Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marco Wood Show
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Rob Long.
Speaker 2: Rob is a.
Speaker 1: Writer and producer and co founder of Ricochet. He also
Speaker 1: does a weekly podcast called Martini Shot.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rob, so coort to have you on.
Speaker 4: Happy to be here. Are you in Florida right now?
Speaker 4: I am beloved Florida.
Speaker 2: My beloved Florida. I am. It's so good. I you know, I.
Speaker 3: Was thinking, we've only met once.
Speaker 1: I believe, and it was at a Reason party shortly
Speaker 1: before I left for Florida.
Speaker 3: I pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And everybody got COVID after that party.
Speaker 5: It was like a super spreader event.
Speaker 2: It was a super spreader event.
Speaker 3: I didn't get it because I don't get COVID.
Speaker 2: I was born in Russia.
Speaker 3: We don't do that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know what. I don't think.
Speaker 4: I mean, I did get it eventually, but I don't
Speaker 4: think I got it there. Now does sound like a
Speaker 4: very Reason event for all party in New York.
Speaker 1: Right, which was like, you know, the time that everybody
Speaker 1: was getting it was.
Speaker 5: It December twenty twenty. Oh, then forget I didn't get it.
Speaker 4: I got it in December twenty twenty we did was
Speaker 4: that where I got it. I would just I would
Speaker 4: just start sending nasty messages to Nick Leespie, who accused
Speaker 4: me once of giving it to him, which oh.
Speaker 1: Really, oh no, yeah, he definitely got it during that party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. I was very excited to meet you.
Speaker 1: I had been a longtime fan. I'm actually, I would say,
Speaker 1: even more of a fan.
Speaker 3: Of yours now than I was previously.
Speaker 5: You're so I got What have I done? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, your sub stack is so good?
Speaker 5: Oh pa, thank you.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I sign up for a lot of substacks kind of
Speaker 1: because I like the people and to be nice. But
Speaker 1: like I get them and they're like, hey, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, But yours, I like, I
Speaker 1: look forward to it and there it's always super interesting
Speaker 1: and hilarious and I just love them.
Speaker 5: My trick was just really not a trick.
Speaker 4: My trick is to use material I've already it's kind
Speaker 4: of somewhat written, and then rewrite it and also make
Speaker 4: sure I send it out early Saturday morning.
Speaker 5: My theory is on Saturday mornings.
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean, I'm not up at five fifty
Speaker 4: or whenever I send it but it's enough time.
Speaker 5: People are like, oh, I'll read this, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh, are you just like tricking me into reading it?
Speaker 3: Is that what's going on here?
Speaker 5: No, I'm just I'm just telling you.
Speaker 2: I have a you have a whole thing.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: If I didn't realize that it's every Saturday. If you
Speaker 1: ask me, like, what day does Rob Long send his
Speaker 1: you know, sub stack out, I wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, Saturdays.
Speaker 2: But I get it.
Speaker 1: You've totally hooked me on Saturday morning reading Rob Long.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You don't get many you don't get many emails anyway
Speaker 4: on Saturdays. But it's AO and it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: it's as oh, it's a three minute read.
Speaker 5: You're like, I got three minutes.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do have three minutes.
Speaker 3: So how did you get into screenwriting?
Speaker 1: And I guess I should note you are well known
Speaker 1: for being a writer on the hit show Cheers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was kind of my first big gig and
Speaker 4: Pat harme my most famous gig. Depending on who you
Speaker 4: are and how old you are you used to be.
Speaker 4: I tell people I wrote for that show. They would say, oh,
Speaker 4: that was my favorite show, or that is my favorite show.
Speaker 4: That was my favorite show, And then it became the
Speaker 4: well that was my we used to watch that. I
Speaker 4: used to watch that with my family every Thursday night.
Speaker 4: And then it was that's my parents' favorite show, and
Speaker 4: that was that it's my my grandparents loved that show.
Speaker 4: And then you know this, I think it's on two
Speaker 4: B you know. So now, so I you know, I
Speaker 4: started as like I'm old. So I started a long
Speaker 4: time ago, and there were no I had no other
Speaker 4: skills really like, I didn't. I couldn't do any kind
Speaker 4: of math, so I couldn't be an investment.
Speaker 5: Banker like everybody else in my college class.
Speaker 4: And I knew I didn't want to be a lawyer,
Speaker 4: although I did have the l SAT prep book in
Speaker 4: my right by my bed as I was in LA
Speaker 4: trying to break into show business.
Speaker 1: So who among us did not have being a lawyer
Speaker 1: as a backup plan?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's like and I like to make
Speaker 4: fun of lawyers, but the truth is that like the
Speaker 4: you know, think, I think of all the people that
Speaker 4: didn't become lawyers, and then you realize that the ones
Speaker 4: who really became lawyers, of the like psychopaths, they're the
Speaker 4: ones who like made it through. Yeah, So I so
Speaker 4: I was in a writing class in college and the
Speaker 4: guy teaching and said, oh, you should, you should go
Speaker 4: to film school. Okay, I'll do that. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: glad you didn't say I should. You know, I should
Speaker 4: go move to Romania or something.
Speaker 5: And I went to UH.
Speaker 4: I once went to UCLA Film School for screenwriting after college,
Speaker 4: and I did that about a year and then I
Speaker 4: figured it.
Speaker 5: The town out really and it was really a trade school.
Speaker 4: And once you figure out, okay, I need an agent
Speaker 4: and here's what I got to do to get an agent,
Speaker 4: then you're just you're on. And I think it does
Speaker 4: not I should say to cautionary note to any young
Speaker 4: people listening who may want to do this. It does
Speaker 4: not work that way anymore. But back then it was
Speaker 4: kind of a wide open town.
Speaker 5: It was really kind of fun.
Speaker 2: What's different now.
Speaker 4: Uh, so many more people want to be so many
Speaker 4: more people want to do that job, and they know
Speaker 4: how to do that job now every every I mean
Speaker 4: I think there's a I taught a class at NYU
Speaker 4: one semester here in New York, and the freshmen in
Speaker 4: my class, my writing class, we're smarter about the business
Speaker 4: of show business than I think really I was for
Speaker 4: ten years of being in it.
Speaker 5: When I was in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just and of course we have so much
Speaker 4: media now, which is destroyed our country, but we have
Speaker 4: tons of it. You know, everybody's got a TV show,
Speaker 4: but there's nine thousand channels of stuff, and they all
Speaker 4: need people to write it for now anyway, And it
Speaker 4: seems to seem to people for a long time like
Speaker 4: it's an incredibly fun job, which it really is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that time is really gone.
Speaker 4: Now it's over supply and nobody's working and everybody's cutting back,
Speaker 4: and whatever I tell people, I can always tell I
Speaker 4: can always what I would tell people that way way,
Speaker 4: show business is right now. The people in the entertainment
Speaker 4: industry always sort.
Speaker 5: Of nod, yeah, you know, it's really rough. People not
Speaker 5: inn the entertainment industry always say yeah, crime me a river.
Speaker 5: I don't care about you guys. And I kind of
Speaker 5: like I'm on both sides of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oversupply, cause let's econ one on one, you know, so
Speaker 4: oversupply clauses that.
Speaker 3: That I ask all of my guests is do you
Speaker 3: feel like you've made it?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: No, not, I mean no, But I also don't know
Speaker 4: what that means anymore. I think as you get older,
Speaker 4: I think if you're lucky, your definition of that changes.
Speaker 4: When I was younger, I thought, oh, I know what
Speaker 4: I want, you know, I want to just have a
Speaker 4: fancy car, drive run away and be a big shot
Speaker 4: and get a table into the restaurant. And then when
Speaker 4: you get that, you think, well, okay, now it's like
Speaker 4: that old Peggy Lee song.
Speaker 5: Is that all there is? You know? You think that
Speaker 5: you know?
Speaker 4: And they've done studies sort of mid life studies or
Speaker 4: mid to you know, you know, they always say that,
Speaker 4: you know, your middle aged crisis or something breakdown, and
Speaker 4: it usually comes from the two things that happen at
Speaker 4: the same time, which is that you're old enough to
Speaker 4: realize that you're.
Speaker 5: That you don't have unlimited time, right, and you're also
Speaker 5: old enough to realize that the things that are really
Speaker 5: important making it you haven't been paying attention to.
Speaker 4: I think that's and if you're lucky, you know, you
Speaker 4: realize that and then you kind of like maybe make
Speaker 4: some mid course corrections in your life or something.
Speaker 5: And if you're unlucky, you so double down.
Speaker 4: And now I definitely I really need car.
Speaker 5: I got the wrong spouse. I got to change out
Speaker 5: this whole thing, you know, right.
Speaker 6: Which is wrong restaurants restaurants, Well, I think that happens,
Speaker 6: like people think wherever they are, like, there's got to
Speaker 6: be I mean, a friend of mine told me this
Speaker 6: great story.
Speaker 5: He was like working as a young guy and he's
Speaker 5: in the George H. W. Bush administration, right.
Speaker 4: Very very accomplished, a bunch of people running that administration
Speaker 4: like a big deal, and he was called into the
Speaker 4: Oval Office, right center of power in the world. All
Speaker 4: of the most powerful people in the world are pretty
Speaker 4: much right there, and he's like, you know, he's in
Speaker 4: his twenties, early twenties, and he's got this book, and
Speaker 4: he's got this briefing thing, and he's been told to
Speaker 4: say this and this and this, and everything's highlighted.
Speaker 5: And he's there and comes in, he sits down.
Speaker 4: He comes in and he stands there and I Bush,
Speaker 4: his Bush, the first president. Bush was incredibly, incredibly generous, elegant,
Speaker 4: lovely man. He said, Dave, you gotta sit down and
Speaker 4: sit down, you kidd you don't stand Hits got a
Speaker 4: briefing book and they start talking. His boss starts talking,
Speaker 4: and Bush starts raised his hand, and he says he
Speaker 4: has a couple of questions before they are going, and
Speaker 4: then the conversation.
Speaker 5: Just me andrews it's just these old.
Speaker 3: Dudes, Yeah, just talking, yeah.
Speaker 5: And just shooting it.
Speaker 4: And then finally he realizes, oh my god, I thought
Speaker 4: there was a room where things happen, and there isn't.
Speaker 4: It's just a room a bunch of old dudes. Yes,
Speaker 4: their afternoon away. So I kind of feel like, you know,
Speaker 4: that's it's a great lesson to learn.
Speaker 5: You know this.
Speaker 1: I always felt like that's what that's what was happening
Speaker 1: at the White House.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I always.
Speaker 1: Imagined it was old dudes blessing the night away.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised to learn there's more.
Speaker 5: Guess be true.
Speaker 4: Look at the world the way the world is. I
Speaker 4: guess that's probably true anyway. So I can't feel you
Speaker 4: ever make it. I think you just kind of you know,
Speaker 4: you're once you're in a room, you realize, oh my god,
Speaker 4: this is like if you ever met a really rich guy,
Speaker 4: really want to make a really rich guy miserable, just
Speaker 4: start talking about somebody who's a little bit.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna definitely try that the next time.
Speaker 2: I'm in a room with some rich guys.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, they hate it. They hate it. They'll spend
Speaker 5: a lot of time trying to explain to you why
Speaker 5: that guy is not really that rich. I don't know,
Speaker 5: he's pretty rich. It's pretty big. Try it. It's worth it.
Speaker 5: It's worth it for those of us who are not
Speaker 5: really rich. So are very few. We have very few benefits.
Speaker 1: That's why if you weren't a writer, what would have
Speaker 1: been planned be for Rob Long?
Speaker 5: God, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know what I would have done. I think
Speaker 4: I think I would have been some kind of like horrible.
Speaker 5: I would have been a lawyer, probably horribly bored now
Speaker 5: furious lawyer. I don't think I would have been very happy.
Speaker 4: I'd have been one of those terrible lawyers, you know,
Speaker 4: and like they're the lawyers and they have a mystery
Speaker 4: novel somewhere they're writing, right, and they don't think they're
Speaker 4: John Grisham and they're not.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: That would have been Yeah, well, I'm glad you didn't
Speaker 1: have to take the l SAT path that things worked out.
Speaker 2: I took the l SAT though.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, my husband was my best friend
Speaker 1: at the time, and he was like, do not be
Speaker 1: a lawyer.
Speaker 3: I don't know any happy lawyers don't do it.
Speaker 1: And so he really he really changed the course of
Speaker 1: my life because I was like, yeah, you're right, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't do this. Yeah, but I think about plan b's,
Speaker 1: you know, like what what the other options out there
Speaker 1: could be?
Speaker 3: Thankfully not not being a lawyer.
Speaker 4: But you know, so I feel like we sometimes have
Speaker 4: an idea that like, Okay, you make this decision. I
Speaker 4: don't know how old you are in your twenties or
Speaker 4: this this is what you're going to be, so you're
Speaker 4: that now yeah, forever.
Speaker 2: But kind of sometimes how it works, like it's you know.
Speaker 5: I think sometime how we choose to make it Yeah,
Speaker 5: But I don't think it has to be that way.
Speaker 5: You can, you know, you can.
Speaker 4: We have a lot of I think, a lot of
Speaker 4: set you know, life, a lot of internally maintained and
Speaker 4: directed objectives and rules that we think we need to follow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I don't think we do. I mean there's someone.
Speaker 3: I guess, Yeah, we probably don't, but it feels like
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 1: I my first job out of college, I was a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical paralegal, and literally I did things like I would
Speaker 1: have to like look at giant things of documents and
Speaker 1: make sure that they were labeled numbered correctly, like one, two, three,
Speaker 1: like monkey work totally. But then my second job, like
Speaker 1: when I wanted to leave there, I was a pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: paralegal and I couldn't become a different kind of paralegal
Speaker 1: at like you know, age twenty one, it was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you are in this.
Speaker 5: Field and we need you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to make make sure that the pages
Speaker 1: are labeled correctly.
Speaker 2: In the pharmaceutical world.
Speaker 1: You can't go into that like finance world with your paralegaling.
Speaker 5: Okay, but you did though, because you know I did.
Speaker 1: But I but I have to say I made the
Speaker 1: most expensive mistake of my life. I went to graduate
Speaker 1: school because I thought to change my life, to change
Speaker 1: my career, I needed more school. That's I mean again,
Speaker 1: I'm an immigrant like that, that's that's sort of.
Speaker 2: What I want. The ideas that I was raised with.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, keep going to school, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to do something, to go to school
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're lied to.
Speaker 4: I don't know, well, I don't know know if it's
Speaker 4: like I just I think it's maybe an unfortunate truth,
Speaker 4: but we should probably all push.
Speaker 5: Back on it hard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the idea, I don't know. I think we had
Speaker 4: this first of all, with there's too many credentials. We
Speaker 4: all have too many credentials, and the credentials don't make
Speaker 4: you happy anyway, so they just kind of like give
Speaker 4: you the make it so that no one can sue you,
Speaker 4: or you can't be fired or I don't know whatever,
Speaker 4: people trust you somehow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm not quite. I mean that would be
Speaker 5: a nice thing.
Speaker 4: That for us to a culture to get away from
Speaker 4: Zeta had to be credential to do everything. Definitely, I mean,
Speaker 4: my god, you have to, Like I'm going to get
Speaker 4: this wrong, but I mean, you know, those women who
Speaker 4: do eyebrow threading, they have to go to school for
Speaker 4: something stupid. The stupidest thing ever, is it's easier to
Speaker 4: be a you know, a daycare employee than it is
Speaker 4: to be a barber, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: What's more important your haircut are the kids?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: I'm unsure me too, Like, yeah, listen, my haircut is
Speaker 1: actually really important.
Speaker 4: That's a reflection of you actually, So yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4: Your kids can have to learn to fend from themselves anyway.
Speaker 3: It'll be fine, you know, it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to take a quick break and be
Speaker 1: right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Do you have
Speaker 1: things that you worry about culturally? Like, what would you
Speaker 1: say is our largest cultural problem?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean I don't know what I don't worry
Speaker 5: about because you get to be a certain point, you're like, boa,
Speaker 5: what's that going to do?
Speaker 4: Be worrying about it? And also things tend to work out.
Speaker 4: I mean, such a ridiculous thing. I don't think that
Speaker 4: we I don't think that we are smart enough in America.
Speaker 4: I think that we're getting dumb and we're letting ourselves
Speaker 4: get dumb. Yeah, and I and I mean that in
Speaker 4: a in a broad way. I just think that we're
Speaker 4: not We don't know enough about science. We don't know
Speaker 4: enough about statistics.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: We don't know enough about the physical world. And I
Speaker 4: don't mean we I mean me, I don't mean we
Speaker 4: know we know. Depending on how old you are, you
Speaker 4: can name the entire cast of Bewitched, including the two Darren's.
Speaker 4: If you're my age, you know that is, and you
Speaker 4: can probably you know, name this all of the tracks
Speaker 4: in order of you know, Taylor Swift's You know.
Speaker 3: I can probably do that.
Speaker 2: My daughter is a big Swift Ye.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean like, which is fine.
Speaker 4: It's just that there's other stuff like I I you,
Speaker 4: I'm sort of right wing myself, so I'm like, I surprised.
Speaker 4: A friend of mine. Uh, this comes from a family
Speaker 4: business here in on Long Island and they make Geiger
Speaker 4: counters and nuclear stuff detectors.
Speaker 5: They've done for years.
Speaker 4: And he remembers as a kid being woken up at
Speaker 4: like three in the morning by the state police and
Speaker 4: they're like flights, flashing the house and knocking on the
Speaker 4: door and they're trying it.
Speaker 5: They're waking up, waking up the family, waking up with
Speaker 5: their dad because they needed him, wow, to go to
Speaker 5: three Mile Island.
Speaker 2: I thought he was in trouble.
Speaker 4: No, well that's what he was. An emergency call, like
Speaker 4: we need all of you when you open up your thing,
Speaker 4: we need your factory, we need to get all this stuff.
Speaker 4: We gotta go to the three Island because I just
Speaker 4: have the three Round Island disaster, right, And I said, wow,
Speaker 4: so amazing, and he goes, yeah, well here's what's even
Speaker 4: more amazing. People forget there was no disaster. M there
Speaker 4: there was no leak.
Speaker 5: There was there was.
Speaker 3: I thought was I don't know enough about it.
Speaker 5: Neither.
Speaker 4: They thought there was and checked it out, and it's like, no,
Speaker 4: we're fine. Everything worked. And yet that moment managed to
Speaker 4: change everything, the whole perception of nuclear power in America.
Speaker 4: It ended the nuclear power initiatives everywhere. Yeah, and made
Speaker 4: us more reliant on foreign oil. So if you connected
Speaker 4: the dots, you could say, okay, so because we are
Speaker 4: too dumb to understand the complicated stuff about it, which
Speaker 4: is not even that complicate about nuclear power, we believe
Speaker 4: this nonsense. And then we said, okay, well let's just
Speaker 4: keep buying oil from the Saudis. And we kept buying
Speaker 4: oil with Saudis, and eventually, okay, if you're really a
Speaker 4: crackpot like me, you say, eventually nine to eleven, So congratulations.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: You know, a standard view.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 1: some fringe views now that have other ideas. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we once knew that, you know, nineteen terrorists,
Speaker 1: a lot of them were Saudi's, blew planes into our buildings, and.
Speaker 3: That's how nine to eleven happened.
Speaker 4: But yeah, and I'm guilty of that.
Speaker 5: Like, Okay, I wish I should know that, like we should.
Speaker 5: We should all. I think we have this idea that
Speaker 5: as as civilization progresses and as things get, as we
Speaker 5: move forward, things certain things should be easier. And I think, no,
Speaker 5: there's more to know.
Speaker 4: You have to know more, right, Like a problem with
Speaker 4: school these days is not hard enough because the kids
Speaker 4: need to know.
Speaker 3: Agree, I so agree.
Speaker 1: There's you know, in New York where we lived, there
Speaker 1: was this whole culture of gifted and talented education and
Speaker 1: you had to really fight to get your kids into it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, how don't necessarily think my kids
Speaker 1: are gifted or talented. I just want them to work hard,
Speaker 1: Like why does it have to be a test or whatever?
Speaker 1: Why can't I just be like I opt into giving
Speaker 1: them the hardest work you have available, and that'll be that.
Speaker 3: But you couldn't do that because you know obviously.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is funny.
Speaker 4: I mean I'm actually going back to I mean I
Speaker 4: should say, but I'm going back to school.
Speaker 5: I'm starting school again.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am going to Princeton Theological Seminary. I'm going
Speaker 4: to get an m div I want to be an
Speaker 4: ordained episcopal minister if you can believe it. Wow, Because
Speaker 4: like I said with my friends, like if you think
Speaker 4: I'm insufferable, now, yeah, wait until I have a collar.
Speaker 4: But you know, I go and look, it's a great place,
Speaker 4: but it's a it's a it's school. Now I'm in
Speaker 4: a school in decades and decades and there's just a
Speaker 4: lot of support now and Princeton.
Speaker 5: Yeah, moving to Princeton in a week.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Uh.
Speaker 4: And but the amount of what I've discovered at schools now,
Speaker 4: Like I mean, I know this is a special kind
Speaker 4: of school, but there's a lot of counseling available and
Speaker 4: study help available, and there's like all this stuff available.
Speaker 3: It's very huggy.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, I'm very huggy. There wasn't when I was
Speaker 4: you know, I don't know what. I don't know what
Speaker 4: it would happen if you were at a mental health
Speaker 4: problem when I was in college. I think you just
Speaker 4: they just assumed you did anyway, So hey, good luck
Speaker 4: with that once you get more sleep, you know, that
Speaker 4: would I think that would have been the solution.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 5: What made you do that, well, you know, it's like
Speaker 5: the same whole thing.
Speaker 4: Like you get to a certain age of like, Okay,
Speaker 4: let's I've been writing about stuff for a long time,
Speaker 4: actually write about.
Speaker 5: Bigger stuff, think about bigger stuff. It's also kind of
Speaker 5: maybe another problem I think with our culture is that
Speaker 5: we have a very we we've isolated the big questions
Speaker 5: like faith or lack of faith and put them off.
Speaker 4: Okay, on one day a week, I'll think about that stuff. Right,
Speaker 4: just comes over here in this department of the bookstore,
Speaker 4: and I'm not sure that's great. And I'm I'm in
Speaker 4: a Episcopal Piscopalian, which is about the grooviest, you know,
Speaker 4: most tolerant denomination out there, which is great. I'm one
Speaker 4: hundred percent behind, and so part of me kind of
Speaker 4: feels like, Okay, there's got to be a way to
Speaker 4: sort of I don't think make this relevance the word,
Speaker 4: but I think it's got to be a way to
Speaker 4: like reintroduce all of this experience people have had for
Speaker 4: at least two thousand years two thousand plus, depending on
Speaker 4: what your faith is as part of the fabric of
Speaker 4: your life, like right, not like or not, like you
Speaker 4: have to wake up in the morning and think, Okay, here,
Speaker 4: here are all the sins that I'm going to not commit.
Speaker 4: But more about waking up every day and thinking, okay,
Speaker 4: well what am I doing here?
Speaker 2: Right as? I don't know, you know, a little.
Speaker 4: Era Episcopalians, though we don't we don't even think we're like,
Speaker 4: we actually redefine the word sin.
Speaker 5: Just so you know that's how good we are.
Speaker 3: I'm going to I'm going to use the word groovy,
Speaker 3: just homage to you.
Speaker 1: I actually just remembered that at the COVID Libertarian Party
Speaker 1: you were excuse me, you were with Andrew Claven. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like talks about this kind of stuff a
Speaker 1: lot like faith in your everyday life.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, Drew is an old friend of mine, and
Speaker 4: he is incredibly thoughtful. He wrote a wonderful book about
Speaker 4: it about his conversion, and Drew is like, is the
Speaker 4: first person to uh, you know, in the crew that
Speaker 4: play the Crucible. You know, it'll be Drew who points
Speaker 4: at me and screams, you know, blasphemer. You know he
Speaker 4: will like that, he said, he will gladly light the
Speaker 4: pyre under me when they stay for heresy.
Speaker 5: That's kind of sweet. Thing to do like only a
Speaker 5: friend would, but he does. He believes that it's a
Speaker 5: part of your fabric of what we're doing here. And
Speaker 5: I think we look. I mean, people go around saying.
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't know, you know, I'm an atheist Dominique.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe I think atheism is a form of faith,
Speaker 4: by the way.
Speaker 3: Agree, yeah, it's religion, religion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And I think you know, people will been
Speaker 4: to yoga class lately, like people are chanting and doing
Speaker 4: stuff and drinking you know, special tea and lighting Palo Santo.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and you know there.
Speaker 4: Or meditating or doing all sorts of things that I mean,
Speaker 4: there's a hunger, like you can't lose the human beings
Speaker 4: are never going to involve past the awe of what it.
Speaker 5: Is to be a human being. It's like we can't
Speaker 5: and if we do that, I think we're losing everything.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was in.
Speaker 4: I was in Peru last week, of all places, and
Speaker 4: there was a moment it was kind of cloudy. But
Speaker 4: there's one moment we haven't a little Peru. It was
Speaker 4: in the in the jungle in the Amazon Park and
Speaker 4: the night sky clears and it's.
Speaker 5: And there's no moon so it's dark, but you see
Speaker 5: all of the stars. We don't see them in the city. Really,
Speaker 5: you got to go to a they called Dark Skies Parkers,
Speaker 5: and we just see them all. When you see them
Speaker 5: all you're like, oh, I get it, I get it.
Speaker 5: I get why the Greeks wrote about all this stuff.
Speaker 5: I get why they invented all these gods. I get it.
Speaker 5: Like if you see this show every single night, every
Speaker 5: single night, better than Cheers, Well, I don't know, that's
Speaker 5: a good question.
Speaker 4: Well it's free or it's free, but that we just
Speaker 4: were just because we have cities and yeah, that kind
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 5: We don't see that not that often. But when you
Speaker 5: see it, you think, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that those moments where you know, you
Speaker 1: feel the whole world.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's been a year definitely of coming back to religion
Speaker 1: for me, I know for a lot of other people.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to hear about your journey at Princeton.
Speaker 3: I think that's like a really amazing thing to do.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm excited.
Speaker 4: I mean I'm excited and also weirdly terrified because it's
Speaker 4: I mean, I just was looking I just putting my
Speaker 4: schedule together and like I had to. You have to
Speaker 4: register for classes right like on your little they have
Speaker 4: apps now for that, and then and then it instantly
Speaker 4: populates with the curriculum and like this, I have a
Speaker 4: paper due. I'm already I'm already nervous about the paper
Speaker 4: December twentieth. Yeah, I'm like, like, I hope they're don't
Speaker 4: I think there's even exams or quizzes Like I I
Speaker 4: may just not do great.
Speaker 5: I'm like too old.
Speaker 2: To see student's.
Speaker 5: Exactly what because.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I wait a minute, I'm a little too
Speaker 4: old to be taking your stupid tests. Be the cranky
Speaker 4: old man in every class.
Speaker 1: I love it, Rob Long, You're so awesome. I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation so much. And here with your best tip
Speaker 1: for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you this.
Speaker 4: This is what I try to say to myself all
Speaker 4: the time, and it is true, even though it feels
Speaker 4: like it's not true.
Speaker 5: You should just remember that there is so much time.
Speaker 5: Just remind yourself there is so much time left.
Speaker 1: I love that because I always feel like I'm running
Speaker 1: out of time.
Speaker 5: It's over, It's over, It's totally over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Thank you so much, Rob Long, catch him everywhere.
Speaker 2: He's so amazing.
Speaker 1: Definitely subscribe to his substack because I think that that's like.
Speaker 3: An underrated just piece of genius.
Speaker 1: Listen to his show Martini Shot, and catch him anywhere
Speaker 1: that you find his writing.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Ray was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: It really was.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
Speaker 1: which shows subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.