Speaker 1: Well, good Monday morning, Welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Chuck Podcast. I really want to be uplifting. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie to you, but first of all, even in
Speaker 1: my even in the world of lightness, meaning my sports fandom,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling down in the dumps thanks to the Nats
Speaker 1: getting swept by the Freakin' Marlins, the forkin' Marlins. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get this rant out of the way really fast,
Speaker 1: but let me just say, as much as I love
Speaker 1: Davey Martinez, it's time to go. It is time to go.
Speaker 1: We need a house cleaning with the Gnats. It's pretty
Speaker 1: clear this coaching staff and these players are not connecting,
Speaker 1: and he threw the players under the bus over the weekend.
Speaker 2: It's bad. So I say.
Speaker 1: This, this is the lightest thing I'm going to talk about,
Speaker 1: because we are obviously living into some a very very
Speaker 1: dark period. So if you are listening this on a
Speaker 1: Monday morning, it is painfully obvious. But the world and
Speaker 1: this country are in desperate need of presidential leadership, and
Speaker 1: we're about to find out whether Donald Trump is up
Speaker 1: to the moment. And I'm saying it that way because
Speaker 1: we almost have no choice, because I know many of
Speaker 1: you don't believe he's up to the moment. I know
Speaker 1: many of you believe he's caused all these moments. I'm
Speaker 1: a huge skeptic myself. But here's the reality. We don't
Speaker 1: get to pick a different president just because the moment
Speaker 1: feels bigger than the man in office. At least, we
Speaker 1: don't get to pick one yet. You only get one
Speaker 1: president at a time. And when you consider the two
Speaker 1: biggest stories dominating the globe right now, growing unrest in
Speaker 1: the United States and a spiraling hot war in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, both require someone who can lower the temperature.
Speaker 1: And right now there's only one person who who can
Speaker 1: do this if he so chooses, and it is Donald
Speaker 1: John Trump. Ironically, he may be more inclined to try
Speaker 1: to turn the temperature down overseas before he ever considers
Speaker 1: that doing it here at home. And I'll get to
Speaker 1: that Sunday Night on my new program for Newsphere, the
Speaker 1: app Sunday Nights with Chuck Todd. Please take a look
Speaker 1: get the Free trial right now you can catch up
Speaker 1: with the ban and interview in this My latest interview
Speaker 1: is with Treta Parsi. He's written three books on Israel
Speaker 1: and Iran. He's easily one of the most sober clinically
Speaker 1: minded journalists and observers of that region and conflict you
Speaker 1: can find deeply sourced in Jerusalem and Tehran. And he
Speaker 1: made one thing clear in our conversation. There's only one
Speaker 1: person who can bring this war to an end right now,
Speaker 1: and it's Donald Trump. Because if the American President can't
Speaker 1: pull the right levers, no one else can in that region.
Speaker 1: No one else can get both either Iran or Israel
Speaker 1: to pull back from the break here. And yet you
Speaker 1: do have a situation where Trump's political base is not
Speaker 1: exactly looking for more political, more foreign entanglements. You could
Speaker 1: argue that Trump rose to power taking over the Republican
Speaker 1: Party by attacking the neo conservative foreign policy of the
Speaker 1: Bush Romney wing, or frankly, the Eisenhower Romney foreign policy
Speaker 1: consensus that has dominated Republican politics for a couple of generations.
Speaker 1: He branded Bush era interventionism as a failure, and he
Speaker 1: turned much of the GOP against it. His America first
Speaker 1: instincts are now baked into his coalition, particularly when it
Speaker 1: comes to Ukraine, for instance. And we're going to find
Speaker 1: out about Iran it is a different ballgame, but it
Speaker 1: may be similar feelings about it. Some of Trump's biggest
Speaker 1: donors and even some of his business partners in the
Speaker 1: region are actually strongly supportive of Israel's campaign to weaken Iran,
Speaker 1: but not the active rank and file base, the ones
Speaker 1: that buy into America First and a bit of the isolationism.
Speaker 1: And it's been interesting to watch Trump over the last
Speaker 1: seventy two hours. He claimed that since he is the
Speaker 1: only one, it's interesting here and this whole idea is
Speaker 1: violating his America First policies. Well, he was asked this
Speaker 1: earlier on Sunday and he said he was the only one.
Speaker 1: He says, well, considering that I'm the one that developed
Speaker 1: America First, and he put that in quotes, and considering
Speaker 1: that the term wasn't used until I came along, I
Speaker 1: think I'm the one that decides that, meaning what falls
Speaker 1: under the American First umbrella. Now, Donald Trump, obviously no
Speaker 1: student of history isn't fully either isn't aware or chooses
Speaker 1: not to be aware that America First was a big
Speaker 1: movement inside the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: So he is simply borrowing something that existed before rebranding
Speaker 1: it as his and claiming no one's ever invented a
Speaker 1: political movement like this. So the bottom line is, though,
Speaker 1: is that what it does tell you is that he's
Speaker 1: going to try to whatever he ends up doing, he's
Speaker 1: going to try to sell his base that this is
Speaker 1: a good thing and that this falls under America First.
Speaker 1: So that may explain why you've seen a bit of
Speaker 1: whiplash with Trump, while so him quickly praise what appeared
Speaker 1: to be an early Israeli success. Right, the decapitation strike
Speaker 1: on the military leadership of Iran felt like we were
Speaker 1: seeing a rerun of what happened with Hesbola. But the strike,
Speaker 1: while lethal, wasn't necessarily decapitating. Right, the nuclear program remains intact,
Speaker 1: and now the war threatens to escalate, and there doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to be a clear exit strategy because you now
Speaker 1: have domestic you have domestic influences on both Iran and
Speaker 1: Iran's leaders and Israel's leaders that are going to essentially,
Speaker 1: I think, prevent a quick walk back, not without the
Speaker 1: intervention of the United States. Now here's the hard truth.
Speaker 1: Israel could cannot finish this mission by themselves. They lack
Speaker 1: those bunk or busting capability bombs that are capable of
Speaker 1: destroying Iran's underground nuclear sites. They have to get US
Speaker 1: firepower to do that, and without it, this conflict I
Speaker 1: don't know how it ends. And I'll tell you. If
Speaker 1: the US gets in, how do they get out? How
Speaker 1: do we get out? We've been down this road before.
Speaker 1: Now there's a growing sense and no one really knows
Speaker 1: what's going on. Did the United States give Israel a
Speaker 1: green light or not? Did we think the threat of
Speaker 1: Israeli action would bring around to the negotiating table? Were
Speaker 1: we leading around on while giving Israel space to strike?
Speaker 1: Are we active players in this or were we passive bystanders.
Speaker 1: Whatever we were may not matter. It's what is perceived
Speaker 1: and believed in the region that may matter more. Here
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that for now, this ambiguity is intentional
Speaker 1: by the United States. Our government is trying to have
Speaker 1: it both ways, cheerleading success if Israel prevails, denying involvement
Speaker 1: if things go sideways. In fact, that's sort of a
Speaker 1: Trump staple on most things in life that he's tried
Speaker 1: to deal with, and that's part of the trust deficit
Speaker 1: though we're all experiencing. Middle East is long in a
Speaker 1: place where truth is and perception is weaponized. But now
Speaker 1: that sense of confusion is creeping into our domestic life,
Speaker 1: and I want to get to that as well. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Donald Trump's at the center of both.
Speaker 1: In the Middle East, he could very well be the
Speaker 1: person to broker peace, strange as that may sound, but
Speaker 1: here at home, it's increasingly clear he's been a driver
Speaker 1: of instability, not a buffer against it. Take immigration. His
Speaker 1: latest round of aggressive deportation tactics sparked protests nationwide, particularly
Speaker 1: though in Los Angeles. But behind the scenes now he's
Speaker 1: pulling back, pressured by agricultural and hospitality interest warning of
Speaker 1: dire economic consequences for their industries. Translations, we don't get
Speaker 1: our food supply without migrants, and you don't get your
Speaker 1: bed made at hotels without migrants. Apparently that includes some
Speaker 1: of his own backers, hotel owners, something he's familiar with,
Speaker 1: and farm and the farm corporations, people who rely on
Speaker 1: that undocumented labor to keep their businesses afloat. Here's the
Speaker 1: economic reality. Farmers are reporting shortages and harvest cruz crops
Speaker 1: are at risk of rotting and fields. Meat processors are
Speaker 1: already warning of bottlenecks, and as we head into the
Speaker 1: summer travel season, resorts in hotels and tourist towns are
Speaker 1: facing major staffing shortfalls. Guests are already noticing longer waits,
Speaker 1: fewer amenities, and rising costs, all due to essentially a
Speaker 1: choice in how Donald Trump's gone about deportation. And that's
Speaker 1: just the political fight. It's also a supply chain crisis
Speaker 1: in the making, and the president knows it. So it's
Speaker 1: quiet backpedaling while avoiding public acknowledgment. Sort of is a
Speaker 1: contradiction between his populis rhetoric and his business first impulses.
Speaker 1: He needs the tough talk to energize his base, but
Speaker 1: he can't afford the economic fallout that comes with actually
Speaker 1: falling through. In this case, the business world is cheering
Speaker 1: for Taco Trump. They want Trump to taco i e.
Speaker 1: You know, the acronym Trump always chickens out. They're desperate
Speaker 1: for him to chicken out on this immigration stuff. Look,
Speaker 1: and considering what we went through last week and what
Speaker 1: happened between Homeland Security and that security detail and the
Speaker 1: US Senator Alex Padilla, none of this what was a
Speaker 1: net positive for him, the immigration and being aggressive with
Speaker 1: these tactics is going to start to turn south on him.
Speaker 2: And then there's Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Two elected Democrats are gonne down and what now appears
Speaker 1: to be a politically motivated attack. The alleged shooter apparently
Speaker 1: had a list of dozens of names of other Democratic
Speaker 1: officials over seventy You would think a story like this
Speaker 1: would stop us all on our tracks, But in a
Speaker 1: week like this, I honestly don't know if anything can
Speaker 1: sort of sober us up or make us go wait
Speaker 1: a minute, we've got to change something here. We still
Speaker 1: have the detail, We still are looking for the details.
Speaker 1: As of my conversation here, we still hadn't gotten the guy.
Speaker 1: But there's a familiarity to this, and least of what
Speaker 1: we've known about the suspect, it has the hallmarks.
Speaker 2: Of some thing we've seen before.
Speaker 1: The Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the country music festival
Speaker 1: massacre in Las Vegas in particular, both very heinous acts
Speaker 1: committed by older men, middle aged men radicalized apparently online.
Speaker 2: We don't quite know that about the Vegas guy.
Speaker 1: We do know that on the Tree of Life guy,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to imagine with this won't be the
Speaker 1: case with this Minnesota assassin, with what's happening online, right,
Speaker 1: And look, I know there is this sense of, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, these guys are crazy people. Rhetoric's just rhetoric.
Speaker 1: But we know crazy people get triggered by rhetoric. And
Speaker 1: here's the uncomfortable pattern. The politically motivated violence in this
Speaker 1: country has been more often coming from the right than
Speaker 1: the left.
Speaker 2: Now, the right.
Speaker 1: Ecosystem will respond and attack me. For instance, I was
Speaker 1: saying this by trying to equate violence from protests with
Speaker 1: the same violence from these radicalized assassin But the two
Speaker 1: are not the same. Right one is collective outrage that
Speaker 1: can sometimes spiral into chaos because bad actors infiltrate the
Speaker 1: other's premeditated, premeditated political murder. Ten X, I'm sorry than anything,
Speaker 1: you can equate with what happened, whether you want to
Speaker 1: equate during the George Floyd protests or what we've seen
Speaker 1: with these other protests, and the distinction matters a lot.
Speaker 1: So look, and let me accept the premise of the
Speaker 1: right wing for a minute. In fact, let's say you
Speaker 1: are on the right and you believe the left is
Speaker 1: a more violent political movement than you are. Then it
Speaker 1: should be all the more reason to condemn this action
Speaker 1: in Minnesota with even more vigor and more outrage, because
Speaker 1: if you believe this is not becoming of the right wing,
Speaker 1: this is not becoming of the conservative movement in some ways,
Speaker 1: there should be more outrage from the right about this.
Speaker 1: A whole bunch of what about is because one of
Speaker 1: the things that drives me batshit crazy when it comes
Speaker 1: to our political debate is the number of people that
Speaker 1: justify their bad actions by pointing to the other side.
Speaker 1: Nobody seems to want to live by the adage of
Speaker 1: two wrongs don't.
Speaker 3: Make a right.
Speaker 1: And look, it's pretty clear Donald Trump is not interested
Speaker 1: in lowering the temperature. Let me quote from you. Let
Speaker 1: me quote you what he said on Sunday when asked
Speaker 1: about the situation of Minnesota. The President said, well, that's
Speaker 1: a terrible thing. Then he's referring to Tim Walls. I
Speaker 1: think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly
Speaker 1: incompetent person. But I may I may call him, I
Speaker 1: may call other people too.
Speaker 2: The question was about whether.
Speaker 1: He was going to call the governor of Minnesota think
Speaker 1: about just let me read this statement again.
Speaker 2: This is again.
Speaker 1: In the last forty eight hours, Tim Walls finds out
Speaker 1: two people he worked quite closely with were gunned down
Speaker 1: by an assassin a bunch of friends. He's probably on
Speaker 1: this target list as well. We don't know that for sure.
Speaker 1: Tina Smith, the US Senator, said she's on the list,
Speaker 1: but a slew of Democrats are on the list. Pretty
Speaker 1: Much every elected official in Minnesota is scared assless. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump says the following. I think he's a
Speaker 1: terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But
Speaker 1: I may I may call him, I may call other
Speaker 1: people too. In the pre Trump era, moment like this
Speaker 1: might prompt an American president to give a unifying speech,
Speaker 1: maybe even a prime time speech. We got to turn
Speaker 1: the temperature down. But the president isn't going to do this.
Speaker 1: It's not this president because confrontation is his comfort zone.
Speaker 1: Reflection is not in his rhetorical playbook, and he won't
Speaker 1: accept the premise that he has contributed to this atmosphere.
Speaker 2: That we're all living in.
Speaker 1: Okay, I could argue and make a strong case that
Speaker 1: he is he is the instigator here, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to accept the premise that there are more than one instigators.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. He chose to be president of
Speaker 1: the United States of all Americans, and I know he
Speaker 1: only wants to govern for his base, but this is
Speaker 1: a moment where if he doesn't do it, we're on
Speaker 1: the precipice and we all are feeling this way. One
Speaker 1: spark feels like it's going to set us off into
Speaker 1: some explosive, horrendous moment. Now, none of this is playing
Speaker 1: well for him politically. In fact, you actually saw that
Speaker 1: on display at as military theme birthday parade this weekend.
Speaker 1: Whether was grim, crowd was thin, and the mood was flat. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the No King's protests drew thousands from coast to coast.
Speaker 1: A lot of those protests were also in the rain,
Speaker 1: and yet they showed up for those might be the
Speaker 1: clearest signal yet where the political energy in this country
Speaker 1: is heading. And that's the thing, you know. The irony
Speaker 1: here is that if Donald Trump would accept the tiniest bit,
Speaker 1: except the tiny his bed of the premise that he
Speaker 1: is participating and contributing to this current unstable political environment,
Speaker 1: he could buy himself some political some political lifelines here.
Speaker 1: A little bit he could, it would turn the temperature
Speaker 1: down and would give him an opportunity to try to
Speaker 1: try to actually heal politically. But he's going to go
Speaker 1: down this road, and this isn't going to this isn't
Speaker 1: going to live well. Look, I lived through this cycle myself.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, I had to wake up to the
Speaker 1: news of a man who mailed pipe bombs to CNN,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others. Turned out, he had
Speaker 1: my face on his van literally with a group of
Speaker 1: four of the reporters that were considered the quote enemy
Speaker 1: of the people, a phrase that of course he got
Speaker 1: and was inspired by Donald Trump. It was that phrase
Speaker 1: all came from him, and all of this man's rhetoric
Speaker 1: came from him. I'm not saying Donald Trump ordered this
Speaker 1: crazy man to attack members of the press, democratic office holders,
Speaker 1: but he is creating an environment and is inspiring weak
Speaker 1: minded individuals who are a bit broken, who take his
Speaker 1: words literally and seriously and in some cases act upon them.
Speaker 1: And not once has this man has ever acknowledged the
Speaker 1: role he's done in there. And you know, I had
Speaker 1: to be honest, I still to this day was not
Speaker 1: comforted when I got visited by the FBI inform me, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, this guy targeted you. This is what's
Speaker 1: happening to all these elected officials in Minnesota. They're getting
Speaker 1: a visit from the FBI to let them know he's
Speaker 1: on their list. You know what all that does is dud.
Speaker 1: It's like, g thanks, Now, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 1: What we just want to let you know and what
Speaker 1: it is, it's the FBI doing a little cya. But look,
Speaker 1: he has created an environment of violence. Right, he pardoned
Speaker 1: the January sixth rioters, right if he didn't believe, if
Speaker 1: he thought political violence was wrong, He never pardons those folks,
Speaker 1: but he sent a clear message political violence is tolerable
Speaker 1: if the target is your enemy. That's the message he
Speaker 1: sent with those pardons. And you know, you live in
Speaker 1: a world where you reap what you sew. And what's
Speaker 1: not fair is that state representative. She didn't do this,
Speaker 1: She didn't create these conditions. This crazy man was whipped
Speaker 1: up and he's responding to a whipped up political environment.
Speaker 1: And it's a whipped up political environment led by one man.
Speaker 1: Now here's the thing he can tone it down. He
Speaker 1: has the ability to do this if he wants to
Speaker 1: be president of a country that doesn't hate each other
Speaker 1: and isn't on the brink of some sort of hot war.
Speaker 1: But he is creating a terrible situation. And this is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's morally wrong, and it's how republics fall.
Speaker 1: And here's another thing, considering that the president was a
Speaker 1: target himself of an assassination attempt and a second assassin
Speaker 1: that seemed to be stalking him, that he could be
Speaker 1: speaking to this issue with credibility, with a kind of
Speaker 1: a different kind of credibility. Unfortunately, as somebody who has
Speaker 1: felt this moment, and it clearly impacted him for a
Speaker 1: period of time, So it almost makes it even more
Speaker 1: head scratching and more frustrating that he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Speak to this moment.
Speaker 1: Finally, I want to end on a thought that's been
Speaker 1: haunting me all week. As we've witnessed some of these
Speaker 1: historically horrific moments, we've entered what I call an Orwellian moment,
Speaker 1: and easily I think the last week was the most
Speaker 1: Orwellian week we've lived in the Trump era. Because you
Speaker 1: go online and you don't know which images are real,
Speaker 1: You can't trust what you see what you read or
Speaker 1: even what you think you know. In Los Angeles, manipulated videos,
Speaker 1: AI generated vote photos, They spread confusion, and they did
Speaker 1: so faster than any fact check could catch up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had to use my own network of people in
Speaker 1: LA that I trust to really understand what was going on.
Speaker 1: You could not trust what you saw online. And that
Speaker 1: is a scary moment. And we know there are professional
Speaker 1: propagandas out there. Some of them are domestic who just
Speaker 1: are trying for clicks. Some are funded by foreign adversaries
Speaker 1: like russ of China, north of Korea, and they flood
Speaker 1: the zone with all of this junk. And the goal
Speaker 1: is in persuasion. It's paralysis. If they can make everything
Speaker 1: feel a bit unknowable, then nothing can be acted upon
Speaker 1: canon And when the public no longer trusts what it sees,
Speaker 1: when truth itself feels up for grabs, that's when democratic
Speaker 1: systems start to wabble. We're watching that unfold right now.
Speaker 1: The chaos in LA this week felt like a test
Speaker 1: run for that uncertainty. And it's not just by the way.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen to the garbage writer that Christy Nome used.
Speaker 1: She was talking about liberating Los Angeles from some socialists.
Speaker 1: What the fork is she talking about? And can you
Speaker 1: imagine if Ali Mayorcis said something about liberating a Texas
Speaker 1: town from its racist tendencies or something like that. This
Speaker 1: is insane rhetoric being used by a cabinet official, and
Speaker 1: not just any cabinet official, a very important one, all right,
Speaker 1: I would you know, no offense to laborhood, but DHS
Speaker 1: is one of the big five after Treasury, State, Pentagon,
Speaker 1: and Attorney General, and I have that kind of sloppy rhetoric,
Speaker 1: ridiculous rhetoric. And it was a sentence that was said
Speaker 1: right before her security detailed tackled Senator Alex Badia. Anyway, Look,
Speaker 1: it's not just a domestic problem. By the way, this
Speaker 1: issue of this Orwellian moment we're living and we've had
Speaker 1: this same cloud of ambiguity over the role over our
Speaker 1: role in the Israel Iran conflicts. I told you before,
Speaker 1: did we help, did we know? Are we responsible? Nobody
Speaker 1: seems to know for sure, and that ambiguity again, may
Speaker 1: it may help short term for us politically, long term,
Speaker 1: no one knows what's going on. This used to be
Speaker 1: the kind of uncertainty you'd only expect in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: or you might expect in Moscow or Beijing, authoritarian places.
Speaker 1: But now it's here. It's in Los Angeles, it's in Washington,
Speaker 1: it's in your Twitter or TikTok feed. And when the
Speaker 1: public's instinct is to say I don't know what to believe,
Speaker 1: that is when you know the democracy itself is extraordinarily vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to believe is a phrase you
Speaker 1: hear all the time in Russia, all the time. So no,
Speaker 1: this wasn't the uplifting, feel good Father's Day PostScript I
Speaker 1: was hoping for.
Speaker 2: But here we are.
Speaker 1: The world is unstable, our country is unsettled, and the
Speaker 1: one person who may be able to calm things down
Speaker 1: is also the one person who's helped stoke this fire.
Speaker 1: I think he might try to else the flames abroad.
Speaker 1: I fear he has no interest in doing it here
Speaker 1: at home. So on that uplifting note, I actually have
Speaker 1: a fun and I would hope to think. Actually a
Speaker 1: slightly more uplifting conversation. It's with Mike Pesca. He's the
Speaker 1: man behind the gist. You may be longtime listeners of
Speaker 1: him on Slady to Me He's like an original podcaster.
Speaker 1: He was doing it before anybody thought it was that
Speaker 1: cool to do it. His Gist substack is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, It's smart, and MY favorite thing about Mike
Speaker 1: is that he is always asking a question. Sort of
Speaker 1: a professional he is. When I think of somebody that
Speaker 1: is a professional skeptic who should practice Joe who does
Speaker 1: practice journalism sort of as a professional skeptic.
Speaker 2: I'd like to think I do that.
Speaker 1: I know Mike does it, and it's what I think
Speaker 1: makes him so readable and so interesting.
Speaker 2: And I think you're going to up this conversation.
Speaker 1: Well joining me now we did a home and away,
Speaker 1: I think is the way to do it. It's Mike Pesca, who,
Speaker 1: of course is best known as host of The Gist.
Speaker 1: I think of you, Mike, as sort of a podcast pioneer.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you're a pioneer of this, of
Speaker 1: this day and age. I mean, you've been doing this
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. Who else can say that?
Speaker 2: Many can? They'd be lying.
Speaker 3: I do think it's the longest running I guess us
Speaker 3: an analysis.
Speaker 2: You and Bill Simmons right right? If it's Newsy.
Speaker 3: You know, Terry Gross has had a podcast version of
Speaker 3: Fresh Air longer than I have. So if you take
Speaker 3: all the radio shows that went into pod had a
Speaker 3: podcast version in two thousand and seven or eight.
Speaker 2: Sure, but doing it as a daily show news.
Speaker 3: Analysis, I think it's me If not, I'll take on
Speaker 3: all comers in the next.
Speaker 2: Daily show, since there is always a daily show.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, look, whether you're you're one of the pioneers, right,
Speaker 1: let's let's put it in those terms. I think we'd
Speaker 1: all accept that. I think it's fascinating. I just had
Speaker 1: this conversation with a media reporter who was asking me
Speaker 1: what do I make of podcasts shifting to video and
Speaker 1: you know, and I said, look, I'll be honest. Six
Speaker 1: months ago, I still would have argued against video for
Speaker 1: podcasts because what I what I liked the best about
Speaker 1: a podcast is eavesdropping on a conversation and the idea.
Speaker 1: And I'm a believer that once you introduce a camera,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get a less honest take. I'm going
Speaker 1: to get a less honest version of that person. But
Speaker 1: that is where the world is headed, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you will. You will not have a successful podcast if
Speaker 1: you stick to audio only. Now, that's just it just
Speaker 1: is what the business is. But when did this transition
Speaker 1: take place? And where are you on it? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you've you've embraced it. Was it a reluctant embrace
Speaker 1: or or an enthusiastic one?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I hate it. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 3: My friend PJ Vote has a great podcast and he
Speaker 3: doesn't want to do video because he says he wants
Speaker 3: to do the best version of what he's doing, and
Speaker 3: the best version of what he does Search Engine, which
Speaker 3: is a nonfiction podcast, would be a documentary, and documentaries
Speaker 3: are their own skill set. So he's either doing the
Speaker 3: very best audio.
Speaker 2: Podcast or a third rate documentary.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm doing the best podcast that I
Speaker 3: could possibly do, or a TV talk show with a
Speaker 3: weird green curtain behind me. The curtain is going to
Speaker 3: get better, you know, at some point, I swear to God.
Speaker 3: So I also think, was this what it seems like?
Speaker 3: It's what the audience demanded. If you look at audio
Speaker 3: audience metrics right, videos are doing really well. And if
Speaker 3: you look at people under thirty two, they don't think
Speaker 3: of podcasting as an audio medium. They think of it
Speaker 3: as a video medium. But so often it is the
Speaker 3: algorithm or it is the some corporate boss that made
Speaker 3: a decision. And what really is going on is that
Speaker 3: Spotify has to creed that this is the way to
Speaker 3: go because they're thinking of.
Speaker 2: You put this on differentiate on Spotify, not YouTube.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, yes, yeah, this is YouTube is benefiting from it,
Speaker 3: but mostly it's Spotify saying video. There's one other aspect
Speaker 3: I'll get into, but Spotify has said to themselves if
Speaker 3: we become a video player, that's much better for business
Speaker 3: because as an audio player, we're not differentiated from the
Speaker 3: Apple podcast or some of the other audio podcasts out there,
Speaker 3: but we've got video from the jump. So some of
Speaker 3: the most popular ones, like Joe Rogan, they've always been video.
Speaker 3: So then they started to tell everyone you got to
Speaker 3: go video. I think they probably punish.
Speaker 2: People who didn't go video. The other thing that's going on.
Speaker 3: Is podcast has a terrible problem with discovery, right. The
Speaker 3: funnel is if you get attention, maybe you got attention
Speaker 3: you left NBC, people said where's Chuck, and early on
Speaker 3: people started to find you, and to this day people
Speaker 3: are probably saying, oh, Chuck's there. On podcasting, the funnel
Speaker 3: in almost only works in the beginning and then a
Speaker 3: year and two years in, how do you get attention?
Speaker 3: It's terrible. There's no way in podcasting to kind of
Speaker 3: tell people that you're out there. But video is the
Speaker 3: one way to do it. So you have clips. I
Speaker 3: only do video. I do a video of every interview
Speaker 3: I do. I think we'll put this up on video
Speaker 3: and some people will watch it. The only reason I'm
Speaker 3: doing that is to generate clips from Instagram, so that
Speaker 3: maybe someone will see this Instagram clip and say, oh,
Speaker 3: Mike Pasca, Chuck Todd. That exists as what I consider
Speaker 3: to be the primary product, which is audio. It's crazy
Speaker 3: and it's algorithm driven.
Speaker 1: It's so true and what you just described, and I
Speaker 1: appreciate you describing it that way because it's it's.
Speaker 2: It is, it is.
Speaker 1: It's weird something in human nature. For whatever reason, we
Speaker 1: won't clip on an audio clip. You send a great
Speaker 1: exchange between you and I audio only, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: get whether it's on a social media app or via
Speaker 1: text or whatever. I'm this way, like, send me a
Speaker 1: piece of video, I quickly watch it. Send me a
Speaker 1: piece of audio. I'm like, well, let me put my
Speaker 1: headphones in or whatever whatever it is. And so it
Speaker 1: feels as if almost ninety percent of the reasons most
Speaker 1: podcasts went video as well, it's the only way to
Speaker 1: market the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it has fundamentally to do with attention.
Speaker 3: So when something has a visual component, including words, it's
Speaker 3: vying for your attension.
Speaker 2: It's announcing itself. It's saying, pay attention to me.
Speaker 3: Probably because of the kind of animals we were on
Speaker 3: the savannah as prey. By the way, anthropology is finding
Speaker 3: out more and more that we're inherently prey, and most
Speaker 3: of our motivation is we're worried about the armed anyway. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're where animals were worried about this, and the visual
Speaker 3: is how we stay alive. The audio is a little
Speaker 3: bit deeper. It probably activates other aspects of our brain,
Speaker 3: but it's not as urgent visual, as urgent audio less urgent.
Speaker 3: This used to be great, the lack of urgency in audio,
Speaker 3: and I work for NPR for ten years. We would
Speaker 3: use phrases like you know, it's a companion and it's uh,
Speaker 3: and we'd have driveway moments. But it was sort of
Speaker 3: the warm bath of attention as opposed to a tiger
Speaker 3: is going to eat us?
Speaker 2: Of attention.
Speaker 3: So I do, Yeah, I do think that there's fundamental
Speaker 3: difference between each medium.
Speaker 2: And I think that.
Speaker 3: It's have people really said, you know what, I like
Speaker 3: audio video podcasts.
Speaker 2: I just like them. They just appealed to me. I
Speaker 2: don't know how many people have said that.
Speaker 3: Maybe young people have said that, but I think it
Speaker 3: just you can't get away from it. And in this
Speaker 3: attention economy is also the urgency economy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's something else though. That why I think many
Speaker 1: people wouldn't have predicted that podcasts would continue to grow,
Speaker 1: And in some ways this is right. We're in a
Speaker 1: second growth period because of the video component. I guess
Speaker 1: it was probably the best way to put it. But
Speaker 1: and maybe this is going to change as more people
Speaker 1: do live. But I think about you doing a daily podcast.
Speaker 1: How how did you get over the moment that you
Speaker 1: finished your recording and then some breaking news happened in
Speaker 1: you'r lie? Oh man, this is going to feel, you know,
Speaker 1: because you have to get over that. Because I could
Speaker 1: make a case that you can always find a story.
Speaker 2: I wish we would have done this.
Speaker 1: You can always find a reason to be How did
Speaker 1: you get over that? And does it surprise you that
Speaker 1: the public has it punished the podcast industry collectively for
Speaker 1: its ability not to be in real time because it's
Speaker 1: really not in real time. It's we are I always
Speaker 1: say a good podcast is on the news, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: you know, it's news adjacent. Sometimes can feel on the news,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily in a breaking news moment.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a problem, and I don't know if it's gone.
Speaker 3: You're framing the question. Look how much podcasting has thrived
Speaker 3: even though this is the case.
Speaker 2: I think it's thrived despite that.
Speaker 3: I think if there was a way to be on
Speaker 3: the news, it would be even better. And it's especially
Speaker 3: true when news happens on a Sunday and I listen
Speaker 3: to a lot of sports podcasts, and if the game
Speaker 3: was on a Saturday and the production schedule is not
Speaker 3: to come back to a Monday, I have to wait
Speaker 3: two days to get my podcast discussion of the game.
Speaker 2: I do not like that. So I think that it
Speaker 2: is a problem. How'd I get over it?
Speaker 3: Just when it became a parent that I was killing
Speaker 3: my staff The first three times I said we got
Speaker 3: to go live and it didn't really matter. But here's
Speaker 3: what's happening we're now in an age. We are in
Speaker 3: an age of media abundance. Abundance, but it's really commentary.
Speaker 3: There's so much more commentary than news, and even so
Speaker 3: much of the news is commentary, as you know.
Speaker 2: And I don't know how much the consumer really.
Speaker 3: Realizes that, but I think we've gotten to a ratio
Speaker 3: that's I don't know if it's dangerous, but it's certainly
Speaker 3: not optimal and place my due. Yeah, yeah, are more
Speaker 3: commentary than is I think optimal?
Speaker 1: No, it is, and it's you know, I get so
Speaker 1: frustrated when people are even trying to pay me a
Speaker 1: compliment that they'll say, oh, I can tell you're really
Speaker 1: speaking your mind, and I'm like, yeah, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm a partisan, you know, I'm just sort of
Speaker 1: I'm no longer what I always say is I'm no
Speaker 1: longer rounding the edges as much. Right for network television,
Speaker 1: i'd have to round the edges. Sometimes it's because my
Speaker 1: first name was meet, or sometimes because I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I knew whatever I said was going to reflect all
Speaker 1: on the entire network. Fair unfair that it would, and
Speaker 1: I was mindful of that. I always got irritated when
Speaker 1: certain colleagues who hosted certain cable news morning shows didn't
Speaker 1: seem to care about their colleagues and the perception that
Speaker 1: they were creating for the rest of us that have
Speaker 1: to do this. And so now I'm no longer rounding
Speaker 1: the edges, right, I'm like, yeah, Joe Scarborough is the singular.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for somebody who did the most damage
Speaker 1: to the press and the Joe Biden story, it's Joe Scarborough.
Speaker 3: Now, it just is maybe that was as long game
Speaker 3: as a Republican I don't know, but it's like, I
Speaker 3: don't know how else to put it right.
Speaker 1: He was Now what I always found unfair is that
Speaker 1: was just his opinion and it should have just been
Speaker 1: seen as like, I don't mind that he did that,
Speaker 1: that was an opinionated show. What I minded was the
Speaker 1: perception that somehow this was a media driven narrative. And
Speaker 1: it's like, no, he's a partisan. But all of that
Speaker 1: has gotten so lost. I mean, me trying to explain
Speaker 1: that that, hey, morning.
Speaker 2: Joe is not this it's not a news it's more of.
Speaker 1: A commentary thing. And you know, it's at this point,
Speaker 1: what does the viewer see? You know, as I've always
Speaker 1: said that Peacock is on every channel, so the viewer
Speaker 1: just sees it all as one thing. Don't differentiate it
Speaker 1: that much. It's true, right, newspaper headlines, whether the headlines
Speaker 1: over an op ed or a news story, the headline's
Speaker 1: the headline, and it's a Washington Post headline, right.
Speaker 2: Regardless of which section of the paper. So it is.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know whether it's even worth fighting
Speaker 1: those particulars anymore in the news consumption space.
Speaker 3: The last one hundred people who pointed out to me, well,
Speaker 3: that's an opinion piece, not from the news section.
Speaker 2: We're all journalists. No citizen has ever said that to me.
Speaker 2: But was that a news piece?
Speaker 3: Just the other day on the show, I did a
Speaker 3: big story on a Guardian piece trying to say that
Speaker 3: the defund movement worked well in Houston and Seattle, and
Speaker 3: it clearly didn't if you look at the murder rate.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wait a minute, is this a newspiece?
Speaker 3: And I scanned it and I actually put it through
Speaker 3: chat GPT. Is this a newspiece or is this an
Speaker 3: opinion piece? And it was in the news section, and
Speaker 3: then we figured out it probably shouldn't have been but
Speaker 3: you're so right that no one gets the distinction. And
Speaker 3: there's one of the reasons they don't get to the
Speaker 3: distinction isn't just on the consumer. Certain outlets will sometimes
Speaker 3: cordon off news and opinion, but there are almost no
Speaker 3: outlets anymore that you would be shocked that that opinion
Speaker 3: is being run in that outlet. There's almost no outlets
Speaker 3: where you'd even be a little bit surprised. I think
Speaker 3: The Atlantic will consistently if we stripped the title and
Speaker 3: I said, where did this run, you might consistently say
Speaker 3: that could either be in the Wall Street Journal or
Speaker 3: the New York Times. So that's a little bit unique.
Speaker 3: But especially before Jeff Bezos had this turn with the
Speaker 3: Washington Post, where.
Speaker 1: I know I used to think the Post was the
Speaker 1: best of all worlds for a while, I really did, yes,
Speaker 1: I felt like for a period the time, the Post
Speaker 1: was its best version of itself.
Speaker 3: And then Jeff right, because I think they were reflecting Washington,
Speaker 3: and Washington was a town with functional Democrats and Republicans,
Speaker 3: and they would sometimes talk to each other.
Speaker 2: But when that ought to change, the Post got to change.
Speaker 3: And now there are there are many many stories that
Speaker 3: were in the post opinion section that were you wouldn't say,
Speaker 3: oh that could run in another newspaper's opinion section who
Speaker 3: had a reading of Donald Trump that wasn't caustic. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's very one of the
Speaker 3: very bad trends of journalism. Also, could I just say,
Speaker 3: when you say, I've heard you say that before, my
Speaker 3: first name is meet as in the press, how many people?
Speaker 3: And did you guys have a super cut in the
Speaker 3: studio where people called you Todd by the stake?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, that happened once every four shows. It did.
Speaker 1: What's funny about it for me is is that actually
Speaker 1: I grew I grew up with that because my grandfather
Speaker 1: his first name was Merle and his middle name was Lynn.
Speaker 2: So what do you think he preferred to be called Todd?
Speaker 1: Okay, so he actually all of his friends called him Todd.
Speaker 1: My father had it literally, his his asociates would call
Speaker 1: him Tom. My mother when she got into real estate,
Speaker 1: all of she would be just referred to as Todd.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It's such a normal thing in my family that I
Speaker 1: would It's funny you bring it up. It always seemed
Speaker 1: to bother other people more than it ever bothered me.
Speaker 2: It didn't.
Speaker 1: I never I used to let I get up. The
Speaker 1: only time I'd get annoyed is when I would get
Speaker 1: Chuck Dodd or Chris Todd or you know, there was
Speaker 1: a time i'd get the Chuck rob you know that,
Speaker 1: or or but that would annoy me a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it never bothered me. But you're so, it's so
Speaker 1: funny how often the Todd thing happened. But that is
Speaker 1: something I grew up with and all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: when you grew up with two first names. I mean
Speaker 1: I used to joke NBC we were the home of
Speaker 1: two first names, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, David Gregory,
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd.
Speaker 2: It was sort of astonishing how many of them?
Speaker 3: You're like, joy, you know, yeah, it was like how
Speaker 3: high that's Jen Sackey. There are no sacking the.
Speaker 2: Right, no Madows out there anymore, you know whatever. I
Speaker 2: once did a story on the Senate.
Speaker 3: First of all, there's a good statistic how many Americans
Speaker 3: have two first names? And you know senators, uh have
Speaker 3: double the rate of two first names.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So I went into the long business. I could
Speaker 1: have I had a shot at this if I wanted to.
Speaker 3: And then you could be a senator and get on
Speaker 3: a Sunday show and call someone about their last name.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let me let me to go back to the
Speaker 1: timing issue of your podcast. What what's a story that
Speaker 1: I would think belongs to your podcast that you don't
Speaker 1: do because of timing or because of topic. What what's
Speaker 1: something that doesn't make the cut that might surprise people?
Speaker 3: Well, how I describe it to people is ideally it's
Speaker 3: an op ed of the air. And okay, that's me
Speaker 3: using these antiquated terms.
Speaker 2: We were just done talking about it. Talking about it
Speaker 2: right understands what an is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is a good gi just discussion is
Speaker 3: subtly a debate. It's always a debate. And I'm not
Speaker 3: taking the other side of the debate. I'm not a partisan,
Speaker 3: but I want them to explain, not just there are
Speaker 3: great interviews that the question to be asked and answered
Speaker 3: is and then what happened or what happened next? That's
Speaker 3: a great interview. It's not a great gist interview. A
Speaker 3: great gist interview is why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are Larry King and Charlie Rose I always
Speaker 1: thought were underrated interviewers. Because they were so good at
Speaker 1: at just sometimes saying and then what.
Speaker 2: You know? And why is why is still the best question?
Speaker 3: But if it's we don't do a lot of history
Speaker 3: unless there's an angle to it, bringing it up to
Speaker 3: the present, or let's re examine why.
Speaker 2: People thought that.
Speaker 3: But I would love to if I had a show
Speaker 3: that wasn't to just I do a ton of history,
Speaker 3: and when we do history podcasts or history interviews, people
Speaker 3: love them. But I do think it's because I'm engaging
Speaker 3: a little bit of a debate.
Speaker 2: What's a if you had more bandwidth, what's a what
Speaker 2: would you be doing?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3: I have two shows besides this one, but they're sort
Speaker 3: of shows within a show. And what is called funny
Speaker 3: you should mention it's where I interview comedians sort of
Speaker 3: about their theses. You know, comedians being the new philosophers,
Speaker 3: and we deferred lots of our punchlines insights.
Speaker 2: It's been that way for decades.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I've always dot comedians were comedians.
Speaker 1: Stand up comedians were always the most well read people
Speaker 1: you'd ever meet.
Speaker 3: They read more than all Yeah, a lot of times
Speaker 3: and a lot of times not formally educated, and they
Speaker 3: felt bad about that, and then they became auto di dacks.
Speaker 2: They're great love I love them. I love the way
Speaker 2: they think.
Speaker 3: But I think since you know, definitely pre George Carlin
Speaker 3: and Richard Pryor, no one was looking to comedians for
Speaker 3: inside And then there were the niche Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: there was Mort Saul who read a newspaper on stage.
Speaker 3: I don't know how funny it was. And then Lenny
Speaker 3: Bruce and this all changed. But I do think there
Speaker 3: was a story in the either Late Night Now that
Speaker 3: must have been the odds where it just quoted Chris
Speaker 3: Rock as an expert on the black experience, and maybe
Speaker 3: said comedian Chris Rock, but he was there for his insight.
Speaker 3: And that's when I said, Okay, they're pundits now, you know,
Speaker 3: they're pundits with punchlines.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the shows that another thing, have
Speaker 1: you ever done it? Have you ever done stand up comedian?
Speaker 3: You know when I was in college, I did, and
Speaker 3: so the read my and my kids do it, and
Speaker 3: the reason that I'm not good at it could be
Speaker 3: many things, right, but the big one is a stand
Speaker 3: up comedian will do when you see his act it's like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, what fresh insights. But of course they'd
Speaker 3: have done this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.
Speaker 3: So I'd rather do a show every day and have
Speaker 3: a couple of hits and say to myself, you know,
Speaker 3: if I had more time to work that over, it
Speaker 3: could be a fantastic it could be an a plus.
Speaker 3: But I'd rather have a string of, let's hope, a minuses.
Speaker 3: This is also one I'm my problems with. When I
Speaker 3: worked for NPR, I was on I did mostly sports,
Speaker 3: and I would crank out a lot of stories because
Speaker 3: when you cover the World Series, you do two stories
Speaker 3: every day, and then you cover the Super Bowl, and
Speaker 3: that's great.
Speaker 2: I love the pace of that.
Speaker 3: But there was a certain kind of NPR reporter as
Speaker 3: epitomodz by this American Life for cereal, where man, did
Speaker 3: they love going over their tape and with a lapidary
Speaker 3: fineness bringing out that one cut of sound. Some of
Speaker 3: my best friends are great at this. I had no
Speaker 3: patience for that. So, yeah, this was the problem with
Speaker 3: stand up. It's you really have to.
Speaker 2: Work it over and over and over again. You don't
Speaker 2: want to be a refiner.
Speaker 1: You're like sort of an entrepre you want to you
Speaker 1: want to be, you want to break the mold quickly
Speaker 1: type of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Adam Carolla has this great analogy where he says, we're
Speaker 3: either a factory or a warehouse, right, and the factory
Speaker 3: is putting out content and the warehouse is storing it
Speaker 3: and maybe crafting it. So he sees himself more of
Speaker 3: a factory. A stand up comedian is more of a warehouse.
Speaker 3: I'd say maybe a curator if they're really good. All right,
Speaker 3: so you do that Moselle on the other show, the
Speaker 3: show within a show. Yeah, it's called Not Even Mad,
Speaker 3: and this is there's an interesting backstory there.
Speaker 2: So I would always listen.
Speaker 3: I do always listen to all these podcasts, and the
Speaker 3: standard form if it's not two people being interviewed, three
Speaker 3: guys talking, not always guys, that's changed a little bit,
Speaker 3: but let's call it three guys talking and agreeing with
Speaker 3: each other, right, it's three guys from the Bulwark or
Speaker 3: three guys from the Dispatch, or three guys from Commentary,
Speaker 3: and three guys from Pod Save America. And I can't
Speaker 3: I listened to all these shows, and I can't tell
Speaker 3: you how many times I've listened to it.
Speaker 1: As you listen to it in speed sped up one
Speaker 1: and a half speed Yeah, I'm two and a half
Speaker 1: and a half Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow.
Speaker 3: And the app my app of choice, also cuts out silences.
Speaker 3: We could listen, by the way, much faster than we do.
Speaker 3: So yes, so maybe you've had this this thought. Also,
Speaker 3: I listened to the three people at the commentary podcast
Speaker 3: talking about whatever they're talking about, and John pod Hortz
Speaker 3: makes a good point, and then I'll listen to the
Speaker 3: three guys at Pod Save America talk about what they
Speaker 3: are talking about, and luckily it's another job.
Speaker 2: You know, John love It or John Favreau makes a
Speaker 2: good point.
Speaker 3: But Favreau and love It are always agreeing with each other,
Speaker 3: and pod Horrits and his guys are always agreeing.
Speaker 2: What what if we took a love It and put
Speaker 2: him next to a pod Horrit.
Speaker 3: So this was my idea, right, this is my idea
Speaker 3: to have a liberal and a conservative talk And the
Speaker 3: first iteration of it didn't really work because of well
Speaker 3: it was called not even mad, but there was a
Speaker 3: little bit of madness. And so now instead of I
Speaker 3: do think that for these shows to have a lot
Speaker 3: of traction, you get to know the host and the panelists,
Speaker 3: and that would be ideal. But I'm just changing panelists
Speaker 3: every week, and it's, uh boy.
Speaker 1: It's a tough I'm I'm rooting for you on that,
Speaker 1: but the algorithms really fights you on that.
Speaker 2: It really is hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm watching this myself, right, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to build a specific I do not want to pick
Speaker 1: a side, right. Megan Kelly made a decision and she
Speaker 1: built a big audience quickly. That's one way to do it.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to, you know, I sort of
Speaker 1: believe in the I want to get it. I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it my way and hopefully it'll be a
Speaker 1: more durable audience. It's actually what worked for me on
Speaker 1: Twitter versus the way others did.
Speaker 2: It, and and so i've i'm I'm mindful of that.
Speaker 1: But there are just the distribution models don't reward left this,
Speaker 1: left right.
Speaker 2: It's hard to find an audience. It says they they.
Speaker 1: Want that, and it's I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether that's the algorithms speaking or whether that's reality.
Speaker 2: I do think it's mostly reality.
Speaker 3: I think the algorithms figured out what works because the
Speaker 3: audience told them. And I think that there's a niche
Speaker 3: for it, but it is a niche, and I hope
Speaker 3: you come to dominate the niche. And I've got my
Speaker 3: little toe hold in the direction.
Speaker 2: It's all niches. You're right, really, you're right. It's a
Speaker 2: series of them. I do think.
Speaker 3: I think it's mostly like when you listen to a
Speaker 3: radio station. Remember kids, there was a thing called radio.
Speaker 3: There's no radio station that plays a little country, a
Speaker 3: little hip hop, and a little classic rock.
Speaker 2: You have to have a format.
Speaker 3: And the format of podcasts is this is a conservative podcast,
Speaker 3: this is a liberal podcast. The exception are the ones
Speaker 3: that are neither liberal or conservative but are actually more
Speaker 3: radical than either.
Speaker 2: Maybe not consistently left.
Speaker 3: And right, but I think you know, uh Sargar and
Speaker 3: Breaking Points, Crystal Ball, that's in that category. Maybe I
Speaker 3: guess you could dub them, you know, far left, but
Speaker 3: so far left that there's a lot of right to them.
Speaker 2: But they're also have a consistent, yeah, consistent format.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I I look, I think I don't want
Speaker 1: to do too much more on sort of the business
Speaker 1: of what we're doing, but it does feel like you
Speaker 1: you have such a knowledge of this and you've been
Speaker 1: are you you know, are you one of those folks?
Speaker 1: Do you think is there more change in the next
Speaker 1: five years or less of it? You know, we're all
Speaker 1: preparing for radical transformation, and usually sometimes if everybody's betting
Speaker 1: on that, it sometimes doesn't become self fulfilling.
Speaker 3: Right in terms of media, in terms of politics, in
Speaker 3: terms of what media or media. In terms of media,
Speaker 3: I would expect I would expect there to be a
Speaker 3: lot of change.
Speaker 2: I would expect AI to change things greatly.
Speaker 3: I would we gotten to this place where there used
Speaker 3: to be a lot of inefficiencies and now there's a
Speaker 3: war on inefficiency and it's working. But you know, inefficiency
Speaker 3: in many systems is a really good thing. Like if
Speaker 3: the in the animal kingdom, inefficiency is a mutt and
Speaker 3: by the way, the healthiest dogs.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: And what it's funny you say that you know why
Speaker 1: our voting system is so secure because it's inefficient, because
Speaker 1: it's methodical, because there's these paper ballots that have to
Speaker 1: follow this, and if we it is actually something that's
Speaker 1: completely inefficient. But if you made it efficient, you'd actually
Speaker 1: send a message of life. Lack of confidence in the
Speaker 1: system we wouldn't trust it. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: an advision one makes it more trustworthy.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you one right in your wheelhouse. So in
Speaker 3: the as you I'm probably telling you something you know.
Speaker 3: But one hundred eighty years ago, the political science movement
Speaker 3: du jore, started by and led by A. Shatschneider, was
Speaker 3: we have these political parties and they're inefficient. It really
Speaker 3: got the political scientists upset. The parties need to sort
Speaker 3: according to ideology. It doesn't make sense to have all
Speaker 3: these conservatives in the Democratic Party. Then that happened, not
Speaker 3: because the political scientists said it, but this is what
Speaker 3: the political scientists wanted, and it was a total.
Speaker 1: Be careful disasters for Oh yes, I talked about this
Speaker 1: all the sorting, oh one hundred percent. The lack of
Speaker 1: ideological diversity inside the two parties. I mean, you and
Speaker 1: I grew up with liberal Republicans working with conservative Democrats,
Speaker 1: with the populist Democrats in the Midwest work and it.
Speaker 3: Was public living from when FDR had to work it
Speaker 3: out with Theodore Bilbo and the very Democrats.
Speaker 2: But I and I.
Speaker 1: Grew up with a with a basically a conservative Democrat
Speaker 1: who left the Party and would say, well, Sam Nune
Speaker 1: would be.
Speaker 2: A Republican in New York.
Speaker 1: Would be always he would always say that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's why I like because I'd always said I thought
Speaker 1: that I thought you were Republican. He said, well, Sam,
Speaker 1: none would be a Republican if he were in Iowa.
Speaker 1: To be a Republican, you know, he's just a Democrat
Speaker 1: in the South because you have to be in order
Speaker 1: to vote right because at the time there was no.
Speaker 2: There weren't many registered Republicans. So it is.
Speaker 1: But you're right, I think that lack of ideological you know,
Speaker 1: the conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are extinct, and that's
Speaker 1: what we miss.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I was just I was just in Seattle,
Speaker 3: and I was spending some time with a very top
Speaker 3: political consultant. And he's because he makes a living, he's
Speaker 3: a Democrat. I don't have to say he's a Democrat Seattle.
Speaker 3: But he bemoans the fact that the Republican Party is
Speaker 3: pretty much non existent and all they could do is
Speaker 3: run some protest candidates who are way out there ideologically
Speaker 3: and never have a chance for winning. This is another
Speaker 3: pretty bad aspect of monopolies.
Speaker 1: Monopolies are bad for economies. Doopolies are not great to economies,
Speaker 1: but monopolies are worse. And what's what's a what's a what?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: The political economy that has become a monopoly in rural
Speaker 1: America for red and a monopoly in urban America for
Speaker 1: blue has been bad for the voters. It's just been bad,
Speaker 1: been bad for diversity of thought. It's been bad for
Speaker 1: new ideas, you know, and it's a that's a problem.
Speaker 3: And your other business, or your main business, which is media,
Speaker 3: has been waylaid by efficiency. Because a newspaper used to
Speaker 3: have all these advertisements. And the point is, you knew
Speaker 3: you were throwing away ninety percent of your advertising dollar,
Speaker 3: and everyone who took out a want to add, nine
Speaker 3: point nine percent of the people weren't in the market.
Speaker 2: For a boat.
Speaker 3: So is this inefficient way of hitting a lot of
Speaker 3: people than when the Internet and especially the Google out
Speaker 3: algorithm got really efficient, great for advertising, pointless for newspapers,
Speaker 3: they were left with maybe cars and supermarkets and not
Speaker 3: even that because you're only on the move to buy
Speaker 3: a car once every seven years. Yeah, So efficiency, So
Speaker 3: to go back to your answer, we're going to get
Speaker 3: more efficient there's no way that the media ecosystem is
Speaker 3: not going to get more efficient. And from what I see,
Speaker 3: efficiency more often has costs than benefits, except for the
Speaker 3: very specific person who is served by the efficiency.
Speaker 2: All Right, I got to ask about.
Speaker 1: The comic books because if you look carefully, you look
Speaker 1: carefully behind me.
Speaker 2: The Roy Campanella is.
Speaker 1: Actually a portrait of one of his baseball cards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from tops in the early early fifties. I'm a baseball
Speaker 1: card guy. Are you a comic guy?
Speaker 3: I'm probably more of a baseball card guy, But you
Speaker 3: know what I am. I may I just moved my
Speaker 3: parents out of the house that not only they lived
Speaker 3: in for fifty years, that I was literally born in
Speaker 3: the driveway of. And so now I have all these
Speaker 3: baseball cards and comic books that I gotta sell because
Speaker 3: I have no room. So when you have no room
Speaker 3: for something, you put a Howard the Duck comic on
Speaker 3: the wall.
Speaker 2: I do like nice Howard the Duck. Nice nice Well.
Speaker 2: I worked at a baseball card store.
Speaker 3: That was my first job, and it was the era
Speaker 3: of Matt I guess I learned about bitcoin then because
Speaker 3: Kevin Seisser rookies were selling for like seventy dollars if
Speaker 3: you remember that funny use.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you referred to it as bitcoin, because
Speaker 1: that's been my analogy is tell me how it's not
Speaker 1: like I have these mic I have a stack of
Speaker 1: Mike Trout Rookie cards. Can I Can I buy something
Speaker 1: with them directly? No, I've got to trade it in
Speaker 1: for cash, and then I can. And what's the difference
Speaker 1: between my mic trop baseball card and bitcoin? And when
Speaker 1: you throw that out there at a crypto person and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's probably the same thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then if you get into blockchain, I don't know,
Speaker 3: Ray Fossey blocking the plate chain, I don't know what
Speaker 3: our analogy could be, but yeah, I remember I was
Speaker 3: listening on NPR and then the beginning of the Ukraine
Speaker 3: War there was a story about how it's fun to
Speaker 3: via bitcoin and isn't it great that bitcoin can get
Speaker 3: this money to the Ukrainian fighters, and like that seems
Speaker 3: much less efficient than a bank account. Like I understand,
Speaker 3: you have this interesting thing in the news called the Ukraine,
Speaker 3: the War on Ukraine, and then you have this thing
Speaker 3: called bitcoin. I think there are more layers in between.
Speaker 3: Then are just bank account that works.
Speaker 1: Look, I do I accept the premise it's a little
Speaker 1: bit easier to hide money. And when you're funding a
Speaker 1: war and an insurgency, you need to hide stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, I get that the block Maybe that's the.
Speaker 1: What's hell full in a moment, But most of the time,
Speaker 1: if you're something that is able to hide transactions or money,
Speaker 1: that's usually not a net positive for society.
Speaker 2: That's usually a net Yeah, that is true.
Speaker 3: I mean my suspicion is mostly and by the way,
Speaker 3: I've lost out on a lot of money because of
Speaker 3: my suspicion. But there are two things that these cryptocurrencies
Speaker 3: are supposed to do, and there are exact odds with
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: Right, this is almost like Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: The great thing about tariffs is that they will both
Speaker 3: give us money in the treasury and suppressed trade. No,
Speaker 3: they can't do both. But the one thing they're supposed
Speaker 3: to do is be a great store of value. I
Speaker 3: get the intellectual case for that. But the other thing
Speaker 3: why everyone loves them is they're going up to the moon. Now,
Speaker 3: nothing that doubles or triples in value is a great
Speaker 3: store of value if it's always if it's also being
Speaker 3: traded as the priceiest commodity ever made.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, I mean like I remember as a kid.
Speaker 1: Growing up when I think the Hunt Brothers tried to
Speaker 1: corner the silver market thinking it was an underutil commodity,
Speaker 1: and it's this just feels like it's going to end badly.
Speaker 1: And the question is how many Americans are going to
Speaker 1: get stuck holding the crypto bag when this happens, because
Speaker 1: we know the super wealthy are going to are not
Speaker 1: going to be the ones hold in the bag. It's
Speaker 1: going to be the everyday people. Yeah, just crazy housing.
Speaker 2: So there's an example.
Speaker 3: Would you would you say that in that way when
Speaker 3: your first name was meet?
Speaker 2: That's interesting?
Speaker 1: So I feel like no, because you know I would
Speaker 1: be you know, then I would be blamed for you know,
Speaker 1: some other entities inability to book so and so or
Speaker 1: I came across, and so you worry about that. And
Speaker 1: it's like I will just say I you know, I
Speaker 1: would sometimes speak out on some things and then someone
Speaker 1: would say, hey, we're trying to book so and so,
Speaker 1: you know, try not to do that again type of mindset.
Speaker 1: And it's like, look, I'm a team player and I
Speaker 1: get it. You know, look you know this this balance
Speaker 1: between you know, I'm always careful. I don't respect access
Speaker 1: only journalists, but I respect the need for access, right,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a fine line between that, and I
Speaker 1: think you can a good journalist draws a distinction. But
Speaker 1: but sort of I kind of view it similarly on
Speaker 1: that So I understand it from that, But I certainly
Speaker 1: feel better about not asking permission, right, And I know
Speaker 1: so for instance, like I've I've been very I've been
Speaker 1: very straightforward, but I've been tough on Biden's for the
Speaker 1: Bidens for a couple of years, and you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't return any of my calls. Well, I understood that,
Speaker 1: Like I made a you know, like and that's okay.
Speaker 1: I don't They don't have credibility with me, so why
Speaker 1: would I want to interview them anyway. So I'm okay
Speaker 1: with that, And I think that that's sort of that's
Speaker 1: that if you're going to burn something, you better feel
Speaker 1: comfortable burning it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, As an example, I don't know if they're the
Speaker 3: best example of someone who will punish a journalist for
Speaker 3: not doing this story they want because they were in
Speaker 3: the mode of we only want to talk to one
Speaker 3: or two people.
Speaker 2: They were very much in the mode of our way.
Speaker 3: Our theory of the case is to do almost no interviews,
Speaker 3: and when we do, maybe do it on morning Joe.
Speaker 3: I think your listeners to the Chuck podcast get this.
Speaker 3: But what maybe people don't when they criticize you for
Speaker 3: being or when they question your partisanship and are you
Speaker 3: able to be partisan? You and I have opinions and
Speaker 3: strong opinions, but you know what wake us up in
Speaker 3: the middle of night. I think that's true for you.
Speaker 3: I know it's true for me. The thing I won't
Speaker 3: be shouting is you got to vote for this guy.
Speaker 3: That's not where my strong opinions lie. It's more like
Speaker 3: looking at a system and we're being crazy when it
Speaker 3: comes to whatever it is MMT or funding.
Speaker 2: Well, look I look my rant. Look the current podcast
Speaker 2: that I have up. One of them.
Speaker 1: My rant this morning was, you know, was how poorly
Speaker 1: Trump and Musk executed Doge. But the idea was a
Speaker 1: really good one and there was a better way to
Speaker 1: do this, and sort of like it actually was empowering
Speaker 1: because I realized this is what you do I think
Speaker 1: extraordinarily well and what I hope to do better, which
Speaker 1: is explain why. Look, you know this is the criticism
Speaker 1: is in execution. The criticism isn't in ideology. And so
Speaker 1: my biggest criticisms of Trump are execution. This is just
Speaker 1: a terribly incompetent administration in just doing the basics doesn't
Speaker 1: mean his ideas. I'd like to see more manufacturing back
Speaker 1: in America. There is a systematic way I had to
Speaker 1: Orange cass On. The way he would have implemented this
Speaker 1: tariff regimen might have had a better shot at triggering
Speaker 1: better trade deals and not shaking up the markets. But
Speaker 1: that's not the way Donald Trump did it. He did
Speaker 1: it in an incompetent way. Making government more efficient and
Speaker 1: more modern. We need to update the infrastructure of government
Speaker 1: the same way. You can't have the same bridge that
Speaker 1: you're going over from the nineteen fifties with today's traffic patterns.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with various government agencies. But dose
Speaker 1: was a poorly executed version of this, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the dirty little secret is those will cost the American
Speaker 1: taxpayer more money than it saved because of all the lawsuits,
Speaker 1: all the restoration of benefits, all the restoration of contracts
Speaker 1: that got unconstitutionally.
Speaker 3: Nick paying people for ninety days not to work and
Speaker 3: then filling them in.
Speaker 1: So we've just cost us. And yet the irony is,
Speaker 1: you know, had bipartisan buy in. There was a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of Democrats. I mean, this is what really frustrates
Speaker 1: me about the mindset of Trump and Maga, which is
Speaker 1: they won now will never work with the other side,
Speaker 1: when every other president of my lifetime said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: the best way for me to be to get something
Speaker 1: done is to And it's sort of two motivations. One,
Speaker 1: I can divide the other already by getting some of
Speaker 1: them to work with me, and it guess what, it
Speaker 1: helps me in the macro it's better for the country.
Speaker 2: Oh and I divide my.
Speaker 1: Opponent like it's it's it's a you're still you know,
Speaker 1: but it's an effective way to still be partisan, but
Speaker 1: maybe doing it through the prism of the best interests
Speaker 1: of the country versus Trump, who's refusing to work with Democrats.
Speaker 2: Just fired you know.
Speaker 1: Suppose you know and you're like, dude, there's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of Democrats that want to prove that they do
Speaker 1: want to work with you. Take advantage of it, and
Speaker 1: your inability is on you you're in and guess what
Speaker 1: you're now going to just drive people away. This is
Speaker 1: why his approval rating is already under forty five is
Speaker 1: he refuses to be president for all the people.
Speaker 2: He just does.
Speaker 3: His great skill is at diagnosing the problem, and then
Speaker 3: he has no interest, in fact a negative interest in
Speaker 3: actually solving the problem.
Speaker 2: And I think that, oh, you'd rather have the problems
Speaker 2: to use as a cudgel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But one of the things that makes him so
Speaker 3: good at diagnosing the problem is what he's been doing
Speaker 3: for fifty years as a salesman. You know, every innovation
Speaker 3: is what problem does' solve. So he'll put his finger
Speaker 3: on the problem, he'll put it in a more vivid
Speaker 3: way than anyone else in politics, and have absolutely no
Speaker 3: interest in solving it. But I do think the knowledge
Speaker 3: of how hard these problems to solve holds a lot
Speaker 3: of Democrats and some Republicans back. It would be great
Speaker 3: to just point your finger to the problem of infrastructure
Speaker 3: and say, infrastructure, it's the other guy's fault.
Speaker 2: But no infrastructures a giant lift.
Speaker 3: Once you know that, maybe you don't speak as starkly
Speaker 3: about it as Donald Trump does. So I do think
Speaker 3: the more you know about the problem, sometimes the more
Speaker 3: it gets in the way of actually solving it. You know,
Speaker 3: I did this pretty much the same segment, but I
Speaker 3: did it in a different way through an interview.
Speaker 2: As we're recording. I had a niche chopra On.
Speaker 3: He was the first ever Chief Technology Officer of the
Speaker 3: United States and he ran essentially ran the office that
Speaker 3: became DOGE, and we just talked about So tell me
Speaker 3: he didn't do it in the style that you did.
Speaker 3: I understand Elon had a hat and a chainsaw and
Speaker 3: you wore a suit. But what were the things that
Speaker 3: he did that you liked?
Speaker 2: And we had a.
Speaker 3: Very good conversation, was very constructive. He talked about a
Speaker 3: lot of the things that he admired that Doje actually did.
Speaker 3: He made a couple of points, one explicitly and won
Speaker 3: by inference. The point he made explicitly is, you know,
Speaker 3: he could have come up with more savings if he
Speaker 3: was or that office was as prioritized by the Clint
Speaker 3: by the Obama administration as Doge was. Right, So presidential
Speaker 3: bandwidth in mental time that counts for a lot.
Speaker 2: And so Obama was doing.
Speaker 3: Other things and he wanted this as a backstop. He'd
Speaker 3: never be able to achieve the actual cuts, not even
Speaker 3: the minuses that Elon did. But also, as I was
Speaker 3: talking to him, I just said to myself, yes, you.
Speaker 2: Know what you are. You're reasonable.
Speaker 3: You look at the net benefits, right, you definitely don't
Speaker 3: have a chainsaw and a hat, and that alone is.
Speaker 2: Not holding you back.
Speaker 3: But the way that any shoppeur would have done it,
Speaker 3: he could have gotten billions more in savings and we
Speaker 3: would have known a billionth of what he did. There
Speaker 3: was no pr aspect. It's almost negative pr Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's I mean that goes back to I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's amazing to me how many.
Speaker 2: People don't learn the lesson from Trump. I mean, have you.
Speaker 1: Noticed like what to me, like the brilliance of Trump
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen was he was He'd go anywhere, he would
Speaker 1: interview with anybody, he didn't care, and he sat down
Speaker 1: with everybody. I've not seen a democrat implement that same strategy,
Speaker 1: not once.
Speaker 2: You're like that guy comes close, right?
Speaker 1: He and by the way, who got traction out of nowhere?
Speaker 2: Yeah boodag right?
Speaker 1: Why because he was showing up and everywhere, right, he
Speaker 1: was willing to show up everywhere, So it is weird
Speaker 1: to me how long it's taken.
Speaker 2: Pare you know there's such.
Speaker 1: This this anger, this you know, it's it's funny.
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 1: There's people on the left who view Trump the same
Speaker 1: way as society views Hitler. And I know that the
Speaker 1: minute I bring up the H word, like people start
Speaker 1: tuning out. But the point is is that you know,
Speaker 1: there is no praising any idea Hitler ever had because
Speaker 1: it was all in service to something grotesque, right right?
Speaker 1: You know, the Democrats, I think sometimes too often look
Speaker 1: at Trump and saying, if he's for it, we have
Speaker 1: to be against it because his ends, everything he does
Speaker 1: is and you're just sitting there going, you know, there's
Speaker 1: ways to learn from him without emulating him, and I don't,
Speaker 1: you know it is And I don't know why I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether we blame internet culture for this
Speaker 1: right where where too many of politicians today are so
Speaker 1: responsive to the moment that they actually can't take a
Speaker 1: step back and see the big picture.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wish I had a better answer as to why
Speaker 1: Democrats have had such a hard time learning.
Speaker 2: What has made Trump work there's some.
Speaker 3: Parts of this that work, and they are I think Democrats,
Speaker 3: especially when they were a sentant, their skill set, what
Speaker 3: success in the party selected for was the ability to
Speaker 3: relentlessly stay on message and not make a mistake. And
Speaker 3: it's the and this was what Obama was great at.
Speaker 3: And you could see that this was what Kamala Harris,
Speaker 3: this was her theory, even if she didn't articulate, it
Speaker 3: is how she operated.
Speaker 2: Trump's the opposite.
Speaker 3: Mistakes don't matter, mistakes probably help them, and there.
Speaker 2: Is no message.
Speaker 3: But I do think because of all fractured media society,
Speaker 3: and because of podcasting and long form podcasting and the
Speaker 3: fact that an audio interview could go an hour and
Speaker 3: a half, I think that old Obama way of don't
Speaker 3: make a mistake and get your three messages message points
Speaker 3: of the day out, I think that's done. And I
Speaker 3: don't know that the Democrats have realized that. The other
Speaker 3: thing is the things that Trump does.
Speaker 2: Well. We were just talking about dose and you know democrats.
Speaker 2: You said Democrats would love to cut Would they? I
Speaker 2: think probably in their heart of hearts, a.
Speaker 3: Few would, maybe many would, But in terms of the
Speaker 3: salience of the issue, it's not one two, or if
Speaker 3: you're right, and.
Speaker 1: I mean I hears it about a democratic ten years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe that one doesn't exist, because you know, not
Speaker 1: every answer is government, but I do think a growing
Speaker 1: number of democratic office holders believe that it is well.
Speaker 3: One thing that I support Trump on is the elimination
Speaker 3: of pennies. And I've been talking about this on my
Speaker 3: show for five ten years, and every time a presidential
Speaker 3: candidate or a senator anyone else would come through, I
Speaker 3: would ask them, why do we still make the penny?
Speaker 3: What do you think about the elimination of pennies? And
Speaker 3: I asked many senators about this. I asked Michael Bennett,
Speaker 3: I asked sp Bootage, and every single one of them
Speaker 3: was interested in the idea, but they were all hesitant
Speaker 3: to just sign on to the obvious. They all claim
Speaker 3: they hadn't thought of it before, and I believe them.
Speaker 3: They're all unbelievably cautious in embracing the riskiness of eliminating
Speaker 3: the penny. And you know, Donald Trump, sure he gets
Speaker 3: himself in trouble with much more consequential items like yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe we should arrest doctors if they give it abortion,
Speaker 3: But he definitely would have said, oh yeah, pennies to no,
Speaker 3: and that's the right answer.
Speaker 1: By the way, look, do you think Kamala Harris would
Speaker 1: be negotiating with Iran right now?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, so I sit there and it's like, now,
Speaker 1: am I troubled that the what's motivating Trump to do
Speaker 1: this is his business deals in the with the golf guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm troubled by the motivation of it. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, sometimes you need some pragmatism. Has to be
Speaker 1: the coin of the realm in the Middle East, or
Speaker 1: you're not going to have any stability in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: And I say stability, not peace. They actually think there's
Speaker 1: a difference. And you know, so, you know, these are
Speaker 1: the things that the left needs to realize why the
Speaker 1: public is more tolerantive Trump than they are because on
Speaker 1: some of these things, Trump's behaving no different than what
Speaker 1: I think they think anybody.
Speaker 2: In that position should be behaving, which is, hey.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you got to make deals with people you don't like,
Speaker 1: and that there's no you know, that's that's real politique.
Speaker 2: So it is.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to me, how and I think what's
Speaker 1: going to be interesting is that if Democrats do win
Speaker 1: the presidency in twenty eight. My assumption it's because somebody
Speaker 1: has learned those lessons.
Speaker 2: If they have a nominee that hasn't learned those lessons,
Speaker 2: are not going to win in twenty oh. Well, have
Speaker 2: to be, have to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think everyone's running is positioning themselves as
Speaker 3: the guy who's learned the lessons, and I think they
Speaker 3: all have a different version of right. Gavin Newsom is,
Speaker 3: I talked to Michael Savage and contradicted, you know, twelve years.
Speaker 2: Of my record.
Speaker 3: And I think Tim wallas is, I'm that regular guy
Speaker 3: who code talks, comes off as a little clok.
Speaker 1: I think if you're caught trying too hard, you're just
Speaker 1: that trying to let me close out with this. Since
Speaker 1: you're a recovering sports reporter, and I spent a brief
Speaker 1: period I helped found a sports business publication back in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, so I guess I can claim some
Speaker 1: stint on the sports reporting world. I do view sports
Speaker 1: as sort of the last bastion of our culture that
Speaker 1: can bring us together, Like I have this thesis that
Speaker 1: I can make youth sports and high school sports. The
Speaker 1: revenue stream that classified advertising was to support local news
Speaker 1: that in the long term that that could be. I
Speaker 1: think when you look at you know, a live event,
Speaker 1: a sporting event can bring red and blue together better.
Speaker 2: I mean, the NFL's the king of all of it.
Speaker 1: And yet coverage of sports is becoming more partisan and more.
Speaker 1: You're starting to see there's conservative sports guys and there's
Speaker 1: liberal sports guys. Where's this headed. Is sports going to
Speaker 1: become as polarizing as politics because of the nature of
Speaker 1: how independent media works, or will it continue to be
Speaker 1: the last piece of glue we have in society.
Speaker 3: I think sports themselves are going to continue to be
Speaker 3: the glue. The talking about sports is definitely going to
Speaker 3: fracture along the lines that you're talking about, but the
Speaker 3: sports themselves.
Speaker 2: Take Caitlyn Clark.
Speaker 3: She can be the epitome of everything that a progressive
Speaker 3: believes in, and she could also be the epitome of
Speaker 3: everything that a conservative.
Speaker 2: Says is good about the country.
Speaker 1: Right, one of the best, actually, my favorite Rorschach test
Speaker 1: in America these days, Right, Like, Yeah, I can learn
Speaker 1: a lot about somebody by how they feel about Kaitlyn Clark.
Speaker 2: Right, look at what she's done as a woman. Look
Speaker 2: at what she's done for women's sports.
Speaker 3: Look at how she's unapologetic, or look at how a
Speaker 3: dad and daughter work together.
Speaker 2: Look at all the hard work, look at all the teamwork.
Speaker 3: So Caitlyn's going to be Caitlyn and is when she
Speaker 3: goes back from her quad and is going to be
Speaker 3: converting these twenty five footers, She'll be the thing, and
Speaker 3: then everything around it can talk about her however they want.
Speaker 1: Right, But it is sort of I am hopeful that
Speaker 1: we can stay glue.
Speaker 2: But you know, I we'll say, you know, I.
Speaker 1: You know, I am a little concerned that a few
Speaker 1: sports are the participants are all lean one way, Like
Speaker 1: it's tough to be a liberal.
Speaker 2: Golfer and it's tough to be a conservative NBA player.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I know examples both, and I think it's
Speaker 3: much less tough.
Speaker 2: I could speak. I know that golfers.
Speaker 3: I think I think twelve years ago I read a
Speaker 3: story that there were no registered Democrats on the on
Speaker 3: the tour. But I know that especially among conservative or
Speaker 3: people who are not orthodoxly or progressive among the NBA,
Speaker 3: much easier than it was during the days of the
Speaker 3: bubble and the lockdown.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting, easier I find it interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, Bruce Pearl is fascinating to me because you
Speaker 1: don't don't see a lot of college basketball coaches being
Speaker 1: so political, I think, for fear it would harm recruiting.
Speaker 1: Right now, he's political on one story and on one issue,
Speaker 1: though I notice he's every once in a while he'll
Speaker 1: he'll just do regular politics, but for the most party
Speaker 1: sticks to just Israel. And obviously it hadn't had any impact, right,
Speaker 1: Auburn's had too and terrific and in fact, he's turned
Speaker 1: them more into a basketball school than they've ever been,
Speaker 1: even in the Charles Barkley days.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But but it is that that stuff fascinates me, and
Speaker 1: I am very curious because you also see it, you know,
Speaker 1: certain in college football, certain coaches, if they're believers on
Speaker 1: a religious front, almost then do better with other believers, right,
Speaker 1: And it's almost how they recruit is through that prism.
Speaker 1: And it is still interesting to me that how much
Speaker 1: college football does work that way and that and people
Speaker 1: are are not quite aware of that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Bobby Batnan was a great example of that. There are
Speaker 3: many others, but I do think Bruce Pearl, I think
Speaker 3: the team responds to it. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of inspiration there, and he brought these this hostage family
Speaker 3: to the final four and they were eventually freed. I
Speaker 3: also think that uh, Steve Kerr, Okay, I know they're professional,
Speaker 3: but Kerr and Popovich.
Speaker 2: Were are very vocal.
Speaker 3: Popovitch was on the progressive side, and I think what
Speaker 3: people respond to.
Speaker 1: You think ku Indianapolis versus San Francisco, be with a
Speaker 1: coach and anything.
Speaker 3: I think so because I think people respond to his conviction,
Speaker 3: the strength of his conviction. I don't think most of
Speaker 3: these twenty something year olds really have strong They might
Speaker 3: have inclinations, but they have.
Speaker 2: Deep political opinions to begin with.
Speaker 3: And when they see Kerr as interpersonally, they respect him
Speaker 3: and therefore they respect the stances that he takes. He also,
Speaker 3: you know, it's very important that all of these cases,
Speaker 3: no one is taking really outlandish, outray dangerous everyone. You
Speaker 3: could always criticize everyone in someone's eyes as doing that,
Speaker 3: but I think they are sticking mostly to, you know,
Speaker 3: the factual basis of their arguments and doing it with
Speaker 3: conviction and responsibility overall.
Speaker 2: And I think you just said the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, Bruce Pearl and Steve Kerr
Speaker 1: both have that they speak with such a conviction on
Speaker 1: the singular topic right Tricklarly Current on gun reform, pearl
Speaker 1: on On on the Israeli hostages that that if you,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's deeply held, I think in some
Speaker 1: ways even people that don't agree with you will.
Speaker 2: Respect it right to that. Yeah, let me get you
Speaker 2: out of here.
Speaker 1: On this, which is an expression Tony Korneizer uses, and
Speaker 1: I love it, and it's and it's simply this, what's there?
Speaker 1: Or four things you read every day that people that
Speaker 1: that most people would be shocked to know that you
Speaker 1: read every day in order to like, what's what's your
Speaker 1: Not to give away any secrets, but you're clearly a
Speaker 1: pretty well read in person. You're you have a diversity
Speaker 1: of interests. You know, I thought I had a diversity
Speaker 1: of interests your Times a thousand and and in fact,
Speaker 1: I'm very jealous of your newsletter at times because I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you literally have I think have created a newsletter of
Speaker 1: just your interests, and you're just like, if you have
Speaker 1: my interest, then you'll enjoy my newsletter.
Speaker 2: Period.
Speaker 3: This is this is the newsletter the just List, which
Speaker 3: I probably should have played it really is just my stuff, right,
Speaker 3: it's the pescal list rights.
Speaker 1: What's a couple of things you read in on every
Speaker 1: day that is just that just nourishes you to a point.
Speaker 2: Whe're like, everybody should be reading this, and I know
Speaker 2: they don't.
Speaker 3: Right, So I will say the New York Times, which
Speaker 3: doesn't surprise won't surprise everyone.
Speaker 2: The Financial Times is fantastic.
Speaker 3: I think the Financial press overall is I don't know
Speaker 3: if the last bastion, but they're much more truthful and
Speaker 3: honest and the least.
Speaker 2: It's the least partisan.
Speaker 1: It certainly has an ideology you could devolve it, but
Speaker 1: it's less.
Speaker 3: I don't think they're trying to convince you of anything
Speaker 3: other than this is really the story, and so Bloomberg
Speaker 3: and the economists or things that I'm happy to spend
Speaker 3: subscription money on. And then I also read, uh the
Speaker 3: Nick Reports from Japan just to get some interesting, kind
Speaker 3: of funny news. I read another newsletter put together by
Speaker 3: Walt Hickey called Numblock. He's been doing it for so
Speaker 3: many years. I love that newsletter. I have vowed never
Speaker 3: to steal an item, but I steal his sources or
Speaker 3: I see where he's getting and then.
Speaker 2: You're like, I'm gonna start reading that sour. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: That's how I got Nike.
Speaker 3: And then I read I read Eric Zorn, who does
Speaker 3: a thing called the Piki un Sentinel. He used to
Speaker 3: be the best columnist of the Chicago Tribune, and the
Speaker 3: Tribune has been facimated. Zorn is awesome, and especially my
Speaker 3: sister lives in Chicago.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by Chicago.
Speaker 1: I have a few stories like the last he was
Speaker 1: like the replacement for Roiko, wasn't he? And he was
Speaker 1: sort of like the last of his kind. I think
Speaker 1: there's like a direct line there. Yes, I think he's
Speaker 1: in that linea jill though.
Speaker 3: You know, I think everyone probably who is a columnist
Speaker 3: editor the Tribune, like John Cass and all these guys
Speaker 3: were kind of anti Roykos would say I'm the I'm
Speaker 3: the last roy Co And Bob Green there was another
Speaker 3: controversial figure.
Speaker 2: What a paper? What a paper that is now a
Speaker 2: husk of itself.
Speaker 3: And there's a building in Chicago called the Tribune Building,
Speaker 3: and I bet people don't even.
Speaker 2: Know there's a newspaper associated with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of the papers that didn't survive, I just
Speaker 1: that one, you know.
Speaker 2: But there's it's there, but sure.
Speaker 1: But like the Boston Globes the same way, like it
Speaker 1: was Wow, it was like a more of a sports section.
Speaker 3: The Globe Sports section, Oh my god, everyone in section,
Speaker 3: the Post, the Post dial section, there was a that
Speaker 3: was a great tangium of greatness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now.
Speaker 1: Boy, the Post both are just you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're not what they used to be.
Speaker 2: Uh, Mike, this was a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: You're, like I said, you're a pioneer in the space
Speaker 2: and you you you you you have an originality that.
Speaker 1: You know you can't it's hard to emulate, and I
Speaker 1: think that for me it feels like the key to
Speaker 1: your success.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks, thanks Todd. All Right, Pasca Italian for a fish.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it that simple? You grew up as
Speaker 2: a fish.
Speaker 3: The name of the production company is Peach Fish Productions
Speaker 3: because Italian Pasca is peach, but pache is fish, so
Speaker 3: it's peach fish.
Speaker 2: Oh that's funny. I like that.
Speaker 1: I love a good sort of naming origin that that
Speaker 1: does stuff like that with words and language.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Mike, appreciate the time. Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All Right, see that dark open that I brought to
Speaker 1: you a tad lighter right with the conversation with Mike anyway,
Speaker 1: So with that, let's do a few questions. The last
Speaker 1: chuck here ash chuck. This one comes from Angela from
Speaker 1: New Orleans. I check love the podcast and enjoyed the
Speaker 1: new Sphere interview Sunday.
Speaker 2: I like that format.
Speaker 1: I wanted to follow up on John from Fairfield question
Speaker 1: about Trump and Musk. Trump's tweets seem to admit he
Speaker 1: gave Elon Musk a government contractor sweeping access to government systems,
Speaker 1: raising serious conflict of interest concerns within the level of influence.
Speaker 1: If true, suggests corruption or at least poor judgment for
Speaker 1: both Trump and his advisors. Also, how are tweets viewed legally?
Speaker 1: Can they be used as evidence or trigger congressional inquiries?
Speaker 2: Thank you? Well, look, they are considered.
Speaker 1: I do think that the tweets are you know, they're
Speaker 1: not somehow protected as some sort of like half speech
Speaker 1: or something like that. Right, what he says on a
Speaker 1: social media what he says in social media is no
Speaker 1: different than what he says in public. And he's the
Speaker 1: president whenever he does it right, and it can be
Speaker 1: a presidential So no, I don't there's no there's there's
Speaker 1: no less. I guess there's no less. You know, a
Speaker 1: tweet hasn't viewed any less any differently than what he
Speaker 1: would say in a TV interview.
Speaker 2: Or a print interview.
Speaker 1: But you're right, I mean, this goes back to about
Speaker 1: what you said, you know, sort of he he basically
Speaker 1: confesses to what he's doing up front, right, And it
Speaker 1: goes back to my to that quote from Speaker Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: who I think I've quoted now there will probably be
Speaker 1: the fourth time in two weeks where he said the
Speaker 1: biggest difference between Trump's corruption and Biden's corruption is that
Speaker 1: Biden tried to keep his corruption on the down low
Speaker 1: with what Hunter Biden was doing and what Frank Biden
Speaker 1: was doing. Donald Trump does it out in the open
Speaker 1: and transparently so because he tells you in plain sight
Speaker 1: that he's handed the keys to the government over to
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, and he's allowed Elon Musk to have his way,
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to certain things that impact
Speaker 1: his businesses, get Star Link into the White House, whatever right,
Speaker 1: you know, allows him to get more government contracts. That
Speaker 1: that's well, it's out in the open so it's not
Speaker 1: unethical anyway. My skepticism is there. Now here's the problem
Speaker 1: the entity we have two. There are three different places
Speaker 1: that could investigate what is clearly obvious conflict of interest
Speaker 1: and it may be corrupt, right, it may be a crime.
Speaker 1: We don't know that it's a crime. We would need
Speaker 1: more evidence to prove it. But there are three entities
Speaker 1: that could essentially do this investigating to see if a
Speaker 1: crime was committed. Entity one would be an inspector general
Speaker 1: at any of the agencies. But of course Donald Trump
Speaker 1: fired all the inspector generals. Now summers are kind of
Speaker 1: be back in place, and when he fires one, there's
Speaker 1: a temporary but by doing the across the board firing,
Speaker 1: he was sending a warning shot, don't come after me.
Speaker 1: The second group is your is your congressional committees? Well,
Speaker 1: guess what Congress is controlled by his party and they
Speaker 1: seem to I mean the House Oversight Committee is literally
Speaker 1: holding investigations about whether Joe Biden had control of his
Speaker 1: autopen or not.
Speaker 2: They are not.
Speaker 1: Investigating what's hitting them in plain sight, which is he
Speaker 1: handed government contracts, gave them away like candidate Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: and he gave Elon Musk unfettered access, probably illegal, unfettered
Speaker 1: access to the federal government to different databases like Social
Speaker 1: Security in the IRS. But we don't know if he
Speaker 1: did it corruptly or not. It certainly looks like it is,
Speaker 1: but there's no investigators. And of course the third entity
Speaker 1: that could do this is the Justice Department. I'm going
Speaker 1: to pause here to let you laugh when I said
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. So you get my point here. Everything
Speaker 1: you say is valid. The problem is the entities that
Speaker 1: are in charge of sort of the rule of law
Speaker 1: in these scenarios. Your inspectors generals, your Justice Department, and
Speaker 1: your congressional committees have all been compromised. I wish I
Speaker 1: had a better answer for you, Angel, I appreciate the question.
Speaker 1: Let me go this second question, alternate history question. Where
Speaker 1: would we be now if Trump didn't withdraw from the
Speaker 1: Iran nuclear deal?
Speaker 2: Jim E.
Speaker 1: Well, that's an interesting question. Well, I can tell you
Speaker 1: what Israel feared of Trump doing a new deal. Here's
Speaker 1: what Israel feared in a new deal. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're really interested in the sort of the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of this, I do hope you tune into the
Speaker 1: interview I did with Treta Parsi on Newsphere. This guy,
Speaker 1: he just he really laid it out well, and we
Speaker 1: go back to that, you know, back to that original
Speaker 1: deal and sort of he really just explains the political
Speaker 1: motivations that each government has domestically. Anyway, It's a terrific
Speaker 1: conversation and I think we'll fill in some blanks here, But.
Speaker 2: Look what Israel.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons there's real acted is they had
Speaker 1: a fear that Trump would cut a deal with Iran,
Speaker 1: and that the deal would give Aron some money that
Speaker 1: could in turn allow them to replenish Hesbalo, perhaps replenish
Speaker 1: the Hoodies, and maybe even help Hamas, although I'm less
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent sure they would be as inclined
Speaker 1: to help rebuild Hamas as they actually the Iranians, I
Speaker 1: think blame Hamas for creating this situation. They suddenly find
Speaker 1: them in right. Hamas did not have Iran's green light
Speaker 1: for the October seventh attack, and yet that October seventh
Speaker 1: attack could look looks like it's turning into the beginning
Speaker 1: of the end for a Ran or at least certainly
Speaker 1: for many of Iran's proxies. But if we still had
Speaker 1: this Iran deal, well they would have you know, in theory,
Speaker 1: they would have more money to at to use, they
Speaker 1: would be more The question would be would they be
Speaker 1: as aggressive if we were if we had if we
Speaker 1: were on top of them all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: it was interesting what Treta thought. You know, they're in
Speaker 1: the first Iran deal. The Golf States were also against
Speaker 1: the United States cutting a deal with Iran, and as
Speaker 1: he put it, he said their fear was that the
Speaker 1: United States would end up just doing business with Iran
Speaker 1: over time and essentially not allowing the Golf States to
Speaker 1: have the advantage that they've had for quite some time,
Speaker 1: at least financially in the region now. And so that's
Speaker 1: why they were They shared the same position as Israel.
Speaker 1: Now they're less you know, they're not as supportive of
Speaker 1: what Israel did, and at the same time, they're not
Speaker 1: any more pro Iran. They just at this point, don't
Speaker 1: they just want stability in the region, because it's the
Speaker 1: instability that costs the money, and it's the instability. Look
Speaker 1: what it's going to do to I don't think this
Speaker 1: is going to be good for anybody in that region.
Speaker 1: So I still don't know how how to answer your question.
Speaker 1: There's so many what ifs here, would be be still
Speaker 1: still be in power?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Would he be considered? How would that have happened? Would
Speaker 1: this if? If Iran? If this deal is staying, does
Speaker 1: Iran pull back on its proxies or get more aggressive
Speaker 1: with its proxies? I I am, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not going to sit here and claim that
Speaker 1: things would be better. It's very possible we could have
Speaker 1: been in the same place because maybe Iran gets cocky
Speaker 1: and violates the agreement, and if they do, then we're
Speaker 1: drawn into this. So I don't know if there's any
Speaker 1: if there's any upside to have to have now at
Speaker 1: this point, I don't know if there had been upside,
Speaker 1: especially if it appears that you were about to get
Speaker 1: them back into a deal that might have been slightly
Speaker 1: tougher than the deal that was cut with Obama. But Jim,
Speaker 1: it's a great question. I don't that's let me put
Speaker 1: it this way. I'm going to go ask some of
Speaker 1: my smarter Middle East experts that very same question, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to see if I can get you a
Speaker 1: better answer down the road, all Right, let's see here,
Speaker 1: Joe may do one more here, Joe R. He's just
Speaker 1: got a note. Not necessarily a question, but it's an
Speaker 1: interesting one. So I thought I charged from Joe. Ours
Speaker 1: from Vero Beach, home of Dodgertown. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I went to Vera. We got to Vera Beach every
Speaker 1: spring break to go check out the Dodgers. My dad
Speaker 1: was a Dodger fan. That was the team of my
Speaker 1: youth as well. So love me some Vera Beach and
Speaker 1: I'd love to see Vera Beach get a new team
Speaker 1: for spring training. How another club hasn't said, hey, we
Speaker 1: want a piece of Dodger Town is beyond me. But Joe,
Speaker 1: here's your observation. Watched your Newsphere interview with Steve Bannon.
Speaker 1: It was like a fresh breeze coming off the ocean.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, see, this is why I'm going to share this
Speaker 1: with you, right. I mean, been to meet the press
Speaker 1: and face the nation fan for decades. In the last
Speaker 1: few years, I've been fast forwarding through the interviews with
Speaker 1: politicians who appeared merely to repeat the party line and
Speaker 1: ignore hard questions. Your podcasts and Newsphere interviews provide more
Speaker 1: information on the state of politics in the world than
Speaker 1: those shows. So congrats on moving to your new formats
Speaker 1: and providing real sight on today's weighty issues.
Speaker 2: Co Gators, Oh man.
Speaker 1: That pains me to have to repeat You'd said all
Speaker 1: these nice things and then you had to say, go Gators. Anyway, Joe,
Speaker 1: let me defend those Sunday shows here. Though I think
Speaker 1: both Margaret and Kristen are trying their very best. I
Speaker 1: think the formats are what prevents them, I think from
Speaker 1: doing the interviews.
Speaker 2: That they would like to be doing. So don't trust me.
Speaker 2: I've been in that seat.
Speaker 1: I understand the different pressures that come with it. So
Speaker 1: I want to be as much as much as I
Speaker 1: appreciate the question and appreciate the sentiment, I'm not interested
Speaker 1: in and dunking on them. I just think that we're
Speaker 1: in a different place now, in this current media ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Do think that.
Speaker 1: There is a that there's a better way to surface information.
Speaker 1: I know it's not as sometimes, it's not as shiny,
Speaker 1: it's not as much of a shiny metal object right
Speaker 1: to grab your attention. But I fear traditional media in general.
Speaker 1: You know, when you start to lose audience. You start
Speaker 1: to like try to grab viewers by the lapels, don't leave,
Speaker 1: don't leave, right, and you start to sort of chase
Speaker 1: certain shiny metal things, thinking that it's going to help
Speaker 1: when sometimes zagging just when everybody's zigging is sometimes the
Speaker 1: better move. But look, you know it's a this is
Speaker 1: the advantage of the formats that I'm in. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, sometimes you don't there aren't You can't
Speaker 1: get these people to sit down for twenty at thirty minutes, right,
Speaker 1: So the people I am getting are end up sounding
Speaker 1: forthcoming because they're willing to come on for twenty thirty
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, and you get a better understanding of
Speaker 1: how someone thinks, even if they're not being straight with
Speaker 1: the answers that they're giving, and you kind of catch
Speaker 1: them with it. Right, that five to ten minute interview,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it serves anybody anything, And I
Speaker 1: think that unfortunately, everybody knows how to do the five
Speaker 1: minute interview, right. You know how to avoid making news.
Speaker 1: If you have to avoid making news, you know how
Speaker 1: to hijacket if you'd like to make a one particular
Speaker 1: piece of information and then make it so that it's
Speaker 1: nothing else.
Speaker 2: I think that's what has made it.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, look, we just got to the
Speaker 1: end of the usefulness of that kind of format, is
Speaker 1: the way I.
Speaker 2: Would put it. But anyway, I appreciate the sentiment.
Speaker 1: I hope my media writer friends out there don't try
Speaker 1: to overwrite what I just said there, don't aggregate what
Speaker 1: I just said.
Speaker 2: Just let it be all right with that. It's Monday.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of maybe there might be
Speaker 1: another podcast or two you want to catch up with,
Speaker 1: so I won't add to the U add to your
Speaker 1: listening time today, but I promise you a couple more
Speaker 1: fun drops later this week and with that until we
Speaker 1: upload again.
Speaker 2: M M