Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 2: Stay in the show. Have you been canceled ever?
Speaker 1: Maria, I have not been canceled. Have you ever been
Speaker 1: canceled night?
Speaker 2: Oh people have tried.
Speaker 3: If you listened to the last episode with elehone, you
Speaker 3: know you come at the King, you best not miss
Speaker 3: fucking blue Sky. Idiots on fucking Twitter and now they
Speaker 3: moved to Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's how you really feel, Nate about.
Speaker 2: No, it's a strategy of the week.
Speaker 1: No, No, it is and sometimes of the strong.
Speaker 3: Today in the show, we're going to be talking a
Speaker 3: little bit about Jimmy Kimmel. Maria, I think you're going
Speaker 3: to have some historical points of view. I'll just I'll
Speaker 3: just be rampting.
Speaker 2: Evidence. I'll just have takes.
Speaker 1: We will we will go into some historical context in
Speaker 1: a discussion of free speech and how it has evolved
Speaker 1: throughout the history of the United States. So on. On
Speaker 1: that note, Nate, let's let's talk some Jimmy Kimmel. Last week,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Kimmel's show was canceled indefinitely by the powers that
Speaker 1: be at Disney and ABC, and we are taping this
Speaker 1: on Monday, September twenty second. We just found out that
Speaker 1: Jimmy Kimmel Live Show is going to be returning. By
Speaker 1: the time you guys here this Wednesday will have been
Speaker 1: last night. But I do want to stress that we
Speaker 1: have not actually seen or heard the return yet. But yes,
Speaker 1: they just made an announcement that they will be bringing
Speaker 1: Me Kimmel back to the air after discussions with mister
Speaker 1: Kimmel about the future. And the original cancelation was very,
Speaker 1: very different from anything we've talked about on the show
Speaker 1: in terms of like cancel no, no, in some ways
Speaker 1: hold on, may I finish in terms of cancel culture
Speaker 1: because it was coming from Brendan Carr, the chairman of
Speaker 1: the FCC, who exerted pressure on the brass at Disney
Speaker 1: to cancel the show and made some very veiled but
Speaker 1: not that veiled threats that you know, we're probably going
Speaker 1: to pull your license.
Speaker 2: It was like, hey, we can do it's the easy
Speaker 2: way of the hodway. You sound exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: It sounded like we were back in the Sopranos, you know,
Speaker 1: or or you know Sopranos because a much worse written
Speaker 1: version of the Sopranos, someone who didn't actually know how
Speaker 1: to write and decided the easy way or the hard
Speaker 1: way was the way to write this dialogue. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what happened. And that's why I said, that's
Speaker 1: a different from what we've been talking about, because there's
Speaker 1: you know, cancel culture, and then there's the chairman of
Speaker 1: the FCC saying, hey, if you can say anything we
Speaker 1: don't like, we're gonna yank your license. So in response,
Speaker 1: you know, there were tons of protests. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of people canceling their subscriptions to you know, Hulu, ABC, ESPN,
Speaker 1: all of these things. And Nate, I'm actually very curious.
Speaker 1: I do want to give some background to this in
Speaker 1: a second, but while we're setting kind of the present
Speaker 1: day context, I'm curious what you think the you know,
Speaker 1: financial impact of this was, because I actually I saw
Speaker 1: a lot of people canceling subscriptions that I wouldn't have expected,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, you know, I wonder if this is
Speaker 1: in any way a financial decision as well, whether that
Speaker 1: actually had an effect or not. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: want to think that it did, but I'm actually just
Speaker 1: curious what you what your take on that particular element is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I worked for Disney for ten years.
Speaker 3: I've ESPN and ABC News, so full disclosure, you know,
Speaker 3: I have you know, a pension which is a Disney stock.
Speaker 3: But I also hate their guts, so that bias probably
Speaker 3: outweighs my financial motivation. But like, look, these companies tend
Speaker 3: to make decisions very expediently.
Speaker 2: Is one way I would put it.
Speaker 3: Right, Maybe you have people who have vision about individual products, right,
Speaker 3: but like I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: Bob Eiger cares about theme parks and movies and big
Speaker 3: franchise IP right use gigantic projects and like and probably
Speaker 3: sees ABC News as this thing that like, you know,
Speaker 3: still I think probably makes money. I mean, TV news
Speaker 3: does not get the ratings at once to you, but
Speaker 3: it's not that expensive to produce as compared to like
Speaker 3: scripted drama or things like that.
Speaker 2: But like, increasingly these big.
Speaker 3: Networks have wondered, do we even want to be in
Speaker 3: the news business at all? Right, Like the head of
Speaker 3: Disney doesn't really care about like the creative or journalistic
Speaker 3: integrity accept to the extent that like you know, it
Speaker 3: might create problems for talent down the line. So yeah, look,
Speaker 3: the president I would draw is to the Washington.
Speaker 2: Post, which is all by Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 3: I'm a keen observer of media, particularly when it comes
Speaker 3: to covering American domestic politics. Right, I would say five
Speaker 3: or ten years ago and people would say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the New York Times is the most presigious and highest
Speaker 3: grossing newspaper at least center left newspaper media brand in America.
Speaker 3: But the Washington Post is nipping at their heels. They
Speaker 3: have a lot of talent on domestic politics. They're kind
Speaker 3: of coequal. They break a lot of stories, they win
Speaker 3: a lot of Pulitzers, and they've made one decision after
Speaker 3: another have led to a lot of the other kind
Speaker 3: of cancelations, canceled subscriptions, you know, when they squashed a
Speaker 3: op ed endorsing Kamala Harris. And again I don't really
Speaker 3: think that like newspapers should be in the business of
Speaker 3: endorsing candidate, at least for national office. Have always found
Speaker 3: that strange in some ways. I find that as six
Speaker 3: between otbed and news kind of strange. But that led
Speaker 3: to I think maybe tens of thousands to hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of canceled subscriptions. And meanwhile, if you look at
Speaker 3: the talent, right, like, if you took like the fifty
Speaker 3: biggest name brands at the Washington Post from two years ago,
Speaker 3: I think literally half might be gone and absolutely are
Speaker 3: voluntary based on on feel like did not have editorial
Speaker 3: support of the masthead.
Speaker 2: And you know that's a challenge.
Speaker 3: I mean it might be in a world where like,
Speaker 3: you know, I think the Washington Post has significantly declined
Speaker 3: in both revenue and relevance, right and like, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: I mean they're going to be very sensitive things like
Speaker 3: like Hulu subscriptions.
Speaker 2: That's the way these businesses work, right.
Speaker 3: Like again, ordinarily, sometimes I think boycotts are a little
Speaker 3: pretentious and cilly.
Speaker 2: Like the way these big.
Speaker 3: Gigantic, generic kind of media brands work is, you know,
Speaker 3: they don't want to get yelled at by people, right,
Speaker 3: They're risk averse, and so if they're like, well, this
Speaker 3: could jeopardize our whole business, and I think that's that's
Speaker 3: probably part of it.
Speaker 2: I Mean, one thing to understand.
Speaker 3: About Trump is he does a lot of things that
Speaker 3: I think are very extreme and objectionable. And I think
Speaker 3: this is one of the clear things that like is
Speaker 3: classic authoritarian capital a right, you look at Turkey or
Speaker 3: Russia or other countries where there's been to pull back
Speaker 3: from democracy, and like finding a pretense to cancel broadcast licenses,
Speaker 3: is is capital a authoritarian? They did kind of pulled back,
Speaker 3: and Carr kind of said, well, I was just pontificating,
Speaker 3: and well, it's important that they, you know, and people
Speaker 3: have a heuristic where they're kind of discount what it is,
Speaker 3: you know, they.
Speaker 1: They could have not pulled back. Yes, this is true now,
Speaker 1: but lo I will.
Speaker 3: Say it's I criticize them in my newsletter over that
Speaker 3: we can like, you know, I will say good for
Speaker 3: Disney for uncancelling Kimmell, who, by the way, did fuck
Speaker 3: up in some let me just you know. The fuck
Speaker 3: up is that he said or strongly implied that the
Speaker 3: person who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk was MAGA, and that
Speaker 3: MAGA was trying to MAGA made America creager and was
Speaker 3: trying to deny the fact that like he was MAGA.
Speaker 3: And you know, Kimmel said that on Monday Evenings episode
Speaker 3: based on really no evidence whatsoever, based on kind of
Speaker 3: like you know what I think are properly called kind
Speaker 3: of conspiracy theories on Blue Sky and Twitter and know
Speaker 3: and everyone uses that phrase insensitivity, Like I think this
Speaker 3: to a certain extent, the job of comedians is to
Speaker 3: press the line on sensitivity. So I think sensitivity is
Speaker 3: like a dumb euphemism, right, He Jimmy Kimmel spread misinformation.
Speaker 3: But I'll tell you what, who hasn't at some point
Speaker 3: it's script TV. It's not like to be known the
Speaker 3: reason I'm lest forgiving, but like it's far far below
Speaker 3: a canceling offense, right or a firing offense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And just to give a bit of history to
Speaker 1: that particular point. But then I also want to go
Speaker 1: even a little further back to highlight something else that
Speaker 1: you said. There was a pretty substantial Supreme Court decision
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty four New York Times versus Sullivan,
Speaker 1: And that decision came out of an ad that The
Speaker 1: New York Times had run, and they basically were trying
Speaker 1: to contribute donations to defend MLK on perjury charges. And
Speaker 1: the ad had some factual inaccuracies, and LB Sullivan, who's
Speaker 1: the Sullivan of the case, said that he felt personally
Speaker 1: criticized even though he was never actually mentioned by name
Speaker 1: in the ad. He sent a request to The Times
Speaker 1: to retract the information and wanted damages. The Times refused anyway,
Speaker 1: this went all the way up to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Times
Speaker 1: and establish the standard known as the actual malice standard
Speaker 1: or reckless disregard of the truth. So basically, if you
Speaker 1: want to win a libel suit, you have to prove
Speaker 1: that the person who was making this statement knew it
Speaker 1: was false and acted with an malicious purpose, right, with
Speaker 1: an intent to harm the subject. Which was a huge,
Speaker 1: kind of huge win for free speech because these factual
Speaker 1: inaccuracies that were in the ad, they weren't on purpose, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like they wanted to take this guy down
Speaker 1: and so but they just said, you know, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: like factual inaccuracies, but it's not enough to suspend our
Speaker 1: license and to get rid of this. And this was
Speaker 1: kind of a landmark First Amendment free speech decision, but
Speaker 1: something that I want to kind of go back even
Speaker 1: further in history. The reason, by the way that I
Speaker 1: invoke the actual malice standard is I think that Jimmy
Speaker 1: came well you know, also you can be factually inaccurate
Speaker 1: and not actually fullifol of that standard. Right, you didn't
Speaker 1: say it knowing that you were blatantly saying something untrue.
Speaker 1: I think at the time he probably thought that he
Speaker 1: was saying something.
Speaker 2: That was right.
Speaker 1: Whether you know he was correct journalistically or not is
Speaker 1: a different story. But going even further back, Nate, one
Speaker 1: of the things that you said was that, you know, networks,
Speaker 1: places like Disney are constantly way playing this calculus, right.
Speaker 1: They don't want to get criticized, and they're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, like what do we do, how do we
Speaker 1: sidestep that? And it's really interesting to me because I
Speaker 1: think that all of the free speech attacks in the
Speaker 1: United States have shown this kind of constant calculus, and
Speaker 1: it's not always worked out the way that the person
Speaker 1: thought it was. So I think this the oldest kind
Speaker 1: of attack goes back to seventeen ninety eight with the
Speaker 1: Sedition Act, right, And this was John Adams when he
Speaker 1: basically said they were in a war with France. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a declared war, and he wanted to silence media
Speaker 1: critics of the government, and so he passed an act
Speaker 1: that said it was unlawful to publish any quote, false,
Speaker 1: scandalous and malicious writing against the government end quote. And
Speaker 1: the measures were huge, fins up to two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, how much is that, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety eight, like that's insane, two years in prison.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of publications started censoring themselves. But
Speaker 1: what ended up happening, and they actually used it very punitively.
Speaker 1: They ended up sending people to jail. Several newspapers had
Speaker 1: to shut down. But what ended up happening was that
Speaker 1: there was a huge backlash against this right. This was
Speaker 1: the end of the Federalists. Jefferson came to power on
Speaker 1: like a huge wave of support, and even later the
Speaker 1: Justice Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court, who had been
Speaker 1: very pro Sedition Act, he was impeached for this. So
Speaker 1: basically everyone was galvanized against it. So it ended up
Speaker 1: just having a huge, huge backlash to that. Attempt to
Speaker 1: stem free speech happened again during World War One with
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson, who was a scholar who had actually defended
Speaker 1: free speech, and he tried to get another Sedition Act.
Speaker 1: Then we had McCarthyism in the fifties who tried to
Speaker 1: bully journalists and do all of that that again big
Speaker 1: backlash people did. The people who stood up to McCarthyism
Speaker 1: have fared much better in the eyes of history than
Speaker 1: the people like McCarthy himself. Then we've got New York
Speaker 1: Times versus Sullivan. Then we get Richard Nixon, and so
Speaker 1: it's very funny when you started saying that you think
Speaker 1: the best kind of example is the Washington Post. I
Speaker 1: thought you were going to go in a totally different direction,
Speaker 1: because the other time that an FCC license was threatened
Speaker 1: was against the Washington Post when they were trying to
Speaker 1: publish the Pentagon Papers. They published them anyway, and obviously
Speaker 1: they won that battle. But Nixon was probably, other than Trump,
Speaker 1: the single most vindictive president against the media. He ousted
Speaker 1: Stuart Lourie for an article that he wrote in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one for the La Times, so he actually just
Speaker 1: banned him from the White House. And you know, he
Speaker 1: basically said that the press, whom he started calling the
Speaker 1: media that comes from Nixon, was the enemy, and told
Speaker 1: his Vice president Spiro Agnew, to constantly attack the media.
Speaker 1: He referred to them as a small and unelected elite
Speaker 1: and basically create a rift so that people wouldn't trust
Speaker 1: the media. And he even threatened lawsuits if anyone used
Speaker 1: tricky Dick in print, so that you know, it became
Speaker 1: incredibly petty, and he did kind of this. Trump is
Speaker 1: really taking a page out of his playbook in a way,
Speaker 1: because he had the irs investigate tax returns by Seymour,
Speaker 1: Hirsh and other journalists that the White House didn't really like.
Speaker 1: And so the thing that I found that I thought
Speaker 1: was the most ridiculous is this was pre Watergate, Gordon
Speaker 1: Liddy and Howard Hunt discussed murdering a journalist, Jack Anderson,
Speaker 1: like actually killing him, so that he would stop basically
Speaker 1: the leaks that were damaging to Dixon into the administration
Speaker 1: and stop any further criticism of the administration. They considered
Speaker 1: things like putting LSD on his steering wheel so that
Speaker 1: he would start hallucinating while driving his car and get
Speaker 1: into a car crash, which isn't.
Speaker 2: Free osc Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't think they realized how LSD. Yeah. Anyway, and
Speaker 1: then Lyddy, this is a quote from Lyddy. He said,
Speaker 1: I would have knifed him or broken his neck end quote.
Speaker 1: So this is all to say that, you know, we
Speaker 1: see these sorts of attacks in the past, and every
Speaker 1: single time they have not worked out well, but every
Speaker 1: single time the media has actually fought back. Right the
Speaker 1: Washington Post published Pentagon papers, Laurie had a career in journalism,
Speaker 1: like people would hire him after that, and Seymour Hirsch
Speaker 1: obviously Pulitzer Prize, like all of these people are storied
Speaker 1: journalists and people who had the support of the country.
Speaker 1: And with Kimmel at the beginning, it was the first
Speaker 1: time that an organization had gotten a threat from the
Speaker 1: FCC and rather than saying no, fuck you, you know,
Speaker 1: we're the media and this is freedom of press, said okay, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll fire you until they didn't. So this is I
Speaker 1: think a very interesting moment. But those historical precedents I
Speaker 1: think are really interesting to keep in mind, especially because
Speaker 1: they did not turn out well for the government.
Speaker 3: And we'll be right back after this break. I think
Speaker 3: with anything we're covering in today's age, you have to
Speaker 3: be aware that most commentators have a bias towards thinking
Speaker 3: history begins when their age eight, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: In the longer sweep of like how does this moment
Speaker 3: in America relate to There's a lot of miles in
Speaker 3: the sixties, right, the Civil War. I mean that, you know,
Speaker 3: I think I think one has to be careful with
Speaker 3: those comparisons, and it might be concerning enough that we
Speaker 3: seem to be losing decades of progress.
Speaker 2: On some issues, right, yep.
Speaker 3: I mean there was the other president, which is you know,
Speaker 3: do you know who Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 2: Used on ABC.
Speaker 4: I don't remember Bill Maher because Bill Maher's politically incorrect
Speaker 4: got canceled because he said the nine to eleven terrorists
Speaker 4: were courageous and we.
Speaker 3: Are not lobbying cruise missiles from thousands of miles away, right.
Speaker 3: He said that like seven days after nine eleven. It
Speaker 3: was litigated in the press for a much longer time.
Speaker 2: Eventually his show was.
Speaker 3: Let lapse, and then he went to HBO and I'm
Speaker 3: sure made lots of money and became more than ye
Speaker 3: you know, part of cancelation. And now I want to
Speaker 3: be clear, I thought that their cancel culture was a
Speaker 3: thing that liberals I call them progressives because it's a
Speaker 3: very illiberal attitude, right, that progressives really were bloodthirsty for
Speaker 3: a number of years kind of picking in the year
Speaker 3: twenty twenty or so, I thought it was an embarrassment
Speaker 3: to the liberal tradition of free speech. I think there
Speaker 3: hetty and jealous, and they don't understand how in a
Speaker 3: relatively free country that when you suppress speech, it usually
Speaker 3: only makes it more compelling and like and more powerful. Right,
Speaker 3: And they thought they could contain the information ecosystem.
Speaker 2: They accomplished nothing that they wanted.
Speaker 3: And you know, they have direct moral responsibility for contributing
Speaker 3: to a climate in which free speech is compromised. With
Speaker 3: that said, Maria, as you said, people have always been
Speaker 3: hypocritical about free speech. The definition's always been contingent and
Speaker 3: evolving in practice, right. And so you know, if you
Speaker 3: were around for September eleventh when Bill mahrg got canceled,
Speaker 3: the Dixie Chicks and Phil Donahue and and other you
Speaker 3: know people, you know you're not like, you're not surprised
Speaker 3: very much by by any of this.
Speaker 2: And now if I'm Trump, now it's my turn. Now
Speaker 2: it's my turn.
Speaker 3: And I felt, I think justifiably, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of bullshit from progressives when they were in power, right,
Speaker 3: and we went rever right and by the way, I
Speaker 3: don't think progressives have often stood up for like the
Speaker 3: higher minded principles either, right, they don't think like good
Speaker 3: poker players, where it's like, okay, what is the equilibrium
Speaker 3: If everybody adopts this attitude, it's kind of contient, like
Speaker 3: the golden rule, right, have decided to get along, if
Speaker 3: you know, literally just put yourself in the person's shoes
Speaker 3: and say, eventually your public is going to win back
Speaker 3: in office. And by the way, eventually we'll be a
Speaker 3: Democrat back in office, maybe in in I guess for
Speaker 3: early in Trump term three and a half years, right,
Speaker 3: you know, turnabout will be fair play then, But like
Speaker 3: perpetually you're losing it.
Speaker 1: No, I think that we forget that. We forget that
Speaker 1: free speech was created to protect speech we don't like,
Speaker 1: but not speech that we agree with. People forget this
Speaker 1: all the time. They're like, yes, free speech. Wait, you
Speaker 1: said something that I disagree with. You can't say that.
Speaker 1: And we've said this on the show before, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to constantly give you history lessons, but
Speaker 1: remember we talked about Skochie, Illinois, Nate and kind of
Speaker 1: and the ACLU on this show before. For people who
Speaker 1: missed that episode. I was basically kind of a case
Speaker 1: that went to the Supreme Court that involved letting neo
Speaker 1: Nazis march in a Jewish in a predominantly Jewish community,
Speaker 1: and the ACL you took it on, and I remember,
Speaker 1: I still remember learning about that and being like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: Like fuck those guys. But yes, like you have to
Speaker 1: protect the speech that you most disagree with, because that's
Speaker 1: the whole point, right, that is what free speech means.
Speaker 1: It means that we can disagree. It means that we
Speaker 1: can have civil discourse. It means that we can all
Speaker 1: have all of these different ideas, and it's okay. So
Speaker 1: I actually nate agree with you that, you know, the
Speaker 1: liberals went way too far. I think this was the
Speaker 1: case in academia, you know. I think this was the
Speaker 1: case at my alma mater, Harvard, where certain professors lost
Speaker 1: their jobs right for I was saying idea, you know,
Speaker 1: for engaging in research that was not politically correct, and
Speaker 1: that's not what academia is about. As long as you
Speaker 1: are not academically dishonest, as long as you're actually kind
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out what the truth is, you know,
Speaker 1: you're allowed to hold different opinions. But I think that
Speaker 1: as you say, this isn't like we've devolved, like this
Speaker 1: is horrifying, like that this is now the spiral right,
Speaker 1: and instead you need to kind of reset and go
Speaker 1: back to those first principles and say, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: free speech, we're for it. The Supreme Court has to
Speaker 1: say this country is for free speech, and the FCC
Speaker 1: can't be threatening licenses because of something somebody said that
Speaker 1: they don't like, and we can't be in a climate,
Speaker 1: you know. After that, Trump doubled down and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't criticize the president. If we don't
Speaker 1: like you or you say something bad about me, there
Speaker 1: are going to be consequences. I mean, it's insane right
Speaker 1: for a president to say that, But we're at the
Speaker 1: point where people there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: don't think it's insane and who are like, yeah, serves
Speaker 1: you right, you shouldn't criticize the president. And the funniest
Speaker 1: thing is what has prompted this whole conversation is the
Speaker 1: death of Charlie Kirk, who I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know him and I didn't know much about him
Speaker 1: until he died. To be perfectly honest, But I think
Speaker 1: he would be someone who actually would be opposed to
Speaker 1: all of this because he was a proponent of free speech.
Speaker 3: No, and you know a lot of these videos have
Speaker 3: circulated on social media of him, like debating on college
Speaker 3: campus is kind of like his big thing, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, he he was good at that. And the
Speaker 3: whole idea was it's an open for him, come debate me,
Speaker 3: bro right, and like here, I'll get myself in trouble
Speaker 3: with probably only a very small fraction or audience. Right,
Speaker 3: you know, there aren't that many I don't think super
Speaker 3: eloquent spokespeople for the Trumpian movement. Okay, and yet half
Speaker 3: the country forty nine point nine percent, he won the
Speaker 3: popular vote. You know, half the country voted for it
Speaker 3: last time. And like and like, you know, you have
Speaker 3: to live in that world. And if you're not going to, like,
Speaker 3: you know, give a platform to Ben Shapiro or Charlie kan,
Speaker 3: who the fuck are you going to give a plat
Speaker 3: form too? You know what I mean, you have to
Speaker 3: be willing to have you know, again, I believe in
Speaker 3: speech broadly, not I just don't think of speech as
Speaker 3: the free amendment. But I believe in like we have
Speaker 3: to have a more tolerant tolerance is a word I
Speaker 3: would use, right, A more tolerant ecosystem for disagreement.
Speaker 1: Absolutely more tolerant. And I would also say kinder right
Speaker 1: where your knee jerk reaction isn't like fuck this person.
Speaker 1: But okay, you know this doesn't sound right to me,
Speaker 1: But where are you coming from? Like to try to understand,
Speaker 1: to at least try to come from a place of
Speaker 1: kindness and not a place of pitchforks, and like, let's
Speaker 1: burn you down, which is I think, you know, to
Speaker 1: bring this back to Kimmel, which is I think the
Speaker 1: natural end of all of this rhetoric is, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to burn you down, and we're going to
Speaker 1: remove you from the air, and we're going to threaten
Speaker 1: the license of your parent company, and we're going to
Speaker 1: show you whose boss. And as you started off you
Speaker 1: know the segment by saying, Nate, you know, this is
Speaker 1: authoritarianism with a capital A one oh one, right, Like
Speaker 1: this is the playbook? Like this is what you do
Speaker 1: is you take opposition, You take things that you don't
Speaker 1: agree with, and instead of tolerating them having discourse, you
Speaker 1: just remove it, you say no, and then you remove
Speaker 1: the people and next step jail right like that, that's
Speaker 1: what happens. Next you start jailing the journalist. You don't
Speaker 1: just remove them from air. And this has happened in
Speaker 1: the United States before, and we had come a long
Speaker 1: long way since then, and now it seems like we're
Speaker 1: devolving again. The United States has been falling right on
Speaker 1: all of the rankings of freedom of press and freedom
Speaker 1: of society, all of those global rankings. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the United States has gone from being a leader to
Speaker 1: you know, in some cases, falling out of the top ten.
Speaker 1: And that's not where you want to be going. We'll
Speaker 1: be back right after this. Like I said, we're taping
Speaker 1: this on Monday, and I'm very curious to know what
Speaker 1: Kimmel is going to sound like when he comes on
Speaker 1: the air, because there's also, as we talked about last
Speaker 1: week Nate chilling effects right and self censorship, and you
Speaker 1: can imagine a future where people are like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to tread really lightly and not talk
Speaker 1: about certain people and not talk about certain topics and
Speaker 1: engage in self censorship, which people have been doing for
Speaker 1: a number of years. And I think that happened with
Speaker 1: the first wave of actual cancel culture. I just I
Speaker 1: keep wanting to stress that the Kimmel thing is different
Speaker 1: because it was coming from the FCC. So that's censorship.
Speaker 1: That's media censorship, which is a very different thing.
Speaker 3: It's different. I mean there are you know, different does
Speaker 3: not necessarily mean worse or better. I mean, I feel
Speaker 3: like people are like.
Speaker 1: In this case, I think it means worse. I understand
Speaker 1: that word does not, but I think government censorship is
Speaker 1: worse than well.
Speaker 3: I kind of believe in the fourth estate in a
Speaker 3: sense of like media both kind of upper highbrow media
Speaker 3: meaning like the New York Times and publications like that,
Speaker 3: and kind of lower media like mass entertainment. Like you know,
Speaker 3: they have a lot of shared cultural powers, like I don't.
Speaker 3: I think they're equal to a branch of government de
Speaker 3: facto in terms of the amount of power they have
Speaker 3: and when they act in unison, right, when you organize
Speaker 3: attemps to cancel people that may originate, you know, from
Speaker 3: progressive to now them a livelihood, like I I it's different.
Speaker 2: It's probably less capital a authoritarian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also awful, Like I I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say anything nice about the Jeff Bezoss of
Speaker 1: the world. Don't get me wrong, I think that it's
Speaker 1: really scary on that level too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, I would like to see more liberals,
Speaker 3: especially they want to have the moral hot ground. If
Speaker 3: progressors want to say, we're just in a fucking wrestling
Speaker 3: match with the GOP and will win through not brute force,
Speaker 3: but will win a maybe we're we think we're smarter,
Speaker 3: will win a tactically battle or whatever else. Right, you know,
Speaker 3: I would like to say I've seen a couple like
Speaker 3: Abby Phillip, who was an anchor on CNN right, had
Speaker 3: a good segment about this.
Speaker 2: But like, I would like to see more liberals say
Speaker 2: we fucked.
Speaker 3: Up, right, we fucked up by abandoning free speech as
Speaker 3: a principle, by pretending. You know, all these people that
Speaker 3: do the cancel and they never have any heterodox quote
Speaker 3: unquote opinions themselves, right, they always like have tuikie cutter
Speaker 3: opinions because they're not Actually, I mean, I don't like
Speaker 3: these people, so I'm not going to say anything overly generous, right,
Speaker 3: you know, I think a lot of people formulate their
Speaker 3: political beliefs because of pure pressure.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And one of the problems with journalism and kind of
Speaker 3: the liberal academy more broadly is like, and that includes
Speaker 3: a lot of fucking lonely souls who who are looking
Speaker 3: to be joiners, right, And I'm I'm against that, you know.
Speaker 3: I think if you've never pissed an audience off or
Speaker 3: your own audience off, then like, how can you have
Speaker 3: lived in a very complicated world like we live in
Speaker 3: for you know, decades and not at some point had
Speaker 3: an opinion that differed from your tribe?
Speaker 2: Right? You know, that's totally fine if you each want
Speaker 2: to go in like and open a.
Speaker 3: Nice little you know, pasta restaurant or something and get
Speaker 3: along with your customers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But if you're a political commentator and you've never said
Speaker 3: anything that pisses someone off, then you are fucking like
Speaker 3: terrible at your job. You shouldn't be canceled scent upliveing cancelation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But like, but you just tell that you don't have
Speaker 3: any independent minded opinions and if you always align with
Speaker 3: one party, the parties are these weird monstrosities. It's like
Speaker 3: saying I think that like PEPSI coo everything that It's
Speaker 3: like being a fanily of like PepsiCo or Coca Cola
Speaker 3: or something. Right, Like, everything this gigantic, faciless corporation makes
Speaker 3: is the best thing on earth. Right, It's you know,
Speaker 3: that's what the political parties are. They're these kind of mediocre,
Speaker 3: gigantic brands that are trying to cater to the mass
Speaker 3: consumer and are pretty darn good at it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But like, but you're just being a fanboy if you're
Speaker 3: always on the always advocating the party line.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, absolutely, you're being a brown spokesperson. I think
Speaker 1: actually the the uh tie that you made to like
Speaker 1: coke or Pepsi or something like that is a really
Speaker 1: good one. Right, You're just being a brand spokesperson for
Speaker 1: the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And this is
Speaker 1: why this is something that you and I talk about
Speaker 1: on the show frequently. I don't think either one of
Speaker 1: us likes the two party system. One of the main
Speaker 1: problems I have with it is that it discourages independent thinking.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Too many people are like, oh, i'm a this, I'm
Speaker 1: a that you apply the label and then you figure
Speaker 1: out what do I think based on that, not what
Speaker 1: do I think? Therefore, what do you know who do
Speaker 1: I support people don't get that granular, or of course
Speaker 1: some people do. But that kind of critical independent thinking
Speaker 1: is something that we should be encouraging, we should be fostering.
Speaker 1: We should be creating a culture where people are rewarded
Speaker 1: for heterodoxy, not for its own sake, but just for
Speaker 1: having their own mind and for being able to say
Speaker 1: what they think. And there are you know, you can agree,
Speaker 1: you can disagree, but yeah, we should be living in
Speaker 1: a society where people think for themselves. And this is
Speaker 1: something that both parties are absolutely to blame for, and
Speaker 1: we are not in a good place right now. So
Speaker 1: I really hope that everyone comes to their senses, including
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, that we actually start supporting free speech
Speaker 1: and what it actually means right, which means that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Kimmel could have fucked up something that he said and
Speaker 1: then said, oh, you know, this wasn't actually true, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't removed from the air. It's kind of that
Speaker 1: sort of a culture, as opposed to one where we
Speaker 1: start getting threats and trying to strong arm people into
Speaker 1: cow towing whatever the party line happens to be right,
Speaker 1: which could be liberal and it could be Republican and
Speaker 1: it could be either one. I think that that's such
Speaker 1: an incredibly dangerous moment. It really does bring me back
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union and that is not a good feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and usould create more sigma for cowardice.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know there were some people like in
Speaker 3: the whole Charlie kirk Kimmel thing, I mean, like you
Speaker 3: know Ted Cruz of all people.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was about to say I actually agreed with
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz for once in my life. I was like,
Speaker 1: what is happening, Ted, Crew? Like this is bad?
Speaker 3: You probably are more familiar with the research on this, right,
Speaker 3: But like when when a small number of people who
Speaker 3: are influential or actually have something to lose, right when
Speaker 3: they speak up. You know, even Michael Eisner, the former
Speaker 3: CEO of Disney, I don't know if he's a friend
Speaker 3: of me with Bob byker or right, but he said,
Speaker 3: what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 2: Bob?
Speaker 3: Right, And like, I'm sure that's you know, Disney's company,
Speaker 3: where people are usually pretty nice, right, And so that
Speaker 3: might have had an influence too, Right.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a lot of research on that night. It's
Speaker 1: a very good point, and yes, all it takes is
Speaker 1: one even just one influential voice, and that can completely
Speaker 1: change the dynamic and what people feel empowered to say
Speaker 1: or do. But this is a really interesting topic and
Speaker 1: I think one that we are going to keep revisiting
Speaker 1: on this show. And I hope Nate that our show
Speaker 1: is still on the air even if we say something
Speaker 1: that you know, the FCC might not like.
Speaker 2: What's your most cancelable opinion? See, that's like a question
Speaker 2: you can answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's come back to that. I think that'll
Speaker 1: be an interesting and interesting segment. No, I actually I
Speaker 1: think that that is an interesting segment.
Speaker 2: What's the most cansful opinion?
Speaker 3: That It's like, it's actually your seventh most canceful opinion
Speaker 3: probably you know what I.
Speaker 2: Mean, right right?
Speaker 1: You have to do the game theory of that and
Speaker 1: you have to play that out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: We hope you feel more educated about free speech, which
Speaker 1: is something that really is core to risky business and
Speaker 1: to our ability to have this show, and to me
Speaker 1: as an ex Soviet immigrant, it's something near and dear
Speaker 1: to my heart. So good luck, Jimmy Kimmel. I hope
Speaker 1: that your return to the air was a good one.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think of the show reach
Speaker 1: out to Us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and by.
Speaker 2: Me Nate Silvery.
Speaker 3: The show was a cool production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 3: is Sonia gerwit Lydia, Jean Kott and daphnew Chen are
Speaker 3: our editors, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1: If you like this show, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: so other people can find us too, but once again,
Speaker 1: only if you like us. We don't want those bad
Speaker 1: reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.