Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Is there any Room left for moderates? With Jeff Maurer

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Is there any Room left for moderates? With Jeff Maurer · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:03
  We're here with Jeff Mara.
• 0:05
  At least I think we're here with Jeff Mara.
• 0:07
  We had some technical difficulties, Jeff, and then all of a sudden we realized that actually it was a back-end button that was switched that was the make sure that this does not work without causing impossible echoes to derail the conversation button.
• 0:23
  And as you were saying, why do they build the button?
• 0:27
  Why have that button?
• 0:28
  Why does that setting exist?
• 0:30
  Take the day off and don't build the make shit not work button into the software.
• 0:35
  Exactly.
• 0:35
  I don't want to be a backseat software engineer.
• 0:38
  A button in the cockpit that is a crash plane button.
• 0:42
  Don't put the button.
• 0:43
  Don't put the crash plane button in the cockpit at all for any reason.
• 0:49
  Again, I don't, you know, and I'm not, I'm not an aircraft designer.
• 0:51
  I'm not a software guy, but I, that's my two cents.
• 0:54
  If people are looking for feedback, tell you what, next time that software, uh, the, uh, box pops up and says, leave a review.
• 1:00
  I'm, my review will be maybe don't put the make shit don't work.
• 1:05
  Don't put the make shit don't work button because also Lord knows if we want to derail a conversation, you and I are plenty capable of doing that by ourselves.
• 1:14
  We don't need technical assistance to make a conversation go sideways.
• 1:20
  AI will never derail a conversation as quickly or as awkwardly as I can.
• 1:25
  As a human being can, exactly.
• 1:27
  It reminds me of, you remember the, not to make light of the dead, but the German wings era.
• 1:36
  It's hopefully the podcast for that disclaimer.
• 1:38
  The German wings aircraft that tragically crashed into a mountain in the Alps because the suicidal pilot was just like, I'm just going to keep on getting lower and lower and lower here until we clip a mountain.
• 1:51
  He didn't need a button.
• 1:53
  He didn't need a crash aircraft button.
• 1:55
  He did it all by himself.
• 1:57
  And I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, but I'm saying that you and I are very much analogous to the German wings pilot.
• 2:04
  We are fully capable of crashing this plane without the help of the button.
• 2:08
  So anyway.
• 2:09
  I've been on a lot of podcasts that people have described as the equivalent of an air crash that killed hundreds.
• 2:14
  Yeah.
• 2:15
  Good, good.
• 2:16
  That's how we like to do things.
• 2:18
  Some would say every episode of my podcast that I do is an equivalent or greater blight on humanity.
• 2:25
  I think so.
• 2:26
  I like to think so.
• 2:28
  So for people who don't know the wonderful Jeff Mara, comedy writer, publisher of the I Might Be Wrong substack, former writer on John Oliver's show, man about town, shall we say.
• 2:42
  Ne'er to well, if you will.
• 2:44
  And for those of you who may not know me, I'm also a scallywag and ne'er-do-well and host of Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Thepps, by which you can divine that I am Josh Thepps.
• 2:57
  Lots to talk about, Jeff.
• 3:00
  Oh, we're good.
• 3:01
  I'm getting waved at from the studio, but it's just to say we're good.
• 3:07
  It was a everything's good wave, not a we're not live wave.
• 3:13
  wave another uh bug that could maybe be worked out don't wave your arms and set off red lights just to say everything's fine josh everything's fine yeah exactly ignore me josh ignore me just keep doing what you're doing they shouldn't hold up signs like in love actually that say stop and then a sign that says emergency and then a sign that says everything's okay
• 3:39
  continue as you were.
• 3:41
  Better ways of communicating that.
• 3:44
  Jeff, I want to pick your brain about a lot of things.
• 3:46
  We didn't even talk about what we're going to talk about today.
• 3:49
  So is there anything, let me be the gentleman, let me be the courteous host as I welcome you into my alcove from a dark snowy night, metaphorically speaking, into my half.
• 4:01
  The turducken is almost ready.
• 4:03
  Is there anything that you would like to address that's going on in the world, that's crossed your radar, that's got a bee in your bonnet?
• 4:12
  I came here with no agenda, no expectations.
• 4:15
  Right.
• 4:16
  There's lots of interesting stuff going on in the world.
• 4:19
  If interesting is a euphemism for.
• 4:23
  For a crash the plane button in the cockpit.
• 4:27
  Let me return to interesting.
• 4:29
  Lots of interesting things in the world.
• 4:30
  But I want to know what you want to talk about.
• 4:32
  So this is your home.
• 4:36
  You cooked the turducken.
• 4:37
  I did.
• 4:38
  I did.
• 4:38
  So I'll let you set the agenda.
• 4:40
  I wanted to talk about extremism in the United States.
• 4:43
  I wanted to talk about the democratic socialists of America.
• 4:50
  I wanted to talk about housing affordability and zoning.
• 4:53
  I wanted to talk about Hassan Piker.
• 4:55
  I wanted to talk about Ben Shapiro.
• 4:57
  I wanted to talk about rejecting extremism.
• 5:02
  I wanted to talk about Milo Iannopoulos being deported.
• 5:05
  There's just so much.
• 5:06
  Did you hear about Milo?
• 5:09
  I did hear about Milo.
• 5:10
  Yeah.
• 5:11
  For those of us who aren't across the story, Milo Iannopoulos, you know, now talk about gadfly, man about town, ne'er-do-well.
• 5:20
  Oh, yeah.
• 5:22
  Well, now I don't want the label attached to me if you can attach it to him as well.
• 5:27
  So Milo, people may remember from the culture wars of, I guess, the late 2010s, Milo was hot.
• 5:34
  Sounds about right.
• 5:35
  Right?
• 5:35
  Early to mid-2010s?
• 5:37
  Yeah.
• 5:40
  He had a moment where he was touring the country like Marilyn Manson, just trying to get banned from places.
• 5:47
  Yes.
• 5:47
  But it was a brief moment.
• 5:48
  I think it was circa 2015.
• 5:50
  That sounds about right.
• 5:51
  And there was a punk rock phase where he would like, you know, he'd go to majority Muslim communities in some random Swedish city and...
• 6:01
  He'd get carried along through the main street amidst passers-by who were all wearing burkas, and he'd be wearing a thong, reclining on a chaise lounge being carried by oiled-up male go-go boys and that kind of thing.
• 6:20
  So a sophisticated contribution to the cultural discourse.
• 6:24
  And he was arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement in the United States and deported.
• 6:32
  And I initially thought, well, wow, this is getting out of hand if they're deporting people on the basis, if they're deporting even a Trump supporter, or at least former Trump supporters on the basis of their ideological beliefs.
• 6:46
  It turns out it wasn't all on the basis of his ideological beliefs.
• 6:52
  He was intercepted at New Orleans Airport, and the article in The Guardian says he has broken his silence about the experience by talking to Piers Morgan four days after the deportation.
• 7:06
  Well, I bet it was hard to get Milo to break his silence.
• 7:08
  Yeah, exactly.
• 7:09
  That guy doesn't like to talk, especially about himself.
• 7:13
  He is a wilting flower.
• 7:13
  They must have really twisted his arm.
• 7:15
  Yeah.
• 7:15
  So he said, quote, for the first time, I know what it feels like to be really, really terrified.
• 7:21
  He described the experience as humiliating and disorienting, physically degrading and frightening.
• 7:29
  And he says he's married to an American, and so he wasn't doing anything wrong.
• 7:37
  But the Department of Homeland Security released a statement, and they said that Milo had legally entered the country in May of 2019.
• 7:46
  but chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws.
• 7:51
  And the Homeland Security Department says that he was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on July 22nd after failing to show up for his immigration hearing.
• 8:03
  And so then he was deported after a ruling by a judge at a hearing at which he failed to show up
• 8:10
  where a final order of removal was issued.
• 8:15
  Then in the Piers Morgan interview, Milo says, that's not true.
• 8:18
  He's married to an American and he has a green card that he's renewing on a two-year basis.
• 8:23
  And I quote, renewing on a two-year basis.
• 8:25
  Now, Jeff, I am married to an American.
• 8:29
  I had a green card.
• 8:33
  Let me ask you a question about, this is more of a linguistic question than a legal one.
• 8:38
  Oh, good.
• 8:39
  Because I'd have no shot at the legal one.
• 8:41
  Permanent residency.
• 8:43
  What do you understand the word permanent to mean?
• 8:51
  On the long-term side?
• 8:52
  Yeah.
• 8:53
  So does permanent mean subject to renewal every two years?
• 8:58
  Or does permanent mean it lasts forever?
• 9:03
  You're really leading me to these questions.
• 9:05
  A little bit.
• 9:07
  This is like what I'm trying to get my son to read a word.
• 9:10
  And I'm, you know, R-E-D, r-r-red, red, red.
• 9:16
  It's red.
• 9:16
  It's red.
• 9:17
  It's red.
• 9:18
  I would say that if it needs to be renewed, then it is not permanent.
• 9:21
  That's right.
• 9:21
  A green card is a permanent resident card.
• 9:26
  It confers permanent residency status.
• 9:29
  Now, the physical card has to be renewed every 10 years, not every two years.
• 9:32
  Well, it doesn't have to.
• 9:34
  You don't need it.
• 9:34
  But if you want the physical card, then it expires just like a driver's license does.
• 9:38
  But your residency status is, you're not going to get deported if you have a green, I mean, look, maybe this will come back to bite me in the ass next time I'm in the States.
• 9:46
  Are you suggesting that Milo is not being fully truthful, Josh?
• 9:52
  This is Milo Yiannopoulos.
• 9:54
  I'm just saying maybe he didn't understand.
• 9:58
  The only constant in the storm, the one person I trust.
• 10:01
  Yes.
• 10:03
  If you can't take Milo Yiannopoulos' word about what transpired to the bank, then why?
• 10:10
  Lord only knows.
• 10:11
  Who can you trust in this crazy world, Jeff?
• 10:15
  Has he had a rift with Trump?
• 10:16
  Because that is the first place that what you mentioned of, oh, wow, they're even deporting Trump supporters now.
• 10:23
  That's the first place my brain went.
• 10:25
  Was he a Trump guy?
• 10:27
  Because he was definitely like a right-wing guy.
• 10:29
  He was a right-wing provocateur.
• 10:31
  And we did not go fully into his whole shtick, which really did have a moment.
• 10:39
  But then he suddenly fell off the radar due to legal problems that had nothing to do with immigration.
• 10:45
  But he went away fast.
• 10:46
  He was gone.
• 10:47
  He was an early supporter of Trump.
• 10:50
  Uh, and he liked the big daddy.
• 10:55
  He did the whole like queers for Trump kind of shtick of like, he's our daddy, like he's our tough guy kind of, you know, like, uh, let's make the, make the libtards cry.
• 11:06
  libtard tears.
• 11:09
  Making the libtards cry was his whole thing, so I am not surprised.
• 11:12
  I don't remember that detail that he was a Trump guy, but of course he was.
• 11:16
  He says that he regrets it.
• 11:18
  He says that he regrets that, apparently, because he doesn't realize how frightening and traumatizing the whole ICE thing is until it happened to him.
• 11:28
  But I just, you know, it's like...
• 11:31
  You and I, Jeff, we have credibility as having experienced the pressure cooker of wokeness and cancel culture at a moment when it was actually culturally ascendant.
• 11:43
  It gets my goat, ladies and gents, that nowadays in 2026...
• 11:48
  You have people crying about like, oh, they want, I'm going to go and leave the mainstream media and do my independent thing where I can speak fearlessly and interview far-right white supremacists without suffering any consequences.
• 12:06
  Or now I'm going to cry foul about some run-in with –
• 12:10
  The immigration agency, they're late to the party.
• 12:14
  Where were they in 2022 about this?
• 12:17
  Why is Milo only now realizing that Trump is not a great chief executive of the country?
• 12:24
  Well, this is why we have the facing leopards party joke, right?
• 12:28
  You know this meme.
• 12:30
  Do you not know this?
• 12:31
  I don't think so.
• 12:32
  Great.
• 12:32
  Then I can apprise you about the best in American culture.
• 12:36
  There's a meme about a lady crying and saying, I didn't think the leopards would eat my face, says lady who voted for the facing leopards party.
• 12:46
  That's exactly what this is.
• 12:49
  There you go.
• 12:50
  She's a pretty good... Oh, that's great.
• 12:52
  I love it.
• 12:52
  I wish I'd come up with it.
• 12:53
  I love that.
• 12:54
  That's reminiscent of the... What was the T-shirt that went viral?
• 12:59
  Probably a good 20 years ago now.
• 13:00
  This would have been Obama times, which was...
• 13:05
  Someone posted on Twitter back when Twitter was good.
• 13:11
  I keep getting asked questions about my not a child rapist t-shirt that the t-shirt itself already answers.
• 13:21
  Yeah.
• 13:22
  It was something like that.
• 13:23
  I don't know what you're talking about.
• 13:24
  Something like that, yes.
• 13:25
  Raising a lot of questions that are already answered by the shirt.
• 13:28
  Yeah, exactly.
• 13:29
  That's right.
• 13:29
  And then that became like a format for a gag.
• 13:31
  Yeah, that's good.
• 13:32
  The face-eating leopard party.
• 13:36
  Well, yeah, it's exactly – I mean, I'm with you.
• 13:37
  I don't –
• 13:40
  know why he didn't put two and two together until now.
• 13:45
  Ironically, this may be the rare case of Trump actually following the law.
• 13:50
  I have not been following this Milo case closely, but from what you described, it sounds like perhaps he had a visa that expired and a judge issued an order of removal and he was removed, in which case that is actually the law doing what it's supposed to.
• 14:06
  Yeah, also, if a court...
• 14:10
  I feel I am tempting fate because I'm going to the States in less than two weeks and I could end up in a Guatemalan prison.
• 14:19
  But – and that's possible.
• 14:21
  50-50.
• 14:21
  And there are lots of bad things that ICE is doing.
• 14:23
  And people should not – I'm not supporting the current policy.
• 14:30
  But it has always been the case everywhere that if you overstay a visa and then there's literally – it's not like an oops kind of thing if there's a court hearing.
• 14:40
  Then it's not just like, oh, I misunderstood.
• 14:43
  Like if you get a summons to a court and then you don't show up at court and then you just keep on staying in that country, what exactly do you think is going to happen next time you encounter a customs official?
• 14:57
  Yeah, and the problems with ICE are specifically that they have been so empowered and that important decisions are often made by the agent right there on the street.
• 15:12
  Some of the agents are...
• 15:15
  let's say not professional and they're kind of running amok.
• 15:20
  I don't want to tar every single ICE agent.
• 15:22
  I think that's a dumb thing to do, but the agency as a whole, you could say their performance is not good and not good in the specific way that they have been given power, that they are exercising a lot in a way that a lot of people don't like and
• 15:39
  This does not appear to be that.
• 15:41
  This is the regular process, the one that involves judges and agents at airports.
• 15:45
  If a judge has issued an order and if Milo was not entering or leaving the country, then it seems like this was not a random thing where he was coming in or going out.
• 15:57
  It sounds like...
• 15:59
  There was actually a court-issued order, I'm guessing here, but I'm assuming, if I'm wrong, I retracted, but it sounds like there was a court-issued order and that the local ICE officials received the passenger manifests from the airlines and it pinged and was like...
• 16:14
  okay, there's a person who is illegitimate in the country.
• 16:18
  And so they actually went and got that person and removed them, which is different from being, as you say, caught up in the drag net of an overly ambitious enforcement agency.
• 16:30
  He wasn't in line at Chipotle and an agent overheard his accent and thought, oh, that sounds pretty foreign.
• 16:36
  He does sound suspiciously Central American.
• 16:40
  Yeah, he could be a Latinx.
• 16:43
  Right.
• 16:44
  English accent, Spanish speaker.
• 16:48
  Yeah, Mexican Spanish speaker.
• 16:50
  I can't tell the difference.
• 16:51
  It's possible.
• 16:52
  I assume you're Mexican, Josh.
• 16:54
  That's just how bad I am with accents.
• 16:57
  I am south of the border.
• 16:59
  Get it?
• 17:00
  I'm south of the border.
• 17:02
  You couldn't be more south of the border.
• 17:04
  You basically can't.
• 17:05
  I mean maybe bits of Argentina and New Zealand perhaps.
• 17:11
  Yeah, no American knows that New Zealand is south of Australia.
• 17:15
  No.
• 17:16
  Well, it's not.
• 17:16
  But I mean it goes further south.
• 17:18
  You're both down there.
• 17:19
  It's east, but it goes further south.
• 17:22
  But you know that it must because you've seen Lord of the Rings and there are beautiful snowy mountains.
• 17:30
  So it must get cold, right?
• 17:33
  Yeah, we know that New Zealand is very pretty and it's got all the sheep and the hobbits.
• 17:37
  And yeah, we just don't know where it is.
• 17:39
  We know it's down there.
• 17:40
  We know it's down there near you.
• 17:41
  I'm just saying you could guess if it's chilly that it is further from the equator than Crocodile Dundee.
• 17:49
  Yeah.
• 17:49
  OK. Yeah.
• 17:50
  Fair point.
• 17:50
  I mean, it seems like a damn moment.
• 17:54
  If you ever even broke out of your American bubble, Jeff, and took a moment to spare a thought for the relative geographical locations of the Antipodes.
• 18:06
  But this is part of the American character.
• 18:09
  You're right, we should.
• 18:10
  But goddammit, we don't.
• 18:12
  We just don't.
• 18:12
  I'm not implying you should.
• 18:13
  I'm just joking.
• 18:14
  But yes, the Great Barrier Reef and Steve Irwin, closer to the equator, Lord of the Rings, sheep, huddled people.
• 18:23
  But it's because they're in the mountains, right?
• 18:25
  That's why they got the snow.
• 18:25
  I don't know.
• 18:26
  It's true as well.
• 18:26
  Yes, there are mountains.
• 18:27
  You say they're closer to Antarctica, so I'm going to take your word.
• 18:30
  They are.
• 18:30
  Argentina may be even closer still.
• 18:32
  The point is the question on everybody's lips at the moment is, does Australia actually exist at all?
• 18:39
  I don't know if you've heard this conspiracy theory, Jeff.
• 18:43
  I had to deliver a presentation last week at a friend's place where they do these conspiracy theory nights.
• 18:48
  A dozen people will sit around and put on little tinfoil hats.
• 18:52
  And you'll do a PowerPoint presentation about a conspiracy that you particularly like.
• 18:57
  So I chose the conspiracy, which I don't know if people believe it.
• 19:02
  It's hard, this whole space of like, what do people believe and when are people just shitposting.
• 19:07
  But there's a subset of the flat earthers.
• 19:11
  who believe that Australia doesn't exist and that every Australian you've ever met is a paid actor and that it's – which I must say, given the preponderance of Australians in showbiz, is almost true.
• 19:28
  Like you've got your Hugh Jackmans and Nicole Kidmans and your Russell Crowes and your Kate Blanchett and your Rose Burns and your Mel Gibson.
• 19:36
  Yeah, so basically most Australians who are Americans are aware of are actors, thereby proving the point.
• 19:43
  And the reason why the Australia hoax exists, this is diabolical, is because – have you heard of colonialism, Jeff?
• 19:55
  I have, yes.
• 19:56
  Have you heard of white supremacy?
• 19:58
  I have, yeah.
• 19:59
  Have you heard of the crimes of white people, of genocide?
• 20:03
  Yes.
• 20:04
  You're speaking my language.
• 20:06
  I just am eager to hear what it has to do with this conspiracy.
• 20:08
  So the British Empire in the 1780s wanted to get rid of all its criminals.
• 20:17
  So they concocted a story that they were putting them on boats and sending them to this faraway land.
• 20:22
  They took the boats out to sea.
• 20:23
  They dumped all the criminals overboard.
• 20:25
  Hundreds of thousands of people drowned.
• 20:27
  And the excuse was Australia.
• 20:29
  Okay.
• 20:31
  Here's why I don't believe that theory.
• 20:35
  First you don't believe Milo Iannopoulos.
• 20:38
  Now you don't believe this.
• 20:39
  But okay, take the floor.
• 20:42
  I'm a skeptic.
• 20:43
  What can I say?
• 20:45
  It's because knowing what I know about the British Empire in the 18th century –
• 20:49
  if they were putting convicts on boats, taking them out to sea, and then dumping them in the ocean, I think they just would have said, here's what we're doing.
• 20:58
  We're going to throw them all in the ocean until they drowned.
• 21:02
  And that would have gotten a hearty cheer in Parliament.
• 21:06
  I don't think they would have hit it at all.
• 21:07
  Yeah.
• 21:08
  That's a good point.
• 21:10
  That's a very good point.
• 21:12
  If the British Empire is as evil.
• 21:14
  We're doing away with the undesirable elements.
• 21:17
  Yeah, that's right.
• 21:17
  You know how they're undesirable?
• 21:19
  Well, now they'll be at the bottom of the ocean.
• 21:21
  So they don't go there.
• 21:21
  They don't put these things stolen.
• 21:23
  That's a really good point.
• 21:24
  If the British Empire is as evil as the anti-colonialist, anti-white civilization people say that it is, then why would that empire have any compunction about killing all of those criminals?
• 21:37
  Right.
• 21:38
  It's not like they were trying to hide their crimes in Bangladesh.
• 21:46
  No.
• 21:46
  Were they worried about public opinion in the 18th century?
• 21:51
  Nobody's voting for anything.
• 21:52
  Don't worry about it.
• 21:53
  What do you think public opinion was in the 18th and 19th centuries about lowly criminals and the might of the British Empire?
• 22:02
  Everyone would have been like, absolutely, I wholeheartedly sign off on this plan.
• 22:06
  Yes.
• 22:07
  100%.
• 22:07
  Also, you know...
• 22:10
  Also what?
• 22:13
  So there, I've punctured it.
• 22:15
  You should take the points I've made back to your group.
• 22:19
  Yeah, I mean, I've got to say.
• 22:21
  Oh, wow, I hadn't thought of that.
• 22:22
  There are better reasons for believing that Australia exists than your...
• 22:29
  theory, especially since I happen to be located in Australia.
• 22:33
  Since you're in Australia right now.
• 22:35
  You gave this presentation from Australia also, correct?
• 22:37
  Yes, this is what I thought was kind of funny about it, that you would pick a – but then I had a twist on it because everyone was like, well, where are we?
• 22:44
  And I was like, we are in an island off the coast of – so part of the theory is that anyone who's been to Australia has actually flown to an island off the coast of South America.
• 22:53
  Yeah.
• 22:54
  But my twist on it was if you are not in on this and if this comes as a surprise to you, the people in the room who I'm delivering the presentation to, then you are the only one who isn't in on it.
• 23:07
  It's basically everything is a Truman Show and all the rest of us are in on it.
• 23:14
  So that was – and with that, I exited to great fanfare and drove off into the night.
• 23:19
  Yeah.
• 23:20
  Who is paying all the actors?
• 23:23
  Because also all the actors you mentioned, they don't get paid a little.
• 23:26
  They get paid a lot.
• 23:27
  Who's funding this and why?
• 23:30
  Has that been covered?
• 23:31
  Probably data centers.
• 23:34
  Oh, okay.
• 23:35
  All right.
• 23:36
  Well, so there's an answer for everything.
• 23:37
  I mean, just pick your boogeyman of the moment.
• 23:41
  It's airtight.
• 23:42
  Okay.
• 23:44
  Wow, I hadn't thought about data centers.
• 23:45
  Good point.
• 23:46
  So there's that.
• 23:46
  But yes, I liked the fact that that was my conspiracy theory.
• 23:49
  The Australia doesn't exist conspiracy theory in Australia.
• 23:54
  I think I'll have more success winning people over if I do it in the United States.
• 23:59
  But that's just me.
• 23:59
  Okay.
• 24:01
  I was just thinking about something.
• 24:03
  What were you just saying before we wrap that up?
• 24:06
  Because there was something else that was cool that I wanted to share.
• 24:09
  You're talking about...
• 24:11
  Well, we were talking about Milo and we were talking about Trump and ICE and what they do and what they don't.
• 24:16
  It was something about the Australia doesn't exist.
• 24:20
  It might have been the geographical location of – Oh, yes.
• 24:24
  But anyway, it will come back to me when we're talking about something else and then I'll jump in.
• 24:27
  What I wanted to pick your brain about, Jeffrey, you don't mind if I call you Jeffrey?
• 24:32
  That's fine.
• 24:33
  That is the long version of my name.
• 24:35
  Yes.
• 24:37
  I like doing that as a game with my kids, by the way, trying to figure out what the long version of people's names is because, you know, as Australians, we feel the need to shorten everyone's name.
• 24:47
  And so sometimes you don't actually know the underlying name.
• 24:50
  You're like, that's Baza.
• 24:52
  And you're like, was it Barry?
• 24:55
  Is it Bruce?
• 24:59
  Sorry, jump in.
• 25:01
  Oh, no, I was just going to say I have noticed that y'all like to shorten stuff.
• 25:05
  Yeah.
• 25:05
  Shorten names and words.
• 25:07
  You're people in a hurry.
• 25:10
  We're all lazy people, Jeff.
• 25:13
  We don't have time to say avocado.
• 25:16
  We usually say laid back, but I'll update my stereotypes to just lazy.
• 25:20
  Lazy.
• 25:21
  I don't know who has time to say avocado when you could say avo.
• 25:25
  My American husband has trouble with this because afternoon is avo.
• 25:31
  Avocado is avo, but if you have an American accent, then avo and avo are close.
• 25:37
  Great confusion.
• 25:38
  He finds himself showing up at avocados instead of in the afternoon.
• 25:43
  Campaigning with Liz Cheney is not like campaigning with Hassan Piker.
• 25:47
  You write.
• 25:47
  Hey, that sounds like an article I wrote.
• 25:49
  Okay, that is the article I wrote.
• 25:51
  Okay.
• 25:52
  I was going to say, you're stealing my shit, Josh.
• 25:55
  I'm stealing your shit.
• 25:55
  That's a point that I made on my blog recently.
• 25:57
  Oh, wait a second.
• 25:58
  He's asking me about it because I'm his guest.
• 26:01
  Oh, I see what you did.
• 26:02
  Clever.
• 26:03
  Clever.
• 26:04
  I saw that headline and I said it was a good headline because I thought,
• 26:08
  What does that mean?
• 26:09
  Which is always what you want out of a headline.
• 26:11
  What does that mean?
• 26:12
  So now that I have you here, Jeff, instead of making us read the article, what does that mean?
• 26:18
  I would never make anyone read, even though I am a writer.
• 26:22
  Thank you.
• 26:25
  It's a qualitative difference, is my argument in the piece.
• 26:30
  I think people see the headline and they-
• 26:35
  Oh, because we have this Senate candidate in Michigan.
• 26:42
  I'm always amazed, by the way, at the knowledge that non-Americans have of American politics.
• 26:47
  I understand that a lot of people...
• 26:48
  I read your sub stack.
• 26:50
  I get all of my information about America from your sub stack.
• 26:56
  You know what?
• 26:56
  It's the only source you need, Josh.
• 26:58
  Yeah.
• 26:59
  And Milo Iannopoulos on immigration affairs.
• 27:03
  About 20% of my readers are not in the U.S.
• 27:06
  I'm just stunned in a very positive way that people are interested in American politics.
• 27:13
  But anyway, yes, Michigan.
• 27:15
  There's a Senate race.
• 27:16
  The Democratic candidate there, Abdul El-Sayed, in the primary campaigned with Hassan Piker on a couple of occasions.
• 27:24
  And this is very controversial.
• 27:26
  He gets asked about it basically every 10 minutes.
• 27:28
  Yes.
• 27:29
  Just to back up here, just because not all of us are as across American politics as you seem to think we are.
• 27:35
  El Saeed is – so Michigan has a big Muslim population in Detroit.
• 27:41
  Is that right?
• 27:42
  Well, define big.
• 27:44
  I mean on the one hand, yes, it is one of the largest – Big for a place where otherwise there are only cows that you fly over between the coasts.
• 27:55
  Yes.
• 27:55
  The flyover states, as some people call them, though I do not, even though I live in the D.C. area.
• 28:02
  Dearborn, Michigan, which is sort of a suburb of Detroit, and then Detroit itself has a substantial Muslim population, but it's not that big.
• 28:11
  I'm actually going to Google right now.
• 28:14
  OK.
• 28:14
  While you Google, I'll also add another question, which is, El Saeed, is he a Democratic Socialist of America faction of the Democratic Party, or is he a regular old Democrat?
• 28:25
  He is not a regular old Democrat, but he is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
• 28:32
  But many of the people who are in the Democratic Socialist America like him a lot.
• 28:39
  And Hassan Piker very much is in the DSA, and El Saeed campaigned with Hassan Piker.
• 28:44
  But El Saeed himself is not in the DSA and does not identify as the socialist.
• 28:48
  I just Googled what is the...
• 28:51
  Muslim population of Michigan, because I think when people hear this and they hear, oh, big Muslim population, they think like, oh, it's like half.
• 28:57
  It's 2.4 percent, according to the state of the state.
• 29:02
  OK. And Michigan is the state where we say, oh, that's the state that has a lot of Muslim people in it.
• 29:08
  And it's 2.4 percent.
• 29:09
  I mean, that would probably be the national average, wouldn't it?
• 29:13
  Or less, maybe.
• 29:15
  What's the Google this?
• 29:16
  All this Googling is the...
• 29:18
  Thank God for Google.
• 29:19
  Speaking of Milo Iannopoulos being wrongly detained by ICE, I think some ICE agents are about to smash down your door from all this Googling about the Muslim population in...
• 29:29
  In Michigan.
• 29:30
  So, you know, the podcast is probably going to end early because you're right.
• 29:35
  I think I can hear them rappelling down the walls of my house right now.
• 29:39
  Exactly.
• 29:39
  One to 1.3% of the United States is Muslim.
• 29:42
  Wow.
• 29:42
  I would point out a certain number of those are going to be, you know, sort of Malcolm X would say black Muslim.
• 29:49
  Right.
• 29:49
  I don't know how many of that 1%.
• 29:51
  That's tiny.
• 29:51
  Not everyone is going to be.
• 29:53
  Yeah.
• 29:54
  That's tiny.
• 29:54
  All right.
• 29:54
  You keep talking and I'm going to look up Australia.
• 29:56
  Yeah.
• 29:58
  OK. OK.
• 29:59
  So El Saeed.
• 30:00
  Anyway, El Saeed is the candidate in Michigan.
• 30:03
  Yes.
• 30:03
  Campaigned with Hassan Piker.
• 30:04
  Gets asked about it all the time.
• 30:05
  So often when this comes up, I haven't heard El Saeed himself say this, but often his supporters, especially if you're on social media, will say, well, Kamala Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney.
• 30:17
  It's the sort of, I would say, knee jerk response.
• 30:21
  You're complaining about Hassan Piker.
• 30:22
  Well, Kamala Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney.
• 30:25
  The point I make of the piece is qualitatively different.
• 30:46
  was by implication a Republican in sheep's clothing because she campaigned with Liz Cheney, who is Dick Cheney's daughter and a Republican.
• 30:59
  That I would say is more or less the argument.
• 31:00
  I would also say the hesitance I hear in your voice seems to be you getting to where I'm going.
• 31:07
  Yeah, I'm trying to...
• 31:09
  I'm twisting myself into pretzels trying to understand the objection.
• 31:12
  But yes, that I think is... And this is what I attempt to do on my blog, along with dick jokes, which is my bread and butter, is to untwist the pretzels, so to speak.
• 31:22
  But my argument is that it is different because...
• 31:26
  When El Saeed campaigned with Hassan Piker, the point was to say, hey, he and I, we've got some similarities.
• 31:33
  We're simpatico in certain ways.
• 31:34
  I wouldn't – obviously, I wouldn't say the implication is we are a carbon copy of each other.
• 31:38
  We're the same person.
• 31:39
  But certainly in the primary, he is saying we are birds of a feather.
• 31:45
  When Kamala Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney, the message was the exact opposite.
• 31:50
  It was, hey, we are different.
• 31:52
  But we both oppose Donald Trump because Liz Cheney, again, to bring anyone up to speed who is not up to speed, Liz Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter.
• 32:04
  She was very conservative.
• 32:05
  She was a member of Congress from Wyoming for a couple of terms after she was.
• 32:12
  often a little bit Trump skeptical.
• 32:14
  And then after January 6th, she became very Trump skeptical.
• 32:18
  I wouldn't even say characterizes it accurately.
• 32:21
  I would say she turned on Trump after January 6th.
• 32:23
  She said this is beyond the pale.
• 32:25
  She voted for his impeachment.
• 32:26
  And she became persona non grata in the Republican Party after that and lost a primary in 2022 and was out of Congress.
• 32:33
  And in 2024, she supported Kamala Harris
• 32:37
  Because she felt that Trump was too much of a danger to democracy.
• 32:42
  He had proven himself to be hostile to fundamental democratic principles.
• 32:46
  And therefore, she supported Kamala Harris.
• 32:48
  So when Harris and Cheney were campaigning together, the message was very much, isn't it interesting that we're both...
• 32:55
  Voting for – I mean, of course, Harris is going to vote for Harris because she's Harris.
• 33:00
  But isn't it interesting that we're voting the same way even though we don't agree on things?
• 33:06
  Right.
• 33:07
  And that was very obvious in the events themselves.
• 33:09
  And they campaigned in front of a banner that said party over country, pretty clear message.
• 33:15
  Sorry, country over party.
• 33:17
  That would be weird, party over country.
• 33:19
  Country over party.
• 33:20
  You'd be like, is that the leopard face-eating party?
• 33:23
  Because that is too extreme.
• 33:25
  But, you know, it's good that they proofread it because I had it exactly backwards.
• 33:30
  But I promise you they had it the right way.
• 33:32
  Telling people you don't have to see the world the way Kamala Harris does.
• 33:36
  You don't have to be a liberal.
• 33:37
  In fact, you could be conservative.
• 33:38
  You could be a Republican and still vote for Kamala Harris.
• 33:41
  That's the message.
• 33:42
  We're different, but we're voting the same way.
• 33:44
  Very different than saying, hey, Hassan Piker, he and I share a lot of the same views.
• 33:47
  Strikes me that there's another important difference, Jeff, which is that the Cheney-Harris alliance was not just one of negative partisanship against Trump.
• 33:59
  It was a way of saying the thing that we both do agree on is...
• 34:03
  is supra-political.
• 34:07
  It's country over politics, as the banner says.
• 34:10
  In other words, what we believe in is preserving the institutions of state and the norms of American democracy and public life.
• 34:20
  And therefore, we can agree on these very, very deep foundational American traditions that have nothing to do with policies or our worldviews.
• 34:31
  The same certainly can't be said of Said and Piker, where it's not like the two of them are...
• 34:38
  I mean, I suppose...
• 34:39
  I'm trying to think of the most generous way of making the comparison.
• 34:42
  It might be the whole system of American capitalism is broken and of American imperialism.
• 34:51
  And, you know, we might disagree about particular policies, not that they even say that they do, not to the same extent that Cheney and...
• 35:01
  uh camilla did but we believe in foundational i mean yeah even trying to make the argument doesn't really work it's like the the the whole point of the cheney harris alliance was that there are certain principles that we believe in that transcend politics the whole point of the hassan piker el saeed alliance is we are on the same page vis-a-vis politics
• 35:28
  Yes.
• 35:29
  Yes.
• 35:30
  I am understanding the distinction you're making.
• 35:33
  Registering agreement on foundational principles versus agreement on... Yeah, on policy preferences.
• 35:42
  Before I was a comedian, I was a speechwriter.
• 35:44
  I was a speechwriter for a number of years.
• 35:47
  So I often think about, you know, messages and, you know, kind of what works and what doesn't.
• 35:52
  The message one might get from El Saeed campaigning with Piker...
• 35:58
  to the extent that they are highlighting their similarities, it's not a message you would use in a general election.
• 36:04
  And that is why El Saeed now, instead of standing firm and saying, yeah, I like Hassan Piker.
• 36:10
  I think he's a good guy with good views.
• 36:12
  He is trying to not talk about Hassan Piker.
• 36:16
  And Republicans, of course, are trying to get him to talk about Piker as much as possible.
• 36:19
  Saeed's line every time he gets asked about this, and like I said, it seems to be about every 10 minutes, is...
• 36:26
  This election isn't about Hassan Piker.
• 36:28
  I don't think people in Michigan care about Hassan Piker.
• 36:31
  They care about, you know, affordability and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 36:34
  Um...
• 36:36
  So he's running away from him because Hassan Piker has said 101, a million and one crazy things.
• 36:43
  Yeah.
• 36:43
  Crazy things that I think can be fairly interpreted as- Before lunchtime just because that's what he's on the, you know, he's streaming seven hours a day or something.
• 36:55
  He has to take a shit on the air.
• 36:57
  He has to eat his chicken breast to get those big muscles on the air.
• 37:01
  It's like there is a real liability.
• 37:04
  when you're talking that much, even if you're not, even if you don't have outre ideas and he does.
• 37:13
  Yeah.
• 37:13
  Yeah.
• 37:13
  I was gonna say, I think it's relevant though that he does.
• 37:17
  I agree if you're talking that much, not all of us going to be solid gold.
• 37:22
  And yet I feel like if you recorded me eight hours a day, every day, you would not find me saying America deserved 9-11.
• 37:32
  I'd say a lot of crazy shit, a lot of shit I wouldn't stand behind, but not that crazy.
• 37:37
  I also wouldn't say that I would choose Hamas over Israel.
• 37:43
  I wouldn't say that Crimea should be part of Russian territory.
• 37:47
  There's all sorts of things I wouldn't say, but he has said all those things.
• 37:50
  And they all give a sense of just sort of being.
• 37:59
  negatively disposed to the United States.
• 38:01
  For example, when he said repeatedly, I hate America.
• 38:04
  It sounds like I'm paraphrasing.
• 38:06
  I'm not.
• 38:07
  That's a sentence he spoke.
• 38:09
  That's like a scene from The Simpsons or something.
• 38:12
  Like, Mr. Piker, is it true that you hate America?
• 38:16
  He's like, absolutely not.
• 38:18
  Is it true that you said... Well, then what about your shirt?
• 38:20
  Oh, this?
• 38:21
  Exactly.
• 38:23
  The I hate America t-shirt.
• 38:24
  Yeah, it's that level.
• 38:25
  Yes, he said, I hate America.
• 38:27
  And then he, you know...
• 38:29
  His supporters will often say, well, context.
• 38:31
  You're taking it out of context.
• 38:32
  He said that, and then he bragged about how he has the balls to say it.
• 38:36
  The context was he says it and means it.
• 38:39
  Other people, they mean it, but they don't have the balls to say it.
• 38:42
  So there's your context.
• 38:44
  Yeah.
• 38:44
  And that is the type of stuff.
• 38:47
  That Elsa now has to try to distance himself from.
• 38:50
  Whereas you're right with Harrison Cheney, you can appeal to without owning every belief that Liz Cheney holds.
• 38:59
  And Harris very obviously doesn't hold many of those beliefs, but you can appeal to the core sense of American identity that specifically.
• 39:07
  The person who wins the election takes office.
• 39:10
  You don't try to incite a riot.
• 39:13
  I like that one.
• 39:14
  You guys did good on that one.
• 39:16
  There are a bunch of other ones.
• 39:17
  Thanks, man.
• 39:18
  Yeah.
• 39:18
  No, you deserve a pat on the back.
• 39:20
  I mean – We were early adopters on that one.
• 39:23
  Yes.
• 39:23
  Yes.
• 39:25
  The whole – I mean there's so much to say about the – look.
• 39:31
  I remember PJ O'Rourke used to say that we all know what whiners, rich people are.
• 39:38
  And in a sense, now we're all rich.
• 39:40
  And we're just a bunch of whiners.
• 39:42
  Like in comparison to everybody else who ever existed throughout history, we just have too much shit and too much spare time and not enough big problems.
• 39:52
  You know, yes, big global problems we have where we can swipe and look at them 24 hours a day on our stupid devices.
• 39:59
  But actual...
• 40:00
  physical hardship problems of wondering where our next meal is going to come from and how we're going to finish a 16-hour day of backbreaking labor and whether our child who we just gave birth to is going to survive until its second birthday.
• 40:14
  These are not problems that are afflicting the majority of people in Western countries.
• 40:19
  And Hassan just seems like a rich kid with a lot of, you know, talking a lot of shit about how bad stuff is because he has the luxury to.
• 40:28
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:30
  I wrote a piece a couple of years ago called We Need Fewer Heroes, where I was sort of ruminating on the phenomenon you're talking about.
• 40:38
  Our lives are, compared to, I would think, any of our grandparents, unless your grandparent is John D. Rockefeller or something like that, our lives are incredibly easy.
• 40:46
  Jeff, even if your grandparent is John D. Rockefeller, what's crazy is a middle-class American...
• 40:53
  Probably has a better life materially than John D. Rockefeller.
• 40:57
  How many TVs did John D. Rockefeller have?
• 41:00
  You know, if he wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the world on a video call, you know, what did he have to do?
• 41:04
  Yeah, that's right.
• 41:05
  How quickly could he go to Singapore to eat a laksa?
• 41:09
  Some steam-powered thing made of wood that you had to crank, and you get a grainy image from Australia, but it comes in two weeks after the fact.
• 41:18
  You go to a tour of the Palace of Versailles, and you're touring through the old French aristocratic, the king, and you see the king's bed, and you're like, this shitty little thing?
• 41:31
  And it's got a bedpan under it?
• 41:32
  You had to get out of bed and shit into a bucket?
• 41:35
  Yeah.
• 41:36
  He was the fucking king.
• 41:38
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:39
  Sorry, he's shitting a bucket throughout the window.
• 41:41
  And I remember being at Versailles, and I had a weird thought.
• 41:45
  I was looking at the floor.
• 41:46
  I was like, this floor, I like the joints on this floor suck.
• 41:49
  It's because it's all creaky and stuff.
• 41:51
  I was like, yeah, it's one of those floors with pegs and stuff.
• 41:54
  They need the 45-degree staple nailer that we have these days.
• 41:59
  Exactly.
• 41:59
  Even Versailles, I have a better floor in my house right now.
• 42:03
  Yes.
• 42:04
  No water resistance to those old oak floor.
• 42:06
  No, exactly.
• 42:07
  Can you imagine Louis XIV walking down an aisle at Home Depot and looking at the staple guns and just being like, my floor could be so much better?
• 42:18
  Yes.
• 42:18
  What you do with one staple gun, you know, purchasable for like 90 bucks, you would have needed...
• 42:26
  30, 40 peasants and half of them would die.
• 42:29
  That's right.
• 42:29
  And he didn't care about that, but they weren't even as good as the state of gun.
• 42:32
  It did not bother him.
• 42:33
  So yes, we live better than our grandparents and we probably live better than anyone's grandparents.
• 42:39
  Almost.
• 42:39
  Yeah.
• 42:40
  But what I was what I was getting to is because of that, we sometimes seek out crusades, don't we?
• 42:46
  And I feel like that is a type that I think is maybe one of the most destructive types in politics, the people who want to be on a crusade because, man, they get carried away fast.
• 42:58
  And, man, they can be talked over to absolutist and extreme viewpoints quickly because in their heads, that's.
• 43:07
  justified because they have created a dragon that they feel the need to slay.
• 43:13
  Yep.
• 43:13
  It troubles me immensely, Jeff, that there seems to be only two modes of politics at the moment, which is that mode of the crusader who's going to burn everything down and make things right, a kind of a revolutionary, whether that's on the far left like Hassan or whether that is like what has become now, at least in America, the mainstream revolution.
• 43:35
  force on the right where, you know, the fuddy-duddy old conservatives of Mitt Romney's era and, like, you know, the Colin Powells and Brent Scowcrofts of the world are just, you know, gone.
• 43:46
  And everything is sort of a Tucker-infused, like, Fuentes shitpost-y kind of MAGA kaleidoscope.
• 43:56
  Or you have incredibly cautious, boring political figures who are anodyne blocks of cheese on a stick who just seem interchangeable.
• 44:07
  Certainly outside of the States, this is true.
• 44:10
  In Australian politics, British politics...
• 44:15
  Man, the establishment figures are so boring.
• 44:19
  And it's no wonder that people want a little bit of a sparkle when they start dabbling in populism.
• 44:26
  Because can't they?
• 44:28
  I don't know.
• 44:29
  Where's the Clinton or Obama of our age or the Blair, like the articulate defender of traditional liberalism?
• 44:42
  Well, great question.
• 44:45
  I hope it ends up being John Ossoff.
• 44:47
  Early days.
• 44:48
  Talk to me about John Ossoff.
• 44:50
  What do I need to know?
• 44:53
  He talked good.
• 44:55
  That fellow talked good.
• 44:57
  He's good at talking.
• 44:58
  Wait, I don't... You're going into too much detail about American politics.
• 45:02
  I keep telling you.
• 45:03
  We have to get back to where the Great Barrier Reef and the New Zealand Alps are located latitudinally.
• 45:08
  John Ossoff is a...
• 45:10
  John Ossoff is a senator from Georgia.
• 45:12
  He's served one term.
• 45:13
  He's up for reelection in 2026.
• 45:16
  And he's a Democrat.
• 45:17
  And he's a young-ish guy.
• 45:21
  I mean, Jesus Christ, I think he's younger than me.
• 45:23
  I'm 46.
• 45:24
  Actually, I know he's younger than me because my wife went to school with him.
• 45:28
  She went to junior high with him.
• 45:31
  So he is a bit younger than me.
• 45:33
  Like when people – here's a quick aside, but we'll get back to John Ossoff.
• 45:38
  The thing I never knew when I was an adolescent, and this will sound very, very stupid, but maybe after you've slept on it for a couple of days, you'll come to realize what I'm talking about, is I knew I would get older.
• 45:52
  But I didn't quite think through that that meant that other people would then come up underneath and be the new younger people.
• 46:02
  Like I'd never quite clocked that until I got into my 30s really.
• 46:06
  And then I was like, oh, I mean, I knew I'd get older, but I thought I would still remain the vanguard of what's hip.
• 46:15
  Because it's a, it's a, yeah, it's a brutal realization.
• 46:19
  And for me, it hit me hardest with sports.
• 46:23
  When you, uh, start seeing, you know, you know, for me, it's like, I'm in my, when I was in my late twenties or late early thirties, and I started to seeing college athletes who were born in like 1994 and it just looked wrong.
• 46:37
  I was like, ha, they've messed up the graphic.
• 46:39
  He can't be born in 1994.
• 46:41
  That would be a baby.
• 46:43
  Fuck.
• 46:43
  That's correct.
• 46:44
  Yeah.
• 46:45
  That's right.
• 46:45
  Yeah.
• 46:46
  And worse still.
• 46:47
  Everyone in the World Cup, except for Messi and Ronaldo, was born in like 2017.
• 46:53
  And I don't know if people realize that.
• 46:56
  But that's how it seems.
• 46:57
  That is true.
• 46:57
  They are all nine years of age.
• 46:59
  Messi and Ronaldo, they're like, you know, Messi's 39.
• 47:02
  They're like, 39!
• 47:03
  Well, that's what I was going to say.
• 47:05
  It's still out there.
• 47:05
  To me, it's... Has it turned to dust?
• 47:07
  To me, the indignity is less that there are people younger than me who are at the Olympics because I feel like there's always been 14-year-old Russian girls doing gymnastics at the Olympics.
• 47:17
  And I know that I'm not an elite athlete, so that was never going to be me.
• 47:23
  But when you hear them start to talk about how old these ancient athletes are and they're 32 –
• 47:31
  You know, you couldn't possibly play tennis past the age of 32.
• 47:34
  You know, your body is basically ready for the grave.
• 47:39
  You're on life support.
• 47:40
  Yeah.
• 47:41
  And then you go, well, yeah, OK. Not only and there are all kinds of all these people.
• 47:46
  And then you start doing the maths in your head of like, well, how old?
• 47:49
  Well, maybe I'm just a late bloomer.
• 47:52
  Maybe not athletics-wise, but how old was so-and-so when he did such-and-such?
• 47:57
  And for a while, I would take great solace that Ricky Gervais was just – he was a loser doing radio shows that nobody listened to when he was 40.
• 48:08
  And then he wrote The Office.
• 48:11
  But now we can't even do that because now you and I are older than he was when he created The Office, Jeff.
• 48:16
  I know.
• 48:17
  Yes, that's right.
• 48:19
  He was as late as it was late bloomers now.
• 48:21
  Yeah.
• 48:22
  Then you have to start scraping the bottom of the barrel and you're like, well, what about like Nick Nolte?
• 48:26
  Wasn't he 60?
• 48:27
  There are a couple.
• 48:32
  One late bloomer I know is literal grandma Moses, which doesn't.
• 48:36
  really make you feel much better because she's got grandma in her name the name also grandma moses didn't make it to australia i'm sorry what is what you learn sometimes i will get like angry when i learned that like newton was 23 yeah when he created calculus it's like fuck you just fuck you man i mean you know i'd have to look it up
• 48:58
  But the man was probably dead by the time he was your age, Jeff.
• 49:01
  You know, it's like Benjamin Franklin was like, you know, he died at the age of 32 after having done everything.
• 49:08
  Everyone who wrote the U.S. Constitution was like 26.
• 49:10
  I know.
• 49:12
  Shit.
• 49:12
  I know.
• 49:13
  What am I doing?
• 49:14
  All right.
• 49:14
  So John Ossoff.
• 49:15
  Sometimes.
• 49:16
  Yes.
• 49:16
  Oh, yeah.
• 49:17
  John Ossoff.
• 49:17
  He was born in 2021.
• 49:20
  Josh, we are at the age where we could complain about the youngs forever.
• 49:24
  So you're right to cut it off.
• 49:25
  Yes.
• 49:26
  John Ossoff, if elected president, would be younger than me.
• 49:30
  So he's running for Senate again in Georgia.
• 49:32
  This would be his second term.
• 49:34
  He is favored to win.
• 49:36
  Georgia is a state that is it's right.
• 49:39
  It's basically a coin toss could go either way in this particular cycle because Trump is so unpopular.
• 49:45
  Yeah.
• 49:46
  Take every state – any state that's a 50-50, it's now like an 80-20 for the Democrat.
• 49:50
  And Ossoff is doing much better than that.
• 49:53
  Wait, it's an 80-20 for the Democrat?
• 49:56
  You're joking, right?
• 49:57
  I mean it's like a 50 – it'll be a 51.5.
• 50:01
  For this cycle only, if a state that was 50-50 in the midterm elections, I would say it would be about 80-20 for the Democrat because Trump's very unpopular.
• 50:10
  Okay.
• 50:11
  But I mean, I thought even when I thought even landslides these days in the United States were three people crossing over to the other side and the partisanship was so intense.
• 50:19
  I don't mean the Democrat is going to get 80% of the vote when I say 80-20.
• 50:24
  I see what you're saying.
• 50:25
  Yes, yes.
• 50:25
  I'm saying it's 80% probability that the Democrat would be your regular down the road Democrat.
• 50:30
  Got it.
• 50:31
  Not correct.
• 50:32
  Not that they would get 80%.
• 50:32
  I see.
• 50:33
  There's an 80% chance that they'll get 50.1%.
• 50:38
  Correct.
• 50:39
  Exactly.
• 50:40
  But with Ossoff, because he's a good candidate, I would say there's a 98%, 99%.
• 50:45
  I'm surely jinxing him by saying that.
• 50:47
  I like that we're just making numbers up at this stage.
• 50:50
  Sure, why not?
• 50:52
  This is the kind of rock-solid political analysis that I come to your Substack for, Jeff.
• 50:58
  Yes.
• 50:58
  Yeah, but you're right that I am tossing numbers out, but I am tossing them out from reading very analytical sites like Silver Bolton is a favorite of mine.
• 51:11
  So you're not shooting them out of your butthole.
• 51:14
  You're kind of just snorting them out of your nose.
• 51:20
  To stick with the metaphor, it is coming out of my ass, but it was placed there by reputable sources.
• 51:28
  Right.
• 51:29
  Okay.
• 51:29
  There was a suppository.
• 51:31
  It wasn't just digested.
• 51:32
  It wasn't masticated food.
• 51:33
  Exactly.
• 51:33
  A surgical procedure involving Nate Cohn and Nate Silver and other people named Nate.
• 51:37
  Right.
• 51:37
  But yes, the numbers are looking good for Osif is the point.
• 51:40
  And the numbers are looking good because I think he's a good politician and he's a very likable young man.
• 51:47
  And some of his speeches have gone viral on Twitter.
• 51:53
  It's kind of funny.
• 51:55
  These speeches, I listen to them and I think that's like a good sane thing to say.
• 52:02
  They're mostly about how Trump is a bad president and America can do better.
• 52:07
  And I will listen to that message and I think, yeah, I agree with that.
• 52:09
  So on the one hand, it's like it's not groundbreaking.
• 52:11
  It's not like, whoa, you just blew my mind.
• 52:13
  It's a very...
• 52:15
  um acceptable i think good thing to say but people are reacting to it as if it is some groundbreaking thing but i think that's because of the environment we're in now where it's just like that seems like a normal sane person and it's a classic in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king situation normal sane person
• 52:34
  takes you a long way in politics.
• 52:36
  I mean, the problem is- So he's got some heat right now.
• 52:37
  There's only so far that that'll take you.
• 52:39
  I mean, that might be the right strategy for the 2026 midterm cycle, where you can just rely on a whole bunch of disaffected anti-Trump voters coming out.
• 52:49
  But it doesn't solve the underlying problem of the cleavage between crazies and lackluster establishment people, right?
• 52:58
  Because you need to find whatever the next-
• 53:01
  It's not going to be the same as Obama or Blair or Clinton, but what Obama was in 2007 or 2005 even with his stump speech about how there is no red America and there is no blue America, there is no white America and there is no black America, there is just the United States of America and cue the roar of the crowd –
• 53:24
  You know, someone has to come through with that, the stuff that gives you the tingle in the spine and, you know, makes your loins stir a little.
• 53:30
  Not just like, I'm not Trump and I'm a young, handsome white man who's articulate.
• 53:36
  Well, he put it better than I did.
• 53:38
  Again, look at the speech.
• 53:39
  Okay, I'll look at the speech.
• 53:42
  People are saying it's Obama-esque in that it is a hopeful, very pro-America message.
• 53:50
  It puts you in a good mood.
• 53:51
  It's the rare political speech that will put you in a good mood.
• 53:55
  What about that governor, Wesley Moore?
• 53:58
  Is that his name?
• 53:59
  My governor.
• 54:00
  Yeah, Wes Moore.
• 54:01
  I live in Maryland.
• 54:01
  Wes Moore.
• 54:02
  Yeah, I'm just outside of D.C.
• 54:04
  I saw him interviewed a couple of years ago on a show, and I thought, this guy's great.
• 54:08
  He's going places he could be the president.
• 54:09
  He seemed like he's a military guy.
• 54:12
  He's not woke.
• 54:13
  He's black.
• 54:14
  He's progressive.
• 54:16
  He's like common sense.
• 54:17
  I was like, yeah, sure.
• 54:21
  I also like Westmore.
• 54:23
  Again, he is my governor.
• 54:24
  Now, I haven't lived in the state long, but yes, he's got some game.
• 54:28
  He's got some game.
• 54:30
  And –
• 54:32
  He's got some testosterone.
• 54:34
  Yeah.
• 54:34
  Which is kind of a rare thing sometimes.
• 54:37
  And, you know, I'm a Democrat, so I feel like I can say this.
• 54:40
  Kind of a rare thing in our party.
• 54:41
  Yeah.
• 54:42
  Sometimes.
• 54:45
  He is a military guy and works out.
• 54:48
  And you can tell.
• 54:50
  And seems like a normal dude with a...
• 54:52
  Does he pass the Pete Hegseth workout test?
• 54:56
  That's the question.
• 54:57
  Does he... Is he muscular enough to...
• 55:00
  to inflict virile damage and life-shattering fury, like tossing Thor-like lightsabers the way that Hegseth wants the American military to.
• 55:12
  And if he can, I'm voting for him.
• 55:15
  He seems to be physically the rare guy who could meet Pete Hegseth's high, high, high, high, high standards for physical fitness.
• 55:24
  He's a big dude.
• 55:25
  He's a big – yeah, he's army.
• 55:27
  He's a big dude.
• 55:27
  Yeah, yeah, good.
• 55:28
  All right, so between Wes and John Ossoff, we're okay.
• 55:31
  Now getting back to your question about – it wasn't your question.
• 55:34
  I made the question up.
• 55:35
  But getting back to your question about the Muslim population of relative jurisdictions –
• 55:41
  You says to me, you says that Al-Sayed in Michigan is in a state that has this supposedly massive Muslim population, which you said was 2% of the population, did you say?
• 55:52
  2.4%.
• 55:53
  2.4%.
• 55:53
  That's what Google says.
• 55:54
  2.4% of the population says Google, which is probably wrong because in my Googling about this, I realized that the United States census does not ask for religious information.
• 56:03
  So it's a guess.
• 56:05
  But anyway.
• 56:07
  I'm trying to see where they got it from.
• 56:09
  The Australian census does ask about religion.
• 56:13
  Oh, okay.
• 56:15
  The population of Australia that is Muslim, do you want to guess?
• 56:24
  Percentage of Australia is Muslim.
• 56:25
  And you said the United States was 1.
• 56:27
  1 to 1.3%.
• 56:27
  1 to 1.3%.
• 56:33
  Again, I'm just going off of what Google tells me.
• 56:36
  But that is consistent with what I knew.
• 56:38
  Australia, you're near Indonesia.
• 56:43
  See?
• 56:43
  I'm going to say.
• 56:44
  You're doing the geography now.
• 56:45
  You're doing the geography in your head.
• 56:48
  You're down there in the upside down part of the globe.
• 56:51
  I'm going to say 4%.
• 56:52
  3.2%.
• 56:58
  You're pretty good.
• 56:59
  And actually, you're even closer if you exclude the states where nobody lives.
• 57:05
  So if you just look at my state, the most populous state where Sydney is located, which is called New South Wales, 4% to 5%.
• 57:14
  So that's interesting that it's considerably more.
• 57:18
  And it's not that Indonesians swim here.
• 57:22
  I know that you think that that happens.
• 57:25
  It's another thing you're good at, swimming.
• 57:26
  We see you in the Olympics.
• 57:28
  Exactly.
• 57:28
  You're very aquatic people.
• 57:29
  Yeah.
• 57:30
  So maybe if Australia doesn't exist, then we have two professions, both entertainment and swimming.
• 57:38
  It's mostly Lebanese, Pakistani, Turkish, Indonesian, and Arab Australians, including Syrians, Afghans, and East Africans as well.
• 57:49
  So there you go.
• 57:50
  Welcome back to Demographics with Jeff and Josh.
• 57:55
  How many Zoroastrians are in Peru?
• 57:59
  Let's find that one out next.
• 58:01
  Can I ask you a question, Josh?
• 58:02
  Please.
• 58:03
  You used the word establishment.
• 58:04
  I'm asking because I'm sort of collecting data on this.
• 58:07
  What does the word establishment mean to you?
• 58:09
  When you're talking about establishment politicians, you said they're very boring.
• 58:11
  What does establishment mean?
• 58:13
  It means to me... Well, let me start with not just the political version of how I would use the word.
• 58:18
  The establishment, when I use that word, means a loose alliance of cultural thought leaders across politics, academia, the media, public policymakers, political staffers, newspaper editors, you know, the class of people who...
• 58:40
  sort of set and police the rules of the cultural conversation and have a strong vested interest in maintaining a status quo and keeping things on an even keel.
• 58:58
  And so in politics, I regard establishment politicians as people who are keen to toe a party line, to maintain party unity, to not embrace major changes.
• 59:15
  to not rock the boat.
• 59:17
  So they would tend to be the leaders of political parties and you, the kind of bureaucracy that the edifice of bureaucracy that underlies that in contrast to, you know, populists or dissenters or, you know, troublemakers or whatever.
• 59:32
  Yeah.
• 59:33
  That, that is a, a,
• 59:36
  Very good definition.
• 59:38
  I put you on the spot for sure.
• 59:39
  And you came up with a good definition that's consistent with what I know and what a lot of people say.
• 59:45
  So can I let me throw out what I think is confusing me, though.
• 59:49
  And I'm not disagreeing with your definition, because like I said, it's very much in line with what I hear a lot of people say.
• 59:56
  If we're talking about American politics, and we are because I'm an American, and I'm sorry, Josh, I don't know anything about Australian politics.
• 1:00:03
  So this is what the parameters of the conversation are going to have to be.
• 1:00:06
  If we're talking about American politics, people talk about the establishment a lot.
• 1:00:10
  And like I said, their definition is frequently very much in line with what you just described, the people who have the ability to set the agenda, influence the conversation, hold power, decide what we talk about, what we say about it, and ultimately what we do.
• 1:00:25
  It has something to do with power, right?
• 1:00:27
  It has something to do with power and decision-making authority and status, right?
• 1:00:32
  Yes.
• 1:00:32
  They'll say that.
• 1:00:34
  And then in the next breath, they will say, all of the energy right now, all of the momentum
• 1:00:42
  is with the populists.
• 1:00:43
  The young people are populist, especially the young people on TikTok and Instagram and stuff.
• 1:00:49
  They're populist.
• 1:00:50
  The Republican Party has gone over largely to populist, as you noted.
• 1:00:54
  And the implication when you're speaking with someone on the left is that, and now Democrats need to follow suit if they want to remain relevant.
• 1:01:01
  They've got to get with Democrats
• 1:01:04
  what's happening now.
• 1:01:05
  They've got to get with the new generation.
• 1:01:07
  They've got to it's often there's an age component to it.
• 1:01:09
  We've got to toss out the old and bring in the new.
• 1:01:12
  And the new is populist and anti-establishment and insurgent and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:01:18
  And those two statements don't compute to me.
• 1:01:22
  If the new thing is what we have to do,
• 1:01:28
  follow.
• 1:01:29
  If that's the thing we have to chase, we have to adopt their views and do what they want.
• 1:01:34
  If they've got that kind of heat, then aren't they the establishment?
• 1:01:38
  I think there are some ways we can see that tangibly.
• 1:01:41
  I used to work in media.
• 1:01:42
  Like you said, I wrote for John Oliver for a long time.
• 1:01:45
  It's a very progressive space, very progressive left, a lot of DSA types, people literally in the DSA, people who are fellow travelers with the DSA.
• 1:01:55
  So there you have people in media with a fucking TV show that goes out internationally who would still say we're against the establishment.
• 1:02:06
  We're insurgents.
• 1:02:06
  It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:02:07
  You have a TV show.
• 1:02:09
  And in the same way in politics, you have operatives, you have money, you have all of the things that we would associate with the establishment backing certain candidates.
• 1:02:21
  One candidate they chose was Graham Plattner in Maine, the anti-establishment guy who people probably even on Australia know.
• 1:02:29
  There were a lot of troubling things about him from his Reddit post to a tattoo that was Nazi iconography that he said he didn't understand.
• 1:02:39
  And people said, no, we think you do know what it means.
• 1:02:42
  And there were a lot of troubling things about him.
• 1:02:44
  And then eventually a very credible rape accusation came out.
• 1:02:46
  And that was the end of that.
• 1:02:48
  The people who brought that insurgent candidate, that disastrous insurgent candidate into the fold, got him to win the Democratic primary in Maine.
• 1:03:00
  How are they not the establishment if they are political operatives with money and influence and the ability to pluck a candidate from obscurity and give them to win the primary in Maine?
• 1:03:09
  How are they not the establishment?
• 1:03:11
  I think you're pointing to an interesting tension, a couple of things.
• 1:03:17
  You can have a –
• 1:03:19
  legacy establishment that has waning power and a new establishment to be that may be more powerful but is not yet established enough to be an establishment.
• 1:03:33
  So you could have a transition period, right, where in 2010 –
• 1:03:41
  The New York Times and the LA Times were the establishment media and the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed were not the establishment, but more people were reading the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed than either of those newspapers and those newspapers had to figure out.
• 1:03:58
  how to change that.
• 1:03:59
  And one of those newspapers did and the other one didn't.
• 1:04:02
  And, you know, so one is no, the LA Times is no longer really the establishment and the New York Times is still the establishment and HuffPost no longer is the anti-establishment.
• 1:04:12
  So it's like a moving, it's a shifting thing.
• 1:04:16
  But I think the relevant thing when people talk about the establishment – and I'm not saying that everybody who does talk about the establishment is using it in this nuanced way.
• 1:04:24
  It's often just a punchline.
• 1:04:25
  It reminds me a bit of the conversation about elites, right?
• 1:04:29
  Trump is the anti-elite guy.
• 1:04:31
  He's always banging on about elites and Hillary Clinton is part of the elite and all this.
• 1:04:37
  He's a rich guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
• 1:04:40
  Who is –
• 1:04:41
  Who is not elite if not Donald Trump?
• 1:04:43
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:04:45
  He gets to go to a private school and get out of the draft and all the things that you would normally code as being elite.
• 1:04:51
  Inherited a few million dollars.
• 1:04:53
  Inherits money, puts gold on everything.
• 1:04:54
  Born and raised in New York City.
• 1:04:55
  Yeah.
• 1:04:56
  So, but there's a cult.
• 1:04:58
  There is, he's not crazy and his followers were not wrong to identify something about a class of thinking
• 1:05:09
  that was elitist in a way that he is not elitist, that was smug and self-certain and sanctimonious and censorious, right, in a way that he isn't.
• 1:05:23
  And that was what I think he meant by elite.
• 1:05:26
  And similarly, the establishment...
• 1:05:29
  is as much a vibe and as much a sort of a culture of...
• 1:05:35
  I think in politics, it also probably includes a component of the kinds of people who...
• 1:05:40
  The Tracy Flicks of the world who are born to become like a politician.
• 1:05:45
  The kind of Hillary Clinton energy of like, you know, I'm going to, I'm never going to put a foot wrong and I'm always going to say the right thing and I'm going to be the star pupil in my class and someday I'm going to grow up to be president of the United States versus the Graham Plattners who just blunder into it.
• 1:06:01
  and have, you know, and reek of authenticity, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, who are the anti-establishment ones.
• 1:06:08
  What you're pointing to about the elites who tapped Platner is an interesting thing, which is that when the elites or establishment or whatever you want to call it can smell an uprising in the air and they're terrified of the peasants revolting, they make stupid decisions and try to get in bed with
• 1:06:28
  you know, anti-establishment candidates or they try to become phony anti-establishment candidates.
• 1:06:33
  All of a sudden, someone who went to Princeton or Harvard is talking with a Southern drawl and trying to, you know, we all know this game.
• 1:06:40
  Hillary Clinton's pulling hot sauce packets out of her handbag on radio shows and podcasts.
• 1:06:47
  We have the same phenomenon here in Australia where the prime minister.
• 1:06:50
  I'm sure you did.
• 1:06:51
  Who declined my invitation to come on my show before the last election, but went on another podcast, which was...
• 1:06:58
  He went on a series of podcasts that were non-intellectual, female-watched, female-led, frivolous pop culture podcasts.
• 1:07:08
  And, you know, God bless them.
• 1:07:09
  There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing shows like that.
• 1:07:11
  But for the prime minister to go on...
• 1:07:14
  and suffer weeks of embarrassment because of a faux pas that he made, which was a stupid faux pas and an own goal that he didn't need to blunder into, but went into in an attempt for a fuddy-duddy, you know, older white man to try to curry favour with the young cool kids.
• 1:07:33
  It's exactly that kind of tension that you're pointing to, which is like, oh my goodness, we have to do things that are young and cool because all the kids are on TikTok.
• 1:07:41
  Yeah.
• 1:07:42
  And you go on and it just doesn't work.
• 1:07:45
  It's like either you have to be a really good establishment person or you have to be a really good insurgent person.
• 1:07:55
  But establishment people can't pretend to be insurgents.
• 1:07:59
  And in the other direction, I think nobody would want, no insurgent would want to necessarily be establishment officers.
• 1:08:03
  Although that's not true.
• 1:08:04
  Nigel Farage is trying to do the opposite thing, right, where he's trying to go from being an insurgent to being prime minister material.
• 1:08:10
  And that doesn't work for him either because he's had too many allegedly shady dealings to live up to the standards of what the Tracy Flick establishment candidate would have abided by throughout the course of their life with their eye on the prize of leading the country.
• 1:08:26
  So it's all right that it's messy, but I don't think that that means that the distinction doesn't exist.
• 1:08:33
  I would say Hassan Piker is another one who now wants mainstream credibility.
• 1:08:38
  You can tell just by what he's wearing.
• 1:08:39
  He's wearing a lot of glasses these days, wearing a lot of suits and ties these days.
• 1:08:44
  He's dressing the way you would dress if you went to a publicist and said, make me look like a smart person.
• 1:08:51
  Make me look like an intellectual.
• 1:08:53
  Yeah.
• 1:08:53
  because I'm tired of being seen as a cloud and I want smart people to like me.
• 1:08:56
  Right.
• 1:08:57
  You're also right that it's not going to work.
• 1:08:59
  No, any smart person can see through his act.
• 1:09:01
  He said way too many stupid things and continues to say them.
• 1:09:04
  So it's not going to work.
• 1:09:06
  It is as ineffective as you're right.
• 1:09:10
  Taking a, a candidate who is a, you know, look, as a speechwriter, you know, you're a cloistered weirdo.
• 1:09:16
  You went to, uh,
• 1:09:18
  little fancy lad university and you know, the day school for a velvet pantaloon where fancy boys, and you're just, you're not a person of the people and it's who you are.
• 1:09:29
  And you're right.
• 1:09:30
  That if one of your handlers goes to you and says, you know, here are the things you do.
• 1:09:35
  You eat this food and you talk about this musician person, this rap man.
• 1:09:40
  And you, why is the anti-Semitic caricature of a conniving Jew?
• 1:09:45
  What's going on here?
• 1:09:47
  You,
• 1:09:47
  Here's what you need to do to make the money.
• 1:09:52
  Oh, God.
• 1:09:53
  How is the... God.
• 1:09:54
  How is...
• 1:09:56
  I'm just observing.
• 1:09:59
  We need consistent standards for these things.
• 1:10:01
  Just observing your rampant anti-Semitism.
• 1:10:05
  But that's fine.
• 1:10:06
  I mean, uncomfortable conversations and all.
• 1:10:08
  You're allowed to express whatever points of view.
• 1:10:10
  Wait, wait.
• 1:10:10
  How did I stumble into – how am I getting the accusation of anti-Semitism here?
• 1:10:14
  Because the voice that you put on with the alleged publicist who Hassan Piker hired to make him look intelligent –
• 1:10:21
  It was a bit dewy.
• 1:10:23
  It was like, here's what you need to do.
• 1:10:24
  It was a bit dewy.
• 1:10:25
  It was a bit dewy.
• 1:10:26
  To look smart.
• 1:10:27
  To look like you're a book learner.
• 1:10:32
  Well, hey, it was more like Hollywood entertainment.
• 1:10:37
  Okay.
• 1:10:38
  But you're also- I know what you're saying.
• 1:10:39
  But this is a problem I stumbled into on my book.
• 1:10:40
  Hollywood money.
• 1:10:41
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:42
  Okay, George Soros.
• 1:10:43
  This is a problem I stumbled into on my book.
• 1:10:44
  Yeah, there's a problem I stumbled into on my podcast one time.
• 1:10:47
  I was doing, and this wasn't like a premeditated bit, I was just riffing.
• 1:10:52
  And I wanted to do an old, because, you know, I do this segment on my podcast news from 100 years ago.
• 1:10:59
  So it was a, you know, Hollywood story, and I wanted to do a, you know, movie producer in the 1920s.
• 1:11:04
  And whenever one of these things happens, I, you know, quick go run it by my wife, because she's Jewish.
• 1:11:08
  I'm like, thoughts on this?
• 1:11:10
  But, um...
• 1:11:12
  I thought, how do I not make that character kind of Jewish?
• 1:11:16
  Very hot.
• 1:11:16
  Because the heads of the studios in the 20s, they literally were Jewish.
• 1:11:22
  And I thought it's way worse if I do like a waspy voice, because then it's like erasure.
• 1:11:28
  That's true.
• 1:11:29
  I read this article one time, which was so funny to me.
• 1:11:33
  And I wish I remembered who wrote it, but it was a Jewish writer.
• 1:11:36
  And the title of the article is all tongue in cheek, but the title of the article was You're Goddamn Right, Jews Run Hollywood.
• 1:11:41
  And it was about like, can we get some fucking credit?
• 1:11:44
  We're killing it out there.
• 1:11:46
  So what was the voice that you ended up doing for your 1920s producer?
• 1:11:51
  It was definitely – do you know Andy Kindler, a stand-up I used to work with?
• 1:11:58
  I loved Andy.
• 1:11:59
  I loved Andy.
• 1:12:01
  Yeah, he'd get very angry and he'd yell.
• 1:12:04
  It was that kind of thing.
• 1:12:06
  Right, right, right.
• 1:12:07
  Because you also have the 1920s, you have the non-Jewish 1920s.
• 1:12:10
  And there's that, there's a little of that in there.
• 1:12:12
  You can always do that one.
• 1:12:13
  I don't think that codes is Jewish.
• 1:12:14
  You got Moxie, kid.
• 1:12:15
  There's that voice.
• 1:12:16
  Exactly.
• 1:12:17
  So yes, that.
• 1:12:18
  Andy.
• 1:12:19
  And there's a little Jackie Mason in there.
• 1:12:20
  Andy has one of my favorite bits, which is about, he's walking along the street and he walks past a piano store.
• 1:12:29
  And he says, what makes a person think of going into the piano store business?
• 1:12:37
  Hmm.
• 1:12:37
  Let's see.
• 1:12:38
  What can I sell that almost nobody knows how to use that costs a fortune and takes up a tremendous amount of space?
• 1:12:51
  Yeah.
• 1:12:52
  I love it.
• 1:12:54
  It's a very good bit.
• 1:12:55
  Andy and I had a spat, and then he was unkind to me on a podcast.
• 1:13:00
  We had a spat about Sam Harris because it was about Islam, and Andy, God bless his soul, and I have tremendous respect for the guy.
• 1:13:10
  I love the guy.
• 1:13:10
  I think he's really a comic genius.
• 1:13:12
  But he was basically –
• 1:13:17
  arguing on my podcast, and this was long ago now, this must have been 2016, 2017.
• 1:13:23
  He was basically arguing that there was no religious basis for jihadism.
• 1:13:29
  And I was just trying to call out that I understand the reasons why he would want to say that because he doesn't want to sound like he's bigoted towards Muslims.
• 1:13:36
  And we're not in any way saying that this is a problem of all Muslims.
• 1:13:40
  But for us to get our arms around the problem, we probably have to be able to speak plainly about it.
• 1:13:45
  He was going off – he got quite heated about how like –
• 1:13:48
  I think he said, like, my mother is a religious person and I take offense at your characterization of religion as being stupid.
• 1:13:58
  And I was like, but if she's religious enough to believe stupid things, then that is stupid.
• 1:14:03
  And then he, I think, went on Sam Seder's show and said that I had called his mother stupid.
• 1:14:07
  But it wasn't – I hadn't really.
• 1:14:10
  But anyway.
• 1:14:11
  But I love you, Andy.
• 1:14:12
  Nothing good happens on Sam Seder's show.
• 1:14:17
  I haven't seen Andy in a long time.
• 1:14:18
  It's been well over a decade.
• 1:14:20
  And we were never like fast friends.
• 1:14:22
  But I worked with him a couple of times and he was always very nice to me.
• 1:14:25
  He's super nice and super well-meaning.
• 1:14:28
  His heart's totally in the right place and I regret that we had him falling out.
• 1:14:31
  I see him on social media and he's very adamant in his beliefs.
• 1:14:38
  And I'm not surprised he'd be on like Sam Sater's show.
• 1:14:40
  Yeah.
• 1:14:41
  And I'm not surprised he had strong opinions about Sam Harris.
• 1:14:44
  Passionate gentleman.
• 1:14:45
  Yeah.
• 1:14:45
  Yeah.
• 1:14:46
  Yes.
• 1:14:47
  All right.
• 1:14:47
  Well, Jeff, you're a passionate gentleman.
• 1:14:49
  I think we've solved.
• 1:14:50
  Have we solved all the problems of the world?
• 1:14:52
  Are there any other outstanding problems that we have to solve?
• 1:14:55
  I don't think so.
• 1:14:56
  No.
• 1:14:57
  Good.
• 1:14:59
  Fabulous.
• 1:14:59
  Well, thanks again.
• 1:15:01
  And I'll see you in Washington, D.C. maybe.
• 1:15:05
  Maybe I'll make it down.
• 1:15:06
  Or maybe you'll make it up to New York.
• 1:15:08
  I'll be in the States for a little bit in a few weeks' time.
• 1:15:11
  So, you know, jump on the older cellar.
• 1:15:15
  Give me a ring-a-ding-ding on the old jingle-jangle.
• 1:15:19
  Yeah, likewise.
• 1:15:19
  Go get a beer.
• 1:15:21
  It'll be smaller than you're used to.
• 1:15:23
  Yeah, it'll be small.
• 1:15:25
  You don't drink them warm?
• 1:15:28
  No.
• 1:15:28
  We've already established that this is a hot climate.
• 1:15:31
  Why would we?
• 1:15:33
  I'm reminding you again.
• 1:15:35
  The Brits, they drink it warm.
• 1:15:38
  I know.
• 1:15:38
  That's because it's never been more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the UK and not rainy.
• 1:15:45
  So they have to console themselves somehow.
• 1:15:48
  No, we'll have a cold beer and we'll go and harass Jesse Singel and throw things at his house.
• 1:15:52
  Oh, that's a great idea.
• 1:15:54
  So if people don't know Jeff, they should follow Jeff's sub stack.
• 1:15:57
  You can probably do that by clicking on some kind of a link.
• 1:16:01
  And if you don't know me, then you should follow Uncomfortable Conversations and get more incredible content like this.
• 1:16:08
  Thank you, Jeff.
• 1:16:10
  Thanks, Josh.
• 1:16:11
  Take care.