This week Offline Móvie Clúb takes on “Tár,” the 2022 film about a music conductor whose narcissism and abuses of power bring about her very public downfall. Max is joined by New York Times critic at large, Amanda Hess, and Offline critic at large, Jon Favreau, to examine the movie’s takes on cancel culture, identity construction and the limits of control—especially online. Should we feel pity for cancelled celebrities? To what extent is social media real life? And is “Tár” secretly a comedy? Fo...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 146
It’s not just supplements and energy drinks fueling the manosphere. Your favorite right-wing podcaster may be sponsored by…Vladimir Putin! Jon and Max discuss the new federal indictment alleging that the Kremlin has been funding right-wing internet personalities, including Tim Pool. Then they break down why the Brazilian Supreme Court has blocked access to X and why the “Hawk Tuah” girl’s new podcast showcases the difference between virality and popularity. But first! Donald Trump is doing the r...
Sep 08, 2024•54 min•Ep. 145
Has there ever been a more dramatic Twitter thread than A’Ziah King’s 2015 saga about a roadtrip turned kidnapping? Erin Ryan and Josie Duffy Rice join Max to discuss “Zola,” the movie adaptation of those tweets. The film tells the (mostly true) story of a young stripper getting whisked away to Florida by a new acquaintance and her pimp. Its searing commentary on sex trafficking is studded with notification sounds and social media soliloquies, to both sinister and comedic effect. Are Florida roa...
Sep 05, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 144
Max and Jon sit down to break down a very online DNC, diving into Obama’s anti-social media convention speech, the MyPillow guy’s embarrassing troll attempts, and a Taylor Swift & Beyonce rumor that spun out of control. Plus: Mark Zuckerberg’s fear driven turn towards Trump and the new political divide: cranks vs. everyone else. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here . For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast....
Sep 01, 2024•59 min•Ep. 143
Jon Lovett and Erin Ryan join Max to discuss how “The Truman Show,” predicted our current era of continuous surveillance and content mining. The movie may be from 1998, but its insights are just as applicable 25 years later—from cults of celebrity, to Fox News, to Instagram. Is Ed Harris’ dome over Burbank a cautionary tale about fascist governance? Do we all hide parts of personalities, depending on context? Why was Jon Lovett freaked out by the Hunger Games premiere? Find out in this week’s Of...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 142
Peter Thiel isn’t as rich as Elon Musk or as notorious as Steve Bannon. But over the last 10 years he has grown from Silicon Valley’s oddball conservative to an ideological anchor of the Trump era. And, unfortunately for us, he thinks the country would be better off without voting. Bloomberg Businessweek reporter, Max Chafkin, has written a book about Thiel and his mind boggling worldview: The Contrarian . He joins Max to discuss what Thiel wants from the Republican Party, his mentorship of J.D....
Aug 25, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 141
Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes join Max to explore how 1983’s “WarGames” predicted the internet era. The film is a fascinating time capsule of Reagan era tech optimism, nuclear war doomerism, and Matthew Broderick’s puckish charm. Ben dives into the foreign policy behind the movie, drawing on his own experience traveling the country with Obama and a briefcase of nuclear codes. Lovett reminisces about 80s computing, marvels at how technology has changed since then, and talks shop on tic-tac-toe. This ...
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 140
Elon Musk hosted Donald Trump for a two and a half hour ramble on Twitter’s garbage live streaming platform—and if you think SpaceX flubs launches…well, they’ve got nothing on X Spaces. Max sits down with Hysteria’s Erin Ryan to recap the most head-smacking parts of the conversation, and ask the question of our generation: if Elon doesn’t call it X, why should we? After that, Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, joins the show to talk about J.D. Vance’s ties to a small but powe...
Aug 18, 2024•57 min•Ep. 139
Why is Tim Walz, a 60-year-old dad from Minnesota, so internet savvy? And why is he so good at making right wingers look not just weird, but also extremely, chronically and dangerously online? Jon and Max discuss the meme appeal of Harris’ new VP pick, why Republicans are sinking deeper into weirdness with transphobic attacks on Olympians, and what X’s latest legal tantrum is really about. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here . For a transcript of this episode, please email...
Aug 11, 2024•41 min•Ep. 138
All of a sudden, nearly every Democrat in the country has started calling out Republicans for being really damn weird. And with JD Vance’s pronatalist views and Trump’s insistence that Kamala Harris isn’t actually Black, the GOP isn’t beating the allegations. When did Republican rhetoric go from fear-inducing, to groan-inducing? Jon is joined by Laura K. Field, a researcher and political theorist who recently published a piece in POLITICO on the topic, and who is writing a book about the evoluti...
Aug 04, 2024•50 min•Ep. 137
Kamala Harris memes are bringing together leftists and wine moms, neolib shills and NeverTrumpers, political wonks and pop stars across every platform. Why is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president breaking the internet and right-wing brains? Jon and Max discuss the danger of the VP leaning into the memes, MAGA trolls' reaction to her candidacy, and how much of Silicon Valley is all in on Trump. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here . For a transcript of this episo...
Jul 28, 2024•55 min•Ep. 136
We still don’t know why a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania opened fire on Trump last weekend. Lone shooters whose paths from normalcy to vigilantism seem esoteric, obscure, or perverse have become a familiar pattern—but there’s actually a lot we do understand about the origins of political violence. Max sits down with terrorism scholar J.M. Berger to understand the psychology of violent extremists and what role the internet plays in their decision to act. But first! Max is joined by the New Yorker’...
Jul 21, 2024•57 min•Ep. 135
Elle Reeve, CNN commentator and author of the new book Black Pill, joins Offline to share her reporting on the darkest corners of the internet. For over a decade, Reeve has tracked the emergence of the alt-right, watched them radicalize on sites like 4chan and 8chan, and documented their migration off the web and into the streets of Charlottesville and halls of the Capitol. She and Jon talk about how this new brand of white nationalism feeds on male loneliness and white resentment, the schisms w...
Jul 14, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 134
Chat GPT isn’t going to top the Billboard Hot 100 any time soon, but something is happening with AI and music—something’s BEEN happening. Unlike in entertainment and journalism, big music labels and even musicians like Drake and Grimes are cautiously embracing the latest in AI. And the results are not all bad! New Yorker writer John Seabrook sits down with Max to explain why the music industry has historically adopted new technologies, and how that Muddies the Waters around what is made by human...
Jun 30, 2024•54 min•Ep. 133
Has this pod saved America…from phone addiction?! We got Jon Lovett to take a rather extreme version of the Offline challenge in Fiji, AND America’s top doctor and friend of the pod Vivek Murthy is now calling for a Surgeon General’s warning label on social media platforms. Max and Jon bask in their success, then mourn the dismantling of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the nation’s leading mis- and disinformation research organization. Then, Max sits down with longtime tech journalist Brian M...
Jun 23, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 132
The kids are not alright, and the culprit is their phones. That’s the thesis of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation. He joins Offline to discuss why he thinks smartphones and social media are fueling a teen and adolescent mental health epidemic, the evidence behind his claims, and the criticism his anti-phone crusade has received. Then he and Jon dive into the four recommendations Haidt believes will lead us out of this crisis. For a closed-captioned version of ...
Jun 16, 2024•52 min•Ep. 131
Why are Republicans apologists for misinformation? How should campaigns respond to online trolls? Are Democrats still using an Obama-era digital strategy? Journalist Sasha Issenberg joins Offline to talk about his new book, The Lie Detectives , and to break down how to defeat conservatives in a truth-agnostic world. He and Jon discuss how today’s political class is adapting to a tumultuous and Trumpy social media landscape, and why controlling today’s narrative is more elusive than ever before. ...
Jun 09, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 130
Critic Emily St. James and Crooked’s Halle Kiefer join Max to talk about “WALL-E.” The 2008 Pixar film depicts a future in which humans are so addicted to their screens that it takes a robot mutiny led by a mobile trash compactor to get them to log off. Why did the filmmakers opt for a trashpocalypse? How problematic is the movie’s portrayal of fatness? Why wasn’t there cancel culture aboard the spaceship? Find out in our last installment of Offline Movie Club (for now!). For a closed-captioned ...
Jun 06, 2024•49 min•Ep. 129
Birds Aren’t Real founder, Peter McIndoe, joins to talk about the impact of the satirical conspiracy that captured the imagination of Gen Z and what he learned about the appeal of false realities after spending years in character as one of the nation’s leading conspiracy theorists. But first: Is TikTok helping Trump win? Why is Google telling people to eat rocks? And what’s the story behind the “All Eyes on Rafah” image going viral across Instagram? Jon and Max break it down. For a closed-captio...
Jun 02, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 128
Are we all living in The Matrix? Eh, probably not. But our tech obsessed, social media driven world is a lot closer to the reality The Matrix posed in 1999 than the Wachowskis probably ever dreamed of! New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and host of Hysteria Erin Ryan, join Max to watch the beloved sci fi film and break down the ways The Matrix inspired a generation of tech bros and why so many people — from the online right to the LGBTQ+ community to recovering tech journalists — see themsel...
May 30, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 127
Do we treat political affiliation like a religion? Which parts of our identity are based off factual belief vs. imaginary belief? This week, Max talks to Professor Neil Van Leeuwen about the difference between thinking and believing, the power of groupish thought, and the similarities between religious creeds and political ideologies. But first! Jon and Max break down the drama between Scarlet Johansson and OpenAI, pick apart the TikTok blockout, and suspend their disbelief that a close friend o...
May 26, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 126
Ezra Klein joins Offline Movie Club to discuss “Her,” the movie that more or less incited this week’s Scarlett Johansson v. OpenAI drama. Back in 2013, when ChatGPT was just a twinkle in Sam Altman’s eye, no one thought a writer falling in love with his sentient virtual assistant was a near-term scenario. But here we are! Ezra, Max and Jon debate what AIs mean for relationships, how “Her” introduced emotional stakes that are absent from AIs in real life, and why Altman definitely copies Johansso...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 125
ChatGPT has officially entered its “Her” era! Jon and Max talk about the flirty AI that debuted this week, whose husky voice and warm enthusiasm evokes Scarlett Johansson. But not all the tech titans are doing so hot; Facebook’s noxious combo of AI-generated content and the real people who are falling for it has been coined the “zombie internet.” The guys discuss Meta’s spam problem, then take a look at how mental health curricula in schools can actually make things worse for students. For a clo...
May 19, 2024•44 min•Ep. 124
Leave it to Tom Hanks to make internet catfishing seem so darn charming! This week, Offline’s Movie Club is watching “You’ve Got Mail,” the cozy, capitalist, and kind of creepy 90s classic. Remember when being online was a choice? When online dating was stigmatized? When Meg Ryan flounced around with unparalleled charisma? Max is joined by Jon Lovett and Crooked Executive Producer Kendra James to soak up the nostalgia of AOL, a roaring economy, and a time before Amazon. For a closed-captioned ve...
May 16, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 123
Is it time for you to make an AI friend? Jon and Max weigh the pros and cons of robot affirmation, sink their teeth into a new study on smart phone bans in schools, and then turn their attention to something they’re both very qualified to talk about: the rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake that’s reanimating Twitter. Plus, a new East vs. West feud takes shape as the guys face off for Vote Save America’s “Organize…or else” campaign. Head to votesaveamerica.com/2024 to ally yourself with you...
May 12, 2024•52 min•Ep. 122
Bo Burnham’s comedy has long captivated and caricatured the internet, but the era his songs skewer the best is the hyperactive, blood-thirsty, online world of peak-pandemic lockdown. Max, Jon and comedian Jamie Loftus discuss “Bo Burnham: Inside,” in which a child of the internet breaks it down and breaks down . Was 2021 the peak of performative virtue signaling? Which host impersonated a flamingo on stage with Bo himself? Is apathy a tragedy and boredom a crime? Find out on this week’s Offline ...
May 09, 2024•54 min•Ep. 121
We all have a caveman brain—at least when it comes to navigating the internet. Amanda Montell, author of the new book The Age of Magical Overthinking, joins Offline to explain how the “cognitive biases” that we developed to make snap decisions in prehistoric times aren’t well suited to handle the volume and pace of the information era. She and Jon talk about biases like the halo effect, zero-sum biases, and declinism, and identify how these biases have supercharged celebrity fandom, influenced o...
May 05, 2024•52 min•Ep. 120
When did we collectively agree that a hoodie-clad coder could wreak havoc on our society? Probably not long after “The Social Network” came out. This week we’re kicking off a new bonus series: the Offline Movie Club! The hosts will dive into one of their favorite films about the internet and technology to discuss what the movie gets right and wrong, and how it shapes our understanding of the digital era. This week Max, Jon and Halle Kiefer, host of the "Ruined" podcast, break down David Fincher ...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 119
Can Biden outpost Trump in the run up to 2024? Why is the president on TikTok if he wants to ban it? Rob Flaherty, former White House Director of Digital Strategy and current Deputy Campaign Manager for Biden joins Offline to explain. Jon and Rob talk about the ways the media environment has changed since 2020, how the Biden campaign is cutting through the noise this time around, and the importance of acknowledging voters’ frustrations. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here ...
Apr 28, 2024•47 min•Ep. 118
We did it folks! Jurors for Trump’s hush money trial are getting to read their resistance tweets to his face as Meta’s crackdown on news is slowly asphyxiating conservative media. Jon and Max celebrate the good news, and then dive into the much more somber topic of dating in the Internet Age. It turns out Gen Z is abandoning dating apps in favor of social media and the “old school” approach of meeting people in person. Then, Max interviews blogger Jenny Livingston about what it’s like to learn y...
Apr 21, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 117
