¶ Introduction
Hello there, Happy Thursday to you. Chuck Todt here with another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Thank you for watching on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure you've subscribed. Like and subscribe. We like those things. Appreciate you those that are listening on the original way that many people listen to podcasts, good old fashioned audio on your phones, in your cars, wherever you're listening to this much appreciated. We are taping just before this is we are in
the run up to Memorial Day weekend. And let me
¶ Republicans struggling to pass the "Big Beautiful Bill"
give you a little bit a hint about Memorial Day weekend in Washington, particularly in the odd numbered years. So we're in the middle of this mess right now, right House Republicans, they set an artificial deadline.
Which they may miss.
You know, Mike Johnson wanted to get the one big beautiful bill, basically Trump's Trump's Agenda Bill, right, you know, at this point we're governing in this horrendous process. Now one party gets control of everything for a couple of years. So they like, let's make the kitchen sink bill. It was what Build back Better was what Joe Biden's Kitchen Sink Bill was called. This one kitchen sink bill is one big, beautiful bill. It's officially called this right, but
it's really the partisan kitchen sink bill. And what have we learned about partisan kitchen sink bills. They're not they will they'll eventually pass. It just depends on how much crap you have to put in or take out in order to get it to pass. There used to be a great saying in Washington, if you can't get a
bill in Congress pass make it bigger. Meaning because back in the days when you actually when everybody was transactional, not just in partisan transactional natures, but literally across the aisle, you could buy votes anytime you want it. All right, let's build this in that district. We'll get his vote. Let's do this over here. He needs my vote for his bill. I'll give him that if he gives me mind.
For you know, that old fashioned way of making a congressional bill was the way it worked when there was bipartisanship. If you didn't, if you couldn't get a bill passed, make it bigger. But ever since we went to this
¶ Partisan governance is bad governance
partisan governance. Right, it basically started with the Clinton era.
Right.
Clinton had a little bit of Republican support every now and then early on, but he was mostly having to do his first two years he had full democratic control.
It was partisan George W. Bush, same thing.
He had a fifty to fifty Senate, so he didn't have to work with a couple of Democrats every now and then. Barack Obama went it alone. Trump's gone it alone. This is the second time he's done it. And of course Biden went it alone. And so when you move into this this stuff, you end up. Look, you make legislation that is harder to keep permanent for what it's worth, makes it easier. And you see what they're doing now. I think Republicans are trying to repeal pieces of Biden's
bill in order to pay for theirs. Democrats, when they get controlled, just do the same thing, right in two years or four years. It is it's no way to govern, it's no way to run the country. It's how what the voters want, whether the voters like like a piece of legislation or not. It's the whiplash that eventually creates exhaustion. So look, it's the reality. And so what does that mean?
Does John Here's what I will tell you. You're going to see dramatic headlines over the next You might see more dramatic headlines in the next twenty four hours, forty hours, seventy two hours. So it so it's not there, and oh, they've doomed the bill, and it may be possible that Johnson has to let him go fly home for the Memorial Day recess and they deal with this for when they come back. Remember how many times Joe Biden's Build Back Better Bill died and then was resuscitated. Joe Manchin
¶ The bill will pass, it's just a matter of when
at the end of the day killed it, and then he came back and revived it. You see where I'm going here. The point is this bill is going to pass. We just didn't quite know when it is going to pass. There is one or two Republicans that are comfortable voting against it, but no one's going to be comfortable being the vote that kills it. Right, Thomas Massey can get away with he's doing because he's not the vote that kills it. And maybe in Andy Harrison, Maryland, or maybe
one other two others can join. You know, however, whatever they're padding is, they'll allow two or three to throw their temper tantrums and they can vote against it. But nobody will be willing trust me to be the vote that kills it. No matter how much they don't like the Medicaid cuts, no matter how much they don't like the salt caps, it won't matter.
This will pass.
So this is one of those moments where back in my old days with I sit here and roll my eyes. I'm like, all right, I know there's this assumption that we should cover this and take the debate seriously, but we know the endgame here and do we really want to pay how much? How much do we want to waste the viewer's time on this sausage. Sometimes it's worth it and sometimes it isn't. Here's what I'll tell you on this one. It isn't worth it. I'm going to
give you the shortcut on that. So look, this thing's going to pass my guest today, and I think it's a perfect memorial.
They we can right.
This is the weekend that we kick off where some people start to start to, you know, have find their books for the summer that they want to read their fiction books. Maybe they've got to new album they're going to download, Maybe there's a new TV series or some movies they're going to be well, My guest is Spencer Cornaber, and he wrote this terrific piece in the Atlantic, having you Know about you know is basically it's it's, frankly, something that's written about every ten years.
Why does pop culture suck? You know?
Some form of that conversation? You know, it's worse than ever, right, nobody, And it's one of those things where I'm and you'll hear this in the conversation that Spencer and I have, where you know, we always miss the good old days of something, you know, maybe it's the good old days of radio. I will you'll hear me whine about music. I hate what algorithms have done to new music, and you'll hear me go off on that. But there's another part of culture that I think is that, you know,
¶ We're in a "culture cold war"
we're in the middle of real culture wars. We've been in a sort of culture cold war between the two parties now for most of the twenty first century. Right Steve Bannon is fond of saying that politics is downstream from culture. The fact is it is all sort of next right, you know, if you think about it. Our presidents, ever since the television age, or really the radio age with FDR, our presidents have become cultural figures. Some want to be in cultural figures and some do not, but
that doesn't mean they all don't become one. Eisenhower strikes me as somebody who was uncomfortable being a part of the culture.
But John Kennedy, I think, loved it.
Richard Nixon loved it, even if he didn't like how the culture was treating him, if you will. But he's a guy that did the Went On laugh In, which was Saturday Night Live before there was Saturday Night Live. So and of course Ronald Reagan came from Hollywood into politics. So look, the fact is culture and politics.
Have been intertwined.
And I've been thinking about this, and you know, there's a part of me I'm like, you know, I can be a curmudgeon on some of this stuff when I hear a celebrity or an athlete pop off about a politician, whether left or right, and I just sort of roll
my eyes. Oh god, you know. And then then I remind myself, well, I do this about sports, and I wonder how many sports guys roll their eyes and people like Chuck to pop off about sports and they think they know what they're doing, or Richard Nixon wants to write a play for the Washington football team back in the day. So I at the end of the day, we're all citizens, and we're all we all sort of have earned the right to pop off.
Okay.
The question is what is the role that political leaders? What's a proper role At the end of the day, they're you know, democracy, it is it's infused in the culture. Right, This is sort of freedom of the freedom of speech. So in many ways our political rules were responsive to culture. So I, you know, they are intertwined. Whether there's no debate about whether they should be or not, it is.
¶ Should political leaders impose culture, or influence it?
Okay.
The question is what should political leaders do impose culture or simply influence culture? Are they they to celebrate the culture or attack the culture of the moment?
Now?
Donald Trump is aggressive on this, right. He doesn't just want to influence culture, right. He wants a certain type of He's got a vision in his own head of what he wants Kennedy Centator to be.
Right.
He wants that to be a show, the American showcase for what he believes is great American culture. And like most people age seventy eight, seventy nine or eighty years old, they think peak culture was sometime between Dean Martin and maybe I'll give them bono, right, But that is culture basically nineteen fifty five to nineteen eighty five. That thirty years that's peak culture, right, that's you know Les miz that came out.
Then when you start to think, right.
This is and it's simply you know, we I think it's human nature when it comes to what we think is culture is when is when the culture is appealing to us, right, And when we're in the ages of somewhere between say ten and forty, that thirty year period, that's when most of pop culture is actually trying to appeal to you, right, And it's in that thirty year period there's always a there's sort of the pre teen culture, teen culture, college cult, you see where I'm going, And
then all of a sudden, after forty, it's all nostalgia. Okay, everything becomes derivative of nostalgia. I'm not saying people over forty aren't interested in new things, but for the most part, the view of culture, I think in the human brain becomes more nostalgic after a certain age. Well, let's be honest, right,
¶ Who we elect as president is reflective of the culture
there is it's like, what is our comfort level? I find myself somewhere in the middle here, Right, I think it's perfectly appropriate and it's going to happen that who we elect as president is usually somewhat reflective of where the culture is at the moment.
Right.
You know, it's not lost on me that Modern Family the election of Obama all sort of happened at the same time. Right, Modern Family was sort of peak culture. You go back and you think about the culture of eighties TV, and it was the height of sort of family TV, Family ties, The Cosby Show eight is enough that felt like it fits the Reagan era culture. You throw in a Dallas and a dynasty, right, and that sort of is a that was that version of the
darker version of culture. Right, you could say, you know, the up to be a Modern Family breaking bad. Right, In some ways both were We're sort of part of that early sort of influenced culture that you could say Obama's election either represented or helped facilitate, etc. And certainly Trump's election is create I think sort of broadened the idea that hey, there's no more cancel culture, although I would argue we're starting to see a new version of
cancel culture develop at this time. By the right who's trying to shame you know, whether it's liberal academics, things like that, it's no different than the same cancel culture those folks on the right were complaining that progressives were doing when it came to certain comedians and certain things
that were uttered. So I would caution some of my friends in the right who are sort of enjoying this moment trying to lord over the culture, that they're actually practicing some of the same bad, bad ideas that they criticized the left, the left for doing.
But Donald Trump certainly.
Is trying, you know, he he his presence, He's not I don't think he is somebody that is trying to
¶ If a president imposes on culture, they impose on speech
just influence culture. He wants to impose it. And I think that's the line, right that there's a fine line between you know, freedom of speech and imposing culture. And if you're imposing culture, your essentially imposing on speech. And I think that's the line he's continuing to draw.
It decided.
Look, if he doesn't like what Bruce Springsteen has to say, so what you know, ask Richard Nixon.
There are many you know, many.
Musicians back in the late sixties and early seventies were no Nixon fan, and certainly he didn't. He complained about it on his tapes. He didn't go out and public and complain about as much. In fact, just the opposite. He was always trying to soften his image, right the dude the walk in, the walk on with laughing, or you look at the picture, you know, hanging out with Elvis Presley. He of course loved to hang out with
Sammy Davis. But what Trump is you know, doing here with his He gets angry when celebrities attack them, and I think part of it is that he believes he's a celebrity, and that he's a celebrity before he was a politician. Right, And so this is a case where Donald Trump believes, Hey, I'm a member of the same club. Why are you attacking me. I'm a member of the same club. You shouldn't be doing that type of mindset.
But he, you know, so there's something has to do with he thinks he's, hey, we're on par you know, you should be celebrating me and et cetera. So he's doing that, but it is a you know, at the end of the day, he just sort of is looking backwards. Look, I like my presidents using the White House to celebrate new artists. I like my presidents in the White House to try to lift up maybe certain parts of the
culture that weren't getting enough attention, you know. I remember it was Jimmy Carter that got me to listen to the to Charlie Daniels for the first time. He loved the Devil went Down to Georgia that.
Song, if you know.
And of course it Charlie Daniels became a little bit politically divisive to some people a decade or so ago, but it was also a form of music that I hadn't been listening to, and Jimmy Carter sort of surfaced it up. So there's there's a fine line, right which I think it's perfectly appropriate to surface up new culture, to sort of diversify the culture, but to impose it and say what is good and what is bad. That's
when you're actually imposing on speech. And I think that's when people get reactionary, and that's when everybody gets in And I think the frustrating thing is is when is when politics gets so infused with with with some sector of the culture, whether it's a point at athletics, right, the NFL felt that the hard way at one point, whether it is music, whether it is the Oscars, whether it is the Emmys, and so it's a it's it's certainly a fine line. But I do think that that
¶ The public will want a president who doesn't impose on culture
here's my here's my guess of what where we had it, where we had as a country, we're not you know, Trump is intentionally inserts himself, right, and the Kennedy Center and all this business. We're going to end up wanting a president who wants nothing to do with the culture, right. I think we're going to be looking for a Dwight Eisenhower type. We're gonna be looking for a Gerald Ford type, the do no harm frankly, a younger version of what
people thought they were getting from Joe Biden. Right, Joe Biden was was you know that he was supposed to be Gerald Ford or Dwight Eisenhower. He chose to be something else, or he was surrounded by by aides who saw something bigger that that wasn't there, right, He didn't he didn't meet the moment because he didn't apparently didn't realize why he was elected in the first place, you know,
and this happens to many a president. Some understand why they were elected, and some have a of a bigger theory.
Of the case.
But as you listen, look, by the way, if you don't like the fact that I've had a political cultural conversation, well I don't know why you're subscribing to me number one, but number two, fear not the conversation. I have a Spencer Cornaber. We talk about movies to talk about we're actually limiting the amount of politics. But I will say this, I noticed that there were there's been more, and I'm
glad to see it. That one of the permission slips that I do think that Trump's election has given to Hollywood writers is that if you just just watch this season of White Lotus or you watch this season of The Studio, and I promise you there are episodes in both of those there are parts of both episodes that that conversation would not have been, that would not have appeared on any episode of any show from twenty fifteen through twenty twenty, and maybe from twenty fifteen through twenty
twenty two. But as the acknowledgment that, hey, half the country is in one place, and if you're in if you're in the business and make it TV shows or movies. You'd like to open the aperture so that everybody feels comfortable watching your show.
And so I will tell you.
I am glad when I can't immediately know oh the writers are trying to make this political statement. There's nothing thing I enjoy more than when there's a zag in one of the TV shows I'm watching that is literally a zag and is meant to sort of virtue signal that hey, we're not trying to be one sided politically, We're trying to open our doors to all sides of the conversation. All Right, I'll shut my trap on this topic for now. When we come back a fascinating conversation
about is how crappy is today's pop culture? I would argue, not as crappy as we all think. PI this Spencer corn Haber next, well, joining me now is Spencer corn Haburn.
¶ Spencer Kornhaber joins the Chuck ToddCast
If you've spent five minutes on the internet, you've probably seen a reference to Spencer's piece about culture and about in the Atlantic that he essentially made read the title of the piece, The title of the piece being is this the worst ever era of American pop culture?
And Spencer we were just.
Talking before we started recording about how the beauty of your piece is how much it has sparked a lot of other people to write about it or talk about it or say it, and in fact, you will love this. My daughter just got home from college, like when I say, got them got like an hour ago, and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to, you know, tape this interview. And she goes, what are you doing? And I show her.
She goes, are you going to be trashing Taylor Swift?
That was like her first question. It's good culture And I'm like.
Well, I don't know yet.
We'll talk about it, but let's start with why did you decide to write this piece?
And I asked, because.
¶ What inspired his piece on current pop culture being terrible?
This is a piece that is always fraught with peril, meaning the minute you write it. It's the ultimate subjective because one person's cultural disgust is another person's excitement about change. So what motivated you? And let me ask me, why do you think you should write this piece?
Well, what motivating me is that the complaining got so loud in the culture in the twenty twenties. I felt like I've been at the Atlantic as a culture critic for nearly fifteen years now, and I kind of wanted the job knowing that declinism was part of the tradition of arts criticism.
Every generation.
Ends up feeling like it grew up in a golden age and like watched that golden age, and and you know, a lot of critics spend the second half of their career kind of writing lay laymentations for how things used to be. And so I've been very self aware about not falling into that trap. I've been accused of being overly optimistic or optimistic is.
Some optimistic that's a good word.
Yeah, you know, that's when you allegedly just believe that anything that's popular is great art, which is not something I believe. But when you start praising people like Tarterswift, you sometimes get called optimist, which is just the way of calling you a sheep or whatever.
So, you know, I've been on guard for this.
But in the twenty twenties, kind of coming out of the pandemic, it felt like there was no coherent story in culture other than I was reading from all these different different vandage points. People feeling like culture was dying. Their favorite art form was, you know, in a follow period and so, and the arguments they were making were actually rather compelling and some of them did involve these
sort of subjective questions that you referred to. You know, that can get so tire somewhere, can kind of just be a circular argument about which era of movies or music was the best. There was a little bit about that, but there were more about these structural, technological, economic, political forces that were making this era feel really different than previous eras we lived through.
I want to focus on music and literature first because I think those are the ones where I feel as if technology may have.
Gotten in a way.
Let me start with music, because I'm a I was a music major in college, because I was a classical music person.
I had.
I played the French worn I have. I My father worked in the record industry, so I grew up all these final records all the time, and he loved both. He was early rock, he was a boomer, but also you know, loved he loved all of Mozart. It was more Mozart than Beethoven. But I so I have an eclectic music taste. I also growing up in the eighties, you know, you know, I literally go from led Zeppelin to Public Enemy, right, which is what a lot of my friends did, right. We were the transition, and that
was what we thought was cool. I certainly had a clash phase, you know, so, just like sort of.
Any kid of the eighties.
I bring this up because my I'm a new music snob. I missed the days of the in the early night you go to listening stations, and I was the guy. If I found one song on an album, I like, I bought the whole album. I'm like, I'm giving that artist a chance because I want to. I believed in the entire idea of hey, they have something to say, let me, let me, let me listen to the whole thing.
And my frustration with music today I have and I'm well confess I have the luxury to do this, but I have six different music streaming services that I that
¶ Algorithms are terrible at introducing new music
I use because I had it all on Apple and
it can't. I never get I never get anything that's new, unclassical mean and not obviously classical music's never new, but there's new interpretations, new recordings, whatever, because it's not a big enough part of my library to trigger the algorithm, right or I have way too much seventies and eighties rock, and I just get all the new music is always something on that so I've literally created all right, this is my classical music one, this is my hip hop one,
this is my classic rock et cetera. And so I look at it and I think it's the algorithms that have really screwed up the ability to surface new music. That's what I have experienced. Am I describing something that's
¶ Old music earns 3x the streams of new music
familiar to you?
Absolutely?
You know, one of the most sort of shocking statistics about music these days is that seventy five percent of music that's streamed every year is old music, music that's older than eighteen months old. So only twenty five percent of what's being streamed at any given moment is new, and those numbers keep getting quoe unquote worse every year. The piece of the pie that's new is getting smaller
and smaller. And a lot of this, I think does come from the forces of algorithms, where they the easiest way to predict what someone's going to want to listen to tomorrow is to study what they listened to yesterday. And this has been marketing logic for you know, time eternal.
You know, you can think back to the stereotype of record label boss in the seventies telling a rock band to make a new hit that sounds like their last hit, right like these these pressures in these forces are kind of the table stakes for making art in capitalism, you could say, but algorithmic culture gives us so much algorithms give us so much data and are just so are so you know, sophisticated about serving you something that is
going to keep you maybe not actively engaged, but possibly engaged. Not not You're not going to write down the name of the artists necessarily, but you're not going to hit skip. And so this encourages a blander and more passive and more recycled or regressive culture.
No, it does.
You know, another way that I've always thought, you know,
¶ Algorithms use music to trigger nostalgia
tv ads, and obviously few and few people see tv ads, but you can always tell who what demographic they're targeting by the music that they licensed in the background, because it's always to me, they're always targeting somebody who listened to that music when they were a teenager, right, so you know, it's like beating you know, so you could always sort of see, oh, they're they're targeting you know boomers, that's why they're using the Beatles, or they're targeting you
know gen x, that's why they're using guns n' roses, or they're targeting, you know, millennials. That's why you're hearing some Nirvana. I don't know if Nirvana's millennial or not. I we can we can debate that, but you get my point here, right, Like you see it sometimes in that and that, and that's now how I feel these algorithms are working almost in the same way that car companies use music to try to get us to trigger nostalgia to get to to make purchases.
Well, that's that's certainly true, and that's certainly how it's been done for a long time. I mean, interesting thing about what you're saying is what kind of music would you play now to make someone who's young now nostalgic for their teenagehood. If you think about what's popular these days, you can think about artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, these are there's a lot of music on the charts that to me isn't sonically linked that closely to this moment.
It sounds like a rehash of classic rock or old country music. You know, it's a kind of pastiche of
¶ New music sounds rehashed and doesn't move the ball forward
really all the decades of rock and roll that you just reference is kind of coming back and being remixed, and that's kind of how music has always moved forward, but it hasn't always felt this much like this regressive, really, And I think there are market forces related to these algorithms that are encouraging pop producers and songwriters to think about how they can make music that is going to play to a very large audience by triggering nostalgia for
multiple generations, and what the effect of that is to create pop music that doesn't really move the ball forward that much in terms of sound, right.
You know the other thing though, and let me let me do a counter on this and what algorithms taught us that perhaps we didn't fully appreciate. So before the algorithm, I would argue the cost dictated music taste, right, it was either New York or LA and you know, yes, we could throw in Motown there too.
But really those were the three places.
And it turns out country music was a lot more popular than how you know, this is a class, you know, it's sort of like it was a It's a version of this of Letterman versus Leno. Leno was always more popular in the middle of America. Letterman was more popular in the coasts, and the rating showed it right. Leno had more viewers, Lenno had more eyeballs, even if Letterman was winning the.
College educated crowd, if you want to go there.
And so, what the flattening of music taste did is it reminded people. Did you know a majority of Americans actually prefer country? Because it does feel as if country's moment now where it's the only place I can find the electric guitar anymore. Country, you know, the only place you find some of the most interesting song lyrics that have a message.
Country.
Is that an argument for crowds that maybe we were we were mistreating country music in our culture for decades.
¶ The music industry lost its gatekeepers
Yeah, Well, part of the story that we're talking about here is the fall gatekeepers, you know, radio, DJs, print magazines, major labels. They You're right, they all had to kind of coastal often elite bias. And so as more and more of America has gone online or not gone online but gone on the streaming in the past decade or so, you're absolutely seeing things like country also hip hop revealed the kind of latent.
Popularity that was perhaps already there.
And yeah, it's a fascinating thing because it's not only happening in America, but it's also allowing global sounds to come to the fore and be exposed to American audiences where things like K pop or Spanish language pop or afropop, afrobeats, these are also like kind of like in a renaissance of popularity. And the question is were they kind of always as popular as we couldn't see that in America?
Or did did this falling of the gate keepers, this algorithmic culture and this ability to search and listen to whatever you want on demand? Did that create a new marketplace and expose Is that really the source of novelty for people who are looking for novelty and culture? Now audiences are gravitating towards these sounds that they really couldn't have accessed as easily a few years ago.
Look, I I'm glad you brought up Latin Latin pop or Latin dance if you will, or however you want it in K pop, because both of those, You're right, I mean, that was again, that was something that the Details magazine was never going to talk about totally, right, Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I came home to visit my baby parents a couple of years ago and they'd been listening to you know, their Alexa algorithms, and they've become obsessed
¶ Algorithms help people discover music in a different language
with bad Bunny.
You know, they speak it.
Be spanished and never let's than any Latin pop ever before. And suddenly their taste seemed to have expanded thanks the algorithm.
So these things aren't all bad.
No, That's why I wanted to sort of like basically fight my own argument here a little bit. My son is eighteen and thinks Oasis is amazing, had this this huge nineties obsession and he loves Oasis, and you're like, okay, interesting, I said, well, you might like the Beatles. Oasis was kind of a Beatles ripoff, you know type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I don't know what to make of that. I mean, look, I remember myself, you know, about his age. I was,
you know, if I was going into older music. For me, it was it was I got real into motown, you know, when I was seventeen eighteen. As I started getting into hip hop right then, it was like, oh I want to I want to hear more black music, you know. So I got really into motown recordings back then. So I guess that's the same mindset, you know.
But I look at you, Yeah, is part of learning your learning your history as part of EVE. And so I do think that some of this like fear of stagnation that we're seeing is actually identifying actually, really people who are excited about music and are learning about it and treating that as if it's that something perverse about it, which is actually is rather healthy.
Let me go one more on music here before we pivot to others. So I don't want, you know, to go all music here, but you know, it's also possible
certain music genre is mature, right, Classical music's matured. There's it's you know, even new stuff today is going to sound like you know, Aaron Copeland, and he was new when he came around the tone of the century nineteenth to twentieth, right, So even when you see new scores that are classically inspired, you know it it sounds, you know, not like the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds classical, but more like the nineteenth century. There's a lot of Tchaikovsky
inspiration in Aaron Copland and stuff like that. So my point is is that that's a mature sound.
Rock.
I think the electric guitar is, for whatever reason, what
¶ Has rock music stopped evolving?
we define as rock music. I don't know if there's I think, is it, I would argue, let me ask you, is it matured?
Are we done?
Are we just simply frustrated that we haven't had a new genre of music take off yet.
It's a very good question that's really hard to answer because for rock and roll in particular, basically every decade since it was invented, people have played it's the.
Most it's done right, Yeah, you know, right?
Are the Killers, like the Killers have been the last rock band? For are they still the last rock band? Because that was always that's for me, it's always how they were built in the early two thousands. Meet the Killers the last rock band.
Yeah, We've had a few different artists claim that title. You know, something like the nineteen seventy five I would say, is a more recent example of the last rock band. And you know they that's an innovative of the moment band that brings in pieces of the past, but really feels very rooted in the now and and really in internet culture. So I do think that genres burn themselves out or kind of do reach a stalling point. At the same time, you know, we're talking about country music
¶ Country music is having a resurgence
having this resurgence, and that's due to country artists making music that sort of sounds traditional, but they're taking on new lyrical topics, or they're incorporating hip hop influences, or it just feels a little more modern. So I do think there's waves for very old genres to engage with their times.
But yeah, I have that fear, and I you know.
There's some people who have a fear that recorded music itself is sort of at the end of its life cycle. There's not really a lot more that you can a lot in many more combinations of sounds that you could put together in a pleasing way on a recording that people are going to listen to.
It's a rather well that's going to be fascinating with AI, isn't it, Because AI is goody going to be able
¶ The impact of AI on music production
to experience as much as people are all negative on AI and I and I get that you're going to be able to experiment and see, you know, classical music went through this where it was just sort of, hey, let's make chords that clash rather than that go together. And you're like, no, I don't like this, and there's a reason it didn't take off, right, But I do.
I wonder how culture will handle Somebody is going to be using AI to mix, to do some some sort of mixing of sounds that'll take off, and well then that that maybe now it'll be a combination of everything. But what music wasn't inspired by something that was already had been created.
Yeah, I think you're I think that's right. Like AI is going to serve up a bunch of new color
swatches that artists can pull from. I don't think I'd have a hard time imagine that AI is going to create a new sound that will that will work for people as like meaningful music in a way that like previous new kinds of me music did, because there's no you know, music has a meaning to people, like it conveys something about identity and about the world that they're the vain and uh it's I think that's pretty hard
to fake it. And so I do think what's going to happen is what you're saying, that that we're gonna have this new library of possible sounds, and the interesting humans might do something with that using the AI. At least, that's the most hopeful take.
For that's the most right and hopeful.
Let's turn to a place where I think we should actually be celebrating our culture rather and that is sort of what we've done with television. I mean, television isn't
¶ Is television the one area of pop culture that's better than ever?
something where we're all going, boy, the good old days, now, the good old days. Have you watched some of those comes, right? Have you watched some of those dramas, like, you know, go watch an episode of Quincy and tell me that we haven't gotten better at the medical drama? Okay, nothing, you know? Or or Rescue nine I think it was called. It wasn't Rescue fifty one or car fifty one Emergency fifty one, which is just no different than what we have today in nine to one one, you know, but
it's a little bit more sophisticated. I do think we're in a golden age of television entertainment, and that is something where you could say it is better now than it was.
Right.
We can debate music, we can debate frankly physical art work, which I want to get into a little bit, even literature, But on television, what say you and what did you find in your writings on that aspect of culture?
I think that we have been in a golden native television and the concern just in the last couple of years is that it's sort of ending, and the gold NATed television would have been like maybe from two thousand and eight, so twenty twenty, you know that that era of you know, prestige TV really becoming the center of
¶ Prestige TV has become the center of the culture
a culture and streaming enabling all these different kinds of stories being told that we're high quality. It seemed like streaming services were trying to stand out by doing things that were really high quality and authentic and just provocative. There's a feeling that that is starting to peter out. And again these algorithms that you're that you are so fearful about. You look at something like Netflix. Netflix is putting out an incredible amount of content, original content, and
it's produced and written. In many cases, according to notes that were given by studio executives that were informed by the algorithm, there's just a lot.
Of well, that's the whole the entire Hallmark channel, Like there's a whole business, right that is literally those have to be AI scripts, right, let's feature the kel Let's feature Donna Kelcey in this Hallmark movie and oh the scripts out and I got it, give me fifteen minutes.
I'll get you a script.
Yeah, and then also make sure that it's paced of Justin's the way that someone can look at their phone and aut a wrapp look at the screen and still know what's going on on. So I think algorithms are giving companies and creators more ways to be mediocre perhaps, and we're seeing a flood of that mediocrity and TV. At the same time, HBO is the pit a lot better than Quincy, the best medical drama I think maybe ever made an incredible work of art that just came out.
So I agree that the highest of television are as highs they've ever been.
Now, let's talk about movies, right, movies have been in
¶ How has episodic tv impacted moviemaking?
some ways this is a genre that I'm wondering if it's to just matured out, meaning we're you know it is.
In some ways.
Episodic television has like I can't tell you how many times I see a movie and I'm like, boy, I'd have preferred that as a six episode. I want the stuff they cut, and I'd rather have it as six or eight episodes. Give me five hours of total watch time six or eight episodes, rather than you trying to edit me a quick ninety minute to our store. There
are versions that still work. I thought, no, mad, that's not a movie that I wanted episodically made out and it was a terrific movie and it really told a great story. Right, So it's not as if movies still don't have its place, but I wonder if it's matured.
Yeah.
I think that movies and TV really are blended together more than they ever have been. And it's hard to talk about one without talking about the other. I mean, I just you know, I just watched and Or, which is a TV series, but it's was made in the series of three episode arcs, and.
I got three more episodes. Buddy, that's awesome. I know, no spoilers.
My wife's out of toud, so what That's a show we watched together, so you know she's out of town.
So those three episodes are sitting there taunting me. But anyway, go ahead.
You're gonna love it. You might cry a bit though.
The to me, that feels like, hey, like that's movie ambition being done for TV, and I almost wish that it was released to three movies, you know, But that's the well.
Tom Cruise is fighting this right, mission impossible. He basically took what would have been one season eight episodes, and he said, no, i'min to do two movies.
Yeah, yeah, no.
And you have these really gargantuan or iconic creators who are still standing up for the art form and doing I think, really interesting things. I think what movies the way forward is to really use the moviness of the medium, like really figure out what it means to have a two hour story that said or it would that you're forced to sit and not look at your phone during And so I think playing with intensity and tempo and like suspense and just varying. Yeah, playing with people's attention
is in a creative way is the way forward. I
¶ "Barbenheimer summer" wasn't a fluke
think about a movie like Barbie, or even a movie like Oppenheimer, both of those, you know, the Barbenheimer Summer.
I don't think that was a fluke.
That was two very different movies that were both edited and in a way that was very modern and pacy and really could work for people's TikTok brain and keep them in their seats, no looging their phone, and really on the edge of their seats.
So Christopher Nolan, I in preparation I had him on Meet the Press before for Oppenheimer, and I wanted a screener, and he refused to give me a screener. He said, no, however, I will set up a special screening in a theater that I believe you need to experience this in. And you know, I brought the whole staff. We got a special meat the press screening. It was fantastic at the and I see why he's right, right, it was brilliant what he did. He knew he had a tough story
to tell, and he wanted to keep people's attention. And so I dragged at the time my seven sixteen year old and my twenty year old and made them both come, you know, a good story. And they enjoyed the movie more than they thought because it did keep your attention. And look, Christopher Nolan is is special, right. It's he owns the movies right now, right like we have the different you know, John is Quentin Tarantino had to run.
This is Christopher Nolan, right, Copola had these guys. He is the guy that understands how to still break through with a movie in this culture which has never been harder.
Yeah, yeah, I think of him as sort of making movies almost like a DJ that makes a DJA set you know, he has a real sense of flow and just like what the body in the brain needs to stay stay in the moment, and he's doing that without sacrificing the seriousness of the story or the writing. And it's a it's a grumbled thing, and hopefully he's going to inspire another generation of filmmakers to do what he's done.
And question further, all right, let's talk about literature, because
¶ Are we also in a golden age of literature?
you know, there's always been the what is it? There's only seven plot lines supposedly, right, is.
That the that's still help them all though?
Right?
Yeah?
Yeah, And it's sort of like because if you really wanted to crap on literature, you could say, well, Shakespeare did it right. And it's like every novel written has some you could sit there and say, well Shakespeare did it or the Greeks did it right? You know, whoever wrote all these Greek tragedies right type of thing. So everything is a derivative. But I would argue we're in a golden age because the last thirty years we're getting a diversity of writers that that the gatekeepers didn't allow
into the pool. So I'm curious where you were in your in your travels, Where did you where did you find culture critics on the issue of literature is it are we are we in a an up upswing? Or is it all too much derivative?
Yeah?
I mean this gets a question that's in my piece really in a section more about visual arts, but is taking on this question of what happens when your field progresses by becoming more diverse, When when, uh, what's changing in the medium isn't necessarily the way you tell stories or kind of formal innovations, or rather the kinds of people that are telling the stories and the kind of resources they get, and then who's in those stories and it And you're right, it can be invigorating to read
a murder mystery, you know, that's that's kind of very familiar plot but set in a totally different MILLIAU than we got in the twentieth century when everything was you know, set in U.
A different antagonist and a different protagonist and all those things and gender diversity and different different, different familiar characters but different backgrounds.
Yeah, I mean, to me, I think that's very exciting and cool that it does not speak to a super robust future for them for the medium. If we're not also talking about formal innovation. You know, someone like Tony Morrison came along and she you know, she was important because of the black female writer, but also because she's just such a formally innovative, distinctive voice. And you know, one knock that people have on modern fiction right now is that there's not as much of an attention to voice.
There's kind of a kind of cold modernist way of writing, and that is being used to render these different stories. And that all this said, I'm not a book critic, so I can't.
Know, but but like you know, is literature and one of the you know, are we in one of those periods where everybody says, everybody the writing sucks. And I don't think we're in one of those.
No, I don't, I don't. I don't think. So.
I think there's a there's a very robust market for like literary fiction that tells these different kinds of stories. But you know, there's this feeling that one, kids and
¶ Younger generations are reading less
younger people and even nbple my age are reading less and and uh have less of attention for a novel. And so that's that doesn't speak all the future of the medium.
But you also have the graphic novels are taking off.
Yes, yeah, and you have you have short stories and serialized fiction being published on platforms like substack, and that seems to actually be a source of a lot of energy.
Right now, that's interesting. I hadn't picked up on that. So basically the way Dickens released his books is back.
Yes, I think that. I think that's opening.
Yeah, that's fascinating. Now let's talk about the visual arts, and I guess whether sculpture, painting, that's where I want to go here, multimedia, I guess is that a are
¶ Do high resolution pictures + AI diminish the visual arts?
we in a mature place when you look at it, Like you know, at first it was about trying to Artists were trying to do their best job to replicate what humans were seeing. Then we got the photograph, so that then we got the Salvador Dolly, hey, let me warp it, right, That's what that's what created because in some ways we already have the photograph. I know what it looks like. Let's have a melting clock, right when
that be interesting? Then we had a movement of public art works like I in Miami, I had the guy I can't remember his name who decided to put pink aprons around all the islands of Miami.
Frankly, it was really cool. This was in the eighties and it.
Was the first one of these he's I forget the guy's name, he's done this, Yes, Chrysto, thank you. And that was a thing. And then we've backed off a little bit on public art. So where are we there?
Is this a it?
And are we in a And I wonder if our ability to perfectly show pictures now based on you know, makes that art harder to innovate with.
Yeah, we're inundated with images now and you know, things like AI can show you anything and very quickly. Where I think that, I think that that visual arts are getting a run for their money just from the Internet. You know, we are looking at visual art all day long. But it's memes, it's tiktoks, it's uh yeah, it's AI art and the gallery scene and the art museum scene. From my understanding, just the past couple of years, there's
most critics agree that it's pretty stale and stagnant. A lot of the galleries are facing financial hardships, are closing, and there's people are kind of looking around for what's the next thing going to be? And I would imagine it's going to have to be from artists engaging with that with their competition on the Internet and finding a way to elevate this kind of tumble of images in a way that feels new, And I don't really know exactly what that's going to.
Look, right, That's what I'm curious, Like, if he came back to life today, what would he be doing.
I mean, we've had those those We've had people print up pictures of Instagram and put them on gallery walls. You know, that was a fad like ten years ago, and we're already past that. So I don't I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
I feel like the one the most interesting is the public space is art in the public space. But I I that that's where at least you can because then it's experiential, I guess, and then let me, I guess
¶ Will experiences become the next big artform for Gen Z
that's where I'd like to go. Finally, the fact that we crave experiences, is that going to be the most innovative art form for maybe the next for gen Z, for the next generation.
I think that's going to be part of the story where both you have such excitement right now for concerts
and live events. You know, the biggest entertainment event of the past two years with Together Swipt's tour, and then there's been many other tours where you just can't get a ticket and people are just It changes the local economy as these tours move through, and the energy is a bit different than it used to be, And presumably that's because these fans want to get out of their bedrooms and be with each other and experience of real life thing the only thing that you can't really duplicate online.
So I think that mentality you're going to see and already are seeing play out in different be capitalized on in different mediums.
You know, the immersive art exhibit.
You know, things like the immersive van goes that pop up in these different cities, or like the Museum of ice Cream, which is essentially like a adult playpen where you take instagrams of yourself. They have a bad rap as being sort of like Instagram bait, but I think there has to be a future for really interesting artists creating immersive exhibits that you really can't duplicate online. I think we are going to see a lot of cool things come out.
Of that, all right, So I went back and looked for the different sort of iconic with to help a
¶ How well will his piece age?
little research help there with our friends at AI, what are the different cultural critiques of the different decades? And it surfaced up a Tom Wolf piece about the ME decade and the Third Great Awakening that was we were the seventies were very narcissistic and me centered. The eighties it was are we entertained to death? Which seems like, boy, that's don't we wish we had that problem?
Right? Isn't that the same.
The nineties The Key the Fraying of America a criticism written by Robert Hughes, The culture of complaint, beginning of polarization essentially was starting. Then political correctness started to pop up a lot there in the nineties. So if your piece ages well, it will be because and if your piece doesn't age well, it'll be because.
If my piece doesn't age well, it's probably because I didn't talk about AI enough.
And I feel like, really at the beginning of the AI moments and that it will upend everything.
And I talk about a bit in the piece and really the fear.
That this overwhelming abundance of slop and the ability to just create background music, music and art that kind of feels like things you've experienced before, and then you can kind of passively enjoy. That's going to create real competition for actual human artists and undermine the creative energy in our society.
I mean, let me play the free marketer here. Let me play free market pushback. Competition usually makes for more innovation,
¶ Will competition with AI make human artists more innovative?
and so maybe we know the AI slop may only stretch human boundaries.
That's true, that's true.
I think that the best things that we will still have some examples of excellence that come out of that. But it's very hard to create great things when you're trying to serve, when you have, when you can't survive, when you can make a living, and when you're not in a creative community of other people that are inspiring you. And all these courses are eating away at those things. And so that's I think the greatest cause for fear.
You were saying that in your piece, and I thought that was an excellent point.
I just think about.
Universities these days, in colleges, and the and the and the and how parents are discouraging their kids from majoring in anything that isn't directly about a job right or income. And so your art literature majors, your sculpture majors. Your music majors are going to be fewer and fewer because it'll feel like, quote unquote, why am I spending all this money for you to become really good at a hobby?
And you know, because it is hard.
I mean, look, I was a music major for a while and I came to the conclusion that I wasn't good enough to be a professional musician and I don't and I wasn't, you know, I didn't. There are plenty of other ways to make a living in music, and I didn't want to do those things right that that was not you know, I want. I had one goal. I couldn't get it, and so I changed lengths. But but that is something that I was wondering about that we won't We're not going to have artists colonies, right,
We're not going to have music schools. We may not have and and if you don't, then we may limit the number and AI may even make people think we don't need as many of them type of things.
So I that.
Does feel like a potential that's on the doomier side of things, isn't it.
Yeah, But we could all make a decision of society to do something about that, and we invest in art schools and say that human made art is a cultural priority or even like a political priority. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but doesn't feel like we're living in that era that I agree with you that we will have our Look, there's a reason we call them enlightening periods, this or that.
I mean, you know.
¶ Will society decide to reinvest in the arts?
We are Civilization is cyclical, right, so I have no doubt we'll have a period where we'll.
Want to reinvest in the arts. The question is win.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that, you know, despite all these forces that we're talking about, these kind of structural downers, if I want to end the piece on a positive note, and I do think they're just an incredible amount of creativity that's happening now. And it's not just in these art forms that we're talking about, but it's also in podcasts, and it's in video games, and
it's on TikTok, and it's in means. And we have a harder way of talking about and appreciating and even knowing what excellence means in those in those mediums.
But I hope that as you.
Know, as we progress in this direction, where there's so much possibility and so many different ways for getting your art out, and so many different ways to find something that really strikes you and to connect over it. I do think that we're going to get better at understanding what creativity looks like in this environment.
You know, it's interesting you just brought up gaming, and
¶ Gaming and sports are more popular than ever
we didn't talk about that as a as a sort of a genre of culture. It's a it's a gigantic genre of culture, right, It's it's hugely so is sports, right, and we've never and look at the growth of more sports. I mean, one of my favorite stats is that there are more youth cricket clubs in New York City than there are Little league baseball teams. And yes, that's how quickly the Southeast Asian population is growing and cricket is becoming more popular. That's just cricket. And I could make
this lacrosse is now a nation nationwide sport. Where so I guess sometimes when you when you you know, is this the worst air of America pop culture?
Well, in sports? Has it ever been more diverse?
Perhaps not, but sports just becoming a subset of gambling and addiction and you know, dopamine chasing do the legalization of sports betting.
That's what as well.
I hear you there, but let me let me so.
One of the reasons why I ended up at music major is my father is like, hey, it'll help you pay for school, and it did. I got a frenchworn scholarship, right, That's how I don't. I don't go to GW without it. Sports is now that path. Now it's like a real in the same way music was a realistic path for your ten to fifteen percent of musicians. Now sports will be to pay for college is a ten to fifteen percent.
It's not a one percent chance anymore. Because it's not just football or basketball, not just boys, right it is. There's twelve or thirteen different sports. And so I throw that in there because it it's part of pop culture.
But it was it. But I think we don't.
I think older generations don't think of it that way yet.
Yeah, I think you're right, and I think you know, and just my day to experience, people are as obsessed
¶ Is the live element of sports and music driving popularity?
with sports as they've ever been. It kind of feels like it's blending the same things that make people obsessed with Tayer Swift is making people obsessed with you know, the white sox or whatever.
Don't you think it's because it's reality, because it's something that doesn't feel like you can manipulate or manufacture.
I don't know.
There's a meritocracy to it, right, like there are a rule I don't I've been wondering this myself. Why are we having this? Or it's also the thing that's least polarizing, right, there's no left versus right, you know as much?
I know, Yeah, you're right, we've had.
It's not like, lease, now, yeah, have we politicized college sports at all?
Now?
I take the minute I said it, right, You're like, I should reel those words back in. But I think the aspiration for sports is that it's not that it can bring people together rather than polarize.
Well, I think fandom is one of the last kinds of social glue that we can rely on in the time when everyone is so isolated on their phones, not
¶ Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift are the king and queen of pop
going into the physical world as much. The one thing that can bridge the physical world and the digital world in a social way is being a fan of something, whether that's a pop star or a sports team.
All right, let me get you out of here on this. Who's the king of pop ha haha. Or the king of quator pop is that Taylor Swift right now?
Right now, it's Taylor Swift right now, so Swift, but maybe you put Bad Bunny would be the king that is. Yeah, he's as big as anyone basically in terms of album sales and all that. You know, someone like Drake he would have pointed to a few years ago. He's fallen off a little bit. Yeah, but Bad Buddy kind of represents this the kind of global incursion of pop, global pop becoming just pop or pop from outside of America being able to be as central as any American or
English speaking star would be. And his music is this amalgam of not just you know, his influence is from
¶ Who rules Hollywood?
Puerto Rico, but it's American hip hop, and it's all sorts of global sounds are in there.
And if I asked you who rules Hollywood, what would be the first couple of names you'd say?
I mean, we talked, we talked about Chris Nolan. You know, it feels like Disney is actually it's Disney's on the back foot and has kind of lost some of its power or kind of it was the monolith that was ruling culture for the past ten or fifteen years, but it seems to have stumbled a little bit. So I think that it's actually kind of an upper grabs moment
on Hollywood. So something like something like Ryan Cooler's Sinners being such a hip that's an example of how there's maybe some space opening up in these kind of like innovative Blockbuster that's not just a sequel. We're seeing a couple We've seen a couple examples of those sort of things pop up over the past few years, and I think it's I think Hollywood is generally in a pretty bad place, but in out of that badness some interesting high high they're going to jump out of that.
Is there a king and Queen of Hollywood that you could point to right now? I mean, who would have that? Who would be sitting in those chairs if you if you had to, if you had to, if you did a rotten Tomato survey.
Well, I don't know if you did a rotten tomatoes survey, but I would put no a Wiley from the pit.
It would be the King. Yeah, because I'm obsessed with that show right now.
By the way, one thing about is rotten tomatoes good or bad for innovative for culture.
I don't think it's very I don't think it's very good because it's it's put a number on subjective.
The determinations.
You know, I was obsessed with Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic when I was growing up, or like you know, wanted with an aspiring critic. But lately it feels like those platforms that have come really gamified, like people are kind of manipulating, And you know, maybe it's.
My biggest beef about aggregating polls, Like I'm not I like Nate Silber, but I don't like what he does with numbers. I like, you know, real clear politics for politics. It drove me crazy. I'm like, no, I'm not taking good and bad and mixing them in a blender. I know the good pollsters, I know the bad pollsters, Rotten Tomato, you know the good critics, and you know the bad critics.
Why are we putting them all in a blender.
Yeah, there's a lot of perverse incentives in that system, and also has created this thing among movie fans, which which is an obsession with kind of yeah metrics. They're acting like sports fans in a lot of ways. I see some pop music too, where music fans are so obsessed with sales numbers and how their their diva is charting and comparison to their rival. And I don't think that was a wide started phenomenon a few decades ago.
It's it's it's sort of like money qualification of life that I think it makes people talk less about creativity and art and more about yeah, money.
We've gone almost as long as the article. Uh, if you listen to the article, So I want to be careful there. But one one area I didn't bring up that I actually meant to because I think we've seen some innovation maybe, but is musical theater and Broadway in
¶ We've seen major innovation in live theater
general and live theater? And I guess maybe is that do we put that in this experiential bucket? I feel like it's having a moment again, right, And and lin Manuel Miranda told us that, hey, you can still do new things. I think some people thought that that was a mature I certainly did that, hey, that's that's a mature genre. And he said, no, it's not. Let me try something.
So what do we what?
Hamilton's ten years old? What's that?
You're right, yeah it is. Isn't it okay to me?
To me that Broadway is not not a healthy sign. And to me, and you know I live in New York, is a stunt cast revival of something.
You're right, they're doing what the movies do. They're doing like, hey, look, Marvel Universe.
You know, I didn't get to see a DNA menzilk climbing that tree. That that one.
But that looks cool, But I guess it's closing. It didn't do all enough.
So I learned from an interview I did with the UH with the with Debora kan Of the Diplomatic, creator of The Diplomat, and she worked for Aaron Sorkin that West Wing is musical theater that actually that it's designed. And I said, are you going to well, why haven't we seen West Wing on Broadway?
She goes, well, we might.
They're going to try to put everything they can on Broadway and most things will wash out, but a couple of them will stick.
But this gets to the whole that this is why, I guess and we should end on this, which is that live in person experiential that that's probably we're the most where we'll see cultural innovation in the near term.
I think that I think that's a big part of it, But I really think more action will be just what's happening on our phones and people using you know, the back of now is probably going to be someone doing something really interesting with George form video I found. I can't point to who that is yet, and I hope that we're gonna all find the Beyonce of Tiktoks soon or something like that.
Well, mister Beasts might have something to say about that before will not even I won't introduce that into the chat. You know, we'll let that go. Pencer, this is great. Thanks for humoring me and this.
Thanks, Chuck, really appreciate it. And keep streaming those six services.
Yes, well, because somebody's got to keep them in business.
Right, exactly, exactly, all.
Right, Now you've found out how many music sites I
¶ Chuck's thoughts on the interview with Spencer Kornhaber
subscribe to.
But yes, it.
Drives me crazy. My war on algorithms. Algorithms are what poison culture. Human beings are what create culture. But we all know this, right, all right, let's do a little
¶ Algorithms suck at making culture, humans are good at it
last Chuck, ask Chuck. All right, first question comes from Gary of newberry Port, Massachusetts or defense and security experts concerned about the Trump Administration's pushed to have European countries
¶ Ask Chuck - Should we be concerned about Europe rearming?
increase their defense budgets for the past eighty years. Having the US Service the continents to facto security force seemed to be a key factor in the prolonged piece the region is seen given their centuries long history of conflict when there is no backstop and terif related changes in global trade connections and alliances. Should the world be nervous about a more heavily armed Europe? Well, Gary, I feel like, are you asking a question or are you really making
a statement? Because yes, I think we know. I say this mostly tongue in cheek, but a little bit nervous. I mean, the last time Germany was able to rearm, how did that.
Go for Europe?
Right, we're now going to put France is thinking about putting it spreading its nuclear weapons all over the continent.
Maybe that's not a bad idea.
The more you have them in different countries, maybe that does sort of potentially keep an uneasy peace right, sort of the mad mantra mutual assured destruction. But look, this is you know, the this is what bothers me about sort of. So on one hand, Trump wants to be the pre eminent power of the world. Well, we are the pre.
Eminent power of the world.
And one of the reasons we are is because we are the security defense for Europe heartstop.
We are that umbrella.
We basically are in charge of securing two continents, North America and arguably that means we basically are going to protect South America, although that hasn't fully fully been premise, hasn't been tested, and Europe. Right, so two and a half continents we're providing security for. That's nobody else. That's that's a super duper power. So we want to give that up, right, There's Look, there's always been a movement on the right, the sort of the isolationist wing of
the party, clearly where jad Vance comes from. Trump basically has stumbled into that part of it. You know, I don't think he's naturally thinks this way. I think he just sort of he is just at the end of the day, transactional and binary. So he ends up in that category. I think Vance is more of a true believer in the sort of isolationism, if you will, or sort of let let everybody manage their own affairs and let's see what happens. The fact is that it hasn't
worked for the globe. Right, that is not a way to keep peace. That is not a way to keep security. So look, I'm not sure it's a good it's a good move. I think it makes America less secure, and I think it makes the world less secure, pure and simple, all right, Matt w Wright, you are one hundred percent
¶ What is your preferred voting method to incentivize compromise?
correct about doubling the size of the house, but it will remain gridlocked if that's all we change our first past the post elections give us the two parties and the resulting incentives to resist compromise. In your episode with Rob sand he advocated for approval voting and open primaries. I like that idea, but I prefer ranked approval voting. The candidate with the highest approval score moves on wins. I'm not a fan of what traditionally gets called ranked
choice voting, i e. Automatic runoff voting. It's barely any better than first past the post. What is your preferred voting method that would break the two parties into four plus competitive parties with the incentive to compromise in Washington? Would you consider advocating for that system as vociferously as for open primaries and for doubling the size of the house. Love the show, Thank you, and thank you. For listening. Look, I have not thought hard enough about first past the
post ideas. I will say this, here's what I want. Okay, ranked choice voting just does It isn't going to get the trust of the public. It is a it could work, and in theory I basically would like to do it, but the hard way, which is I think the top four should move to a general election and then you pick from there and if nobody gets fifty, the top two meet again in a runoff.
That's what I think right now.
If you can decide as a party, whether you know, we could have you know, I'd love to see open primaries completely. Top four advanced to the general without you know, one, two, three, four, whatever it is, and then the top two if nobody gets fifty, would meet in a run off. I think that gives everybody a voice. I think that would open things up. You know, I don't want to dismiss first past the post ideas. It might be a better way.
You know, if we do double the size of the house, you know, maybe some states will want to go to multi you know, there's there's some thought that you could you know, let's say you're a state that has eight congressional districts. So, for instance, and I'll give you an example of this. Mindid County used to elect it. All school board members were elected county wide and it was the I think they had. Let's say there were nine members of the of the school board, the top nine
advanced and the and was the school board. There's some people that think, hey, maybe you hold your congressional elections. So if you're a state that has eight congressional districts, everybody runs statewide, everybody votes statewide, and the top eight get because this is a the the thinking there is if you get the top eight, and if you would get sort of pooled voting, right, you know, maybe some group would vote on identity politics and and surface up
one type of candidate. Maybe some group would practice ideological politics and surface another type of candidate. But that you know, if you had top eight, you would get a pretty you get a congressional delegation that truly was representative of
the entire state. Now the problem with that is what if all eight you know, let's say you're talking, you're talking the state of Iowa, and you get eight, but all eight are from des Moines, right, and you don't have anybody from Cedar Rapids or Debuque or Sioux City. You get my point, right, So, but you know, it's one of those ideas that I don't dismiss, say in a county for state representative races, right, or for state senate races if you have a large enough state senator
state house. So I think there are circumstances where that might be an interesting idea. But ultimately, when it comes to statewide elections and sort of larger elections, you know, I think we you know, we ought to have top four in general and opens it up to other primaries, to other political parties. The duopoly is what is stifling innovation in American politics. That is just a fact that
doopoly stifles it. If these were private organizations, you know, I think there'd be a that the FTC that they could break up this duopoly. But you know, this isn't how it works, since guess who runs the FTC. The duopoly, right, There's never been a duopoly that's never been more embedded
in government than the GOP and the Democratic Party. I think we've got to come up with infrastructure, voting infrastructure that that incentivizes non major party candidates, that allows people who are independent, That allows people who have a different points of view to feel as if their voice can be heard in a reasonable way. So I'm really glad you picked up on the rob sandpoint about first past
the post and the improval ideas. Look, all of these things I think will be coming to various states over the next twenty or thirty years. I think we're we're going into a period. You know, it's one of these things. I can't wait for fifty years from now for political scientists to talk about the fifty years that we're about to experience, because I think it's a I think we're going to have a lot of reform, experiment, experiment. Some will work, some well, just like what happened arguably in
the first fifty years of the twentieth century. You know, some of them stuck right, direct election of senators, giving women the right to vote, Some didn't, prohibition. So you know, I do think we all agree that the system as it stands doesn't work, and I think, you know, thanks to the fifty States, we should start seeing some interesting experiments beginning sooner rather than later, rank choice voting being one of them that we're already seeing play out. And
we're kicking the tires on it. And this was something I was a huge advocate of. Now I'm like you, Matt, I'm a little a little less into it than I was before. All Right, last question, doctor Walters, Well the
¶ Will the Biden cognitive question loom over the 2028 election?
cognitive Biden litmus tests become the Democratic version of the twenty twenty election or January sixth or will this remain a non healing wound until it is acknowledged and apologized for. Lastly, if you were Budhajid or another prominent Democrat, how would you answer the Biden cognitive question? Well, this, I don't know if we know the answer just yet. You know, there's a fine line here. I go back to Carter
and Ducacus right in Mondale. They were you know, when you lose, you're usually sort of ostracized in a form, in one form or another.
I'm trying to remember.
I think, you know, I certainly think Mondale in eighty four acknowledged Carter. I think Carter was at his convention. I'm not sure if he spoke at that convention. Certainly was not a part of the Clinton ninety two convention, right or any of that. I I think that I think it's possible that the Democrat that wins the nomination is the one with the least amount of Biden ties. Now what does that mean. Does that mean no Biden cabinet secretaries or a Biden cabinet secretary makes it through
because the other candidates had closer ties to Biden. It's I do think it's going to be in the same way. The Bush brand was just forever tainted by WMD and
not finding the WMD. And I think ultimately is why Jeff Bush's candidacy couldn't get off the ground, is that the Bush baggage still was too heavy to carry into a campaign in twenty sixteen, and the fact that Donald Trump not not only didn't get penalized for going after the Bushes, he seemed to get rewarded inside the party for having the guts to go after the Bushes.
So it is.
I suspect it will be somewhat of a litmus test, you know. To me, if I were Booto, I would just tell the truth right, which was Look, I didn't have a lot of interaction. I always had some question about this, but I felt confident Joe Biden because I because of what I was watching with Donald Trump, you know, I don't try to come up with something else. I think that's the likely answer. And if that's the answer, you just lean into it and own it.
You know.
I know that I'm not going to conduct of my presidency that way, you know, something like that. And I'm going to be for you know, mandating more medical records to do this or that. You know, I think you can deal with it. And if anybody can talk their way out of this one out of this, it's Pete Buotages, right. I don't know if others can as much. Pete is better at this than most. Right, he has the gift of gab. But it it's it's got to be believable.
And like I said, I'm I I you know, I've had these conversations with with various folks over the over the past few years on this issue. It was Donald Trump's presence that created an illusion of reassurance.
Call it.
It was frankly, Democrats had their own version of Trump derangement syndrome, and in Trump arrangement syndrome, right, which the right likes to call every critic every once.
In a while.
But in this case, what I think one of the symptoms is you just assume everybody sees the worst version of Trump that you're seeing, and most voters, you know, not a lot of voters see that same version.
Right.
Some of it has to do with the bubble you live in and this or that. And I do think this was a version of people in the White House had Trump arrangement syndrome. You know, no way that January sixth guy is going to be able to beat even you know, a half awake Joe Biden. So it was all done under the cover of comforting themselves by the perceived weaknesses that they thought Donald Trump was bringing to
this campaign. And they were weaknesses, they just weren't weaker than the biggest weakness that either Canadate had, which poll after poll after poll showed, was age and capacity to serve a full second term. I will tell you this, Pete's going to learn a lot if Kamala Harris runs for governor, how it'll be interesting to see if how forgiving California voters are of her, How she answers the question of why didn't what did she see? When did
she first start becoming concerned? Does she lean into it or not? And does avoiding it create a problem for her? That you know, oh, she's not coming across authentic or
honest or whatever it is. So if you're if you have some Biden baggage and you're thinking about running for president in twenty eight, watching how Kamala Harris navigates this and seeing how voters, particularly Democratic voters in California receive this will provide I think some guidelines for how those with some Biden baggage in twenty eight decide to deal with it. All right, I'm gonna stop there. I hope
you enjoy your Memorial d weekend. By the way, I had a lot of fun with my friend Jason Page and his UH and his show on YouTube and syndicated around the country, his sports show. We had a good time. UH did a little uh uh if you want to check it out, had a fun interactions with Patrick McEnroe, among others. So take a listen, absolutely roast me for whatever sports takes you don't agree with. Hope you enjoy the weekend of sports, and let's hope, let's hope we
get some competitive NBA basketball. I'm nervous. I'm nervous that these series is that we may be done. I have a feeling okay, see Denver was unofficially the NBA Finals. I hope I'm wrong, but we shall see with that until I upload a game.