Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Slate Political Gabfest" with David Plotz

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"The Slate Political Gabfest" with David Plotz · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the show that doesn't deal in absolutes, that doesn't deal in blacks and whites.
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  So many shows, so many politicians, so many commentators, so much of your social media feed,
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  expects either your agreement or disagreement. Either your furious love or your furious anger.
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  I do not. I ask only that we give each other the benefit of the doubt, that we wrestle with ideas,
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  we reject, as well as those we think are right. Let's escape the dogmas of conventional wisdom.
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  Let's have conversations that straddle the cultural divide and make us all just a little uncutable.
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  Today on the show, if you're a fan of one of the world's most popular political podcasts,
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  the slate political gabfests, then today's guest needs no introduction. If you're not a fan of
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  that podcast, you should be. David Plott's Emily Baselon and CBS's John Dickerson sit down,
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  and they basically had the idea of doing a political podcast that was a bit like the green room
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  at one of the Sunday morning political shows before or after the actual show, where people really
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  say what they believe, instead of what they're supposed to say in soundbites, for the mass media
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  consumption. And that's always been Plott's way. I knew David somewhat when I was living in New
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  York City. He actually was my first guest on my old now-to-funk podcast, Weed of People Live,
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  after the election of Donald Trump. He and I sat down and prognosticated about what could be.
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  Take a listen to some of that exchange. You're pointing to the big, to the elephant in the room
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  here, which is the extent to which Trump is timable. What you're articulating is a pragmatic
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  vision of the Republicans who are conservatives who are flirtatious with Trump on the basis of
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  the fact that they were going to be able to regard him as a willing partner. Andrew Sullivan
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  makes the point that if they haven't been able to, been willing or able to control him up until
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  now, there's no reason to be optimistic that he's going to give a shit what the Chamber of Commerce
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  thinks about tariffs. But it's not that so much as I think Trump, so the two things are at war in
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  Trump. And one is this untameability and kind of the narcissistic, I'm going to do whatever I want.
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  And the other is the laziness that he's not willing. He actually doesn't want to do any work.
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  He wants to appear in public and be grandiose and make massive pronouncements and project power.
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  But he doesn't want to actually do any of the hard work of governing and making decisions.
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  That's not, he's not interested in that. There's that amazing anecdote in one of the stories
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  about Trump from earlier this year when he was reached out to, he reached out to,
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  Kasich, I forget who reached out to him. A campaign manager, I think, Manifort maybe reached out
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  to Kasich and said, would you like to be the vice president? And Kasich said, not really.
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  And Manifort said, well, you know, you'll, you'll, this goes back to my joke at the beginning,
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  you'll be in charge of domestic policy and foreign policy. And Kasich was like, what am I going to
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  mean? What, what, what jurisdiction am I going to have? And so then Kasich said, well, what is
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  Trump going to do? And, and the person said, he's going to make America great again. So Trump
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  doesn't actually, so if you, if you begin with the premise that Trump doesn't actually want to do
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  the work, then it becomes, who is going to do the work? And if it, if the people doing the work
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  in the Trump administration are basically very right-wing conservative politicians and, and their,
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  their minions, then you can sort of predict it's going to be, it's going to be not that different
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  from what a Ted Cruz administration was and somewhat more right-wing than what a George W. Bush
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  administration was, but not massively radically different. That's an interesting point. And I,
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  and this is this kind of, there's one of my big concerns here is that take George W. Bush as an
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  example. There's no, I don't believe that we would have had an Iraq war if it was just up to George
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  W. Bush operating in a vacuum, right? I mean, he was not an experienced foreign policy thinker.
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  And the people he surrounded himself with were experienced foreign policy thinkers. Cheney and
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  Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld had spent every year since the original Gulf War writing op-eds in the
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  national review about how it was a mistake not to go all the way to Baghdad and finish the job.
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  So when they saw an opportunity and a country in crisis and a Middle East that had obviously
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  crossed, crossed a threshold, they took what they'd always wanted to do and they enacted it.
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  My worry is who does Trump then surround himself with on the issue of energy policy which he
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  doesn't give a shit about on the issue of Supreme Court nominees, which he probably doesn't really
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  give a shit about on the issue of foreign policy, which he probably doesn't really give a shit
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  about. I mean, he's not a policy one. He doesn't care about the details, as you say.
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  So that team, if that team is Giuliani, Chris Christie, that's as terrifying as Trump just
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  winging it. I don't know about that. I think that most people, and I think even Giuliani and
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  Christie and Gingrich and Steve Bannon, I would put in a different category, but the politicians
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  who are allied with Trump are loose cannons, but they're more or less, more or less move in the
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  world of right-wing politics. And so they are going to pursue policies. On energy, the policies
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  will be terrible. They're definitely going to be terrible. On the Supreme Court, the nominees
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  will be terrible, horrible right-wing conservative judges. No doubt. But I guess I just don't think,
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  I don't think that Trump is going to... I don't foresee a change on... I don't see a massive change
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  in the nature of what government is and how it operates from him. I guess one thing that will change
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  is that he lies and that he will use the institutions of government to create lies.
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  And so the government, which we rely on, for trusted information, for facts,
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  for careful analysis of the economy and seeing what work and what isn't for counting things
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  correctly, that will no longer become trustworthy. That's going to be terrible. They're all
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  sorts of things they won't for political reasons. They won't allow research on climate change
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  presumably. There'll be things that they just stop doing, which are important information
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  gathering things. But I just don't... I don't think he's going to take us into a massive war
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  anywhere. I don't think he's going to launch nukes. No, I agree. I agree. And so I guess, yeah,
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  as you say that, what occurs to me is that it's probably worth being... It's probably worth not
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  conflating into one big bucket, all of the different spheres of influence and the risks that
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  they entail, right? Because there are some areas of government control over which the executive
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  has power, which are predictable. And you're right, on energy policy, to take just the first one,
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  I pull out my ass, there's not a huge amount that you can do wrong. I mean, you can just be
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  predictably irresponsible on the climate crisis. Yeah, that's what I'll be. Yeah, and there'll be
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  pipelines. They're going to be digging pipelines. There's going to be pipelines. With the exception
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  of a big oil spill or something, you can't really totally fuck up everything on the basis of
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  energy policy, other than to the extent that you encourage climate change.
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  Then there are some areas where there's a lot more uncertainty. So if you think about the
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  NATO security guarantee and our position towards Russia, for example, you know, the, as a non-American,
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  I care deeply about America being the power that upholds the global security guarantee. And that
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  doesn't mean what a lot of critics of this perspective, a lot of American critics often think
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  it does, which is why do we have to be the world's policeman? Why is it always our job to put out
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  all the fires? Why do I kind of other countries deal with their own shit? I understand that.
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  But fundamentally, even if you don't enact the power, that power has to be there as an
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  unstated bedrock of international diplomacy in order to sustain the liberal democracy that has
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  been sustained globally since the Second World War. And he has no interest in that. And no
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  understanding. I don't think of that. But I think, but again, that goes to another laziness.
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  I don't think he gives a shit about it. I don't think it's a major issue for him. I think he
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  said all that stuff about NATO and never thought about it. And then we'll never think about it again
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  and it's not important to him. And so the question is, are the, the kind of generals and the,
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  the defense department or folks that he appoints, are they people who don't believe in the NATO
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  security guarantee? No, it's probably going to be Neocons who love the NATO security guarantee and
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  they're going to, you know, just want us to, to, they're going to be fine with it. They're
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  just going to want to build the military like crazy. This comes down to a question of whether or
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  not his temperament. And that's an overused word in the campaign. But like what you need from
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  a president is a constitution that I think veers towards de-escalation and not taking things
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  personally and not being reactive and not putting your foot in it and not being easily manipulated,
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  right? And in a world in which there are lots of complicated multipolar dynamics going on
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  between Assad and Putin and not China and Korea and Japan, you know, the idea, Putin is playing
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  a game of three-dimensional chess out there with the United States. And I've even been critical
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  of the Obama administration for playing a game of checkers in, on Syria and on Russia. I mean,
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  the strategic thinking and cool-headedness that you want from a commander in chief is going to
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  be lacking in the next president. That is absolutely the case. That is the number one worry.
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  And I think you can, you can see that both in this sort of longer term strategic stuff in the
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  Middle East or other parts of the world in East Asia. And you can also imagine what it might be like
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  in a moment of an ISIS attack on the United States or some, some crisis, some, some security
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  crisis, which has a domestic element, the kind of excessive unbounded, un-incoherent attack,
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  an incoherent response that he might make that would violate norms, that would step on the
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  Constitution. Even with George W. Bush, after 9-11, what he did, you know, we didn't throw
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  thousands of Americans into jail. There were no detention camps set up outside of Pekipsi for
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  Americans to be, you know, hurt it into and for American Muslims weren't rounded up and un-mass.
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  And a Trump crisis, that kind of thing where the executive can act autonomously and with authority
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  is scary. Yeah, I mean, imagine if they were black riots. Imagine if there was another
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  Ferguson and instead of trying to placate, he came out and used that footage and used his
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  appearances on Fox News to put in politically expedient ways. And crises got exacerbated instead
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  of, I don't know, I can, again, I'm sort of collapsing and conflating two separate things.
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  One is the domestic question of whether or not he has authoritarian tendencies and would do
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  things like, you know, I mean, I think it's a bit far fetched to imagine that he would round people
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  up and put them into camps. But you can imagine him consistently opting for expedient ways to
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  use divisiveness to entrench his power and his popularity and to scapegoat others and to never
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  make it about being his fault. Because, you know, he's not, he is not constitutionally capable of
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  saying that he screwed up or even believing that he's, he's screwed up. So you can imagine
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  things getting skewed that way domestically. But really for me, as a non-American, the fact that
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  5% of the population of the world gets to vote on policies that have massive implications for
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  the remaining 95%. And that of those 5%, we're really only talking about voters in the rust belt.
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  I mean, the idea that 52% of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin are the people who are deciding the
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  impact that climate change will have on Bangladeshi farmers and the impact that Putin will have on
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  Estonian free speech activists is weird. Well, sure, but on the other hand, there are 1.3 billion
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  people in China and nobody who decides that, you know, 47 people in a central committee. Yeah,
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  we don't look to China as being, as being an example of the kind of governance that would
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  want to emulate. Yeah, but I don't know. I think we look, this is an election that went horribly
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  awry and it's terrible. And we've chosen the probably literally one of the worst 100 people in
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  the entire country to be president. So that was David plots and me right in the wake of Donald Trump
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  having been elected. We allude to that a little bit on this podcast. But if you want to hear that
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  whole thing, it's a fascinating walk back in time into the headspace of a couple of moderately
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  intelligent analysts of American culture and politics right after that political earthquake.
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  I'm going to release that to subscribers. So if you are a subscriber, then you will get that as
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  an additional piece of bonus content. If you're not a subscriber, this is one more reason why you
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  should subscribe. David now is the founder and CEO of a local news podcast network called Citycast.
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  You'll hear a little bit more about that. But really, I mean, the crowning achievement of his
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  career, what brought him to everybody's attention was when he was the editor of slate,
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  not just as a performer on the slate political gab fest, but from 2008 to 2014. He was the editor
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  of slate magazine, which was a real standout publication at the time for taking an unexpected
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  angle on big news issues. For you never quite knew where they were going to come from. It wasn't,
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  you know, it wasn't like, you sort of know, you can kind of predict where the New York Times is
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  going to stand on social cultural political issues. You never quite could with slate. That's
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  changed since he left, but it's largely to his credit that the place was such an exciting and energetic
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  and invigorating place to read and to work. This is a conversation that one is all over the bloody
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  map. I mean, if you don't like it 10 minutes in, you're never going to like it because it's just him
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  and me shooting the shit about the things that we think are important for pandemic, how we should
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  all talk to each other, the role of podcasting whether or not our heads are too absorbed in national
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  politics and not enough in our daily lives. This is a conversation between two friends. I loved it.
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  I hope you do with the one and only David Plott's.
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  What time is this there? 7.30 tomorrow. Is that early? I mean, it's early for work,
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  not early in life. What time do you work? My show is on from 12.30 to 3.30 in the afternoon,
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  so we have a production meeting at 9.15, so I get in about 8.30, 8.45. That's not early.
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  My favorite podcast is this soccer, football podcast about the Premier League, which is done by this
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  guy. It's done by people in England, but then the host moved Australia. He does it all the time,
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  and I just don't even understand what their taping schedule must be like. It must be wild.
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  Yeah, I mean, there's like a brief window in which it's fine, and then there are lots of windows
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  in which it's not. That's been one of the downsides of moving to the other side of the world.
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  But aren't you from the other side of the world?
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  Too shame. Yeah, but I spent most of my adult life in New York. I was there for 12 years,
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  and I only came back here in 2017. Am I right in remembering that we did a podcast
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  right after Trump was elected in New York? You are. You were my first guest after the election.
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  Oh my gosh. I would not want to listen back to whatever I said that.
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  It's amazing. I listened to it about about a year before Trump left office, about like three
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  years after we did it, and it aged pretty well. I think the main concerns were still,
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  I mean, the one thing I felt was, thank God we weren't right. Like thank God to some extent,
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  he was more incompetent than we'd feared, and the structures kind of
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  crickly held better than we might have thought. I think mostly that he was just incompetent,
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  he was just less interested than we feared he might have been in achieving the things that he could have.
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  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Okay, I don't even know what we're talking about.
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  I know what we're doing. I'm just here. I just click the link. Thank you. Click a link and go.
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  Well, I don't do a big intro and I don't do it. We just can sort of wander into it. But I mean,
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  the main thing that I think you'll have an interesting perspective of is, hey, the difference
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  in the world between them and now and be what's happened to our conversations. I mean, as someone who
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  runs a podcast network that focuses on like actual news and like local issues and stuff like that,
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  how we can best talk to each other in the 21st century. But we don't have to get that
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  that big and grand yet. How long are we talking for by that? Well, like I go for about an hour and
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  then there's a little thing that we do at the end for our subscribers called first date questions
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  where I pepper you with quick rule shock questions about your life. Okay, but I'll have you out by
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  the top of the hour, the top of the next hour. Is that okay? Great, by nine. It's now 530
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  my time. Yeah, have me out by when you think seven. Okay, we can do 645. It would be even better.
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  Wait five. For you, anything, David. Okay. What do you remember of those early days after Trump
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  was elected? Have we started? Are we going? We're not. Yeah, okay.
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  With all a fever dream, I remember very little. I remember election night in the sense that
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  I was at a live podcast taping where everyone at that taping expected it was a live show and
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  everyone expected it to be this triumphant experience and watching that room get darker and darker
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  and sadder and more and more. Catastrophic was one of the truly gripping and depressing nights of
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  my life. There was a couple of people I met that night. One of my podcast heroes was also on
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  the live show and she and I met for the first time and at the end of the night, I remember we said
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  to each other basically, it was great meeting you. I hope I never see you again. This was so painful.
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  And we you are. So I was there at that at that thing with Grant, my producer who you knew as well.
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  And we were we won stage. I was on stage. I was on stage before Trump's victory became clear.
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  I was on stage on the early part of the evening when it was still ha ha laugh laugh play on the couch
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  potter around. I had let my part was over by the time it was clear that he was going to win.
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  Right. And where were you? Were you in the crowd? I was in the crowd. I was in or was backstage just
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  sitting there talking to to various people and just watching in horror as Mike Pasca tried to
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  make make lemonade out of the world's biggest lemon. Why haven't there been preparations for that
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  possibility? Yeah, great question. Great question. I think there was a real
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  miss apprehension about how accurate polls were. I don't think people recognize that there was
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  a possibility of this just enormous polling error as related to particular groups,
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  the sort of white white non-college educated voters who turned out. David, like I mean five days
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  ago saying that there was a 20% chance that he would win. Like a 20% chance, you know,
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  if I tell you you're going to be doing a big show and there's an 80% chance of this but a 20%
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  chance of that, you'd go, oh, well, we'd better cover the 20% base. Yeah. And it was it was like
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  a cognitive thing that we couldn't put it out. We wouldn't allow ourselves to acknowledge that
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  20% is not nothing. Yes. I cannot cast myself back to that mindset at that moment so I don't
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  remember exactly what was going on and I was not a person planning the show so I don't even
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  remember that whether there was a discussion but no, you're right. Do you think it was a cognitive
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  failure of refusing to be able to look at in the face or do you think it was just such confidence?
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  I think there was this tremendous confidence coming out of the Obama years which perceived by
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  people in my set as having been a very successful presidency and oh, this historic
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  historic black president to be followed by historic woman president and of course this
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  this guy is such a clown and it wasn't necessarily a fear of looking at it. It was worse than that.
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  It was a negligence. It was just sort of like a ho, ho, ho, ho, couldn't possibly. Ha, ha.
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  Yeah. I don't think I agree. I don't think it was a fear. I don't think that we thought, oh,
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  he might win but we were too, you know, we're too cowardly to confront it or something but I think
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  almost like September 10th 2001, it was just not part of our worldview as being a possible thing.
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  Like it was like, this isn't that's not the way the world works. They might say it's 20% chance
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  but in reality, we don't live in that world where Huxters and obvious charlatans become president
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  of the United States. That's not the kind of country that America is. That's not the kind of world
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  that we live in. We live in a world in which we've had this this very heartfelt and eloquent
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  and articulate and intelligent president for eight years and now that we're going to have the
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  first female president and we're on this little chuchu train of history and we just, it's amazing
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  how naive we can be, I guess, about what's coming. What do you think the next thing might be,
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  like that? Well, I was thinking about that the other day, how in a relatively short time,
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  in the lifetime of my oldest child. So from 2001 until today, we have lived through, I think,
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  in 9-11 in Trump's election in COVID and in the Ukraine invasion, which I think is hugely important.
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  These four kind of epochal and then also it wasn't a single event but it will in the long course
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  of history it will be seen as a single event. This tremendous rise of China as a global power.
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  These in a way five world changing events and all of them, all of them with maybe the possible
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  exception of the rise of China have come at a tremendous surprise to all of us and so I am going
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  to try to be, I mean, I'm a person who likes to speculate and stuff and I'm going to try to be humble
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  because I didn't see any of this other things, these other things coming so I'm not sure why I would
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  think I would see the next one coming. Yeah, I'd add another one to that list which is social media
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  which will also be looked back on as a single thing that has happened. Good one, good one, good one,
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  like not recognizing just how, right, how that moment of switch from utopianism around it to
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  oh my gosh, this is a tool of social devastation, a tool for authoritarian control and tool for
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  poisoning us. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as recently as five years ago, you know, when Huff Post
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  Live was collapsing and I was getting out of dodge and moving to Australia, I would still have said
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  that social media is largely a force for the democratization of information in a good way and that
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  the ability of people to talk to each other is going to foster a world of greater understanding and
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  I mean, that was the whole premise of things like Huff Post Live, right, you know, communication is
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  going to be more horizontal, it's going to be more egalitarian, it's not going to be topped out
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  anymore, you're not going to have to sit at home and listen to a straight white man bark and use
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  that U at 6.30 p.m. every evening, you know, you're going to be able to talk to people in real time
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  in Saudi Arabia and that's going to be a liberating force and that just seems so naive now. Yeah.
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  Do you know this book? I was I used to work with this guy, Will Dobson who is a he was a
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  he was Slate's political editor and he wrote this book called The Dictators Learning Curve,
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  right, and it was all and it's really prescient because he wrote it 10 years ago now and it was just
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  about how oh you think that because you've heard about the Arab Spring and you've heard that
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  you know someone tweeted something and that caused a protest in Tunisia, you think that these things
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  are good for you, but actually watch what happens, watch how these are going to be taken and used
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  for authoritarian control, which is different than this point about it poisons all of us even those
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  who are not living with authoritarian, but the recognition that actually that that the control
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  over these information sources is is coming and present for in authoritarian countries because
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  the capat not because not because they are capable of controlling information but because they're
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  capable of causing us they're just drowning us in in chaff and Christmas and lies that we stop
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  believing anything and that Will was really really ahead of his time. I've been looking for
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  another good audio book so I'll grab it that sounds good. I mean the even in the conversation around
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  Elon Musk and Twitter and free speech and so on it it's frustrating to me that this is still
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  being characterized as free speech versus not free speech which strikes me as a very sort of 20th
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  century way of looking at things because if the free speech that you're talking about reliably
• 27:02
  leads to a massive confusion and inarticulate blathering like if the algorithms are rigged in such a
• 27:11
  way that they favor for things that they're going to exercise us and outrage us or pander to what we
• 27:17
  already believe then it makes no sense to talk about a sort of lucky and idea of free speech in
• 27:24
  the context of technologies that predictably produce bullshit. Right yeah no totally agree and
• 27:33
  and it's it's weird that Musk who I think is a genuinely really smart person would be so
• 27:41
  unsophisticated naive to think oh actually what people they they want these things to be
• 27:47
  liberated so there can be more there can be more garbage people can be free to harass people more
• 27:53
  like is there anyone in the world who who wishes the internet was had more harassment and you know more
• 28:01
  lies and more anti-Semitic manifestos and and more you know massacres live stream who wants that
• 28:08
  who's the person that actually wants that and that means really the world that they're asking for
• 28:13
  doesn't it depend what you mean by harassment and what you mean by lies and their concern would be
• 28:17
  that you end up with these very woke 22 year old software engineers in Silicon Valley writing to
• 28:23
  work on skateboards and deciding that you know I don't know someone you know refusing to put their
• 28:29
  pronouns in their bio on Twitter is a form of hate speech and they're going to be excluded from
• 28:35
  the plan for sure and I'm not regulation yes and I don't I'm not saying that there's not
• 28:41
  some semblance of a point there and I as a like as a as a person who's who's you know sort of
• 28:51
  horrified some of the time at the at the woke young I feel that but but that is that seems to me
• 28:58
  as a problem as a as a mag on magnitude level of magnitude problem it is is way way below on the
• 29:07
  Richter scale of fucking up the world or screwing up the world yeah compared to the this
• 29:15
  to what the the hateful people are able to do with with their hate I mean we need we need
• 29:23
  I wish both of them were we're constrained but if I can only constrain one of them I'd rather
• 29:28
  constrain people who are the trollish hateful and the bots and the and they're you know the Russian
• 29:36
  lies than I would the the woke mob yeah how do you feel about your ability to talk freely about
• 29:43
  these kinds of things on the platforms that you currently have like the political gap first and
• 29:49
  like at the job that you you currently have you've always sort of prided yourself on being the
• 29:53
  contrarian I guess the slate pitchy angle which is which is to say the angle it comes at at an
• 30:01
  angle to pardon my misuse of that word but but at an angle to the conventional thinking about
• 30:08
  things and that's becoming trickier and trickier without suddenly being lumped in as being like
• 30:13
  oh if you're not saying this then you must be saying this other thing right right well I
• 30:20
  I'm there a lot of things I don't talk about because I don't think I think I would get in trouble
• 30:26
  and I'm not sure I have a super sophisticated well thought out take on them and I'm not I'm not
• 30:34
  a classically trained brilliant debater and so there are things I avoid talking about which I
• 30:39
  would have talked about 15 years ago because it was a more playful environment it was also
• 30:44
  environment where was you know it was you were probably saying things that were hurtful the people
• 30:49
  who I didn't want to hurt because I was playing around in certain ways so there's some of that on
• 30:55
  the gap that's the the bigger point for me is just I I don't I host a political podcast I spend
• 31:03
  close to zero time thinking about national international politics because I find it so
• 31:10
  demoralizing that's why you know in some sense it's why I left slate back in 2014 and so eight
• 31:18
  years ago I left running a political magazine because I just found the environment so depressing and
• 31:25
  I found what was happening in politics especially national politics so depressing and so
• 31:33
  despair inducing that I just didn't want to be part of it so I went and went to have
• 31:37
  subscribe where I was running a media company that was all about the wonder of the world and now
• 31:41
  I'm at a place in citycast where I'm running a new media company which is a really locally focused
• 31:48
  and I it'll I think at the local level there's still a possibility of hope and we're there's
• 31:53
  some ability for people to work together and not treat treat each other as as the instrumental
• 32:01
  objects of to be loads and derided but to actually you know accomplish things together and so
• 32:11
  that's why I can't I can't I can't I show up on the gap as I love talking to John and Emily my
• 32:18
  podcasting partners if I never thought for a minute about American politics again for the rest of my
• 32:23
  life that would be fine with me that makes me a little bit sad because I fear that if the
• 32:29
  David Plotters of the world retreat then we're left only with the barbarians like isn't it isn't
• 32:34
  it worth playing around and defending some people in the process of seeking to cling on to a
• 32:43
  public square that is ran bunches and fun and fearless I'm sure I mean yeah it's it's it's it's
• 32:52
  worth it but I don't know I'm like I'm I'm an old man I'm 52 years old I have you know I have
• 33:04
  I have just like kind of trying to get off to into the sunset at this point I've been working
• 33:10
  for a long time 52 you're talking like it's 85 85 well it's kind of feel that way but no but it
• 33:16
  it it doesn't um the the two different fights right there's a fight for free speech for what for
• 33:26
  for the ran bunchessness and free speech and offend everyone and like screw the woke mobs and
• 33:32
  and and don't be afraid of cancellation and those are battles that I think are
• 33:38
  worth they're nice they're worth fighting I just don't kind of have the I just don't have the it's
• 33:47
  just not it's just not important none of them are important enough to me in any given day for me to
• 33:53
  want to fight those those fights and and then there's the fight against the thing that's that I
• 34:00
  despair about is it's the fight against the the the entire integrity of the political process the
• 34:08
  the rise of authoritarianism the rise of people like Trump and DeSantis and the destruction of
• 34:13
  the basic norms and values that hold our government together and that is really worth fighting for
• 34:19
  and it's really important and um I I am so despairing and disgusted that I I I don't have I don't
• 34:31
  have the critays gene in me or the Josh Marshall gene in me where I can be in that but I'm not a
• 34:36
  pugnacious person who wants to be in the fight like you kind of have to be you have to want to fight
• 34:42
  people at home you have to be a bit of an asshole maybe you're a bit of an asshole I don't know
• 34:46
  you have to be a bit of an asshole to engage in all that because it's because it's so um
• 34:52
  it's so bloody and you're you're popping every every artery you're you're you're blowing the
• 34:57
  capillaries out and I don't I got I I would like to hang out with my girlfriend and pet my cat and
• 35:03
  I mean I don't want to be I don't want to be a bit of an asshole but I'd like to believe that if I was
• 35:09
  in Germany in the 1920s I'd be a bit of an asshole to the people who were being unreasonable around
• 35:15
  me with the hopes of heading off whatever is is coming like I don't think you can you can do your
• 35:22
  duty in uh in preventing authoritarianism and Trumpian madness without also interrogating the
• 35:30
  causes of that madness that arrangement partly comes from a dying like white
• 35:38
  culture middle aged culture that feels like it's being assailed from all sides and like it's
• 35:42
  five-year-old children are being taught that there's no such thing as boys and girls and that you
• 35:46
  know all the all this kind of stuff and without kind of getting our arms around the excesses of
• 35:52
  the left I don't think we can get our arms around these but is there anything that you have seen
• 35:57
  in how the left uh is fighting Trumpism or the authoritarian aging white people and the proud
• 36:08
  boys uh and that is there anything you've seen that's actually effective if you anything you've
• 36:13
  seen in how the media is confronting this that is effective that has changed it or not like
• 36:20
  slowed its acceleration or stopped it or reversed it at all I've seen nothing in how the media has
• 36:27
  has responded to this and the in a way this is kind of this is my answer which is I am choosing to
• 36:33
  focus on an area where local politics and how we live in cities where at least it seems like
• 36:42
  the fights aren't simply between two toxic groups on the extreme that the fights are the fights are
• 36:51
  in a much more central place they're much more about how we actually live not how we talk about
• 36:56
  how we live not how not rhetoric they're actually fights about you know are we going to build
• 37:00
  this apartment building you know uh where how many cops are we going to hire with the city budget
• 37:06
  and those it feels to me like if you can get people to work together in small ways and local
• 37:12
  situations that maybe there's some hope that yeah that that spills out into the larger culture I just
• 37:18
  don't see anything like when I watch when I watch uh there's so much righteous there's so much
• 37:26
  righteous energy correct righteous energy in the people who are speaking out against the woke
• 37:32
  mobs in the people who but mostly in the people who are speaking out against Trumpism they are
• 37:36
  absolutely correct about everything and yet has it done anything to change the dynamics of what's
• 37:42
  happening no well no no the righteousness hasn't but I think that's a function of how bad our media
• 37:48
  currently is I mean I can imagine a world in which you dial down the righteousness on both sides
• 37:53
  by 20% and you dialed up the cool kind of uh bridge seeking comedy seeking uh like where all
• 38:01
  Americans there is no red America or blue America we can agree on these fundamental principles
• 38:06
  kind of rhetoric and in occasions like that I do think you see more unity so the kind of rhetoric
• 38:11
  of Obama versus the rhetoric of Trump in the media sphere I mean I would say if you still had a
• 38:16
  Christopher Hitchens or even I mean even people you know you might hate my saying this but people
• 38:20
  like Bill Ma or people like Sam Harris or even in some cases are Joe Rogan who are able to talk to
• 38:26
  people on the other side in a way that lands as being sympathetic but are then able to point out
• 38:32
  errors in their thinking or ways who basically just don't enemenize everybody I don't I don't
• 38:38
  mean give them an anima but turn them into an enemy uh then I think you could I think if you could
• 38:44
  shift the media a bit away from MSNBC and Fox News and towards like we're all just trying to
• 38:50
  muddle through this together so I kind of understand your fears but here's where they don't quite work
• 38:55
  then you could do it but I equally but then a half of me goes well you're taking the exact
• 39:00
  correct uh approach because there are only so many hours in a plot scene day and so I don't know
• 39:06
  how you're going to move the media behemoth on those big national issues but you actually can do
• 39:10
  something on a on a local level so how does that translate like articulate the plot
• 39:15
  division of what you what you're doing with podcasts at a local level and what how that impacts
• 39:21
  people's lives? Well for background I am the CEO of a new company a new-ish company called
• 39:29
  CityCast and what CityCast is is a network of daily local podcasts and newsletters in cities
• 39:37
  across the US so we're now in in six cities we'll be in uh eight in a couple of weeks
• 39:45
  Denver Chicago Salt Lake City we're about to be in Boise we're in Houston we're about to be in
• 39:50
  DC we're in Pittsburgh a bunch of a bunch of US cities and in each of those cities we create a
• 39:57
  daily local podcast that's designed to help you as a citizen of Denver feel more connected to
• 40:04
  Denver Colorado you you're gonna learn something about what's happening in the city and you're
• 40:08
  gonna you're gonna hear you know a good good take on what's happening in with the development of
• 40:15
  this park or with the you know the the new crackdown on restaurants or some things that are both
• 40:23
  extremely trivial and things that are both and things that are extremely serious you know the
• 40:28
  traffic development the mayor corruption what what we're eating uh you know the great festival
• 40:38
  that's happening the sports teams all of those things are what we're doing and the theory of the
• 40:44
  case I mean it's mostly it's the theory of the case is I'm trying to build a great new media
• 40:49
  business as part of a and that will make a profit for its its owners um but it's when I think
• 40:56
  about why I'm trying to do it is because it's the reasons that we talked about which is that the
• 41:03
  it's very hard for people to have any kind of conversation with people who they are not in their
• 41:09
  homogenous near narrow group these days but one place where people seem to be able to do it a little
• 41:15
  bit better than others is in local issues because while you tend to live near people who are like you
• 41:22
  people who are like you are it's it's not fully we are we're not completely fully geographically
• 41:27
  sorted you actually have some variety of human beings in in cities and and so there are a lot of
• 41:34
  issues and the issues don't break down on on traditional red blue lines the way almost everything
• 41:41
  else in American politics breaks down on red blue lines they break down on on lines are you pro
• 41:46
  development or anti development are you a car person or a bike person are you a a person who is
• 41:54
  like a you know you're what kind of consumer are you and these are issues where where they're
• 42:00
  definitely fights and the the the fights are as as heated as they are around anything else but
• 42:07
  they are ultimately fights which which are about real ways of living and real things that people
• 42:13
  deal with you know is the school should my school have a masking requirement or not it's
• 42:18
  something that affects my child every minute and and so I find there is there's a kind of relish
• 42:27
  and joy to me in confronting this and I think that we it makes people it makes people better
• 42:35
  citizens of their city to to hear these conversations that we're having and ultimately if we can do
• 42:42
  that and do that in city after city after city maybe we slightly change we slightly change the
• 42:49
  the culture and the politics of the event that's interesting I mean it is it's a it's a noble counter
• 42:56
  to the increasing nationalization of our political consciousness where so much more of our attention
• 43:02
  is paid to things that we abstracted daily lives than used to be the case and in some way I wonder
• 43:09
  if that's actually the hope I was I was talking to Tyler Cowell and the economist and he's really
• 43:14
  optimistic like he's so refreshingly optimistic about everything he's like a little kid you know
• 43:21
  he's just like you know America's great America's always been great will be fine but you know part
• 43:26
  of what he part of his argument about why he doesn't think that social media is going to
• 43:29
  going to cause all these problems that I fear is he's like most people just don't care I mean most
• 43:34
  people are just not not that online most people don't use it that much and they're certainly not
• 43:38
  online in the way that the Twitter you know elites like we are online and so all of this woke
• 43:45
  stuff has peaked all of the you know the argy barging and like you know this is actually something
• 43:51
  that yes it's increased from 50 years ago people the amount to which people are hostile towards
• 43:56
  their neighbors because of with their blue or red but in reality most people just go out and they
• 44:02
  mow the lawn and they say hi to their neighbors and that's still the basic reality of people's
• 44:06
  lives so I suppose to whatever extent you can foster that you're you're doing a good job
• 44:12
  yeah I think I think the the the counterpoint to what I just said and to what you just said is that
• 44:19
  that increasingly actually the people who live next door to you are like you that there's been
• 44:24
  this geographical sorting right people are moving to be around people who are like themselves and
• 44:29
  so that's a that is a problem but I'm glad to hear the Tyler's I I love Tyler he's he's
• 44:38
  he's such a delightful person to and occasionally gone out to dinner with him in DC he's he's
• 44:46
  one of these people who really makes you love the city you live in he lives in in DC or around
• 44:50
  DC and he's he's the greatest investigator of restaurants in Washington as well as me he's
• 44:58
  about Washington DC food I think yeah yeah it's incredible he took me to like restaurants that I
• 45:04
  never would have found otherwise which were like not necessarily the best restaurants but we're so
• 45:08
  interesting yeah yeah that's great um you mentioned covert masking how have you found the the
• 45:15
  the pandemic it's been a bit bemusing you know it's in spite of all of the kind of Fox News
• 45:20
  hysteria about Australia having been turned into a totalitarian dictatorship last year
• 45:25
  um the reality on the ground has has been with the exception of of one three months lockdown most
• 45:30
  of Australia and I always have to add the big caveat that Melbourne chose to go to go a different
• 45:34
  direction because the Victorian government was hyper cautious so they endured really hard hard
• 45:38
  lockdowns but most of it for most of Australia we weren't masking and we weren't lockdown and schools
• 45:44
  weren't closed and day cares were open and shopping centers were open and you know in February of 2021
• 45:51
  when there was no vaccines yet I was going to I went to Hamilton in Sydney with 2,000 other people
• 45:57
  because there was no virus and so in some ways like I think I heard you say on the GabFest recently
• 46:03
  that you just went back to work for the first time in the office could that be true well it's true
• 46:09
  but that's not that's not because of COVID it's because I started a company that's fully remote
• 46:14
  because right and a whole bunch of different cities I see I see okay but I mean I've heard from
• 46:19
  several people in the States like oh we're just starting to go back to work or the kids are just
• 46:22
  starting to go back to school or we're still arguing over whether or not the kids should be wearing
• 46:27
  masks and we you know we went Australia went in a very binary way either we were staying inside
• 46:35
  doing nothing or we were basically living life normally and America didn't have that luxury so
• 46:40
  it's kind of oozed its way through the pandemic and I wonder what your diagnosis of how that went
• 46:47
  is well not not good not good
• 46:53
  they're million dead American seems like we would have been it like had you know 700,000
• 47:01
  you know 300,000 people will be alive if it be handled it better but
• 47:06
  yeah generally if you could have done what Australia did and there are lots of caveats of course
• 47:10
  but if you could have done then 900,000 people would be alive because the
• 47:14
  just right yeah yeah I mean are there there's so many reasons why we were
• 47:19
  unable to do it and I think
• 47:25
  there's so many reasons there's some there's so many reasons some of them are political
• 47:30
  like that people because everything is so polarized people intrinsically just didn't
• 47:35
  decided not to trust the the state and there's this extremely perverse idea of what freedom is
• 47:47
  in the United States that I would have thought would be prevalent in Australia and I'm actually
• 47:52
  because Australia is in so many ways is like has it has so much of the same kind of freedom
• 47:59
  yeah a lot DNA that the US has but I don't know why you guys why did you guys not have that
• 48:05
  it's been an interesting test it has really revealed what I've always suspected about Australia
• 48:09
  which is the Australians are very obedient we have a like we've sold to the world this crocodile
• 48:14
  dundee frontier myth but actually we feel deep down like a lonely lost people on the wrong side
• 48:22
  of the planet from our forebears and have always struggled with our position geographically in
• 48:30
  the world and anxiety about being swamped by the yellow peril from the north and I think that
• 48:36
  feeds a bit into the national character of you know speed limits are very low here they're very
• 48:41
  tightly enforced people like that people like you know people like places closing early and not
• 48:46
  being noisy Australians are quite sort of we're a highly urbanized country so almost all of us live
• 48:52
  in just a handful of big cities and and we we get along politely we're quite Canadian in that in
• 48:59
  that sort of way or New Zealand I guess there's not there's not much of the don't trade on me there's
• 49:06
  much more of an egalitarian sense of we're all in this together I mean it even shows up in war like
• 49:11
  I was reading a dispatch from world war one where the Americans and the Brits were remarking on how
• 49:17
  much Australians treated this as a as a communal effort and like we're all in this together and we're
• 49:23
  doing this for the homeland and we're doing this for the queen and the Brits were like the queen
• 49:26
  like you're on the wrong side of the world in the queen but like you tell them it wasn't the queen
• 49:31
  then you guys were so you were so far behind the time so you were still still for queen Victoria
• 49:39
  was still in power you know but you tell a person to do it for king and country and the
• 49:44
  Nazi kind of does it whereas an American will be like you know who's bloody king I think there's
• 49:49
  just some of that and so when it came time to like we're all going to do this together and we're
• 49:54
  going to do this thing then we were less inclined to be like up up up up up up up but is it exactly
• 49:59
  necessary do I absolutely need to stay inside why can I do this but not that there was a lot more
• 50:04
  just like you know what the rules are probably stupid at the at the edges but on the whole it's
• 50:10
  probably worth all of us just knuckling down and putting up with some shit and eating shit for a while
• 50:15
  and then it'll be better for everybody because we're all in this together there was just more of a
• 50:19
  communal thing Damien Cave had an interesting piece in the New York Times here's the here's the
• 50:22
  New York Times Australian bureau chief about a week or two ago which would be worth your reading about
• 50:29
  his analysis of what the difference was and he sort of puts it down to to trust to great trust
• 50:35
  is more trusting yeah and then more egalitarian they're more we call it mateship here like a sense
• 50:41
  of egalitarian communal sensibility and I think yeah that's and then sometimes that's a bad thing
• 50:48
  because I think we would be much more easily heard it into concentration camps if that ever happened
• 50:53
  we wouldn't be pulling up our AR-15s and shooting at the at the authorities but from in most
• 50:59
  situations I think it's a good trait that's that's interesting I mean it is it is remarkable how
• 51:06
  little trust there is in institutions in the US right now and in all essentially all institutions
• 51:13
  may be the military and that's been that's been a kind of a willful part of it is like a willful
• 51:23
  act on the part of Republicans to undermine trust in government it's been it's been an actual
• 51:29
  policy to undermine the trust in the federal government in particular that has been pursued by
• 51:37
  a Republican the Republican Party but then it's you know there's a lot of other reasons why
• 51:42
  the happening and yeah we're we're very untrusting and I wonder if this comes back to like the
• 51:51
  trying to fight the fight for reason versus the versus hysteria and passion there there does seem
• 51:56
  to be just more more to distrust in America on all sides I mean I'm thinking of masking now like
• 52:04
  I was talking to a friend of mine in LA who was saying that when he's waiting to pick up his kids
• 52:08
  from daycare outside on a sunny day in Los Angeles he gets so much shit if he's not wearing a mask
• 52:15
  like they're standing six feet apart from each other the the parents and the other parents like
• 52:19
  get it shit scream and I don't even think that is that is not a true story or it's not a true
• 52:25
  story of for today maybe that was there may have been it was it was about four months ago yeah
• 52:31
  there may have been a moment where there was some truth to that but you you you don't need you don't
• 52:39
  need it and you don't need it and the mask masking has like has has almost vanished even now there's
• 52:46
  a huge surge in the U.S. right now every one has has whatever it is the new that new
• 52:54
  I'm across new you improved yeah but nobody's paying any attention this doesn't matter nobody's
• 52:58
  masking anywhere it doesn't it's not that is yes there was a time and where people were people
• 53:05
  were truly unpleasant and self-righteous about it but that time has passed yeah this was I think
• 53:10
  it was November because it would have been before I came to the to the States most recently
• 53:15
  yeah I'm just making the point that there are there are there are rules that get imposed that
• 53:21
  people regard as being rigid that actually if you were a little bit more flexible about that you
• 53:27
  probably wouldn't provide such a backlash from people who distrust institutions yeah and the
• 53:33
  I mean the masking one was particularly bad because there wasn't because people were wearing bad
• 53:37
  masks yeah weren't actually wearing masks that were helping them and there wasn't
• 53:44
  there was so little sort of acknowledgement that that there were I don't know there was just
• 53:50
  it was just so badly handled and I thought with schools it was truly maddening as a parent of
• 53:56
  a child in public school it's just how bad that that pole returned to school the the failure to
• 54:05
  acknowledge that masking and the end remote learning were devastating for tons of kids and really
• 54:11
  bad for tons of kids and the the line about that was was infuriating and how did the return to
• 54:18
  school work for you well for my I had one kid who was at a private school that but a very kind of
• 54:29
  progressive private school that did return but return kind of solely but my kid who was in public
• 54:33
  school took a really long time to go back when they went back it was with with tons of masking
• 54:43
  requirements but they seemed basically arbitrary because there was no requirement about a particular
• 54:48
  kind of mask they didn't really do anything to improve the air filtration so it was sort of like
• 54:52
  well why are you why is this so important than these other things are not that important and
• 55:00
  and it just I don't know it was just frustrating that that I don't have nothing cogent to say
• 55:08
  anything about this anymore I'm sorry Josh I thought I spent like a year being angry about it
• 55:13
  any year people weren't like the people just didn't think about the cost that there of course
• 55:21
  there was a huge health cost of not of when you let kids back in school there was a risk they were
• 55:28
  getting at covid there was risk to teachers risk to everyone's family etc but this this it took so
• 55:33
  long for people to acknowledge oh there's an enormous cost that we as a society are going to bear
• 55:38
  in 10 20 years when these kids are less educated when we've you know all these kids who just got lost
• 55:45
  from the school system would drop that at school and no one ever tracked them down who missed
• 55:50
  you know months or years of learning and that that cost was not factored in because while we were
• 55:56
  being so cautious about covid and we weren't even good about covid and so we weren't even effective
• 56:00
  like covid either so it was it's it's just been it's been I'm not saying that I had tremendous
• 56:10
  huge faith in American institutions and I was sure we were going to get all this right
• 56:16
  but I we've underperformed even against my fairly low expectations I remember Titans being
• 56:22
  a Tyler talent Tyler wrote this article right at the beginning pandemic which was oh you as always
• 56:26
  has deals the same things they start really badly but they get they use their tremendous industrial
• 56:32
  capacity and capacity to organize and capacity to scientific capacity to to conquer anything like
• 56:39
  this it's the same is the world or two world war one the Cold War you name it we we that's how we
• 56:46
  mobilize and get get stuff done and ultimately we'll we will prevail and yeah I mean sure there were
• 56:52
  vaccines developed and sure there's some drugs developed and that's all well and good but man
• 56:57
  the the the the toll of death the toll to the economy the toll to social trust does not it doesn't
• 57:05
  feel like this has been a great triumph of America you know we have some vaccines yeah I mean
• 57:11
  I'm a friend of mine on the on the death toll on America's death toll a friend of mine said it'll
• 57:15
  be to be interesting to actually know how many of those people in Australia have died since in the
• 57:21
  past two years just because they were very old hmm like not that not that it's worthless but like
• 57:28
  we locked them up for a couple of years so they'd be safe how many of the million people who died in
• 57:34
  America were within two years of dying from natural causes like well quite possibly half I don't
• 57:42
  know yes but if you yeah maybe but the elevator I mean the the amount of excess death in the world
• 57:50
  is pretty high which suggests it's not and it's been pretty high for two years that suggests it's
• 57:55
  not just like old people were going to die anyway if dies like all these other people who didn't
• 57:59
  need to have died have died which yeah that's true it'd be interesting to see if there's a decline
• 58:03
  in excess death in the next year yeah like that would be super filling of people who were going to
• 58:09
  die this year right right right and maybe maybe with all good maybe we've saved society billions
• 58:14
  and billions of dollars it's now going to be invested through I don't think I'm going to call
• 58:18
  on it more I think Louis CK has a joke and insert all of the necessary caveats about that
• 58:24
  men's moral moral standing but he has a joke about COVID saying you know what a what a terrible
• 58:29
  thing an awful lot of people who were just about to die did not keep on living
• 58:38
  cruel way of putting it but is generally largely true if you look at the demographics of people
• 58:44
  who succumbed to COVID the other the last spoken like a spoken like a man who did not lose any
• 58:50
  close friends or relatives to COVID yeah yeah yeah absolutely and that's a point that I also make
• 58:55
  as well when people keep attacking me online for being an apologist for Australian totalitarianism
• 58:59
  I you know I make the point that my 78 year old father who has who has chronic pulmonary disease
• 59:05
  is alive and in many parts of the world including the states there would be a decent chance that
• 59:10
  he wouldn't be alive anymore and then of course they come back and say oh talk about a
• 59:14
  count of factual you can't prove that he would have died if he wasn't in Australia to which I say
• 59:20
  I hope you've never used a condom or worn a seat belt or taken an anti-malarial drug or anything else
• 59:25
  that doesn't have 100% prevention because it's the same principle like on a population-wide basis
• 59:30
  if you look at the data much likely to have died the the last thing I'll say about COVID and
• 59:37
  lockdowns and so on is that the the edges of state force always feel arbitrary and so when you
• 59:46
  ask why Australians put up with I guess the the sort of communal sacrifices that had to be made to
• 59:53
  avoid the epidemic from getting out to out of control here until we were vaccinated I think the
• 59:58
  answer is partly that there was more patience for the recognition that the edges of state force
• 1:00:02
  are arbitrary whereas there was much more when I was in the states in December and January a lot of
• 1:00:08
  people were bouncing on the yeah but why can I do this but I can't do that why can I do that but
• 1:00:12
  I can't do this like there were videos going viral of a woman who was in quarantine in Australia
• 1:00:18
  and they had these these kind of outback bungalows where people who had to spend two weeks would be
• 1:00:24
  located and she's on her veranda at this in this bungalow and there are people in PPE
• 1:00:30
  like essentially enforcing that you can't leave the quarantine facility and there's a line drawn
• 1:00:36
  on her balcony between one bungalow and the next bungalow and she's saying to them she's filming
• 1:00:41
  on her video on her camera and she's saying so you mean I can stand here but it would be a threat
• 1:00:46
  to Australia if I just cross that line they're like yes you'll be fine if you cross that line she's
• 1:00:50
  like what differences am I I'm outside like why don't I stand here but I can't stand there it's
• 1:00:54
  all bullshit and this went viral in the states and lots of people saying yes this is total
• 1:00:59
  Terrians and this is crazy but of course the same argument can be made if you're driving at
• 1:01:05
  49 miles an hour versus 51 miles an hour at some point you make the boundary and when the state
• 1:01:11
  has to impose the blunt rule of force on people it's not fun and it seems arbitrary nobody likes
• 1:01:18
  confronting the brutal force of the state and when that force has to be invoked for some
• 1:01:24
  greater good it's it's nasty at the edges and it's ugly but those edges only exist
• 1:01:31
  so that this vast other good can be achieved which is that we don't have a million people dying
• 1:01:36
  anyway that's the last cherry on top hope put on the Australian COVID experience
• 1:01:42
  is cherry on top an Australian phrase too I don't think well we say it here but I don't think
• 1:01:46
  we came up with it did we I don't know it seems to me such like such a quintessential American phrase
• 1:01:52
  because the cherry isn't a very American fruit and you put it on top it's like a thing you put on
• 1:01:57
  an ice cream sundae and I just started with a very American we inherit a lot from you I'm sure
• 1:02:01
  it's American that last night we were watching a cooking show in my partner Sean someone on the
• 1:02:06
  on the show said oh there's like a deer in the headlights and Sean said why the fuck was
• 1:02:11
  right and say a deer in the deer Sean's Americans he's like why are we trying to deal like
• 1:02:17
  around any deer yeah I was like yeah that's a good point is there some equivalent for kangaroo
• 1:02:22
  with I mean the kangaroos do exactly the same thing so you say I was a kangaroo in the headlights
• 1:02:26
  but it doesn't have the same ring although now that I now that you now that we've come upon this
• 1:02:31
  next time I'm in the States I'm just going to drop that as being I think it would be good you
• 1:02:35
  might it might be infectious do kangaroos do that yeah yeah they have the same kind of thing
• 1:02:43
  not getting stuck so so Australian roads are littered with yes with dead kangaroos yes and then do they
• 1:02:51
  I mean the people harvest them and eat them then I mean would you well there's the whole move
• 1:02:57
  in in the US like there's some food banks that will get reports of road kill and they'll go and
• 1:03:03
  dress the deer and save that deer for save the meat at least some of it can be preserved not
• 1:03:10
  not the part that's been in contact with tarmac and stuff right but the but the preservable stuff
• 1:03:15
  and I wondered if there were some similar and well I have some news for your plot see Australia's
• 1:03:19
  quite hot so by the time you get and it's all very large yeah by the time you got to the kangaroo
• 1:03:26
  I don't think you'd want to be eating that meat but they we do eat kangaroo meat we do we do I do
• 1:03:31
  eat wild kangaroo a couple of times about once every other week it's a good what's the taste like
• 1:03:37
  tastes like venison believe it or not they they evolved in in parallel like while Australia was
• 1:03:43
  off doing its thing and it had split off from all of the other continents at first the reason
• 1:03:48
  it has such weird mammals is because there was this kind of parallel evolution where they were very
• 1:03:53
  very similar evolutionary forces being imposed on like tiny little tiny little mammals from which
• 1:03:58
  we all evolved you know that started flourishing after the dinosaurs died and then they just
• 1:04:04
  grew into sort of different weird bizarre world versions of other things so the kangaroo is kind
• 1:04:10
  of a deer just adapted in a different way it has a lot of the same behaviors and all the same taste
• 1:04:17
  huh yeah all right there you go there you go you're absolutely it today lesson yeah exactly
• 1:04:23
  climate change is another thing I just wanted to quickly touch on what role does it I mean where
• 1:04:30
  what spaces of occupying your head on a daily basis whoa well I have three children
• 1:04:38
  and so it is it is it doesn't occupy much space on a daily basis except obviously when it gets
• 1:04:47
  really hot and I think well that's because of this or when when the hurricane is descending on
• 1:04:55
  on the place that I want to go vacation I think about it in that sense but mostly I just
• 1:05:03
  I think about my poor children and I think about how lucky they will be compared to all these other
• 1:05:10
  children in the world who probably will not have to have the same resources that they have
• 1:05:15
  I it's another area where where I feel deeply hopeless in the sense that America has
• 1:05:27
  has done such a really poor job confronting it and where the the the battle to just switch to a
• 1:05:40
  carbon-neutraler economy seems to have been completely abandoned but I don't know I guess
• 1:05:48
  I'm optimistic I do I am optimistic that there will be there will be technological advances that
• 1:05:55
  will make this somewhat less bad than the the doomsayers tell us it's going to be I have some hope
• 1:06:04
  technology is just going to get us far enough that it's obviously going to be catastrophic and
• 1:06:11
  I think your country is probably totally hosed but but I don't know that the whole world
• 1:06:19
  I you know they're parts of the world they're going to be unlivable most of Australia will be
• 1:06:23
  unlivable you know places like Bangladesh part of India lots of parts of parts of in the equatorial
• 1:06:31
  bands but but I'm not sure that yeah I guess I guess I don't think civilization is going to end
• 1:06:38
  no no no many many I'm not even sure that that that much of the world is going to become unlivable
• 1:06:43
  technologically I mean if you could get if renewables keep getting as much better as they have in
• 1:06:48
  the past generation into the into subsequent generations you know air conditioning is useful
• 1:06:54
  and heating is useful as well you just got to find a way to create the energy for it I mean the
• 1:07:00
  main thing that I worry about having just endured horrendous relentless unseasonable rain and
• 1:07:07
  floods for and we're having not had a summer and then two summers before that having just been
• 1:07:13
  built to a crisp by the most horrendous bushfires and the whole sky is being so gray I mean even
• 1:07:18
  the ferries on Sydney harbor had to be cancelled because you couldn't see in front of you it was
• 1:07:21
  like a 19th century pea super where like there was ash just raining down on I would get up in
• 1:07:26
  the morning and I'd have to turn on the windscreen wipers and hose it down because the car was just
• 1:07:30
  coated in ash like that is not a life like if that happens every few years man I don't want to live
• 1:07:38
  like who wants to live that life who wants to live a life for it is just pouring with rain and
• 1:07:42
  constantly wet and then it's just burning hot and and you know smoke everywhere and choking and
• 1:07:48
  coughing we were wearing masks before the pandemic in Sydney we were we started wearing masks
• 1:07:53
  two months before the pandemic because of the ash we'd already bought the we'd already bought
• 1:07:58
  the N95 masks and then all of a sudden the macro particles turned into micro particles and instead
• 1:08:03
  of bits of burning trees we had little virus particles to keep that but like that's the kind of
• 1:08:08
  thing that I worry about with my kids it's less like it's civilization going to collapse I don't
• 1:08:12
  think it will but yeah what do you but aren't there parts I would have thought there are parts of
• 1:08:17
  Australia where it is because of whatever the wet bulb temperature is going to be there will be
• 1:08:22
  people literally well they're already outside they're already are I mean they're already
• 1:08:29
  are parts of Australia and parts of like death Valley in America and places where it's you know
• 1:08:34
  routinely 50 degrees Celsius so I want parts where people live in huge numbers and maybe not
• 1:08:39
  as maybe it's not true in Australia but in India I'm sure there are parts where people live in
• 1:08:43
  huge numbers where it will get so hot during heat waves I mean yeah yeah yeah during heat waves
• 1:08:50
  I like I think what happens I think what happens is that instead of a heat wave killing X number of
• 1:08:54
  people if the heat wave is two degrees warmer than it kills one number of people and that's more
• 1:08:58
  people but I don't think you have to I mean it's like the dust bowl in the American West in the
• 1:09:03
  Depression I don't think there's ever an inflection point that is noticeable enough that everybody
• 1:09:09
  actually packs up on the leaves necessarily I mean maybe you end up with wasteland cities but I
• 1:09:13
  think it's likely that people just grin and bear it and they become cities with high fatality rates
• 1:09:19
  during extreme weather events that's what I suspect um well yeah all right that's
• 1:09:25
  beautiful let's talk about something let's wrap with something more interesting which I think
• 1:09:28
  is your experience as a public person um you probably didn't expect that you would become like
• 1:09:34
  a quote unquote celebrity when you were a journalist but the political gabfist has has completely
• 1:09:39
  gone off and and is now this little this little jewel in the crown for the three of you do you
• 1:09:45
  when did you realize that the gabfist was was a hit hit I think it was it was it was a slow
• 1:09:54
  slow boil because the no when we began we didn't think anyone listened to it we didn't realize
• 1:10:00
  anyone listened to it at all and none of us even listened to podcasts ourselves for the first
• 1:10:04
  couple years we did it I think it was when it was actually when Stephen Colbert called me
• 1:10:09
  one day on a on a it was a Friday afternoon during I can't even remember which campaign it was
• 1:10:18
  maybe 2011 presidential campaign or something 2011 build up to the presidential campaign and he
• 1:10:24
  called we we posted the gabfist we usually posted it on Thursday evening but we posted on Friday
• 1:10:30
  morning for some reasons we were late and he he got my number and called me and and playfully
• 1:10:36
  chewed me out and said how I can't even have my staff meeting unless I've listened to the gabfists
• 1:10:41
  and it wasn't up what are you doing plots and I realized like oh my god like the person I most
• 1:10:47
  admire in the world of entertainment is such a super fan that he's tracking down my my number
• 1:10:54
  demanding that we release the podcast for him early and I thought well that's that's something
• 1:11:00
  that's the thing so it was it took a few years but it's I don't know if you found this I mean you
• 1:11:06
  you you certainly are a podcaster and so you probably have but you only get positive feedback
• 1:11:12
  on a podcast because the people who don't like it just don't they just don't listen to it
• 1:11:18
  so it's unlike other forms of media where people come across it like you don't really stumble
• 1:11:23
  across a podcast and then become a listener or something like where you might with radio like you
• 1:11:29
  might be somebody a radio playing ambiently so you only have peat this is why so many people
• 1:11:34
  start podcasts and never stop them because you think I love them it's actually yeah people who
• 1:11:40
  choose to exactly exactly and and so with the gaffess we created something which it's
• 1:11:46
  fortunately it's not 18 people who love us but it's in order is it like 18 million it's somewhere
• 1:11:50
  between 18 18 million and and it's it's the perfect level I don't know what level of fame it is
• 1:11:59
  it's not much fame but it's the perfect for me it's the perfect level that people you know once once
• 1:12:06
  every couple days I will be speaking somewhere and I it's speaking out in the world and someone
• 1:12:10
  will hear my voice and they will recognize me and they'll say something nice because they had
• 1:12:14
  nothing because they're a podcast listener they only listen to podcasts they like and so they like
• 1:12:18
  my podcast and that's perfect it's great and I don't have any other any other harassment and it's
• 1:12:25
  clear like the other thing about podcasts is and again I'm sure you know this is that it's this
• 1:12:34
  intimate emotional medium and people feel personally connected and they feel personally connected
• 1:12:41
  to me and John and Emily and and it is a meaningful emotional relationship that they have with us
• 1:12:47
  and that feels really good to to I'm so much happier I of course I'd like to be a great educator
• 1:12:55
  be someone who has an idea which changes the world and and that would be great I would that would
• 1:13:02
  be really nice but I don't have that and what instead what I have is like a I have lots of people
• 1:13:08
  who've felt slightly better they felt slightly less lonely in the world they felt slightly more
• 1:13:14
  part of a kind of conversation in the world and then they would have otherwise and that is extremely
• 1:13:21
  gratifying that emotional connection that you have made with people and that you get to do you get
• 1:13:27
  to make with them all yeah yeah it's also nice not having your face being noticed a lot as
• 1:13:33
  me especially when your face looks like mine that is definitely true but I just mean like you know
• 1:13:38
  I don't know if you get it at like I find that airport staff or like airline staff or like
• 1:13:43
  healthcare professionals I'm not sure why but I guess anytime when someone has to look at your
• 1:13:47
  ID and look at your name then do they sometimes go oh Plot so are you from the you from the Gab Fest
• 1:13:55
  anyway I find that happens to me they're like oh zips oh you're the you're you know whereas
• 1:13:59
  they wouldn't necessarily hear notice my voice or that and they might know my my face but I'll be
• 1:14:06
  going to get a you know a covid test or something like that and they'll and they'll recognize the
• 1:14:11
  name and that's nice to know that you to just feel like you're in these people's lives as you say
• 1:14:14
  and that you're like woven into the fabric of their everyday existence I don't have the benefit
• 1:14:20
  that you have I've only having podcast fans because I have a radio show as well and I make the
• 1:14:25
  mistake of going on other people's podcasts like Joe Rogan's and stuff like that so most of my
• 1:14:31
  most of my social media interactions are still hot stuff but my social media interactions are
• 1:14:36
  definitely hot stuff but my personal reaction yeah yeah no um it's you like me we have this
• 1:14:42
  name at the similar level of ludicrousness with it that's right that's the anyone else like a z that
• 1:14:50
  doesn't like why is there a z yes we really have to have a z yeah and uh it just looks kind of silly
• 1:14:57
  but it's nice it's very it's like very distinctive yeah yeah it's I mean it's certainly
• 1:15:01
  better than having that equivalent level of fame on your face where like you would have to sit
• 1:15:06
  around like if you're on yeah I just think it's you don't want people staring at you all the time
• 1:15:12
  uh David it's uh it's wonderful to catch up with you again um I love uh I love just
• 1:15:17
  skittering around your brain in uh in wayward in a wayward fashion uh will you stay around for
• 1:15:22
  for first eight questions where I can pepper you with uh quick raw shark questions and I love to
• 1:15:26
  this was so fun Josh thank you uh well if you are if you're not a subscriber tune in for the next
• 1:15:31
  episode and if you are a subscriber let's get started with the first eight questions what's the best
• 1:15:37
  year of your life so far oh gosh um gosh gosh hard uh you know 2021 was really great I know
• 1:15:52
  you're not allowed to say that what what the world is great that that was the worst year that was
• 1:16:00
  for me it was I started a new business that I'm loving creating I I have my kids are in a good place
• 1:16:10
  I've come out of a really sort of sad period following my divorce I had a girlfriend who's making
• 1:16:17
  me very happy um yeah and it's like a re and I think the the kind of the crucible of this divorce
• 1:16:26
  and the collapse of my marriage the sort of unexpected collapse of my marriage really made me
• 1:16:31
  sort of value and see things I hadn't seen and be aware of things I hadn't been aware of and that was
• 1:16:37
  great was 2020 the worst actually 2019 was the worst was that was that was that was the sort of
• 1:16:46
  year everything fell apart yeah yeah I want to ask you about it because this is technically
• 1:16:53
  first-aid questions but I'm sure I could have gotten some no I used to talk about it on first
• 1:16:57
  dates all the time yeah yeah I look I have I never go through that sounds absolutely awful um
• 1:17:09
  what's the best what's the most beautiful view you've ever seen uh most beautiful view I have
• 1:17:15
  ever seen is oh gosh sorry I'm getting there this is such a profound question
• 1:17:38
  um oh my gosh wow uh I was just in Sicily and climbed up from Tower Mina which is a town in
• 1:17:58
  Sicily to this town that hangs on a cliff above it and that view was the most beautiful thing
• 1:18:04
  the path along that was the most beautiful thing oh no the most beautiful view it's uh there's a
• 1:18:08
  hill in Vermont my my family has a house in Vermont and there's a hill with an avenue of maple trees
• 1:18:13
  that overlooks the town of Cabot Vermont that is the most beautiful spot on the earth how lovely yeah
• 1:18:20
  I went to Sicily in December for the first time so beautiful sorry I missed you there were you there
• 1:18:26
  in December no I'm sorry may close enough uh and uh best ice cream flavor
• 1:18:34
  uh m in chocolate chip worst um strawberry where are you going to go on yet well where would you
• 1:18:47
  go on your next holiday if you could uh where were they going my next holiday I would go to
• 1:18:55
  Australia actually it wasn't so damn far away I would go I just like we don't get you
• 1:19:02
  I want to I need two weeks to do it and I never get two weeks just take them yeah all right yeah
• 1:19:09
  you need two weeks and ideally you need to talk to me about uh frequent flyer miles because
• 1:19:13
  doing it in in business is so much or you need to just blow it on business because doing it
• 1:19:18
  if you're only gonna do two weeks you have to be in business class so you can sleep you don't
• 1:19:21
  get off an economy class flight for 22 hours and then have to be free because then it wipes out
• 1:19:25
  the next three days good good to know all right uh what TV shows did you watch as a kid
• 1:19:32
  I watched um well it depends what kid aged Johnny Saco and his robot that was a that was a big
• 1:19:38
  favorite I watched um hill street blues when I my that was the first adult show I ever got to
• 1:19:45
  watch was hill street blues love that show watch the colors be show watched um uh the fact the
• 1:19:51
  fact of life love the fact of life family ties classic NBC shows yeah right uh what do you not
• 1:19:59
  care about that other people do why not care about cars yeah that's good uh if you could send
• 1:20:13
  a ledity yourself in the past uh what age would you send it to and what what would you say
• 1:20:17
  and you can't do you know lottery numbers and stockpicks and stuff like that um probably to the
• 1:20:26
  just the sort of um 18 year old 17 18 year old David plots and tell him um like there are lots of
• 1:20:34
  girls who are like who'll be interested in you and you just like just don't be get so worked
• 1:20:41
  up over it hit on girls sleep with girls like spend more time with girls and don't like don't
• 1:20:48
  agonize over as much as you're agonizing over oh that's nice uh you get to change one law what law
• 1:20:53
  do you change maybe uh um is this one law I would make the United States parliamentary democracy
• 1:21:11
  instead of a instead of whatever the system we have I've heard you bang on about that such a fan
• 1:21:18
  of the parliamentary democracy yeah okay I'll I'll grant that it's not really a law it's more like
• 1:21:23
  overhauling the entire constitution of the United States I've had one if I had one I've been uh oh
• 1:21:29
  well I was the same thing with like I was going to say popular election the president but that's
• 1:21:33
  the same problem okay yeah right yeah don't worry about it uh what's the most underrated city
• 1:21:38
  uh Medellin Columbia wow great fantastic city so fantastic that's an excellent answer
• 1:21:49
  because it's also dispoiled by the reputation from the drug wars but now all the cool kids know
• 1:21:54
  it's cool yeah that's true it's almost it's not underrated anymore it's the problem that's right
• 1:21:59
  yeah like severely overrated Cleveland is pretty great too love Cleveland yeah okay good uh
• 1:22:06
  last uh last first eight question if you get to live to you might even have done this as
• 1:22:09
  a conundrum question on the on the gab fest I'm not sure but you get to live to a hundred and
• 1:22:13
  you get to either keep your your body or your mind as you had it when you were 30
• 1:22:22
  wait and then the other goes to goes to have it goes however however however however fate is
• 1:22:27
  going to take it you know I would have given a different answer well hey I don't want to look to be
• 1:22:31
  a hundred I would have given different answer my father has dementia and um and there's no nothing
• 1:22:39
  worse than that that taking up the mind that way and his body is okay and his mind is gone and
• 1:22:46
  it's terrible so I would take my mind even though um yeah even though I don't think I would
• 1:22:54
  I think I would have answered that differently 10 years ago interesting yeah needless to say
• 1:22:58
  Tyler Cowan had the same answer keep the mind uh what stage of dementia is your dad at my dad's
• 1:23:03
  got Alzheimer's uh as well he's I mean I don't know he has Alzheimer's and he has it bad enough that
• 1:23:11
  he doesn't he doesn't know he has no proper noun he can't care for himself he's in he's in care
• 1:23:21
  and um he's happy and he's not uncomfortable but it's just so sad his man who's so brilliant and so
• 1:23:29
  engage with the world and and to see all of that lost is the worst does he know you
• 1:23:37
  he knows I'm a person of importance to him but he doesn't know who I am really
• 1:23:41
  does your dad know you yes dad's in the early stages so I'm always interested uh dad does he know
• 1:23:47
  does he know he has it yeah he knows he jokes about it um he's always been he's an actor and he
• 1:23:52
  was a comedian so he's you know he takes off about it and he still lives with mommy he doesn't
• 1:23:59
  need round the clock care although that's getting you know difficult and he's a beloved
• 1:24:04
  person to Australians of a certain age he was in a sitcom in the 80s so it's you know
• 1:24:10
  it's just an interesting thing to to see he still very much knows us but he's you know
• 1:24:16
  he can know yeah sorry no no finished sorry I'm sorry well I was just going to say he can no longer
• 1:24:25
  uh get through a complicated conversation or really a conversation that you know you can
• 1:24:31
  know how to follow the thread of multiple thoughts so like his his intellect has has now become
• 1:24:37
  trapped in uh and you'll remember this I'm sure from when you're from father began that it has
• 1:24:43
  become trapped in single loops of yeah noticing things or remark up remarking upon things with no
• 1:24:49
  capacity to then build upon logical ideas right well I recommend it's terribly sad but I would
• 1:24:59
  recommend that you read the book in love by Amy Bloom I do know about this book it's no annoying
• 1:25:04
  but it's a memory yeah he she's she's a wonderful American novelist and essayist but it's about her
• 1:25:10
  husband's Alzheimer's and his ultimately his um his suicide uh but it oh yes right yeah I
• 1:25:20
  read a review of this I'm I'm convinced I have a lot of Alzheimer's in my family so I have
• 1:25:26
  fear the worst for myself um and I just think all the time like how am I get how can I avoid this how
• 1:25:33
  can I avoid it for myself and avoid it more importantly avoid it my mother is suffering so much
• 1:25:40
  I hope that your mother doesn't end up suffering similarly my mother suffered so much from what
• 1:25:45
  happened with my father and um I'm sure my father would never want it I I just want to off myself
• 1:25:53
  as soon as I can it's interesting isn't it to think about what would those criteria be like how would
• 1:25:58
  you set advanced protocols um do we even I mean even if it were legal I mean assume that you can
• 1:26:04
  go to Switzerland or something or and do it but you know you know how how would you define in
• 1:26:09
  advance what the trigger is yeah I I tried to do I just was writing my well and I tried to get
• 1:26:16
  this written into my well and I just couldn't figure out how to do it there's no legal way to do it
• 1:26:20
  in the US there's nothing there's there's it's really really hard to figure out how to
• 1:26:28
  make it happen and Amy Bloom this book has a lot about how difficult it is in the US to kill
• 1:26:33
  yourself and they go to Switzerland but even in Switzerland it's no it's no picnic really so
• 1:26:41
  no it requires tons of planning and you have to have you have to have pretty high mental capacity
• 1:26:47
  in most people by the time they kind of plan it and people who with Alzheimer's plan it and and
• 1:26:56
  they've reached the point when they're ready for it they are actually have such diminished capacity
• 1:27:01
  that they are no longer allowed to do it yeah right yeah it's you have to have enough capacity
• 1:27:06
  just to be able to find out yourself knowingly and be responsible for it uh and most people at
• 1:27:13
  the mentioned just don't yeah I mean don't maintain that capacity for all I would thought there
• 1:27:19
  were some jurisdictions like the Netherlands where you could do an advanced directive and then you
• 1:27:22
  no longer had to be Corpus Mentos when you pull the trick when someone pulled the trigger for you but
• 1:27:27
  I could be wrong I mean either way you could always do it under the table I know I think you
• 1:27:31
  I think there are places where you have to be a citizen of those countries I don't think I think
• 1:27:35
  the tourism is I see where it gets tricky right right I mean I know a family who who's you know
• 1:27:41
  they've had the same family doctor for all their lives and the family doctor was willing to do it
• 1:27:46
  when back when it was illegal here and they just came over to the house so that is also you know
• 1:27:53
  doing it illegally I suppose as an option I think once I once I ceased to be able to name
• 1:28:00
  anyone who I loved I think yeah that would probably be the point on that sunny note
• 1:28:06
  on that sunny note first what a great first date you you must be great on a date
• 1:28:12
  it's a good thing I'm married David don't just be more yeah exactly
• 1:28:18
  get you just imagine just getting up I can you get the check I'm feeling a little bit uh you
• 1:28:24
  know I'm feeling I'm feeling bad now about killing myself do you mind just picking up this
• 1:28:28
  uh I'll call you right we'll do this again we'll do this again yeah oh my god anytime oh all right thank
• 1:28:35
  you David thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you
• 1:28:42
  uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh leps on twitter and
• 1:28:47
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• 1:28:54
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