Speaker 1: Hello there, Happy Thursday to you. Chuck Todt here with
Speaker 1: another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Thank you for watching
Speaker 1: on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure you've subscribed.
Speaker 1: Like and subscribe. We like those things. Appreciate you those
Speaker 1: that are listening on the original way that many people
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts, good old fashioned audio on your phones,
Speaker 1: in your cars, wherever you're listening to this much appreciated.
Speaker 1: We are taping just before this is we are in
Speaker 1: the run up to Memorial Day weekend. And let me
Speaker 1: give you a little bit a hint about Memorial Day
Speaker 1: weekend in Washington, particularly in the odd numbered years. So
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of this mess right now, right
Speaker 1: House Republicans, they set an artificial deadline.
Speaker 2: Which they may miss.
Speaker 1: You know, Mike Johnson wanted to get the one big
Speaker 1: beautiful bill, basically Trump's Trump's Agenda Bill, right, you know,
Speaker 1: at this point we're governing in this horrendous process. Now
Speaker 1: one party gets control of everything for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: So they like, let's make the kitchen sink bill. It
Speaker 1: was what Build back Better was what Joe Biden's Kitchen
Speaker 1: Sink Bill was called. This one kitchen sink bill is
Speaker 1: one big, beautiful bill. It's officially called this right, but
Speaker 1: it's really the partisan kitchen sink bill. And what have
Speaker 1: we learned about partisan kitchen sink bills. They're not they
Speaker 1: will they'll eventually pass. It just depends on how much
Speaker 1: crap you have to put in or take out in
Speaker 1: order to get it to pass. There used to be
Speaker 1: a great saying in Washington, if you can't get a
Speaker 1: bill in Congress pass make it bigger. Meaning because back
Speaker 1: in the days when you actually when everybody was transactional,
Speaker 1: not just in partisan transactional natures, but literally across the aisle,
Speaker 1: you could buy votes anytime you want it. All right,
Speaker 1: let's build this in that district. We'll get his vote.
Speaker 1: Let's do this over here. He needs my vote for
Speaker 1: his bill. I'll give him that if he gives me mind.
Speaker 1: For you know, that old fashioned way of making a
Speaker 1: congressional bill was the way it worked when there was bipartisanship.
Speaker 1: If you didn't, if you couldn't get a bill passed,
Speaker 1: make it bigger. But ever since we went to this
Speaker 1: partisan governance. Right, it basically started with the Clinton era.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Clinton had a little bit of Republican support every now
Speaker 1: and then early on, but he was mostly having to
Speaker 1: do his first two years he had full democratic control.
Speaker 2: It was partisan George W. Bush, same thing.
Speaker 1: He had a fifty to fifty Senate, so he didn't
Speaker 1: have to work with a couple of Democrats every now
Speaker 1: and then. Barack Obama went it alone. Trump's gone it alone.
Speaker 1: This is the second time he's done it. And of
Speaker 1: course Biden went it alone. And so when you move
Speaker 1: into this this stuff, you end up. Look, you make
Speaker 1: legislation that is harder to keep permanent for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: makes it easier. And you see what they're doing now.
Speaker 1: I think Republicans are trying to repeal pieces of Biden's
Speaker 1: bill in order to pay for theirs. Democrats, when they
Speaker 1: get controlled, just do the same thing, right in two
Speaker 1: years or four years. It is it's no way to govern,
Speaker 1: it's no way to run the country. It's how what
Speaker 1: the voters want, whether the voters like like a piece
Speaker 1: of legislation or not. It's the whiplash that eventually creates exhaustion.
Speaker 1: So look, it's the reality. And so what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Does John Here's what I will tell you. You're going
Speaker 1: to see dramatic headlines over the next You might see
Speaker 1: more dramatic headlines in the next twenty four hours, forty hours,
Speaker 1: seventy two hours. So it so it's not there, and oh,
Speaker 1: they've doomed the bill, and it may be possible that
Speaker 1: Johnson has to let him go fly home for the
Speaker 1: Memorial Day recess and they deal with this for when
Speaker 1: they come back. Remember how many times Joe Biden's Build
Speaker 1: Back Better Bill died and then was resuscitated. Joe Manchin
Speaker 1: at the end of the day killed it, and then
Speaker 1: he came back and revived it. You see where I'm
Speaker 1: going here. The point is this bill is going to pass.
Speaker 1: We just didn't quite know when it is going to pass.
Speaker 1: There is one or two Republicans that are comfortable voting
Speaker 1: against it, but no one's going to be comfortable being
Speaker 1: the vote that kills it. Right, Thomas Massey can get
Speaker 1: away with he's doing because he's not the vote that
Speaker 1: kills it. And maybe in Andy Harrison, Maryland, or maybe
Speaker 1: one other two others can join. You know, however, whatever
Speaker 1: they're padding is, they'll allow two or three to throw
Speaker 1: their temper tantrums and they can vote against it. But
Speaker 1: nobody will be willing trust me to be the vote
Speaker 1: that kills it. No matter how much they don't like
Speaker 1: the Medicaid cuts, no matter how much they don't like
Speaker 1: the salt caps, it won't matter.
Speaker 2: This will pass.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those moments where back in
Speaker 1: my old days with I sit here and roll my eyes.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, I know there's this assumption that
Speaker 1: we should cover this and take the debate seriously, but
Speaker 1: we know the endgame here and do we really want
Speaker 1: to pay how much? How much do we want to
Speaker 1: waste the viewer's time on this sausage. Sometimes it's worth
Speaker 1: it and sometimes it isn't. Here's what I'll tell you
Speaker 1: on this one. It isn't worth it. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you the shortcut on that. So look, this thing's
Speaker 1: going to pass my guest today, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a perfect memorial.
Speaker 2: They we can right.
Speaker 1: This is the weekend that we kick off where some
Speaker 1: people start to start to, you know, have find their
Speaker 1: books for the summer that they want to read their
Speaker 1: fiction books. Maybe they've got to new album they're going
Speaker 1: to download, Maybe there's a new TV series or some
Speaker 1: movies they're going to be well, My guest is Spencer Cornaber,
Speaker 1: and he wrote this terrific piece in the Atlantic, having
Speaker 1: you Know about you know is basically it's it's, frankly,
Speaker 1: something that's written about every ten years.
Speaker 2: Why does pop culture suck? You know?
Speaker 1: Some form of that conversation? You know, it's worse than ever, right, nobody,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where I'm and you'll
Speaker 1: hear this in the conversation that Spencer and I have,
Speaker 1: where you know, we always miss the good old days
Speaker 1: of something, you know, maybe it's the good old days
Speaker 1: of radio. I will you'll hear me whine about music.
Speaker 1: I hate what algorithms have done to new music, and
Speaker 1: you'll hear me go off on that. But there's another
Speaker 1: part of culture that I think is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of real culture wars. We've been
Speaker 1: in a sort of culture cold war between the two
Speaker 1: parties now for most of the twenty first century. Right
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon is fond of saying that politics is downstream
Speaker 1: from culture. The fact is it is all sort of
Speaker 1: next right, you know, if you think about it. Our presidents,
Speaker 1: ever since the television age, or really the radio age
Speaker 1: with FDR, our presidents have become cultural figures. Some want
Speaker 1: to be in cultural figures and some do not, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they all don't become one. Eisenhower strikes
Speaker 1: me as somebody who was uncomfortable being a part of
Speaker 1: the culture.
Speaker 2: But John Kennedy, I think, loved it.
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon loved it, even if he didn't like how
Speaker 1: the culture was treating him, if you will. But he's
Speaker 1: a guy that did the Went On laugh In, which
Speaker 1: was Saturday Night Live before there was Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: So and of course Ronald Reagan came from Hollywood into politics.
Speaker 1: So look, the fact is culture and politics.
Speaker 2: Have been intertwined.
Speaker 1: And I've been thinking about this, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a part of me I'm like, you know, I can
Speaker 1: be a curmudgeon on some of this stuff when I
Speaker 1: hear a celebrity or an athlete pop off about a politician,
Speaker 1: whether left or right, and I just sort of roll
Speaker 1: my eyes. Oh god, you know. And then then I
Speaker 1: remind myself, well, I do this about sports, and I
Speaker 1: wonder how many sports guys roll their eyes and people
Speaker 1: like Chuck to pop off about sports and they think
Speaker 1: they know what they're doing, or Richard Nixon wants to
Speaker 1: write a play for the Washington football team back in
Speaker 1: the day. So I at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we're all citizens, and we're all we all sort of
Speaker 1: have earned the right to pop off.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The question is what is the role that political leaders?
Speaker 1: What's a proper role At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they're you know, democracy, it is it's infused in the culture. Right,
Speaker 1: This is sort of freedom of the freedom of speech.
Speaker 1: So in many ways our political rules were responsive to culture.
Speaker 1: So I, you know, they are intertwined. Whether there's no
Speaker 1: debate about whether they should be or not, it is.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The question is what should political leaders do impose culture
Speaker 1: or simply influence culture? Are they they to celebrate the
Speaker 1: culture or attack the culture of the moment?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is aggressive on this, right. He doesn't just
Speaker 1: want to influence culture, right. He wants a certain type
Speaker 1: of He's got a vision in his own head of
Speaker 1: what he wants Kennedy Centator to be.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He wants that to be a show, the American showcase
Speaker 1: for what he believes is great American culture. And like
Speaker 1: most people age seventy eight, seventy nine or eighty years old,
Speaker 1: they think peak culture was sometime between Dean Martin and
Speaker 1: maybe I'll give them bono, right, But that is culture
Speaker 1: basically nineteen fifty five to nineteen eighty five. That thirty
Speaker 1: years that's peak culture, right, that's you know Les miz
Speaker 1: that came out.
Speaker 2: Then when you start to think, right.
Speaker 1: This is and it's simply you know, we I think
Speaker 1: it's human nature when it comes to what we think
Speaker 1: is culture is when is when the culture is appealing
Speaker 1: to us, right, And when we're in the ages of
Speaker 1: somewhere between say ten and forty, that thirty year period,
Speaker 1: that's when most of pop culture is actually trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to you, right, And it's in that thirty year
Speaker 1: period there's always a there's sort of the pre teen culture,
Speaker 1: teen culture, college cult, you see where I'm going, And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, after forty, it's all nostalgia. Okay,
Speaker 1: everything becomes derivative of nostalgia. I'm not saying people over
Speaker 1: forty aren't interested in new things, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: the view of culture, I think in the human brain
Speaker 1: becomes more nostalgic after a certain age. Well, let's be honest, right,
Speaker 1: there is it's like, what is our comfort level? I
Speaker 1: find myself somewhere in the middle here, Right, I think
Speaker 1: it's perfectly appropriate and it's going to happen that who
Speaker 1: we elect as president is usually somewhat reflective of where
Speaker 1: the culture is at the moment.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not lost on me that Modern Family
Speaker 1: the election of Obama all sort of happened at the
Speaker 1: same time. Right, Modern Family was sort of peak culture.
Speaker 1: You go back and you think about the culture of
Speaker 1: eighties TV, and it was the height of sort of
Speaker 1: family TV, Family ties, The Cosby Show eight is enough
Speaker 1: that felt like it fits the Reagan era culture. You
Speaker 1: throw in a Dallas and a dynasty, right, and that
Speaker 1: sort of is a that was that version of the
Speaker 1: darker version of culture. Right, you could say, you know,
Speaker 1: the up to be a Modern Family breaking bad. Right,
Speaker 1: In some ways both were We're sort of part of
Speaker 1: that early sort of influenced culture that you could say
Speaker 1: Obama's election either represented or helped facilitate, etc. And certainly
Speaker 1: Trump's election is create I think sort of broadened the
Speaker 1: idea that hey, there's no more cancel culture, although I
Speaker 1: would argue we're starting to see a new version of
Speaker 1: cancel culture develop at this time. By the right who's
Speaker 1: trying to shame you know, whether it's liberal academics, things
Speaker 1: like that, it's no different than the same cancel culture
Speaker 1: those folks on the right were complaining that progressives were
Speaker 1: doing when it came to certain comedians and certain things
Speaker 1: that were uttered. So I would caution some of my
Speaker 1: friends in the right who are sort of enjoying this
Speaker 1: moment trying to lord over the culture, that they're actually
Speaker 1: practicing some of the same bad, bad ideas that they
Speaker 1: criticized the left, the left for doing.
Speaker 2: But Donald Trump certainly.
Speaker 1: Is trying, you know, he he his presence, He's not
Speaker 1: I don't think he is somebody that is trying to
Speaker 1: just influence culture. He wants to impose it. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the line, right that there's a fine line
Speaker 1: between you know, freedom of speech and imposing culture. And
Speaker 1: if you're imposing culture, your essentially imposing on speech. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the line he's continuing to draw.
Speaker 2: It decided.
Speaker 1: Look, if he doesn't like what Bruce Springsteen has to say,
Speaker 1: so what you know, ask Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2: There are many you know, many.
Speaker 1: Musicians back in the late sixties and early seventies were
Speaker 1: no Nixon fan, and certainly he didn't. He complained about
Speaker 1: it on his tapes. He didn't go out and public
Speaker 1: and complain about as much. In fact, just the opposite.
Speaker 1: He was always trying to soften his image, right the
Speaker 1: dude the walk in, the walk on with laughing, or
Speaker 1: you look at the picture, you know, hanging out with
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley. He of course loved to hang out with
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis. But what Trump is you know, doing here
Speaker 1: with his He gets angry when celebrities attack them, and
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that he believes he's
Speaker 1: a celebrity, and that he's a celebrity before he was
Speaker 1: a politician. Right, And so this is a case where
Speaker 1: Donald Trump believes, Hey, I'm a member of the same club.
Speaker 1: Why are you attacking me. I'm a member of the
Speaker 1: same club. You shouldn't be doing that type of mindset.
Speaker 1: But he, you know, so there's something has to do
Speaker 1: with he thinks he's, hey, we're on par you know,
Speaker 1: you should be celebrating me and et cetera. So he's
Speaker 1: doing that, but it is a you know, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, he just sort of is looking backwards. Look,
Speaker 1: I like my presidents using the White House to celebrate
Speaker 1: new artists. I like my presidents in the White House
Speaker 1: to try to lift up maybe certain parts of the
Speaker 1: culture that weren't getting enough attention, you know. I remember
Speaker 1: it was Jimmy Carter that got me to listen to
Speaker 1: the to Charlie Daniels for the first time. He loved
Speaker 1: the Devil went Down to Georgia that.
Speaker 2: Song, if you know.
Speaker 1: And of course it Charlie Daniels became a little bit
Speaker 1: politically divisive to some people a decade or so ago,
Speaker 1: but it was also a form of music that I
Speaker 1: hadn't been listening to, and Jimmy Carter sort of surfaced
Speaker 1: it up. So there's there's a fine line, right which
Speaker 1: I think it's perfectly appropriate to surface up new culture,
Speaker 1: to sort of diversify the culture, but to impose it
Speaker 1: and say what is good and what is bad. That's
Speaker 1: when you're actually imposing on speech. And I think that's
Speaker 1: when people get reactionary, and that's when everybody gets in
Speaker 1: And I think the frustrating thing is is when is
Speaker 1: when politics gets so infused with with with some sector
Speaker 1: of the culture, whether it's a point at athletics, right,
Speaker 1: the NFL felt that the hard way at one point,
Speaker 1: whether it is music, whether it is the Oscars, whether
Speaker 1: it is the Emmys, and so it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: certainly a fine line. But I do think that that
Speaker 1: here's my here's my guess of what where we had it,
Speaker 1: where we had as a country, we're not you know,
Speaker 1: Trump is intentionally inserts himself, right, and the Kennedy Center
Speaker 1: and all this business. We're going to end up wanting
Speaker 1: a president who wants nothing to do with the culture, right.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to be looking for a Dwight
Speaker 1: Eisenhower type. We're gonna be looking for a Gerald Ford type,
Speaker 1: the do no harm frankly, a younger version of what
Speaker 1: people thought they were getting from Joe Biden. Right, Joe
Speaker 1: Biden was was you know that he was supposed to
Speaker 1: be Gerald Ford or Dwight Eisenhower. He chose to be
Speaker 1: something else, or he was surrounded by by aides who
Speaker 1: saw something bigger that that wasn't there, right, He didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't meet the moment because he didn't apparently didn't
Speaker 1: realize why he was elected in the first place, you know,
Speaker 1: and this happens to many a president. Some understand why
Speaker 1: they were elected, and some have a of a bigger theory.
Speaker 2: Of the case.
Speaker 1: But as you listen, look, by the way, if you
Speaker 1: don't like the fact that I've had a political cultural conversation,
Speaker 1: well I don't know why you're subscribing to me number one,
Speaker 1: but number two, fear not the conversation. I have a
Speaker 1: Spencer Cornaber. We talk about movies to talk about we're
Speaker 1: actually limiting the amount of politics. But I will say this,
Speaker 1: I noticed that there were there's been more, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad to see it. That one of the permission slips
Speaker 1: that I do think that Trump's election has given to
Speaker 1: Hollywood writers is that if you just just watch this
Speaker 1: season of White Lotus or you watch this season of
Speaker 1: The Studio, and I promise you there are episodes in
Speaker 1: both of those there are parts of both episodes that
Speaker 1: that conversation would not have been, that would not have
Speaker 1: appeared on any episode of any show from twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: through twenty twenty, and maybe from twenty fifteen through twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. But as the acknowledgment that, hey, half the
Speaker 1: country is in one place, and if you're in if
Speaker 1: you're in the business and make it TV shows or movies.
Speaker 1: You'd like to open the aperture so that everybody feels
Speaker 1: comfortable watching your show.
Speaker 2: And so I will tell you.
Speaker 1: I am glad when I can't immediately know oh the
Speaker 1: writers are trying to make this political statement. There's nothing
Speaker 1: thing I enjoy more than when there's a zag in
Speaker 1: one of the TV shows I'm watching that is literally
Speaker 1: a zag and is meant to sort of virtue signal
Speaker 1: that hey, we're not trying to be one sided politically,
Speaker 1: We're trying to open our doors to all sides of
Speaker 1: the conversation. All Right, I'll shut my trap on this
Speaker 1: topic for now. When we come back a fascinating conversation
Speaker 1: about is how crappy is today's pop culture? I would argue,
Speaker 1: not as crappy as we all think. PI this Spencer
Speaker 1: corn Haber next, well, joining me now is Spencer corn Haburn.
Speaker 1: If you've spent five minutes on the internet, you've probably
Speaker 1: seen a reference to Spencer's piece about culture and about
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic that he essentially made read the title
Speaker 1: of the piece, The title of the piece being is
Speaker 1: this the worst ever era of American pop culture?
Speaker 2: And Spencer we were just.
Speaker 1: Talking before we started recording about how the beauty of
Speaker 1: your piece is how much it has sparked a lot
Speaker 1: of other people to write about it or talk about
Speaker 1: it or say it, and in fact, you will love this.
Speaker 1: My daughter just got home from college, like when I say,
Speaker 1: got them got like an hour ago, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to, you know, tape this interview. And she goes,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And I show her.
Speaker 2: She goes, are you going to be trashing Taylor Swift?
Speaker 1: That was like her first question. It's good culture And
Speaker 1: I'm like.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know yet.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it, but let's start with why did
Speaker 1: you decide to write this piece?
Speaker 2: And I asked, because.
Speaker 1: This is a piece that is always fraught with peril,
Speaker 1: meaning the minute you write it. It's the ultimate subjective
Speaker 1: because one person's cultural disgust is another person's excitement about change.
Speaker 1: So what motivated you? And let me ask me, why
Speaker 1: do you think you should write this piece?
Speaker 4: Well, what motivating me is that the complaining got so
Speaker 4: loud in the culture in the twenty twenties. I felt
Speaker 4: like I've been at the Atlantic as a culture critic
Speaker 4: for nearly fifteen years now, and I kind of wanted
Speaker 4: the job knowing that declinism was part of the tradition
Speaker 4: of arts criticism.
Speaker 3: Every generation.
Speaker 4: Ends up feeling like it grew up in a golden
Speaker 4: age and like watched that golden age, and and you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of critics spend the second half of their
Speaker 4: career kind of writing lay laymentations for how things used
Speaker 4: to be. And so I've been very self aware about
Speaker 4: not falling into that trap. I've been accused of being
Speaker 4: overly optimistic or optimistic is.
Speaker 2: Some optimistic that's a good word.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, that's when you allegedly just believe that
Speaker 4: anything that's popular is great art, which is not something
Speaker 4: I believe. But when you start praising people like Tarterswift,
Speaker 4: you sometimes get called optimist, which is just the way
Speaker 4: of calling you a sheep or whatever.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I've been on guard for this.
Speaker 4: But in the twenty twenties, kind of coming out of
Speaker 4: the pandemic, it felt like there was no coherent story
Speaker 4: in culture other than I was reading from all these
Speaker 4: different different vandage points. People feeling like culture was dying.
Speaker 4: Their favorite art form was, you know, in a follow
Speaker 4: period and so, and the arguments they were making were
Speaker 4: actually rather compelling and some of them did involve these
Speaker 4: sort of subjective questions that you referred to. You know,
Speaker 4: that can get so tire somewhere, can kind of just
Speaker 4: be a circular argument about which era of movies or
Speaker 4: music was the best. There was a little bit about that,
Speaker 4: but there were more about these structural, technological, economic, political
Speaker 4: forces that were making this era feel really different than
Speaker 4: previous eras we lived through.
Speaker 1: I want to focus on music and literature first because
Speaker 1: I think those are the ones where I feel as
Speaker 1: if technology may have.
Speaker 2: Gotten in a way.
Speaker 1: Let me start with music, because I'm a I was
Speaker 1: a music major in college, because I was a classical
Speaker 1: music person.
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 1: I played the French worn I have. I My father
Speaker 1: worked in the record industry, so I grew up all
Speaker 1: these final records all the time, and he loved both.
Speaker 1: He was early rock, he was a boomer, but also
Speaker 1: you know, loved he loved all of Mozart. It was
Speaker 1: more Mozart than Beethoven. But I so I have an
Speaker 1: eclectic music taste. I also growing up in the eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I literally go from led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: to Public Enemy, right, which is what a lot of
Speaker 1: my friends did, right. We were the transition, and that
Speaker 1: was what we thought was cool. I certainly had a
Speaker 1: clash phase, you know, so, just like sort of.
Speaker 2: Any kid of the eighties.
Speaker 1: I bring this up because my I'm a new music snob.
Speaker 1: I missed the days of the in the early night
Speaker 1: you go to listening stations, and I was the guy.
Speaker 1: If I found one song on an album, I like,
Speaker 1: I bought the whole album. I'm like, I'm giving that
Speaker 1: artist a chance because I want to. I believed in
Speaker 1: the entire idea of hey, they have something to say,
Speaker 1: let me, let me, let me listen to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And my frustration with music today I have and I'm
Speaker 1: well confess I have the luxury to do this, but
Speaker 1: I have six different music streaming services that I that
Speaker 1: I use because I had it all on Apple and
Speaker 1: it can't. I never get I never get anything that's new,
Speaker 1: unclassical mean and not obviously classical music's never new, but
Speaker 1: there's new interpretations, new recordings, whatever, because it's not a
Speaker 1: big enough part of my library to trigger the algorithm,
Speaker 1: right or I have way too much seventies and eighties rock,
Speaker 1: and I just get all the new music is always
Speaker 1: something on that so I've literally created all right, this
Speaker 1: is my classical music one, this is my hip hop one,
Speaker 1: this is my classic rock et cetera. And so I
Speaker 1: look at it and I think it's the algorithms that
Speaker 1: have really screwed up the ability to surface new music.
Speaker 1: That's what I have experienced. Am I describing something that's
Speaker 1: familiar to you?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: You know, one of the most sort of shocking statistics
Speaker 4: about music these days is that seventy five percent of
Speaker 4: music that's streamed every year is old music, music that's
Speaker 4: older than eighteen months old. So only twenty five percent
Speaker 4: of what's being streamed at any given moment is new,
Speaker 4: and those numbers keep getting quoe unquote worse every year.
Speaker 4: The piece of the pie that's new is getting smaller
Speaker 4: and smaller. And a lot of this, I think does
Speaker 4: come from the forces of algorithms, where they the easiest
Speaker 4: way to predict what someone's going to want to listen
Speaker 4: to tomorrow is to study what they listened to yesterday.
Speaker 4: And this has been marketing logic for you know, time eternal.
Speaker 4: You know, you can think back to the stereotype of
Speaker 4: record label boss in the seventies telling a rock band
Speaker 4: to make a new hit that sounds like their last hit,
Speaker 4: right like these these pressures in these forces are kind
Speaker 4: of the table stakes for making art in capitalism, you
Speaker 4: could say, but algorithmic culture gives us so much algorithms
Speaker 4: give us so much data and are just so are
Speaker 4: so you know, sophisticated about serving you something that is
Speaker 4: going to keep you maybe not actively engaged, but possibly engaged.
Speaker 4: Not not You're not going to write down the name
Speaker 4: of the artists necessarily, but you're not going to hit skip.
Speaker 4: And so this encourages a blander and more passive and
Speaker 4: more recycled or regressive culture.
Speaker 2: No, it does.
Speaker 1: You know, another way that I've always thought, you know,
Speaker 1: tv ads, and obviously few and few people see tv ads,
Speaker 1: but you can always tell who what demographic they're targeting
Speaker 1: by the music that they licensed in the background, because
Speaker 1: it's always to me, they're always targeting somebody who listened
Speaker 1: to that music when they were a teenager, right, so
Speaker 1: you know, it's like beating you know, so you could
Speaker 1: always sort of see, oh, they're they're targeting you know boomers,
Speaker 1: that's why they're using the Beatles, or they're targeting you
Speaker 1: know gen x, that's why they're using guns n' roses,
Speaker 1: or they're targeting, you know, millennials. That's why you're hearing
Speaker 1: some Nirvana. I don't know if Nirvana's millennial or not.
Speaker 1: I we can we can debate that, but you get
Speaker 1: my point here, right, Like you see it sometimes in
Speaker 1: that and that, and that's now how I feel these
Speaker 1: algorithms are working almost in the same way that car
Speaker 1: companies use music to try to get us to trigger
Speaker 1: nostalgia to get to to make purchases.
Speaker 4: Well, that's that's certainly true, and that's certainly how it's
Speaker 4: been done for a long time. I mean, interesting thing
Speaker 4: about what you're saying is what kind of music would
Speaker 4: you play now to make someone who's young now nostalgic
Speaker 4: for their teenagehood. If you think about what's popular these days,
Speaker 4: you can think about artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone,
Speaker 4: these are there's a lot of music on the charts
Speaker 4: that to me isn't sonically linked that closely to this moment.
Speaker 4: It sounds like a rehash of classic rock or old
Speaker 4: country music. You know, it's a kind of pastiche of
Speaker 4: really all the decades of rock and roll that you
Speaker 4: just reference is kind of coming back and being remixed,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of how music has always moved forward,
Speaker 4: but it hasn't always felt this much like this regressive, really,
Speaker 4: And I think there are market forces related to these
Speaker 4: algorithms that are encouraging pop producers and songwriters to think
Speaker 4: about how they can make music that is going to
Speaker 4: play to a very large audience by triggering nostalgia for
Speaker 4: multiple generations, and what the effect of that is to
Speaker 4: create pop music that doesn't really move the ball forward
Speaker 4: that much in terms of sound, right.
Speaker 1: You know the other thing though, and let me let
Speaker 1: me do a counter on this and what algorithms taught
Speaker 1: us that perhaps we didn't fully appreciate. So before the algorithm,
Speaker 1: I would argue the cost dictated music taste, right, it
Speaker 1: was either New York or LA and you know, yes,
Speaker 1: we could throw in Motown there too.
Speaker 2: But really those were the three places.
Speaker 1: And it turns out country music was a lot more
Speaker 1: popular than how you know, this is a class, you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like it was a It's a version
Speaker 1: of this of Letterman versus Leno. Leno was always more
Speaker 1: popular in the middle of America. Letterman was more popular
Speaker 1: in the coasts, and the rating showed it right. Leno
Speaker 1: had more viewers, Lenno had more eyeballs, even if Letterman
Speaker 1: was winning the.
Speaker 2: College educated crowd, if you want to go there.
Speaker 1: And so, what the flattening of music taste did is
Speaker 1: it reminded people. Did you know a majority of Americans
Speaker 1: actually prefer country? Because it does feel as if country's
Speaker 1: moment now where it's the only place I can find
Speaker 1: the electric guitar anymore. Country, you know, the only place
Speaker 1: you find some of the most interesting song lyrics that
Speaker 1: have a message.
Speaker 2: Country.
Speaker 1: Is that an argument for crowds that maybe we were
Speaker 1: we were mistreating country music in our culture for decades.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, part of the story that we're talking about
Speaker 4: here is the fall gatekeepers, you know, radio, DJs, print magazines,
Speaker 4: major labels. They You're right, they all had to kind
Speaker 4: of coastal often elite bias. And so as more and
Speaker 4: more of America has gone online or not gone online
Speaker 4: but gone on the streaming in the past decade or so,
Speaker 4: you're absolutely seeing things like country also hip hop revealed
Speaker 4: the kind of latent.
Speaker 3: Popularity that was perhaps already there.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's a fascinating thing because it's not only
Speaker 4: happening in America, but it's also allowing global sounds to
Speaker 4: come to the fore and be exposed to American audiences
Speaker 4: where things like K pop or Spanish language pop or afropop, afrobeats,
Speaker 4: these are also like kind of like in a renaissance
Speaker 4: of popularity. And the question is were they kind of
Speaker 4: always as popular as we couldn't see that in America?
Speaker 4: Or did did this falling of the gate keepers, this
Speaker 4: algorithmic culture and this ability to search and listen to
Speaker 4: whatever you want on demand? Did that create a new
Speaker 4: marketplace and expose Is that really the source of novelty
Speaker 4: for people who are looking for novelty and culture? Now
Speaker 4: audiences are gravitating towards these sounds that they really couldn't
Speaker 4: have accessed as easily a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Look, I I'm glad you brought up Latin Latin pop
Speaker 1: or Latin dance if you will, or however you want
Speaker 1: it in K pop, because both of those, You're right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that was again, that was something that the
Speaker 1: Details magazine was never going to talk about totally, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I came home to visit my baby
Speaker 4: parents a couple of years ago and they'd been listening
Speaker 4: to you know, their Alexa algorithms, and they've become obsessed
Speaker 4: with bad Bunny.
Speaker 3: You know, they speak it.
Speaker 4: Be spanished and never let's than any Latin pop ever before.
Speaker 4: And suddenly their taste seemed to have expanded thanks the algorithm.
Speaker 3: So these things aren't all bad.
Speaker 1: No, That's why I wanted to sort of like basically
Speaker 1: fight my own argument here a little bit. My son
Speaker 1: is eighteen and thinks Oasis is amazing, had this this
Speaker 1: huge nineties obsession and he loves Oasis, and you're like, okay, interesting,
Speaker 1: I said, well, you might like the Beatles. Oasis was
Speaker 1: kind of a Beatles ripoff, you know type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I don't know what to make of that. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I remember myself, you know, about his age. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, if I was going into older music. For me,
Speaker 1: it was it was I got real into motown, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was seventeen eighteen. As I started getting into
Speaker 1: hip hop right then, it was like, oh I want
Speaker 1: to I want to hear more black music, you know.
Speaker 1: So I got really into motown recordings back then. So
Speaker 1: I guess that's the same mindset, you know.
Speaker 4: But I look at you, Yeah, is part of learning
Speaker 4: your learning your history as part of EVE. And so
Speaker 4: I do think that some of this like fear of
Speaker 4: stagnation that we're seeing is actually identifying actually, really people
Speaker 4: who are excited about music and are learning about it
Speaker 4: and treating that as if it's that something perverse about it,
Speaker 4: which is actually is rather healthy.
Speaker 1: Let me go one more on music here before we
Speaker 1: pivot to others. So I don't want, you know, to
Speaker 1: go all music here, but you know, it's also possible
Speaker 1: certain music genre is mature, right, Classical music's matured. There's
Speaker 1: it's you know, even new stuff today is going to
Speaker 1: sound like you know, Aaron Copeland, and he was new
Speaker 1: when he came around the tone of the century nineteenth
Speaker 1: to twentieth, right, So even when you see new scores
Speaker 1: that are classically inspired, you know it it sounds, you know,
Speaker 1: not like the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds classical, but
Speaker 1: more like the nineteenth century. There's a lot of Tchaikovsky
Speaker 1: inspiration in Aaron Copland and stuff like that. So my
Speaker 1: point is is that that's a mature sound.
Speaker 2: Rock.
Speaker 1: I think the electric guitar is, for whatever reason, what
Speaker 1: we define as rock music. I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: I think, is it, I would argue, let me ask you,
Speaker 1: is it matured?
Speaker 2: Are we done?
Speaker 1: Are we just simply frustrated that we haven't had a
Speaker 1: new genre of music take off yet.
Speaker 4: It's a very good question that's really hard to answer
Speaker 4: because for rock and roll in particular, basically every decade
Speaker 4: since it was invented, people have played it's the.
Speaker 3: Most it's done right, Yeah, you know, right?
Speaker 1: Are the Killers, like the Killers have been the last
Speaker 1: rock band? For are they still the last rock band?
Speaker 1: Because that was always that's for me, it's always how
Speaker 1: they were built in the early two thousands. Meet the
Speaker 1: Killers the last rock band.
Speaker 4: Yeah, We've had a few different artists claim that title.
Speaker 4: You know, something like the nineteen seventy five I would say,
Speaker 4: is a more recent example of the last rock band.
Speaker 4: And you know they that's an innovative of the moment
Speaker 4: band that brings in pieces of the past, but really
Speaker 4: feels very rooted in the now and and really in
Speaker 4: internet culture. So I do think that genres burn themselves
Speaker 4: out or kind of do reach a stalling point. At
Speaker 4: the same time, you know, we're talking about country music
Speaker 4: having this resurgence, and that's due to country artists making
Speaker 4: music that sort of sounds traditional, but they're taking on
Speaker 4: new lyrical topics, or they're incorporating hip hop influences, or
Speaker 4: it just feels a little more modern. So I do
Speaker 4: think there's waves for very old genres to engage with
Speaker 4: their times.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I have that fear, and I you know.
Speaker 4: There's some people who have a fear that recorded music
Speaker 4: itself is sort of at the end of its life cycle.
Speaker 4: There's not really a lot more that you can a
Speaker 4: lot in many more combinations of sounds that you could
Speaker 4: put together in a pleasing way on a recording that
Speaker 4: people are going to listen to.
Speaker 1: It's a rather well that's going to be fascinating with AI,
Speaker 1: isn't it, Because AI is goody going to be able
Speaker 1: to experience as much as people are all negative on
Speaker 1: AI and I and I get that you're going to
Speaker 1: be able to experiment and see, you know, classical music
Speaker 1: went through this where it was just sort of, hey,
Speaker 1: let's make chords that clash rather than that go together.
Speaker 1: And you're like, no, I don't like this, and there's
Speaker 1: a reason it didn't take off, right, But I do.
Speaker 1: I wonder how culture will handle Somebody is going to
Speaker 1: be using AI to mix, to do some some sort
Speaker 1: of mixing of sounds that'll take off, and well then
Speaker 1: that that maybe now it'll be a combination of everything.
Speaker 1: But what music wasn't inspired by something that was already
Speaker 1: had been created.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're I think that's right. Like AI
Speaker 4: is going to serve up a bunch of new color
Speaker 4: swatches that artists can pull from. I don't think I'd
Speaker 4: have a hard time imagine that AI is going to
Speaker 4: create a new sound that will that will work for
Speaker 4: people as like meaningful music in a way that like
Speaker 4: previous new kinds of me music did, because there's no
Speaker 4: you know, music has a meaning to people, like it
Speaker 4: conveys something about identity and about the world that they're
Speaker 4: the vain and uh it's I think that's pretty hard
Speaker 4: to fake it. And so I do think what's going
Speaker 4: to happen is what you're saying, that that we're gonna
Speaker 4: have this new library of possible sounds, and the interesting
Speaker 4: humans might do something with that using the AI. At least,
Speaker 4: that's the most hopeful take.
Speaker 2: For that's the most right and hopeful.
Speaker 1: Let's turn to a place where I think we should
Speaker 1: actually be celebrating our culture rather and that is sort
Speaker 1: of what we've done with television. I mean, television isn't
Speaker 1: something where we're all going, boy, the good old days, now,
Speaker 1: the good old days. Have you watched some of those comes, right?
Speaker 1: Have you watched some of those dramas, like, you know,
Speaker 1: go watch an episode of Quincy and tell me that
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten better at the medical drama? Okay, nothing,
Speaker 1: you know? Or or Rescue nine I think it was called.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Rescue fifty one or car fifty one Emergency
Speaker 1: fifty one, which is just no different than what we
Speaker 1: have today in nine to one one, you know, but
Speaker 1: it's a little bit more sophisticated. I do think we're
Speaker 1: in a golden age of television entertainment, and that is
Speaker 1: something where you could say it is better now than
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We can debate music, we can debate frankly physical art work,
Speaker 1: which I want to get into a little bit, even literature,
Speaker 1: But on television, what say you and what did you
Speaker 1: find in your writings on that aspect of culture?
Speaker 4: I think that we have been in a golden native
Speaker 4: television and the concern just in the last couple of
Speaker 4: years is that it's sort of ending, and the gold
Speaker 4: NATed television would have been like maybe from two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, so twenty twenty, you know that that era
Speaker 4: of you know, prestige TV really becoming the center of
Speaker 4: a culture and streaming enabling all these different kinds of
Speaker 4: stories being told that we're high quality. It seemed like
Speaker 4: streaming services were trying to stand out by doing things
Speaker 4: that were really high quality and authentic and just provocative.
Speaker 4: There's a feeling that that is starting to peter out.
Speaker 4: And again these algorithms that you're that you are so
Speaker 4: fearful about. You look at something like Netflix. Netflix is
Speaker 4: putting out an incredible amount of content, original content, and
Speaker 4: it's produced and written. In many cases, according to notes
Speaker 4: that were given by studio executives that were informed by
Speaker 4: the algorithm, there's just a lot.
Speaker 1: Of well, that's the whole the entire Hallmark channel, Like
Speaker 1: there's a whole business, right that is literally those have
Speaker 1: to be AI scripts, right, let's feature the kel Let's
Speaker 1: feature Donna Kelcey in this Hallmark movie and oh the
Speaker 1: scripts out and I got it, give me fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: I'll get you a script.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then also make sure that it's paced of
Speaker 4: Justin's the way that someone can look at their phone
Speaker 4: and aut a wrapp look at the screen and still
Speaker 4: know what's going on on. So I think algorithms are
Speaker 4: giving companies and creators more ways to be mediocre perhaps,
Speaker 4: and we're seeing a flood of that mediocrity and TV.
Speaker 4: At the same time, HBO is the pit a lot
Speaker 4: better than Quincy, the best medical drama I think maybe
Speaker 4: ever made an incredible work of art that just came out.
Speaker 4: So I agree that the highest of television are as
Speaker 4: highs they've ever been.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about movies, right, movies have been in
Speaker 1: some ways this is a genre that I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: it's to just matured out, meaning we're you know it is.
Speaker 2: In some ways.
Speaker 1: Episodic television has like I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: times I see a movie and I'm like, boy, I'd
Speaker 1: have preferred that as a six episode. I want the
Speaker 1: stuff they cut, and I'd rather have it as six
Speaker 1: or eight episodes. Give me five hours of total watch
Speaker 1: time six or eight episodes, rather than you trying to
Speaker 1: edit me a quick ninety minute to our store. There
Speaker 1: are versions that still work. I thought, no, mad, that's
Speaker 1: not a movie that I wanted episodically made out and
Speaker 1: it was a terrific movie and it really told a
Speaker 1: great story. Right, So it's not as if movies still
Speaker 1: don't have its place, but I wonder if it's matured.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that movies and TV really are blended together
Speaker 4: more than they ever have been. And it's hard to
Speaker 4: talk about one without talking about the other. I mean,
Speaker 4: I just you know, I just watched and Or, which
Speaker 4: is a TV series, but it's was made in the
Speaker 4: series of three episode arcs, and.
Speaker 2: I got three more episodes. Buddy, that's awesome. I know,
Speaker 2: no spoilers.
Speaker 1: My wife's out of toud, so what That's a show
Speaker 1: we watched together, so you know she's out of town.
Speaker 2: So those three episodes are sitting there taunting me. But anyway,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 3: You're gonna love it. You might cry a bit though.
Speaker 4: The to me, that feels like, hey, like that's movie
Speaker 4: ambition being done for TV, and I almost wish that
Speaker 4: it was released to three movies, you know, But that's
Speaker 4: the well.
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise is fighting this right, mission impossible. He basically
Speaker 1: took what would have been one season eight episodes, and
Speaker 1: he said, no, i'min to do two movies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 4: And you have these really gargantuan or iconic creators who
Speaker 4: are still standing up for the art form and doing
Speaker 4: I think, really interesting things. I think what movies the
Speaker 4: way forward is to really use the moviness of the medium,
Speaker 4: like really figure out what it means to have a
Speaker 4: two hour story that said or it would that you're
Speaker 4: forced to sit and not look at your phone during
Speaker 4: And so I think playing with intensity and tempo and
Speaker 4: like suspense and just varying. Yeah, playing with people's attention
Speaker 4: is in a creative way is the way forward. I
Speaker 4: think about a movie like Barbie, or even a movie
Speaker 4: like Oppenheimer, both of those, you know, the Barbenheimer Summer.
Speaker 3: I don't think that was a fluke.
Speaker 4: That was two very different movies that were both edited
Speaker 4: and in a way that was very modern and pacy
Speaker 4: and really could work for people's TikTok brain and keep
Speaker 4: them in their seats, no looging their phone, and really
Speaker 4: on the edge of their seats.
Speaker 1: So Christopher Nolan, I in preparation I had him on
Speaker 1: Meet the Press before for Oppenheimer, and I wanted a screener,
Speaker 1: and he refused to give me a screener. He said, no, however,
Speaker 1: I will set up a special screening in a theater
Speaker 1: that I believe you need to experience this in. And
Speaker 1: you know, I brought the whole staff. We got a
Speaker 1: special meat the press screening. It was fantastic at the
Speaker 1: and I see why he's right, right, it was brilliant
Speaker 1: what he did. He knew he had a tough story
Speaker 1: to tell, and he wanted to keep people's attention. And
Speaker 1: so I dragged at the time my seven sixteen year
Speaker 1: old and my twenty year old and made them both come,
Speaker 1: you know, a good story. And they enjoyed the movie
Speaker 1: more than they thought because it did keep your attention.
Speaker 1: And look, Christopher Nolan is is special, right. It's he
Speaker 1: owns the movies right now, right like we have the
Speaker 1: different you know, John is Quentin Tarantino had to run.
Speaker 1: This is Christopher Nolan, right, Copola had these guys. He
Speaker 1: is the guy that understands how to still break through
Speaker 1: with a movie in this culture which has never been harder.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think of him as sort of making
Speaker 4: movies almost like a DJ that makes a DJA set
Speaker 4: you know, he has a real sense of flow and
Speaker 4: just like what the body in the brain needs to
Speaker 4: stay stay in the moment, and he's doing that without
Speaker 4: sacrificing the seriousness of the story or the writing. And
Speaker 4: it's a it's a grumbled thing, and hopefully he's going
Speaker 4: to inspire another generation of filmmakers to do what he's done.
Speaker 1: And question further, all right, let's talk about literature, because
Speaker 1: you know, there's always been the what is it? There's
Speaker 1: only seven plot lines supposedly, right, is.
Speaker 3: That the that's still help them all though?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's sort of like because if you really
Speaker 1: wanted to crap on literature, you could say, well, Shakespeare
Speaker 1: did it right. And it's like every novel written has
Speaker 1: some you could sit there and say, well Shakespeare did
Speaker 1: it or the Greeks did it right? You know, whoever
Speaker 1: wrote all these Greek tragedies right type of thing. So
Speaker 1: everything is a derivative. But I would argue we're in
Speaker 1: a golden age because the last thirty years we're getting
Speaker 1: a diversity of writers that that the gatekeepers didn't allow
Speaker 1: into the pool. So I'm curious where you were in
Speaker 1: your in your travels, Where did you where did you
Speaker 1: find culture critics on the issue of literature is it
Speaker 1: are we are we in a an up upswing? Or
Speaker 1: is it all too much derivative?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean this gets a question that's in my piece
Speaker 4: really in a section more about visual arts, but is
Speaker 4: taking on this question of what happens when your field
Speaker 4: progresses by becoming more diverse, When when, uh, what's changing
Speaker 4: in the medium isn't necessarily the way you tell stories
Speaker 4: or kind of formal innovations, or rather the kinds of
Speaker 4: people that are telling the stories and the kind of
Speaker 4: resources they get, and then who's in those stories and
Speaker 4: it And you're right, it can be invigorating to read
Speaker 4: a murder mystery, you know, that's that's kind of very
Speaker 4: familiar plot but set in a totally different MILLIAU than
Speaker 4: we got in the twentieth century when everything was you know,
Speaker 4: set in U.
Speaker 1: A different antagonist and a different protagonist and all those
Speaker 1: things and gender diversity and different different, different familiar characters
Speaker 1: but different backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, to me, I think that's very exciting
Speaker 4: and cool that it does not speak to a super
Speaker 4: robust future for them for the medium. If we're not
Speaker 4: also talking about formal innovation. You know, someone like Tony
Speaker 4: Morrison came along and she you know, she was important
Speaker 4: because of the black female writer, but also because she's
Speaker 4: just such a formally innovative, distinctive voice. And you know,
Speaker 4: one knock that people have on modern fiction right now
Speaker 4: is that there's not as much of an attention to voice.
Speaker 4: There's kind of a kind of cold modernist way of writing,
Speaker 4: and that is being used to render these different stories.
Speaker 4: And that all this said, I'm not a book critic,
Speaker 4: so I can't.
Speaker 1: Know, but but like you know, is literature and one
Speaker 1: of the you know, are we in one of those
Speaker 1: periods where everybody says, everybody the writing sucks. And I
Speaker 1: don't think we're in one of those.
Speaker 3: No, I don't, I don't. I don't think. So.
Speaker 4: I think there's a there's a very robust market for
Speaker 4: like literary fiction that tells these different kinds of stories.
Speaker 4: But you know, there's this feeling that one, kids and
Speaker 4: younger people and even nbple my age are reading less
Speaker 4: and and uh have less of attention for a novel.
Speaker 4: And so that's that doesn't speak all the future of
Speaker 4: the medium.
Speaker 2: But you also have the graphic novels are taking off.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, and you have you have short stories and
Speaker 4: serialized fiction being published on platforms like substack, and that
Speaker 4: seems to actually be a source of a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: Right now, that's interesting. I hadn't picked up on that.
Speaker 1: So basically the way Dickens released his books is back.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that. I think that's opening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. Now let's talk about the visual arts,
Speaker 1: and I guess whether sculpture, painting, that's where I want
Speaker 1: to go here, multimedia, I guess is that a are
Speaker 1: we in a mature place when you look at it,
Speaker 1: Like you know, at first it was about trying to
Speaker 1: Artists were trying to do their best job to replicate
Speaker 1: what humans were seeing. Then we got the photograph, so
Speaker 1: that then we got the Salvador Dolly, hey, let me
Speaker 1: warp it, right, That's what that's what created because in
Speaker 1: some ways we already have the photograph. I know what
Speaker 1: it looks like. Let's have a melting clock, right when
Speaker 1: that be interesting? Then we had a movement of public
Speaker 1: art works like I in Miami, I had the guy
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name who decided to put pink
Speaker 1: aprons around all the islands of Miami.
Speaker 2: Frankly, it was really cool. This was in the eighties
Speaker 2: and it.
Speaker 1: Was the first one of these he's I forget the
Speaker 1: guy's name, he's done this, Yes, Chrysto, thank you. And
Speaker 1: that was a thing. And then we've backed off a
Speaker 1: little bit on public art. So where are we there?
Speaker 2: Is this a it?
Speaker 1: And are we in a And I wonder if our
Speaker 1: ability to perfectly show pictures now based on you know,
Speaker 1: makes that art harder to innovate with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're inundated with images now and you know, things
Speaker 4: like AI can show you anything and very quickly. Where
Speaker 4: I think that, I think that that visual arts are
Speaker 4: getting a run for their money just from the Internet.
Speaker 4: You know, we are looking at visual art all day long.
Speaker 4: But it's memes, it's tiktoks, it's uh yeah, it's AI
Speaker 4: art and the gallery scene and the art museum scene.
Speaker 4: From my understanding, just the past couple of years, there's
Speaker 4: most critics agree that it's pretty stale and stagnant. A
Speaker 4: lot of the galleries are facing financial hardships, are closing,
Speaker 4: and there's people are kind of looking around for what's
Speaker 4: the next thing going to be? And I would imagine
Speaker 4: it's going to have to be from artists engaging with
Speaker 4: that with their competition on the Internet and finding a
Speaker 4: way to elevate this kind of tumble of images in
Speaker 4: a way that feels new, And I don't really know
Speaker 4: exactly what that's going to.
Speaker 1: Look, right, That's what I'm curious, Like, if he came
Speaker 1: back to life today, what would he be doing.
Speaker 4: I mean, we've had those those We've had people print
Speaker 4: up pictures of Instagram and put them on gallery walls.
Speaker 4: You know, that was a fad like ten years ago,
Speaker 4: and we're already past that. So I don't I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I feel like the one the most interesting is the
Speaker 1: public space is art in the public space. But I
Speaker 1: I that that's where at least you can because then
Speaker 1: it's experiential, I guess, and then let me, I guess
Speaker 1: that's where I'd like to go. Finally, the fact that
Speaker 1: we crave experiences, is that going to be the most
Speaker 1: innovative art form for maybe the next for gen Z,
Speaker 1: for the next generation.
Speaker 4: I think that's going to be part of the story
Speaker 4: where both you have such excitement right now for concerts
Speaker 4: and live events. You know, the biggest entertainment event of
Speaker 4: the past two years with Together Swipt's tour, and then
Speaker 4: there's been many other tours where you just can't get
Speaker 4: a ticket and people are just It changes the local
Speaker 4: economy as these tours move through, and the energy is
Speaker 4: a bit different than it used to be, And presumably
Speaker 4: that's because these fans want to get out of their
Speaker 4: bedrooms and be with each other and experience of real
Speaker 4: life thing the only thing that you can't really duplicate online.
Speaker 4: So I think that mentality you're going to see and
Speaker 4: already are seeing play out in different be capitalized on
Speaker 4: in different mediums.
Speaker 3: You know, the immersive art exhibit.
Speaker 4: You know, things like the immersive van goes that pop
Speaker 4: up in these different cities, or like the Museum of
Speaker 4: ice Cream, which is essentially like a adult playpen where
Speaker 4: you take instagrams of yourself. They have a bad rap
Speaker 4: as being sort of like Instagram bait, but I think
Speaker 4: there has to be a future for really interesting artists
Speaker 4: creating immersive exhibits that you really can't duplicate online. I
Speaker 4: think we are going to see a lot of cool
Speaker 4: things come out.
Speaker 1: Of that, all right, So I went back and looked
Speaker 1: for the different sort of iconic with to help a
Speaker 1: little research help there with our friends at AI, what
Speaker 1: are the different cultural critiques of the different decades? And
Speaker 1: it surfaced up a Tom Wolf piece about the ME
Speaker 1: decade and the Third Great Awakening that was we were
Speaker 1: the seventies were very narcissistic and me centered. The eighties
Speaker 1: it was are we entertained to death? Which seems like, boy,
Speaker 1: that's don't we wish we had that problem?
Speaker 2: Right? Isn't that the same.
Speaker 1: The nineties The Key the Fraying of America a criticism
Speaker 1: written by Robert Hughes, The culture of complaint, beginning of
Speaker 1: polarization essentially was starting. Then political correctness started to pop
Speaker 1: up a lot there in the nineties. So if your
Speaker 1: piece ages well, it will be because and if your
Speaker 1: piece doesn't age well, it'll be because.
Speaker 3: If my piece doesn't age well, it's probably because I
Speaker 3: didn't talk about AI enough.
Speaker 4: And I feel like, really at the beginning of the
Speaker 4: AI moments and that it will upend everything.
Speaker 3: And I talk about a bit in the piece and
Speaker 3: really the fear.
Speaker 4: That this overwhelming abundance of slop and the ability to
Speaker 4: just create background music, music and art that kind of
Speaker 4: feels like things you've experienced before, and then you can
Speaker 4: kind of passively enjoy. That's going to create real competition
Speaker 4: for actual human artists and undermine the creative energy in
Speaker 4: our society.
Speaker 1: I mean, let me play the free marketer here. Let
Speaker 1: me play free market pushback. Competition usually makes for more innovation,
Speaker 1: and so maybe we know the AI slop may only
Speaker 1: stretch human boundaries.
Speaker 3: That's true, that's true.
Speaker 4: I think that the best things that we will still
Speaker 4: have some examples of excellence that come out of that.
Speaker 4: But it's very hard to create great things when you're
Speaker 4: trying to serve, when you have, when you can't survive,
Speaker 4: when you can make a living, and when you're not
Speaker 4: in a creative community of other people that are inspiring you.
Speaker 4: And all these courses are eating away at those things.
Speaker 4: And so that's I think the greatest cause for fear.
Speaker 1: You were saying that in your piece, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was an excellent point.
Speaker 2: I just think about.
Speaker 1: Universities these days, in colleges, and the and the and
Speaker 1: the and how parents are discouraging their kids from majoring
Speaker 1: in anything that isn't directly about a job right or income.
Speaker 1: And so your art literature majors, your sculpture majors. Your
Speaker 1: music majors are going to be fewer and fewer because
Speaker 1: it'll feel like, quote unquote, why am I spending all
Speaker 1: this money for you to become really good at a hobby?
Speaker 2: And you know, because it is hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I was a music major for a
Speaker 1: while and I came to the conclusion that I wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough to be a professional musician and I don't
Speaker 1: and I wasn't, you know, I didn't. There are plenty
Speaker 1: of other ways to make a living in music, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do those things right that that
Speaker 1: was not you know, I want. I had one goal.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get it, and so I changed lengths. But
Speaker 1: but that is something that I was wondering about that
Speaker 1: we won't We're not going to have artists colonies, right,
Speaker 1: We're not going to have music schools. We may not
Speaker 1: have and and if you don't, then we may limit
Speaker 1: the number and AI may even make people think we
Speaker 1: don't need as many of them type of things.
Speaker 2: So I that.
Speaker 1: Does feel like a potential that's on the doomier side
Speaker 1: of things, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But we could all make a decision of society
Speaker 4: to do something about that, and we invest in art
Speaker 4: schools and say that human made art is a cultural
Speaker 4: priority or even like a political priority. I don't think
Speaker 4: that's going to happen anytime soon, but doesn't feel like
Speaker 4: we're living in that era that I agree with you
Speaker 4: that we will have our Look, there's a reason we
Speaker 4: call them enlightening periods, this or that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know.
Speaker 1: We are Civilization is cyclical, right, so I have no
Speaker 1: doubt we'll have a period where we'll.
Speaker 2: Want to reinvest in the arts. The question is win.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that, you know, despite
Speaker 4: all these forces that we're talking about, these kind of
Speaker 4: structural downers, if I want to end the piece on
Speaker 4: a positive note, and I do think they're just an
Speaker 4: incredible amount of creativity that's happening now. And it's not
Speaker 4: just in these art forms that we're talking about, but
Speaker 4: it's also in podcasts, and it's in video games, and
Speaker 4: it's on TikTok, and it's in means. And we have
Speaker 4: a harder way of talking about and appreciating and even
Speaker 4: knowing what excellence means in those in those mediums.
Speaker 3: But I hope that as you.
Speaker 4: Know, as we progress in this direction, where there's so
Speaker 4: much possibility and so many different ways for getting your
Speaker 4: art out, and so many different ways to find something
Speaker 4: that really strikes you and to connect over it. I
Speaker 4: do think that we're going to get better at understanding
Speaker 4: what creativity looks like in this environment.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting you just brought up gaming, and
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about that as a as a sort
Speaker 1: of a genre of culture. It's a it's a gigantic
Speaker 1: genre of culture, right, It's it's hugely so is sports, right,
Speaker 1: and we've never and look at the growth of more sports.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of my favorite stats is that there
Speaker 1: are more youth cricket clubs in New York City than
Speaker 1: there are Little league baseball teams. And yes, that's how
Speaker 1: quickly the Southeast Asian population is growing and cricket is
Speaker 1: becoming more popular. That's just cricket. And I could make
Speaker 1: this lacrosse is now a nation nationwide sport. Where so
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes when you when you you know, is
Speaker 1: this the worst air of America pop culture?
Speaker 2: Well, in sports? Has it ever been more diverse?
Speaker 4: Perhaps not, but sports just becoming a subset of gambling
Speaker 4: and addiction and you know, dopamine chasing do the legalization
Speaker 4: of sports betting.
Speaker 3: That's what as well.
Speaker 2: I hear you there, but let me let me so.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why I ended up at music
Speaker 1: major is my father is like, hey, it'll help you
Speaker 1: pay for school, and it did. I got a frenchworn scholarship, right,
Speaker 1: That's how I don't. I don't go to GW without it.
Speaker 1: Sports is now that path. Now it's like a real
Speaker 1: in the same way music was a realistic path for
Speaker 1: your ten to fifteen percent of musicians. Now sports will
Speaker 1: be to pay for college is a ten to fifteen percent.
Speaker 1: It's not a one percent chance anymore. Because it's not
Speaker 1: just football or basketball, not just boys, right it is.
Speaker 1: There's twelve or thirteen different sports. And so I throw
Speaker 1: that in there because it it's part of pop culture.
Speaker 2: But it was it. But I think we don't.
Speaker 1: I think older generations don't think of it that way yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're right, and I think you know,
Speaker 4: and just my day to experience, people are as obsessed
Speaker 4: with sports as they've ever been. It kind of feels
Speaker 4: like it's blending the same things that make people obsessed
Speaker 4: with Tayer Swift is making people obsessed with you know,
Speaker 4: the white sox or whatever.
Speaker 1: Don't you think it's because it's reality, because it's something
Speaker 1: that doesn't feel like you can manipulate or manufacture.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's a meritocracy to it, right, like there are a
Speaker 1: rule I don't I've been wondering this myself. Why are
Speaker 1: we having this? Or it's also the thing that's least polarizing, right,
Speaker 1: there's no left versus right, you know as much?
Speaker 2: I know, Yeah, you're right, we've had.
Speaker 1: It's not like, lease, now, yeah, have we politicized college
Speaker 1: sports at all?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: I take the minute I said it, right, You're like,
Speaker 1: I should reel those words back in. But I think
Speaker 1: the aspiration for sports is that it's not that it
Speaker 1: can bring people together rather than polarize.
Speaker 4: Well, I think fandom is one of the last kinds
Speaker 4: of social glue that we can rely on in the
Speaker 4: time when everyone is so isolated on their phones, not
Speaker 4: going into the physical world as much. The one thing
Speaker 4: that can bridge the physical world and the digital world
Speaker 4: in a social way is being a fan of something,
Speaker 4: whether that's a pop star or a sports team.
Speaker 1: All right, let me get you out of here on this.
Speaker 1: Who's the king of pop ha haha. Or the king
Speaker 1: of quator pop is that Taylor Swift right now?
Speaker 4: Right now, it's Taylor Swift right now, so Swift, but
Speaker 4: maybe you put Bad Bunny would be the king that is. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's as big as anyone basically in terms of album
Speaker 4: sales and all that. You know, someone like Drake he
Speaker 4: would have pointed to a few years ago. He's fallen
Speaker 4: off a little bit. Yeah, but Bad Buddy kind of
Speaker 4: represents this the kind of global incursion of pop, global
Speaker 4: pop becoming just pop or pop from outside of America
Speaker 4: being able to be as central as any American or
Speaker 4: English speaking star would be. And his music is this
Speaker 4: amalgam of not just you know, his influence is from
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico, but it's American hip hop, and it's all
Speaker 4: sorts of global sounds are in there.
Speaker 1: And if I asked you who rules Hollywood, what would
Speaker 1: be the first couple of names you'd say?
Speaker 4: I mean, we talked, we talked about Chris Nolan. You know,
Speaker 4: it feels like Disney is actually it's Disney's on the
Speaker 4: back foot and has kind of lost some of its
Speaker 4: power or kind of it was the monolith that was
Speaker 4: ruling culture for the past ten or fifteen years, but
Speaker 4: it seems to have stumbled a little bit. So I
Speaker 4: think that it's actually kind of an upper grabs moment
Speaker 4: on Hollywood. So something like something like Ryan Cooler's Sinners
Speaker 4: being such a hip that's an example of how there's
Speaker 4: maybe some space opening up in these kind of like
Speaker 4: innovative Blockbuster that's not just a sequel. We're seeing a
Speaker 4: couple We've seen a couple examples of those sort of
Speaker 4: things pop up over the past few years, and I
Speaker 4: think it's I think Hollywood is generally in a pretty
Speaker 4: bad place, but in out of that badness some interesting
Speaker 4: high high they're going to jump out of that.
Speaker 1: Is there a king and Queen of Hollywood that you
Speaker 1: could point to right now? I mean, who would have that?
Speaker 1: Who would be sitting in those chairs if you if
Speaker 1: you had to, if you had to, if you did
Speaker 1: a rotten Tomato survey.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know if you did a rotten tomatoes survey,
Speaker 4: but I would put no a Wiley from the pit.
Speaker 3: It would be the King. Yeah, because I'm obsessed with
Speaker 3: that show right now.
Speaker 1: By the way, one thing about is rotten tomatoes good
Speaker 1: or bad for innovative for culture.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's very I don't think it's very
Speaker 4: good because it's it's put a number on subjective.
Speaker 3: The determinations.
Speaker 4: You know, I was obsessed with Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic
Speaker 4: when I was growing up, or like you know, wanted
Speaker 4: with an aspiring critic. But lately it feels like those
Speaker 4: platforms that have come really gamified, like people are kind
Speaker 4: of manipulating, And you know, maybe it's.
Speaker 1: My biggest beef about aggregating polls, Like I'm not I
Speaker 1: like Nate Silber, but I don't like what he does
Speaker 1: with numbers. I like, you know, real clear politics for politics.
Speaker 1: It drove me crazy. I'm like, no, I'm not taking
Speaker 1: good and bad and mixing them in a blender. I
Speaker 1: know the good pollsters, I know the bad pollsters, Rotten Tomato,
Speaker 1: you know the good critics, and you know the bad critics.
Speaker 2: Why are we putting them all in a blender.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of perverse incentives in that system,
Speaker 4: and also has created this thing among movie fans, which
Speaker 4: which is an obsession with kind of yeah metrics. They're
Speaker 4: acting like sports fans in a lot of ways. I
Speaker 4: see some pop music too, where music fans are so
Speaker 4: obsessed with sales numbers and how their their diva is
Speaker 4: charting and comparison to their rival. And I don't think
Speaker 4: that was a wide started phenomenon a few decades ago.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's sort of like money qualification of life
Speaker 4: that I think it makes people talk less about creativity
Speaker 4: and art and more about yeah, money.
Speaker 1: We've gone almost as long as the article. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you listen to the article, So I want to be
Speaker 1: careful there. But one one area I didn't bring up
Speaker 1: that I actually meant to because I think we've seen
Speaker 1: some innovation maybe, but is musical theater and Broadway in
Speaker 1: general and live theater? And I guess maybe is that
Speaker 1: do we put that in this experiential bucket? I feel
Speaker 1: like it's having a moment again, right, And and lin
Speaker 1: Manuel Miranda told us that, hey, you can still do
Speaker 1: new things. I think some people thought that that was
Speaker 1: a mature I certainly did that, hey, that's that's a
Speaker 1: mature genre. And he said, no, it's not. Let me
Speaker 1: try something.
Speaker 2: So what do we what?
Speaker 3: Hamilton's ten years old? What's that?
Speaker 2: You're right, yeah it is. Isn't it okay to me?
Speaker 4: To me that Broadway is not not a healthy sign.
Speaker 4: And to me, and you know I live in New York,
Speaker 4: is a stunt cast revival of something.
Speaker 2: You're right, they're doing what the movies do. They're doing like, hey, look,
Speaker 2: Marvel Universe.
Speaker 4: You know, I didn't get to see a DNA menzilk
Speaker 4: climbing that tree. That that one.
Speaker 3: But that looks cool, But I guess it's closing. It
Speaker 3: didn't do all enough.
Speaker 1: So I learned from an interview I did with the
Speaker 1: UH with the with Debora kan Of the Diplomatic, creator
Speaker 1: of The Diplomat, and she worked for Aaron Sorkin that
Speaker 1: West Wing is musical theater that actually that it's designed.
Speaker 1: And I said, are you going to well, why haven't
Speaker 1: we seen West Wing on Broadway?
Speaker 2: She goes, well, we might.
Speaker 4: They're going to try to put everything they can on
Speaker 4: Broadway and most things will wash out, but a couple
Speaker 4: of them will stick.
Speaker 1: But this gets to the whole that this is why,
Speaker 1: I guess and we should end on this, which is
Speaker 1: that live in person experiential that that's probably we're the
Speaker 1: most where we'll see cultural innovation in the near term.
Speaker 4: I think that I think that's a big part of it,
Speaker 4: But I really think more action will be just what's
Speaker 4: happening on our phones and people using you know, the
Speaker 4: back of now is probably going to be someone doing
Speaker 4: something really interesting with George form video I found. I
Speaker 4: can't point to who that is yet, and I hope
Speaker 4: that we're gonna all find the Beyonce of Tiktoks soon
Speaker 4: or something like that.
Speaker 1: Well, mister Beasts might have something to say about that
Speaker 1: before will not even I won't introduce that into the chat.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll let that go. Pencer, this is great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for humoring me and this.
Speaker 4: Thanks, Chuck, really appreciate it. And keep streaming those six services.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, because somebody's got to keep them in business.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly, exactly, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Now you've found out how many music sites I
Speaker 1: subscribe to.
Speaker 2: But yes, it.
Speaker 1: Drives me crazy. My war on algorithms. Algorithms are what
Speaker 1: poison culture. Human beings are what create culture. But we
Speaker 1: all know this, right, all right, let's do a little
Speaker 1: last Chuck, ask Chuck. All right, first question comes from
Speaker 1: Gary of newberry Port, Massachusetts or defense and security experts
Speaker 1: concerned about the Trump Administration's pushed to have European countries
Speaker 1: increase their defense budgets for the past eighty years. Having
Speaker 1: the US Service the continents to facto security force seemed
Speaker 1: to be a key factor in the prolonged piece the
Speaker 1: region is seen given their centuries long history of conflict
Speaker 1: when there is no backstop and terif related changes in
Speaker 1: global trade connections and alliances. Should the world be nervous
Speaker 1: about a more heavily armed Europe? Well, Gary, I feel like,
Speaker 1: are you asking a question or are you really making
Speaker 1: a statement? Because yes, I think we know. I say
Speaker 1: this mostly tongue in cheek, but a little bit nervous.
Speaker 1: I mean, the last time Germany was able to rearm,
Speaker 1: how did that.
Speaker 2: Go for Europe?
Speaker 1: Right, we're now going to put France is thinking about
Speaker 1: putting it spreading its nuclear weapons all over the continent.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's not a bad idea.
Speaker 1: The more you have them in different countries, maybe that
Speaker 1: does sort of potentially keep an uneasy peace right, sort
Speaker 1: of the mad mantra mutual assured destruction. But look, this
Speaker 1: is you know, the this is what bothers me about
Speaker 1: sort of. So on one hand, Trump wants to be
Speaker 1: the pre eminent power of the world. Well, we are
Speaker 1: the pre.
Speaker 2: Eminent power of the world.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons we are is because we
Speaker 1: are the security defense for Europe heartstop.
Speaker 2: We are that umbrella.
Speaker 1: We basically are in charge of securing two continents, North
Speaker 1: America and arguably that means we basically are going to
Speaker 1: protect South America, although that hasn't fully fully been premise,
Speaker 1: hasn't been tested, and Europe. Right, so two and a
Speaker 1: half continents we're providing security for. That's nobody else. That's
Speaker 1: that's a super duper power. So we want to give
Speaker 1: that up, right, There's Look, there's always been a movement
Speaker 1: on the right, the sort of the isolationist wing of
Speaker 1: the party, clearly where jad Vance comes from. Trump basically
Speaker 1: has stumbled into that part of it. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't think he's naturally thinks this way. I think he
Speaker 1: just sort of he is just at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, transactional and binary. So he ends up in
Speaker 1: that category. I think Vance is more of a true
Speaker 1: believer in the sort of isolationism, if you will, or
Speaker 1: sort of let let everybody manage their own affairs and
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. The fact is that it hasn't
Speaker 1: worked for the globe. Right, that is not a way
Speaker 1: to keep peace. That is not a way to keep security.
Speaker 1: So look, I'm not sure it's a good it's a
Speaker 1: good move. I think it makes America less secure, and
Speaker 1: I think it makes the world less secure, pure and simple,
Speaker 1: all right, Matt w Wright, you are one hundred percent
Speaker 1: correct about doubling the size of the house, but it
Speaker 1: will remain gridlocked if that's all we change our first
Speaker 1: past the post elections give us the two parties and
Speaker 1: the resulting incentives to resist compromise. In your episode with
Speaker 1: Rob sand he advocated for approval voting and open primaries.
Speaker 1: I like that idea, but I prefer ranked approval voting.
Speaker 1: The candidate with the highest approval score moves on wins.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of what traditionally gets called ranked
Speaker 1: choice voting, i e. Automatic runoff voting. It's barely any
Speaker 1: better than first past the post. What is your preferred
Speaker 1: voting method that would break the two parties into four
Speaker 1: plus competitive parties with the incentive to compromise in Washington?
Speaker 1: Would you consider advocating for that system as vociferously as
Speaker 1: for open primaries and for doubling the size of the house.
Speaker 1: Love the show, Thank you, and thank you. For listening. Look,
Speaker 1: I have not thought hard enough about first past the
Speaker 1: post ideas. I will say this, here's what I want. Okay,
Speaker 1: ranked choice voting just does It isn't going to get
Speaker 1: the trust of the public. It is a it could work,
Speaker 1: and in theory I basically would like to do it,
Speaker 1: but the hard way, which is I think the top
Speaker 1: four should move to a general election and then you
Speaker 1: pick from there and if nobody gets fifty, the top
Speaker 1: two meet again in a runoff.
Speaker 2: That's what I think right now.
Speaker 1: If you can decide as a party, whether you know,
Speaker 1: we could have you know, I'd love to see open
Speaker 1: primaries completely. Top four advanced to the general without you know, one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and then the top two if nobody
Speaker 1: gets fifty, would meet in a run off. I think
Speaker 1: that gives everybody a voice. I think that would open
Speaker 1: things up. You know, I don't want to dismiss first
Speaker 1: past the post ideas. It might be a better way.
Speaker 1: You know, if we do double the size of the house,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe some states will want to go to
Speaker 1: multi you know, there's there's some thought that you could
Speaker 1: you know, let's say you're a state that has eight
Speaker 1: congressional districts. So, for instance, and I'll give you an
Speaker 1: example of this. Mindid County used to elect it. All
Speaker 1: school board members were elected county wide and it was
Speaker 1: the I think they had. Let's say there were nine
Speaker 1: members of the of the school board, the top nine
Speaker 1: advanced and the and was the school board. There's some
Speaker 1: people that think, hey, maybe you hold your congressional elections.
Speaker 1: So if you're a state that has eight congressional districts,
Speaker 1: everybody runs statewide, everybody votes statewide, and the top eight
Speaker 1: get because this is a the the thinking there is
Speaker 1: if you get the top eight, and if you would
Speaker 1: get sort of pooled voting, right, you know, maybe some
Speaker 1: group would vote on identity politics and and surface up
Speaker 1: one type of candidate. Maybe some group would practice ideological
Speaker 1: politics and surface another type of candidate. But that you know,
Speaker 1: if you had top eight, you would get a pretty
Speaker 1: you get a congressional delegation that truly was representative of
Speaker 1: the entire state. Now the problem with that is what
Speaker 1: if all eight you know, let's say you're talking, you're
Speaker 1: talking the state of Iowa, and you get eight, but
Speaker 1: all eight are from des Moines, right, and you don't
Speaker 1: have anybody from Cedar Rapids or Debuque or Sioux City.
Speaker 1: You get my point, right, So, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of those ideas that I don't dismiss, say in
Speaker 1: a county for state representative races, right, or for state
Speaker 1: senate races if you have a large enough state senator
Speaker 1: state house. So I think there are circumstances where that
Speaker 1: might be an interesting idea. But ultimately, when it comes
Speaker 1: to statewide elections and sort of larger elections, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we you know, we ought to have top
Speaker 1: four in general and opens it up to other primaries,
Speaker 1: to other political parties. The duopoly is what is stifling
Speaker 1: innovation in American politics. That is just a fact that
Speaker 1: doopoly stifles it. If these were private organizations, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there'd be a that the FTC that they
Speaker 1: could break up this duopoly. But you know, this isn't
Speaker 1: how it works, since guess who runs the FTC. The duopoly, right,
Speaker 1: There's never been a duopoly that's never been more embedded
Speaker 1: in government than the GOP and the Democratic Party. I
Speaker 1: think we've got to come up with infrastructure, voting infrastructure
Speaker 1: that that incentivizes non major party candidates, that allows people
Speaker 1: who are independent, That allows people who have a different
Speaker 1: points of view to feel as if their voice can
Speaker 1: be heard in a reasonable way. So I'm really glad
Speaker 1: you picked up on the rob sandpoint about first past
Speaker 1: the post and the improval ideas. Look, all of these
Speaker 1: things I think will be coming to various states over
Speaker 1: the next twenty or thirty years. I think we're we're
Speaker 1: going into a period. You know, it's one of these things.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for fifty years from now for political
Speaker 1: scientists to talk about the fifty years that we're about
Speaker 1: to experience, because I think it's a I think we're
Speaker 1: going to have a lot of reform, experiment, experiment. Some
Speaker 1: will work, some well, just like what happened arguably in
Speaker 1: the first fifty years of the twentieth century. You know,
Speaker 1: some of them stuck right, direct election of senators, giving
Speaker 1: women the right to vote, Some didn't, prohibition. So you know,
Speaker 1: I do think we all agree that the system as
Speaker 1: it stands doesn't work, and I think, you know, thanks
Speaker 1: to the fifty States, we should start seeing some interesting
Speaker 1: experiments beginning sooner rather than later, rank choice voting being
Speaker 1: one of them that we're already seeing play out. And
Speaker 1: we're kicking the tires on it. And this was something
Speaker 1: I was a huge advocate of. Now I'm like you, Matt,
Speaker 1: I'm a little a little less into it than I
Speaker 1: was before. All Right, last question, doctor Walters, Well the
Speaker 1: cognitive Biden litmus tests become the Democratic version of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election or January sixth or will this remain
Speaker 1: a non healing wound until it is acknowledged and apologized for. Lastly,
Speaker 1: if you were Budhajid or another prominent Democrat, how would
Speaker 1: you answer the Biden cognitive question? Well, this, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we know the answer just yet. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a fine line here. I go back to Carter
Speaker 1: and Ducacus right in Mondale. They were you know, when
Speaker 1: you lose, you're usually sort of ostracized in a form,
Speaker 1: in one form or another.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I certainly think Mondale in eighty
Speaker 1: four acknowledged Carter. I think Carter was at his convention.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if he spoke at that convention. Certainly
Speaker 1: was not a part of the Clinton ninety two convention,
Speaker 1: right or any of that. I I think that I
Speaker 1: think it's possible that the Democrat that wins the nomination
Speaker 1: is the one with the least amount of Biden ties.
Speaker 1: Now what does that mean. Does that mean no Biden
Speaker 1: cabinet secretaries or a Biden cabinet secretary makes it through
Speaker 1: because the other candidates had closer ties to Biden. It's
Speaker 1: I do think it's going to be in the same way.
Speaker 1: The Bush brand was just forever tainted by WMD and
Speaker 1: not finding the WMD. And I think ultimately is why
Speaker 1: Jeff Bush's candidacy couldn't get off the ground, is that
Speaker 1: the Bush baggage still was too heavy to carry into
Speaker 1: a campaign in twenty sixteen, and the fact that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump not not only didn't get penalized for going after
Speaker 1: the Bushes, he seemed to get rewarded inside the party
Speaker 1: for having the guts to go after the Bushes.
Speaker 2: So it is.
Speaker 1: I suspect it will be somewhat of a litmus test,
Speaker 1: you know. To me, if I were Booto, I would
Speaker 1: just tell the truth right, which was Look, I didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of interaction. I always had some question
Speaker 1: about this, but I felt confident Joe Biden because I
Speaker 1: because of what I was watching with Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't try to come up with something else. I
Speaker 1: think that's the likely answer. And if that's the answer,
Speaker 1: you just lean into it and own it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I know that I'm not going to conduct of my
Speaker 1: presidency that way, you know, something like that. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to be for you know, mandating more medical records
Speaker 1: to do this or that. You know, I think you
Speaker 1: can deal with it. And if anybody can talk their
Speaker 1: way out of this one out of this, it's Pete Buotages, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if others can as much. Pete is
Speaker 1: better at this than most. Right, he has the gift
Speaker 1: of gab. But it it's it's got to be believable.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I'm I I you know, I've
Speaker 1: had these conversations with with various folks over the over
Speaker 1: the past few years on this issue. It was Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's presence that created an illusion of reassurance.
Speaker 2: Call it.
Speaker 1: It was frankly, Democrats had their own version of Trump
Speaker 1: derangement syndrome, and in Trump arrangement syndrome, right, which the
Speaker 1: right likes to call every critic every once.
Speaker 2: In a while.
Speaker 1: But in this case, what I think one of the
Speaker 1: symptoms is you just assume everybody sees the worst version
Speaker 1: of Trump that you're seeing, and most voters, you know,
Speaker 1: not a lot of voters see that same version.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Some of it has to do with the bubble you
Speaker 1: live in and this or that. And I do think
Speaker 1: this was a version of people in the White House
Speaker 1: had Trump arrangement syndrome. You know, no way that January
Speaker 1: sixth guy is going to be able to beat even
Speaker 1: you know, a half awake Joe Biden. So it was
Speaker 1: all done under the cover of comforting themselves by the
Speaker 1: perceived weaknesses that they thought Donald Trump was bringing to
Speaker 1: this campaign. And they were weaknesses, they just weren't weaker
Speaker 1: than the biggest weakness that either Canadate had, which poll
Speaker 1: after poll after poll showed, was age and capacity to
Speaker 1: serve a full second term. I will tell you this,
Speaker 1: Pete's going to learn a lot if Kamala Harris runs
Speaker 1: for governor, how it'll be interesting to see if how
Speaker 1: forgiving California voters are of her, How she answers the
Speaker 1: question of why didn't what did she see? When did
Speaker 1: she first start becoming concerned? Does she lean into it
Speaker 1: or not? And does avoiding it create a problem for her?
Speaker 1: That you know, oh, she's not coming across authentic or
Speaker 1: honest or whatever it is. So if you're if you
Speaker 1: have some Biden baggage and you're thinking about running for
Speaker 1: president in twenty eight, watching how Kamala Harris navigates this
Speaker 1: and seeing how voters, particularly Democratic voters in California receive
Speaker 1: this will provide I think some guidelines for how those
Speaker 1: with some Biden baggage in twenty eight decide to deal
Speaker 1: with it. All right, I'm gonna stop there. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy your Memorial d weekend. By the way, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with my friend Jason Page
Speaker 1: and his UH and his show on YouTube and syndicated
Speaker 1: around the country, his sports show. We had a good time.
Speaker 1: UH did a little uh uh if you want to
Speaker 1: check it out, had a fun interactions with Patrick McEnroe,
Speaker 1: among others. So take a listen, absolutely roast me for
Speaker 1: whatever sports takes you don't agree with. Hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: the weekend of sports, and let's hope, let's hope we
Speaker 1: get some competitive NBA basketball. I'm nervous. I'm nervous that
Speaker 1: these series is that we may be done. I have
Speaker 1: a feeling okay, see Denver was unofficially the NBA Finals.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm wrong, but we shall see with that
Speaker 1: until I upload a game.