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- [00:00]
Hasan Minhaj
The Moon could be holding over $1 trillion worth of platinum in its craters. This is such a wild concept that I had to check it out on Ground News, which is today's sponsor. Ground News shows a breakdown of publications reporting on a story, including the ownership, factuality and political leanings of that story. It's not about eliminating bias. We've all got biases. It's just trying to make you aware of potential biases or the veracity of different publications as you analyze your an event or an issue. For example, when I read about the Moon, I was able to scroll between some of the 17 reporting publications. 84% of the sources were considered high factuality by Ground News, while others were not, though I probably could have guessed that by the headlines. One article was titled quote A sensational treasure is hidden on the Moon. Whoever gets it could become very rich. I'm skeptical, but I am listening. Use the link in the description or go to groundnews.com hasan to get 40% off their vantage plan, the same one we use here at HMDK that breaks down to just five bucks a month. For unlimited access. Visit groundnews.com hasan and subscribe today. I, Hasan Minhaj, am a sucker for fall food. I am craving pumpkin muffins, fresh apples and a warm bowl of chili. It just hits different with a slight chill in the air. Let's be real. I have been very upfront with all of you guys. I cannot cook for shit. Normally around the house I'm the trash guy or the dishes guy or the let's just order takeout guy. But lately I've been the Whole Foods guy. They have amazing baked goods, pre made meals and the highest quality ingredients. Plus I get my Halloween candy there and it will never have red dyes, high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. But the best news of all this month at Whole Foods Market you can save 50% off select frozen pizzas with prime through October 28th. That's half off. That's on brands like Rao's, Caulipower and Daiya. So I will be skipping the takeout and chefing up frozen pizzas this month. How hard can it possibly be? That is 50% off select frozen pizzas with prime at Whole Foods Market. Terms apply. Visit your local Whole Foods Market today in store or online.
- [02:13]
Jill Lepore
Lemonade.
- [02:17]
Hasan Minhaj
Do you think Batman would vote for Donald Trump?
- [02:21]
Jill Lepore
He's a really. Which Batman? Adam West? No. The Christopher Nolan Batman? Yes. What do you think?
- [02:29]
Hasan Minhaj
I don't think Nolan Batman Nolan Batman definitely is not registered to vote okay, that's fair.
- [02:35]
Jill Lepore
That's fair.
- [02:36]
Hasan Minhaj
Jill Lepore is an author, New Yorker staff writer and professor of history and law at Harvard University. She expects a lot from her students and her readers. Her 2018 book, these A History of the United States was 955 pages. Pages. Holy shit. Her new book, we the A history of the U.S. constitution, is 720 pages. Thank you so much for being considerate. But these aren't just zoom meeting bookshelf decorations. These are gateways to understanding how our history shapes who we are and where we're going as a country. Now, have I finished reading either of these books? No, But I have followed Professor Lepore for years because she understands that the best way to explain the present is, is to talk about the past. So we get into it. We talk about technocracy propaganda, AI presidents, and the 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi rally here in New York City. And I ask her a question on behalf of America's tech oligarchs. Isn't a manifesto basically just a constitution with more cocaine?
- [03:40]
Jill Lepore
Hurry, right away, no delays are there. Make your daddy glad. You have had such a laugh.
- [03:48]
Hasan Minhaj
You teach history at Harvard University and you're also a law professor. You wrote a 955 page history of the United States. Many people have it on their bookshelf.
- [04:02]
Jill Lepore
I saw it as credit for owning it.
- [04:04]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah, yeah. I saw it as decoration. You know, the zoom meeting flex, it's in the background of like, it has.
- [04:09]
Jill Lepore
Some heft to it that counts.
- [04:10]
Hasan Minhaj
My question to you is, are Americans too dumb about history to realize that we are reliving history right now?
- [04:17]
Jill Lepore
No, history as an academic discipline. Okay, set that aside for a minute. But just like we live in a world where we're constantly orienting ourselves in relationship to the past.
- [04:27]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [04:28]
Jill Lepore
So that for sure happens with people as they think about our political circumstances too. Right. I don't think it means, oh, you have to have taken AP US History or you have to have gone to college. Like, I think people have a real sense of change over time because that's, that's just. It's like how we steer the boat.
- [04:48]
Hasan Minhaj
But do you think on some level we feel intuitive historical deja vu of like, this has to have happened before?
- [04:54]
Jill Lepore
I think we are flooded with historical arguments like make America great again is like a four word historical argument. Right. Like it just like it presupposes a past, it makes a claim about who could change the future. Like we, our whole politics is oriented around like progressivism. Right. There's like an Argument about progress, conservatism, and it's an argument about conserving the traditions and history. Like, we. We just live that. Like, maybe we're not as. I mean, like, my job is to think about this stuff all day. So, like, I think about it all day, but I don't know that people think about it all day. But I do think we are immersed in a world of daily lived experiences and popular culture and politics and where the place of history looms exceedingly large. Maybe, you know, maybe even too large.
- [05:47]
Hasan Minhaj
I speak for the casuals. I speak for people that are just feeling it in the comment section, in the streets as I mill about here in midtown Manhattan. And one of the things I keep hearing from a lot of people is we are living through a 1930s moment. This feels like the 1930s all over again. As a historian, what are the parallels that you see between the 1930s and the 2000 and 20s, what we're living through right now?
- [06:13]
Jill Lepore
Well, I think when people say that they're talking about the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and they're talking about the abdication by ordinary Germans of a moral voice that could have stood in opposition to what Hitler and the party were doing over the course of the 30s, they're thinking about the appeasement on the part of. So the European powers famously, like, kind of appeased Hitler for a long time, and so they're thinking about that. They're also thinking about what was at the time called the strategy of terror. The Germans had this crazy effective PR machine where before they were going to invade or do anything, they would on the radio sort of broadcast effectively that they had already done it.
- [07:04]
Hasan Minhaj
Yes.
- [07:05]
Jill Lepore
And just terrorize the population into giving up before they even rolled in the tank.
- [07:11]
Hasan Minhaj
So this is so interesting. You've written about this. You wrote about the power of radio as a form of media.
- [07:15]
Jill Lepore
Yeah.
- [07:16]
Hasan Minhaj
In the 1930s, do you feel like there's parallel between that type of propaganda influencing the masses in the 1930s and kind of social media and Web 2.0 in the 2010s and 2020s?
- [07:28]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. I mean, yes and no. I mean, like, with most parallels, it's like. It's parallel, but it's also perpendicular. You could kind of get lost in this.
- [07:35]
Hasan Minhaj
It's not perfect. It's not.
- [07:37]
Jill Lepore
It's not perfect. Right. So the thing about radio that's just kind of almost impossible to, you know, when you have, like, your earbuds in and you're listening to a podcast and you have that, like, that total intimacy with the voice of the podcast.
- [07:49]
Hasan Minhaj
Why are you calling me out, Professor? It's just me on the train.
- [07:52]
Jill Lepore
Like, you feel so intimate. Like, okay, so think about when radio was new, right? And you have this device in your kitchen, you know, in your living room, and these voices are coming in and you don't respond. Like you're just listening. So there was a huge amount of research at the time. Like the whole like modern experimental psychology is kind of based on the study of the radio. Because the power of persuasion that that made available was extraordinary. And Germany's Minister of propaganda, Goebbels, like understood that, right. He required everybody to have a radio in their house and he basically push a button from his desk and tell the German people what to believe. And in the US there was a really determined effort to not allow that to happen, to not allow radio to become that. And there are all these kind of fantastic. So we think about like FDR and the fireside chats, like, well, maybe that is propag. He wanted to like talk, to have Americans gather around their fireside and he would tell them we have to close the banks. But there was also this incredible outpouring of democratic radio that was designed to say, okay, no, let's actually use this tool, this kind of crazy new technology that could be so bad, it could be so dangerous. Let's figure out how to use it to fortify our ideals of democratic participation, representation and deliberation. Like NBC had this show called, I think it's called the Town Meeting of the Air. And it begins with like this bell ringing and this town criery.
- [09:17]
Hasan Minhaj
What decade was this?
- [09:19]
Jill Lepore
It was called the Town Meeting of the Air. It's so cool. You can listen to it on YouTube. So they would be like on the radio every week and they'd get this panel of people to like deliver. They had these topics like they were kind of like voted up.
- [09:28]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [09:28]
Jill Lepore
Voted down topics.
- [09:29]
Hasan Minhaj
So it'd be like, so still thumbs up? Thumbs down.
- [09:31]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, still thumbs up. Should we have like national health care? Should the Communist party be outlawed? Whatever. Like, and they'd have people with different opinions debate them on the radio. And you were supposed to listen at home and then continue the debate. Like in the US people tried to use radio to defend the United States against the rise of fascism, whereas of course in Germany it was is used to advance fascism. So I guess your question is like, is it parallel or not parallel? The thing is the. I don't think any of the pro democracy technologies that we associate with social media have ever worked. Maybe you can think of one. Well, that. That is working or has worked, but I. There's, like, a lot of dreams about that.
- [10:15]
Hasan Minhaj
Tell me about the federal program in the 1930s called the Federal Forum program.
- [10:20]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, this was this crazy good idea. It's a really great idea. So this guy, I think he was maybe superintendent of schools in Detroit or Cleveland or when he's in big Midwestern industrial towns, and he thought, all right, democracy is really in crisis. So the 30s in the US were very much like this moment to get back to your palace in the sense that everybody was worried about the future of democracy. Like, democracies are falling all over Europe, and American democracy seemed pretty fragile. So people would have these debates, and whole issues of magazines would be like, what is the future of democracy? So this guy was like, all right, well, let's actually do some democracy. I have at my disposal all of the public schools in my entire school district that are empty every evening. Like, why don't we use these buildings like this bricks and mortar to try to, like, bring people together to have these debates? And so he. He would. They would do, like, door to door, like, knock on the door, polling sauce, like, upvote down, vote, ask people what they were interested in debating. And, you know, it could really be anything. And he would just then hold these meetings at the local schools. They would have the debate that the people in the neighborhood or the precinct had chosen. People come in, like, give us some information. The public would. They would just have this kind of, like, big forum about.
- [11:34]
Hasan Minhaj
There's two things that you laid out that I thought were so interesting, which. Well, number one, it was federally funded. Okay. And then number two, the topics seem so prescient. Should the power of the Supreme Court be altered? Do machines oust men? Must the west get out of the East? Do company unions help labor? Can we conquer poverty? I mean, I'm like, are these 19?
- [11:57]
Jill Lepore
Can we just redo those? Like, let's just do that.
- [11:59]
Hasan Minhaj
Like, take two. What's this, like, the Bernie and Zoron, you know, democratic socialism campaign? These are all things we're still talking about, right?
- [12:05]
Jill Lepore
We didn't solve them.
- [12:06]
Hasan Minhaj
We didn't solve them.
- [12:07]
Jill Lepore
No.
- [12:07]
Hasan Minhaj
But I do think it is pretty cool that, like, you know, this was IRL debate. This isn't about social media clout. People had to put their shoes on and say that shit to your face.
- [12:16]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, you're all about putting shoes on.
- [12:17]
Hasan Minhaj
Put your shoes on. Yeah, yeah. This is about Thanksgiving dinner. But you're not forced to go. You're willingly engaging in some form of discourse. And even if it is about ego, did you find that people maybe found it as a more healthy way to resolve their differences?
- [12:35]
Jill Lepore
I think it just, it is like, got people out of the house, stretched their muscles, like, renewed their democratic habits.
- [12:41]
Hasan Minhaj
I mean, the closest we have in modern day, I think, was the January 6th riots. Obviously we had a representative government. Number 45. He tweeted out a time and location. He was like, pull up. Come one, come, come all. People clearly put their shoes on. Some put on a Viking helmet. It could have used a moderator. But discourse happened. Seven people were killed, two were cops.
- [13:03]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. Political protest is a different tradition. Political violence is a different. I guess you could call it a tradition. But those are, I will put to you, inimical to public debate. Like, that's, that is. To go and seek to overturn an election through violence is the opposite of the founding principle of democracy that we agree to lose.
- [13:25]
Hasan Minhaj
I don't know if you saw this post on Truth Social that was written by the President. Let's take a look at this. But essentially the president here is directing this at Pam Bondi, and DJT is basically saying, hey, Bondi, I need you to go after Comey, Adam Schiff and Letitia James. So is it safe to say when friends and fellow citizens here in society are saying we are descending into fascism? Is this fascism?
- [13:54]
Jill Lepore
You know, it is in this sort of Orwellian sense. Fascism becomes overused when both sides use it as a term of ready opprobrium, and then it loses its power, which is part of the problem with using the word fascism. You've probably noticed lately that it is far more preferred by journalists who are covering the Trump administration, by political scientists writing about executive overreach, the decay of the separation of powers, the failure of the Supreme Court to uphold its obligation to defend the Constitution against executive overreach, that really, authoritarianism is, I think, a more accurate term. Fascism is a kind of cultural. A kind of cultural wide phenomenon that we could talk about differently. But I think, you know, the outrageous truth, social media, whatever it is, post is classic authoritarianism, right? Like, it is, it is. It is wildly unconstitutional. And the publication of it is even weirder. Right. People are like, did he mean to put that online? Wasn't that just like.
- [15:01]
Hasan Minhaj
No, he meant it.
- [15:02]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, he did, yeah.
- [15:03]
Hasan Minhaj
He's got a lot of practices.
- [15:04]
Jill Lepore
He did, he did, he did. But so I think it's, it's, it's tricky because there is a kind of dilution of the meaning of words that is Also associated with fascism. Right. So. But it is worth stepping back a minute and saying, like, remember when, you know, Biden was like, I'm running, I'm running. We're the party defending democracy.
- [15:25]
Hasan Minhaj
Yes.
- [15:27]
Jill Lepore
And yet Biden didn't want to step aside. And yet the Democratic Party didn't want to hold an open primary or have a mini convention. Like, there are institutional ways in which the Democratic Party, while touting itself as the party of democracy, was being profoundly anti democratic, which really weakens our ability to think about democracy in meaningful terms. Right. So if you're willing for short term political gain, to use a term, to advance your own party's aims without consequence for what it does, for our ability to speak with clarity to one another, then damn you. That's how I feel about that.
- [16:01]
Hasan Minhaj
We're here in midtown Manhattan. Literally a few blocks over is Madison Square Garden, AKA the Mecca. I think one of the greatest arenas on planet Earth. Now, it's had many events held there. This was not a good event. In 1939, there was literally a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. What were the underpinnings of what happened there that allowed Ticketmaster of the time to issue tickets, have people come, all 17,500 seats get filled up. And what happened at that rally?
- [16:35]
Jill Lepore
There is a really, truly beautiful and profoundly distressing documentary film about that rally that I would really recommend to everyone by the director, Marshall Curry.
- [16:46]
Hasan Minhaj
Yes.
- [16:47]
Jill Lepore
Where he restored the footage that was taken. And there's just incredible audio of those addresses. If you ask what we are actively fighting for under our charter. First, a social just white gentile ruled United States. Second, gentile controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow directed domination. It is just really chilling to look at that space where you're like, you're used to seeing, I don't know, Lebron James or Larry Bird or whoever it is, you know, like these guys and they have this giant banner of George Washington behind them and they are selling Nazism as Americanism. That's in a way, the thing to me as a historian that is really most shocking about it. The kind of repackaging.
- [17:42]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [17:43]
Jill Lepore
Of the ideals of the Nazi party as consistent with a particular.
- [17:50]
Hasan Minhaj
I think they fundamentally sell this German authoritarian, fascist ideology.
- [17:57]
Jill Lepore
Yeah.
- [17:58]
Hasan Minhaj
To what, what was considered to be one of the world's leading democracies.
- [18:02]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. So it's important to remember they totally failed. They sucked. And they failed. And they were hot.
- [18:07]
Hasan Minhaj
Take. They sucked.
- [18:08]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, they sucked.
- [18:09]
Hasan Minhaj
I agree.
- [18:09]
Jill Lepore
Right?
- [18:09]
Hasan Minhaj
I agree, Professor. I agree.
- [18:11]
Jill Lepore
Also, like it's, it's, it's also A tribute to the United States that they were able to hold an assembly like that. Is that, is that is what our First Amendment is about. No one said, you can't have this meeting. And the fact that they had the meeting really inspired people to think differently about just how perilous the possibility was of the United States falling to fascism. It was revelatory, I think, to Americans at the time to see that this, that this event had happened. You know, there are journalists who report, Dorothy Thompson, the great journalist, reports on that event. There's a protester who is, you can see this in the documentary, who is just jumped on and dragged out of the meeting. So it is, you know, there are the, what they're arguing is the same crap that is being marketed by the far right across the history of the United States, right? In times of economic weakness, where ordinary people are suffering and looking maybe for an explanation, looking for a group of people to blame, it can be sold to them as a political product that there's a particular group of people to blame. And their difference from you is one that is immutable. And their presence in the United States is itself a defilement of the founding ideals of the country. I mean, it's like you can, it does, it's not hard to make the list, right. It's sort of similar. Like you could take that list of those topics at the debates held in the federal debate forums of the 1930s, and you can also take the list of the talking points of the, the Bund, the German bundle, which held that rally in 1939, and they will come across as very familiar.
- [20:00]
Hasan Minhaj
Well, this is something that was quite chilling. I mean, when you, I don't know if you saw this the other day, but it was reported that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he called upon not just the top US Generals, but the top US Generals from around the world. Now, keep in mind, obviously for those of our listeners that don't know, there's over like 750 bases, military bases that the United States has on all over the world. And Pete Hexseth called them for an in person meeting. Now, I know we're having a return to work moment, and I get it, but that's a lot of top generals that have to pull up and have a meeting in person. And that seemed unprecedented. But then a retired lieutenant general tweeted this. I don't know if you saw this. Ben Hodges goes. July 1935. German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin, informed that their previous oath to the Weimar Constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Fuhrer. Most generals took the oath to keep their positions. And then Pete Hegseth, quote, tweets him and says, cool story, General.
- [21:04]
Jill Lepore
For real? Did he really do that?
- [21:06]
Hasan Minhaj
This is for real now. Was this a cool story?
- [21:09]
Jill Lepore
Yeah.
- [21:10]
Hasan Minhaj
What's going on here?
- [21:12]
Jill Lepore
No, now I'm a little stricken by the idea that he retweeted that.
- [21:15]
Hasan Minhaj
Yes, quote, tweeted.
- [21:17]
Jill Lepore
Effectively. What the Trump administration has done this second time around is instead of attempting to abide by the Constitution, even notionally, has been very explicit that the Constitution is what Trump says it is, that he does not have a duty to uphold the Constitution. He has said as much himself, although that is, in fact, the oath that the President swears on his inauguration. But for Trump, the Constitution is malleable, can be whatever meaning he wants to attribute to it. So the 14th amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Trump says, no, it doesn't. And therefore what he says is true. Trump's general rule is right. Whatever I say is true.
- [22:03]
Hasan Minhaj
So he treats himself almost as a quasi. Both president and Supreme Court justice, interpreter of the Constitution, essentially.
- [22:08]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. So he has. Just to be clear, there is no constitutional role for the President of the United States in interpreting the Constitution. The interpretation of the Constitution is left to the judiciary.
- [22:21]
Hasan Minhaj
But. But certainly presidents have always had.
- [22:23]
Jill Lepore
Presidents have views about the Constitution.
- [22:24]
Hasan Minhaj
ESPN first take on their favorite.
- [22:26]
Jill Lepore
Absolutely.
- [22:27]
Hasan Minhaj
You know, but amendments, etc.
- [22:29]
Jill Lepore
Right. I mean, there's not that you think about. FDR gives this really important speech in 1937 about the Constitution. Truman gives a big speech about the Constitution in 1952. Like, you know, presidents have views about the Constitution, but the Weimar moment is about saying we have to have a whole new Constitution and you have to swear to it. And the Constitution is the Fuhrer's Constitution. I think the kind of empirical question now is Hegseth doesn't need to have the generals swear to Trump's Constitution, but presumably, effectively, that is what they're being asked to do.
- [23:05]
Hasan Minhaj
They don't have to literally swear.
- [23:06]
Jill Lepore
They don't have to literally do that.
- [23:08]
Hasan Minhaj
But, like, kiss the ring, right? Until recently, I didn't realize food waste is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. When food ends up in landfills, it makes methane, which heats up the planet 80 times faster than carbon dioxide. Most of the food in landfills comes from our homes. So this is an actual issue that we in our households can have a real impact on. Today's sponsor mill makes reducing food waste odorless. And effortless. Mill is a food recycler that transforms your food scraps into nutrient rich grounds. All you gotta do is chuck them in and stop thinking about it. Then you can use the grounds in your garden or Mill can send them to a local farm for you. I love Mill because it breaks down food quickly and keeps my kitchen smelling fresh. Now I don't constantly have to take the trash out. It's awesome knowing that I am making a difference with essentially zero effort. Sounds too good to be true. You can actually try MILL risk free and get $75 off with code Hasan. That's H a S a n visit mill.comhasan to try mill today. That's mill.comh a s a n I Hasan Minhaj am a sucker for fall food. I am craving pumpkin muffins, fresh apples and a warm bowl of chili. It just hits different with a slight chill in the air. Let's be real. I have been very upfront with all of you guys. I cannot cook for for shit. Normally around the house I'm the trash guy or the dishes guy or the let's just order takeout guy. But lately I've been the Whole Foods guy. They have amazing baked goods, pre made meals and the highest quality ingredients. Plus I get my Halloween candy there and it will never have red dyes, high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. But the best news of all this month at Whole Foods Market you can save 50% off select frozen pizzas with prime through October 28th. That's half off. That's on brands like Rao's, Kali Power and Daiya. So I will be skipping the takeout and chefing up frozen pizzas this month. How hard can it possibly be? That is 50% off select frozen pizzas with prime at Whole Foods Market. Terms apply. Visit your local Whole Foods Market today in store or online. Your new book, we the History of the Constitution goes into not only the Constitution itself, but constitutional amendments.
- [25:29]
Jill Lepore
I wrote the book because I just feel like it's very hard to know what the Constitution even is anymore. And who's in charge of it really? And is anyone upholding it? Or how does it change? Can it change? Like and I who's in charge of it? Who is in charge of it? We are. That's the whole. That's the whole game. That's the whole entire point of a written Constitution.
- [25:53]
Hasan Minhaj
I thought it was the Supreme Court justices that interpret it and then we are. What do you mean by that?
- [25:58]
Jill Lepore
We are. So okay, so cast your mind back. Sure. To sixth grade civics.
- [26:05]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [26:06]
Jill Lepore
You know, okay, there's going to be an American revolution. The Americans are mad. Parliament is taxing them. They're like, look, it's unconstitutional to tax us. No representation. Taxation without representation. And parliament's like, where does it say that England doesn't have a written constitution? As you may know, they still do not have a written constitution. It's the accretion of, of. Of rulings and precedents. Right. Ever changing. So the colonists, okay, well, we're going to rebel. And they do. And. But then immediately they need to have a government.
- [26:38]
Hasan Minhaj
Sure.
- [26:39]
Jill Lepore
The states. Even before declaring independence, the states had their own. Yeah. Because the states are like, okay, our royal governor is like a coward and he like got on a boat and went back to England because we, you know, ransacked his house, called him a loyalist. Yeah. Our. We have no legislature. Like, half those people are loyalists and they're gone.
- [26:57]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [26:57]
Jill Lepore
So we have no government. So we're gonna have a government and we're gonna. We're gonna have a constitution. Like England has a constitution. But you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna write ours down. And that was kind of a new idea. Like, it was, it was genuinely a new idea.
- [27:09]
Hasan Minhaj
And then the other cool new idea was the Constitutional Convention.
- [27:12]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. So then that's pretty fire. They're like, you know what, you know who can't write the convention freaking constitution? The legislature. We're going to write the constitution. We're going to elect special group of people, 39 delegates. They're not going to go on and hold office. They're going to be people who just write the Constitution. And then you know what? They don't just get to decide it. They send it back to the people for ratification. And you know what? On top of that, we have to have a provision in there that says we can amend it if we, if we need to. Because if we're going to write it down, like, that's great. That means we can point to and say the government has this power, but not this power. We have this right. Like, it's great to have it written down, but then it could get frozen in time. We want to have the ability to change it. And who should have the ability to change it? We do. So these were the, like, the founding principles of American constitutionalism. They, that a convention has to be called to write it, that it has to go to the people for ratification, and then it has to be amendable. And that all those things are true of the federal Constitution, which doesn't come till 1787.
- [28:06]
Hasan Minhaj
You know, professor, can you imagine having a constitutional convention now? How could you even possibly get consensus ON who the 39 delegates would be? Who would your 39 delegates be?
- [28:16]
Jill Lepore
So it's not for us to decide, it's for voters to decide. Right. That's like. You don't just appoint people to a convention. If you did, my list might be different, but. But that's not what we do. And here's the problem. We used to have state constitutional conventions all the time, too. Like, we've had like a couple hundred of them, but we haven't had a state constitutional convention to amend a state constitution since 1986. Because Americans just don't really trust one another to get together and deliberate over fundamental questions anymore. Right. There are a lot of fundamental questions we might want to ask. Not like, maybe the most, like, things about environmental protection, like, what are we going to do to mitigate climate change? Do we need to fundamentally alter our state's constitution to better deal with that? What about AI? Like, are there fundamental things we want to have, like privacy rights or we want to have. Like. There's a lot of fundamental questions that one would think we could ask right now about, about this supposed new era that we're entering. But. But we don't deliberate that way anymore. When people, like, can't get through the Thanksgiving dinner argument still, like, like, we need to build a lot of skills back. I think. Here's an analogy that I think sort of explains us. Like most people deeply of all the, like, declining faith in institutions. One thing most people really deeply believe in is. Is jury trial and jury service. The idea that at the end of the day, like, 12 randomly chosen people presented with evidence for or. And against a conviction or, you know, in a lawsuit can make the right decision. Like a verdict. The word means truth. Like that 12 randomly chosen people can make. Can do the right thing and they'll deliberate. It could be. It could be really difficult, but they will. We trust in that system. We all participate in it. And a constitutional convention is a bit like that. Right? Like that. You could just be called a lot of. A lot of. The idea for event conventions about choosing people by lottery, like, should be just kind of random. Like, who participates? You know, we don't need Beyonce to tell us what to do in the constant. Should be.
- [30:10]
Hasan Minhaj
That'd be kind of cool, though.
- [30:11]
Jill Lepore
Well, would it? She has a good hat, right? That would be. That would be good. But so, but so we don't do it anymore. We haven't Done it in, like, whatever, many years, and we've never done it federally since 1787. Like, if you imagine that we had stopped having jury duty in the 60s because someone said, like, oh, mainframe computers could do it better. And, like, we'll just let a computer decide guilt or innocence. And that's how we've been doing it for 50 years. Like, could we reintroduce jury trial today? Like, would people, if they hadn't done it in two generations, trust one another?
- [30:46]
Hasan Minhaj
Right.
- [30:47]
Jill Lepore
That's kind of. That's sort of where we are with, like, the idea of a Constitutional convention. Yeah.
- [30:51]
Hasan Minhaj
For me, it feels like the Constitution is basically cooked. All these things that I thought were democratic norms that were enshrined in law. The right to abortion, gone. Discrimination against LBGTQ people, gone. Birthright citizenship. We'll see First Amendment barely hanging on. Separation of church and state. It's not really a thing anymore. So is the Constitution cooked?
- [31:16]
Jill Lepore
I was at an event in Seattle the other night, and someone asked that question in the Q and A, and.
- [31:21]
Hasan Minhaj
I said, the Constitution basically cooked.
- [31:23]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:23]
Hasan Minhaj
Oh, great.
- [31:24]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, so it's great. It was like 500 people in this beautiful former church. And so I said, all right, like, all in favor of all, you know, say I. If you believe there's still use in the Constitution and we should figure out how to uphold it and amend it. And then I did all, you know, I'll oppose nay. And there were like, 10 people that said nay. It was kind of a resounding aye. And I. I was kind of impressed by that. Like, I think, you know, it's like the. You know, the framers said. And I'm not a big defer to the framers person, but, like, one of the more brilliant things they said is, like, the Constitution lives in the hearts and the minds of the American people. Like, we have the Constitution we want. If it's being trampled on, it's up to us to stop that.
- [32:08]
Hasan Minhaj
Right.
- [32:09]
Jill Lepore
So, yeah, it's all the things that you say about the ways in which it's cooked are ways in which it's cooked. But, like, is that inevitable? Is that. Is that not reversible? I.
- [32:23]
Hasan Minhaj
Look, you can be optimistic.
- [32:25]
Jill Lepore
You gotta, like, you gotta put your skin in the game. And it does kind of require getting out into the streets.
- [32:34]
Hasan Minhaj
I mean, right now, basically, the Supreme Court, they're the interpreters of the Constitution. And as you were saying, there's some hardcore originalists. You know, take like a Clarence Thomas. I would call him like a constitutional Wahhabist. But is it almost like the way religions interpret the Bible? Hey, you have your original text, we have the Old Testament, but then, hey, there are these new ways to interpret it. Mormonism, Lutheranism, et cetera.
- [33:03]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. And that is, you know, the means of inter. First of all, the power that the Supreme Court has granted to itself as the supreme interpreter of the Constitution is, Is a fairly recent vintage and is. Has a whole historical thing. But the. But the method that the Supreme Court uses to interpret the Constitution changes a lot over time. It tends to wax and wane. Honestly, with evangelicalism.
- [33:23]
Hasan Minhaj
I want to jump ahead a little bit here. One of the things that you recently wrote in the New York Times was specifically about artificial intelligence. And you wrote about Sam Altman and you're pretty cynical and critical of. Of the claims that he has made about how he wants to bring AI into the world democratically.
- [33:41]
Jill Lepore
Don't you think he's pretty cynical about the claims that he has made? Well, I think there are fewer more deeply cynical people than Sam Altman.
- [33:51]
Hasan Minhaj
I am trying to understand what makes him tick. And I wanted to ask you why the cynicism? I mean, tech oligarchs, they love a manifesto. They love a form of a constitution. These are the rules. They love the terms of agreement. Isn't a manifesto basically a constitution, but with more cocaine?
- [34:17]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. A manifesto is the opposite of constitutionalism. It's one man's determination of how we all should live. Do you remember in the. Maybe you're so much younger in the 90s.
- [34:30]
Hasan Minhaj
Old.
- [34:31]
Jill Lepore
In the 90s and the early 2000s, there was so much adulation of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur as the new hero of America and the world. And it was kind of maddening because everything that these entrepreneurs, not everything, but much, that a certain segment of entrepreneurs promised just was never realized. In fact, had the opposite effect. Like if you think about the founding mission of Facebook, it's going to connect us all. It's going to bring equal rights around the world. It's going to be an engine of.
- [35:05]
Hasan Minhaj
Humanity and a photo album for great weekend parties.
- [35:08]
Jill Lepore
Also that. And okay, maybe that came true.
- [35:12]
Hasan Minhaj
And the wall for birthday posts. It also regularly reminds me of whose birthday is.
- [35:17]
Jill Lepore
You get to hear by email from people that you went to high school with and didn't ever want to hear from again.
- [35:21]
Hasan Minhaj
Correct.
- [35:22]
Jill Lepore
So those things came true. But in fact, you know, it was an engine of polarization, extremism, radicalism, political dysfunction.
- [35:29]
Hasan Minhaj
No bueno.
- [35:29]
Jill Lepore
Destroyed local journalism, really bad. Had huge negative consequences. And yet there have been no consequences whatsoever. And no gov and essentially no government action whatsoever. And the latest project of, you know, Zuckerberg, under now the rubric of Meta is personal superintelligence for everyone. You know, Zuckerberg announced last summer that's his new goal. He's going to usher in a new era of human history with personal superintelligence for everyone. It's going to lead to prosperity, equality, greater connection, better humanity. Like why, why people don't get called on this, given that everything about the idea that the CEO of an international corporation gets to determine the rules by which people in a democratic society lives is in opposition to the principles in which we actually do live. I just think the press has been very complicit in the adulation and lack of investigation and critical distance. There's much more of that now. And now it's like, oh, now you're a doomer. Okay. It would have been good to be a doomer in about 2002.
- [36:30]
Hasan Minhaj
I mean, do you foresee the speed at which they are working and the fact that the current justice system and the current government is so analog, the speed of digital and. Yeah, well, these technologists, they're essentially the New founding Fathers. Would you. Could you argue that they're shaping?
- [36:49]
Jill Lepore
I mean, there's always a problem like technology is changes at a much faster pace than does the law and certainly then do constitutions.
- [36:56]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [36:57]
Jill Lepore
So it's, there's. We're really struggling with that. There's just like, it's, it's a kind of like tortoise and a hare situation.
- [37:01]
Hasan Minhaj
You've done such deep analysis about many technologists. And I would love this because I was a NorCal. I grew up as a Norcal kid. Grew up, born and raised.
- [37:09]
Jill Lepore
Did you want to be Musk when you were a kid?
- [37:10]
Hasan Minhaj
Did I want to be Elon Musk when I was a kid? You know what's so funny is I had friends that work at Space X. Yeah. Like, worked at Tesla 2002, 2003, 2004 Tesla. And really when I have this conversation, my friends that grew up in the bay, so many of my family friends work in technology, but I feel like when I read about technology and the way it's covered, there's kind of two camps. These techno futurists are either curious nerds or they are evil super villains. Have you seen the Incredibles?
- [37:41]
Jill Lepore
Of course I've seen the Incredibles.
- [37:42]
Hasan Minhaj
So they're basically written like there's syndrome from the Incredibles.
- [37:45]
Jill Lepore
Yeah.
- [37:45]
Hasan Minhaj
So if you haven't seen the Incredibles, Syndrome is basically the evil villain at the end, he. He has like a fro yo hair like that at the top, and he's really fucked up and bad, but it's one or the other.
- [37:56]
Jill Lepore
Yeah.
- [37:56]
Hasan Minhaj
Is that the way you see it, or is it a little bit of both?
- [37:58]
Jill Lepore
I mean, I think I once wrote a piece for the New Yorker called How Elon Musk Went From a Superhero to a Supervillain. Because it's very much exactly right. Like, we have these two ways of thinking about these characters, and that's largely because, just like, narratively, it's satisfying to think about them in either of those categories. Yeah, right.
- [38:16]
Hasan Minhaj
Where are we in the heroes journey?
- [38:17]
Jill Lepore
And, like, I totally get that. Like, I have not missed a Marvel movie and never will. Like, I'm fine with that. But, like, at the level of politics, that's crazy. Like, that the fact that you have this glamour, celebrity, whatever, you're on the time 100 most influential people, doesn't mean you actually get to tell the rest of us how to live. Like, this is the thing. Like, I started that New York Times piece with a quote by Altman this old. It's maybe 2016, and he says, like, if I wasn't in on this, I wouldn't want these telling me what to do. And I was like, yeah, that's how we all feel. I feel like that's it. Maybe you don't feel that way. Maybe you're happy to have them tell you what to do, but, like, we didn't decide as a society that they get to tell us.
- [38:55]
Hasan Minhaj
I'm cool with that.
- [38:56]
Jill Lepore
Okay.
- [38:56]
Hasan Minhaj
And. And guess what? I was a former TIME 100 person, and I don't get to tell anybody what to do. I have zero power.
- [39:02]
Jill Lepore
I don't mean to indict the time.
- [39:03]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah. I'm just saying, like, doing a YouTube.
- [39:05]
Jill Lepore
Podcast, whole fetish about whatever. You have the gold, platinum, you enter the plane first, you have your personal jet. Like, these things. I don't fucking care. Like, I'm sorry. They're like, if you either believe in democracy or you don't.
- [39:19]
Hasan Minhaj
I'm not even. I don't take any of these as personal attacks. And I'm only United 1K. I wish I was Global Services, but I'm only 1K.
- [39:28]
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Well, hi, everybody. It's Julia Louis Dreyfus from the Wiser Than Me podcast. And I'm not going to talk about food waste this time. I'm going to talk about food resources. All that uneaten food rotting in the landfill, it could be enriching. Our soil or feeding our chickens because it's still food. And the easiest and frankly, way coolest way to put all its nutrients to work is with the mill food recycler. It looks like an art house garbage can. You can just toss your scraps in it like a garbage can. But it is definitely not a garbage can. I mean, it's true. I'm pretty obsessed with this thing. I even invested in this thing. But I'm not alone. Any mill owner just might corner you at a party and rhapsodize about how it's completely odorless and it's fully automated and how you can keep filling it for weeks. But the clincher is that you can depend on it for years. Mill is a serious machine. Think about a dishwasher, not a toaster. It's built by hand in North America and it's engineered by the guy who did your iPhone. But you have to kind of live with Mill to understand all the love. That's why they offer a risk free trial. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer.
- [40:57]
Hasan Minhaj
In your column you mentioned a moment from Sam Altman's appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast and I want to play that moment back for you.
- [41:04]
Jill Lepore
We were joking around the other day.
- [41:05]
Hasan Minhaj
On the podcast where I was saying that what we need is an AI government, that we should have. What is that? AI President. And have AI just make all the decisions. Yeah. Have something that's completely unbiased, absolutely rational. I'll tell you something I love about that. Someday let's say that thing gets built. The fact that it can go around and talk to every person on Earth, understand their exact preferences at a very deep level, how they think about this issue and that one, and how they balance the trade offs and what they want, and then understand all of that and collectively optimize for the collective preferences of humanity or of citizens of the US that's awesome. Is that awesome?
- [41:47]
Jill Lepore
It's not awesome. There were some great short stories. A lot of fiction writers imagine this. In the 1950s, Isaac Asimov wrote a story called the Franchise. There's another story where the president is AI and they're all dystopian. Right. It's like the very opposite of what we believe. Right. That we do actually prefer humans to machines, at least thus far in human history. Insofar as, you know, basic matters of judgment, a capacity for sympathy. I think I would say that I don't speak for the majority of humankind, but I think most of us still believe that living in a body Is part of being intelligent that you can't actually be an intelligent machine? That is a super intelligence over humans. Like, we have an embodied capacity for knowledge. Like there's like, that's, that's actually tyranny like that. Like, did you people not watch any science fiction from the 90s? Like I, it, it is a through line of science fiction. It goes very, goes back to the middle of the 19th century even that we would one day be ruled by machines because we keep seeding bigger and bigger parts of our lives to decision making by machines. And you know, we are not that far from that. It's like intellectual play for Joe Rogan, I guess. But we're not like, I think you can reasonably ask, like, how far are we from being governed by artificial intelligence, given that, for instance, our public discourse is almost exclusively in the digital sphere. In the digital. So multinational corporations determine who sees this show and you know, what, how many, how often you're going to be, what you're going to be, what else you're going to be shown.
- [43:29]
Hasan Minhaj
Robotic algorithms and large language models.
- [43:31]
Jill Lepore
Right? It's like, was that a, was there a, was there a vote taken? Should we cede public discourse in the public square to corporations who believe that machine speech is free? It falls under First Amendment protections. I didn't choose that. I think that it is a real question how much we still are governing ourselves, given I have this book coming out next year called the Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, which I make the argument that we essentially live in an artificial state. The liberal nation state is so imperiled by the corporate ownership of public discourse where the majority of participants in our public square are bots. Right. They're all inverted platforms now where there are more bots than humans participating in them.
- [44:16]
Hasan Minhaj
Wait, so you believe in dead Internet theory?
- [44:19]
Jill Lepore
I don't believe in dead Internet theory.
- [44:21]
Hasan Minhaj
Come on, I thought we were going to get. Get it popping on the pod.
- [44:23]
Jill Lepore
No, that would be a hot take.
- [44:25]
Hasan Minhaj
Okay, well, what's interesting is that basically you're saying the only current civilians that we have that have the most amount of brain share that aren't being infringed upon by these tech oligarchs are essentially my friends that have flip phones.
- [44:40]
Jill Lepore
Your friends that have flip phones? Yeah.
- [44:43]
Hasan Minhaj
So that's just disease. I'm sorry, that's my one buddy who still uses a football.
- [44:46]
Jill Lepore
It's just disease.
- [44:47]
Hasan Minhaj
Just disease.
- [44:49]
Jill Lepore
Well, good for him.
- [44:51]
Hasan Minhaj
One tech oligarch you've deeply researched is Elon Musk, and you released a whole podcast on him. And it was called X Men. In the first episode, you talk about how he went from comparing himself to Iron man to comparing himself to Batman. But you explore the question of whether Batman is kind of fascism coded. Do you think Batman would vote for Donald Trump?
- [45:14]
Jill Lepore
So really, which Batman? Adam West? No. The Christopher Nolan Batman? Yes. What do you think? You.
- [45:22]
Hasan Minhaj
I don't think Nolan. Batman. Nolan. Batman definitely is not registered to vote.
- [45:27]
Jill Lepore
Okay, that's fair.
- [45:28]
Hasan Minhaj
That.
- [45:29]
Jill Lepore
That's fair.
- [45:29]
Hasan Minhaj
The Killing Joke Batman, where he's kind of like older and grizzled when he's got. He's kind of got the gray specks of hair in him. Killing jokes. That's World War II, dad Batman.
- [45:40]
Jill Lepore
That's.
- [45:40]
Hasan Minhaj
He's. That. He's a little. He's a little MAGA Batman. I think he might.
- [45:45]
Jill Lepore
Yeah. Yeah, fair enough.
- [45:47]
Hasan Minhaj
Elon Musk started with a great story. His business model was saving the world. It was capitalism for good. Did that story change or was it just never true?
- [45:57]
Jill Lepore
You know, there was a whole thing in the 90s on the. Really started late 80s, like the kind of mesh message boards of Silicon Valley where, like, all this rhetoric of existential risk, like the world is facing these existential risks that was imported from, like, national security studies and like, only, only our, like, tech innovation can save the world from these existential risks. And a lot of that discussion was about climate change. And I think that's a big part of what fired up Musk. When you, like early on, you see these early interviews with very young Elon Musk, like, like late 90s, he. He's really committed to sustainability. And like his. He has this kind of spirit of adventure around what becomes SpaceX, but Tesla, not just as a car company, but as a battery manufacturer. Right? He's really committed to sustainability, but he also has, what is just the water that everybody is sipping out there, a kind of recycled technocracy movement ideology, which is like. There was a political party in the 1930s called Technocracy, and Musk's grandfather was a leader of it. And they did not believe in democracy. They also didn't believe in communism or fascism, but they believed that democracy should be replaced by engineers making all the decisions. Scientists and engineers would make all the decisions. There should be no money. They believe in something basically pretty close to a universal basic income, that in the age of the modern industrial economy, democracy no longer made sense. It was, as they would say, it was just stupid. So I think that. I think that is a big part of Musk's worldview and the worldview a lot of, A lot of those. The current crop of tech CEOs really is just kind of recycled version of technocracy.
- [47:39]
Hasan Minhaj
What is the most interesting thing that you learned about Elon Musk in your deep research of him?
- [47:44]
Jill Lepore
I really love learning about his father. So his, his father, Joshua Haldeman was the. He was Canadian and he was the national leader of the technocracy movement in Canada. And then when the movement was outlawed.
- [47:55]
Hasan Minhaj
He mean, his father Errol must.
- [47:56]
Jill Lepore
I mean, he's. I'm sorry, his grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. Yeah, his maternal grandfather, father. When the movement was outlawed, he was arrested. He was denied entry into the United States. And then he became a leader of this anti Semitic party called the Social Credit Party. You know, when that kind of went down in flames and he failed to be elected, he left Canada for South Africa right after apartheid was announced. And then he became a very prominent defender of the apartheid regime and publishes a lot of conspiracy conspiratorial tracts that he self publishes. Like he types them out and he has a newsletter called Survival and he writes all these tracks called like the World Conspiracy of the International Health Organization. He's like anti vaccine. Just. I was really fascinated by discovering, partly because these very unpalatable tracts of Haldeman have been mostly, I think, destroyed. The family's certainly not going to make them available. But there was like a radical, radicalism collection at I think Michigan State University where they had been collecting radicalism, like writings of the KKK and stuff. And they had some of Haldeman's writing. So it was really amazing to be able to track those down. I also met a bibliographer of anti Semitica who had a bunch of Haldeman's writings and shared them with me. It's like as a historian, like an archival discovery is always like the most intriguing thing.
- [49:18]
Hasan Minhaj
Like you're a microfiche, Stan.
- [49:19]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, like for a reporter, it's like, you know, you. Someone to go on record with, you know, the like Deep Throat or whatever. But for, for historian, it's like finding something that no one else has ever seen before. That was really exciting. And also because they were so, you know, you were asking we just to circle back about the echoes of the 1930s. That technocracy stuff really is kind of prophetic. It's still with us.
- [49:39]
Hasan Minhaj
Do you think his maternal grandfather's writings and the conspiracy stuff and all that, you know, even the abhorrent anti Semitic stuff, do you think that had any impact on him?
- [49:49]
Jill Lepore
You know, I don't. I Don't have any idea about that. Like, Musk was, was like 2 years old when his father died in a plane crash. His father was an aviator. Like a big. They'd have a lot in common, actually. Look extremely alike. I don't. I mean, I don't. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe the family writings were in the household. It's certainly not something that Musk himself has ever spoken about. That's like, beyond my ability. Like a historian shouldn't speculate about it. I don't know. And he's not responsible for his grandfather's views. It's more just like that kind of stuff is on X alt the time now. And his grandfather's stuff completely vanished. Because it used to be when you had lunatic conspiratorial ravings that you typed up and sent in newsletters to your friends, you know, they put them in the trash and that was the end of that. But now, like, there's a. There's a, you know, there's a social media thing that's like going to amplify those views.
- [50:35]
Hasan Minhaj
We've read about all these Silicon Valley guys thinking about the future. They're techno futurists, but they're also simultaneously building doomsday bunkers. So I've been struggling to understand this. Right. Elon thinks we need to colonize Mars. Why are so many people that are trying to, quote, build the future also terrified of the future?
- [50:55]
Jill Lepore
I think they really do live in a world of a science fiction imaginary. So it's really for them.
- [51:09]
Hasan Minhaj
And do you see that the Terminator.
- [51:11]
Jill Lepore
Storyline is kind of an inevitability. Okay. In their mind. And so they can't.
- [51:16]
Hasan Minhaj
Or T1?
- [51:17]
Jill Lepore
No, T1. So what's that said in 2029? I think maybe in LA. Remember, like the opening scene, it's like LA is in ruins.
- [51:24]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:25]
Jill Lepore
And then we, you know, then we go back in time to whatever, Linda Hamilton or what. Like they can't travel back in time to fix it and they know they're actually bringing it on, so they kind of want to travel forward in time to make sure they have an escape route. Like, I just think they live in that. They live in that imaginary in a. I mean, I thought that actually really came across in that, that Mountainhead film. Did you watch Mountain Head?
- [51:48]
Hasan Minhaj
Oh, yeah. I love Mountain Head.
- [51:49]
Jill Lepore
Yeah, he's great. I thought it was a really clever embodiment of those ideas. Yes, well, they'll be a Mountainhead. They can go have their Ayn Rand, you know, Utopia. Where, sorry, where, you know, the rest of the world is burning. They're, like, watching on their phones as, like, people are dying in the streets. And they're like, well, shall we, you know, sacrifice another bowl of caviar to our temporary fetish for caviar?
- [52:16]
Hasan Minhaj
So you're basically saying there will always be this sort of ivory tower safe space, whether it's up in a mountain or down in a doomsday bunker where they can separate.
- [52:28]
Jill Lepore
I mean, it's an illusion. They don't get to survive any more than anybody else does. I like. It's a. But. But that they're in. I mean, like, questions. Why are they so invested in that illusion? I like they. It's honestly like, it's the James Bond Evil Dr. No layer. Like, really, it's fiction. But you know that scene in Mountainhead when they bring the baby up to visit the guy who's supposed to be sort of Zuckerbergian?
- [52:53]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [52:54]
Jill Lepore
And he, like, dotes the baby's, like, been traveling for 20 hours, no doubt in great misery.
- [52:59]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [52:59]
Jill Lepore
And he, like, snuggles with him for, like, the 30 seconds that he needs of. Of his own humanity and then sends him off again.
- [53:06]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [53:07]
Jill Lepore
That, I think, was the best representation in that film of the alienation from humanity and the human condition, that the fantasy of a world where we're governed by machines, where machines do all of our work for us, where our friends are machines. There's just a kind of abdication of the basic, like, living in a human being a person. Just be a person.
- [53:33]
Hasan Minhaj
Yeah.
- [53:33]
Jill Lepore
Yeah.
- [53:34]
Hasan Minhaj
Professor Jillaport, thank you so much for joining us.
- [53:35]
Jill Lepore
Thank you. It's been a real treat.
- [53:36]
Hasan Minhaj
This was awesome. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now's the perfect time because guess what? You can listen completely ad free. Plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus content like Halle Berry on how to be a good partner during menopause or Mehdi Hassan on the dumbing down of media clips you won't hear anywhere else. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app. That's lemonadapremium.com. don't miss out.