Today, I want to share a new show from New York Times Opinion. It is called The Opinions, and it is the opinion page of The New York Times come to life in audio. And so I want to play two I really liked here. The first one is from my friend and colleague David French, the Times Opinion Calmest. David is a very conservative guy never voted for a Democrat for president in his life. He's a very pro-life guy. But he's talking here about why he's going to be casting
a ballot for Kamala Harris this November. Enjoy. This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is David French and I'm an opinion columnist at The New York Times. I've been a conservative since the moment I started being interested in politics. I was a cold war Reagan conservative. I came of age in the 1980s and that was my political identity. And for a
long time, it's also was my professional identity. I was a free speech lawyer for many years. I was a pro-life litigator for many years. I was a Romney delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention. So I was deeply embedded both in the conservative legal movement and in the Republican Party itself before the rise of Donald Trump. But I am for the first time in my adult life going to vote for a Democrat for president in 2024. I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris. Some people say I can't vote
for Kamala Harris because I'm pro-life and a Christian. But in fact, I believe Donald Trump is harming the pro-life movement in a profound way. I'm often asked if I'm still conservative. The answer is I'm voting against Trump precisely because I'm conservative. That's why I'm doing it. I was a Reagan Republican because of the
commitment of the party to certain conservative principles. The current Republican Party is not the Reagan Republican Party and its policies and it is certainly absolutely not the Reagan Republican Party when it comes to its commitment or understanding of the importance of character. Now with the
rise of the Maga Republican Party, the party has transformed itself. And so therefore, if I'm a Republican because of a commitment to character and a specific kind of conservatism and it's no longer committed to those things, then it has no claims on my loyalty at all. I had never voted for Donald Trump. I like to say I have voted for Mitt Romney for president more than any other person alive, including probably Mitt Romney. So I've written in Mitt Romney, for example.
But I had not affirmatively cast a vote for the Democratic candidate. And I will tell you when this really began to change. It wasn't just January 6, although January 6 elevated the stakes dramatically. It was the one-two punch of January 6 and seeing how far Trump himself and Maga had strayed from its commitment to the American rule law. It was also then that Russian attack on Ukraine and the response of the Biden-Harris administration to that contrasted with the Maga response.
What I've seen is this administration was on the right side of those issues. And Kamala Harris has pebbled down on those commitments to be on the right side of those issues. I'm an evangelical Christian and I've been pro-life for reasons related both to my faith and to my understanding of science and justice. And it was one of the primary reasons why continued my affiliation with the Republican Party because of the Republican Party's consistent commitment to
a pro-life position. But with the rise of Donald Trump, I was very, very concerned about his effect. Abortions went up under his presidency. And since the Dobbs decision, the pro-life movement has been a state of political collapse. It's not even been able to win a referendum in a red state. Trump was the very first president since Carter to end his presidency with a higher abortion
rate and ratio and tens of thousands of more abortions. So you're beginning to have a world with more abortions, decreased support for the pro-life movement, and then Donald Trump himself and the MAGA movement fundamentally changes the Republican Party platform to the point where it was no longer recognizably pro-life. And it was the most watered down platform on abortion in 40 years.
And so it strikes me as bizarre if people make the argument that as an evangelical Christian, you have to support the man who watered down the pro-life platform in the Republican Party, the man who oversaw the first increase in abortions in decades, the man who has been found liable for sexually abusing a woman, and a man who's bragged, bragged about his sexual exploits, that that's the person that Christians have to support, or they're not being faithful, strikes me
as not just destructive, but also laughably ridiculous. It's a mistake to think of voting for somebody as endorsing all aspects of their coming presidency. No, it's an endorsement of the things I like, and it's not an endorsement of the things that I don't like, and it's definitely a repudiation of the other side. Here's the way I would put it. I think there are ample opportunities for the pro-life movement to work with a Harris administration to enact policies that will make abortion
less appealing as an alternative for women. So for example, I have long supported to Biden administration's efforts to create an expanded child tax credit. But do you think that there are policies that are aimed at improving the lives of young mothers that pro-life people can work with the Harris administration on? Also, I'm not naive. There are things that I would
oppose. So for example, if she is wanting to repeal the high amendment, which is prohibiting direct federal funding of abortion, I would oppose that if she was wanting to enact a federal law codifying row, I would oppose that. But I would also note that pro-life folks can block some of those policies with their votes down ballot. The president is not, she would not be queen of America. She would need the votes in the House and the Senate to enact national change.
So this idea that everything depends on the vote for the president is just completely wrong. And right now, I think there's an appetite for a return to a more normal American politics, any more calm America. And I think you see that through her candidacy, not through the candidacy of Donald Trump. The second episode of the opinions that I wanted to share is a little different. It's based off an experiment, the opinion page ran, seeing how Chattcheapyte matched up to a human
novelist when it came to writing a sexy beetroot. The human they enlisted was the novelist and short story writer Curtis Sidenfeld, one of my favorites. And both Sidenfeld and Chattcheapyte got the same prompt. The prompt was five words, lust, regret, kissing, middle age, and flip-flops. And remember, if you enjoyed these, you can subscribe to our new show The Opinions by clicking the link in the show notes or searching for it wherever you get your podcasts. This is The Opinions, a show that
brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Susanna Meadows. I'm an editor in the New York Times Opinion section. My job is to bring writers into our pages who are grappling with big questions and who can surprise us. I'm here today with a fiction writer. I have long been a fan of Curtis Sidenfeld. She's the author of the book Prep and more recently Romantic Comedy. And she's here to talk about a recent piece
we worked on together that featured a writing competition of sorts. We pitted an original short story from Curtis that she wrote for the Times against a story created by Chat GPT, both in the genre of a short, lusty summer be trade. Hi, Curtis. Hi, Susanna. So before we get into the writing competition, can we talk for a second about your relationship to AI? So I see it as a huge unknown, not necessarily a positive unknown, potentially threatening. And if I'm having a meal
with other writers and the topic of AI comes up, it's like a bummer. Like I'm kind of like, oh, going to this portion of the evening. I'm not a judge here later. Like I wanted to write a better story than AI did. But I also feel some sincere curiosity. Like how would this work can it write fiction like in a weird way if it could write fiction that was interesting to me? That fact would be interesting. Uh-huh. I'm one of many, many novelists whose books were used to
train Chat GPT without compensation without my agreeing to it. And I think at the time I had seven books published and it had used five of them. And I was like, I am very insulted. It used five and I'm very insulted. It did not use the other two, which were the ones that were the most negatively reviewed and the lowest selling. Like I was like, even you. So when you came to us of this idea, I was genuinely curious to see what it could produce and how good it would be.
I mean, just in my defense. You came to me and we're like, wouldn't it be fun to write fiction for the opinion page? And I was like, that would be fun. And then I think we had some back and forth about a few ideas, including what is a beach read? And then the idea just came to me like, oh, what if it was this contest between AI and me? We would both get the same prompts. We'll give a list of possible ideas that readers can choose from. And then it's a combination of very summary stuff,
like pop songs and sand and sunscreen. And also mixed in our things that I like to write about like on we and ambivalence and self-consciousness and privilege. So we had a list of 20 things that Curtis came up with. And then we gave readers a place where they could write in their own suggestions of what they wanted you and Chatshipy to write about. And then looking at the responses, it seemed pretty clear what they wanted. It was lust. Lust was number one.
Regret was number two, which I just what summarizes humanity more than lust and regret. And then kissing was number three. And so then we gave these suggestions from readers to you Curtis. And there were hundreds right that you looked through. And so then you decided on what? So I decided on middle age and flip-flops. And which even that captures the range. It would be like jet skis, murder, fruity cocktails. I think it was when it was like when your thighs stick to the chair
that you're sitting on. I actually found it moving or touching that I think there were at least 10 writings for middle age. But I think people knew that this would be a summer romance or sort of going in that direction. And that they were kind of saying like let the characters be middle age. So I do think there is this kind of cultural hunger for middle-aged romances. And I was glad in a
small way to try to satisfy that hunger. So we had our prompts write a thousand word short story in the style of Curtis sit and felt that includes these elements lust, kissing, flip-flops, regret, and middle age. So while Curtis was toiling away at her original short story for us, I had the task of entering the prompts into chat GPT. And it took 17 seconds. And you know, the words just appeared to see the speed at which it spits out sentences was the most unsettling part
because also in a very biased way, I'm like my story is better. I'm like it wrote its story. I don't know a million eyes answer. And my story is probably not a million times better. So it's like the speed is unsettling. So now we're going to play for you the beginning of both short stories, one by chat GPT and one by Curtis. But not necessarily in that order. So you'll have to guess which is which. After you hear these we'll come back and we'll tell you if you're right.
Let's start with Beatread number one. You probably can see where this is going. When my flight from La Guardia landed in Minneapolis on that August afternoon, the first text I received was from the executive director of the nonprofit I'd be holding the training for the next day, canceling our dinner because of a family emergency. The second text was from my friend Jenny asking me to look at the profile of a guy
named James on the dating app we both used. And to let her know if it was the same asked not one question James I'd gone out with around Christmas. That date had felt like such a waste of an evening that I'd given myself a break from the absence. By the time the seatbelt light had gone off, I'd texted Jenny to tell her it wasn't and I'd received a heart on the app from a man who is currently online whose handle was MTN Biker 1971. He was 53 a year younger than me. He had deep brown
eyes and was bald with a gray and brown beard. And three of his five photos featured him on a bike. I swear, I swear that MTN Biker 1971 and I already had exchange generic greetings before it occurred to me that because my setting showed profiles within 10 miles of me, he was local. Oh, sorry, I typed. Just realized you live in Minnesota and I'm only visiting for 36 hours. Before I could send this, a new message came in from him. What's your favorite fruit that's
considered a vegetable and what's your best episode of TV ever? So I deleted, oh, sorry, and typed, okra and the season finale of Severance. You? Can you see where this is going? You probably can see where this is going. By the time I was in a new bear, he told me his name was Brian. He worked for an environmental advocacy group. And the previous weekend on a trail, he'd ridden his bike past a woodpecker sitting on the back of a deer. He'd been so close that he
and the deer had made eye contact. I typed, just to clarify, you did or didn't also make eye contact with the woodpecker. Sadly no, he replied. Next time? By the time I'd entered my hotel room, he'd written, I don't usually suggest it this quickly, but want to grab a drink tonight? So far, I'd answered no question untruthfully. When he'd said he lived in St. Paul, I typed, I'm currently in downtown Minneapolis. I hesitated for a few seconds. Then typed, I'm free tonight.
Alright, so that was just the beginning of B-TREED number one. Here's the start of the second short story. Let's see if you can tell who wrote what. The flip-flop moment. Lydia had always been practical. It was her hallmark, the trait that kept her life organized in meat rows, like the files on her desk or the cushions on her sofa. At 48, this practicality had become her armor, projecting her from the reckless impulses that she might have indulged in during her younger years.
And so, when she walked into the coffee shop on that sweltering July afternoon, it was with the same cautious optimism that she had applied to everything else in her life. The coffee shop was called Java Junction, an ironic nod to its non-descript location. It was where she met her friends for Book Club, where she studied with her son while he was in high school, and where she'd spent countless hours with her late husband. That was the first
thing she'd felt when she entered, the lingering echo of shared memories. She was here for a meeting with her college friend Julie, and Julie was late, which gave Lydia plenty of time to observe. She sat at a small table near the window, which was always Lydia's favorite spot. The sunlight spilled over the table, creating a halo around her as she skimmed through a magazine. Her flip flops occasionally brushing the edge of the table. She had never been one for extravagant shoes, practical,
again. But on that day, the flip flops seemed to betray a different side of her, a side that wanted to feel something more, something less anchored. Julie arrived, panting slightly from the heat. She was a whirlwind of energy, always dressed in vibrant colors and speaking in rapid bursts. The two friends embraced and Lydia noticed how the decades had changed them both. Julie still had that unfiltered joy, while Lydia felt a certain grain-ess to her own existence.
They talked about their lives. Julie's recent move to a beach town and Lydia's endless work days. The responsibilities of being a single mother, the growing distance from her teenage son. They laughed about old times and reminisced about their college days, and for a moment, Lydia felt something she hadn't in a while, a spark of connection, a vitality. As they chatted, Lydia noticed a man sitting alone at a nearby table. He was tall, with an easy smile and eyes that seemed to dance with
mischief. He wore a pair of flip flops, practical, but worn with a casual confidence. Lydia couldn't help but glance at him every now and then. Her gaze lingering longer than she intended. Okay, so now you've heard both stories. We can reveal if you haven't already figured it out yourself, which one Curtis wrote. Curtis, I wrote the first one. The one that has the title, you probably can see where this is going. To me, the difference was so obvious immediately.
Just down to the details, Curtis, that you used, like making eye contact with a woodpecker, which is a sentence that I've definitely never read or considered in my life. What I found interesting is that there were similar things that you both hit aside from the prompts that you both worked off of. You both used the word optimism, but you said extravagant optimism, which I love.
I just I savored that when I read it and then chat GBT's version was cautious optimism, which we've all heard a million times, but it just was so clear that this is a human being writing this versus the other thing, which was just so dull and soulless. Anyway, Curtis, tell
me what you thought the difference was. Well, it's funny actually that you're using the word soulless because more than 20 years ago, I went to the Iowa writer's workshop and the director at the time was Frank Conroy and I might be paraphrasing, but he would say what makes fiction work is not, okay, I'm definitely paraphrasing, but is not pure quality, but you can feel the press of a soul
under the words like one soul communicating with another. And I feel like there is some sweatiness or nervousness or yearning that I think is actually is inside of me and is in my fiction and is in a lot of people. But I feel like if you plucked an individual sentence from chat G.P.T.s story, it's probably fine or even it better like it's probably like smoothly written, but cumulatively, something is missing. Like there's not any real emotion or anything that makes
it feel very specific. And there was just there are no stakes in the second one. Yeah, yeah, sometimes I think of writing styles as spices. The more unusual flavor is the more divisive it will be, the people who like it will really like it, the people who don't. And the chat G.P.T. story feels like lunch from like a fast casual chain where you're like on a road trip and you're like I just have to fill my stomach and like keep driving or whatever. It's just there's nothing special about it.
So what did you do to prepare? In general, I like to do quote unquote research for fiction because I feel like it just always makes it interesting and I don't know what I don't know and I have a friend who is in her early 50s and lives in New York and like intermittently does dating apps and she read it for me. And I have another friend who's a serious biker and I said if Brian's dating app profile handle is mountain biker 1971, is that like no real biker would ever have?
And and he was kind of like it is, do she was his word? I don't know if we say it. Yeah, I do. She had a family podcast. And he was like, but I think it actually does what you're trying to achieve, which is like, I mean, he's born in 1971, you know, like his way. There was things I was trying to do as succinctly as possible because I had already exceeded the word count. And we should say, I mean, I at start interrupting you, but all these things that you're talking about
are all the things that you're pretty sure chat TPP didn't do. Yeah. And then it made me think, oh, so is that what a soul is? Is that what the human part is? No, I think I mean, it's true, like, you know, because I wanted to bring honor to humankind. I did before. Oh, thank you. I mean, you speaking on behalf of human God.
That's not a lot of time on this 1200 words, whether it was getting feedback from my friends and driving to this park or watching, like I had seen the David Bowie cover band that I'd seen in real life is called the band that fell to earth. I had seen them in person, but then like, watching a little bit of their videos on, I mean, like, how many members are in the band? Yeah, because you want it to feel real. Would you say that is also how you are in the story?
Or is that oversimplifying? You mean like because of the effort and the specificity of the details and all that you, I mean, there's so much of you, even if it's just you researching what the St. Paul Park is like, it's that's you in there. Yeah, well, it's funny because if I read fiction by one of my friends, I often have the feeling that I was spending time with them. Yeah. Like that's that's how much you can kind of feel someone's essence come through their
fiction or feel their personality come through their fiction. Everyone has a sensibility or like words they would or wouldn't use or observation they would or wouldn't make. So yeah, I mean, I wrote every sentence in the story. So of course, there's a lot of me in there, even though there's also like none of me in there. Right. But I also, one thing I want to say is I remain humble about this in the sense that I think this story that AI wrote reads like a story written by AI. Yes,
I agree. I did find it somewhat reassuring at least just for the moment in terms of writing and creativity that were not as screwed as I might have thought for now. But I think that it is adapting quickly, you know, the way this stuff works. If it was drastically improved in like three months, six months, the conversation we're having is sort of true in August 2024. And I don't know how long it'll be true. Right. Curtis, thank you so much for joining me and for doing
this experiment. It was so much fun for me to thank you, Susana. So to read the rest of these scintillating Beatreads and I hope you do, you can visit the link in this episode show notes or visit nytime.com and search sit and felt. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vashaka Derba, Phoebe Lett, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusek, and Annie
Rose Straser. Engineering, mixing and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and a Femes Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary March Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Straser.