Give you away.
You go ahead, you go right ahead.
I'll attempt some kind of segue and you will pick up on it.
I that's perfect, perfect.
Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast. James Lilyx is off today, as is Charlie Cook. Is Steve Hayward joined by Rob Long.
Yeah what does that mean? Like, so what happens?
James sick? And then you call Charlie and charlis I'm not doing it and you're like, well, yeah, who did we get?
That's the wrong opening note? Rob, Sorry, it's that I'm trying to do a little fifteen second one. Sorry, that's all right, you're rusty, right. Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast. It's Steve Hayward sitting in for James Lylyx, who is out today.
As is Charlie Cook. Joining us is Rob Long. So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Keep this this is real.
Yeah, it's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and seventy five. And as James always wants us to remind you, please join Ricochet at ricochet dot com.
It's not expensive.
Join the most stimulating conversations on the web. James is under the weather. I think Charles is out somewhere. I'm a little under the weather, So I apologize for my scratchy voice, but we managed to scrounge up Rob Long.
Scratch a right, you know what, you need to work on this because like like, well, you know, James is sick and Charlie's who knows where Charlie is? So I don't know. We got Yeah, we put out an all apb. We get this clown in. You know, maybe special guests. You could say we are well, I could you're under the weather. I get it.
Well, I mean I think of it this way. Rob is uh.
You know, I pick up the news every day. I'm on the road this week, so a little less news, but you know the good, the bad, the crazy, and I often think that you know, at least Rob Long has a blessed existence in a monastic occupation at the moment.
You probably missed some of this craziness.
Now, yeah, I wouldn't call it a monastic you don't.
We're like this sponsored or the seminary was created by very stern Presbyterians.
But they weren't that stern, right right right, Yeah, Well, Presbyterianism and monasticism don't often go together in the same sentence, but that was our last podcast together.
Yeah, we don't have to go back through that, yeah, right, right, right.
So well today there is a whole lot in the news.
So you know, I have been predicting for years item number one, that eventually what was going to turn back a lot of the really extreme transgender craziness and I mean, frankly what I think, mutilating children and young teens. That the trial lawyers were going to rescue us from this because you would have and you know, we know there's a significant number of people who regretted making a transition and want to de transition, and I thought they're going
to sue for malpractice. And one reason I think this, just very briefly, is I am familiar. Don't ask me how because it was a confidential settlement with NDAs. But some years ago I'm aware of a lawsuit brought against an abortion provider by someone who got an abortion as a teen with the usual no parental notification because that was always right and it was a look, they did not counsel me of the psychological risks of having an abortion, which you know a lot of young women they regret
having done it, and sometimes there's trauma and ball. Okay, Well, the abortion provider settled very quickly because they did not want this to be spread around, right, And I think most people who think of a suit either against these transgender surgeries or even abortion, they don't really want to go through a trial either, because that's painful and difficult. But the object is that the lawyers who brought the
case was let's make certain abortion providers uninsurable. And so I'm wondering if that's what's going to happen now with the transgender business.
Well, it could happen.
It also can happen naturally.
It's not as if it's not as if this stuff isn't already controversial, even in the context of the people who've been performing it. You know, the entire clinic, the Tavistaw Clinic in Britain, which is one of them. First of all, one of the most famous psychoanalytic institutes in the world, if not the most famous. I think Freud taught there. So this is the most establishment place there is.
And they did this kind of therapy and this kind of and they not I don't think they did the surgery, but they they authorized the surgery on minors and the and the hormone therapy and all that stuff, and they not only decided to stop doing it, but I think a year later they closed the entire thing.
And it wasn't because of pressure.
From you know, some I don't know what, you know, social conservative It was out of this genuine feeling that maybe they haven't been making a mistake.
And they were very careful.
They didn't say we're against this in general, or we don't think that you should be allowed to do this if you if you feel it's necessary or whatever. I don't, I don't know, but they did say that not for kids, right, and that I mean, that doesn't seem like an outrageous criterion, which is you got to be eighteen or nineteen.
Right, right? Yes?
Uh. Well.
The other aspect of this is I think we now have pretty good data that there's an aspect of social contagion going on here. And it's kind of lumpy, right, it tends to because why is it so high in bel Air and Cambridge, Massachusetts and not in.
Peoria, right right? Uh?
And it does remind me joke Bill Bill Maher said that he says like yeah.
Right, uh, and I mean I'm sure, yeah, you'll remember that was it thirty years ago? Now, you had this outbreak, outbreak epidemic of anorexia and bilimia among young women, right, and that that clearly had a contaging effect.
There wasn't some and there's no epidemic.
I mean, that's not caused by a virus or something, right, right, And but it just you know, a group think and so forth. On the other hand, I think, uh, you know, the identitarians as I call them, one more thought about that, and but you may agree with me at this.
I do know four or five transgender individuals, men who change teams, as I like to put it, but all in adulthood, some of them far into adulthood.
Right, And you know they all, by the way, most of them are not down with the you know, I can go in any bathroom I want and sort of aggressiveness of it, right, quite the opposite. And most of them are either conservative or libertarian. And they all say the same thing. You know, I thought I would be happier as the other thing, and I am. And so I take that and respect it. It's rare but real, and I think probably one a typical of the identitarian
left of taking it too far. They're actually going to make it harder for people who really do have genuine gender dysphoria.
Yeah, I think that's probably true.
I mean, I find the whole thing so bad, Like anyway, because of the I'm trying to be nicer. I wrote a I wrote a piece for commentary. It's gonna be out next week, and I put in a story that's true with a joke at the end. And I'm sure I'm gonna trouble.
For you know, Like.
I have a friend who is in the has been the fashion sort of retail fashion business for a long time. He's very well known guys for a bunch of books, and you know his joke as he goes. You know, a lot of these you know, these guys just you know, they think they're going to become women. And it's like, well, wait a minute, think about this, like what is your
summer Look? You know, you it isn't just this thing where you just wake up one day and you get to you know, and you got all you're thinking about these things because but women have been thinking about these things forever.
And I suspect that that is.
But you know, some some of the old some of the older gentlemen, the older meaning you know, in their in their grown up phase, who've decided to do this. You know, I don't. I'm not sure they at this point. I'm sure they trade it up in the looks department, you know. Yeah, And but but again, that is entirely,
entirely up to them. And I celebrate the courage it takes to make a change like that, and I hope that they have equal courage if they if they regret it, that there's the equal embrace of their changing back.
I think that happens too.
It doesn't have to, but it can. And in general, you know, I think when you're grown up, I mean fine, and I think there is a certain and I don't I'm not. I am not, by no means am I questioning the good faith of the people who have having this done or doing this themselves, which is crucial. They're doing to themselves, which is fine. But you know, some of it does feel a little like a very very
rich society and a very very privileged group. And we all are, i mean, just by being Americans in twenty twenty six, we're incredibly rich.
It's just kind of like, well, I can do this, I can do it, so why not you.
Know, well, we've also, I mean we Something that I think is never made distinct is that it's one thing to just cross dress, right, you know, I want to wear a dress and call myself a woman. And that's another thing to go all the way, shall we say, right and have surgeries use modern medicine. And it reminds me of the old breakfast joke that the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed, right, So you know, the people go all the way, they really can't switch back very easily.
I don't think I don't you know, I don't.
Yeah, And I think we're not being honest to them either. They are not switching to something they really aren't. It's really just a more a closer visual approximation of what they want. But they aren't able to do the thing. You know, if you become a woman, you don't have a uterus, you can't have children, you don't you don't
have you don't menstruate. And then there's also the truth part of it is I have a friend of mine who's very done, She's been doing this kind of researching a long time and she he says, you know what, they don't tell people is that you will not be able to experience sexual pleasure, right right, Yeah, So this if the if you're drawn to that, if this is somehow these things and look, we're all kind of wired
in some weird way with God knows. I wouldn't want to look under the hood of your head, you wouldn't want look at ah of mine. But if that, if that is part of what's happening here, then you're going to be really disappointed. Yeah. Also this when you try to buy shoes, I think that's the only thing that's that's not going to be a good.
Right, Well, one last serious point and then take a wide angle lens look at a broader scene. I do know that apparently one bar to more malpractice use is statutes of limitation. Now I'm an expert on this, but I do know that when starting thirty years ago, you had all the explosion of the scandals of sex abuse by Catholic priests, the boy Scouts and so forth, that a lot of states ran out and extended there's statute of limitations for those kinds of claims. And we'll have
to keep track on whether that happens here. I suspect it might in some states.
I agree, I agree. I think also I feel like that I would say to those people on the pro side or on the sort of continuing to perform these things from miners, is that if you want to look and see what can happen to a to may be the most the most venerable, strongest institution and earth has ever known in the Catholic Church, take a look, and that will happen to the psychiatric or the psychological industry, and that all those institutions if this keeps going on.
Yeah, I think that's right. So more broadly, I think that what I call the.
Identitarians, which is this and the whole sort of Dei world, it's pretty evident to me they are digging in, thinking if we can survive three more years of Trump, which will seem like twenty years, right, because you measure Trump and dog years if you're on the left, right, doesn't seem every day a want. And they're digging in, and you know they're disguising the Dei stuff on campus.
That's what I follow the most.
Closely, and and I don't keep want to don't want to keep beating this dead horse. But the identitarianism business has always been sort of the extreme of the idea of liberal autonomy, of self definition, self creation, totally unmoored with you know, tradition, history, human nature and the wilfulness of it is what makes them, I think, so angry and aggressive in a lot of domains, and so they're not going to go away easily even after just one or two lawsuits, is my expectation.
I think that might might be the case.
On the other hand, once you've once you've cracked, these things only really work in their sort of mob intimidation, like if you don't if you don't do this, we're going to punish you in all these different ways. Once that's broken, it's really hard to scare people again. And you're already seeing it in colleges, like college is sort of the.
Bell weather, Right. This all happened a while ago.
People perfectly happy sending their kids to a school that doesn't that doesn't necessarily have the same cachet, the same name as a school as a school might have had ten or fifteen years ago. Now, I think this is all gonna take a long time. Yeah, but I'm not sure it's I'm not sure it's a slam dunk for the weighted out the playing possum, waiting it out weighted outers. I mean, look, if we could, if we all survived three more years of Trump, that great.
I mean, I'm not sure I'm going to survive.
Let alone, let alone the left. But my guess is that these these only work if you could point to everyone to say everyone's doing it, and you'll be can roundly condemned if you don't.
I'm not sure they can do that anymore.
Right, Well, you know, one indicator is always comics, right, And I mean I get a lot of social media feeds.
Like you do.
And you know, there are always a few comedians who would make fun of this business, but lately I've been seeing a lot more of them do it right. Yeah, right, and and they bust up the audience. It's pretty clear that the you know, okay, and that got significant. Well in other news that is overlaps, maybe a little another batch of Epstein files here the last few days. I hope you got I hope you got to miss that Robert of that catch up with you.
Also, no, no, that's like no one's talking about of course. I think that's the most amazing thing about being in seminary is that no one is talking about the news in any at any point, they'll make you know some of the people who are on the left, which a lot of a lot of them, will make you know. They'll make these oblique represents, you know, in these troubled times, which so do we get all we've always been able to say. But I am, of course obsessed with it.
And because it's to me what I find, I'm such a Pollyannist weirdo. I just assumed that all of this talk about how Epstein's network was so big and you knew everybody and all that stuff, that was like a lot of nonsense, Like really, I don't think that really happens. And then you go on these email list and it's extraordinary how much I mean, his full time job, Look, I might box right now is like twenty emails. I'm late on returning his He seems to be doing nothing
but on the phone all day. Like I mean, that's that would be my defense where he where his lawyer if he were alive and he were facing you know, more assault charge than's it? When did he have time, ladies jumping the jury between eleven eleven and eleven twenty three, When the when the plaintiffs insists he was attacking her. He was actually setting nine emails, like we could see, like the guy seemed to be doing nothing with that.
So but it is interesting. It is interesting.
Yeah.
I mean I instinctively resist frothy conspiracy theories, and you know, I want to really be proven. And on the other hand, I noticed the same thing. How did he make his money when he's spending all his time being social chairman seemingly twenty four to seven and it had cost him a lot of money to do all that too. So I mean a few things have leaked out. I mean, he really droves some hard bargains, evenly squeezed some people.
He frauded some people. The New York Times had a pretty good story on a dive a couple of months ago or a month ago, and it really detailed that he was a sharpeither. Okay, but it's still I don't know, it still seems so out of proportion. I do kind of wish it would all go away. Although last thing, maybe you, I don't know if you caught this. I think it was maybe Bill Marshow last Friday night. I've just read about it. But he said, where does QAnon
go to get its apology, right. I mean, I don't know if you know all the QAnon stories, and you know they're way out there. I mean I met someone once who said, this is, you know, eight or nine years ago, right that you know there is this organized pedophile ring.
Forget the pizza shop. There's tunnels that start from a mile underneath a Denver airport to go all over the country, and that's where the trafficking is going on.
I just you know, I mean, you know, I'd rather how about we talk about Kim Trail something more sensible just.
The way I can see, right, right, Well, yeah, I think that. Well, I mean, you know, it doesn't seem like it requires much of a conspiracy.
It's just rich people and a guy.
What's interesting to me is that he is Epstein really is a classic character you've seen in fiction and in plays and stuff. He's every single person he is emailing with, he despises, he hates everybody, and if the great tragedy of his life I think for him was that he committed suicide before he could see the destruction that he created. It isn't as if this guy, there's not one of those emails in which he's genuinely concerned for a friend or anything.
I mean, look, even the worst.
People, you know, even Hitler was nice to his dog. Right this he seems like all he a lifetime of resentment and anger and he hates these guys more than anything. And and I think that drove it. I mean, it's very it's very the worst thing about it for me is that there's no index like the No One's index
that so you can search on the web. When when the North Koreans hacked the Sony emails, yeah, and then Wiki Leaks put it on the web and you could you could like search for your name and if you ever, if you had, like I did some stuff at Disney, I mean at Sony in those years, and so I went and looked for my name because I could see what the business affairs people were emailing to each other back and forth about my contract and this and that. It was really fascinating, but they were kind of like
they weren't really lying. There was one moment where it was like, oh, I got it, I see what you guys are up to. But mostly, you know, people even in emails, they're not twirling their mustache. But this guy and I don't think he is either, but you could tell that there's just he just he's a this is I think were he alive today, he would not be disappointed at the wholesale reputational destruction that he has created.
Yeah, you know, I had not picked up on that angle of it, Rob, I have to confess that there's sort of malice there born of you know, anger and resentment and whatever.
I miss that, but yeah, I did enjoy.
I mean, I have not been calling through these things, but you can't avoid some of it. Boy, what the Allen sure turns up a lot? Yeah, emails right, wanting Epstein to broker you know, small bit parts.
In his movies, and you know, I meet all kinds of crazy stuff.
Yeah, I mean I think but Epstein kind of knew. I mean like the devil.
The devil.
Uh, the devil always appears to you as a solution. Yeah right, it's whatever your weaknesses is what the Devil's gonna say. I could take care of that for you.
Right.
It's never it's never something and it's never even something grand like I can make you a king of the world. I mean, that's what we that's how we imagine it. But really when the devil comes to you. He says, Look, I know this, this this little thing is bothering you. Let me help you. Let me help you financi your movie, and I can sell some. I'll sell some walk on, so before you know it, you'll have all the money you need.
Okay.
Yeah, so it starts right by the way.
Well, yes, I do.
I mean, well, maybe this is the time to do this. I was going to bring it up later, but you know so, I'm still out in California for some crazy reason.
It's way.
Here's a new one for you that I was talking about just yesterday. Some people here in Texas uh a three hundred and sixty five million dollar bike lane eight miles along the La River, which, as you know, is a storm drain. It's concrete channel, right, it was supposed to be open last year. They haven't started construction, and the construction cross is now estimated to be over a billion dollars all in for eight miles along the La River.
And how is this possible? Right, that's just a measure of the comprehensive failure of California.
But equally already concrete. They what do they have to do?
Exactly?
No, that's really how hard is a bike path on the La River which is empty ninety nine percent of the time time, as you know, right, also have to spend only.
In California, Yeah, exactly. No one wants to ride there. Oh my god.
But that brings me to your, well, your former industry, right, which I know we've talked about how it's in free fall in California because of high costs and everything else. And the latest idea that apparently Governor Newsom was talking about is, well, we have to come up with some subsidies and tax breaks for the Hollywood industry in California, which is, you know, do we have to have subsidies
to take coals to Newcastle? I mean, it's unbelievable to think that what has been one of the premier industries of California for one hundred years was on such hard times that it needs And I know, Georgia and Oklahoma and all these other states New Mexico aren't trying to lure the film industry, but California you would think would have such an advantage like Las Vegas has an advantage. I mean in casino gaming has spread over the country, but Las Vegas still thrives because none of those places
can offer what Las Vegas does. And I've always thought Hollywood will always offer what all those other states can't offer, even with bribes.
Yeah, I think it's probably true in some respect. The problem with it is that we say it's a runaway production. They call it in show business runaway productions leaving LA But there was too much production for you know, the past fifteen twenty years. So it's sort of like you think about them as oil wells, right, you know, you drive through oil towns and like you see these dereks that are not being used, with the oil pumps that aren't going up and down, up and down, up and down, and why is that?
It's just because of the price of oil. It's not worth it.
Those things will start moving when it makes economic sense. Right. We just over invested in show business into TV shows for frankly, mostly streaming services now needed twenty five thirty forty fifty sixty one hundred originals, right, so they all had to be made. They had to be made somewhere. So if production went down to where it was when I started, or midway around there, that would probably be That's probably the outcome the problem with a budget is
money is fungible. So if I get the state to pay for something and said we're not going to pay for the big star salaries, We're only going to pay for this or this or this, well guess what's gonna happen to the star salaries. They're going to suck up the Because the truth is, no matter what matter how you pay for it, the people who are whose faces are on the screen really for the not for the first time, but for the most extreme time ever, they
are more important. It costs ten million dollars to twenty million dollars to launch a title, whether it's a movie or TV show or anything, into public consciousness. Every time, you don't have to every million dollars, you don't have to spend to try to tell people what the show is about, who's in it. You're it's money in the bank. So you want a recognizable star, you want to build on.
That's why they those why all the reboots that aren't really reboots, That's why all the tie ins, the things, That's why all the stars like you just need to you need to watch the TV show with the actor whose name you know, rather than have me try to introduce you to some name because its too risky, even though you and I Boke would say, well, that's dumb because look at the biggest the biggest hits in cable streaming in the past ten fifteen years, and they start.
Nobody's right, right, but that's risky.
So well, follow up question.
I distinctly remember you here on Ricochet I'm going to say five six years ago, at the height of COVID, looking head to after COVID, and you made a comment about how ah, there's the pipelines drying up, and so right now, all the Hollywood production companies are green lighting anything that walks through the door something like that. And you know, I watched some of these streaming shows now or I'll dial them up, and I have two thoughts.
One is, the production values are really really good, and the acting is kind of average to mediocre, and the plots aren't very good.
It's just not very good.
And I sometimes wonder if the high production values now are actually an impediment to people enjoying a show, because I look at the old reruns of seventies sitcoms So tax or whatever, and I always thought, you know, they're kind of grainy compared to what we have today. Sometimes the laugh track too much and the lines are clunky, but it worked right. It's it's like, well, old coat and some of these shows now try too hard, it seems to me, and.
I don't know what this is gonna go.
Well, I mean, look, it's gonna have to go with less, right, that's that's usually the solution is that you when a bubble burst, everybody has to figure out what they really want to do in their lives, and some people are you know, look, there is no way around it if there are going to be fewer people working in show business in a year than there are now, and everybody's waiting for the other person to leave.
First, right, And it's not how that works.
Like you got to like if you could, if you, I would say this to anybody, if you haven't worked in six months, nine months in any capacity in show business and you can leave, leave, yeah, you'll your life will be immeasurably, immeasurely healthier. But no one's listening to me when I say that.
I know right well that they will as soon as you become father Rob.
Yeah, given to order them, Yeah, exactly right.
So you know I was in Washington, d C. A week ago today and it was two degrees, which you know.
I mean I lived in Washington for fifteen years and I don't ever remember being that cold, and it's been that cold for a while, and I think it's still cold up where you are.
I know, I've had some people freeze to death. What's the answer for this? I mean, we just need thicker blankets. What do we need to do well?
I mean, look, there's no answer to being cold. I mean, we're cold, that's all.
I mean. I remember it was people we've never had a snowstorm like this, like, well, we had one in twenty seventeen and in twenty eighteen.
We have them at every you know, five six, seven years.
I'm not making an argue back climate change for or against, but this is not This does not seem unprecedented to me. I remember when I was producing a show that was we were shooting out on Long Island, and there was two weeks there where I had to wake up because I was running the show super early to hear whether because the unions require certain closures and insurance requires certain
standards for closures. And then the lawyer studio lawyer who would decide whether you you know, they were not the studio would not want to be liable for any accidents to close. That studio lawyer was conveniently located in Los Angeles, so I'd have to wake that guy up at three in the morning, which he hated.
Was like, but yes, you're going to be up at three in the morning.
And and he he had to make the decision whether we as a studio, we we as a studio could open. And that's because the snow is so terrible and it's not that bad. It wasn't that bad this year. So it's cold, and then suddenly it's warm, you know. Then you get a thirty two degree day, and then you got an eleven degree day, and it's called winter.
Right yeah, right, and and and then comes summer and it's all climate change all the time.
Right yeah. Yeah.
Then I was like, oh my god, it's never been this hot.
Right, well, yeah, yes, it has actually a year ago, but the last time it was hot, right yeah.
And then the other question is, uh, even if you've got the right accouterments for coping with the weather, what do you do for your long term future, which is a different kind of fabric.
Well, I hope that that is not a segue, because if it.
Is, that's a terrible one. I know.
Oh my gosh.
On a scale of one a Lilacs, that's like a three. But okay, he's sick, so you wouldn't want to show him up right. That's actually fine because you know, as you know, it's like last year it was winter and last year was summer. And that's what happens with the years they pass, and the passing of another year is
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And we thank Fabric for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. As James always likes to add, well, all right, let's turn to another I guess collapsing industry, or at least collapsing media property and The Washington Post right, and I'm sorry James is not here today. I'll bet he has some mixed feelings about this as an old, ink stained wretch,
and I sympathize with that. My first job out of college a long time ago was doing the local news reporting for a suburban daily that no longer exists, and I realized then it was an unpromising professional field.
I had no idea to be so bad. But the Post. What to say about this? First of all, I do the progression.
I think you know these numbers, So Arianna Huffington sold the Huffington Post. Was it twenty some years ago? For so I call three hundred million dollars? I don't even I don't even know the Huffing the Post still exists.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's a bucket shop man, but I think it is.
Yeah.
And then so then you know, few years later, Jeff bezos byes the Washington Post for two hundred and fifty million dollars. You know, this legendary publication with a you know, a seemingly usable built in market.
Uh.
And that's couch cushion change for him, of course. And that's what's annoying so many people who are laid off this week, who seem to think they're entitled to endless subsidies from him. Uh So A couple of points. One is, you know the New York Times is thriving financially. I mean they're making lots of money, and you know the Post was losing one hundred million a year. The difference there, I think you probably know and listeners may know, is that it's not from ads and news coverage. It's from
all the collateral things they did. They figured out early on the crossword puzzle. They bought wordle they do games.
They bought a couple of proprietary what's it called the there's a sports site they bought that people they extra for. So you know, they figured out the digital media world that cross subsidizes the old fashioned news. Although I think they've shrunk that a little bit.
I think they have.
Yeah. I remember years ago people were talking a very famous venture capitalist had a thing he had on Twitter, you called the New York Times death watch. Ah, and we're gonna watch it, watch the New York Times die. Of course that we are there. They're ascified and slow, and you look at what they've done, and they have
whether they've announced it or not. I mean, obviously New York Times to you me as you know, we are enraged at their headlines and their editorial editorializing on the front page, all that stuff, right, But still what they realized was they a long, hard mirror. Look at the mirror. They said, what are we really? We are a service business.
And they used to have.
If you want to go see a movie, or you wanted to go to a play, or you wanted to go to a restaurant, or you wanted to live your life, the New York Times you looked at because it gave you all that information, like their theater section told you what was playing in the movie theaters and all that stuff. And they doubled down on those things. Now they weren't. Nobody checks the newspaper to see where the movies are. But their food section is terrific. And I did I
do wordle I do the crossword every day. Now I do the Crossword. I get a paper delivered, which is a sign of geriatric, you know, mental decline, but I still do it. And that the humility it takes to see what you really are, not what you've become thanks to the Internet, what you always were these newspapers were always that they just got a little too big for
their bridges. Over the past twenty thirty years, when we were flooded with journalism students and all sorts of nonsense that they went to school to study journalism, all this bs that they swallowed and preened around with themselves, which was ridiculous. Right now they're faced with, Okay, why do I read this every day? And there are reasons why people do you just have to give them those reasons and instead, I mean, I remember, I mean, this is this is a dumb I'm not talking out of school.
It was so long ago having dinner back when I used to hang around with Rupert Murdoch, having dinner with Rupert moroc and Peter Robinson, and we were with Rupert in l A.
And uh.
We were sort of talking about wicked know what what what?
What?
What?
What?
What? What would you what would you do if you were right?
And he goes that or no, you know. I said, well would you ever buy the La Times?
And he said no? And I said, well don't you? And I tried to explain to him what I thought LA was, like, LA's this.
Big, sprawling baroque city, it's all his got movie stars and like sex scandals and creepy weird murders and gangle.
I was like, amazing, So this is a tabloid city. It's got no tabloid and he kind of looked at it's like huh, but he said, well, you know, even the New York Post doesn't make that much money and say it's hard.
Well, guess what he's doing.
Yep, I'm gonna that there's a there's a tabloid in kel the California Post I think it's called, said basically the New York Post for California, which is like very East Coast center, which is like, well New York City, it's one tabloid and all of California gets another. But it might work. But that's what people want. Page six, right, you know the recipes, puzzle, sports scores. Well, you know New York Times about Wirecutter, which is a terrific consumer products review site.
What do they want? They want service?
And then you know, let's be honest, it's great that you have a beyrout bureau. Right, Nobody's like, that's not what's driving me. No one has ever picked up the newspapers. They've said, I wonder what, you know, what are what they're what is happening in Singapore? It's like, why were there all those sirens down the street. Why why were the cops surrounding that house that I drove home on the way home from work. They want that's what they want to know what's going on?
Right? I think the California Post already has a staff of eighty and they're adding more, you know, the all different kinds of positions. Their office is in Century City, which I think I think makes sense. I mean, Downtown LA, as you know, is all bankers and lawyers and this kind of boring. Yeah, the other side of town is where the action is.
So they already own they already own the space, correct. Yeah, So it's like, you know, I'm not spending any money. If you got no fancy offices for you people, you're going to be in the offices that we already have.
I think it's true.
I also, I mean I also I remember years ago I was talking to a New York LA Times reporter. She was pretty high up there, and I was saying, look, I've lived in LA for twenty I've lived in LA for twenty years of this At that point I believed for twenty years, and you're always driving everywhere, so I've seen the whole city. I have no idea where anything is. Like La is one of those places where I always say to people, where was Rodney King beaten by the police?
And they always think south Central. No, No, it was way out in the far Valley, but Coyment way out there, practically on the other side of like almost in Seniorality.
Actually almost in Terry County, right yeah, right, yeah.
Nobody knows where anything is. I said every La Times article, first of I said, cover more murders, cover more crime, it bleeds, it leads, do that stuff. But also you used to have a graphic inset on every article of where this took place. And she said, oh, well, we're not interested in doing that, so.
Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean I grew up with the La Times and actually knew the Chamner family slightly when they still owned it, and you know, it was a real paper back then, right yeah, and including with foreign bureaus because that was the flush days for newspapers.
On the other hand, you talk about giving people what they want.
One of the numbers that came out this week about the Post is they laid off sixteen of their nineteen.
Climate change reporters.
Yeah.
Now, it doesn't matter what you think about the whole climate change issue. The point is is that we know, repeated surveys, pew gallop everybody else, that issue is a snoozer for the overwhelming number of Americans, right even it turns out environmentalists ranked climate change below local things like air pollution, trees and parks, and.
Exactly they prioritize the local.
And so, I mean, the only reason I hired that is because you know, the people thought they were smarter than the rest of us, said, Oh, we need to just jam people with climate change coverage instead of covering murders and you know the fun stuff.
Well, I'll tell you. I mean, we talked about this a little time last time we talked.
But you know, look, I'm I spent all my day thinking about you know, lofty, big things, Steve. You know, I'm not like you down there in the gutter of politics and policy. I'm you know, elevated here. But and I sometimes I do wonder. And I know most of the Ricochet listeners will roll their eyes at this because they've made up their mind.
About me years ago.
But i'my thing like you know, MI, like I don't want to get too soft here, like I don't want to become in some kind of woke whatever. And I was driving to the library the other day, and usually I walk, but it was too cold, so I'm driving, and I have too many books and I'm too old to carry them. And I've heard an NPR report about a healthcare some healthcare initiative, healthcare agency, not federal, but
it's a nonprofit about climate change. And that of course, as you know, I don't know if you knew this, Steve, but the climate change has a bigger effect on women and minorities than anybody else. Your climate change is different from somebody else's climate change. And I was ever thinking, like what that's bananas? And as I pulled into library, the interviewer said, well, you know, some people are going to hear that. And I'm not saying I agree with them,
so we can hear that. I wonder how exactly that affects doesn't affect all of us equally, And the person had and I had to stop. I had to stop park and I was there, but I had to listen to this answer. And the answer was this weirdly contorted thing that maybe if climate changes happen and you are displaced due to climate change, which of course we've seen already, And I was like, wait where I don't remember seeing that?
But you know, this woman insisted that there have been great migrations because of climate change, that those women may enter it to a new place that doesn't have the same health access that they enjoyed from where they can Like that is the most bizarre use case I've ever heard of. Uh, But so I felt better about myself with thought, Okay, well, if I can recognize that.
I know I'm still kind of sound philosophically.
But again, it's like it is one of those things where, of course, now how many reporters are covering that beat, And if you're covering that beat, then you have to be looking for a reason to be covering that beat. So it's going to be everything and then and then when when no one wants to read it, you get mad at Jeff Bezos.
Yeah, there's been a real Gresham's law. You know, bad money drives out good of environmental reporting generally. But I mean, there are a few mainstream reporters whose work on climate I have respected over the years, like Andy Revkin of the New York Times, but he left the New York Times a decade ago, and party was he did not always tow the party line one hundred percent.
And he's a big believer. I mean, he's not a skeptic or you know. And that's what happens, and you're left with a lot of hacks to do these crazy things. I mean, you know, you talk about life imitating art. You must know.
The old joke goes back to the eighties about how the major papers would cover the end of the world coming tomorrow, you know, right, you know, the USA today says world to end tomorrow, but we're grinning and bearing it. The Wall Street Journal world end tomorrow, Markets to close early see page A.
Nine for details.
The New York Times would be world to end tomorrow, Women and Minority's hardest hit. And then the Wash the Washington Post, who we're talking about now, would have said world end tomorrow.
Reagan policies blamed. And now that's what we're reading. It's unbelievable, right, And.
It's like it's it's a funny thing because you ask yourself of a wouldn't you if you're running a business wouldn't I mean any business. Don't you look at the people in that same sector who are doing well, Yeah, and steal their ideas and do those things.
That is how you do it. That is like, I don't know, you have to take a business. I didn't go to business school, leave and I know that's how you do it.
And you try to make french fries as the way that McDonald's makes french fries because people seem to like the McDonald's french fries and don't overthink it, don't grow a brain. And the Washington Post the only had only had really had there only three newspapers in New York in the country that had circulation and kind of the heft, and that was the La Times, the Washington Post and the New York Times. And of those three, only one
really exists and one is thriving. And the solution would be just do.
That right right, Well, I mean the Murdock example again, So in the Wall Street Journal has been profitable forever, but you know it gives it fills on a big important it is to reporting, right, yeah, exactly. And part of that service, of course, is the editorial page. They've always said back to the Robert Bartley days it's the only editorial page in America that sells subscriptions, which was right. And then Fox News of course was a stroke of genius,
hugely profitable. So you know, i'd always heard a New York Post ran in the red and you think it's profitable.
I don't know. Maybe it is.
Oh no, I don't think it's profitable, but I mean, I'm sure the New York Oh no, no, the New York Post does run in the red, but a little bit. But it's enough that you know, Dad likes it, right, Yeah, right, dad, Right, when Dad goes, it'll probably.
Go Yeah, it could be that's right. Well, we'll see. And meanwhile, I'm very curious about Scott.
Jennings on CNN, which you know, CNN's ratings are terrible, but I'll bet if we actually got the you know, hour by hour numbers. Maybe they're out there and I just haven't looked, but I'll bet Scott Jennings is attracting some viewers say oh, finally there's somebody on and it was different from all the other cloned lefties.
So I don't know.
I think I think that like that could be. I mean that the solution is has never not been to In my opinion, the solution has never not been to, like, have a bunch of voices. If you're gonna have voices, have a bunch of them. That's how CNN was to begin with. They they had conservatives liberals yelling at each other. That was a crossfire was they decided not to do that for a while, and they you know, look, but that look cable news rankings came out today, right, Number
one shows the five. Yeah, number two shows that is Jesse Waters. Number three shows Gutfeld, And I know gut Feld, right, I'm sure right now he's trying to convince them to say that he's actually number two, not number three. That when Jesse Waters the movie Brett Baer, Right, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, America reports that's number seven.
And I think.
I'm just trying to think that that is the that's a that's there.
That's what they call the box news every that's their every weekday news. That's their standard news. Will Kine and Martha McCallum, Yeah right, So, uh, what do they know that you don't like? But right, the solution is so obvious, right, it's but but they'll never do it right.
One more entertainment question and then we're ready to get out. I've got an exit question for you, But one more entertainment question.
Uh. I've been following the uh, the fight. Who's going to acquire?
Is it?
Warner Brothers? Netflix is going to buy it? And Paramounts perished it in said no, we want to buy it. And I don't know.
I'm a cynic and thought maybe paramount was just trying to make Netflix have to pay more and have to pay cash just to punish them.
It seems like a bad idea to me, but what do I know.
It's a bad idea for either one of them. I think it's the worst idea for Netflix.
Yeah, I think that.
I think that strategy could have been correct, but flipped Paramounts always wanted to buy it. I think Netflix came in and offered nobody should buy it. These things are too big. They need to be smaller. The system works better when it's atomized, and unfortunately, everyone's gonna have to learn that by losing a whole lot of money. And the solution isn't to have the government step in, which is I think they want any trust to come in, which is stupid in the same way that government shouldn't
be subsidizing production at all. The California taxpayer shouldn't be subsidizing the cost of a making a movie. All those things that have to be worked out the proper way, which is with a lot of pain and screaming. But that's the only way to solve certain problems, right right, all right?
Exit question not exactly personal, but it's a new semester in new year. What are you reading, either for class or on your own, just for your own edvocation. What's what's got your attention.
I don't do any reading that isn't related to my because that's just time.
You know.
I'm behind on the reading I have to do. But I am reading the only two things I am reading. They are interesting, that are kind of they're not directly assigned. One is I'm finally getting through Dominion, Tom Hollands fantastic book about sort of like a kind of a swooping up and down look at the history of Christianity, which is great and juicy, and he's a wonderful writer, so
it's great. And then I'm reading this Yale story in Carlos Air, who wrote a wonderful called Reformations, which is a nine hundred billion thousand pages long, which is but he's a wonderful writer, so it's not dry history. It's great.
But the one I'm reading right now is called They Flew.
And it's a story of he takes a historians look at the accounts of the saints and he says, if you have, you know, for our historical accuracy criteria, it's you know, multiple multiple accounts that are spread out and then a multiple unique accounts like why would no one
would make this up unless it was true? And it's hard to say, it's hard to understand how a bunch of people in different places at different times, who didn't know each other would have the same account of some bananas things some saint did like fly right, And he's like, well, you just have to be He.
Doesn't go as far.
I mean, I'm not finished it yet, but he's a wonderful writer. So it's a great and I actually think that that is something on the horizon, the new kind.
Of area of.
Theological historical inquiry, which is, okay, well, what if what if the world is a lot weirder than we think it is? And whether we whether we agree it is or we don't agree with it. It's a fascinating thought experiment. So I recommend that book.
Yeah, I think I think Peter Robinson brought up that title some weeks ago. I think it's the episode when we had Charles Marion to talk about his taking religion seriously book. If I recall that I've got the Tom Holland book on my ridiculously long reading pile or tall reading pile.
That yeah, I never quite get through. But yeah, it looks really good.
It's good as juicy, and it's like you can kind of you could kind of flip through it. I mean, right, I don't don't say that, but there are sections that I want to read, you know, the.
Benedictine rules section. I have a I have a I actually got to put the list together.
Books that are like that where you could just turn to almost any page and the writing is so good and so well constructed that you just enjoy it even if you haven't done all the stuff before it. And you know, that's very few books, but I have a few that most of them are older people don't write in that style anymore. Holland is an exception, but well.
All right, uh, well, the listeners, as the old car Talk guys have said, you've just wasted another perfectly good hour listening to me and Rob.
Yeah, this is fun. We should do more often, of course.
I mean, obviously I want James to get well yeah, right, yeah, I wouldn't want him to be you know, but it's kind of fun, right.
And Charlie Cook has had an on fire Twitter game this week. He's got a good Twitter game anyway, but yeah, he's really been firing left and right on all cylinders in any case. This podcast was brought to you by fabric Please support them for supporting us and join Ricochet to become a member of the best site for civil center, Right Conversation. As always, please take a minute to leave
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So we'll see you in the comments. Everyone. Great to see Rob, hope to see you again soon.
See you soon, Ricochet.
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