No, let's let this is gold Let's talk about this on the podcast.
All right, so let's let's go.
You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance.
It's not a real word. Like just gesture is a good word. At least you know where you stand with gesture, But nuance, I don't know.
Maybe I'm well, we're coming on the end of February, and this is glop culture. And I'm John pod Horitz in New York in Princeton, New Jersey. Rob Long, Hi, Rob, Hey, John?
How areight?
In Washington, d C? Jonah Goldberg Hi, Jonah, Hey, John, guys. I don't know if you know this or not, but Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and this morning he announced that he was changing the editorial policy of The Washington Post's opinion section to reflect his interest in it
promoting personal liberties and free markets. And I speak as somebody who has twice in my life been the editorial page editor or the opinion editor of two newspapers, one The Washington Times, the other New York Post that lost money and were owned by proprietors with ideological interests in
ideological goals in mind. And it was my understanding, as it is for anybody who works for money losing institutions, that it was the prerogative of the owner to set the editorial philosophy of the thing that he owned, particularly
when it was losing money. But you would think today Jeff Bezos having announced this, and having also annound that David Shipley, the current manager of the opinion section, would not be joining him in his new approach, and was therefore leaving that what Jeff Bezos did was a craven act of monstrosity, largely designed to curry favor with Donald Trump, which it may be. It may be that he wishes
to curry favor with Donald Trump. However, the fact is that the guy has now lost something like three hundred million dollars in the last three years on the Washington Post and may not want to continue losing enormous amounts of money on the Washington Post and having his other
businesses affected by the anger of politicians. Which again, through the course of American history, politicians have used their editorial pages and their opinion sections to curry favor with politicians and power who might help them get things like favorable placing of their printing plants and things like that. So the crocodile tears on the screen, and the yelling and the and the and the hysteria that has been uh, the michi flowing, the mischia go has been flowing today.
Yeah no, you're right.
Yeah, so that's why the focus just keep going, every Yiddish word, just go ahead.
But also it's such a weird bromide. What he said was he wanted to be one the editorial page to be to be to emphasize personal liberty and pre market. I mean, like only only an American editorial page editor of a major newspaper would find that I quit.
I'm against both those things.
I refuse, like I refuse to write to publish editorials and favor of personal liberty and the free market. So it's sort of like like, I mean, what have you really said? What he wanted, which was pro tariffs, which is sort of slightly more more in keeping with the
current administration. It's a very it's a it's a it's a strange, and it also it's like another indication that I I think I need to you take some kind of like weird retreat because all the things that people are really mad about, I'm not mad about, and then all the other things that people aren't mad about. I find myself enrage by. But there, there you go, jonah So, I have a slightly more nuanced take. I generally agree with you.
Ah, I don't like nuance. Paul Reiser and dieta reference there.
I generally agree with you. And at the same time, I think that the how to put this, the devil will be in the details, right, I think that's it really depends what he how this actually gets implemented, is it? You know, there are a lot of The current Washington Post op ed page is the most conservative I think it has ever been.
And that's I don't think that at all.
I got Jim Garritty, you got George Will, you got Megan mccardalship has the most conservatives it's had, right, I mean, crowdhammer is gone.
But in the nineteen eighties, certainly Meg Greenfield ran a far more conservative or conservative friendly editorial and opinion section. And remember you're you're mentioning a couple of people. They are outweighed by the tens of thousands of online columnists. Who's woke level of wokeness approaches? I don't know, vel So.
I welcome your counter nuance. So I really don't like counter nuance. My only my only point is is that it it just kind of depends on how this is implemented. And in the context of Bezos's sort of switcheroo towards Trump, you know, with the Kamala Harris editorial spiking and all that kind of stuff, endorsement spiking, I have a more
wait and see attitude about it. But I agree with you that in principle, you know, the Wall Street Journal basically is dedicated to free markets and and you know, personal liberties broadly understood and all that kind of stuff.
But I don't know, I also kind of think that, you know, the third most important op ed page in the country, depending on how you measure these things, should have a little bit of a sort of let's have the best arguments possible attitude on its on its pages, and we'll see what that looks like without you know, going forward.
Well it should, but not, no, no, no editorial page in the country has a let's just have the best arguments. That's that's not the way any of them works. They're always aligned or affiliated with one side or another broadly speaking, And I don't care. I don't care what the editorial line of the Washington Post is, by the way, look on it. I genuinely don't care. Unless they were unless they wanted to hire me, I would, unless they want a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to write one
column a week. I really, I really don't particularly they used to.
Do that, remember that, Nor that they used to do that.
There were people who had ridiculous deals to do stuff like that. When I say that I don't care, I mean Jeff People at the Washington Post who are complaining, there's some guy named Jeff Stein who you know, you know, actually went out and sort of attacked Visa. They should be falling on their knees to thank Bezos for the fact that he is supporting this completely insupportable enterprise that cannot make a nickel and in fact loses nine figures. This is nine figures a year. So you know what,
You're lucky to have a job there. You don't like it, get the hell out, What do I care? David Shipley doesn't want to go work there. Fine, everybody gets hired by the Atlantic. I'm sure he'll get hired by the Atlantic to produce equally mediocre op ed edits that he has currently that's whatever, Like it's nobody. The weird thing is the staff. I felt this way. Look, I worked for Sun Young Moon, you know, and he let me work and like I ran sections of a newspaper, I
ran a magazine, I ran up you know. It was like he was a crazy person and you know, had a lunatic religion and all of that. And I was still grateful to him because I had a job, I got to do something that I really liked. And he lost money. He was losing money to provide me with a forum, and like everybody who works at that paper
should be on their knees. I felt the same way about Rupert Murrock when I worked at the New York Post, which now, by the way, does not lose money, and it is it is ungrateful and unseemly for people to say, oh, he doesn't have the right to do this, he's just cow towing to Trump. Well maybe he is cow tewing to Trump, and maybe you should let me have a right to do it. Yeah, and maybe you should let her do that because he should be happy. He shouldn't
have tourus. If you'll look use the owning the newspaper is then they'll just get rid of the newspaper. And you know who is going to come in and spend lose one hundred million dollars a year on it. Nobody. Nobody loses one hundred million dollars a year on things like that is actually not something that's done in the United States. Capitalists don't come in and then like waste a hundred million dollars. They come in, if they have a delusion, then they can run it at a profit.
I think Bezos is basically proved it can't be done. Yeah, there are like three newspapers in the United States that make money. The Journal is one and The Times is another. And as I say, I think the New York Post doesn't lose money anymore. Nobody can make money on a newspaper. No one's coming to buy it from them, or if they do, they're buying it for scrap. So they should be happy. They should say thank you, Jeff Bezos for
changing your editorial policy. Those personal librities and those free markets. What a great idea.
So I do think what is interesting is that, you know, I have this long standing argument about like how America took this weird turn because basically because of TV bits starting with the Telegraph, of buying into objective coverage, right, And it was this whole idea, if you just put a TV on things you didn't have, you could take out all the bias. And of course it's nonsense and that never happened like in the UK or most of Europe. Right,
I mean the Guardian stayed left wing. Doesn't mean I mean I don't like the Guardian, but it doesn't mean it was. Or the times of the Telegraph which are right of center or conservative, doesn't mean they were bad papers, but you just knew where they were coming from, right, And I think that's a more honest way to do journalism. What is interesting to me is like American media is reverting back to the nineteenth century model in all sorts
of ways. And I've been making that argument for a long time, and now it's reverting in another way, which is to have media barons basically leaning heavily on how their outlets cover the news. And I think that's both good and bad depending on the actual circumstance. You know, the La Times is going through all sorts of turmoil, where I've been a columnist coming.
Up on twenty years.
Because the new owner has an idea about how these things, how a newspaper should work, and that's normal.
I agree with you.
There is this weird sense that the sort of institutionalized progressive elite seems to think that these institutions should always and forever be aligned to their priors and their interests, and when these institutions go another way, they think, it's this just outrage It's like petting the cat backwards. They just think it's apps outrageous and unthinkable, and it's it's kind of fascinating to me.
Again, We're used to living in a world in which, sure we hold minority view. We work in a profession in which they have had the high they have had the uh you know, the high ground uh in the culture for our entire professional lives, all three of us, in our different you know, in our different respective professions or places that we work. And we're used to it, and they're not, and they don't. They are not used
to not being kowtow too. And in fact, the last five years, for the last seven years, they were kowtowed too. They were sold a bill of goods that not only if they went woke, and they and they went in this direction. Not only would it be commercially a blockbuster for them, but they could alter the course of American history for the better by preventing the return to power of one Donald Trump. And guess what, it didn't work.
They didn't prevent him from getting reelected. In fact, maybe if they had not covered up Biden's infirmities, the Democratic Party could have been forced to ditch him into twenty twenty three. They got a different candidate in twenty twenty four who might have had a chance of beating Trump. Who knows. But all these owners Shu and Singh, you're the guy at the at the at the La Times, Bezos, all these guys, they were told, you have to go
this way. It's going to be fantastic. Democracy dies in darkness. It's a gold mine. The resistance is a gold mine. And it turned out a it wasn't a gold mine. Look at what's happening at MSNBC and b what whatever political end they thought they were going to achieve backfired on them. So why is he still giving them run of the paper. Why is Jeff Bezos giving them run of the paper. They didn't take the guy down. He's now running things, and Bezos wants to make peace with him.
Maybe you think that's, of course the illegitimate, because you think, yeah.
I mean, I don't know if he I mean, I mean I think that Trump will can consider this a triumph, but I'm not sure it's gonna be making peace. I mean, the the as you want to point it out, the pro free market, pro individual liberty newspaper in America right now is the Wallsey Journal, and the editorial page has all been called Trump and his administration fools and a moron.
And he complains about it, and he complains about it.
So I was like, you know, you could be you could be pro pro free market and pro personal liberty and still run a thwart of our erratic and I think sort of mentally imbalanced president. Yeah.
We don't need to get deep into conservative esoterica here, but just to put a pin on this, the contention that Donald Trump is pro free market.
And pro personal liberty is disputable.
Yeah, that's right. Yes, it's not a Yeah, it's not a fact.
Okay, So let's go where where Bezos is going. So forget that maybe he's trying and to make peace. No, but maybe what he's making peace with is the original Silicon Valley worldview, right, which was this kind of libertarian I know he's not Silicon Valley that he was in Seattle, but he's over there, this libertarian let it all hang out. Information wants to be free, you know, do all that. And then they got woke. They got woke. In the
twenty ten Silicon Valley went to the left. It was this weird leftist libertarian thing.
And now, yeah, no, I just I don't think that's true. I think that if anything that weird and information wants to be free nonsense, they're all embarrassed by because that's how you go broke. I remember hearing.
That information was destroyed the newspaper industry.
Yeah, information wants to be free. He wants me free. He wants to be free. And I remember a very very prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist running something he called the New York Times Deathwatch, because of course the New York Times is foolishly not doing that. And the New York Time realized, Okay, well, we just have to do something about our brand, and we have to have a better cooking section, and we have to have a better
games section. That people will pay for and that actually did that actually had a huge effect on their bottom line. I think what Basis wants to be is he wants to be a really important guy that everybody thinks is cool, rather than this weird nerd that he is still in his weird transference phase to the guy who doesn't really understand popular music. That that guy. He doesn't want to be that guy anymore. And it's intoxicating to have a newspaper, to be able to like have a newspaper, and I don't,
but you know, he's got that. He's got Elon Musk running around. And seeing Elon Musk is basically president standing looming over Donald Trump, It's like it must be really really frustrating and also really really cool. I mean, why why else would he buy James Bond? That's what he wants to be, you know.
I lately I've been on a bit of a terror against needless anthropomorphization of things.
And as one does, you know, and this one does.
And the first of all, information wants to be free. Well, first of all, who gives that rats ass what information wants?
Right?
And second of all, like alcohol wants to be free, Lots of things want to be free by the same logic, but like bars that serve alcohol for free go out of business. And the whole idea that somehow you were going to have something that's very expensive to produce, which is reported journalism. Believe me, it's very expensive, as we're learning at the Dispatch to have good reporting, both in terms of time, salary and resources and all the rest.
If you go by the motto, it just it just wants to be free, like it's some stallion that needs to be let off some BLM ranch in New Mexico.
You're going to go out of business.
And the willingness of the news industry in general to buy into something that they obviously had to know at some foundational level.
Was not true.
Is one of the great self inflicted wounds of America.
I think I.
Told this story about the New York Post. When I was at the New York Post and when the website went sort of the entire paper was put on the website for free. And I had just come from the Weekly Standard, and I had had one rule when we started the Weekly Standard, and I went to Bill christ I said, we are not giving content away for nothing. Because I had watched time magazine did it and they had made a huge mistake. And then Walter Isaencson tried
to correct that mistake, and we didn't. The Standard did not. You had to subscribe to get a code to read the Standard online. There was no other way to read if you were going to read it at all, and not on paper. And the New York Post went entirely free. And I said to my boss, why are we doing this? I don't understand. He said, you should love this because
it'll give you a national audience. Like people are still going to read the Post the way people are going to buy the paper to read it on the subway. We were the number one selling newspaper in Manhattan. People bought it in the afternoons to read it on the subway on the way home. Sold three to four hundred thousand papers that way by hand for fifty cents, you know,
two quarters thrown in. And that therefore there was no threat because all the only thing you were going to get was people reading The New York in Cincinnati or San Francisco or something like that. And it made sense if you if you didn't understand that at some point people were going to be able to carry something around that was going to make the free thing available to them when they were on the subway, and therefore weren't going to buy the paper.
It's still a part of you though, that when you hear the stuff, you think, wait, we're still talking about the newspaper.
Well, I mean, Joan and I both still write for newspapers, so we're still talking about it because you know, it's like if we were if we had a if we had buggy whips, if we had a horse and we needed a buggy whip, we would still talk about the best place to buy a buggy whip. Yes, you know, maybe maybe that's not something that other people really pay attention to, But you know.
I also still love physical newspapers too.
I do the crossword every day.
See I don't. I'm very happy not reading the physical newspaper. I mean, and I find, by the way, with books that because my my eyesight isn't great, that that iPads you know, where I can blow the type up or actually and the phone, by the way, are much easier on my eyes than a than a conventional codexes. But but that's okay. I mean, I many people do.
Like doing the crossword puzzle. The Journal and The Times cross repuzzle, and there is a mystery to the Journal and the Crimes cross re puzzle, in which there are occasionally clue that are that are repeated. There'll be one on Tuesday and The New York Times that will appear on Thursday. Not not exactly the same clue, but close. And it's impossible to know how that happened. It's unlikely that anyone consciously stole it right, because it's just too silling.
These things are all done way ahead of time. But I don't know if anybody else has noticed that. I just thought I would talk a little bit about crossroad puzzles because I don't know.
I'm just doing storing. To me, doing a crossroad puzzle on the phone or on the computer on the iPad is fantastic.
It's not.
Oh yes it is.
No, that's an incorrect opinion.
It is not an incorrect opinion, and it is in fact demonstrated by the fact that, as you say, the puzzle is one of the things that makes The Times have ten million subscribers.
I'm not saying it's not profitable. I'm just saying it's an incorrect opinion. But you know, it's not an incorrect opinion.
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So we've been talking about Jeff Bezos. I think it's now time for us to talk about Mark Zuckerberg and our friend John Goldberg. Mark Siberberg has seduced John Goldberg. Uh in a very horrifying way. Terrified. It's like Black Mirror. I'm in an episode of Black Mirror because joon' Goldberg, as I see him on on Zoom right now, is wearing a pair of smart smart spy glasses. He's wearing smart glasses, and I am freaked out. So Joanah, what are you seeing?
Can you tell what you're seeing right now?
What is going on?
So just to be clear, these are not the virtual reality glasses. Uh huh okay, so yes, those virtuality grasses are different. Those are those big honkin things that look like.
That's the oculus. That's called the oculus, right.
Which is sort of like a slim down version of the thing from that Albert Brooks movie where the cameraman all had these word helmets.
Real life was called real life Real Life.
So this these are written by Albert Brooks and Harry Shearer. By the way, Harry was it was co creator, co created my mind.
But go ahead, So these are basically modified tricked out ray Man wafer sunglasses good by the way, and the lenses are transitions, so like in the sun'll be there'll be sunglasses and you can link it with your phone and I can I'm not currently linked with my phone, but I can ask it sort of instead of like asking Siri for something, you can say you can ask Meta for something, and you can say, hey, I don't want to say it because I'm afraid it'll trigger here
and confuse things. But you can say, hey, what am I looking at? Or take a page? Yeah, take a video, what's the capital of Belize? You know that kind of stuff, and it'll basically just do the search and read it back to you, readbact the answer to you. I don't use that very much. I tend to have the AI stuff turned off because I find it annoying. But uh, I thought these were really cool when Karas Swisher showed me a pair you had brought to the studio one
day at CNN. And the audio on them is fantastic. It's about as good as air pods, and so you can have them in and listen to a podcast or music or any of that kind of stuff, and you can also very surreptitiously just taped aside and take a photo. And the photos are actually pretty good. And so the highest best use I've gotten out of them was when I went to India on that special trip and you went, I went to all sorts of places where you weren't supposed to be taking a picture to pictures, and since
people don't realize what it is, no one noticed. And it's not like I got pictures of classified things or whatever. But it's a kind of a fun way to like, if you're driving and you see something wacky, you don't have to take out your phone and like you kill yourself. You just tapped aside of your glasses and it takes a picture.
Is it weird and racist for me to say things something like tell me please, why are you keep tapping on the side of your head? Are you taking pictures about? Is that we cut that out?
I don't know if no, But I love okay, And uh, they're just a toy, you know. I mean it's kind of cool. I have not gotten massive utility out of them. But if you're doing something where you're not going to be I wanted to take out your phone to take a picture and all that kind of stuff or video, but you want the ability to do it, or if you want to listen to something while not having air pods in or any of that kind of stuff.
It's pretty cool.
And if you like the the AI features, there's all sorts of cool stuff you can do with it. I'm just not that into it, so I'm sorry. I don't have a more grandiose, exciting explanation. But they're a fun toy.
This is the end of the work. This is it? Is it really that we're done? We're done, humanity is done?
Why because we have we have fun glasses.
I saw Elon Musk the other day tweeted that we're on the verge of the singularity. Jonah is merging with his glasses. The AI is now on his body, is literally hanging off his body, and at some point they'll put it in. I'm wearing contact lenses now because my eyesight has gotten somewhat worse that it's actually better with I got with. What if they put AI in my contact lenses like ten years from now.
Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that.
John, Yeah, I am very Why not.
Sure that you will be gentle?
Yeah?
It will happen. This is very bad. This is very bad. It's more more more badness of the of the bad, of everything going bad. You think he gets his hands on this. Here's what they see. What do we see? What these lasses do to the next generation of people, the next generation of people between the ages of ten and fifteen.
I am surveying the people the ages of ten to thirteen, and also people in the ages seem seem to be the ages of all ages, and they seem to me to be in these many many people seem to be sort of mentally and emotionally imbalanced and filled with inappropriate anger all the time, and angry at stuff and easily persuaded nonsense. So the idea of maybe having some kind of a machine in there to sort of govern their weirdness and to remind them, actually, no, this is not
really what's happening. Could be? Uh could could could?
Well, that's good. So you're saying, what if you programmed it? What if somebody got in there and turned you into a character in a Philip K. Dick novel. You're like, you put your glasses on, you take a picture, and they're like, that's not actually The Washington Monument there is no Washington Monument. In fact, that is an alien base.
Let me explain. So, let let I have I have four words, maybe six words, to to say, Deputy FBI Director Dan.
Was terrible. I didn't just say.
You're telling me that putting a little AI in there is gonna make it worse. I think you're your dreams. I can't get only make it better.
You're saying that Dan Bongino with metaglasses would be better.
I'm saying that the evil masterminds in the Philip da k Dick novel, or the evil masterminds in the George Orwell be.
Like, well, we're not going to do that.
Obviously, this is one Come on, now, we're gonna we may be evil, but we're not gonna be That's that's too far. I don't know. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror in the morning, in the telescreen and know that I had done that. I mean, you know, so, so I just I take a more sanguine attitude towards all of this technology. But then again, I'm a seminary, so I have.
To you do well, why why why does a seminarian look at the present and think that the world is not full of sin, and that we are not and that we are not headed. We are not making it easier for people to sin, to live, to live disconnected lives from others, to not to serve others, but to only live as part of the priesthood of the self. Why couldn't that be the lesson of the metaglasses.
Because people don't want to do that. They want to connect it what they that they are. We are, deeply, deeply, deeply in our heart of hearts and our soul, we are lonely and we want to be connected, and no matter what we invent, will never ever be able to stamp that out. And maybe we just need to know what that what the value of that is. Maybe we we we maybe people think for a little bit, Oh you know what, I don't really need to to have this conversation. I'd rather just send you a like on
TikTok or whatever it is. I don't know, you know, maybe we need to hit rock bottom like a drunk.
So Rob, can I ask you a related question because I'm actually kind of on POD's side about generally, I think iPhones have been in social media, all these things have been bad for the soul and all this connectivity has made everyone lonelier.
Yeah, but it's true.
I have a question for you as a seminary. Have you told anybody.
You know get to church you Heathen?
No?
I have not, I have not, I have not.
Do you think that's coming?
Uh? No? I mean you think for me to be telling people to go to church? Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think what you want to do is you want people to you want people to go to church. I mean this is what I think religion and church is a place where you go because it has something you need, not because it's something you have. So you don't go to church because you want to like profess your faith. You go because you want faith. I think
that the churches have kind of missed that. So they just have to make sure that whatever it is that they're I mean it's easy for me to talk about the Episcopal Church I know pretty well, but you know there will be big, you know, committees, and they wonder what what can we do to get people back to church?
And they'll you know, they do things like, well, you know, we'd remind people that our coffee hour we serve Starbucks coffee and you can drive by churches every now and then and see a silence that we have Starbucks coffee, They'll say, which is weird because so to Starbucks down the streets, So like, why would you go to the church or you could go to starbuck, right, you know, churches need to start serving up and delivering and offering
things that people really want. But what they don't want, obviously is to go and hear sinners in the hands of an angry God. I don't believe that anyway, So I'm glad that they don't, but they do want to hear something, and I think that people writing though, oh yeah, I mean it's killer, it's killer.
Guy, that guy, that guy knew how to that guy knew how to kill material.
Yeah.
Greenwhild my colleague today has a has in our Daily Commentary's daily newsletter. We're taping this on on Wednesday the twenty sixth, points out that there is a new survey that suggests that the decline in religious faith, religious attendance and people saying that they has stabilized for the first time in a very long time. Ross staff that very excitedly also that as welless.
On our on the Ricochet podcast last last Friday was great.
And humorously points out that his own book is on the bestseller list, and maybe he's personally responsible for his new book, which is about why people should believe in God.
Why he says go to church Heathen?
He does, He doesn't, he does.
But Abe has a very interesting theory, which is that he says that the last five years, really beginning with twenty twenty, so that's the year of the pandemic, and the year of George Floyd, and the year of the Awokening and the year of the revolution in consciousness, and all of that have been so terrible, and that this substitute religion wokeness, which is a subsidute religion, as John McWhorter said in his book on it, and I think, as is true of socialism and leftism in general, that
the failures of this, the failure of this to do anything but try to instruct people that men are not men and women are not women, and the entire world has actually is actually might be having the same kind of boomerang effect I suggested about politics and Jeff Bezos, and that people are like, we gave a shot to this fake with this pseudo religion, and they're describing a world we neither add, we understand or want to live in, and it's time to go back to the older ways.
I think that may be partly that certainly I think is driving some of the attractions and more orthodox religions. You know, the Orthodox Church is getting very popular now that a lot of converse with that. But I would, I would actually pre would date that much older. I remember when I was a kid and my dad was in the it was in the tech business, and he brought home this thing. This is like ninety seventy six, seventy seven, maybe seventy eight. It was a computer chess
board and you could play chess with a computer. And I remember thinking, man, now that I have this, I will never be bored. But of course, you know, I was bored, Like within a minute, I was bored. And you know, midde day, that says a lot about me. But I was easily bored. And I think we've been told for twenty years to go back to the technology thing, that these these these items will help connect you to
other people, and it's going to be great. You're gonna information, you can connect with people, and this is the you know, the I actually wrote a piece about this and the the years ago, the the heart of all the technology, that invention and money and investment and the innovation from you know, two nineteen ninety eight, ninety two thousand on has been really about the war against loneliness. And we
have all these things and they don't work. People are still lone not only just lonely, they're just they're pissed too. Now I not only am I lonely, but I also have a gigantic list of people like despise and some of them are some of them are my friends. Right, And I think that you kind of want to go. You're gonna have to ask yourself, Okay, well, what's if I have all this and I'm still lonely and I'm still still emptiness? What could possibly be the answer I
find I have this? I mean, I know we should just keep going, we should go to tough, funny stuff. But I have this problem with people. You know, some of my colleagues at seven you keep talking about how terrible everything is. Everything's really terrible, you know, global warming and war and whatnot. And I said, no, no, See, the thing is that things are really great, but it's not enough, right, I mean by any measure or metric. The world is a better, better place it is today that it was
you were, you go. And I think that we're starting to realize that, oh, we we need another way of measuring happiness and goodness and purposefulness in our life.
I mean, I think that's the deepest possible point. We are living in a time in which in which there are literally billions of people who are not starving, who people in their position forty years ago would literally have been starving to death. Yeah, right right, this is this is a real thing.
Uh.
The advances of humankind credible out of the most the deepest penury. Uh is something that we take totally for granted in a really terrible way, and for people, and and we're people, and but you're right that that does not solve for soul aching, the thing that makes the soul ache, and that a lot of what makes the soul ache. Yeah, is this refusal or inability to connect. The connection is a burden.
And we should also have some jokes here, but I don't have any. Let's put I say one other thing, which is that that one of the things that we have discovered with social media is that the your ability to show off to people is much much greater than
ever was, and that is not enough that everyone. You know, part of the sort of self promotion that people do is just it's just not satisfying, and so you have to look for something else, which may I would not recommend looking to a night out with drinks if you reach a certain age, but if you do go out at night and have a few drinks, you'll maybe you're like me. You don't bounce back the next day like
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So Rob, I have notes. I I agree entirely that we should get to something more jocular. So I'm going to forego trying on the prior conversation except to say two things. One, I did write a whole book on this entire topic. The rest it's all about ingratitude and all that kind of stuff. And two you said in that excellent ad read for that excellent product, the people who always used to say, no, no, it's about dehydration. You need to eat a banana?
What? Yeah, I'm sorry, I I alighted two things. Yeah, but the banana has potassium. So some people say, oh, you need to drink water, and let's be say, oh, no, just eat a banana because it has potassium. And so I you're good, is correct.
I've never man.
It's hot outside, I'm so thirsty, I gotta eat a banana. It's just not give give a give a thirsty man a banana.
I do sometimes. I remember once I I I got into this like fugue state. I would when I was pitched TV shows. I remember like once pitching his show and we were we said it in San Francisco, and it was the picture went great. Every he's nodding and smiling and laughing, this is great. We won a great pitch, you know. And I said, and we love, you know, we want to sit in San Francisco because it's such a great city's going these great things. And then I
said some weird, I said, I had no memory. I said, and you know, with great about San Francisco is there's so many ways in and out of the city. And everybody nodded like, oh yeah, yeah, right great. And then we were walking out and we sold the show. We were walking down, we sold the scriptway walking out, and my writing partner said, what are you what are you talking about? There's so many ways in and out of it? What does that even mean? I said, I don't know.
Did I say that? Because yeah, you said. The thing we like about San Francisco is there's so many ways in and out of the city. Is that? What is that? Even? And I said, well, did anybody No? No, They all nodded like that made sense, But it didn't make any sense at all, And you know, and and like he was mad at me, Like we we kind of had a little tension in the car the way back of the office because I was like, well, we sold it,
didn't we? Yeah, but it was just nonsense. It's just like you need to think about what you're saying, is what he kept saying to me in a very angry tone of voice.
So years ago, you know, I'm still friends with these guys that I worked with when I was a television producer for Ben Wattenberg's TV show. And the whole stick behind the TV show was we were gonna have experts, right because journalists are glib and don't know a lot about a lot of things, and politicians lie.
So it's going to be people.
You have to have written a book, or you have to be a scholar or an expert on something, and you can't just be some you know whatever. And we were in an editorial meeting and someone proposed to have Ed Koch as a guest on this panel. And I was not particularly fond of the person who proposed this, and I kind of scornfully got this haughty.
Tone and I said, well, I just don't know.
It seems to me that ed Cotch doesn't really have an at academic pedicure. And I made it like another ten twenty five seconds into my little shpiel before someone said what.
And wheeled around the way.
And so twenty thirty years later, my friends still give me a grief for having said academic pedicure.
That is, that is a malapropism for the ages. That is so good, that is so good.
It's probably true. I don't I don't think i'd want to like check that.
Where where where? But where do you go to get a degree in pedicure? Would be I assume Korea. I'm gonna I'm gonna make a wild stab and say that South Korea, since all nail salons in New York City are run by people from South Korea, that maybe this is something that you, you know, have to take a very difficult test for.
Thanks to the good work of the Institute for Justice, the think tank R Street, and governor's like Doug Doosey, War on Occupation, no licensing, Yes, such that you no longer need a degree in academic pedicure.
And although yes, that's that, that is that's very deep. I want to mention you mentioned bananas. And this brings to mind the fact that the new season of White Lotus is now on HBO and it's set in Highland. And two things about this one is they keep cutting all the all the interstitial things. When they cut between the the three plot lines are they show like a monkey in a tree, a little monkey, a big monkey, a medium sized monkey. The monkey is crawling up and
down the tree. So that's why I brought to mind the banana. And the fact is, so I've watched I think it's either two episodes or three, I can't remember. Now. Uh, this it is so boring. It is like watching paint dry. I swear to God this season.
Uh you know.
Basically, now this has become a show where you pick a location. Mike White picks a location right, the Hawaii, the first one that was a COVID show that he did sicily. Now this is Samoi Ko Samoi and Thailand and god, you know he'll be the Maldives next or whatever. And then you like have music from the company and then then you have these rich Americans acting foolishly on on location, and my god, it is so excruciatingly dull.
And I'm saying this because I think people need to understand that you are permitted to watch a show like White Lotus, which wins Emmys and everyone is so thrilled with it, and everyone's like waiting for it to come back, and then it comes back. It's okay to think that it's bad. When it's bad, people often don't give themselves permission to think.
That, really, that's interesting. I've never had that problem.
Well you haven't, but you know that there are people who are like, oh, you've got to watch Oh you know, we've talked about this the Oh no, it only really gets good in the fourth Yeah.
Yeah, are girls, you know, which is still the greatest example of that.
Pat, Yeah, that's absolutely true. Patrick Schwarzenegger is in it, and somebody I think I just read a little somebody just post. I assume this is real because I saw it on Twitter. His angry response at the charges that he only got the job because he's, you know, Patrick Swartz, He's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver's son, and he so knows everybody. He said, those people are that's unfair. They weren't there when I was doing all the plays in high school.
We're going to drama classes, like, yeah, I guess that's true. They missed your He is Pajama game.
He is very very good. He is actually very good. I mean, he plays the worst person in the world, a genuinely sort of repugnant bro. Very good looking. He's very good looking. He's he's nominally he's playing somebody who was nominally charming, but it's actually morally disgusting, and I gotta say he's he's good. So I'm happy to report that that we should talk.
About the other shows that, I mean, the honest truth about it. Yeah, these jobs are easy anyway, so good you know it's it's not that hard, but go ahead, sorry, we should.
It's it's a little bit like the Seinfeld where like you're not allowed to dislike the English patient.
Exactly right, we should.
I mean there were like the last season of True Detective terrible, like deserve to leave skid marks on the toilet bowl.
It was so bad, and.
Well you also disliked it because it was it was it defamed Alaska. It was an act of defamation of poor poor Alaska. That it was its Yeah, but like.
My problems with it there on the Alaska stuff having been to like Barrow in the place where it's supposed to be set, is like I think that's where it's.
Supposed to be set.
It's sort of like you know, when we watch sort of second or third tier action movies, they're all filmed in Toronto and they're supposed to be New York City and they go on these like subway systems that look nothing like New York, right. That's that was my main problem with the Alaska part of it was just like this is not what Alaska is like.
But uh, you should see that.
You see that. Austin Powers Movies made fun of that, where they would you know, be in a car chase through London and then suddenly they were on the Hollan Drive and there's a little musical I saw it. I forget that. It's called Love Me Tonight, or I think it's called Love Me Tonight with Maurice Chevalier. Actually sorry, Early, it's a really great, great movie.
One of the great, one of the great original on the outside musicals.
Not on set, yeah, yeah, not a set and incredible, incredible opening sequence, really really brilliant. But there's a period in when when I think Janet MacDonald is on on a horse and she's chasing after him on a train and it's it's the Valley. I mean, it's it's Covina she's on. Basically she's like, right, you're supposed to it's supposed to be France, is what you're saying, right, And she's basically on the corner of Ventura and wits it.
But it's great, I mean still good. But it's like, yeah, okay.
Fine, but I mean I find this all the time now, particularly extremely it was also it's always been true, but but these shows that people they come back. They they have a great first season, right, and people get very excited, and it's totally logical that you get six good hours or eight good hours out of something and that's a
pretty significant accomplishment. And then you come back and you don't have and that's it, and then they have to make more because it's popular, and then they gets really annoying. And yet it's the second and third seasons where people go, oh my god, this is so f Oh my god, god, the bear. The bear is so fan it's so fantastic.
It's like, well, it's sun cost fouls. You already put in so much time you can't possibly pull the ripcord on it. But also it's kind of like the same thing we're saying before, which is that you're discovering, Oh, this thing I thought would make me happy actually doesn't make me happy.
And then you don't want to acknowledge it, so you know, you sort of and you don't want people to be mad at you if they're enthusiastic and you're not, because then you're like a wet blanket. You're you're, you're, you're you're harshing their mellow. You're you're ruining their good time.
And you would you say say more about how you feel when people get mad at you.
People get mad at me from the first moment in the morning till I go bed, go to bed, not me. I am not that that is not I but I am not.
Who are they getting mad at? Are they getting mad at John? Are they getting mad at little John? Who are they getting mad at?
Whatever? Whoever they're getting mad at. It has my name and it has.
My face, so maybe it is session.
We probably Yeah, thank you, thank you so much that that would be that would be a very, very very helpful.
So there's a show that we're supposed to all of which I'm not saying is anything like True season four, True Detective or Girls or anything like that. But I am curious because it is benefiting from this, Oh you have to love it phenomenon is uh Severance, And I'm curious what you guys think about this season.
I'm getting very annoyed by this season of Severance. So the first season of Severance I thought was fantastic. It's a workplace satire, right, That's the whole thing about Severance is that it was a workplace satire about what what
what what? What? What would it be like if you could ditch the parts the boring part of your life where you were a drudge and you could just sort of like come, that person goes to work and you don't have to be at work, and then you just live the parts of your life where you're not at work, right, and so and then this hilarious depiction of this, you know, bizarrely Amway like cult like Kellogg like corporate culture that you live inside, right, And that was what was really
great about it. And now it's just a science fiction now it's just a bottle science fiction show. That was just a show where it's like, what's really going on at Lumen and not Luman the breathing metabolic device, what's going on there? And are they clones? Are they do indies have consciousness? And stuff like that, and then it's
like stuff. So the thing that really got me was I was listening to another podcast, Matt Bellanieese podcast about Hollywood, and he had on the producer of Severance, and the guy was like, well, it's such a big hit on Apple now we are looking forward to having many seasons to come. And I was like, oh, oh my god. No, like, no, try to finish up because you're already losing me with the seventeen different twists on the plot lines.
It all goes to the same place. And I just remember a year, million billion years ago, it's going to see the And by the way, if you have not seen the movie Blade Runner, I apologize for this, but going to see the movie Blade Runner in the movie theater. In the movie theater, some you know, at some point in the movie, some guy some rose back turned to whoever goes. I bet you that guy's a robot too.
He just doesn't know it. And yeah, it's like, yes, it's all just not as interesting or as earth chattering as people think. It is funny, a little funny joke, and then you're out.
It's funny you say that about the robot thing, because I think the far better comparison. So could be right, Maybe they'll stick the landing. But like, is when World the HBO show.
Or it just spun out of control?
Yeah, they got It's like the boond Smoke didn't. They didn't have the right ventilation in the writer's room or to a certain extent lost, which I have now concluded that the title of that show was actually an ironic one who describing viewers who are trying to follow everything and the writers who completely lost whatever intentionality they originally had.
And so like, I kind of liked the mood and the stuff in severance, but you can just feel like they're going to have an ending that does not justify the investment.
I don't even know if they're going to have an ending. That's my point. I mean, one of the things about what's going on here is it took two and a half years for this second season to come out, right. Because of the strikes COVID there were various things that delayed everything. So this show is on like two and a half years later. Yellow Jack, which is another mystery bottle show thing, has just returned, and it's like, I
can barely remember what I did on Saturday. You expecting so remember you're not about it from a show that I watched two and a half years ago. And you know, Stranger Things is coming back this summer and they're all eighty years I only want to see they're four years older. They're supposed to be teenagers.
I only want to see TV or movies in which if there is like an artificial intelligence kind of character or like some kind of android that at least one of the actors describes that person as a robot.
Robot.
I don't like robot. I think robot because it kind of like it sets it in the fifties where I want to be. And by the way, take a quick break, we will be right back, and please listen to this wonderful message that's been been inserted by a robot or a robot, and we're back, so that the robot did his work.
Uh, by the way, that's one of the things that where I where I decided that I was losing my sympathy with severances. There's a whole thing. There's a plot. They they they the the the inny that they end up outside, right, they're outside on an outing and the outing is called ortbow, which of course is at anagram for robot. So it's like, oh, so now you're telling me that they're robots or this is just a total like ridiculous red herring, like do it or don't do it?
You know what I mean. It's like you mentioned Lost Lost when Loss started to lose me, which was I think was like in the second season, though I kept watching it, of course, and it did have wonderful stuff all the way through its six seasons. Was when they met the the others, right, the other people from them, and people are like some guy says to uh Matthew Fox, the hero is like, this isn't your island, Jack, this is our island. It's not your island. I was like,
they don't want it to be their island. They want to get.
Off the island.
I get off this island. You you you keep it. I'm happy to have you have the island. I'm not contesting ownership of the island with you, and that was when you thought, Okay, they've really lost the thread here.
You can call this the Gulf of America. It's fine. I don't want to be.
Exactly right, but can I just offer it? Can I for since we're talking about TV shows and stories and I know we got to run probably pretty soon. And I know you two are not on the TikTok for whatever reasons you can come up with.
Because I'm not twelve, but if you.
Are twelve or you're you know, emotionally twelve. The thing about TikTok is that there are there are there are shows on it, and they're terrible, and they are incredibly incredibly uh by the numbers, kind of like you can't believe it. It's as if they are written by and acted by robots. But they are very, very simple. It's usually it's either a a humble person going into a restaurant. This is the one I saw the other day. Hi, I'm here at what are you doing here? This restaurant
is the number one restaurant. It's such a person such as yourself wouldn't be here. And then the resons, well, I think I have a reservation it's impossible, go away, you know, and then it goes on forever, and then you can because I'm hooked on this. And then you gotta you go down and like a and then the chef comes in and says, a is, did my mother come here to get her table? What? Wait here? Your mother?
Is this?
Who? And then then the person is, you're fired for biggest snob And the one I saw the other day, which I love, which is the guy's asleep at a tech company in his little The kid, the son of the owner for Dyson Technology or whatever it is, comes and says, what are you asleep in the chair? You're fired? And he goes, I was just here all night, just working. You're fired, your loser. And then the guy's girlfriend has
just been fired. She's some kind of weird corporate uh you know, hr person, and she's like, yeah, yes, I would fire him. To boss's son, and then the boss's son, it's unbelievable. And then you just if you just if you scroll down and watch the rest of them. Then of course the boss's son is screamed at by his father. But there's the great moment where the kid, the guy who has been fired is then rehired by another beautiful
woman who's at the you know, Thunderland Technology. I will give you a salary of one million dollars a year, and you will have a company called It's all kind of weird fantasy. You have to described incredibly satisfying.
So you have to describe what you're talking about here, because what happens on TikTok, which I have sampled, is these these things are in chapters, right, so, and the chapters last two minutes, and then when you're done with that chapter, you can swipe up to go to the chapter that immediately succeeds it, and then you keep going. It can be fifty or sixty chapters. And they are little moral dramas, and they are made in China. They're made by they're written by Ai. They're made for by
these Chinese production houses. Though they're all Americans or Canadians.
They're all yeah yeah, right, but the dialogue is so hilarious.
Yeah, And so I saw one myself about were wolves.
No, it is not only loyal service to you, yeah yeah.
Yeah, but it's were wolves, but their corporate they're there. It's a were wolf who's also a billionaire. So it's like Twilight plus fifty Shades of Gray with a girl in high school and Succession, but they are written that way. It's like they make Hallmark movies look like Congreve or Sheridan or Moliere.
You know.
I mean that is the level of dialogue. So congratulations on.
Because every trait it's like it's like watching a h Case Code movie. Every transgression is punished the evil person.
This is what we need from you, Rob as a seminary. We need you to punish transgressions so that people will no longer be lonely. This is how we're coming around, I think for loneliness.
John Oh, yeah, this is the punishment reach out.
That is fair enough. I think that is a very good I do want to make one recommendation. I did it on our podcast, but remarkably because I thought the first season was not very good and the second season was terrible. Though I did watch them both because I'm a sucker.
Uh.
The the Amazon series Reacher, right, which you're right, the Lee Child novels, right you did. The third season is now up, and uh, it's really good. It's shockingly good. Like it's as though they took this terrible turn in the second season where it's Reacher with his team, his former team, and that's not what you want from Reacher. Reacher is the lone ranger, and you don't want Reacher having a team.
So you think is better? Do you think it got better or do you think you got No?
I think it got better. I certainly got dumber, but I think so. I'm recommending that. Jonah, do you have anything to recommend you? You You're always on a plane somewhere watching something, so.
You know I should have thought about it more before coming on here. No, because everything is terrible, but uh gosh, I feel like I watched something recently that, oh, well, we talked about it last time. I think, so it doesn't really count. But man, did I enjoy American Primeval.
I did too, although it's so needlessly grim, but it's so so unbelievably so beautifully photographed. And oh that's another thing. Yeah, three was pretty Nineteen twenty three was pretty boring. Also the first episode of nineteen of the second season of nineteen twenty three, I Haven't I Haven't, which which was Rob are you watching anything or are you too busy reading the Nice in Creed or whatever?
Well, a nice and Cree isn't that long. So I'm not watching this thing. I am, but I am, I am, I'm a huge amount of reading I have to do. That is that is a that is a problem, although it's a happy problem because you get to sit down and read, you know, the Saint Basil of Says area, which is kind of the that stuff is really good. The harm anytime I see that I'm assigned to read a hom read a homily or a set of homilies,
I'm in. It's when you're when you're reading, you know, so you love good homily, love good homily because someone's got to hear it, you know. It was it was it was written to be read out loud, written to be understood, right, I am reading a certain amout. There's a certain amount of theology now which would be come under the heading of woke theology. And that is uh, that has been instructive. It's interesting to read. Some of it actually is valuable, and some of it is absolutely
kind of like making up new words for stuff. And there's a little bit of conversation about as the when you're reading the Old Testament and reading it this sort of as a through the lens of migrant literature. You do get a little people get a little hot on the collar when it comes down to some of those things.
By the way, Uh, John, maybe you've already planned or maybe you've already reviewed it.
It's not out yet.
You probably haven't reviewed it yet, but someone a commentary should take a look at my AI colleague Mike Rosen's new book coming out. I just did a podcast with them.
It's like, uh, it's on the Torah and AI right.
Making clay from clay from silicon, and it's it's about how Jewish mystical, Jewish mysticism and Jewish ethics can inform our understanding of AI and how to regulate it. And it's actually pretty interesting, good stuff.
He's a good writer. He writes for me all the time. The book is in fact assigned, and that is a very good assignment. You know. The the world again, My colleague A. Greenwall is very much obsessed with this, and
I think there is something to it. The more AI is sort of a factor is going to be a lot of what will make AI work is the development of kind of these quantum computers and quantum mechanics and things like that, and the deeper you look into that or you try to sort of understand what's going on there and quantum theory. The closer the closer you get to something that starts looking very much like a pre modern world view about the existence of other worldly beings
and that sort of thing. There is something to the idea that AI, which, as I say, I look at and I think it's very frightening and the destructive. But the thing that will make it work is raising all kinds of interesting spiritual questions about the nature of reality itself that I don't even begin to understand, but that I think Rosen's book starts to touch on, and that other things are going to deal with even more so
it's one of those things. The AI thing is one of those many things that people are talking about more and more. Like Frederick Douglass, if you remember what Donald Trump said in the first term, he is somebody that people are talking about more and.
More, more and important.
Well yeah, yeah, hey, we got through this whole thing without talking about Eilon Musk.
So let's get out out all right. That's problem no Eel and Musk.
Spader