Speaker 1: Of Course, Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: What's Up Something Bill ProQuest Love Supreme on this week's classic,
Speaker 2: which revisited May thirty. In twenty eighteen interview with journalists
Speaker 2: and author Ronan Pharaoh, he dropped out and talking about
Speaker 2: his first book, War on Piece. The chat left to
Speaker 2: talking about family most of and Roman's Pursuit of the Truth.
Speaker 2: Episode eighty six.
Speaker 3: Enjoyed Supremo Son Son Supremo roll call, Supremo Sun, Supremo
Speaker 3: roll call, Suprema Sun Supremo roll call Suprema Sun sub
Speaker 3: Supremo roll call.
Speaker 4: I am for real, Yeah, I am so down.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ronan Pharaoh, expose these class.
Speaker 3: Supreme So Sun Supremo, roll call, breama something something, Supremo role.
Speaker 6: My name is Fante. Yeah, I can't play the word lizzer.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I never had a bar MINSI. Yeah, congrats on that
Speaker 6: pool Litzer.
Speaker 3: Suprema Suprema roll called Suprema Son, Suprema roll call.
Speaker 4: My name is Sugar. Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I heard Pharaoh, yeah, I was like, oh Eve, yeah,
Speaker 2: not again.
Speaker 3: Suprema role called Suprema Son So Suprema.
Speaker 4: Roll called Bill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and life is hard Yeah when you live inside. Yeah,
Speaker 2: House of Cards.
Speaker 3: Suprema Son, Suprema roll called Suprema Son, Suprema.
Speaker 8: Roll em Yeah, and Pharaoh everything he says, yeah, yeah
Speaker 8: I follow, Yeah me too, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Supp.
Speaker 9: Roll, I'm rolling row, I'm here to stay.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I can't free style, but I got a yeah roll.
Speaker 4: He started the crooning. That was amazing.
Speaker 9: Guys ring definitely need another take, but there's promising stuff there.
Speaker 4: You are a one I love.
Speaker 6: I was outside and I saw the I had a
Speaker 6: new bars. I saw the word lips outside.
Speaker 9: I was like, like like Pulitzer soul.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, if you were all the revelation comes after
Speaker 4: roll call, before call.
Speaker 10: There is nothing we can think of that you know
Speaker 10: that rhymes with the word that we intended you.
Speaker 9: Do that every time that's exhausted.
Speaker 4: What what episode is this? Like like.
Speaker 9: Congrats on your eighty something? The episode that means.
Speaker 10: Each each freaking roll call has been somewhat customized, all
Speaker 10: mind saved.
Speaker 4: You're a lie?
Speaker 11: Oh yours?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 2: Like off topic because I like to be as topic
Speaker 2: as positive.
Speaker 10: This week because this well, this is the one. Yours
Speaker 10: is always political.
Speaker 4: No, matter what. Like even if we have like like.
Speaker 10: You know, the food episode, you'll talk about what happened
Speaker 10: in the news that week, So you're like our.
Speaker 4: Political conscious but not really.
Speaker 2: I was going to try to do a non political
Speaker 2: one this week because it's political to fuck with you all.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was like, you better stick to way
Speaker 2: special guests. There is a today say the word high.
Speaker 9: She's very My goal is to get her to open up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: We are literally yeah we in place of bost Bill
Speaker 10: uh Ziah, one of my seven managers is here.
Speaker 11: Maybe we can get into it later because.
Speaker 10: It's not about me our special guests, you know, I
Speaker 10: will say probably one of the one of the one
Speaker 10: of the hardest things to to do, uh, I think
Speaker 10: in terms of David and Goliath is taking a stand
Speaker 10: and calling people out, sticking to the truth, especially when
Speaker 10: terms like fake news gets thrown around a lot, and
Speaker 10: you know, there are a certain few that still don't
Speaker 10: know who to believe. You know, I guess anyway, this
Speaker 10: this man has in my opinion, uh, he's leading the
Speaker 10: charge and he's a mighty David to the world's good life.
Speaker 4: His new book just got released, War and Peace. Thank you.
Speaker 4: I want to talk about.
Speaker 9: That hell out of that, guys, welcome. Yeah, that how cool.
Speaker 10: I saw your speech last night. That was really incredible.
Speaker 10: How you picked up your mom.
Speaker 4: For it, you know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, look I brought with me actually, uh,
Speaker 9: one of the first women who went on the record
Speaker 9: in these stories I wrote about Harvey Weinstein. And you
Speaker 9: know there's a reason for that. I really I was
Speaker 9: there because of her, and I feel like we have
Speaker 9: all benefited so much from the example of how brave
Speaker 9: these women were. And you're right, my mom was there too,
Speaker 9: and she is a super brave woman who has gotten
Speaker 9: a lot of flak for standing up for her daughter
Speaker 9: and for women's rights, and I owe a lot to her.
Speaker 10: I gotta say, even like news news of you writing
Speaker 10: the New Yorker piece and your work before. Of course,
Speaker 10: we at one point worked in the same building at
Speaker 10: thirty Rock, what I call thirty Rock University.
Speaker 4: I'll just say that you graduated.
Speaker 9: You kicked out, you know. Well you're talking about that later, yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, but you were. You definitely had a cooler
Speaker 9: layer in thirty Rock than I did.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but you guys, really know it all is man,
Speaker 10: and you know, I was always a big fan of
Speaker 10: the third floor, all all the cats that ever.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, there's some great reporters there.
Speaker 10: But I'll say that, even though I believe maybe the
Speaker 10: first time I met you, I recalled, did you guys
Speaker 10: ever attend a show with Most?
Speaker 4: I know at the time when he was doing be
Speaker 4: kind Rewind?
Speaker 9: Yeah, wow, that is a piece piece of obscure IMDb trivia.
Speaker 9: My mom co starred with Most in this Michelle Gontrey movie,
Speaker 9: right yeah, and she loved Most. She was like, this
Speaker 9: guy is the salt of the earth. She thought he
Speaker 9: was so sweet, he was so supportive.
Speaker 10: One point that you guys, that was going to be
Speaker 10: like the the adoption thing, like Most.
Speaker 9: Was just going to be like the latest addition to
Speaker 9: the Pharaoh family.
Speaker 10: Exactly would that I saw, even I don't know if
Speaker 10: it's you or your siblings at one of his shows
Speaker 10: that I happen to be.
Speaker 9: At, totally possible. I mean I'm a big fan of his.
Speaker 10: Okay, So but I'll say that my my true introduction
Speaker 10: introduction to you was your your Twitter feet, which was
Speaker 10: super fearless. At first, I didn't I didn't even know
Speaker 10: you were journalists. I just thought, yo, your singers are.
Speaker 9: I'm glad you liked them. They have gotten me in trouble.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, how how did your Father's Day?
Speaker 10: I don't know if this is the White Elephant or
Speaker 10: room whatever, but your Father's Day tweet was rather interesting.
Speaker 9: I had some spicy tweets in my day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, how how did you deal with that?
Speaker 10: Because usually I get a lot of clot back from
Speaker 10: you know, yeah inner circle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, but you just always has that.
Speaker 10: Always been you, like, I'm going to call it out
Speaker 10: if I see bullshit, I'm gonna call it out.
Speaker 9: For sure, for sure. I think when you're calling out
Speaker 9: bullshit through careful investigative reporting, you do have to then
Speaker 9: be careful about like being glib on social media. So
Speaker 9: it's a delicate balance. You know, it depends on the topic.
Speaker 4: So you can't be yeah, you're you're not.
Speaker 9: I think, you know, while I'm in the middle of
Speaker 9: such sensitive stuff and I'm so under fire from some
Speaker 9: pretty nasty people that I've exposed, you know, I still
Speaker 9: get a little in edgewise.
Speaker 11: And at last, you know, a few I want to
Speaker 11: say weeks.
Speaker 9: Yeah, during those period.
Speaker 8: Time, these things, it's like, Okay, your Twitter might go
Speaker 8: more PG.
Speaker 9: Now it's a little more PG. Yeah. I also think,
Speaker 9: you know, Twitter has changed, like our cultural moment has changed.
Speaker 9: There was a period where like I'd go on with
Speaker 9: you know, Jimmy, and he'd like read his favorite tweets
Speaker 9: of mine. And I don't think we do that anymore.
Speaker 9: Like the novelty of Twitter wore off, and it's now
Speaker 9: more for me anyway, like a rolodex of fellow reporters,
Speaker 9: rather than like a joke medium.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, it's more like it's like the morning papers.
Speaker 6: Now it's like the morning papers.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, right, it's more of just a news aggregator
Speaker 9: for me.
Speaker 4: Hashtag is a thread, you know it, Threa.
Speaker 11: Nothing's funny anymore?
Speaker 9: Yeah, nothing, but well you guys are still funny. That works.
Speaker 10: So just as a young person were when did you
Speaker 10: realize that this is bullshit and I have to stand
Speaker 10: up for something or were you Were you the tattletale
Speaker 10: of your siblings?
Speaker 9: Like what, I was not a snitch on her I
Speaker 9: because it's.
Speaker 10: Weird just from where I came from, Like I was
Speaker 10: raised Okay, one time I used to be the cousin
Speaker 10: that TOLDE job right, But I was raised like you.
Speaker 10: My uncle would punish the guilty party and then punish
Speaker 10: the snitcher.
Speaker 4: Everybody it's like, what did I do? It's like you're
Speaker 4: supposed to stick together, which it's like, that's that's kind
Speaker 4: of weird.
Speaker 10: We at a young age, I'll say that at least culturally,
Speaker 10: black people were slow to call things out, and then
Speaker 10: maybe by their teens, then it's like to tell it
Speaker 10: like it is thing because then you just realized that
Speaker 10: this is bullshit and I gotta stand up. So I mean,
Speaker 10: at what point where did you feel like on my
Speaker 10: own two I gotta.
Speaker 9: I was always raised with a really strong spirit of
Speaker 9: public service and justice, and I think a lot of
Speaker 9: that flows from my mom being like a recovering Catholic
Speaker 9: schoolgirl who you know is still really was inculcated with
Speaker 9: that kind of save the world attitude and and I think,
Speaker 9: you know, speaking the truth and cutting through bullshit, even
Speaker 9: when it means putting a lot on the line is
Speaker 9: a big part of that. But what's interesting when you
Speaker 9: talk about snitching is, you know, my day job as
Speaker 9: an investigative reporter requires both a lot of telling of
Speaker 9: hard truths and also a lot of keeping of secrets,
Speaker 9: right because you're dealing with all of these anonymous resources. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and you know, even when people go on the record,
Speaker 9: you know, you have to be very careful about parsing
Speaker 9: out the parts they want to say the parts they
Speaker 9: don't want to say. And one of the most important
Speaker 9: things I do is respecting people's privacy.
Speaker 10: Well, let me make clear snitching is at least inculturally
Speaker 10: for us. Snitching is like when you're part of an
Speaker 10: operation and then yeah, Evan, you rat everyone else out.
Speaker 4: No, be cool, because boss bills not here. And I
Speaker 4: want you guys to choose this podcast.
Speaker 10: Does this take some calls and you know, to on
Speaker 10: the micro yes, sound effects, all this stuff. But so
Speaker 10: I would not necessarily say, I mean, keeping a secret
Speaker 10: is necessary in your line of business.
Speaker 4: And I feel that's not.
Speaker 11: You walking back.
Speaker 4: No, I never. I mean, like.
Speaker 11: Interesting point.
Speaker 9: That's why I was super interesting.
Speaker 8: I wanted you to go back to what you said
Speaker 8: about him and your brothers and sisters, because when you
Speaker 8: came in here, you were already talking about your brothers
Speaker 8: and sisters.
Speaker 11: How many do.
Speaker 9: You have and were one of fourteen? Okay, it's a lot.
Speaker 4: And your last name is not Johnson.
Speaker 9: And where are you in this game of the fourteen,
Speaker 9: there are four younger than me. Ten of my siblings
Speaker 9: are adopted, and most of them have, uh, you know,
Speaker 9: really traumatic difficult backgrounds of various kinds. You know, adopted
Speaker 9: from terrible situations of poverty and abuse. You know, many
Speaker 9: of them adopted older at a point where basically they
Speaker 9: would not have found a home otherwise. And you know,
Speaker 9: those are the people I love most and I grew
Speaker 9: up with, and it really gave me this incredible sense
Speaker 9: of perspective. It's hard to like sop into your soup
Speaker 9: about anything when you have so many of the world's
Speaker 9: challenges read at your doorstep.
Speaker 10: So from the gate being one of fourteen, like you're
Speaker 10: automatically taught community service and that sort of. I mean,
Speaker 10: it wasn't a silver spoon situation. Then you decided, because
Speaker 10: there's some people that like they grow up privileged, rich,
Speaker 10: and then they realized, like, yo, this is we'll sit
Speaker 10: I got.
Speaker 9: And you know, I'd never like complain of hardship in
Speaker 9: that respect, because lord knows, I've reported on and seen
Speaker 9: plenty of real hardship and I didn't have that. But
Speaker 9: you know, I was raised by a single mom who
Speaker 9: was at that point, you know, not working all the time,
Speaker 9: and it was very clear that we all had to
Speaker 9: strike out and make a living as early as possible.
Speaker 9: And you know, not everyone could go to private school.
Speaker 9: It was it was merit based, and you know, we
Speaker 9: were really fortunate. I was supported through my whole childhood,
Speaker 9: but it wasn't opulent. And you know, the flip side
Speaker 9: was that there were all these very real traumas and
Speaker 9: often really just physical challenges that I saw my siblings
Speaker 9: go through, So I was I was exposed to that
Speaker 9: from an early age.
Speaker 8: You said something interesting, you said, going to private school
Speaker 8: was merit base.
Speaker 9: Well, you know, a lot of my siblings had the
Speaker 9: benefit of like wonderful public schools in our in our
Speaker 9: towns that we grew up in. In Connecticut, we moved
Speaker 9: around a little bit. Was New York, Connecticut.
Speaker 4: Born in New York.
Speaker 9: I was born in New York, and then I spent
Speaker 9: my teens in Connecticut. And it was kind of I
Speaker 9: think it was an individual decision for each person, like, Okay,
Speaker 9: what are they going to benefit from most? You know,
Speaker 9: how good is the local school? Uh, you know what
Speaker 9: makes sense? Are they really going to get a lot
Speaker 9: out of some kind of a specialized program, you know,
Speaker 9: whether they either you know, need more attentive education because
Speaker 9: they've got special needs, or because they're excelling in a
Speaker 9: particular way and that needs to be tended to. I'm
Speaker 9: not allowed to work.
Speaker 11: For your mom like that unbelievable work.
Speaker 9: She was an incredible mom, and I saw her shoulder
Speaker 9: this huge burden all by herself. Did you get to
Speaker 9: do any of you guys have kids?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I got the two boys seventeen and twelve.
Speaker 9: So you know, what a handful. It's a lot. It's
Speaker 9: a lot, and I can't imagine doing that all alone,
Speaker 9: you know, while making a living with so many kids.
Speaker 9: It's a lot to bite up. I definitely grew up
Speaker 9: knowing that I didn't want to adopt ten kids, but
Speaker 9: I also grew up really admiring the hell out of it.
Speaker 4: Is it? Yeah? How is it?
Speaker 10: Fighting for your own space and your own voice and
Speaker 10: your I would assume that you have to be diplomatic,
Speaker 10: and you know, the biggest vote wins and we get
Speaker 10: to watch this.
Speaker 9: Channel and you know, yeah, a lot of early negotiating skills.
Speaker 9: I hadn't thought of it in that way, but that's
Speaker 9: probably true. I mean a lot of fighting over food.
Speaker 9: You know, we were like we were a dark meat
Speaker 9: family when it came to chicken, and the darkness was
Speaker 9: always gone, you know, never enough drumsticks to go around.
Speaker 4: Yo, son, your last name is John.
Speaker 11: No, we just had a whole conversation about good hair
Speaker 11: and whatnot.
Speaker 8: And it's funny because that that was my next question
Speaker 8: to you, like breaking down the diversity of your brothers
Speaker 8: and sisters, because that provides such a different understanding for
Speaker 8: you, you know, especially.
Speaker 9: As a totally different understanding. I mean, look, I'm still
Speaker 9: a white guy, and I would not claim to understand
Speaker 9: what it's like to grow up as a black woman
Speaker 9: in our society. But I can claim to understand what
Speaker 9: it's like to grow up, you know, with a bedroom
Speaker 9: next to the bedroom of a of a black young woman.
Speaker 9: And uh, that's a lot, that's a whole. I mean,
Speaker 9: I want to be careful because I was telling you before,
Speaker 9: like I have you know, the black siblings. Yeah, I
Speaker 9: have black somebs. I have Asian siblings. We were we
Speaker 9: were real like United Colors of Beneton. I know, you
Speaker 9: know I have uh you know, there are black women
Speaker 9: in my life who are very disapproving of the Chris
Speaker 9: Rock documentary that you just mentioned.
Speaker 8: The good hair, Yes we're talking, was going to put
Speaker 8: you in Yeah, an interesting conversation.
Speaker 9: It is an interesting conversation that people have about that.
Speaker 9: And it's not really for me to say, you know,
Speaker 9: how sensitive he was or not, because I'm not in
Speaker 9: that demographic. But but uh, certainly I got a taste
Speaker 9: of the hair traumas of honestly the childhood of just
Speaker 9: about any girl of any color, because as I was
Speaker 9: telling you earlier, my Asian siblings were like getting perms
Speaker 9: and wanting curly hair, and you know, my black sister
Speaker 9: was like, you know, going through the whole rigamarole of
Speaker 9: like strainers, relaxers and you know, going out in the rain,
Speaker 9: and it's all ruined. So God bless anyone who finds
Speaker 9: equilibrium on their hair, whatever color that may be.
Speaker 4: You you had a problem with good hair.
Speaker 11: No, I thought, not me, she was. But I saw
Speaker 11: the point of it.
Speaker 8: I saw the point in the problem because I was saying,
Speaker 8: at the end of the day, Chris Rock is a man,
Speaker 8: and so it was from a perspective a man, and
Speaker 8: a lot of things were left out.
Speaker 10: That's what we're talking about Oh okay, now I watch again,
Speaker 10: see I.
Speaker 7: Mean white people, I know loved that documentary cause I
Speaker 7: feel I'm so full of insight now yeah, and I
Speaker 7: was kind of surprised then, you know, you talked to
Speaker 7: black women about it, and it's a little more split
Speaker 7: down the middle, where like you found things to respect
Speaker 7: in it.
Speaker 9: And I mean I certainly enjoyed it, and I just
Speaker 9: that it.
Speaker 11: Was done and his intentions and doing it when it
Speaker 11: came to that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did not
Speaker 11: know that.
Speaker 10: Okay, where did you go to high school? Did you
Speaker 10: all go to the same high school? Well, you're all
Speaker 10: not the same.
Speaker 9: Age, so yeah, I mean there's a huge age span.
Speaker 9: I actually did not go to high school.
Speaker 11: But you went to college and like sixteen years eleven.
Speaker 9: Oh wait, you deal with it.
Speaker 4: As you graduated it like you graduated.
Speaker 9: I was at fifteen, right, Yeah, whoa time out? This
Speaker 9: about me? I'm here.
Speaker 10: I did not know this about you? And wait, time out?
Speaker 10: Explain your schooling.
Speaker 4: I we missed that. We missed the Ron Ferro plan.
Speaker 9: Look, I don't know if it's a good idea, but
Speaker 9: it's what happened. I I was super nerdy and was
Speaker 9: bored in school, and I was lucky enough to uh
Speaker 9: get like a you know, brochure for this JOHNS. Hopkins
Speaker 9: program where you can take college courses as a kid.
Speaker 11: John Hopkins like nothing.
Speaker 9: They have this thing. It's so embarrassed. It's called the
Speaker 9: Center for Talented Youth. I'm so sorry, guys. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 9: I and these fellow nerds would get together and like
Speaker 9: take college courses in the summers. And this would have
Speaker 9: been like, you know, from age nine or ten on. So,
Speaker 9: so the the way you get into that summer camp
Speaker 9: is you take the SAT. And so I took the
Speaker 9: SAT and I got a score where people were like, oh, okay,
Speaker 9: you should just go to college. So I just I did.
Speaker 4: Wow. And this is at nine years old.
Speaker 9: So the SAT, you know, I took it a couple
Speaker 9: of times in that period. You had to retake it
Speaker 9: to get it. This is more detail than needed, but anyway,
Speaker 9: I got a like a baller s a T score
Speaker 9: kind of.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 9: I got a perfect. No one is ever going to
Speaker 9: want to be my friend, I don't. No, no, no, okay,
Speaker 9: this you will be my only friends.
Speaker 4: No, but peep it, peep it, all right, So.
Speaker 10: Maybe I don't know if I tell the story of
Speaker 10: my birth doctor or not, but like he was trying
Speaker 10: to get my parents to think, you know, I was
Speaker 10: born in the early seventies and there was like a
Speaker 10: new way of thinking and all that stuff, and he
Speaker 10: was trying to get my parents to kind of go
Speaker 10: out of their their uh boundary comfort zone when it
Speaker 10: came to raising me. Now they geared more towards entertainment
Speaker 10: and whatnot. So he told them like, you know, when
Speaker 10: he wants to write on the walls, let him write
Speaker 10: on the walls, let.
Speaker 4: Him anything in a black and even in the plastic covert.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let him jump on the good sofa and yeah, right,
Speaker 6: all by leader all this stuff.
Speaker 10: But that's how became a drummer. After a while, it
Speaker 10: was like, Okay, he's destroying too much furniture, what do
Speaker 10: we do, Get him a drum set. And then that's
Speaker 10: like around two. But he definitely said, like make sure
Speaker 10: before the age of five you let him just you know,
Speaker 10: he's going to be curious about a lot of things, like,
Speaker 10: of course, if it's a fork to the socket stopped, Yeah,
Speaker 10: but let him draw on the walls, let him play
Speaker 10: in his food.
Speaker 9: So would you raise any kids you have that way?
Speaker 9: Hell no, you don't want to lose those couches.
Speaker 4: But you see, I feel.
Speaker 10: Because of I've seen the result, and I have cousins
Speaker 10: that were or under a strict like this restrictive lifestyle,
Speaker 10: and I've seen the results of being too restrictive what
Speaker 10: that does once they're teenagers and you rebellicans. Like TV
Speaker 10: was taken away from me in my formative years, but
Speaker 10: as a result as an adult, like, I'm totally addicted
Speaker 10: to CV, you know what I mean.
Speaker 9: So it's sort of I actually had the same evolution
Speaker 9: on video games where we were a new video game
Speaker 9: household and then I became like a real nerdy gamer
Speaker 9: as a result.
Speaker 4: What do you gang? What's what's your jointe?
Speaker 9: Oh man, I've got four I'm a PS four guy
Speaker 9: Paul's college. I'm sure, yeah, but kind of, you know,
Speaker 9: I was so I was so subversive that, you know,
Speaker 9: I was the kind of kid where when I was
Speaker 9: told you can't get a Nintendo, I was like, here
Speaker 9: are all my arguments on why this is an important
Speaker 9: art form and writers of my generation are going to
Speaker 9: be going into video games and telling important horizon expanding stories. Yeah,
Speaker 9: but also there was something about and then I would like,
Speaker 9: you know, rig up emulators on my computer to get
Speaker 9: the Super Nintendo games and the sixty four games, like
Speaker 9: you know, just terribly like hacked together versions I'd download,
Speaker 9: but so I could play them. I'm not at getting
Speaker 9: piracy and emulation here. I'm just saying it was.
Speaker 4: You just built your own videota. So what's so?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I have a PS four. I'm I'm a I
Speaker 9: grew up on partly as a consequence of that ban
Speaker 9: on consoles, computer games which were allowed, which are a
Speaker 9: little more cerebral, like do you remember like Missed from
Speaker 9: the Night, Missed as My Jam? And there's actually now that,
Speaker 9: similar to some of the transitions in the music industry,
Speaker 9: there's much more of an indie scene in gaming right
Speaker 9: now because you publish declined inside for four. Inside is
Speaker 9: a beautiful working art.
Speaker 4: That's crazy.
Speaker 9: It's like Scandinavian game I think, right, maybe Danish and
Speaker 9: uh it's like black and white. Yeah, we got to
Speaker 9: go deeper on this. We're losing the rest of them.
Speaker 9: This is a side of him that I've exposed.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, we were very much a rabbit hole show.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so I love the kind of the lineage of
Speaker 9: those mist adventure games and other kind of artistic games
Speaker 9: that are a little mysterious and make you think. And
Speaker 9: Flower Love Flower Love Journey, that's ny Journey's great. Yeah,
Speaker 9: there's a game from PS four called Soma, which you
Speaker 9: should one hundred percent play, like best writing, best story seen.
Speaker 4: These choose your venture games.
Speaker 6: Nah, Like Inside is is just a game where you're
Speaker 6: a kid and it just drops you in this world
Speaker 6: and you just it's a side scroller game, so like
Speaker 6: you die, so yeah, it's like Mario and you can
Speaker 6: just die in so many different ways. And it's these
Speaker 6: puzzles you have to figure out and.
Speaker 9: But it's it's a very evocative, beautiful backdrop of like
Speaker 9: a kind of an Orwellian like repressive society. So it's
Speaker 9: much more about like the experience than the puzzle.
Speaker 4: Natural.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then Flower is like if pm don designed
Speaker 6: a game. Flower is like you where you are a
Speaker 6: pedal of a flower. It's amazing, how dude. It's you're
Speaker 6: a pedal of a flower and you play as the wind,
Speaker 6: so you have to direct the pedal to go through
Speaker 6: this garden to pick up more flowers and they the music.
Speaker 4: I want to. I don't think.
Speaker 6: Yo, I didn't, but my homies, it's a beautiful game.
Speaker 4: And like on Weed, it's even better.
Speaker 9: I love to hear this gentle soul. You love this
Speaker 9: gentle stone.
Speaker 4: But I play too, though, so I like.
Speaker 6: And Last of Us. That's like a screenplay for sure.
Speaker 9: I hear the new God.
Speaker 4: I got it. I purposely. I haven't downloaded.
Speaker 6: I haven't started yet because I got work to do,
Speaker 6: and I know once I started.
Speaker 4: First of all, hats off for Afro picks. Off to
Speaker 4: you for your for your your your New York piece.
Speaker 9: Thank you what.
Speaker 4: I mean, the what gave you.
Speaker 10: The nerve or the gall or the audacity to even say,
Speaker 10: all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna go after that, because
Speaker 10: I would have figured that every editor or every boss
Speaker 10: of yours would have tried to shut you down.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Maybe the guilt of the Democratic yeah, or the guilt
Speaker 10: of the Democratic Party, you know, being as he was
Speaker 10: one of the biggest supporters or whatever like that could have.
Speaker 9: Just like a lot of powerful forces trying to shut
Speaker 9: it down.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: And how did you manage to bob and weave your
Speaker 10: way out of that to something that actually not only
Speaker 10: stuck but worked.
Speaker 9: I'm just so relieved and so grateful because of all
Speaker 9: those obstacles. You know, the most important answer is that
Speaker 9: these women who came forward did this incredibly brave and
Speaker 9: difficult thing. I mean, I worked with them for months,
Speaker 9: and we had so many tough conversations about the pros
Speaker 9: and the cons and the threats to their career and
Speaker 9: the threats to their physical safety. And you know, as
Speaker 9: you know, one of the articles I wrote exposed this
Speaker 9: whole system of hiring like combat ready, yeah, massage and yeah.
Speaker 9: I mean, like there's real cloak and dagger stuff going
Speaker 9: on here. And from the beginning, you know, the women
Speaker 9: involved in the story were warning me of that, and
Speaker 9: I knew that every single person who had told their
Speaker 9: story did it because they thought it could help protect
Speaker 9: the next woman to come along, and because they had
Speaker 9: done this incredibly difficult thing. I just wouldn't have been
Speaker 9: able to live with myself if I had allowed it
Speaker 9: to be shut down, or if I had given up.
Speaker 9: The other aspect of it is, by the time I
Speaker 9: got to the decision point of like, Okay, my life
Speaker 9: is falling apart, I got no more career, Like nothing
Speaker 9: like this is the maybe ies you know, swung too
Speaker 9: wide on this. I couldn't go back because I really had,
Speaker 9: like I gambled everything. You know, I'd spent a year
Speaker 9: of my life and all the opportunities I thought I
Speaker 9: had and was pursuing had gone away, And did you
Speaker 9: the only choice I had was to stick with it.
Speaker 10: Did you feel like your exit at MSNBC was like,
Speaker 10: was that the end of the world, like when you
Speaker 10: walked out of that building with your box?
Speaker 4: Or I don't know.
Speaker 10: I can always tell when someone leaves MSNBC because of
Speaker 10: certain white box that they carry outside of It's never
Speaker 10: happy look on their face when they're carrying.
Speaker 9: Leaving anywhere where you thought you were building a future
Speaker 9: is incredibly hard. I was at the time, not at MSNBC.
Speaker 9: I was on the Today Show. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 9: I know it all. It's all one news organization. You're
Speaker 9: right to consider it the same, uh, And you know,
Speaker 9: I'm really proud of the work the Investigative Unit did
Speaker 9: on a bunch of stories I worked on there, and yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, look, things things changed as I was working
Speaker 9: on this story.
Speaker 10: So at the time of the Today Show, did you
Speaker 10: hear any rumblings of what was happening at the time.
Speaker 9: I am going to have to be careful in this
Speaker 9: conversation about that. You too, You're a you're a tough interviewer. Look,
Speaker 9: I do think that it's you don't know, but you
Speaker 9: are the the.
Speaker 4: I thought I was asking soft questions like in the past.
Speaker 9: Look, I think there's a lot of valid questions out
Speaker 9: there about how all these things connect together. And you know,
Speaker 9: I gotta make sure that that story is told in
Speaker 9: the right way at the right time.
Speaker 8: That's what I was going to ask you, because you
Speaker 8: chose well, obviously this book must have been in the
Speaker 8: works before it was Yeah, okay, because there must be
Speaker 8: something in process to tell the story of your process
Speaker 8: in doing this article.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think further down the line, people are right
Speaker 9: to hammer me with questions about this and and I
Speaker 9: will make sure you've.
Speaker 10: Talked about Okay, I'm sorry. I just assumed that once
Speaker 10: the he was done and yeah, that it was like.
Speaker 9: No, Look, I mean they I will say, broadly, the
Speaker 9: story behind stories like this can be important because when
Speaker 9: something this important and this dangerous stays quiet for this long, uh,
Speaker 9: that's not an accident. And there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 9: for that, And I think you know now that we
Speaker 9: are grappling with the underlying allegations, and it was really
Speaker 9: important to me that the women's stories be at the
Speaker 9: center of the conversation. So I also didn't want to
Speaker 9: distract from that. But I think as we get further
Speaker 9: and further out, you know, it will be important to
Speaker 9: really take a hard look at ourselves in the media
Speaker 9: and across our society, and and look at the systems
Speaker 9: that keep these sorts of things quiet.
Speaker 4: How long did you research that the Weinstein story?
Speaker 9: The big first interview was done in January of last year.
Speaker 9: The first you know, research and calls would have happened
Speaker 9: sort of October November of twenty sixteen. Yeah, so about
Speaker 9: a year.
Speaker 10: So your book or my book, my summering book.
Speaker 4: What did you first start? Right?
Speaker 9: By the way, I love that image of you with
Speaker 9: war on piece in your lap. I snapped the picture.
Speaker 9: I'm instagramming that.
Speaker 4: It's right here. How long was the process too?
Speaker 9: Way too long?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 11: And you had to be fly around the world a
Speaker 11: little bit too, right?
Speaker 9: Yeah? Yeah, you saw there's all sorts of crazy exotic
Speaker 9: locations in there. It took five years, all told, to
Speaker 9: write this book, and a lot of the actual writing
Speaker 9: happened at the end. And part of that was because
Speaker 9: the Weinstein story like took over my life, and right
Speaker 9: at the moment where I was supposed to be in
Speaker 9: crunch mode for the book, I was juggling these two
Speaker 9: giant things.
Speaker 4: Were your editors understanding?
Speaker 9: Like, okay, no, no, they were not. They actually they
Speaker 9: dropped the book and I had to resell it to
Speaker 9: a wonderful team at Norton, my current publisher.
Speaker 8: Serious for a yeah, oh they are mad. They when
Speaker 8: did they drove?
Speaker 4: People are mad? A lot of people are in regret mood.
Speaker 11: Now, Yeah, because I need to know when did they drop?
Speaker 9: Right at the as the Weinstein story was heating up,
Speaker 9: This would have been like maybe April of last year. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, there's great, great people over there, and I'm
Speaker 9: sure they're doing fine. But it was obviously a huge
Speaker 9: blow to me personally. And there are so many brave
Speaker 9: whistleblowers that you know, they knew and I knew had
Speaker 9: gone on the record for this book, and I couldn't
Speaker 9: let them down either. Because this book is the story
Speaker 9: of first of all transformation in America's role in the world.
Speaker 9: That's really important to all of our safety. And second
Speaker 9: of all of brave men and women in an unsung
Speaker 9: career who are really getting pushed out right now and
Speaker 9: denigrated and who are profoundly misunderstood and abused by politicians.
Speaker 11: They're abused by the public because in a way public.
Speaker 11: It's funny because I was thinking.
Speaker 8: To myself in reading, because I didn't read the whole thing,
Speaker 8: but I've ran through it, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: so now I feel bad about beeping at the guys
Speaker 8: to get the park anywhere they want to with the
Speaker 8: diplomat tags, I was like, I'm.
Speaker 11: Going to raise in DC, so I'm to get the
Speaker 11: park he wants to. And now I get it. I'm like, Okay.
Speaker 9: You know, these are men and women who turn down
Speaker 9: opportunities to make a lot more money in the private sector,
Speaker 9: who go to the most dangerous and difficult places on
Speaker 9: Earth at times, move their families around every few years,
Speaker 9: and they do it because they know that their work
Speaker 9: makes the United States safer. Yeah. I mean they are
Speaker 9: the first line of defense against dangerous people getting into
Speaker 9: our country.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 9: They are the people responsible when you get into a
Speaker 9: crisis or take a taken hostage and you've got to
Speaker 9: get pulled out. And they're the people who, hopefully if
Speaker 9: we empower them, which we are not, broker the deals
Speaker 9: that keep our brave service men and women out of conflicts.
Speaker 9: You know, war should not be the first solution.
Speaker 10: Well, you said that people would think that with this
Speaker 10: current administration that we're quote air quote under that sort
Speaker 10: of the decline of the diplomacy overseas and other territories.
Speaker 10: Most of us would think that the the client is
Speaker 10: starting now, but you actually said that it was this
Speaker 10: has been going on, like doing the Clinton and doing
Speaker 10: the Bush Bush one and the Reagan administration.
Speaker 9: So there's two things going on here. A lot of
Speaker 9: the book is devoted to the crisis under the Trump administration.
Speaker 9: I mean, this is a crazy new extreme where we
Speaker 9: are literally purging the State Department, just mass firings, hundreds
Speaker 9: of diplomatic posts, empty.
Speaker 11: Empty, right. Can you say the number, It's not.
Speaker 9: I mean it changes all the time, So I don't
Speaker 9: want to give a number now because it will change
Speaker 9: by the time we and sometimes it gets worse not better,
Speaker 9: by the way. Yeah, but it's we're talking about you know,
Speaker 9: major embassies without an ambassador, major offices around the State
Speaker 9: Department without an assistant secretary to run that region, and
Speaker 9: it means that we're flying blind in all sorts of
Speaker 9: big challenges all around the world. I Bookend War on
Speaker 9: Peace with the story of this guy, Tom Countryman, which
Speaker 9: is his real name. Unbelievably, Yeah, that's not like a
Speaker 9: stage name, that's his real name. And he is indeed
Speaker 9: like a patriotic guy you knows, served in all these
Speaker 9: dangerous places for years and years, and he was the
Speaker 9: top official on arms control at the State Department. And
Speaker 9: he got fired within days of Trump coming in. And
Speaker 9: you think about that, like at a time when we're
Speaker 9: facing down Iran and North Korea and arms control is
Speaker 9: one of our biggest challenges. We just gave the boot
Speaker 9: to our top expert on that field. So a big
Speaker 9: part of this is the Trump era. But you're right,
Speaker 9: you know, when people say this is unprecedented, that's not
Speaker 9: quite the right word, because there's a lot of precedent
Speaker 9: you can look at and draw really clear lessons from.
Speaker 9: You mentioned the Clinton administration. Clinton over the course of
Speaker 9: the nineties cut spending on development and diplomacy by thirty percent,
Speaker 9: and we closed all sorts of embassies around the world.
Speaker 9: The embassies we had left were short funded. We shuddered
Speaker 9: two really important government agencies, one on information which obviously
Speaker 9: we could use that skill set as we go up
Speaker 9: against ISIS propaganda, one on arms control. And you know,
Speaker 9: these are lasting pieces of damage that we really felt
Speaker 9: after nine to eleven when we needed diplomats more and instead,
Speaker 9: obviously what we've seen is everything gets run through the Pentagon.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, book.
Speaker 8: It's interesting because number one, I wanted to big you
Speaker 8: up because the way you kind of explain things as
Speaker 8: you go and you learn about the State Department and
Speaker 8: you learn about everybody's role. But it also becomes very
Speaker 8: scary as you really realize, to dumb it down, that
Speaker 8: we don't have as many friends in these countries as
Speaker 8: we used to and when it comes to American representation,
Speaker 8: which is kind of scary. And then it goes back
Speaker 8: to the White House, who we are the only ones
Speaker 8: really communicating with these outside entities, which is.
Speaker 10: Yeah, are you saying in the case of North Korea
Speaker 10: there should have been way more. Did we ever have
Speaker 10: representation in North Korea?
Speaker 4: At all?
Speaker 9: So it's not about wanting an embassy there, you know,
Speaker 9: I think everyone agrees that, like, it wouldn't be the
Speaker 9: right thing to recognize them as a state in that
Speaker 9: way at present until they reform in a whole lot
Speaker 9: of ways. But what we have had in recent history
Speaker 9: are really concerted efforts led by really experienced diplomats to
Speaker 9: have talks with them and other players in the region
Speaker 9: that can kind of squeeze them and exert pressure, like
Speaker 9: the Chinese. So under George W. Bush, for instance, there
Speaker 9: were six party talks led by this guy Chris Hill,
Speaker 9: who's a career diplomat who's profiled in this book. And
Speaker 9: you know, it's too simple to say that he just failed.
Speaker 9: You know, they worked really hard around the clock for
Speaker 9: a long time. They got North Korea to shut down
Speaker 9: some of its reactors for the first time. They got
Speaker 9: some concessions and some transparency. In the end, you know,
Speaker 9: it fell through North Korea and followed through to the
Speaker 9: extent we wanted. But there were significant inroads made in
Speaker 9: our ability to talk to China about this. And we've
Speaker 9: just thrown that all out since then.
Speaker 11: And because Trump said he's the reason that we have
Speaker 11: where China is.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, And you know, Trump is trumpeting a lot
Speaker 9: about the I'm so sorry for that accidental point about this,
Speaker 9: you know, meeting potentially leader to leader in the North
Speaker 9: Korea crisis. I just got to say, and this is
Speaker 9: addressed in the book. What all the experts who have
Speaker 9: been immersed in trying to crack the North Korea problem
Speaker 9: for years say is time will tell what that means
Speaker 9: a meeting like that, because North Korea is really wily.
Speaker 9: They lie all the time, and there's a real risk
Speaker 9: that we get played. If you go into a meeting
Speaker 9: leader to leader, it can be a way to legitimize
Speaker 9: them as a nuclear power. They can run around saying, hey,
Speaker 9: now we're recognized and we can have new because that's
Speaker 9: one of their key demands. We don't necessarily have a
Speaker 9: long term strategy in which to embed that meeting. And
Speaker 9: that's a problem because we no longer have a corps
Speaker 9: of experts devoted to North Korea at the State Department.
Speaker 8: I was like, so this is not going to have
Speaker 8: a happy ending, because we're still useful too.
Speaker 9: There's some hope in this book. I mean, I talk
Speaker 9: about the fact that there are still these brave men
Speaker 9: and women doing this work in difficult places around the world,
Speaker 9: and and I talk about some of the examples in
Speaker 9: recent history that suggests that if we support them, you
Speaker 9: can actually turn things around.
Speaker 8: So where are so where do you think it's important?
Speaker 8: And they are there because they've been pulled out of
Speaker 8: so many places.
Speaker 4: I have one quick question there.
Speaker 10: I believe that, you know, obviously, in the name of pettiness,
Speaker 10: I believe the Trump administration this is setting down UH
Speaker 10: or firing UH at will.
Speaker 4: Who he pleases.
Speaker 10: What were the reasons or at least between the Reagan
Speaker 10: and the Obama administration, did you see the decline of
Speaker 10: diplomacy around the world, Like, what were the reasons of
Speaker 10: Were they saying that, Okay, this particular place in Zambia
Speaker 10: or or this African nation, we don't need you know,
Speaker 10: five diplomats there.
Speaker 9: So I'm careful not to oversimplify the problem.
Speaker 8: UH.
Speaker 9: The State Department bureaucracy is slow moving, it's broken and
Speaker 9: outdated in a lot of ways. And you know, part
Speaker 9: of this conversation is people saying, well, we need to
Speaker 9: cut back because we need to reform, and I think
Speaker 9: that that's not unreasonable. You know, intelligent reform where we
Speaker 9: reshape what our diplomacy looks like, is a great.
Speaker 11: Idea, but there's no plan.
Speaker 9: No, there's no plan. They are cutting.
Speaker 4: What's the soul, not fat, what's the idea plan?
Speaker 9: Well, you know, the example I would point to is,
Speaker 9: since you were asking about history, you know, during World
Speaker 9: War Two, I went back and found a lot of
Speaker 9: the old headlines covering the State Department then, and they
Speaker 9: sound a whole lot like headlines about the Rex Tillerson
Speaker 9: State Department in the past year, people saying we've got
Speaker 9: a broken State Department. You know, it's not doing its job.
Speaker 9: You know, we need to throw it out the window.
Speaker 9: We need to reform it. And what's interesting is what
Speaker 9: we did then, which is instead of throwing it out,
Speaker 9: we really reshaped it for a modern era. You know,
Speaker 9: mass communication was on the rise. We created all sorts
Speaker 9: of new offices and new priorities. We cut older offices
Speaker 9: that were now outdated, and you ended up with a
Speaker 9: period where we had the creation of you know, NATO
Speaker 9: and the UN and the World Bank and all of
Speaker 9: these structures we still rely on. So I think you
Speaker 9: can reform it.
Speaker 11: Is that want this administration, though.
Speaker 9: This administration doesn't seem to want it.
Speaker 11: This is what I'm saying. It's gonna be empty positions, yes, emptiness.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm curious to get your take on what you
Speaker 6: think the role of technology plays in kind of our
Speaker 6: decline of diplomacy, just because this is the first time
Speaker 6: I think we're just living in the air where information
Speaker 6: and misinformation just flies so fast, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: And so I'm curious, what do you think, Like, you know,
Speaker 6: when you were talking about you know, like forty hell
Speaker 6: not even forty years ago, like during the Bush one,
Speaker 6: I mean, there was no Twitter, there was no social media.
Speaker 6: So now stories can break and you know, it may
Speaker 6: be all the way source, it may be whatever, but
Speaker 6: it can just go so off the rails. What do
Speaker 6: you think the role that social media has played, either
Speaker 6: good or bad, like in the role.
Speaker 4: Of all that.
Speaker 9: It's a really good question, and it's something I talk
Speaker 9: about a lot in the book. The rise of instant
Speaker 9: communication technology has profoundly affected the role of diplomats. Right,
Speaker 9: you don't need an ambassador in a foreign land to
Speaker 9: deliver a message anymore, like that cool kind of magical
Speaker 9: responsibility that they once had of here is a letter
Speaker 9: from the United States. Isn't how it works anymore? And
Speaker 9: I think that that's part of what allows some of
Speaker 9: this destructive political rhetoric where there's just the constant denigration
Speaker 9: of diplomats says, you know, dusty bureaucrats who don't get
Speaker 9: anything done, which I think is really unfair and short
Speaker 9: changes the important work they do. The fact that we
Speaker 9: don't need letters delivered in person anymore doesn't mean that
Speaker 9: we don't need experts who understand the most complicated crises
Speaker 9: on Earth and know how to get American citizens out
Speaker 9: and protect their interests and cut deals that advance our influence.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So, if we are lacking, or if we're declining, and
Speaker 10: I don't know how sharp that decline is, I think
Speaker 10: I know the answer. But who is picking up the
Speaker 10: slack and who is slow to win? Who's on point
Speaker 10: right now?
Speaker 9: As far as I'm glad you asked that, because one
Speaker 9: of the kind of the like shadow that is cast
Speaker 9: over this story in the book is that China is
Speaker 9: doing the opposite thing right now. And you know, I
Speaker 9: don't mean to hold up China as some paragon of virtue.
Speaker 9: I think it's pretty troubling if China is filling the space.
Speaker 9: But the fact is, yes, I mean I think there
Speaker 9: are pros and cons to Chinese leadership, and it varies
Speaker 9: around the world, but certainly I do think the United States,
Speaker 9: despite all of our flaws, is still a more sincere
Speaker 9: and ardent defender of human rights. And I do think
Speaker 9: that we want American influence, you know, in large parts,
Speaker 9: despite all the ways in which we screw up and
Speaker 9: can be a malign influence. I think it is a
Speaker 9: good thing for the world if we are running things correctly.
Speaker 9: And what we're seeing right now is in important places
Speaker 9: around the world, China is investing in more and more diplomats.
Speaker 9: And I'll give you an example. You know, I was
Speaker 9: in Sudan for a while, and in Sudan, China for
Speaker 9: a long time played the role that we kind of
Speaker 9: stereotypically think of China as playing, which where they're this
Speaker 9: interloper that is totally callous about human rights and they're
Speaker 9: extracting the oil and like aiding and a bedding a genocide.
Speaker 9: And I wrote about that a lot at the time.
Speaker 9: Now China has like a regional envoy who's doing shuttle
Speaker 9: diplomacy trying to like cut a peace deal there, so
Speaker 9: they have a whole Yeah, they because they want to
Speaker 9: ascend to a status of global leadership, and there are
Speaker 9: kids all around the world growing up with really clear
Speaker 9: signs of Chinese leadership and development, big infrastructure projects in
Speaker 9: places where we no longer even have embassies.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, that's kind of my reaction to that.
Speaker 4: That's not learn.
Speaker 9: Kinda yeah, we got to do our role. Call a
Speaker 9: Mandarin next time.
Speaker 10: Let me ask, let me ask you. You know, I'll
Speaker 10: say that at least okay. You know, I still watch
Speaker 10: Mantle Show, and it's sort of kind of like my
Speaker 10: my lullaby, like I gotta see what, you know, just
Speaker 10: suck and sleep at night.
Speaker 9: She's great, She's so principal.
Speaker 4: Am I am? I? Am I? It is twenty eighteen
Speaker 4: a pipe dream? Is it? In terms of impeachment, it's no.
Speaker 4: In terms of midterms, the idea of like do you
Speaker 4: do you?
Speaker 9: Oh man, I'm not going to handicap that race. All
Speaker 9: I can say is I'm going to keep on telling
Speaker 9: stories that I hope are relevant to voters as they
Speaker 9: make informed decisions. And you know, I've been exposing some
Speaker 9: of these secret election season payments in my latest round
Speaker 9: of New Yorker Stories, and I think there's a lot
Speaker 9: to uncover here about the abuse of power and how
Speaker 9: powerful people can distort people's perceptions during an election. And
Speaker 9: it's not my job to project whether that has any
Speaker 9: impact or to hope that it doesn't impact.
Speaker 4: Are you speaking of the Facebook situation or.
Speaker 9: The that that's part of the whole soup of things
Speaker 9: that happened. But the last few stories I did were
Speaker 9: about secret payments to to silence stories, this practice of
Speaker 9: catch and kill where there were you know, stories that
Speaker 9: might have seen the light of day and didn't because
Speaker 9: of transactions that were covered up at the time, seemingly
Speaker 9: on behalf of the president.
Speaker 10: But it's obvious that people, uh, you know, he wants
Speaker 10: to make that statement, like I could stand on Fifth
Speaker 10: Avenue somebody and nothing what happened to me? And I'm
Speaker 10: almost thinking, like, oh, he's absolutely right, Like his believer
Speaker 10: is going to believe what they believe.
Speaker 11: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 10: But in a case, But but then there's a case
Speaker 10: of like Sinais Wayne's statement last week where she said
Speaker 10: that you know, as a Canadian and I know, like
Speaker 10: there's there's the people that scare me.
Speaker 9: The most, She'd vote for.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because she felt he told the truth but but
Speaker 10: the thing is is that I believe that if she
Speaker 10: truly saw what was happening and was informed, she would
Speaker 10: know better.
Speaker 9: But the problem is, you guys have to get on.
Speaker 10: I'm not caping for Shania whatsoever, but this is the
Speaker 10: person that I know, Like I keep my television on
Speaker 10: twenty four to seven watching news. Now this is subsequently
Speaker 10: also bringing down my spirit as a human being? Am
Speaker 10: I being less productive because I gotta keep I gotta
Speaker 10: figure out even when I bust into Zara's office, who's
Speaker 10: not speaking at all?
Speaker 4: Right now? For now?
Speaker 9: I know, do we get one sound bite?
Speaker 10: By the end, she literally like, I wanted you to
Speaker 10: ask about Mike Pompeiio.
Speaker 8: Okay, why don't you ask about what?
Speaker 4: Do you want to know what about Mike? I was
Speaker 4: wondering if you think things are going to get better
Speaker 4: if she gets in there?
Speaker 9: So I would say today things one is, here's what
Speaker 9: we know about Mike Pompeo's record in terms of his
Speaker 9: position on the issues. You know, he's extremely hawkish. He
Speaker 9: has been right there with the President saber rattling about
Speaker 9: dismantling the Iran deal and stepping away from a diplomatic
Speaker 9: approach you know, the president sent him right after firing
Speaker 9: Rex Tillerson to meet with the North Koreans, you know,
Speaker 9: while he was CIA director. So he's already been sort
Speaker 9: of part of this moment where we're seeing the work
Speaker 9: of diplomats outsourced to soldiers and spies. That said, I've
Speaker 9: continued to talk to all these whistleblowers whose stories are
Speaker 9: in war on peace, and hope really springs eternal with them.
Speaker 9: You know, they in there.
Speaker 11: This is not a this is not a first time thing.
Speaker 8: Because Colin, they made a mistake of the Clinton right,
Speaker 8: the Clint administration made a mistake with Colin Powell, and
Speaker 8: they say that they made a mistake with placing diplomacy.
Speaker 9: I think multiple administrations realized they made a mistake on this.
Speaker 9: You know, late in the game. The Clinton administration, after
Speaker 9: his first Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, sounded a whole
Speaker 9: lot like Rex Tillerson defending these deep cuts to the department.
Speaker 9: Madeline Albright came in and was much more focused on
Speaker 9: large scale diplomacy. During the Bush administration, you know, after
Speaker 9: the disasters of Iraq, condalize rices on the record in
Speaker 9: this book talking about you know, needing more diplomacy, and
Speaker 9: that's the period in which they took this run at
Speaker 9: the North Korea problem, and I talk about that as well.
Speaker 9: Often this realization comes too late. There are senior Obama
Speaker 9: administration officials saying, you know, we kind of expressing regret
Speaker 9: about the fact that they had an Afghanistan policy that
Speaker 9: was really overtaken by celebrity generals, and how they tried
Speaker 9: to course correct and get more diplomatic views in the
Speaker 9: room later on, and you wound up with the Iran Deal,
Speaker 9: the thaw in relations with Cuba, the Paris Climate Change Accord.
Speaker 9: So if you invest in diplomacy, you can get results.
Speaker 9: You just have to have leadership. And you know, to
Speaker 9: circle it back to Mike Pompeo, I think there's a
Speaker 9: lot of hope right now about him. There's a lot
Speaker 9: of sincere hope that he will invest in diplomacy and
Speaker 9: defend that institution and believe in the brave men and
Speaker 9: women working there, which we haven't seen so far in
Speaker 9: this administration.
Speaker 2: What's going to be the final Jenga cube that you
Speaker 2: pull that everything's going to crumble down?
Speaker 4: Oh man?
Speaker 10: Because it seems like do you feel the pressure, because
Speaker 10: I don't want to put that on you, but I
Speaker 10: feel like I'm sure you did it before you can
Speaker 10: do it again. One of you is going to get that.
Speaker 10: All the presidents men like a movie like not that
Speaker 10: that should.
Speaker 4: Be your motivation. I thought it was going to be
Speaker 4: stormy day.
Speaker 9: It's not. It's not my job to, you know, try
Speaker 9: to bring down anyone. It wasn't even my job to
Speaker 9: try to bring down Harvey Weinstein. My job was to
Speaker 9: make those survivors feel heard, which they hadn't been for
Speaker 9: a long time. And I think similarly with the reporting
Speaker 9: I've done on the Trump administration and even the stories
Speaker 9: I tell in this book. You know, my job is
Speaker 9: to get as close to the truth as possible and
Speaker 9: to pull back the curtain on stuff that people haven't
Speaker 9: wanted you to see.
Speaker 4: How how can you okay?
Speaker 10: So doubling back to because I realized I didn't, I
Speaker 10: didn't clear myself up with snill listen.
Speaker 4: My point was that I feel as though there are
Speaker 4: people who their whole thing is I just can't. I
Speaker 4: can't watch the news. It it kills me inside.
Speaker 10: And I understand, you know, it's so overwhelming to deal
Speaker 10: with your life and then to see what's happening in
Speaker 10: life there. But it's like, I just I'm one of
Speaker 10: those people that has to keep an eye even though
Speaker 10: I'm not totally immersed in it.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm yeah, but you care.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And I don't feel as though people don't care,
Speaker 10: but I I do feel that there are a set
Speaker 10: of people that because it won't affect them easily as
Speaker 10: it will others. You know, like I have friends and
Speaker 10: family that are already affected by the doctor situation. You
Speaker 10: know what I'm saying, Yeah, that shit affects me. But
Speaker 10: how do you reach people that are indifferent to watching
Speaker 10: the news that.
Speaker 4: You know, if I can get through a day where
Speaker 4: I don't have.
Speaker 10: To explain to someone and filter it and explaining their
Speaker 10: language that they understand what's going on. Or sometimes I
Speaker 10: go in Zarrors room, I'm like, all right, that hour
Speaker 10: where I'm shooting fallon six o'clock, using my first thing
Speaker 10: is all right, what happened?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 10: And based on her face some days she's crying because
Speaker 10: some shit happened, or you know, it's how how do
Speaker 10: you how do how do journalists get their groove back
Speaker 10: where you know, where you're counterattacking propaganda television like Fox.
Speaker 4: Can I call them that? I think that is there
Speaker 4: one person?
Speaker 9: Yeah, there are there are individual people at Fox I respect,
Speaker 9: but I do think that.
Speaker 4: Who are they? Who's the two people that you know?
Speaker 9: Look, I think Shep Smith does fairly straight coverage. Actually yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: you know, he's okay. And I think there are people
Speaker 9: like uh, you know, I don't want to endorse everything
Speaker 9: each of these people does wholesale, but like Brett Bair
Speaker 9: does some sort of more I think, you know, on
Speaker 9: those straight and narrow news kind of stuff. But but yes,
Speaker 9: I think overall, you know, that is an organization with
Speaker 9: some very clear ties to the people that are covering.
Speaker 9: And how come they do a lot of damage to
Speaker 9: the conversation? I do think that.
Speaker 10: But how come the world just can't not the world
Speaker 10: where Americans can't see that?
Speaker 9: Well, So, so to your first point, I think you've
Speaker 9: highlighted one of the most important and difficult challenges we
Speaker 9: have as a society and as reporters too. Apathy is
Speaker 9: in a lot of ways the enemy of progress, and
Speaker 9: it's one of the toughest nuts to crack. I totally
Speaker 9: get and empathize with the fact that people despair when
Speaker 9: they watch the news and they just want to turn away.
Speaker 11: It's overwhelming to people get overwhelmed.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I do think that the mainstream media deserves
Speaker 9: some blame for the way the twenty four hour news.
Speaker 4: It goes off. Yeah, you have to turn it off,
Speaker 4: like you have to set your right.
Speaker 8: It's alienated and it's the same story, sometimes not the
Speaker 8: same stories, but yeah, the same stories.
Speaker 9: So I think we're part of the problem is systemic
Speaker 9: where there is a broken news system, where the business
Speaker 9: model is built around reritting, rereading the same headline over
Speaker 9: and over again and not offering anything new to the conversation,
Speaker 9: or doing the other thing that's cheap and easy, which
Speaker 9: is put people in a room and having them shout
Speaker 9: at each other. Yea, all of which I think has
Speaker 9: conspired to make people tune out. And that's really dangerous
Speaker 9: because we need people who like all of you sitting here,
Speaker 9: really profoundly care and are going to be engaged and
Speaker 9: cry if the new cycle dictates that, and want to
Speaker 9: stand up and do something. We all need that. And
Speaker 9: so you know, I hope in the small part that
Speaker 9: I do to tell stories, I'm doing it in a
Speaker 9: way where people know, it's not part of just hammering
Speaker 9: them over the head with the same old headlines. It's
Speaker 9: not part of the partisan echo chamber, you know, it's
Speaker 9: really giving them some facts that maybe they can be
Speaker 9: armed with as they make decisions.
Speaker 6: Has anyone approached you yet about doing movies about any
Speaker 6: of yourself, like either warm Piece or your Weinstein stuff,
Speaker 6: because I think that's gonna be when you talk about
Speaker 6: how you reach people. Yeah, getting over the abbe because
Speaker 6: I'm one of those people, you know, I'm straight up
Speaker 6: like yo, all the Trump. So I'm just like, yo,
Speaker 6: just I'm just waiting for Jerry brook Kamer to make
Speaker 6: the movie.
Speaker 4: And I will choice cast with Trump. That's just party
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, man, Like I'm just waiting because it's just so
Speaker 6: much information and you don't know what's what, what's allied,
Speaker 6: what's true. So I would probably fall into one of
Speaker 6: the category. I'm not just totally apathetic, you know, I
Speaker 6: stay up to some degree, but certainly it's a point
Speaker 6: where you kind of have to shut down. Like, look,
Speaker 6: I got kids to raise. I gotta do my things,
Speaker 6: so I can't be innundated with it all the time.
Speaker 6: But I was curious if anyone has because all this stuff,
Speaker 6: I mean, just the past couple of years of your life,
Speaker 6: it's prime ready for us.
Speaker 9: There's some crazy stories there. Look, I have a lot
Speaker 9: of respect for storytelling in different mediums and the power
Speaker 9: to expand people's horizons with these stories.
Speaker 6: If you can, if you can't, give it up, I mean,
Speaker 6: I get, don't don't fuck up the bad I think.
Speaker 4: You know, I understand.
Speaker 9: I think you're right. I think that you know. These
Speaker 9: stories can reach different audiences if you if you tell
Speaker 9: them right, whether it's in you know, a careful piece
Speaker 9: of investigative reporting, or a movie or a book or
Speaker 9: a song. I mean, there's a lot of ways to
Speaker 9: move people and help them understand important issues we all
Speaker 9: grapple with.
Speaker 6: Because I thought you before, I know, because before, I
Speaker 6: like before we kind of my prepping for this. I
Speaker 6: watched The Paternal If you watch the joint on HBO,
Speaker 6: the Paternal I haven't.
Speaker 9: Is it good?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it is good, it is good, But it's more
Speaker 6: so about like the investigation and.
Speaker 9: How I should I should be watching that as an
Speaker 9: HBO Okay, I've got I've got an HBO deal starting soon,
Speaker 9: so I'll.
Speaker 11: Breaking news, breaking news, breaking news.
Speaker 4: I'm so crazy right now.
Speaker 9: But oh my god, a sample. Yeah, I'll be you know,
Speaker 9: I'll be turning some of these stories into documentaries and uh,
Speaker 9: you know, I'll be back on TV. And I think
Speaker 9: part of that is because you're right, there's there's different
Speaker 9: ways to get to people and they're all important.
Speaker 4: Is there something bubbling under that you're working on? Yes, yo,
Speaker 4: you said the excavation point at the end of the Okay,
Speaker 4: So when.
Speaker 10: You have a scoop that you know that you have, uh,
Speaker 10: who's your trusted circle?
Speaker 4: Who is your because I don't you know, and.
Speaker 10: I don't know the doggy dog world of journalism or whatnot,
Speaker 10: But when you know you have some ship that no
Speaker 10: one else has.
Speaker 9: So I write for The New Yorker, and I am
Speaker 9: really happy to say that after all of the challenges
Speaker 9: of the past year, you know, I landed in a
Speaker 9: place where there's just some of the best damn journalists
Speaker 9: on earth supporting me and David I'm Nick who runs
Speaker 9: The New Yorker, who you should totally have on. I
Speaker 9: want to hear him in a roll call. That guy
Speaker 9: is cool as hell and rescued the Weinstein story and
Speaker 9: stood by it. When it was under attack. And uh,
Speaker 9: you know, as I work on upcoming stories, I got
Speaker 9: a great circle of editors that are circle of trust
Speaker 9: there and and fact checkers as we get closer to
Speaker 9: the finish line on each story. And it's a it's
Speaker 9: a wonderful institution. What people should subscribe?
Speaker 4: I mean, can you keep it real? How real are
Speaker 4: the you.
Speaker 9: Know, I always keep it real, but how.
Speaker 10: Real are the threats? Like is it barbershop talk or
Speaker 10: is it some real.
Speaker 9: It's it's some it's some real shit unfortunately. But I mean,
Speaker 9: like you even you, I did, I did move out
Speaker 9: of my place So.
Speaker 10: When you're in a parking lot alone, is it like
Speaker 10: over the shoulder?
Speaker 4: Is it? Yeah?
Speaker 9: I mean it it it It comes and goes. Uh
Speaker 9: you know. I think there are periods where I'm working
Speaker 9: on a specific story where it gets very very adversary,
Speaker 9: where that is very much the vibe of like, okay,
Speaker 9: maybeing followed. What precautions do I need to take?
Speaker 11: Because that national inquiry that was a big deal.
Speaker 8: Like I mean, if Stormy's looking over her shoulder, yeah,
Speaker 8: definitely looking over yours when you say it is love child.
Speaker 9: And there was a story in the in the New
Speaker 9: York Times last night about some of the connections between
Speaker 9: those allegations of intimidation and you know, people that were
Speaker 9: getting hired and this is all stuff that will continue
Speaker 9: to come to light. But yeah, the answer is it's
Speaker 9: it's real.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm just saying that in the sixties, Uh, they
Speaker 10: handled it, yeah, a certain way. Uh, Whereas I feel
Speaker 10: as though, because there's cameras everywhere, it's hard to execute
Speaker 10: that sort of you know.
Speaker 4: I hope I got a call.
Speaker 9: I mean, I hope you're right that it's harder for
Speaker 9: people to you know, attack other people because of the surveillance.
Speaker 8: Well plus to say house of cars for real, like Ronan,
Speaker 8: can't anybody just I just can't see.
Speaker 9: It is it's I will say, you know, without talking
Speaker 9: about the specifics of stuff I've reported on I in
Speaker 9: general terms, I have been startled at how close it
Speaker 9: is to fiction and how you know, kind of cloak
Speaker 9: and dagger tactics that I didn't think existed in the
Speaker 9: real world really are part of the tool set deployed
Speaker 9: by powerful people when they're on a rampage trying to
Speaker 9: stop something from coming out.
Speaker 10: But almost the thing that I'm marvel at the most
Speaker 10: is that I don't think that this current administration is
Speaker 10: truly aware of the power of how technology works. Like
Speaker 10: I feel like there're so old school, seventies eighties, old school,
Speaker 10: you know, just keep it between us, not knowing that
Speaker 10: we're going to find out the information anyway.
Speaker 9: Like, I mean, it's this weird dichotomy, right because Trump
Speaker 9: is also like the king of Twitter and like late
Speaker 9: night tweets and early morning tweets and tweets with typos.
Speaker 10: It's just so obvious that he comes from the school
Speaker 10: of if you say something enough, they'll believe it, they'll
Speaker 10: believe it.
Speaker 4: Like I can.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I can tell you know, a whitewash when it's
Speaker 10: so obvious and transparent.
Speaker 4: Yeah that I guess.
Speaker 10: This leads me to my last question, which is do
Speaker 10: you have hope for twenty eighteen? And if you do, uh,
Speaker 10: what do you project will.
Speaker 9: Have I guess to the extent that I engage with
Speaker 9: electoral politics at all, it's just wanting to tell stories
Speaker 9: that arm people with as much useful and accurate information
Speaker 9: as possible, you know, I truly that's not a cop out.
Speaker 9: I just I don't think in those terms. I really
Speaker 9: just think in terms of what's the most important story
Speaker 9: I can go after? And I hope I think that
Speaker 9: telling the truth is good for society as a whole,
Speaker 9: and I hope that that is also helpful for the Electorate's.
Speaker 4: Funny on record week.
Speaker 9: It's not the world I'm in, you know, I'm not
Speaker 9: in in.
Speaker 11: The world.
Speaker 9: Fair enough.
Speaker 8: But what's funny is you mentioned Malon Aubright And I
Speaker 8: was also thinking about what do you think about Malon
Speaker 8: Abright and people like James Comy like writing these books.
Speaker 8: I mean, in the season of Born Peace, come your
Speaker 8: book coming out of.
Speaker 9: Alright, she was wonderfully candid, you know, and has a
Speaker 9: great uh history of public service and is obviously very frank,
Speaker 9: both in War on Peace and her own book, Fascism
Speaker 9: A Warning. It's subtitled uh. And you know she's also
Speaker 9: she's a you know, uh, I don't say this in
Speaker 9: a disparaging way, but a partisan, so she can talk
Speaker 9: more freely about so then James Comy, well, James Comy,
Speaker 9: it's much more I mean, you know, obviously he's like
Speaker 9: dodging and weaving bullets. And it's a whole careful process.
Speaker 9: Anytime you have a government agency reviewing your book, and yeah,
Speaker 9: I think it was almost inevitable that it was going
Speaker 9: to be a minefield for him to do a press
Speaker 9: store for that book.
Speaker 11: The wrong time.
Speaker 9: I don't know. I don't know. It's not for me
Speaker 9: to say. I honestly, I also haven't read the book,
Speaker 9: so I wouldn't want to say it's the wrong time
Speaker 9: for it to come out. Maybe it's the right time.
Speaker 9: I don't know. But you know, I think he's definitely
Speaker 9: trying to navigate those potholes. Maybe oh you wow, you
Speaker 9: are super disapproving. No, no, no, she's got this look on
Speaker 9: her face like.
Speaker 11: No, no, I'm happy that he came out.
Speaker 8: But again, he kind of goes back to what Amir
Speaker 8: said at the end of the day, like, no matter
Speaker 8: who comes out, there's a certain population, a certain people.
Speaker 4: That they're going to pick the fact.
Speaker 11: They don't see it.
Speaker 9: They ye something wrong with him.
Speaker 4: I believe whoever is wearing the tie says it's true.
Speaker 8: Because yeah, I was all hyped about the book, but
Speaker 8: then I realized, I'm like, I'm hyped with the same
Speaker 8: people again.
Speaker 9: Well, this is this is one of the problems that
Speaker 9: we have to deal with in terms of the media
Speaker 9: landscape where the President was clearly able to exploit, you know,
Speaker 9: both through these catch and kill operations via the Inquirer
Speaker 9: and also the general co opting of a tabloid media
Speaker 9: outlet that runs constant headlines that are you know, pro
Speaker 9: Trump and anti Hillary Clinton. Well, because it interfaces with
Speaker 9: that audience that you're talking about, that's not necessarily part
Speaker 9: of the conversations you're in, but they are seeing those
Speaker 9: magazine covers on the checkout line. So there's an interesting
Speaker 9: you know, I'm not a media reporter, but there's an
Speaker 9: interesting media narrative here, which is this split nation of
Speaker 9: we're all in our own partisan bubbles. We go on
Speaker 9: Facebook and Twitter and it's algorithmically curated, so you only
Speaker 9: see views you agree with, and then right, and then
Speaker 9: for the people who don't watch the news, you know,
Speaker 9: there's this whole other parallel reality of National Inquirer covers
Speaker 9: and the checkout line at the supermarket, and none of
Speaker 9: these groups are talking to each other. And that's a
Speaker 9: real problem. That's you know, bigger than anything I am
Speaker 9: able to sign it right now, that's.
Speaker 4: Weird to me that asteroid Inquirer is still a thing.
Speaker 9: Yes, I mean it's not in terms of the media conversation,
Speaker 9: but it is in terms of grocer's denominator.
Speaker 10: Like I'm not saying I've been to the grocery store
Speaker 10: a few times, but they.
Speaker 4: Don't have it that whole food.
Speaker 9: The people that whole foods are are the people in
Speaker 9: your conversation. They're not the people who need convincing, right.
Speaker 11: That's again, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Some of the people are.
Speaker 10: I don't watch the news, like I work with a
Speaker 10: lot of I don't know. I think it's I think
Speaker 10: it's almost dangerous on the whole food side of things,
Speaker 10: because again I know, and I work with a lot
Speaker 10: of people who you know, they can afford to turn
Speaker 10: the other way. Look, you know, and.
Speaker 9: That disappoints me.
Speaker 4: That hurts me more.
Speaker 9: I hope everyone with the power to raise their voice
Speaker 9: is doing so in an informed way. That's all. This
Speaker 9: is the apathy that we've been hitting on again and
Speaker 9: again is a really dangerous and disappointing thing. People got
Speaker 9: a care.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and you made us not to go back to
Speaker 11: the book.
Speaker 8: But Warren Peace made us care about the diplomacy because again,
Speaker 8: I wasn't even thinking about you.
Speaker 9: I hope. So I think the brave men and women
Speaker 9: doing this work deserve that.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys, well, thank you. I appreciate you for coming.
Speaker 9: See you guys.
Speaker 11: Can we do do the whole?
Speaker 8: The whole title is War on Piece, the end of
Speaker 8: the plomacy and the decline of the American influence.
Speaker 10: O Wow, heavy words, Ladies and gentlemen, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 10: or on behalf of Sugar Steve Zarah's Almond.
Speaker 8: Okay, Bill, don't say Boss Bill too, because he thinks
Speaker 8: he always say we forgive it.
Speaker 4: And Boss Bill, of course we get.
Speaker 6: We do this on this collection of Green Tea kit
Speaker 6: cats Hell the worst.
Speaker 4: Sorry that was a bad idea. Anyway. This is Quest Love.
Speaker 10: You were listening to Quest Love Supreme and be safe everybody,
Speaker 10: Thank you, Seeal the next one.
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