Editing 31: Ryan Holiday - Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes

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Years ago, during the financial crisis, Mike invited me and my family to take over his two small islands in the Puget Sound archipelago and lead a renegade research-oriented science camp. We did this every summer there for many years, and these islands, now under new ownership are in fact the origin of the so-called "Double Island Rules" that we discuss from time to time, which allowed us to get past issues of ego and miscommunication between intellectual and domain specific silos.  

In any event, we, that is, I rushed to get the episode out for April 1, and in my haste, I forgot to include the segment of special things due to Mike for a level of generosity, wisdom, selflessness, risk taking, leadership, and brilliance that honestly I'd previously only seen in movies. I will try to have Mike on The Portal at some point. But I wanted to say that his unwavering support of scientists attempting to work outside of and around traditional channels in physics, biology, economics, and other subjects, has been nothing short of inspirational to me. So Mike, if you're listening out there, please come through The Portal. These are dark times, indeed, and we still need great leaders like you to remind us all of how it's done.  

As for what is on my mind this week, it is this: the virus and its curious relationship to the future. For the last month, I've spent nearly all of my time at home with my family, and many of the better thoughts I've been exploring during this time are due to my collaborator and wife, Pia Malaney. Pia is the economist who currently runs SIGS, the Silicon Valley Center for Innovation, Growth and Society, which she cofounded with INET, the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Very early on, I was fumbling to try to understand the most likely effects of the virus, and she said something clarifying, which I wish I had repeated to you all when it was fresh. She said, "I think, in a way, the virus can be thought of as representing the future." I don't know, maybe I'm dense, but I didn't catch it the first time, so I asked her to clarify. She was surprised that this wasn't obvious to me, so she spells her position out.  

"Think about it this way: take all of the seemingly varied issues we discussed constantly over the dinner table and at conferences."  

"All of them?" I replied, with a slightly teasing voices, as I assumed she was speaking with hyperbole.  

"Why, yes, pretty much all of them," she said brightly, and without an ounce of self doubt in a voice that I have learned to fear over many years of collaboration, she continued, "Let's start with surveillance, monopolies, automation, telecommuting, next generation warfare, UBI, future of work, the retail apocalypse, online dating, antivaxxers, the student debt crisis, supply-chain vulnerability, green tech and climate change, urban homelessness, college equivalency certificates, biohacking, the retreat from globalization, collapse of mainstream journalism, Chinese ascendance, social engineering, Saudi monetization and the move away from fossil fuels in the kingdom, inclusive stakeholding, political realignment and the problem of gerontocracy and the end of naive capitalism underpinned by U Chicago style economics, in fact, pretty much all the things we've used the center to explore."  

"Okayyyy", I said nervously.  

"Well", she continued, "you know that tired tech expression, 'The future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed'? Well, this virus is accelerating that unifying future that was already headed our way across the board." And, recapitulating that moment where agent Qian drops the Kobayashi coffee mug in The Usual Suspects film, a forest spontaneously emerged for me from the confusion of the trees I had seen previously. All of these seemingly disparate phenomena were suddenly revealed as closely related. Americans were actually calling for their own surveillance, only they were calling it contact tracing. The Retail Apocalypse, which had been building slowly, suddenly became a matter of a government decree, creating an ever more imposing monopoly for the world's now richest human. He, in turn, owns and controls the only paper to take down a US president, consolidating control over a sensemaking apparatus. Most supposedly essential face-to-face office work was revealed to be illusory, as easily-monitored and recorded telecommuting replaced the high carbon commute. The demand for fossil fuels, in turn, evaporated, pushing oil futures into radical states of contango. Social distancing solve the problem of unwanted "Me Too" toxic male touch, a sexless zoom dating put the hurt on Netflix and chilling. Indeed, nearly UBI like payments were going out to newly unemployed former workers who were expected to sit at home on couches, as universities effectively all but confessed that they could deliver the same value through distance learning by not rebaiting extraordinary tuition. China, through an emasculated World Health Organization, seemingly began inducing our own U.S. institutions, like the CDC, and Surgeon General's office, to impart deadly magical thinking to Americans about the ineffectiveness of masks for healthy people. This all came as if some kind of twisted revenge for the Boxer Rebellion where Chinese believe swords and martial arts made them invulnerable to Western high tech warfare.  

Spontaneous protests broke out in cities across the country, as mass protesters fought mysterious rules that communicated that one may not peaceably assemble in Congress addiction to the First Amendment. We were also not allowed to contradict public health authorities, who are clearly covering for a level of Baby Boomer and Silent Generation incompetence to keep the manufacturer and storage of essential goods and services within national boundaries and out of the hands of strategic rivals, who think nothing of blatantly lying to us in matters of life, death, and statistics.  

I reasoned, however, that there were clearly too many different things happening in such a situation for the sudden arrival of the future to lack a single ideology. And so it occurred to me and to Peter Thiel as well, who I called immediately, that the two older generations of Americans, who were to duke it out in the race for the presidency, shared a single purpose. Their common goal was to stop the future from arriving at essentially any cost to future generations, so that they could live out the remaining days in as close to the style to which they'd become accustomed in childhood and young adulthood as was actually possible.  

And what did they use to accomplish this? Well, it was a combination of three ingredients. First of all, it required political control. Second of all, it also needed a seemingly inexplicably indifference to the world of trouble that they would finally leave to their descendants after their demise. Lastly, it partially hinged on a reliance on 75 years of astonishingly good luck, which can partially be explained as a rational universal fear of the future, after two world wars, totalitarian atrocities, the 1918 pandemic, and the Great Depression. This is related to Francis Fukuyama's theory of the end of history.  

To this way of thinking, what was happening was simple. The magic trick of holding back nearly all aspects of our true future required all three elements to be in place simultaneously. Now nothing had changed with respect to the first two. In fact, all that it occurred was that their luck had finally run out with the COVID virus. To my generation, and the ones that followed, that past version of the post-war American dream was like a mesmerizing rumor and tale that the older generations had repeatedly and vividly wielded to cast a spell. This intimidated many of us from demanding answers and us saying our own future. If you can't get a second home in your 30s from a paper route, a low cost education, or a life in public service, then perhaps you should wait your turn and let the elders who made it work lead for a little while longer, until the younger generations can prove that they're ready to assume adult responsibilities.  

This was a magical spell indeed, which blinded those of us who are forced to repeat "Ok, Boomer" to explain our seeming relative inability to earn and lead in the presence of elders who could out earn us in their prime. And this was even under the weight of multiple divorce settlements, or three Martini lunches, and without the extensive training and apprenticeships that we seem to require.  

Well, that spell is now broken for me, watching our supposedly leaders contend with the true pandemic. The Silent and Boomer generations, lacking any kind of precedent now look like incompetent dolts. I suppose it is theoretically possible that the rest of us former gritty latchkey kids and digital natives would not fare better, but we could scarcely do worse. In fact, our elders are revealed not as go-getters or can-do leaders, but as creatures of The System, who simply held back confronting the inevitable future for decades, because its shape and form are indeed terrifying. And it wasn't really the virus that was accelerating the terrifying future across the board. Any worldwide crisis of sufficient depth would have done it. The world has always been caught up in escalating plagues, wars, depressions and conflicts, and the Coronavirus was ushering in the future, simply because it was the first piece of early-20th-Century-scale bad luck to fall into our new millennium, characterized, as it is, by fragility.  

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In this episode, I get to sit down with author and social analyst Ryan Holiday. I wouldn't say that I know Ryan enough to consider him a close friend. But I have enjoyed every conversation I've had with him for the unique metacognitive perspective that he brings to all things on which he thinks speaks or writes. There are two things in particular that Ryan does that make him one of the most incisive analysts and best conversationalist in the public eye working today. In many ways, the overarching lens that I feel is missing from today's hyper partisan world is that of expecting conflicting truths to lie in Super positions. After all, why would anyone imagine that the simplified childlike positions of activists would be appropriate for those who issue hyper partisanship in favor of nuance? Well, I can't pretend to answer that question. I can't say that Ryan's ability to fully consider the validity of two or more evident truths that are at least nominally in conflict is all too rare in today's world of public intellectuals. Well, that itself is reason enough for me to tune into Ryan's perspective. There's something deeper that draws me towards his voice and way of thinking. All too often in my experience, the minority of social analysts who in the internet era can still properly entertain the dialectic in public, without bending to the activist mob, tend to stop there prematurely at a point of detachment. They frequently appear to be disinterested in reframing natural tensions for others so as to facilitate progress through synthesis and reconciliation. Instead, they often prefer the entertainment value of a continuing battle to a satisfying conclusion without Victor or vanquished. In particular, I've increasingly noticed a move towards studied in difference in the projection of personal apathy on the part of several metacognitive pundits and what seems to be a mechanism of self protection. I find that Ryan, by contrast is fairly open and sharing that he cares about the future deeply, but always in a thoughtful and measured way informed in an interesting fashion by his relationship to stoicism. That combination of caring without sanctimony makes him one of my favorite conversationalist in private, and I am glad that we got a chance to try to translate this into a public forum.  

Two words in the setting of this conversation To begin with, it took place in 2020 before the stay at home orders were in place. So it feels in some sense like a message in a bottle from another earlier world. And it oddly filled me with a sense of what feels like a genuine longing for our recent past upon listening to it. With so much rapid change it feels like full on early 2020 nostalgia is actually now a thing, even though it is only April. Secondly, we discuss Ryan's book on Gawker and Peter Thiel. This is one of the first places that I've ever shared my thoughts about the episode, and it may surprise people to hear my inner conflicts about Gawker journalism and Nick Denton. To this end, I will just point out that I was later to find out about the story from Peter than many may have imagined, and that Peter actually encouraged me always to act as an independent voice of moral concern, as you may discern from the conversation. I'll let the conversation speak for itself, however.  

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Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein and I am here today with Ryan Holliday, author of conspiracy and other books and a great all around thinker and voice analyzing what's going on in our society. Ryan, welcome.  

So very curious about your thoughts as to whether the time that we're in right now has any particular feel and why it's hard to associate what has been going on in terms of a site Geist with any kind of intellectual wrapping that helps us better understand what the forces are that are most changing our lives at the moment.  

I've actually been thinking about that a little bit. You've probably led to live in LA so maybe you ever watch the show the hills?  

Okay, so the hills is this sort of fake reality show that came out in about originally it started in Laguna Beach, it was a reality show and then they all move to LA but it's this sort of, like, mid early aughts like reality show about young people moving to LA and it created all these sort of big brands and and sort of personalities that dominated the tablets for a really long time. And then this year, they came out with like the 10 year anniversary of like the show, it ended, they all went on, some of them are successful, some are not successful. This was a show about them in their early 20s. And now they're in the early 30s and they like revisited it and my wife and I were watching it and I loved it like it wouldn't it would not think I would like it but I loved it. What I found over and over again This is what I think the sort of Zeitgeist is, is these characters who basically are fake people, but sometimes have real emotions. They the word they kept talking about over and over again was like how anxious they were and how tired they were. And and these are obviously all sort of tail and millennials right and and it would be peak Millennials are at peak millennials. Yes. And and it struck me that there was probably something illustrated there about the sort of millennial mind of for the millennials that what their 20s was, from the teens to the end of their 20s was like the Warner Act, the financial crisis, an economic recovery that they didn't really benefit from, and then walking in now to becoming a parent. You know, becoming an adult maybe but but starting to get serious about life but without the comfort or security That would suit some of those anxiety. So I thought it was, to me one of the feelings of the age is kind of an anxiety or an unease about things like

together with exhaustion  

With exhaustion. Yes. Because we're, you know, we're on our phones all the time, we're consuming more information than ever. We have more information about what other people are. I think the exhaustion is from social media in the sense of like, it's keeping up with the Joneses times like 1000, you know, because  

I don't even want to call it, "We are on our phones". We have merged Yes, with our phones. And so if I think about the phone as a portal, the idea is that I turn this slab towards me and then I suddenly go into some in, like, right now, I don't know whether you and I are being attacked on social media.  

Sure, we probably we probably are just a percent what percentage of it is attack and what percentage of it is complimentary?  

Right? Yeah, but but the point that is that there is this parallel world taking place at all times. And then we have now merged with it so that we there isn't a way that is  

n our phones, or the idea that it's a separate world is like, right now, there are people simultaneously watching thousands of hours of video or audio that both of us have produced. So we're having this conversation, which is obviously not live, but other people are watching a very different conversation with us at this moment. That's right. And that is strange if you think about it. And yeah, some of those people are hating that conversation so that people are loving that conversation. It's a one of the one of the weird things I get all the time we're talking about Tim Ferriss is not going to go like people go, Oh, I just, they're like I loved you on the Tim Ferriss podcast or whatever is like I did that interview in 2014. But to them, it's new. So like that the portal, different people are entering the portal at different times. And whereas I think something is old, if you've never seen it before, I

Ryan Holiday  22:44

informations. I was actually just like my I have a three year old So I was thinking like, what's the what's the like, when I was you know, when I was a kid, like, what's the what's the technology story that I will tell them that will like blow their mind. And I was thinking about this last night because I got to my friend's truck. It An older truck. And we had an older version of that when I was growing up. But we had this Toyota pickup truck when I was a kid. And it didn't have a clock in it. It was a cheap old truck. And I remember that whenever like on the way to school to see if we were late, or you know what time it was, we'd have to turn it to, like ksdk. I grew up in Northern California turning to KPK, because every 15 minutes, they said, you're listening to KPK. It's 945 and traffic like, so we'd have to turn on the radio and hope we were close to, but would know that in a minimum of, you know, 14 minutes and 32 seconds, we would be getting the time. Right. And so it was it was it's weird, because yes, things were more synchronized. But also, you could exist in a bubble detached from time also, because not everyone was trying you were you were genuinel

unreachable. It was g

orious. Yeah. It's strange. Not that not that long. I mean, this is I'm telling you probably l

ke 95 or six. So I'm interested in in sort of these old stories, but I also just Am I right that probably we will find that our brain structure was altered by

ur phone use? I mean, I would think so. There's that Louie ck bit about, you used to have to sit with awkwardness or unpleasantness. But now you can instantly relieve yourself of like, like, let's say, I got here early, and there's no one here. And I was w

iting because the  

ost was late. No, no, I'm just saying, let's say you get to something early. Yeah, you would have had to wait with your own thoughts, right. And now you can go into the portal and not have to have thoughts. And so that idea of reflection or downtime, it's like, one of the things I compare writing a book too, is sometimes if you have your laptop and you shut it and it's just You'd go into sleep mode, but you'd come back and something had happened. And it's been on for 11 hours. And it's like almost like hot to the touch. It doesn't happen anymore. But I remember that happening on my older Mac books. To me that's like what writing a book is like, your brain is not shutting off. And I think social media actually creates the phone, create some version of that, where the you're never getting the downtime between moments, right? Always, alwa

s the moment. In what ways Am I diminished? What parts of my capacity if I forgotten for that? Well, what I'm really trying to get at Yeah, ultimately, is that a lot of transformations have taken place that have not been well documented, that divorce us increasingly from what might be termed our super ancestors, people. Like there are no 400 hitters in baseball. Yeah, we've accepted that that was a different errands. Now that can't be sure, but it seems like we could accomplish all sorts of things recently. Li that we can't now. And it's very interesting the extent to which we've lost capacities. And we haven't documented what it was that took them from us. Like, I can't figure out why I can'

read a book. Well, so related to that one, I think it was Daniel Boston, if you read him at all, he wrote this book, the image about sort of the invention of modern media. He's basically talking about what television radio does, is fascinating. I think it was like the Librarian of Congress or something. But he was he was like, the Lincoln the Lincoln Douglas debates. It was like Lincoln talked for three hours. Douglas talked for three hours. Then everyone took a break and went home and came back. And then they each argued for like, another three hours. You're like, now the democratic debates are like, an hour and 20 minutes and there's eight candidates, you know, like, human beings used to be able to consume incredibly long form complex like these were farmers and blacksmiths and People was sitting here watching one of the smartest people who ever lived. One of the most eloquent speakers of all time talk for three hours without break, you know? unamplified, have you seen certain losses of capability? I mean, I think the I think the ability to consume very long form content whether it's you know, Robert Caro book, or it's a, you know, 1000 you know, line poem. I think those are one of the one of the only bright spots to me as podcasts that people will listen to a three hour Joe Rogan and long form podcasting and long form television. Yes, yes. Although I find long form television to be very manipulative and not a sign of progress. Oh, say more. This is great. So I think okay, so it like, when I watch, I don't know, bloodlines? What I got the sense of is that like, let's say I watched the first three seasons, which I thought were good and then I realized I just watched 22 hours of television and eight minutes of things have happened. What they did is they like instead of having to create beats inside the show to get you to go from commercial break to commercial break, they, they just know that if they if they keep you going, if at the end, you're vaguely interested, you will let it autoplay to the next thing. So it's, it's taking what what could be a compressed really interesting couple hours of television and and it's like how the YouTube algorithm rewards watch time, right so people just make shit longer than it genuinely needs to be. Like as a writer, one of the favorite rules, one of the favorite exercises I heard Raymond Chandler would write on basically index cards and his typewriter and his rule is like something has to happen on every The index card. So if you read a Raymond Chandler thing, it's like beat beat beat beat beat. Now you read, you know, some novel that wins the National Book Award. And it's like, weirdly, it is 2000 pages or 1000 pages, but nothing happens. The characters learn nothing, you know, no lessons are taught. So like, it's it's even some of the long form stuff that we consume. It's mostly just a testament to our ability to veg out or consume it in the background as we're doing another thing, rather than be ver

engaged with uh, well, then, maybe what I want to do is to break out is there some long form television that you think isn

t empty calories? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm sure

'm sure there are like, I found that the sopranos was incredibly drawn out and in general d

dn't waste a lot. So you liked it. I did. And look, I would say that the HBO model is different than the Netflix model. The HBO model is like, this has to be so good. You will wait one week and hold on to the threat and come back to right the Netflix model is Can I Can I steal Tuesday from you guys you know like when you call in sick from work and watch a episodes of gangs con or Narcos or whatever. Okay

well then what's going on with Joe Rogan? This is

singular funnel. Yes,  

t is fascinating. Someone was telling me that for like, there's a whole generation of people that don't even know you can listen to Joe Rogan that you like they just watch it on. Like, I mean, I it makes no sense to me that someone could watch a three hour YouTube video like I just don't understand where you would well. They're, they're lightly watching it often. I think so. But but but I think it is a it's a generational, also a lifestyle thing that is somewhat new. But I was just listening to his Malcolm Gladwell interview, and it's like three and a half hours. And I was like, literally entertained for every second. He's looking he's, I think he's a master of it. And I think what he's  

ood at is, is, is being the every man in the sense of like, he's asking the questions that a normal person would ask Malcolm like, like, what would a person who has the opportunity to talk to one of their favorite authors would talk about, as opposed to whatever the subtle political agenda or you know what, like, whatever, somebody in the media would try to use the opportunity of talking to Malcolm Gladwell to

accomplish right. Except that the funny part is that he's so far away from being every man. Sure. The persona and the rapper exactly communicates every man like his vibe. Is what you say yes. And then if you talk to him, or hang out with him outside of his show, you're just aware of what an incredible storehouse of information that's particularly senior human being is. He He has an enormous body of knowledge so that you're always close to something that he wa

ts to talk about. Yeah, that's true. One of the interesting that sounds noting soom at that interview is there was like nothing that Malcolm Gladwell mentioned that Rogan wasn't vaguely familiar with no events in the news there was no he was mentioning this video like this police shooting and this and and he was like he knew all of it. I think I think what defines Rogan to me and good podcasts and why they so exploded is like, actually an earnest interest. Yeah. As opposed to a vague like you've been profiled by media outlets, right? And very little but but what happens is actually very, very little interesting. But but you get the sense that this person is very nice to you and very friendly. But when you read the article, it is clear that their intention was to let the reader know that they  

ere above up here rendering judgment on the quality wise sometimes they don't c

rent okay threads is the success of Joe Rogan above all all others telling us more about what is going on with traditional and legacy media. In that he is offering somehow the best antidote to this kind of seamless, endless interoperable wall of institutional corporate and  

egacy sense make. Yeah, like so. So I think it's also just genuinely like, most people are fans of stuff, right? And Joe Rogan is a fan of stuff. And when you read a New Yorker profile, or a New York Times profile, or an Atlantic piece, or even some of the, you know, like Recaps of television shows, by outlets that, you know, everyone does this now, there's this weird sense that everything sucks. People that make it suck, the world is falling apart, and that the job of the media is to tell us what's wrong with things. Right. And, and like, why would anyone consume that information? Like what what is the utility of you telling me that things suck? Like I talked to? When I when I talk to authors, it'll, like, the old media model was like, you could write a book about an idea like just generally like, Hey, this is complicated and people are like, I don't have time for this. Like, tell me if it's Tony. Is it good? You know, or tell me that this is bad. But there's this weird sort of thing in a media where it's just like, it's just kind of this is this is it's like a there's an ambiguity to it. And like, it's almost

ng, nobody cares. Well, and I sensibly that should be the role of the editor, the editor should like, I almost get that there's a commentary of sort of young, opinionated writers who are writing things, but there should be the editor on top who's saying, who's asking tough que

tions about that. Is it the The economic is it that the system of selective pressures that is choosing these people to sit in those chairs, yeah, is now imparting such a spin that the world is kind of tuning it out increasingly because, you know, for example, there is a piece I've never heard described like a general platonic abstraction which I call envy porn. Yeah. Where the peace talks about fabulously rich people leading shitty decadent lives and you're supposed to be exactly filled with one part envy

in one part pity. Yeah, where some version of that piece is like, I'm gonna write about this person whose life seems very glamorous, but I'm I'm a subtly going to show how they're actually a vapid idiot. Yeah, you know, and and I think what it is is like, okay, so economic like economically and Opera, as far as opportunities, but it's literally never been Easier to reach a mass audience to monetize your work to, to control your own destiny as a creative person, right? So like imagine, imagine looking at the like the the vast opportunity of podcasts out there, the opportunity to write books or to create YouTube videos are to do any of these things and go, my, I don't want to do that. What I would like to do is make $42,000 a year without health benefits and be have a full time job at Business Insider, right? You know what I mean? Like you are either you're insane, or you're fundamentally somebody, or you're fundamentally lacking the talent to cut it in the real world eat what you kill, like, sell stuff dire

tly to the audio. So it's a variance reduction model that you know that you're going to have a job if you do your job, but you don't actually have Have to test yourself based on whether or not people are dying

Yeah, it's like, Okay, if you live in some small town, you might think, Oh, this person is a certified financial advisor. They they're, they know more about money than me. Yeah. Which might be true. But like, they would not be if they were really good at managing money, they would not be running at Charles Schwab office in, you know, Toledo or something, right. And so it's like, you just, oh, the people who are writing for this outlet or that outlet are in it, unless, I mean, there's obviously exceptions, like Malcolm Gladwell writes for The New Yorker, but has is also an entrepreneurial creator in other ways. But, you know, you just realize, Oh, you're it's sort of like the survivorship bias. Like all the good people have been all the fundamentally talented people have been siphoned off

and work for them so that I really, I don't know that I hold exactly that take on. There's a selection bias. I think that there's an aspect of People merging with these venerable structures. There is power from an institutional perspective that hasn't been completely lost and frittered I'm not quite sure whether the millennials still pay attention. But that came from Harper's, that came from the Atlantic that came from the New Yorker. However, what I'm very curious about is at what point do the super vital people start going back into the institutional structures? Like I will see things happen on the Joe Rogan program? Yeah. And unless there's an angle to take somebody down, it doesn't filter back into what is this thing I call the gated institutional narrative, because it's mostly an idea that certain organs only talk to each other and themselves. Right. And that the power of that conversation to stay focused on it could be completely irrelevant and wrong things or misleading things are terrible things, but it still has a measure of coherence that the world Wild West LAX, and I'm questioning what happens when the interesting stuff is incoherent. And the other stuff has a coherence, even if

it's meaningless. Yeah, George trout wrote this book called within the context of no context. And he started talking about he was a New Yorker writer. He wrote this like 30 years ago, but sort of talking about exactly we're talking about is that, like, sort of the job of these old institutions was to provide context to imprimatur a stamp of approval. But now there's these new media outlets this new wild west where that's gone. Yeah, it is interesting. It's like the Elan musk episode of Rogan is newsworthy, but the other episodes of treach still millions more people than, you know, an episode of Lena Dunham's girls, one is covered and the other isn't right. But these empty shells are are really he calls them empty shells that like these outlets are empty shells that that there is this significance and meaning equity in them that was built over hundreds of years. In some cases, the Atlantic is, you know, dates before the Civil War. So even if the business model is changing the credibility might have been reduced, still mean something to people because it's been around for so long. Like a great example of this is like Forbes, is this economic business model is the exact same outlet as the Huffington Post, right? Like it's run by contributors, most of whom are not paid, most of whom are not edited. And yet, you see something written by for like, you see an article from Forbes calm, it feels like it's from the media brand Forbes, which states the early 1900s, right. But it's actually written by some random person who may be, you know, conflicted or not qualified or wet. So these empty shelves matter a great deal. And we because so much advertising has been put behind them and exposure. One of the examples I like to use is like, okay, you you're driving through la you See a billboard for you know, a new movie. It'll have the laurel leaves, you know, around the award that it's one. Well, you know, there used to be like a handful of film festivals and now there's a million film festivals. And so you're driving and you see the Laura leaves and you go, Oh, this is an award winning movie. But that might have been, you know, the Sacramento Film Festival or a non exist

nt Film Festival. You know, you've already got the Charles Schwab Office of Toledo, Ohi

really angry. Is that ever gonna give us I'm from Sacrament

, okay, or I feel like you just plugged in a sec. There's no such t

ing as bad press. Yeah, but but you know what I mean? So like, like, our mind is looking for these symbols. Yeah, tell us like this is the important narrative. This has been vetted. And in fact, most of that has fallen away. And, and so we're, I think we have trouble integrating what's even  

eal and not real. So if all of our minds are now Really the product of random, not randomly, but eclectically chosen inputs, and we can't count on a cannon so that there is a less shared context. What would be the art that would be appropriate to this time that we could look back and say, Hey, do you remember how we sh

red that? I mean, like, what is the art we're creating now th

t matters? are we are we unreachable by art? effectively? Because w

're too atomized. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, is there a Is there a painting that could come out that would, Jen that would genuinely pierce the cultural  

onsciousness like remember when Gangnam Style came down? Yeah, that was so weird. Yeah,

it was so unseen. Yeah, there really is dancing  

Unknown Speaker  44:01 

ogic state. Yeah, yeah. So that was able to it grabbed the mic and sa

d, Now hear this. Well, what's interesting is that was like the first video to do a billion views. Right? Okay. And now there are videos that have done a billion views that you and I have never heard of, you know, like, which is very strange to think about. I remember the other day I, someone had recommended this book, it's a, the book is a man called oath, which is this interesting little novel. There's actually really good, but he's like, Hey, you should check out this book. And it recently come out and I pulled it up and it had 18,000 reviews on Amazon. And I'd never heard of it. So not like I hadn't read it, but like, I'd never heard of it. I've never seen it written about anywhere. It had won no awards. It had not been made into a movie. And, and so you realize, yeah, things can be flat out cultural phenomenons. But having No cultural impact whatsoever because they are filtered out of whatever that dominant media narrative is, right? I, I yeah, I mean, I even see this with with my with my own books, right like I've sold, my books are sold millions of copies have been reviewed, like twice in newspapers really. And they were almost all from the to book because that was a media centric book. So my book that's got the most media connections got the most attention, but actually sold the fewest

amount of copies. And for the rest for the rest of it, you don't r

ally fully exist. Yeah, basically, basically, it exists to the people who surface it in the who get it surface to them in the Amazon algorithm. Yeah. So like crazy, but as far as yeah the like, What's also weird is like, yeah to sell millions of books in you I could walk into, I could walk into a good chunk of indie bookstore it, I think people it. It's not just the the the media culture, but I could walk into a large number of indie bookstores. And not that they wouldn't have my books, they would not have heard of my books, right? Even though their businesses literally should be book signing books that are selling copies, right, putting them in front of people. So there is this weird, sort of there's this weird, it's almost the New York Times list that I'm passing with the New York Times bestseller list. So two things about it. So why? Because to the to the public, The New York Times list is a reflection of what books are selling best, right? And to anyone in the industry. You know, this is in fact not the case. It's heavily edited. The New York Times list for instance, discounts Amazon, and ways independent retail as a their algorithms as independent retail matters more than Amazon, even though Amazon is responsible for roughly 80% of all book sales, only until like 2000 it was only in like 2012 2013 that they started counting ebooks. Yeah, audible was, in some cases not included. If you look at the fine print on the New York Times bestseller lists, it says explicitly not included our perennial sellers, which means that like The Great Gatsby should be on the bestseller list most weeks, The New York Times says oh, that's old. Let's put how to be anti racist on the list even though actually that book is sel

ing a fraction of seven habits. This

s okay, you know, so this is this complex supporting our human malware and our malware runs between our ears. Okay, let's client side. So I, I have a program that says if I want to know what's hot, I should check the New York Times bestseller list. Yes. And the idea is why am I maintaining the malware client side to participate in this crazy drama? Is it only because other people are using the same list? And so it's a QWERTY phenomena where it's a terrible arrangement of keys on the keyboard that was originally there to get keys not to stick to slow down. Or, I mean, how do I get rid of my le

acy architecture? Well, as probably a little bit that, right? It's the cultural inertia and legacy of like, this thing is existing. And so it's a shorthand. There's probably a Gerardi an argument that like we want what other p

ople are wanting. And t

ere's also I told me, they're not

ven wanting that. Right. But we think that's what peo

t you're wanting. That's true. Yes. So it's Gerardi in virtue signaling. Then, oh, this is good. And then and then I think a lot of it is the Paradox of Choice, right? There's so much choice that we need. We gravitate towards anything. So we go to the most read list on the side of the New York Times, we go to the top of Amazon, like we, we just it's like, please reduce choice for me. I think that's

what we're saying what or mean, or, and please allow me to plug into a large mimetic complex so that my time isn't wasted with references. Like for example, I drove here, and I have this Discord server of people who talk about the show and the culture. And I wanted to announce myself as coming in. So I said, you know, this line from the HMS pinafore, my gallon crew, good morning, and I was hoping somebody would echo back, sir, go

d morning, right? You want th

m to get the wrap I want them to get the reference and nobody has the reference, right? Because why is anyone maintaining HMS pinafore from the 1800s in 2020 on

a Discord server? Well, that is when it's Zen mostly right about ancient philosophy. So I sort of, you know, reading these books, what I what I love is your reading Montana, or Seneca, there'll be they'll quote lines from, you know, the Odyssey or Virgil or they're quoting poetry in place and things. And it never occurs to them to attribute the line. It's always in the footnote from the translator. This is a last line from a European ease play or whatever, right? But in the ancient world, it was assumed that he was you would not only Yeah, you'd not only have seen said play, but you would have seen said play so many times, that you would recognize it. And you know, I think I think the problem is there was just so much le

s stuff right. So was it There's that but there's also this this weird discomfort we have of teaching a Canon for the purpose of keeping inter op

rable referencing well, canon is racist there. That's why we can't have it. So tha

's why we promote

it on the portal. Now, of course, why we stopped teaching the canon. We've certainly like yeah, people used to. People used to learn Seneca when they were being taught Latin, but now they don't learn Latin. So they're definitely not going to learn. Senecas. epigrams, you know, like, so there, I think there there's an element of that to it. But also, it's like, Look, there was only a handful of playwrights in Athens. Now we have all those playwrights, and we have Shakespeare, and we have, you know, 100 years of movies with the movie canon. Is is the one thing that I really see going in the opposite direction is that we remember these scenes. Yeah. Like if I said to you, if you would say you Can't handle the truth. Everyone would know what you

re talking about. Right? But if I said to you put that coffee down, would that be  

esonant with you? A little bit? merrigan Ross Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, like so is that coffee is  

or closers. Yeah. There's those are the thing that that we can do th

t to some extent. Well, one of the so what I do because I do this email every morning I write an email called daily stoic and it's one sort of stoic inspired meditation every day, instead of quoting plays because no one gets those. I use song lyrics a lot and I find song lyrics are also something that people have a have a lot o

familiarity with really depends on what era it does. When I found out that my millennial co workers had never heard bridge over troubled waters by Simon and Garfunkel. I  

don't know that? Yeah, it's like classic rock

of the world, or even the hip hop, like a hip hop is everybody will point to the hip hop and say, No, no, the hip hop is actually that that's what's now that's just not getting I listened to it. I'm still not convinced that that's the music of now. Okay, that somehow our inability to say where we are in common and to build up that kind of PVS and we'll call it the inner subjective or what have you. Yeah. means that my music, even if it's great music sucks because it's not the m

look ridiculous. I think they are but there's also an argument that like we're the deplorable zz who are not gett

what

free. Screw you. Maybe maybe that's a good point. I don't know. But it's a very I thought it was a revealing cultural moment that like the person was All the power it I don't think Bob Dylan was then as big as Taylor Swift is now. He didn't have 100 million Instagram followers. Do you know what I mean? Yea

it i

our minds. Okay. I won't change my euro. Ok

pictures of your I don't want to say normatively. Yeah, but the thing that I'm just fascinated by is the idea isn't occurring to these people like that. Yeah, you know, once you have a kid in a school and you're worried about how the kid is doing other parents have the same concerns about the same teachers and you're having these conversations, you start to think, Oh, well, this is what my body is programmed for, is to take this incredible interest in a tiny number of people. Now, I don't mean to say I'm positive that you won't mean to say that every single person needs to go have a child, right? It's just most people, most people. Yeah. On average. Yeah. Even. And I'm not even talking about having a great family like I have a challenge difficult family li

oldest is three, three and a half. And then I have a seven month old. So I'm i

deeping the shit all right, yeah, this is great. Yeah. By the way, three was definitely the I heard about the terrible twos. We had terrible threes.  

don't have them. Yeah, it's a i

It was horrible. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, this was a life and death activity. It still is occa

not to be happy. We I think we would be happier if that's what we were b

never let it go. Well, the thing that the one that really breaks my heart is how many weekend getaways Do you people need? And I said this thing about you're gonna have hard drives filled with photos that nobody cares about and you're never gonna hold a grandchild in your own arms. What What is even going through your mind? So like gallery, yeah, is a concept that

are still fresh. No, it's funny, like so my parents I think are sort of typical. My parents were slightly late or like late the last generation of boomers, though the last sort of tail end of boomers but like when my we grew up in California, and then when my sister and I graduated from college, or went to college, my parents moved to Hawaii so they moved so the opposite of like Let's be near the kids. My parents moved literally as far as you can move away and stay in the United States. And then I can tell it makes them sad that they don't have as close a relationship with their grandchildren as some of their friends. And it's like, you know, it's because you live in an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, right? And you put it together. I'm not going to the end, they go Come visit us. It's the beach. It's like, yeah, how hard it is to put two toddlers on an eight hour flight with a three hour time difference. T

do that. No, no, I understand. It's a complete disconnect. Yeah. The story I've been telling recently was going to my father's 85th birthday party and one of their friends this is the silent generation who doesn't take

lands none of it? Well, it's also it's like, you should move into a two bedroom condo. And then people you You should have moved to Florida. And then people could have your house. It's not only that it can't afford can't afford it. It's that you're s

 

ill in the house. Yes, but I woul

 

say differently, but I just been in California. It's like, it's also because boomers aren't selling their houses because they don't want to want to

interesting Sure. Yeah. Or it's like if you know retirements a lie, and it's not gonna happen, yo

 

 

know what I mean? Well, I don't think let me just get my spin on this. There's nothing magical about the generations. Yeah. The question is, what was your developmental environment and your economic environment growing up? Yeah. So I thought I just had a problem with authority. Turned out when I started working for somebody younger than myself as an expert. Yeah, some of the extras don't figure into the millennials straight, which is very extra thick. It's hysterically funny. I found that I was easily able to take direction from somebody like Peter teal. Not because I had a hierarchy or authority issue, but because really the problem was silence and boomers have beliefs that I don't share. Sure, they just don't understand what they do. Do makes no sense to me? None. I cannot process it. And it's not like I haven't studied it or try to understand her. It's just certain things that are obvious realities to me. It's like speaking at a high frequency that their ears can't hear. Yeah. The divisio

 

to me is you had silence and boomers and then there's a line and then Xers millennial Gen Z, are all saying, well, we're not part of whatever story is going on above that line. And and maybe to tie back to the art problem, the art discussion. I think one of the big problems is that we don't have any story whatsoever. There's no mediums, music, television, especially literature, which is, you know, my focus that is telling any kind of redeeming, inspiring, meaningful, what's

your what's your timing? I feel like I spend most of my time communicating with peo

dead and so do i do well so so xeno is the founder of stoicism he goes to the oracle of done sigh he's a young man, he's This is a merchant family's incredibly wealthy. He trades tyrian purple, which is the purple dye that makes the Emperor's cloak. And he stops to the Oracle of Delphi, Delphi, and he says, what should I do with my life? Basically, this is the timeless question, right? And they say, your light, you will, you will become your best self, when you begin having conversations with the dead. And he shortly thereafter suffers a shipwreck washes up in Athens, loses everything. And he walks into a bookstore, and the bookseller is reading it dialogue of Socrates. And this he realizes, oh, this is the conversation with the dead. You know, Socrates is dead, you know, few decades by the time this happens, and he realized, Oh, I'm talking to Socrates and this, this creates the School of philosophy that I now believe in, but I think I think what we have lost is We This is the closing the America of the closing the American mind the blue blue. We've lost we've destroyed the cannon replaced it with nothing. You know we we destroyed the myths of founding of America replaced it but nothing we've questioned patriotism replaced it with nothing. You know we we tore down marriage replaced it with nothing. You know we tore down the office, the community, the small town square, all the things we tore them down and we've replaced them with nothing. I feel like I I'm I'm rooted in those. I'm rooted in that a more ancient tradition. That's to me where I find me to rebuild that

those voices not. I'm a fan  

 

f shadow banning. I'm not a big fan of shadow banning by corporate interests. We're doing it for the wrong reason. Yeah. I'm a big fan of excluding people and heads on pikes when you actually have the conviction of why that person needs to be excluded f

as on your shar

 

. Yeah. And like, you know, that blowhard has been mining the same passage from Seneca Yeah, tell me something new. Did you read a new book today? Okay, so now you muted that you don't realize that that person is changing the  

 

 

 

 

nal Constitution. In an open air Park it's protected under bulletproof glass and Hell

eah, modifier and the key point is Can you touch it? Understand why can't we touch it? were the people, the people? No, you can't touch i

. You just can't. Right. Yeah, it's sure protections and enforcing of boundar

ave the community right. Now, that's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah, it's weird. I feel like everyone, everyone should have experience moderating an internet forum. Like I cuz I did that as a certain internet nerd growing up and so I, I, you Yeah, you're like, Look, you gotta You got to ban people or you got to get rid of people or you have to insist on the rule like if there are rules and you don't insist on people following that rule you descends into a

 

archy immediately I also think you need an injustice budget. Like in other words, you can't move through the world you like the Jains in India? They don't do any harm. Okay? Yeah. Okay, well, no, you have to you have to be allowed to do some injustice as you move through planet Earth. Got it? So the fact that so many people have an idea that they have to only have type one error and never have type two e

 

ror is paralytic. Well, so I wrote a piece a couple months ago about hunting and Hunter. Yeah, I go live on a little farm in Texas mostly mostly boars, because they're an enormous invasive species. But what I love two things about it. I love one if I took a picture of my breakfast this morning, people Oh, that's a delightful photo right? If I took a picture of a boar I shot a murder, right? No, actually what One is much less violent and cruel than the other right? Bacon from a factory farm. You know sausage from I encourage everyone to read the walrus and the carpenter poem of Lewis Carroll. I'

read this. Well, you know, the time has come, the walrus said to talk of many things of shoes and chips and celiacs of cabbages and kings and why the seas boiling hot and whether pigs have wings ever heard now, it's a dialogue between these two characters who trick a bunch of oysters into being their lunch. Ah, and one of them is very sad about the fact that they've done such a nasty thing and the other ones like, Oh, come on, we did it. Whatever. Yeah. And I really detest you. The question is, who do you detest more? Yeah, and I always detested the one with this sort of mock care and sanctimony and pity Yes, whereas other people have the idea. Well, at least that's a nub of something to begin an em

homeless crisis. Do you see your own h

 

pocrisy? Clearly? What like, what in what I just said are in

critical. I mean, I think that that's the right the right posture and I think that I don't in an online world signing yourself up for being for truth for goodness for consistency. Yeah. You just dooming yourself to fail. There's no possible way that you're going to leave a trail that isn't going to contradict itsel

 

many times over. Yeah. And one of the stoic ideas is sort of be strict with yourself and tolerant of others. We have it the exact opposite in our sort of media culture, especially, like, I always laugh at the sky is falling alarm of media people about the collapse of norms in politics. These are the same people who wake up every day and had been part of a generational collapsing of neurons. Inside journalism, right and so we can be norm enforcement is not something that you insist on other people do. It's something that you follow. I think religious people get this wrong to the 10 commandments are not you for you to enforce on other people. The 10 commandments are 10 rules to govern your behavior, because that's also your that's what's u

nd then the knife st

 

ck in in twisted. Yes. And something that I also took from you. I think that story is rife with is what was it? The rustle can rustle conjugation that's exactly like so how you decide to spin those things is the difference between him looking like ruthless businessman, a fool or savvy, savvy. Seven ruthless might be Russell conjugates. Yes, but but fool is the preferred way of destroying people in our culture. And I actually think what Trump like it, maybe I had this theory that like the media just wants, if there's a sort of bent towards nihilism, or absurdity, it's like how do we just undermine the credibility of everyone? Everyone in everything constantly by by sort of pointing out weird flaws, contradictions showing, portraying their worst moments blowing up, you know, bad comments, that that's that's the equivalent. The analogy is that's all you don't feel good. Here's some antibiotics, you don't feel good. Here's some antibiotics. And then Trump and some other figures, I think, doesn't just have to be political are the Sooners drugs that are anti biotic or anti right? resistant to antibiotics? Right. And then we don't have another play. Like we don't have a

 

ything we can do. Are you fascinated by th

Trump phenomenon was originally a very horrified, and I've come back down to more of a be

 

 

I think, I think like no learning s

 

ems to take place well, so it's impossible to get someone to understand what's in their financial interest to not understand ideologically they could not dislike Trump more commercially. He could not be You better. So the idea that they would learn this and kill the golden goose is just not going to happen. But when that stat that, oh, we gave Trump, you know, the media gave Trump $2 billion in free publicity. The media business turns around and sells that free publicity at a multipl

ully believe you. Okay. In other words, if that were true, then you would vote for Trump. And you won't. Me. You mean that report reporter that SJW reporters that PR I don't think these people I think they are benefiting from it and implicitly and subconsciously they're doing things to further this. Yeah. Nicholas conflict. I'm not sure. Yeah. I don't think they really want Trump to continu

 

in office. Yeah, right. But so I think there there is the, but that's the Upton Sinclair thing is that you don't you don't understand why you're not understanding it because you're you think ISIS are blinding you to to

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

really wants her. No, nobody really likes N

ncy Pelosi either or anywhere else. But yeah. Nancy Pelosi when she in her role is Starker. They may not like Nancy Pelosi, but they know that she's a darker she's a tough piece of muscle. Sure. And if she's your Starker then Okay, she's your bad guy to go up against their back. I don't think we have exactly the same feeling about Pelosi at

the moment. Sure. Yeah, it is weird. You're sort of hostage

have have gotten very one sid

d verdict, is i

? Yeah. You know, it's not it's not about her being a woman. It's not about her specific just don't like her in spe

ific. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Y

 

 

l, you know, like that, is it? Yeah. I mean, have you been in these terrible definition? I don't even know what liberal means. If all what I'm just I'm ju

 

t saying is, like many of the greatest storytellers of our time would identify as liberal and vote democratic. And yet, why are the liberals so bad at storytelling, narrative, branding? Like, why is Trump actually the one that is dominating the news cycle? that knows like when you watch the Democratic candidates speak, or when you watch Hillary's campaign, are they actually so abysmal at saying anything compelling, having any kind of  

als, we're lyi

 

g? In what sense? Let's imagine I wanted to tell heartwarming, heartwarming story about immigration. Yeah. If I just have a story about a guy that comes with a dream and fans a company and puts all sorts of people to work and becomes an American hero, that's not a great story. At the moment, if I were instead to tell the story about a guy who comes over on an h1 b visa is being cynically exploited by importers of labor who are trying to destroy the American worker. And then he realizes what's going on. And then he founds a business despite the fact that he's been used as a pawn in this terrible game. And, you know, he starts speaking out on behalf of you know, do you think that they hate immigrants, they don't hate immigrants. What they really hate is your exploitation you America, like, Oh my God, what a story that would be. Yeah. Because then I would say, Wow, you've just resolved these two things. One, I've always been Loved immigrants and to I can't stand immigration and the reason is because it's being exploited. That's a story with an emotional core, which would allow people to say I've never heard anyone sing my song before. I work in an environment where I love the immigrants and I can't stand my American bosses because of what they're using the parents to do against me. We can't tell that story. Like, the weird thing is, is that the left is not in any way shape or form the left it's not liberal. It's not pro worker, okay, it's metastasized into some unrecognizable thing that has no authenticity and calling it the left. Like when you had protest songs that were witty that were smart that, you know, that nailed people where they lived. Sure, that worked. Sure you know this thing with gretta when Trump went after gretta, and he didn't go after credit directly, he went after the the exploitation of graduates He knew that I was a late, which is disgusting and there, but then I start to feel negative things about credit. Why should I feel any negative thing about credit the person, I have to maintain layers and layers, and it's the layers of manipulation and malware that are making all of us deran

tell a compelling narrative, Greg, what, I wonder  

 

f I know the same group, I'm forgetting who it was. Billy Ray is one of them. Yep. It was his. I love the idea. I sort of wanted to be a part of it. And I went, and I won't say who the politician was actually forgetting the name. But the point was, that one of the Democratic candidates who came was was so smug and and, and sanctimonious, and so cloying in the things he was talking about is a person who accomplished like nothing legislatively, you know, but was what it was, it was very illustrated for me of the fundamental problem, I think which goes to your point, which is that instead of being honest and real, and thus relatable, the stories that the democrats are talking about just don't work. And I think the story you're talking about has has, is complicated. And there's some nuance and there's good and bad and you know what  

 

mean? Like it's, that's a text story, right? My point is an important part of it. Okay, well, the left when they were able to tell like if you have cartoon evil, like you had, you know, with the with lynchings in the south, yeah, you can tell a simple story of farraj. Right. The idea that you're going to not be able to tell the stories of our time is this means exactly the same point again. All of the great left of center stories in the modern era begin w

we screwed up on trade. Yeah. We screwed up on immigration, and we screwed up on terror. We told you that if somebody says Allah Akbar after a mass killing that that means absolutely nothing. Yeah. And that made you feel crazy. Because if you have any Muslim I'm sure they're telling you hey, we have a problem in Islam. You guys aren't taking it seriously. Yeah. And every time I hear somebody say the tear in Islam have nothing to do with each other. I always tell them you've just told me that you have no close Muslim friends because if you had them they would be telling you we have a problem in Islam with terror. Yeah, okay. So when you do that thing, you make people like I can't. You know, I talked about this as a Hercule perot, Agatha Christie mystery, called the Allahu Akbar. murderers. Nobody can figure out why anybody's uttering this phrase after all of these mass killings, and you're cute. Hercule perot is the only one who can solve the case. Th

say Yeah, right. Right. Okay. And then the last one is immigration. We are an immigrant loving country. We love our me because we come from immigrants stock. And as a result, what did you do? You use the fact that we love immigrants and they are open to the world to figure out a way to read Distribute wealth and put a vacuum into most of our pockets that exhausts into yours. So you used immigrants to transfer wealth and then you said, Oh, you wouldn't hit you know, you wouldn't hurt a puppy dog, you would hit a girl with glasses, you wouldn't say anything against an immigrant. Okay, all of those things are invidious. They're in bittering. And the idea that America is taking its middle finger and sticking it into the eye of the Democratic Party. Yeah. is warranted unless, unless and until it makes contact with Yes, we had a group of people associated with Davos, who played those games on you and created massive amounts of income and asset inequality. They're gone now. Yeah, we can't do that. They're still there. They still want to play the same games. They won't let us tell our stories. I mean, like, you know, the whole me to thing that happened in Hollywood. There was a lot of texture in that movement. Yeah, that could have revealed all all of the different ways in which, you know, there's type one error, there's type two error is ambiguity, right. Instead, it was done incredibly starkly very silently victims, I believe, believe all women Yeah. Right. You know, it's just, th

seductive ideas. The big issue is Genie negative policy, what can you if the Gini coefficient measures the extent to which income and asset inequality has increased? Okay, what are you going to do to decrease the Gini coefficient create a more equal society? So my claim is that on the far left, you have things like wealth caps, you know, no More billionaires are wealth taxes, asset taxes, then you have sort of neutralise things like UBI, which were Android loan debt. Right. And then on the right, you have things like renegotiation of trad

 

and  

 

mmigration. Yeah. And so all of these are intended to be Genie negative programs. Okay. And so that's a common consensus that we should do some Gi

it had a kind of ideological justificat

Nick personally. No, but I don't think he was that concerned about him being collateral damage in it, but I think what Gawker represented was Nick. But but it even Nick would talk to me later about how he there was an inmates running the asylum kind  

of these things. Yeah, Peter compared it to that. Melville story. It was it bonito, the one where it's a slave ship and can that the slaves takeover, but then another slave ship comes up next to it and so they can't really veal that they've taken it over. So the slaves are patrol are walking the, the, you know decks of the ship, conspicuously sharpening knives and you know, like, like, it's like it's it Nick look like he was the head of the machine but was not no longer the head of the machine. The toxic culture he'd created was running the show. I mean, even like, so there

I think so yeah. I mean, I think that the forces, in particular once the press is emboldened by an unreal visited New York Times v. Sullivan, like if you think about, I often compare it to the 66 or 67 memoirs versus Massachusetts coming out of the Warren Court. Yeah. He's two incredibly idealistic decisions that are very simple and Stark, and very, you know, morally easy to understand. Yeah. One of them gets revisited, because it's too insane to actually implement and the other one sort of stays with us. And then now that the press seems often to be against the public interest as often as it is for the public interest, like having its own weird, independent agenda, it's terrifying to see tha

much protection. Well, I think it's like if you're going to get the protections because in a way journalists almost have where the court decisions are coming. journalists have extra first minute rights that the ordinary person doesn't have, right? I can't walk down the street and defame and slander peo

like passing the board is one that is more universal than all the others and when you put journalists in contact with it, it's in a c