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0:01:31 – Episode 353.
0:01:34 353 is the area code serving southwestern Wisconsin.
0:01:38 In 1953, the first James Bond novel was published.
0:01:41 What would happen if James Bond took Viagra?
0:01:44 He would continue to be a state-sponsored terrorist
0:01:46 whose actions disgrace us all.
0:01:47 Disgrace us all.
0:01:48 Mm, I didn’t like that one.
0:01:50 I was once in a James Bond-themed porn film.
0:01:52 I didn’t enjoy it, but I did manage to come on cue.
0:01:57 That’s better.
0:01:58 Go, go, go!
0:02:10 Welcome to the 353rd episode of the Prop G-Pod.
0:02:10 What’s happening?
0:02:13 I am in, I’m French dog right now.
0:02:16 I’m a cheese-eating surrender dog.
0:02:17 Mm, is that fair?
0:02:18 Is that fair?
0:02:20 France did fall in about 11 days.
0:02:22 So I’m in the south of France.
0:02:26 You know, France absolutely would be the most amazing country in the world
0:02:28 if it wasn’t inhabited by the French.
0:02:30 All right, they just know how to do shit here.
0:02:31 Everything is beautiful.
0:02:33 The Côte d’Azur is wonderful.
0:02:35 I had a James Bond moment about, I don’t know,
0:02:38 I think the first time I came to Cannes,
0:02:40 I bombed into, I landed in the airport,
0:02:43 Delta Airlines overnight, no sleep.
0:02:47 And I pull up Uber to take an Uber to my hotel.
0:02:50 And this was back when I was actually working for a living
0:02:52 and I’ve got an Airbnb for like, I don’t know,
0:02:55 70 euros a night, you know, 40 minutes out of town.
0:03:00 And I pull up Uber and up pops this helicopter icon.
0:03:00 So I’m like, what the fuck?
0:03:02 So I press on it and it says,
0:03:07 meet your helicopter to Cannes and the baggage claim.
0:03:09 And I show up and I meet this 13-year-old
0:03:12 in what looks like a Halloween costume of a pilot’s uniform,
0:03:14 puts me in a van, takes me to this thing
0:03:16 where there’s a lawnmower with a rotor blade
0:03:17 called a helicopter.
0:03:21 We take off, we zoom or whisk across the Côte d’Azur,
0:03:24 land in the Palais.
0:03:25 And I get out and there’s a bunch of people
0:03:27 at Meta Beach kind of trying to figure out
0:03:30 how they can get teenage girls to self-harm more.
0:03:32 And they look up and they see me getting out
0:03:33 of my helicopter and I’m like,
0:03:34 da-na-da!
0:03:37 Literally, that was kind of a James Bond moment.
0:03:41 Now my life is pretty much about trying to pursue
0:03:43 a series of James Bond moments.
0:03:46 I’m here at my favorite hotel in the world,
0:03:47 the Hotel de Cap Eden Rock,
0:03:49 which is reeks of European luxury.
0:03:51 My favorite thing, and I’ve talked about this before,
0:03:53 but that’s not going to stop me from talking about it again.
0:03:57 I go to the FTR, I go to this beautiful little patio
0:04:00 at the Hotel de Cap, and I have my latte and my croissant
0:04:03 and my freshly squeezed orange juice.
0:04:06 And I sit there with my Financial Times,
0:04:09 or as I like to call it, that salmon bitch,
0:04:12 trying to signal that I’m smart and very international.
0:04:16 And then I hire a Zodiac for the week,
0:04:21 this guy, French guy, who somehow manages to drive a boat
0:04:24 while having two cigarettes lit at once.
0:04:28 And he takes me in, and I always crash the beach from,
0:04:34 I’m like fucking the 5th Battalion of the U.S. Army
0:04:36 crashing on Normandy.
0:04:38 I go into Omaha Beach.
0:04:40 Omaha Beach for me is meta.
0:04:42 I hate those motherfuckers.
0:04:44 And I always land on their beach, and they look up,
0:04:45 and there’s a security guard, and they know what to do.
0:04:47 And I just bomb through there onto the Palais.
0:04:48 That’s what you do.
0:04:49 You go into the soft tissue.
0:04:51 You land from the seaside.
0:04:53 And I did it at a Pinterest beach, but they’re nice.
0:04:54 They didn’t care.
0:04:55 They just looked up and said,
0:04:59 oh, would you like to browse some soapstone kitchen counters
0:05:00 or plan your wedding?
0:05:04 Anyways, I love Cannes, Lions.
0:05:08 It used to be where they’d give out trophies to the ad execs
0:05:10 who were all looking for a different job,
0:05:12 and then basically Tech 8 Media.
0:05:14 I mean, it’s just so hilarious.
0:05:17 The lions of this industry were Martin Sorrell, Maurice Levy,
0:05:19 and a guy named John Wren from Omnicom.
0:05:20 And now, between the three of them,
0:05:22 they have a $40 billion market cap.
0:05:26 And you’re seeing, I mean, they’re just unimportant.
0:05:28 It’s just hilarious we continue to talk about these companies.
0:05:32 that Alphabet or Amazon will lose or gain the value
0:05:34 of all three of these companies in a trading day.
0:05:36 And yet, they’re trying to hold on.
0:05:38 And WPP just made this big announcement
0:05:41 that they’re moving to more of an influencer model.
0:05:42 Well, oh, wow.
0:05:43 Yeah, that’ll help.
0:05:44 It’s got a $9 billion market cap.
0:05:48 And I’m pretty sure there’s going to be an activist coming to WPP
0:05:50 because my guess is they have some really good assets.
0:05:53 And what you have now is a hole that’s less than the sum of its parts.
0:05:58 The original conglomerate model fashioned by Sir Martin Sorrell
0:06:00 made a lot of sense and it no longer makes sense
0:06:02 or it doesn’t make sense when you have a lot of your assets are dying
0:06:03 or in structural decline,
0:06:06 especially with meta deciding that, oh, using AI,
0:06:08 we can do the creative and we can do the account planning
0:06:09 and the media buying
0:06:12 and stop hiring these very young, attractive people
0:06:13 who you overpay such that you can get invited
0:06:16 to their used-to-be-cool party.
0:06:18 Anyway, lovely to be here.
0:06:22 My big tip around traveling is travel to hotels, not to cities.
0:06:25 It’s like what school you pick for your kids.
0:06:26 We obsess over what school.
0:06:28 We obsess over what city we’re going to.
0:06:31 Well, actually, if you find the right teacher, it doesn’t matter what school.
0:06:33 And if you have a bad teacher, it doesn’t matter what school.
0:06:34 It’s more about the teacher than it is the school.
0:06:37 I think it’s the same with hotels.
0:06:42 I read all these hotel lists and I travel to hotels versus a city
0:06:47 because a mediocre hotel in LA makes LA kind of a hellish place
0:06:49 with a bunch of freeways as you’re trying to go somewhere
0:06:51 and do something cool, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
0:06:54 Or if you’re having an affair with your, I don’t know,
0:06:58 secretary’s husband or something, and that’s the Hotel Bel Air.
0:07:01 If you’re younger and you want something a little cooler,
0:07:03 you go to the addition and they’ve got a cool restaurant there.
0:07:05 I mean, it’s all about the hotel.
0:07:06 LA, yeah, LA’s great.
0:07:07 But you don’t go to LA, you go to the hotel.
0:07:09 Where do you go?
0:07:10 You don’t go to the South of France.
0:07:11 Cannes itself is not that nice.
0:07:12 It’s okay.
0:07:13 It’s okay.
0:07:15 What’s nice is the Hotel du Cap
0:07:16 or what’s over the top is Hotel du Cap
0:07:20 where you get a latte and a croissant for $38.
0:07:20 No joke.
0:07:22 And as I’m sitting there reading my FT,
0:07:24 hands down the highlight of the trip
0:07:26 is these two ridiculously ripped,
0:07:28 they look Italian, maybe they’re French.
0:07:30 They come out in these like cool polos
0:07:32 and they’re in between working out
0:07:33 and taking human growth hormone.
0:07:35 And they come out on their arm
0:07:37 with these two peregrines,
0:07:38 is that what they’re called?
0:07:39 Falcons.
0:07:40 And they have the little hood on them
0:07:41 and everyone just kind of stops eating,
0:07:45 you know, their croquettes
0:07:46 or whatever it is we were eating for breakfast.
0:07:48 And they look at these two beautiful men
0:07:51 with their two equally beautiful hawks.
0:07:54 And the problem is occasionally a seagull,
0:07:56 the seagulls haven’t gotten the memo
0:07:58 that these rooms are 4,000 euros a night
0:08:00 and they’ll come up and literally steal your croissant.
0:08:03 And seagulls are, I don’t know,
0:08:04 they’re flying rats as far as I can tell.
0:08:07 So what they do is they bring out these guys
0:08:08 with these hawks and the seagulls
0:08:10 are going around, you know, flying
0:08:11 and then they take the hood off
0:08:15 and instinctively the hawk just bolts off the arm
0:08:17 of the handsome ripped French slash Italian guy
0:08:20 and like takes a seagull.
0:08:21 And when I say takes,
0:08:22 I mean somehow in midair
0:08:24 manages to rip the fucking thing apart.
0:08:26 And then all of a sudden the seagulls are like,
0:08:27 I mean, they’re going crazy.
0:08:29 They’re going, for good reason,
0:08:30 they’re going crazy.
0:08:31 And then there’s no seagulls
0:08:33 for like seven or eight minutes.
0:08:34 And it’s just fucking hilarious.
0:08:36 And I’m like, whoa, I see this thing.
0:08:37 I see the rip guy.
0:08:40 I see the, I see the Falcon rip apart a seagull.
0:08:42 And I’m like, I would pay 4,100 euros
0:08:43 for my room right now.
0:08:48 Just a reminder that Prop G Markets is now daily.
0:08:48 That’s right.
0:08:51 You’ll find it only on the Prop G Markets feed.
0:08:52 We’ve gone daily.
0:08:55 We still do two days a week, me and Ed.
0:08:56 And then the other three days,
0:08:59 it’s just Ed reading the headlines with some guests,
0:09:01 talking about specific topics,
0:09:02 a little crisper, a little shorter,
0:09:04 20 or 30 minutes instead of 60 or 80.
0:09:06 And then I do what’s called phoning it in
0:09:09 wherever I am at 10 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time.
0:09:12 I call in and give my unfiltered take
0:09:14 on the issue of the day.
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0:09:50 Thank you for enduring that.
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0:10:00 Okay.
0:10:03 In today’s episode, we speak with one of my role models.
0:10:04 People say, who do you look up to?
0:10:06 And I have a lot of people I look up to.
0:10:07 Most of them, nobody else knows.
0:10:09 Just dudes getting up,
0:10:11 you know, making money for their families,
0:10:12 trying to be good role models,
0:10:14 you know, absorbing blows,
0:10:16 not being assholes.
0:10:17 Those are the people I admire.
0:10:20 But in terms of popular or pop figures,
0:10:23 the individual I get a lot of guidance from
0:10:24 is Sam Harris,
0:10:26 a neuroscientist, philosopher, best-selling author,
0:10:29 and host of the Making Sense podcast.
0:10:32 I find Sam is just literally a buoy,
0:10:34 a, what’s it called?
0:10:35 A life raft,
0:10:36 a port of call,
0:10:37 and a stormy seas.
0:10:39 I just find he has such moral clarity,
0:10:41 does the work.
0:10:42 If you listen to his podcast,
0:10:43 every word is just,
0:10:45 you can tell every word has been selected.
0:10:46 The economy of words,
0:10:47 it’s so crisp,
0:10:47 it’s so tight.
0:10:49 We discussed with Sam
0:10:51 the collapse of trust in institutions,
0:10:52 why getting off Twitter
0:10:53 was the best decision he’s ever made
0:10:54 for his mental health,
0:10:56 and what Elon Musk and Andrew Tate
0:10:58 reveal about masculinity today.
0:10:59 With that,
0:11:00 from the south of France,
0:11:02 from the Hotel Ducap Eden Rock,
0:11:04 here’s our conversation
0:11:05 with Sam Harris.
0:11:19 Sam,
0:11:20 where does this podcast find you?
0:11:22 Los Angeles.
0:11:23 So,
0:11:25 I was struggling with what
0:11:26 topics to cover,
0:11:28 specifically what topics not to cover,
0:11:29 so I thought I’ll
0:11:30 basically do a buffet here
0:11:32 and have you decide
0:11:33 of all the things
0:11:35 we’re most concerned about
0:11:37 or of all the things
0:11:38 to be concerned about.
0:11:39 What are you most concerned about
0:11:40 right now and why?
0:11:43 I think it would have to be
0:11:44 the way we’re interacting
0:11:46 with information.
0:11:46 You know,
0:11:47 I mean,
0:11:47 it just is,
0:11:49 and largely this is a story
0:11:51 of what social media
0:11:52 and the internet
0:11:53 generally has done to us,
0:11:54 but,
0:11:55 you know,
0:11:56 you can throw into this bin
0:11:58 the failure of institutions
0:12:01 and the pervasive lack
0:12:02 of trust in institutions
0:12:04 that is far deeper
0:12:06 and more widespread
0:12:08 than the failures
0:12:09 of those institutions
0:12:10 would justify,
0:12:10 right?
0:12:11 I mean,
0:12:12 people are far more
0:12:14 distrusting of the media
0:12:17 than the errors of,
0:12:17 you know,
0:12:18 the woke errors
0:12:18 of the media
0:12:19 over the last few years
0:12:20 justify.
0:12:23 People are far more
0:12:24 distrusting of government
0:12:25 and the scientific
0:12:26 establishment
0:12:27 than the errors
0:12:28 committed during COVID
0:12:29 justify,
0:12:29 right?
0:12:31 And so we’ve reached
0:12:32 this kind of freefall
0:12:32 condition,
0:12:33 as far as I can tell,
0:12:35 especially in independent
0:12:36 media and over in
0:12:36 Trumpistan,
0:12:37 it’s just a,
0:12:38 you know,
0:12:39 the physics have
0:12:40 completely changed,
0:12:41 wherein you have
0:12:43 proper lunatics
0:12:44 trusted as,
0:12:46 you know,
0:12:47 as honest brokers
0:12:47 of information.
0:12:48 You’ve got people
0:12:49 like Tucker Carlson
0:12:51 and a host of
0:12:53 slightly better behaved
0:12:54 but no less
0:12:56 confused podcasters
0:12:57 who I might not
0:12:57 name here.
0:12:58 And,
0:12:59 you know,
0:13:00 conspiracy theorists,
0:13:01 people like Alex Jones,
0:13:02 I mean,
0:13:02 these people are in
0:13:03 good standing
0:13:04 right of center
0:13:06 and it’s bonkers.
0:13:08 And so I fear
0:13:08 that we are in a
0:13:10 position increasingly
0:13:11 where we’re rendering
0:13:14 ourselves ungovernable
0:13:14 or,
0:13:15 you know,
0:13:16 governable only
0:13:17 by,
0:13:18 you know,
0:13:19 half the population
0:13:21 willing to get
0:13:22 absorbed into a
0:13:23 personality cult
0:13:25 and continuously
0:13:26 fed lies.
0:13:28 And it’s just a,
0:13:28 you know,
0:13:28 I don’t know how
0:13:29 we would respond
0:13:31 to the next
0:13:32 proper emergency.
0:13:33 You know,
0:13:34 if 9-11 happened
0:13:34 now,
0:13:36 if a pandemic,
0:13:36 you know,
0:13:37 worse than COVID
0:13:38 happened now,
0:13:39 if a real war
0:13:39 happened now,
0:13:41 I think we’re
0:13:42 in a society
0:13:42 that is just
0:13:43 riven by
0:13:43 misinformation
0:13:45 and frank
0:13:46 dishonesty.
0:13:48 And it’s a very
0:13:48 dark picture,
0:13:49 I think,
0:13:50 of us politically
0:13:51 at the moment.
0:13:52 Do you see
0:13:53 any sources
0:13:54 or paths
0:13:54 to repair?
0:13:56 Well,
0:13:56 I do think
0:13:57 we have to
0:13:58 figure out
0:13:58 how to reboot
0:13:59 trust in
0:14:00 institutions,
0:14:00 which is,
0:14:00 you know,
0:14:01 obviously a
0:14:01 two-sided
0:14:02 problem.
0:14:03 The institutions
0:14:04 themselves
0:14:05 have to
0:14:07 become
0:14:08 trustworthy,
0:14:09 and,
0:14:10 you know,
0:14:10 the Trump
0:14:10 administration
0:14:11 is making
0:14:11 that hard
0:14:12 now by
0:14:13 launching an
0:14:13 all-out
0:14:14 assault on
0:14:15 them in
0:14:16 ways that,
0:14:16 you know,
0:14:17 if the purpose
0:14:18 was to make
0:14:18 them trustworthy,
0:14:19 you would go
0:14:20 about it very
0:14:20 differently,
0:14:21 right?
0:14:21 I mean,
0:14:22 I share the
0:14:23 concern that
0:14:24 the Ivy League
0:14:25 and other
0:14:26 universities failed
0:14:27 to deal with
0:14:28 the explosion
0:14:28 of anti-Semitism
0:14:29 and frank
0:14:30 moral confusion
0:14:31 that happened
0:14:32 after October
0:14:32 7th,
0:14:34 but if that
0:14:34 was your
0:14:34 concern,
0:14:36 if your concern
0:14:36 was to deal
0:14:37 with the,
0:14:38 merely deal
0:14:39 with the
0:14:39 ideological
0:14:40 capture of
0:14:40 so many
0:14:40 of these
0:14:41 departments
0:14:41 and the
0:14:42 administrators
0:14:43 and talk
0:14:43 some sense
0:14:44 into them,
0:14:45 you wouldn’t
0:14:45 go about it
0:14:46 the way
0:14:46 the Trump
0:14:46 administration
0:14:47 is.
0:14:48 So,
0:14:49 we need
0:14:50 to restore
0:14:51 trust in
0:14:51 institutions.
0:14:53 We’re not
0:14:53 all going to
0:14:54 independently
0:14:55 do our own
0:14:55 research in
0:14:56 the face of
0:14:57 the next
0:14:59 great challenge
0:15:00 to our
0:15:00 society.
0:15:01 We need
0:15:02 to have
0:15:02 people we
0:15:03 can trust.
0:15:03 We need,
0:15:04 you know,
0:15:04 we need real
0:15:05 air traffic
0:15:06 controllers who
0:15:06 can keep the
0:15:06 planes in the
0:15:07 air,
0:15:07 right?
0:15:08 And so,
0:15:10 there’s been
0:15:10 a kind of
0:15:11 disavowal of
0:15:12 expertise,
0:15:13 especially in
0:15:14 independent media,
0:15:14 especially on
0:15:15 podcasts,
0:15:17 as though any,
0:15:17 you know,
0:15:18 comedian who’s
0:15:19 a quick study
0:15:20 and, you
0:15:20 know,
0:15:21 can use
0:15:22 chat GPT
0:15:23 can be an
0:15:23 expert on
0:15:25 the war in
0:15:25 Ukraine or
0:15:27 the Israeli-Palestinian
0:15:29 conflict or
0:15:30 epidemiology or
0:15:31 whatever it is.
0:15:33 And it’s a
0:15:33 free-for-all out
0:15:34 there.
0:15:34 And I just,
0:15:34 so we’re going
0:15:35 to have
0:15:35 to,
0:15:36 it may
0:15:37 require some
0:15:39 very clear
0:15:41 catastrophes born
0:15:42 of misinformation
0:15:43 to get our
0:15:44 heads screwed on
0:15:44 straight,
0:15:45 but, you know,
0:15:45 eventually we’re
0:15:46 going to bump
0:15:46 into some
0:15:47 hard objects
0:15:48 out there in
0:15:49 the real world
0:15:49 and we’re
0:15:50 going to want
0:15:50 to know what
0:15:51 real experts
0:15:51 think about
0:15:52 real problems
0:15:54 and we’re
0:15:54 going to stop
0:15:55 denying that
0:15:56 expertise is
0:15:56 really a thing.
0:15:57 And, again,
0:15:58 I’m not arguing
0:15:58 that mere
0:16:00 credentialism is the
0:16:00 way you find
0:16:01 experts.
0:16:01 it’s not,
0:16:02 you know,
0:16:03 we might go
0:16:03 into that if
0:16:04 you’re interested
0:16:05 because people
0:16:06 are confused
0:16:06 about this,
0:16:08 but the idea
0:16:09 that everyone’s
0:16:10 opinion is worth
0:16:12 hearing on every
0:16:13 topic is just
0:16:14 a colossal load
0:16:15 of bullshit
0:16:15 and everyone
0:16:16 knows this at
0:16:17 bottom and yet
0:16:19 the way we
0:16:19 interact with
0:16:20 information is
0:16:20 not reflecting
0:16:21 that.
0:16:22 I’m curious,
0:16:23 and I think you
0:16:24 share this opinion,
0:16:24 there’s been so
0:16:25 many things,
0:16:25 I don’t know if
0:16:26 you, that I
0:16:26 thought would
0:16:27 have been
0:16:28 disqualifying about
0:16:28 the Trump
0:16:29 administration just
0:16:29 in the last
0:16:30 hundred days that
0:16:30 the public would
0:16:31 have just,
0:16:32 you know,
0:16:33 that’s it,
0:16:33 they’re going to
0:16:34 regurgitate here,
0:16:34 there’s going to
0:16:35 be real pushback
0:16:36 and there hasn’t
0:16:36 been.
0:16:38 And I’ve come to
0:16:39 a very crude
0:16:39 conclusion,
0:16:40 and maybe I
0:16:41 shouldn’t conclude
0:16:41 it, or a thesis
0:16:42 I should say
0:16:43 that America
0:16:44 would rather have
0:16:45 an autocrat,
0:16:45 a kleptocrat,
0:16:46 than a weak
0:16:46 party.
0:16:48 And I saw a
0:16:48 survey yesterday
0:16:49 that said if
0:16:50 the election were
0:16:52 held, yesterday
0:16:52 even knowing what
0:16:53 we know so far
0:16:54 in the Trump
0:16:54 administration,
0:16:55 that he would
0:16:56 still win.
0:16:58 I’m curious what
0:16:59 underlying or what
0:16:59 shifts in the
0:17:00 ground,
0:17:03 you felt led to
0:17:04 his re-election
0:17:05 and what’s
0:17:06 happened since
0:17:07 then, and why
0:17:07 it just doesn’t
0:17:08 seem as if
0:17:09 there’s anything
0:17:10 that can actually
0:17:11 be disqualifying.
0:17:14 Well, on that last
0:17:15 point, I think I’m
0:17:16 as confused as
0:17:17 anyone.
0:17:17 I mean, again,
0:17:18 there are a thousand
0:17:19 things, any one of
0:17:20 which would have
0:17:23 totally wrecked the
0:17:24 presidency of any
0:17:25 other American
0:17:26 president.
0:17:27 I mean, this is
0:17:27 something that
0:17:29 President Obama
0:17:31 remarked on from
0:17:32 some stage recently,
0:17:34 where he just said,
0:17:34 you know, can you
0:17:35 imagine me doing
0:17:36 any of these things?
0:17:37 And then he went
0:17:38 through a short list
0:17:40 of things, again,
0:17:41 any one of which
0:17:42 would have been a
0:17:42 national scandal.
0:17:43 I mean, the news
0:17:44 cycle would have
0:17:45 never stopped
0:17:49 ruminating on just
0:17:50 how appalling that
0:17:51 thing was, whether
0:17:52 it’s launching a
0:17:53 meme coin, which is
0:17:55 a device calculated
0:17:56 to accept bribes
0:17:58 from crooks and
0:18:01 foreign agents, and
0:18:03 to very quickly reap
0:18:03 hundreds of millions
0:18:04 of dollars in
0:18:06 profits thereby,
0:18:08 grifting your
0:18:09 credulous cult.
0:18:10 That’s just one
0:18:10 thing.
0:18:13 I mean, it sounds
0:18:14 hyperbolic to say
0:18:15 a thousand, but
0:18:16 that’s conservative.
0:18:18 There’s well more
0:18:19 than a thousand
0:18:20 things Trump has
0:18:21 done in the last
0:18:22 ten years, said or
0:18:23 done, that would
0:18:24 be perfectly
0:18:25 disqualifying in
0:18:26 another candidate or
0:18:27 another president.
0:18:28 I mean, the meme
0:18:30 coin is such a
0:18:31 shocking act of
0:18:33 corruption.
0:18:34 It’s amazing we
0:18:35 don’t have very
0:18:37 clear laws against
0:18:37 it.
0:18:38 Apparently we don’t,
0:18:39 and we’re just
0:18:40 discovering that.
0:18:41 So the job of the
0:18:42 next president,
0:18:43 whoever that, or I
0:18:44 should say the next
0:18:46 sane and ethical
0:18:47 president, whenever
0:18:48 we get such a
0:18:50 person, may not be in
0:18:51 the next round,
0:18:53 obviously, that
0:18:53 person’s job is
0:18:55 going to, in my
0:18:56 view, is going to
0:18:57 be to do a
0:18:59 post-mortem on
0:19:00 this decade of
0:19:01 American history,
0:19:03 political history,
0:19:04 and try to figure
0:19:05 out how we never
0:19:07 become vulnerable
0:19:07 to this kind of
0:19:08 thing again.
0:19:09 I mean, clearly we
0:19:12 need a system that
0:19:13 is immune, as immune
0:19:15 as a system can be
0:19:16 to the private
0:19:17 derangement and
0:19:19 corruption of a
0:19:20 bad actor, right?
0:19:21 Because we’ve proven
0:19:22 ourselves as a
0:19:24 population, as a
0:19:25 citizenry, perfectly
0:19:27 capable of
0:19:29 electing a
0:19:30 patently
0:19:31 unqualified,
0:19:33 malicious, vindictive,
0:19:35 and morbidly
0:19:37 selfish person to
0:19:37 the highest office
0:19:38 in the land.
0:19:39 We did that.
0:19:41 I mean, we can
0:19:42 wonder why we did
0:19:43 that, but we’ve
0:19:44 proved to ourselves
0:19:45 and to the world
0:19:46 that we’re capable of
0:19:46 doing that twice,
0:19:47 right?
0:19:48 We’re capable of
0:19:49 electing a person who
0:19:50 we knew last time
0:19:50 around tried to
0:19:51 steal the election
0:19:53 and lied about it
0:19:54 having been stolen
0:19:57 from him and told
0:19:59 this lie again and
0:19:59 again as a
0:20:00 continuous provocation
0:20:01 to political
0:20:03 violence on the
0:20:04 part of his cult.
0:20:07 And all of this
0:20:09 is so weird and
0:20:11 so destructive of
0:20:13 the faith that so
0:20:14 many people have
0:20:15 had in the
0:20:15 stability of our
0:20:16 system of
0:20:17 governance that,
0:20:18 of governance,
0:20:20 that, yeah, I
0:20:20 think we have to
0:20:21 figure out what
0:20:23 laws we should have
0:20:25 had to backstop
0:20:26 some of the
0:20:27 norms we thought
0:20:27 were inviolate,
0:20:29 all of which
0:20:30 Trump and his
0:20:31 administration have
0:20:32 violated.
0:20:34 So, I mean, I’m
0:20:36 totally mystified as
0:20:37 to why people aren’t
0:20:39 as allergic to
0:20:39 these norm
0:20:41 violations as we
0:20:41 are.
0:20:41 I mean, there’s
0:20:43 just, it’s, again,
0:20:44 there’s, you could
0:20:45 name, I could easily
0:20:46 name dozens here
0:20:47 off the, you know,
0:20:50 off the cuff, but
0:20:52 it’s, I mean,
0:20:53 take just adjacent
0:20:53 to the meme
0:20:54 coin, the fact
0:20:55 that we now are
0:20:57 a country wherein
0:20:58 the president is
0:20:59 using our foreign
0:21:00 policy, our
0:21:02 tariff policy, to
0:21:03 privately,
0:21:05 personally enrich
0:21:06 himself.
0:21:07 You know, when we
0:21:08 slap a 46% tariff
0:21:10 on Vietnam, the
0:21:11 Vietnam’s response
0:21:13 to mitigate that
0:21:14 harm to their
0:21:15 economy is to
0:21:17 invite Elon to
0:21:18 give them internet
0:21:19 service through
0:21:20 Starlink, right?
0:21:21 So, that’s
0:21:22 clearly a conflict
0:21:23 of interest and
0:21:26 a moment of
0:21:27 self-dealing there
0:21:27 on the part of the
0:21:28 administration, but
0:21:29 then also to
0:21:30 greenlight a $1.5
0:21:31 billion resort
0:21:33 from the Trump
0:21:34 administration, right,
0:21:34 or from the
0:21:35 Trump family.
0:21:37 It’s just, in the
0:21:38 perfect world, people
0:21:39 would go to jail
0:21:40 for this, right?
0:21:42 And so, I just
0:21:43 don’t know how our
0:21:44 system is this
0:21:45 vulnerable.
0:21:46 It’s quite
0:21:46 shocking.
0:21:49 It’s pretty
0:21:49 obvious that the
0:21:50 system, at least in
0:21:51 the short term, does
0:21:52 not have the
0:21:53 resilience to
0:21:54 arrest this or
0:21:55 cauterize it.
0:21:57 And I think a lot
0:22:00 of Democrats are
0:22:02 disappointed there
0:22:02 hasn’t been a more
0:22:03 robust pushback.
0:22:05 If you were
0:22:05 advising the
0:22:07 Democratic Party on
0:22:08 how to be more
0:22:09 effectively or
0:22:10 robustly pushed
0:22:11 back on what’s
0:22:13 going on, assuming
0:22:14 the institutions
0:22:14 aren’t going to
0:22:15 solve the problem
0:22:16 right now, what
0:22:16 advice would you
0:22:16 give them?
0:22:19 Well, that’s very
0:22:20 hard.
0:22:21 It’s hard to see
0:22:22 what they can do.
0:22:23 I mean, Cory Booker
0:22:24 standing up for 25
0:22:25 hours and talking
0:22:27 doesn’t move the
0:22:28 needle, as far as I
0:22:28 can tell.
0:22:30 I mean, there may be
0:22:32 nothing to do short
0:22:33 of winning the
0:22:35 midterms decisively.
0:22:38 And for that, I just
0:22:38 think the Democrats
0:22:39 have to learn the
0:22:41 lesson, the obvious
0:22:43 lesson of the
0:22:44 presidential election
0:22:45 in 2024, which is
0:22:47 that the far-left
0:22:48 activist class of
0:22:50 the party has no
0:22:51 advice worth
0:22:53 listening to, right?
0:22:54 Their concerns are
0:22:55 bogus, their
0:22:57 convictions are
0:22:59 scarcely sane.
0:23:01 They have to be
0:23:02 ignored, right?
0:23:04 I mean, all, you
0:23:05 know, I view
0:23:07 Harris’s loss as
0:23:08 overdetermined, but
0:23:09 she clearly lost
0:23:12 based on her
0:23:12 efforts to
0:23:14 maintain something
0:23:15 like a, you
0:23:16 know, a game of
0:23:17 four-dimensional
0:23:19 chess with woke
0:23:21 identity politics,
0:23:21 right?
0:23:22 I mean, she was, at
0:23:22 a minimum, she was
0:23:24 unable to properly
0:23:27 disavow some of the
0:23:28 crazy things she had
0:23:29 said in 2019
0:23:30 and 2020, and
0:23:31 just whenever
0:23:32 put on the spot
0:23:34 was either
0:23:35 completely tongue-tied
0:23:36 and just stonewalling
0:23:37 or she just
0:23:39 produced something,
0:23:40 some sort of
0:23:41 woke word salad.
0:23:42 And it was
0:23:43 obvious that she
0:23:44 couldn’t be let
0:23:44 loose on Joe
0:23:45 Rogan’s podcast for
0:23:46 fear of what she
0:23:48 might say over the
0:23:49 course of three
0:23:49 hours.
0:23:52 That caution, that
0:23:53 sense that you can’t,
0:23:53 there are all these
0:23:54 third rails you can’t
0:23:56 touch, otherwise
0:23:59 the intersectional
0:24:00 maniacs will come
0:24:02 for you on X, that
0:24:03 spell has to be
0:24:04 totally broken, and
0:24:05 I’m hopeful that it
0:24:07 has been, but I’ve
0:24:08 yet to see real
0:24:09 evidence of it.
0:24:09 I mean, what we
0:24:10 need are charismatic
0:24:13 candidates who will
0:24:15 speak in, you know,
0:24:17 ad lib and at
0:24:18 length with a
0:24:19 perfectly carefree
0:24:21 attitude with respect
0:24:22 to the, you know,
0:24:23 all the various
0:24:24 shibboleths that
0:24:26 gave us wokeness over
0:24:27 the last, you know,
0:24:28 decade or so.
0:24:28 I mean, it’s just,
0:24:30 all of that has to
0:24:33 be just continuously
0:24:34 violated with
0:24:35 abandon.
0:24:36 And I’m not saying
0:24:36 that we suddenly
0:24:37 turn into bigots,
0:24:39 but there’s clearly a
0:24:42 line that protects
0:24:43 the, you know, any
0:24:44 sane political
0:24:46 commitment to social
0:24:47 justice, I mean, of
0:24:48 a sort that we, you
0:24:48 know, that could have
0:24:49 come out of the
0:24:50 mouth of someone
0:24:51 like Martin Luther
0:24:54 King Jr., which has
0:24:56 us speaking sanely
0:24:57 about things like
0:24:59 immigration and, you
0:25:00 know, youth, gender,
0:25:02 dysphoria, et cetera, in
0:25:03 ways that don’t, won’t
0:25:04 alienate half of
0:25:05 American society.
0:25:06 And we have to do
0:25:07 that immediately and we
0:25:08 have to find the stars
0:25:10 in the Democratic Party
0:25:11 who stand a chance of
0:25:13 getting elected to
0:25:14 Congress and to the
0:25:16 presidency in the next
0:25:16 elections.
0:25:18 Do you think it’s fair
0:25:19 to say that the
0:25:20 Democrats have their
0:25:20 hearts in the right
0:25:21 place, but they go too
0:25:24 far and then they kind
0:25:25 of invite an overreaction
0:25:26 and that’s sort of
0:25:27 playing out here?
0:25:28 Yeah.
0:25:29 So in that sense, I
0:25:32 find the left fairly
0:25:34 culpable for Trump and
0:25:35 Trumpism, right?
0:25:35 I just think it was
0:25:38 obvious what should have
0:25:40 been said about all of
0:25:40 these cultural war
0:25:43 issues that would have
0:25:44 been acceptable and
0:25:46 sane, even if it
0:25:48 departed from what
0:25:49 the far right wants,
0:25:50 it wouldn’t have, it
0:25:51 wouldn’t have been a
0:25:54 continuous SNL sketch
0:25:56 of identitarian moral
0:25:57 confusion, right?
0:25:59 And so given that the
0:26:01 party got that captured
0:26:03 by these, which was
0:26:04 effectively a new
0:26:06 religion of, at the
0:26:07 center of which was a
0:26:08 kind of moral panic,
0:26:10 and the idea that in
0:26:11 the aftermath of a
0:26:12 two-term black
0:26:14 presidency, not only had
0:26:16 we made no progress on
0:26:17 race issues in this
0:26:18 country, racism was
0:26:19 somehow at its most
0:26:22 excruciating high tide,
0:26:22 right?
0:26:24 Like, it’s just,
0:26:26 everything was wrong.
0:26:27 Systemic racism was
0:26:28 everywhere.
0:26:29 And, you know, I mean,
0:26:32 Joe Biden gave a speech,
0:26:33 I think it was to
0:26:34 Morehouse College, very
0:26:34 early in his
0:26:37 presidency, which was the
0:26:39 most delusional piece
0:26:43 of pandering to the far
0:26:44 left on this particular
0:26:44 issue.
0:26:45 I mean, he stood up in
0:26:47 front of these black
0:26:49 graduates and said, you
0:26:51 know, the deck is so
0:26:52 stacked against you, you’re
0:26:53 not only going to have to
0:26:53 be the best, you’re going
0:26:54 to have to be better than
0:26:56 the best to get your foot
0:26:58 in the door in this
0:26:58 society.
0:26:59 It’s so poisoned by
0:27:00 racism.
0:27:01 And he said this at a
0:27:03 time when everyone,
0:27:04 literally everyone,
0:27:05 knew that not only was
0:27:06 this not true, the
0:27:07 opposite was true.
0:27:08 If you’re at all
0:27:10 qualified, if you’re a
0:27:12 black graduate of a good
0:27:14 institution in the year,
0:27:15 you know, this I guess was
0:27:19 2021, the chance that you
0:27:20 were going to get into
0:27:21 medical school or get
0:27:21 into, get a job at
0:27:23 Netflix or get into, you
0:27:24 know, get a job at the
0:27:25 Ford Foundation or whatever,
0:27:26 the Bill and Melinda Gates
0:27:28 Foundation, anywhere, any
0:27:30 high status job, right, or
0:27:33 position in academia, was
0:27:35 not only not harmed by being
0:27:37 black, you were positively
0:27:38 advantaged by being
0:27:38 black.
0:27:39 Literally everyone knew
0:27:40 this.
0:27:41 They had known it for
0:27:42 years, and yet the
0:27:42 president of the United
0:27:44 States is telling the
0:27:45 graduating class of a
0:27:47 black college that they’re
0:27:49 under the boot of a racist
0:27:51 patriarchy.
0:27:52 Undoubtedly, he would
0:27:54 have added the variable of
0:27:56 gender as well if he’d been
0:27:57 given the chance.
0:27:58 I mean, it’s just, it was
0:28:00 pure delusion, and everyone
0:28:01 knew it.
0:28:04 And so I think that that
0:28:05 bell has to be unrung
0:28:07 somehow left of center.
0:28:08 I think it’s in the
0:28:09 process of being, I think
0:28:11 we’re, we no longer
0:28:12 believe this stuff.
0:28:15 And DEI is now, you
0:28:18 know, the acronym is
0:28:22 radioactive, I think for
0:28:23 good reason.
0:28:25 Again, none of this is to
0:28:27 repudiate a commitment to
0:28:29 civil rights, and none of
0:28:30 it’s to ignore that there
0:28:32 are still real racists in
0:28:34 our society and real threats
0:28:36 of racism, and probably
0:28:38 policies that, that, you
0:28:40 know, meet the test of
0:28:41 institutional racism that
0:28:43 still need to be found and
0:28:43 changed.
0:28:44 I mean, all of that’s true,
0:28:47 but this tip over into
0:28:48 reverse racism, which really
0:28:51 was what DEI became, was
0:28:53 totally dysfunctional and
0:28:55 unethical, and, and yeah,
0:28:57 I mean, it gave us, in large
0:28:58 measure, it gave us
0:28:58 Trumpism.
0:29:00 Do you distinguish between
0:29:01 DEI efforts on campuses
0:29:04 where, you know, 60 years
0:29:06 ago, Harvard, Princeton, Yale,
0:29:07 12 black people combined,
0:29:08 that’s a problem, but now
0:29:09 60% of Harvard’s freshman
0:29:11 class identifies as non-white
0:29:14 versus the corporate world
0:29:15 where we still have, I think
0:29:17 about 80 of the Fortune 500
0:29:20 CEOs or 16% are women, that
0:29:21 there still are a lot of
0:29:24 companies who their boards
0:29:25 and their CEOs and their
0:29:27 senior management just are
0:29:30 much different than their
0:29:32 broader employee base or
0:29:33 their customer base.
0:29:34 Do you make any distinction
0:29:36 between kind of DEI and how
0:29:37 far it’s gone or not gone
0:29:39 between academic institutions
0:29:40 and the private sector?
0:29:43 Well, I think it’s a complex
0:29:44 problem, and I think it
0:29:46 changes depending on the
0:29:49 context and the identity
0:29:51 you’re talking about, right?
0:29:52 So for like women in the
0:29:53 workplace, there’s the
0:29:54 obvious variable of, you
0:29:56 know, women deciding to
0:29:57 have families, getting
0:29:59 pregnant, and the asymmetry
0:30:00 there, what happens to them
0:30:01 versus what happens to men
0:30:04 who, you know, ride
0:30:05 shotgun with them and also
0:30:06 just get to have families.
0:30:07 That has obvious
0:30:09 consequences, and I think,
0:30:10 you know, that, you know,
0:30:13 the wage gap, what I
0:30:14 imagine is true is that if
0:30:16 you correct for the effect
0:30:18 of, you know, losing those
0:30:19 years of your life to
0:30:21 pregnancy and raising kids,
0:30:23 you know, that closes the
0:30:25 wage gap, and it also
0:30:26 probably accounts for the
0:30:27 some of the differing
0:30:28 ambitions between men and
0:30:30 women, and those are
0:30:31 differences that we might
0:30:32 not want to correct for in
0:30:33 the end.
0:30:34 We might want some other
0:30:35 way of correcting for it.
0:30:37 I mean, I think it’s hard to
0:30:38 know what is optimal there.
0:30:39 I don’t, you know, the idea
0:30:43 that every person is, it just
0:30:45 wants to be a CEO really at
0:30:47 bottom and wants to make the
0:30:49 sacrifices that entails.
0:30:50 I think that’s, you know,
0:30:52 probably not true, and it’s
0:30:53 probably good that it is very
0:30:54 good that it’s not true.
0:30:56 You know, I just think we had a
0:30:59 moment in the 60s where a
0:31:03 fairly heavy-handed approach to
0:31:04 righting the wrongs of the
0:31:06 past was warranted, right?
0:31:08 And so I think it was totally,
0:31:10 I think our approach to
0:31:11 affirmative action then was
0:31:13 totally justifiable, and then
0:31:16 we entered a period where it
0:31:18 did all the good it could do,
0:31:19 and it started doing some
0:31:19 obvious harms.
0:31:21 For me, the goal is quite
0:31:24 clear, and it is a goal that
0:31:25 people like Martin Luther King
0:31:27 Jr. explicitly articulated,
0:31:28 which is we want to get to a
0:31:30 colorblind society, which is
0:31:32 not to say that it’s a
0:31:33 society where no one notices,
0:31:35 you know, the superficial
0:31:36 characteristics between people,
0:31:38 but that those characteristics
0:31:39 don’t matter, right?
0:31:40 That there’s no political or
0:31:42 moral significance to the
0:31:43 color of a person’s skin.
0:31:44 We want to get to that
0:31:48 world, and we were and are, I
0:31:49 think, very close to getting to
0:31:49 that world.
0:31:52 Some of us live in that world
0:31:53 already.
0:31:55 I mean, you know, in high status
0:31:58 parts of culture, for much of the
0:32:00 time, that’s how you experience
0:32:03 life, and I’m sure it is in other
0:32:06 parts of culture, but insofar as we
0:32:07 haven’t perfectly gotten there, we
0:32:08 want to get there.
0:32:09 The problem with the far left is
0:32:11 that they explicitly have
0:32:13 disavowed that as the goal.
0:32:15 They don’t think colorblindness is
0:32:15 a rational goal.
0:32:18 What they want to do is play this
0:32:21 intersectional game of, you know,
0:32:23 power politics across identity
0:32:27 groups, wherein, you know, white
0:32:31 males have the least rank, and so
0:32:33 you just flip the hierarchy on its
0:32:36 head, and they want to prosecute
0:32:37 this war of all against all until
0:32:38 the end of time, right?
0:32:40 And again, this goal and the
0:32:42 disavowal of colorblindness has
0:32:43 been explicit.
0:32:46 They think there’s no getting over
0:32:47 race.
0:32:49 Race is just super important and
0:32:53 super indelible, and therefore,
0:32:54 we’ve been living in a society,
0:32:57 again, I think the vapors of this
0:33:00 lunacy are getting expunged, but
0:33:03 rolling back the clock prior to the
0:33:05 2024 election, we were living in a
0:33:10 world where left of center, people
0:33:13 cared about race as much as—the only
0:33:15 people right of center who cared about
0:33:18 race as much as the left wing of the
0:33:21 Democratic Party are white supremacists
0:33:23 and neo-Nazis and actual racists.
0:33:25 I mean, that was what was so perverse
0:33:25 about this.
0:33:29 There were documents issued by, you know,
0:33:32 like the Democratic Party itself and
0:33:34 certainly every activist group
0:33:36 supporting it, which if you had done a
0:33:38 search for place for white and black in
0:33:39 those documents, they would have read
0:33:42 like Ku Klux Klan pamphlets from the
0:33:44 early 20th century, right?
0:33:47 It’s just—it was completely bonkers, and
0:33:50 how we lived so long under that mania is,
0:33:52 again, is another one of these inscrutable
0:33:52 things.
0:33:54 I mean, we can now say the same thing
0:33:55 about Trumpistan.
0:33:58 I mean, how is it that all of this is
0:34:01 passing among otherwise sane people?
0:34:04 It’s a mystery, but it’s, you know, the
0:34:07 left is largely culpable for this pendulum
0:34:12 swing into populist, no-nothingism, and,
0:34:16 you know, the way immigration got
0:34:16 weaponized.
0:34:19 I mean, yes, there were both sides
0:34:21 accounted for how we got here.
0:34:25 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:37:55 So you live in L.A.
0:37:59 I went to college in L.A., UCLA, and in 1997, they did
0:38:01 away with race-based affirmative action, and they
0:38:05 moved to kind of an adversity score, which is
0:38:07 essentially, the way I can best describe it, would be
0:38:10 affirmative action based on income as opposed to race
0:38:11 or sexual orientation.
0:38:15 Do you think that’s a good model, or are you part of the
0:38:18 kind of merit-only philosophy?
0:38:23 No, I think, I mean, I’m very worried, as I know you
0:38:28 are, about wealth inequality and income inequality, I think
0:38:30 wealth inequality more so.
0:38:35 And I think correcting for that is an intrinsic good.
0:38:42 I think that this is a real disparity in luck that, you
0:38:45 know, people suffer everywhere, you know, within our society
0:38:51 and across societies, and insofar as we can cancel it, I
0:38:53 mean, you know, I don’t think, I think we should be
0:38:55 tolerant of a certain amount of inequality, because I think
0:38:59 that is, it is part of the flywheel of capitalism that some
0:39:02 people can get up earlier in the morning and strive harder and,
0:39:06 you know, miss dinners with their kids and earn, you know,
0:39:10 more money as a result because they just had that
0:39:12 entrepreneurial ambition.
0:39:14 I think we want to preserve that.
0:39:17 I think we want all the incentives that, you know, if there’s a
0:39:20 better incentive structure than capitalism, we haven’t found it
0:39:26 yet for producing wealth and creativity, again, that we all
0:39:28 benefit from, even the lazy benefit from it.
0:39:35 But, no, there are people who were born to immense advantages that
0:39:39 others don’t have, and we should try to figure out how to correct
0:39:43 for that. And one of the disadvantages historically in the United
0:39:47 States, certainly, has been the, you know, the ambient level of
0:39:54 racist bigotry and an exclusion from economic opportunity on that
0:39:57 basis, right? So, yes, I mean, I think it’s still true to say that
0:40:06 black families have, on average, one-eighth the level of stored wealth
0:40:12 as white families. And one must imagine that the legacy of racism has a lot
0:40:17 to do with it. The crucial thing to realize, however, is that the thing
0:40:25 that is stopping any person from getting ahead now is very unlikely to be
0:40:31 racism now, right? So that’s the thing that was so misguided about so much
0:40:36 of DEI thinking, right? It’s like, you know, if you wave a magic wand and get
0:40:43 rid of all the racists, you’re still not going to suddenly have more, you know,
0:40:47 Fortune 500 people, you know, more members of the black community who are
0:40:54 qualified to be Fortune 500 CEOs or cardiologists or etc. So there are economic
0:41:01 disparities, which are riding on top of educational disparities and disparities in
0:41:07 health outcomes and, you know, single-parent families at a much higher rate, etc. But if
0:41:16 you use class as your proxy for all of your other concerns about disparities of
0:41:21 outcome, again, educational, health, etc., I think you do a lot of good and you also
0:41:28 disproportionately help people of color because as a, you know, class, their
0:41:33 identity, the various identity groups are highly correlated with disparities in class
0:41:34 difference.
0:41:43 Yeah. So we’re both dads. You know, we think a lot about, write a lot about and speak a
0:41:50 lot about the struggles of young men right now. They’re just as well and as much
0:41:55 advantage as men have registered over the last, you know, several hundred, couple thousand
0:42:01 years. The last 20, 30 years, it would be hard to point to a group that’s done worse in America
0:42:08 than young men. I’m curious as a dad and as someone who’s a keen observer of culture and
0:42:15 society, what do you think has led to this? And any thoughts as a dad or just someone as an
0:42:23 observer on how what we can do or what society, assuming you agree it’s a problem, can do to
0:42:29 help sort of right the ship around young men, you know, again, starting to participate or
0:42:32 be more productive members of society?
0:42:40 Well, I must say as a father of two girls, one in her teens and one soon to be, it’s very
0:42:45 easy for me to be taken in by the view of young men as just rapacious hoodlums who need to be
0:42:52 viewed as a problem. But I can dimly remember that I was once a young man and I know this problem
0:43:00 from the other side, obviously. No, I mean, I think you have been a great voice of reason on this topic
0:43:09 and a counterpoint to many of the examples that are getting, that are serving as sort of pathological
0:43:15 attractors to young men in our society. People like Andrew Tate, right? Like you, you know, you’re like
0:43:21 the anti-Andrew Tate and, you know, that’s a good thing. I mean, we need, we need more people like
0:43:30 you who are modeling masculinity in a way that is ethical and, um, and just, just kind of conversant
0:43:35 in the, in the skillset you want young men to be conversant in, right? I mean, it’s, it’s really,
0:43:42 it’s amazing if you kind of hold your body of work up against, you know, the, the Andrew
0:43:49 tateification of, uh, similar topics. It’s, um, you know, you’re, you’re checking similar
0:43:54 boxes, right? I mean, it’s like, it’s all, you know, economic independence is, you know,
0:44:00 is one variable, but you, when you look at the diabolical version of it, it is all about just
0:44:09 the, the most, um, obscene materialism, right? Without any, any deeper aspiration, right? Without
0:44:15 any ethical engagement with the problems of, of this world, it’s just, if you can get a Bugatti,
0:44:21 you know, or rent one in Dubai, you know, and pretend, and, and, and pretend to your, you know,
0:44:27 fans that you, that this is your lifestyle, you’ve basically accomplished everything you need in life,
0:44:32 right? I mean, that’s, and, and so that, that is something that we need to, to offer a counterpoint
0:44:36 to. And, um, I think you’re doing that. I think you’re doing a great job of it.
0:44:38 I think you’re being generous.
0:44:44 No, I mean, honestly not. I mean, it’s just, you’re, I think you do a fantastic job of, uh,
0:44:51 putting the lie to the notion that, that money can’t buy you happiness in any sense, right? I mean,
0:44:56 we, we know that’s not true. We know that being poor or being subjected, not even poor, but just
0:45:03 having financial stress be a major component of your life. We know that’s corrosive to a feeling
0:45:08 of, of wellbeing. And we know it’s corrosive to marriages and relationships. And, uh, and so you,
0:45:17 you know, you have taken the taboo off of talking about wealth in an aspirational way. Uh, and you
0:45:22 found a way of doing it. That’s not icky. That’s not, that doesn’t disregard the problem of wealth
0:45:27 and equality and the ethical burden of, you know, being generous and, and creating a, a social safety
0:45:33 net and paying taxes and, you know, everything in that bucket that, that is the antithesis of what
0:45:39 the, the president of the United States, uh, or his various acolytes like Elon Musk message about. I mean,
0:45:44 it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s counter-programming that that’s absolutely necessary. And, and so, you know,
0:45:51 I view you as a great, um, messenger of, of what it’s like to be a good citizen and a good man and just,
0:45:57 just a mensch. I mean, the word we have, the, the, the only good word we have for it is, is, is, uh,
0:46:00 Yiddish, you know, it’s a, you know, you’re a mensch. So keep it up.
0:46:07 Well, let me, let me just say, I’m really enjoying this podcast so far, Sam. Um, so like men, young men
0:46:11 are going to look up to just naturally the president of the United States and the world’s wealthiest man.
0:46:16 And I don’t think Donald Trump, I’m not sure Donald Trump was ever what you would call an
0:46:23 aspirational man or a good person, but my senses, and you’ve written about this, Elon Musk, you were
0:46:30 friends with and had a lot of admiration for, and I think you had a similar type of relationship with
0:46:36 Joe Rogan. And then, and, and I see one of the things I love about America is I do think there’s
0:46:44 a zeitgeist guideposts, a natural gravity towards once you experience success, it becomes correlated
0:46:49 with trying to be kinder or start to think bigger picture about leaving your mark on society in a
0:46:55 positive way. Even the robber barons at some point flipped the script and said, what can I build here
0:47:04 with my wealth that would serve society well? And it seems as if those rivers have reversed and that
0:47:10 some of our most powerful people, as they get more powerful or a broader platform, don’t evolve, but
0:47:17 digress. Do you have any sense for why that is happening now across some of our most powerful and
0:47:25 influential men? Yeah. Well, I think just a few people can do a lot of harm to the culture. I mean,
0:47:33 you have any, in the person of Elon, just this unique example of somebody who, um, has so many obvious,
0:47:40 genuine gifts. I mean, you know, above all as an entrepreneur, I mean, he, he’s clearly, uh, has a
0:47:45 vision and can sell that vision to, to lots of talented people and to, you know, tens of thousands of
0:47:52 talented people who want, who will, you know, you know, stumble over themselves to get a chance to
0:47:59 work for him. And, um, they can do some amazing things, right? So he’s, so he’s aspirational and a
0:48:06 great model of, of success in that regard. But, you know, he’s had this kind of personal unraveling,
0:48:13 which I’m at pains to explain apart from just the influence that Twitter and now X has had on his brain,
0:48:19 uh, and the influence of, you know, fame, I guess, um, a certain kind of fame that, to which he’s
0:48:26 clearly addicted, um, that has just encouraged him to become this very different sort of person.
0:48:29 And whether he was always this sort of person, just kind of waiting to get out and I didn’t see it,
0:48:35 I don’t know. I mean, I, so I’m, I’m forced to believe I, one of two things, either he’s changed a
0:48:40 lot, having become the richest and one of the most famous people on earth, uh, or I just didn’t know
0:48:45 him in the first place. Right. So let me just press pause. You’re, you’re a neuroscientist. Do you
0:48:50 think ketamine could have anything to do with it? Yeah. I mean, I, so I’ve, I just heard, I’ve heard
0:48:55 the reports that you’ve heard. I mean, this was reported in the wall street journal. Um, if I wanted
0:49:01 to dig in his circle, like I’m sure I could find, you know, uh, firsthand reports of how much of that’s
0:49:07 true, but, um, yeah, if he is using ketamine as, as frequently as was reported, that certainly can’t
0:49:16 help. Right. I mean, he’s, he’s, um, but he’s just, uh, honestly, his engagement with, with X,
0:49:25 um, was so dysfunctional for so long, even before he bought it. Um, and, and, um, it became his, you
0:49:31 know, seemingly full-time preoccupation. It’s just this, it did something. I mean, you know, everyone
0:49:38 who, who’s ever, it was ever addicted to it, or, you know, it’s just too, uh, fixated on it has a,
0:49:41 you know, a homeopathic dose of this. I mean, they know it, like I, you know, I got off of Twitter
0:49:49 now, um, two and a half years ago because of how demonstrably harmful it was, it was proving in my
0:49:54 life. And I was never somebody who was addicted to it. I was just somebody who was using it as an author
0:49:59 and as a, you know, as a speaker and a podcaster, I just thought it was a necessary marketing channel.
0:50:04 And it was also just very tempting to talk to other prominent people and, and, uh, you know,
0:50:10 try to clean, clean up misinformation and react to things. And so I was using it in a normal way.
0:50:16 I mean, and I do not consider Elon’s use of it at all normal, but it was still probably the worst
0:50:22 thing I did to my life in the last 10 years. Right. And, and, you know, the, and getting off
0:50:27 of it was, I’m always embarrassed to admit the best thing, the best life hack I have found in the last
0:50:32 decade. I mean, it was completely transformational of my life to get off Twitter. And that’s just a sign
0:50:38 of how, uh, debasing it was for me to use it the way I was using it. Um, and again, I was, I was not a
0:50:44 super tweeter. I was maybe, you know, on average once a day or so a couple of times a day, but I would go
0:50:50 for days without doing it, but it was still punctuating my life in a way, uh, and amplifying a certain
0:50:56 kind of signal in a way that was, was proving quite harmful, um, and quite disorienting. And I think it
0:51:00 was just giving, it was turning me into a bit of a misanthrope. I mean, it was, I was seeing the worst
0:51:05 in people, you know, pretty much all the time. I mean, just whenever I looked at my phone, I was just seeing
0:51:14 some awful piece of, um, you know, dishonesty or malice broadcast to me by people who I, who I
0:51:19 knew in their, in normal, you know, certainly most of them in their, in their private and even public
0:51:26 lives were not this sort of person. But in this context, it was, it was amplifying for the worst in
0:51:34 people. And so, you know, Elon has just performed a kind of human sacrifice of himself on the altar of
0:51:41 that, of, um, that set of incentives. And he’s acts like a, you know, whether he is a psychopath or not,
0:51:46 he acts like one, right? And I, and I’m not, I’m not actually exaggerating. He acts like a psychopath
0:51:54 on X. He’s completely callous as to the harms he caused and all the while knowing the harms he causes,
0:52:01 both in the lives of private citizens who get doxed and get, you know, swarmed by his cult,
0:52:07 uh, and just the harm he causes in the world. I mean, just the, his adventures in doge when he,
0:52:13 you know, fed on his account, fed USAID into the wood chipper and stopped, you know, life-saving
0:52:18 programs in sub-Saharan Africa, which people immediately recognized would, would lead to death,
0:52:25 you know, in very short order. And if not corrected for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths
0:52:31 within a year, right, he, he, the attitude he took to all of that was one of just, you know,
0:52:38 probably, you know, fentanyl addled ecstasy, right? I mean, he was just, he just reveled in the chaos he
0:52:43 was causing. And so it was with his, you know, Hitler salutes, which, you know, may have not been
0:52:48 Hitler salutes. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s just a moron, uh, who has just
0:52:53 bad, you know, awkward body English, uh, who knows what he was up to there with his, my heart goes
0:53:00 out to you. And now I look like Adolf Hitler, uh, you know, twice, uh, in a row, but whatever his
0:53:07 intentions, when he saw the blowback, when he saw how much, when he saw that every anti-Semite on planet
0:53:15 earth was celebrating, right? He could have very easily have signaled to his 210 million, whatever, whatever
0:53:20 it was at that point. Followers, listen, this is, I see how, I see what that looked like. You know,
0:53:25 sorry, that’s embarrassing. Obviously I despise anti-Semitism. And if you’re an anti-Semite,
0:53:31 please unfollow me, right? Like that would have been the sane, ethical, manly thing to do, right? But
0:53:38 instead he just made Nazi jokes and trolled the world, right? Uh, all the while, uh, signal boosting
0:53:43 the accounts of real anti-Semites and bringing real anti-Semites back onto the, onto Twitter with great
0:53:48 fanfare and people like Nick Fuentes, uh, and also funding the far right party in Germany to,
0:53:54 to boot, right? I mean, it’s just he, so his contributions to the greatest eruption of anti-Semitism
0:54:02 in our lifetime have been at best ambiguous. And, uh, yeah, he’s, it’s just totally irresponsible.
0:54:10 So the fact that, that he is the cultural influence he has been, um, has been directly harmful to a
0:54:13 generation of young men who have worshiped him. I mean, I think the greatest thing to,
0:54:20 to ding his reputation, and it really should have been a fatal blow was the gaming, uh,
0:54:25 controversy where he, where it was revealed. He was pretending to be one of the best gamers
0:54:31 on earth. I don’t know if you saw this, Scott, but, um, you know, a bunch of gamers saw him play
0:54:36 one of these games in public and it was totally clear. I’m not a gamer, so I can’t get into the
0:54:42 details here, but apparently it was, it was clear to a, to a moral certainty that, uh, he did not have
0:54:47 the skills he was pretending to have. He had paid someone to build out his character, someone very
0:54:53 likely, you know, in China to play 24 hours a day and, uh, build out his character to superhuman levels,
0:54:58 uh, so that he could inherit all those powers and then display them ineptly in front of the gamers who
0:55:02 actually knew how to play the game. But he had gone on Joe Rogan’s podcast and Lex Friedman’s
0:55:08 podcast and lied to their face about being a top 10. And in some cases, uh, you know, the best gamer
0:55:15 in the world, uh, on certain games and what, when they lavished praise on him, you know, just talking
0:55:20 about what you just, that, that suggested that he has, you know, a kind of a neurological, uh, you know,
0:55:26 a six sigma level, you know, neurological health that, that, uh, you know, would predispose him to those
0:55:30 abilities. Uh, he totally owned it. It’s like, yeah, you know, it’s gaming as a great surrogate
0:55:35 for all kinds of talents. And yeah, it’s really, and it’s, he was lying about all that. Right. So
0:55:40 that if anything was going to destroy his reputation with a young man, I thought that was going to be
0:55:45 it. And I think it probably did in, in gaming circles. We’ll be right back.
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0:58:16 Hey there, this is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels. And this week I’m talking to Scott Frank,
0:58:20 the writer and director who moved from movies to Netflix, which is where you can see Department
0:58:26 Q, his newest hit. And we talked about how no one knows what the future of Hollywood is going to be
0:58:30 like, except that it won’t be like the past. This business hasn’t landed where it’s going to land
0:58:35 yet. And people keep looking backwards and saying, no, we just need to get movie going back to where
0:58:40 it was. That boat sailed. That’s not going to happen anymore. That’s this week on Channels,
0:58:42 wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
0:58:51 We’re back with more from Sam Harris.
0:58:59 I have to credit you. You’re the first time we had dinner, you gave me permission to get off of
0:59:06 Twitter. I said, I, I, I acknowledge that probably 20 or 30% of my mental health episodes over the last
0:59:10 few years had been triggered by something on Twitter. And you said, why are you there? I’m like, well,
0:59:14 got a big following, half a million people. And I think, how many did you walk away from?
0:59:19 Uh, I think I had 1.5 million when I pulled the cord.
0:59:25 And I, I, I got off and it’s exactly what you said. It’s been one of the most accretive things
0:59:29 to my mental health that I’ve done in the last 10 years. And what you realize the thing I’ve,
0:59:33 I’m curious if you feel this way, once you’re off it, you’re off at three or four months,
0:59:41 you recognize just how small it is. That it really is a, it is a small part of the world that is
0:59:48 occupying way too much of your world. I have no difference in my life. None, except I’m not,
0:59:58 I don’t venture into this strange moon of, of Mars that’s hostile and, and biased and weird and angry.
1:00:04 And it’s like, why was I, why was I vacationing there? You know, seven times a day, you know,
1:00:09 I’m, I’ve talked a lot about this a lot on the pod. And when I was younger, I didn’t have enough
1:00:12 anxiety. I wasn’t worried about anything. I almost failed out of UCLA several times. I didn’t really
1:00:17 care. Almost got fired a lot. Didn’t really care. Sleepwalking through life, kind of 30 to 40,
1:00:22 the right amount of anxiety, enough anxiety to be productive, worry about the right things.
1:00:26 Now I have too much anxiety. I worry about everything. Anything happens with my kids,
1:00:32 I worry. And lately I’ve had a really difficult time disassociating from things I can control and I
1:00:36 can’t control specifically some of the things that are happening around the Trump administration.
1:00:42 I mean, it’s like, this shit really rattles me. Like it’s taking time for my presence
1:00:47 and ability to just stay focused on the really important things in my life, such as when I’m
1:00:52 with my kids or with my partner. I’m curious if you struggle with some of those same things,
1:00:57 your inability to disassociate from these, some of these things that are going on. And if you are
1:01:01 able to do with it, what are the vehicles and practices for helping you do that?
1:01:07 Yeah. Well, as you know, or I think, you know, meditation has been a very big focus of mine.
1:01:14 And I mean, for me, that really is the, it’s a kind of superpower because it, I mean, at a certain
1:01:20 point you recognize that your mind is all you have really. I mean, obviously you, you have a body,
1:01:26 you have circumstances in the world. I mean, things matter, but your, your reaction to what happens
1:01:33 is so much more important in, in, in almost every case than what, than what happens.
1:01:41 There’s so much, so much room for being on the negative side, being needlessly, pointlessly
1:01:47 unhappy, right? I mean, worrying when worry does absolutely no good. And you, you just suffer twice,
1:01:52 right? If the bad thing happens and you were worrying the whole time before it happened, well,
1:01:56 then you got to, you got to suffer all the way up to the bad thing happening. If it didn’t happen,
1:02:05 your, your worry was, it was truly a hallucination, but in no case does, I mean, for me, negative mental
1:02:12 states like anxiety are useful in a very punctate way in that they give you information about the world
1:02:15 or your, your place in the world or some, you know, something that needs to be responded to.
1:02:23 But then for virtually every moment thereafter that state, whether it’s anxiety or anger or
1:02:29 impatience or, or, you know, just pick your, your flavor, that state is almost always counterproductive,
1:02:34 right? Which is to say you, you, you want to be in a different state when you’re, you’re actually
1:02:38 solving the problem at hand, or you’re just waiting to see what happens, right? I mean, there, there are
1:02:42 many problems, as you point out, that we’re powerless to solve and we’re just kind of witnessing
1:02:48 this kind of slow, slow rolling emergency. The question is, how unhappy do you have to be
1:02:54 living under that condition of uncertainty? And the answer you find when you learn to meditate is
1:03:04 not unhappy at all, really. And so, so my life is a very strange bifurcation between having kind of a
1:03:11 very high level of personal wellbeing, you know, certainly most of the time, and also being very
1:03:16 concerned about the state of our world, right? I mean, so I, I spend most of my time professionally
1:03:22 and even just, you know, personally, privately focusing on the bad things that are happening
1:03:26 and the bad things that may yet happen, the bad things I’m, I, I think it’s rational to worry
1:03:35 will happen or very likely will happen. And yet my life is so good. I’m so, it’s so good in,
1:03:42 in, in, in superficial, you know, contingent ways that could change as much of that is born of my
1:03:49 ability to notice what I’m doing with my attention and to cease to do the dumb thing that is causing
1:03:52 me to be miserable in, in this moment, right?
1:03:54 And you get that perspective from meditation?
1:03:59 Yeah. I mean, so, you know, mindfulness for lack of a better word, I mean, that’s, that does
1:04:05 cover basically what I mean, but it’s something I get into in, in much greater detail in over at
1:04:11 waking up, which is the meditation app that, um, I have and in my book by that same title,
1:04:18 but briefly, it’s just, I mean, if you’re, if you’re suffering, you’re almost certainly thinking
1:04:25 without noticing your thinking, without noticing the power of thought to determine how you feel and
1:04:32 react in each moment to, to just your sensory and raw sensory existence, right? I mean, you’re just,
1:04:36 you’re just, in each moment, you’re just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
1:04:43 uh, and thinking and the, and, and therefore feeling various moods and emotions and the role
1:04:48 that thought plays there, the role that our, our captivity to thought, our, our unawareness of, of
1:04:53 any alternative to being identified with each thought that passes through consciousness,
1:04:58 that role is decisive. I mean, it’s every bit as decisive as, you know, when you’re asleep and
1:05:03 dreaming and you don’t know you’re dreaming, right? You, you’re safely in your bed and in reality,
1:05:06 you’re safely in your bed, but you, now you’re having some horrible dream.
1:05:12 That, you know, plunges you into shame, right? Or, or, uh, fear or some other negative mental state
1:05:19 that the, the, the neurology of that, right? The, the, the failure of reality testing, the fact that
1:05:26 your, your, your conscious life can be completely subsumed by self-generated imagery. That is a, a,
1:05:32 a, a version of that is happening to us in the waking state. And we call it thought, you know,
1:05:36 we call it ourselves, really. We call it me. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s just me here.
1:05:41 I’m thinking, I’m, I’m the thinker, right? I’m, these thoughts are in my voice, right? That’s the,
1:05:47 that sense of being identified with, with thought is something that is, is a spell that gets broken
1:05:54 ultimately when you actually learn how to meditate. And it does give you this, this degree of freedom
1:06:00 that people otherwise don’t have, which is to just, just get off the ride, right? You’re, you’re feeling
1:06:04 miserable because you’re thinking about the thing that happened yesterday or the thing that might happen
1:06:12 tomorrow. You can actually get off that ride. Uh, even if, and you can get off of it, even if it’s,
1:06:19 if it’s a real problem, right? It’s like, you know, your kid has some scary illness and you’re going
1:06:24 from doctor to doctor and you don’t know what, what’s what, and you have real reason to be worried,
1:06:28 right? I’ve been in that situation. You know, it’s, of course you’re going to be unhappy,
1:06:35 but the question is how unhappy do you have to be? How contracted do you have to be? How ruled do
1:06:41 you have to be by your thoughts from this moment to the net, until that you get the net, the appointment
1:06:48 next Tuesday or to, until you get the results of the scan, you know, you got a scan on Friday and,
1:06:51 you know, perversely, we have a medical system that doesn’t work on weekends, right? So you,
1:06:58 you have to wait until Monday for the results of an MRI. Um, if you’re lucky, uh, how,
1:07:06 how riddled by anxiety do you have to be? Meditation gives you a freedom to just actually,
1:07:13 just enjoy the beauty of your life in the meantime. Uh, because you’re going to, you’re going to be there
1:07:18 to deal with it when you actually have to deal with it. I mean, Monday will come around and then
1:07:24 you’ll be the guy who has to absorb whatever information you get. And the question is, do you
1:07:30 want to, to do that well and to be a good father in that context? Do you want to be the guy who was
1:07:34 just racked by anxiety all weekend? Or do you want to be the guy who actually had a good time with his
1:07:40 kids on the weekend? And then you get the information on Monday, right? It’s like, we’re all going to die,
1:07:44 you know, where this is all going, right? All right. We’re going to die. Our kids are hopefully
1:07:49 are going to live long enough to be old enough to be, you know, the ripe old age that, that it’s
1:07:54 appropriate to die, but impermanence reigns, right? So the question is, how can we be happy
1:08:01 under conditions where the punchline is that everything changes, right? And that you, that
1:08:07 everything that is gathered gets ultimately dispersed, right? That’s, that’s what’s, that’s the
1:08:14 situation we’re in. The people who, who first figured out how to meditate, figured out that you,
1:08:20 that how you use attention really matters and really can spell the difference between happiness
1:08:27 and suffering in each moment. As you’ve gotten older, the things that give you joy and peace,
1:08:34 have they changed, become certain things more or less? I think I’m a slightly odd case because I got
1:08:42 very into meditation and, and, uh, uh, became very cognizant of the, the finiteness of life
1:08:50 very early, right? So I was a, you know, I was probably 18. Um, and I was, I, I became kind of
1:08:55 obsessed with my own mortality earlier than that. My best friend died when I was 13. My dad died when I
1:09:05 was 17. Uh, so, so loss was, was something that I, um, uh, I understood, uh, fairly early and the,
1:09:10 sort of the philosophical and psychological implications of that became interesting to me
1:09:19 very early. So I was always, um, a student of, of life-changing philosophy. I mean, not just,
1:09:23 you know, purely academic questions of interest, but just sort of like, what does it mean to live a good
1:09:29 life? We’re like, what, what, what, in a context where we know, uh, we’re ultimately going to lose
1:09:35 everything. Uh, and so I was thinking about that very early. So I, I can’t say that that has changed.
1:09:43 I, I just, in some ways I’m learning, relearning the lessons I learned when I was 18 and 19 and 20.
1:09:52 Um, and they’re, they’re, they’re landing, uh, harder and, and perhaps, uh, uh, slightly differently
1:09:57 now, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a continuation of where my head has been at for, for many decades,
1:10:02 I have to say. Would you describe the loss of your father as sort of a defining or the defining
1:10:07 moment in your life? Like, has there been one moment that sort of changed or your orientation or
1:10:14 approach to life or given you, you know, set you on a different path? Well, I, it was less so in
1:10:19 this case. I mean, we were, we were close, but it was a long distance relationship. He had left when I
1:10:26 was, um, two and a half and, uh, So you were raised by a single mother or did she remarry? Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:31 I mean, she, she eventually got remarried when I was 15, but yeah, no, for all intents and purposes,
1:10:36 I was, I was raised by a single mom and she was quite a, quite the hero. I was raised by a single
1:10:42 mother too. And I didn’t know that about you. Can you talk a little bit about, uh, I def, I think
1:10:47 almost everything, I see almost everything, the way I respond to the lens of being raised by a single
1:10:53 mother. Can you talk a little bit about how that impact that’s on had on you as an adult and your
1:11:00 approach to partnership and being a dad? Yeah. Well, so again, this is a, a case that is going to be
1:11:08 somewhat, um, atypical because my mom was just, um, uh, both very, very talented and, and very lucky.
1:11:14 Right. So she’s, she, uh, really did not have resources. My dad left, I think he, um, on her
1:11:20 account, he, I think cut one child support check of $500 or something like that. But I mean, he really
1:11:26 did not discharge his responsibilities as a dad very well. And he was a struggling actor, so he didn’t,
1:11:30 he didn’t have money either, but, uh, he had been, he was painting houses at that time to make
1:11:37 money. Um, but he abandoned me and my mom, you know, to go be an actor in, in New York. He couldn’t
1:11:43 figure out how to do that in LA for some reason. Um, so that, that attests to some other lack of
1:11:51 commitment to, um, being a parent. But, um, my mom, uh, discovered one day that she could write,
1:11:56 uh, television shows and she discovered this very quickly. I mean, she just, she, I think she
1:12:01 actually sold her first script. She was just watching television one day trying to figure out
1:12:06 how she was going to make money. Again, we really had nothing. And she, uh, I think she said, I forget
1:12:12 the, it was maybe $2,500 or something. She, but she sold, sold the first thing she wrote and then
1:12:20 just became a, a colossus within the television industry. And she, um, eventually, I mean, her big
1:12:27 hit was golden girls. She created golden girls. And so we went from being, uh, poor to being wealthy
1:12:32 over the course of, um, probably, it was probably a little more than a decade. I mean, I think I was,
1:12:39 Oh my God, Susan Harris. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I literally just thought I’ve kept, I keep saying,
1:12:44 I thought I’ve seen the name Susan Harris on the, in the credits of all these series in the seventies
1:12:52 That was my mom is awesome. Um, but so, but it was a very weird time. And so there’s a funny story
1:12:59 that she likes to tell, uh, which, um, maybe says more about me than, than, uh, I would like, but
1:13:04 she, um, I mean, she was working really hard again. She was a single mom. So I, I grew up with a lot,
1:13:07 with a long string of babysitters and, you know, when I would come home from school, there would be a
1:13:13 babysitter. My mom would be, you know, writing at the office. And at one point she came to me and she said,
1:13:20 uh, we were living in a little rented house in the San Fernando Valley. And, uh, um, but I was going
1:13:27 to a private school that she had stretched to get me into. And, uh, so I was surrounded by kids who
1:13:33 had much more money than we did. And she said to me, uh, I don’t remember this, but I’m sure this is true
1:13:41 because this is, was indelibly, uh, etched upon her memory. She said, um, you know, um, if I have an
1:13:47 opportunity here, if I work much harder than I’m working now, our situation is going to change.
1:13:52 And either you’ll, you’ll be able to, one day we’ll be able to, you’ll be able to have a pool in the
1:13:58 backyard, like your friend, Tom Brown, uh, who has, he had a great house with a great pool.
1:14:03 And, um, but you’re going to have much, you have less of me, you know, you’re going to spend more
1:14:10 time with, with babysitters and, um, you know, so it’s, there’s going to be a sacrifice. And apparently
1:14:14 I thought for a few seconds and I turned to her and I said, get the pool, mom.
1:14:22 I want the pool. I’m not exaggerating, Sam. I’m freaking out. You’re you. Yeah. I feel like you’ve
1:14:27 raised me through my fifties, but your mother, I just figured out kind of raised me. I was a child of
1:14:33 television. Oh, my soap is the first time I was ever introduced to a gay man, Billy Crystal.
1:14:40 Well, then not only you, not only you, that’s she’s America often, often credited with writing
1:14:45 the first truly positive. I mean, I’m not sure it’s totally aged. Well, I mean, it was probably,
1:14:52 you know, more character than you would, you would want, but, um, she is the true first truly positive
1:14:55 role for a gay character in television. I believe that’s true.
1:15:01 He wasn’t like a psycho killer or a pedophile. And then the first time I ever saw a black man in a
1:15:08 position of leadership was Benson, which is also another show. And then when my mom was six,
1:15:14 she and I used to watch everyone loves Raymond Frazier and the golden girls. Right. Wow. That
1:15:20 is, that is this wild. So quite, quite, quite heroically. She wrote, I think this is a, uh,
1:15:25 I mean, this may not sound as impressive as it is because people don’t know how television gets made,
1:15:32 but she famously wrote, she didn’t have a writing staff for soap. So she wrote, I believe is the first
1:15:39 75 episodes all by herself. I mean, she was banging out one episode a week of television, 22 weeks a
1:15:46 year all by herself. And I mean, I, uh, very few people have done that in television. So it was quite
1:15:52 amazing. So just as we wrap up here, you gave me a piece of advice about being a dad a couple of years
1:15:57 ago that I’ve really held onto. And I want you to, I’m going to try and, uh, prompt you to remember
1:16:02 it, but you said you figured out that you just, in certain instances, just needed to be dad. Can you
1:16:09 speak more about that? Yeah. I mean, I, and part of this was, was my realizing what I wanted in a
1:16:15 school. I mean, I, I just wanted to outsource all of the, the, the role of being a teacher to the
1:16:20 school so that, and I, I must say this has been achieved imperfectly in the, in my daughter’s
1:16:24 schools, but I just wanted to be able to say, oh, you know, yeah, that, you know, that, you know,
1:16:30 Mrs. Johnson, she’s, she’s a hard teacher, you know, and just commiserate with the, with my daughters
1:16:35 without ever having to, to tiger mom anything. Right. I just don’t want to be that guy.
1:16:40 And the truth is I’m just not comfortable being that guy. I don’t want, I don’t like the subtext of
1:16:48 apparently conditional love that gets communicated when you, when you really push. Um, and so I just,
1:16:55 um, I haven’t. And, uh, I mean, I, both my daughters are good students and they’re, you know,
1:16:59 they’re, they’re getting educated, but you know, there, there’s definitely a difference between,
1:17:05 you know, tiger momming it and not, and I’m, I’m definitely not. And, uh, I realized I just
1:17:12 want, I just want to, to have a, I want there to be no doubt in my daughter’s minds, how much I love
1:17:21 them and how much I, I rejoice in who they are as people. Um, and so whenever I’m in a mode that
1:17:26 stands a chance of, of confusing that, you know, it’s, it’s, I, I, I’m, I’m alert to the, to the,
1:17:33 the downside there. So I just, um, yeah. And as a result, I have very little stature in the home as a,
1:17:39 as a source of, of, uh, knowledge or wisdom. Um, I mean, you know, when push comes to this,
1:17:43 that’s probably not true, but there’s a fair amount of comedy had at my expense. I mean, I’m going to,
1:17:48 unlike you, I’m in a household with, uh, with, uh, three girls, uh, or, you know, two girls and a,
1:17:53 and a mother. And, um, it’s, uh, there’s a, there’s very little testosterone in the home.
1:17:58 Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, bestselling author, and host of the Making
1:18:04 Sense podcast. Sam, um, just to put some additional pressure on you, when people ask me who my role
1:18:11 model is, I, I cite you. So if you, if something happens, so I really hope for just selfish reasons,
1:18:14 you keep killing it. Cause if you go down, you’re probably taking me with you.
1:18:20 Okay. So I need you, I need you to remain to be thoughtful and courageous and fearless and,
1:18:26 and well-read and, and rigorous in your research, but always enjoy, uh, our time together.
1:18:32 And I, I really do look at you as someone who looks at the issues and then, uh, and I’ve tried
1:18:39 to model this and then says what you believe is right, regardless of what heckling from the cheap
1:18:45 seats or shame you might endure. And it’s something that’s given me a lot of courage and discipline to
1:18:50 say, okay, where does, where does, in an attempt to find the truth, where does it take you? As opposed
1:18:55 to constantly checking myself and thinking, well, what will the reaction be? So thank you.
1:19:00 Well, thank you. And, uh, high praise, but I will, I will, I’ll try to keep it together.
1:19:01 There you go, brother. Take care, man.
1:19:24 Okay. I was with happiness. Father’s day just passed. Um, I think like a lot of people, I have a
1:19:32 complicated relationship with my father. Um, my dad, uh, was, uh, pretty selfish and
1:19:39 married and divorced four times as far as we know. And I was the son by a second marriage. He had
1:19:44 another daughter by his third marriage. I’ve actually become quite close with, but you know,
1:19:49 at the end of the day, my dad left my mom and I and moved to Ohio because he got a promotion.
1:19:57 And I saw my dad mostly in the summer and during the holidays and I’ve kind of never forgiven him.
1:20:04 And also something that I think moms do. And I recognize accidentally, and it’s usually the mom
1:20:08 that’s the single head of the single parent household is my mom sort of weaponized me against
1:20:14 my father and used to send very, very aggressive messages through me to my father. And then my father,
1:20:20 my father would respond equally angrily and it kind of would ruin the weekend. I were the time I was
1:20:26 spending with my dad and my mom sort of, I wouldn’t say turn me against my dad, but, uh, there’s just
1:20:30 no getting around it. When your parents get divorced and you’re living with mom, you’re going to probably
1:20:38 see, I think dad is kind of the bad guy. And I certainly did. And also he just was so, um, not generous
1:20:43 with money. Uh, you know, he had a nice life economically. We did okay, but it was definitely
1:20:49 a strain. And I look back on it now. And I think one of the reasons I try to be, I won’t even say
1:20:56 generous, but promiscuous with money was I was just so fucking turned off by how cheap he was. Um, anyways,
1:21:01 I had a lot of issues. I, I, I never didn’t speak to my dad, but I didn’t feel very close to him for
1:21:07 a long time. I resented him, uh, about, you know, with just a little bit effort. He could have been
1:21:12 so, so much of a more of a positive force in my life, but this is what I did. And what I would suggest
1:21:18 you do. If you have a great dad and it’s all like shadow boxing and football games, and he showed up
1:21:22 every, every week on the sidelines for you, then great. Um, then you’re not going to have a problem
1:21:26 being good to your dad. And if you do, if you aren’t, then it’s your problem.
1:21:31 But for those of us, like most people who have a father who is flawed, or maybe doesn’t fit the
1:21:37 current version of what it means to be a dad in the Hallmark channel from 2025, what has helped me is
1:21:43 I asked myself, I go to basic evolution and that is, was your father better to you than his dad was to
1:21:48 him? My dad, and I didn’t know this, my dad never complained about this, but I found out from his
1:21:55 sister, uh, my dad was the oldest and living in Depressionair, Scotland and his father, it sounds
1:22:01 like was an alcoholic and his father was physically abusive. And she outlined one instant where, um,
1:22:07 my grandfather, my dad’s dad came home drunk one night, woke him up and beat him. Can you imagine
1:22:13 being a child and you get woken up by the guy who is supposed to be your protector and beats you?
1:22:21 So my dad never beat me. Um, was never, it was, it was, uh, it came close a couple of times. I was
1:22:25 very scared of him. I think it was like the shark and jaws. It was the unknown that was more scary than
1:22:32 the actual shark. Uh, but he was much better to me than his dad was to him, which means he checked the,
1:22:42 the dad box. And that is he made the effort to be better to me than his dad was to him.
1:22:47 And my dad did make an effort. He would, when he was in Chicago and heard I was somewhere, he would
1:22:53 fly me out and take me to museums and try and find something to do with a 14 year old. And I’ve gotten,
1:22:59 I’ve gotten much better at remembering the good stuff and then putting all the bullshit aside and
1:23:03 something that has been an enormous unlock for me, not only with my father, but with all of my
1:23:10 relationships is to not keep score. And what do I mean by that? Instead of thinking, Oh, I’m his son.
1:23:17 He owes me a lot. And on a scorecard, he came up short. I just said, all right, what do I want to be a
1:23:21 son? Who do I want to be as a son? And the answer is I want to be a loving, generous son. Then hold
1:23:27 yourself to that standard and don’t keep score. Don’t think about, well, did he do enough to deserve a
1:23:31 loving, generous son? That’s not the point. The point is, do you want to be a loving, generous
1:23:36 son? If the answer is yes, then just be a loving, generous son. And if your father dies, which my
1:23:42 father will soon, my father’s 95 and in hospice and basically has the kind of mental complexion of a
1:23:47 baby right now, it doesn’t recognize anybody. Am I going to regret? Am I going to think to myself,
1:23:51 I just don’t think there’s any way I’m going to think to myself, I was too nice or too generous to my
1:23:57 dad. And if you’re better to your dad than he was to you, that’s fine. I think that’s kind of what it
1:24:03 means to be a man. And then in a nod to him, if he was better to you than his dad was to you, then you
1:24:08 need to be better. And hopefully you will be to your own sons. But if you’re like me and have a bit of a
1:24:13 complicated relationship with your father, what I would suggest is just an enormous unlock is put away
1:24:21 the scorecard, put the bullshit aside and just be the son you want to be and enjoy Father’s Day with
1:24:21 your dad.
1:24:31 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for
1:24:35 listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Stay tuned for next week’s conversation
1:24:37 featuring Robert Green.
1:25:13 Thank you.