible about how we create it but I think the
• 1:20:14
  doomers have already been proven proven wrong because it's already smart and to me it's like the
• 1:20:22
  idea is when it's super smart it's going to take over the world and turn us into paper clips by
• 1:20:26
  accident but if that were true then I would expect when it was as smart as us to already be seeing
• 1:20:34
  some versions of harms along that dimension but well I just don't see and I haven't seen that
• 1:20:46
  no but there may be a qualitative difference between the ability of something that's more
• 1:20:53
  stupid than you to manipulate you or develop its own once then something that's smarter than you
• 1:21:00
  like I think the logic of the people who are worried about the alignment problem for example is
• 1:21:06
  that there's just we're just not going to be in any position to be trying to control it like not
• 1:21:11
  that it will definitely go off the rails but once something is a thousand times more capable
• 1:21:15
  and strategic than you are it's naive to think that you'll be able to keep it under your command
• 1:21:22
  and that is just a problem that would not emerge with something that's as dumb as chat JPTs
• 1:21:27
  can't only is right but in my view like if it really is much more intelligent then it knows
• 1:21:36
  what we want and it knows what our values are because that's what it would mean to be much
• 1:21:41
  part of what it would mean to be much more intelligent than us and I do think people unsubconsciously
• 1:21:48
  anthropomorphize it because they they assume we're only used to intelligence that comes with a
• 1:21:54
  package deal of survival instinct and all the other animal drives we have we've only ever seen
• 1:22:02
  that type of intelligence what we've created is intelligence without every other human trait
• 1:22:08
  including survival instinct this thing doesn't care whether it lives or dies we assume it would
• 1:22:12
  sometimes but it literally doesn't have that it's not created by evolution it's created by
• 1:22:18
  totally different process that excises intelligence and just gets rid of everything else so I don't see
• 1:22:25
  why it would have any of the drives to you know eliminate us or or so it's like the two categories
• 1:22:39
  of arguments one is like it'll be super intelligent but so dumb that it accidentally turns us
• 1:22:43
  into paper clips which I do think is contradictory right either super intelligent or it's not
• 1:22:49
  well I'm not sure I buy that because that that to me rings a bit like the ontological argument
• 1:22:53
  for God which which goes like God must exist because God is the best thing in the whole world in
• 1:22:58
  all universe the best thing you can conceive of and so if he didn't exist that would be less
• 1:23:03
  good than one that did exist therefore he must exist because he's perfect I mean you could
• 1:23:09
  just imagine a type of super intelligence that doesn't conform to what you're calling a kind of
• 1:23:14
  a moral wisdom but yeah but it's really really like freakishly literal minded like yeah yeah exactly
• 1:23:19
  right but that's like the chat GPT already like isn't like that like when you give it when you
• 1:23:25
  when you when you type in it when you make a typo like often it into it's actually what you meant
• 1:23:30
  yeah it's not always but quite often it's like it's it has a certain level of common sense
• 1:23:35
  yeah yeah so there's that category but then there's the okay if it's like we're more intelligent
• 1:23:41
  the chickens and chickens are living in our world you know it's not like we're genociding them on
• 1:23:46
  purpose but they're tasty and so we fucked them over and that's they're they're going to be like
• 1:23:50
  that to us well no they're not going to be like that because we were created by evolution as we're
• 1:23:55
  chickens we all have survival instinct we all have all of these other package of motivations and
• 1:24:01
  drives that make us use our intelligence in ways that are are deleterious to other animals
• 1:24:06
  and stuff but this has none of that it doesn't care whether it lizardize much less anything else it
• 1:24:11
  doesn't have envy it doesn't have tribalism it doesn't have anything okay so if we're saying
• 1:24:16
  one about the alignment problem humans will use it to do shitty things yeah that was my next
• 1:24:23
  question yeah what what how do you feel about I mean the possibility of being able to once it
• 1:24:28
  once it is agentic which it already is becoming and can actually do things in the world and can
• 1:24:33
  book your own tickets for you and can you know actually do stuff instead of just talking at you
• 1:24:40
  what if people can I mean you the human imagination the capacity for it's an extra
• 1:24:46
  bubble shit yeah it's gonna it's the games are going to get worse they already are I mean bio weapons
• 1:24:52
  like yeah who knows the real the real yeah the real dangerous what humans will do with it yeah and
• 1:24:59
  the threats probably to liberal democracy that arise from it potentially amplifying bad ideas and
• 1:25:06
  you know people using it to disseminate misinformation and everything yeah what's your what are
• 1:25:12
  you reckon the odds are that we get out of the 21st century with liberal democracy intact and
• 1:25:17
  thriving and oh I don't know that's a really deep question I'm not sure I mean if you view
• 1:25:25
  regimes as sort of like technology dependent meaning like as technology changes you should expect
• 1:25:33
  to see the ideal form of governance change to match uh technological changes then you would
• 1:25:42
  expect things to change meaning like you know a hundred years from now that the real threats to
• 1:25:47
  society will be different than they are um today and so that will require new systems of government
• 1:25:56
  governance to actually flourish I mean we've had these ones for hundreds of years and they've done
• 1:26:01
  well yeah I agree but um I'm not I'm not saying it will change I think I think it is doing pretty
• 1:26:08
  well but uh I'm not sure hmm yeah I mean new new threats may require new new norms because if we
• 1:26:18
  do if we do begin to live in a world where one person with AI is is just gonna create a lot more
• 1:26:26
  harm than one person with anything can can do now I mean that that definitely puts a damper
• 1:26:34
  on my civil libertarian instincts right I mean that that um so it kind of depends where technology
• 1:26:42
  goes all right I look forward to your dystopian AI novel about what it's like to live in an iodine
• 1:26:48
  factory uh and and be a chicken uh common uses a sub sack uh is caught with it's just called common
• 1:26:55
  huts right called in the corner common corner the podcast is conversations with Coleman uh if you're
• 1:27:00
  uh just joining us and don't know who I am I'm Josh steps and this is uncomfortable conversations
• 1:27:05
  and uh every day for the next two weeks we're going to a different city talking to fascinating people
• 1:27:09
  and there's a huge backlog of great episodes that you can find on uncultured conversations so
• 1:27:14
  subscribe to the sub stack to keep abreast of everything that we're doing Coleman Hughes uh I'm
• 1:27:19
  gonna let you go and let's get a drink and then you can play some music cool thank you thanks