AI News Anchors, Dems $20 Million Plan to Study Men, and Max Bids Farewell to Offline

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau – Episode Summary Title: AI News Anchors, Dems $20 Million Plan to Study Men, and Max Bids Farewell to Offline
Release Date: May 29, 2025
Host: Jon Favreau
Guest: Max Fisher (Final Episode)
Knowledge Cutoff: 2023-10

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1. Farewell to Max Fisher

Timestamp: [00:50] – [07:24]

In this heartfelt segment, Jon Favreau announces that Max Fisher is bidding farewell to the show. Max expresses his bittersweet emotions about leaving, reflecting on the adventure and meaningful experiences shared over the past two years.

Max Fisher [02:55]: "It's bittersweet, man. It has been so fun, so interesting. I look forward to it every week, which is not something you usually say about a job."

Jon reciprocates the sentiment, emphasizing the invaluable partnership and friendship developed during their time together.

Jon Favreau [03:38]: "You are a partner and a friend and thank you for everything you've brought to the show."

The duo engages in light-hearted banter, comparing their dynamic to characters from "Silicon Valley," and sharing memorable moments from their collaboration.

Max Fisher [05:18]: "Everyone is sad that I'm going."

Jon Favreau [06:02]: "We're not even consciously uncoupling."

As the segment progresses, Max shares his deep appreciation for the show's impact on his personal growth and the meaningful conversations they've had.

Max Fisher [07:53]: "Don't give them to Trump, you know, don't give them to Mark Zuckerberg or fucking TikTok..."

2. The Rise of AI-Generated Deepfake News Anchors

Timestamp: [07:29] – [16:19]

Jon and Max delve into the alarming proliferation of AI-generated deepfake news clips, highlighting a viral 8-second video featuring a fake news anchor reporting a bizarre story about J.K. Rowling's yacht sinking.

Max Fisher [08:21]: "Now that is funny. You have to admit that it's funny."

They discuss the implications of such technology, emphasizing the potential for misinformation and the erosion of trust in authentic news sources.

Max Fisher [09:08]: "It's feeling a little cooked. It's feeling to me like this is the Jurassic Park moment for AI Deepfakes."

Jon adds to the conversation by drawing parallels to fictional scenarios and real-world consequences, such as the spread of fake news leading to financial market fluctuations.

Jon Favreau [11:24]: "It's not showcasing the danger... it's stuff that is believable but also very damaging."

The discussion extends to the challenges of content moderation on platforms like Meta, citing a case where an influencer's likeness was used in an unauthorized ad despite violating community standards.

Max Fisher [18:01]: "They're just not very good at enforcing this stuff."

3. House Republicans’ AI Regulation Ban

Timestamp: [22:22] – [25:37]

Jon introduces a contentious political development where House Republicans have passed a provision to prevent states and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade. This move aims to create a uniform federal standard but faces skepticism regarding its enforceability and legality.

Jon Favreau [23:36]: "They disagree. Last week, as part of their big, beautiful bill..."

Max critiques the provision as a result of corporate lobbying, arguing that it serves as a corporate handout rather than protecting consumer interests.

Max Fisher [25:22]: "It's just lobbying by trade groups. It's just a giant corporate handout."

4. Democrats' $20 Million Plan to Study Men

Timestamp: [25:37] – [33:28]

The conversation shifts to the Democratic Party's newly unveiled $20 million initiative, codenamed SAM (Speaking with American Men), aimed at regaining the support of young men. Max and Jon critically analyze the plan, questioning its approach and effectiveness.

Jon Favreau [25:37]: "What do you think about this? And, like, does this become law and is it lawful?"

Max Fisher [26:15]: "This is a giant corporate handout."

They debate whether the plan genuinely addresses the needs and sentiments of young men or if it falls into the trap of condescending anthropology.

Jon Favreau [26:39]: "Do you think it's a syntax problem?"

Max Fisher [28:07]: "It's not the elites in the party who do not talk and act like or have contact with or know what the lives of these voters are like."

The discussion highlights concerns that the Democratic strategy might be out of touch, leaning too heavily on academic language without genuine connection to the target demographic.

5. Reflections on Loneliness and Screen Time

Timestamp: [37:40] – [75:56]

In the latter portion of the episode, Jon and Max explore the pervasive issue of loneliness exacerbated by excessive screen time. Drawing from interviews with experts like Katherine Price and Lauren Greenfield, they discuss strategies to reclaim attention and foster meaningful in-person relationships.

Key Insights:

• Attention as Life's Currency:

  Emma Austin [39:00]: "Our lives are what we pay attention to... whatever you're paying attention to, that's what you're actually going to experience."

• Practical Tips to Reduce Screen Time:

  Max Fisher [40:06]: "Foundational number one, your phone goes in the other room overnight."

  Max Fisher [41:27]: "Expert level tips: Walks every day without your phone."

• The Role of Physical Activities:

  Engaging in activities like walking or working on puzzles helps reduce dependency on screens and enhances real-life interactions.

• Youth Perspective on Technology:

  Max Fisher [46:54]: "Teens are the ones sounding the alarm about phones being bad for them."

  They emphasize the importance of fostering real human connections over digital interactions to mitigate the loneliness epidemic.

Jon Favreau [50:18]: "Screens are fundamentally antisocial."

6. The Relationship Between the Right and Masculinity

Timestamp: [75:08] – [60:38]

In a critical analysis of masculinity within right-wing politics, Jon and Max discuss how the manosphere and figures like Jack Crosby interpret masculinity through the lens of dominance and violence. They explore how this portrayal resonates with men feeling disenfranchised and fosters a culture of cathartic aggression.

Jack Crosby [54:23]: "The right wing has successfully been able to present a definition of masculinity... involving the constant threat of an ability to inflict violence."

Max Fisher [55:43]: "I've come to understand something I didn't before... the manosphere has come to mean politically as a feedback loop between sports, podcasts, media, Trump."

They highlight the dangers of dehumanization facilitated by the Internet, where online interactions can embolden violent tendencies detached from real-world consequences.

Jon Favreau [59:35]: "The Internet era plays into this by dehumanizing people totally."

7. Embracing Mortality and Living in the Present

Timestamp: [75:56] – [76:43]

Concluding the episode, Jon and Max reflect on the importance of embracing mortality to live a fulfilled life. Inspired by Jenny Livingston’s insights, they discuss how recognizing the finite nature of life can foster deeper connections and intentional living.

Lauren Greenfield [66:31]: "Remember you're gonna die... it's a reminder to cherish each moment."

Jon shares personal anecdotes about how parenthood has enhanced his ability to live in the present, appreciating the small, meaningful moments over digital distractions.

Jon Favreau [73:44]: "Am I doing something that I feel is either satisfying to me or will have some kind of impact on the world around me?"

Max echoes the sentiment, emphasizing the need for presence and intentionality in an age dominated by technological distractions.

Max Fisher [75:56]: "Live a happy life in that moment, for that moment."

8. Closing Remarks

The episode wraps up with warm farewells to Max Fisher, encouraging listeners to embrace the lessons discussed about technology's impact on our lives and the importance of being present.

Jon Favreau [76:03]: "If there's anything I want the listeners of Offline to remember, it's staying fabulous."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Max Fisher [02:55]: "It's bittersweet, man. It has been so fun, so interesting."
• Max Fisher [09:08]: "It's feeling a little cooked. It's feeling to me like this is the Jurassic Park moment for AI Deepfakes."
• Max Fisher [16:19]: "But you could easily imagine an AI model that's able to reproduce clips from CNN, the BBC, Totally."
• Max Fisher [26:15]: "This is a giant corporate handout."
• Jon Favreau [39:00]: "Our lives are what we pay attention to."
• Max Fisher [40:06]: "Foundational number one, your phone goes in the other room overnight."
• Jon Favreau [73:44]: "Am I doing something that I feel is either satisfying to me or will have some kind of impact?"

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Conclusion

In this poignant final episode of "Offline with Jon Favreau," the hosts tackle pressing issues surrounding artificial intelligence, political strategies, and the pervasive influence of technology on human relationships. As Max Fisher bids farewell, the conversation underscores the urgency of reclaiming our attention and fostering genuine human connections in an increasingly digital world. Through insightful discussions and personal anecdotes, Jon and Max offer listeners a compelling narrative on navigating the challenges of the internet age to lead happier, healthier, and more present lives.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

You don't look like an old leather. You don't want to look like an old leather sofa.

[Jon Favreau]

No, no.

[Max Fisher]

The next thing you know, Trump's true socialing that you look leathery. That's what he said. Or what did he say about dried up like Bruce Springsteen.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, like a.

[Max Fisher]

He needs one skin.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

When our country is in crisis, every day, like every day is an emergency. Every day is scary. But at the same time, you know that you've got to live. You've only got so many hours and days. That's what your life is. Your life is hours and days. And don't give them to Trump, you know, don't give them to Mark Zuckerberg or fucking TikTok, both, because that's the only life that you have, but also because, you know, if you do care about saving democracy and fighting against Trump, then you've got to be able to be present for that. You've got to be actualized. You have to be in control of your own attention. So it's not about balancing living a happy, fulfilled present life against how to be engaged in saving our country. They're actually the same thing.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Max Fisher]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

Max, today is the day, your final offline taping. How you feeling?

[Max Fisher]

My send off before I'm launched into the sun, it's bittersweet, man. I mean, I, you know, I did not know what I was getting into when I moved out here to do this with you, which was part of the appeal. You know, it was an adventure and it was something new. But it has been so fun, so interesting. I look forward to it every week, which is not something you usually say about a job, which I definitely am not taking for granted. And it's felt really meaningful. Like, it feels really fulfilling to be doing this and very valuable for me just personally and I hope for people listening along. So thank you, you know, thank you to you, to Emma Austin, listeners, for really inviting me in here and I don't know, treating me like a partner and a friend. It's nice.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, you are a partner and a friend and thank you for everything you've brought to the show. And people ask me, what's your favorite thing to do with crooked and offline? Like, recording offline every week is really.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, my God, that's so nice, man. I love offline. Oh, it means a lot to hear.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, you know, I mean, I of course love Pod Safe America.

[Max Fisher]

Sure. Your spin off, which is. Is doing better and better. Yeah, I think it might take off.

[Jon Favreau]

But it is, it is so much of my life, both on microphone and off, just. And it like the conversations that we have been able to have are just, it's different and makes you think more and it gets out of the professional and political into like life.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And I've really enjoyed that. And I would not have been able to do it without you in shotgun here.

[Max Fisher]

Thanks, man. For a few years. Well, that, I mean, that realization feels like that's kind of the show, you know what I mean? Like, we thought this was a new show when we. I mean, obviously you started it well before I got here, but like when you and I were doing it and then realize that it's a show about life. And I think that's what we're realizing about politics right now and about democracy and elections. Is that actually both the like? Diagnostically, if you want to understand what's happening, you have to think about life. But also just if you want to be a good citizen and get through the week, that those are the things that really matter. Yes, Julia has been very nicely. She's been combing through the comments on YouTube and Discord. Can I read, like, comments reacting to me leaving? She hasn't sent me any. If there are any mean ones, she hasn't sent them to me. So as far as I know, everybody is sad that I'm going.

[Jon Favreau]

I'll send those in a couple weeks.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. I appreciate that quote. Truly going to miss your dulcet criticisms of John's screen time numbers and your thoughtful takes on the imminent doom we face as a two online nation. Man, I really feel seen by that comment, someone really gets what I'm doing here. That is from shanereck, who added, is this what it feels like when your parents get divorced?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, well, no, it feels much different.

[Max Fisher]

And we're still gonna record shows on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

[Jon Favreau]

Also. It's not like Austin and Emma have to choose.

[Max Fisher]

No, they do. At the end of the show, they're gonna be picking the host and they never get to speak to the other host again.

[Jon Favreau]

We're not even consciously uncoupling. I don't know. It's not even.

[Max Fisher]

Speak for to yourself, man.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, that is funny.

[Max Fisher]

No, but you will be hearing from my divorce lawyer.

[Jon Favreau]

Should I listen? Should I read the listener email that Austin sent us?

[Emma Austin]

I.

[Max Fisher]

No, absolutely not. No. I hate this email. No, it's fine. You can read it. It's fine. I shouldn't be. It's a nice email that someone is listening to the show closely. I'm sorry that I said I hate it. I don't mean that.

[Jon Favreau]

When I listen to the podcast, I picture Thomas Middleditch as John and Zach woods as Max, a la Silicon Valley, the show on hbo. If you haven't seen it, it seems fitting enough given the subject matter. I hope this doesn't seem unfair to you two, and I certainly don't mean it as an insult. I think Max does sound a little like Zach woods. And maybe if I pick the right photos, I could argue John vaguely can resemble Thomas Middleditch. Maybe if the lighting is right.

[Max Fisher]

I don't think you look like. No disrespect to Thomas Middleditch. I don't think you look like him.

[Jon Favreau]

Thank you. Obviously. Obviously the subject matter also fits, all things considered. Probably added to that is the dynamic between the two characters in the show. Max Zach is the voice of reason, while Thomas slash John is the spastic code Pied Piper, Twitter crazed main character. No offense, John. None taken.

[Max Fisher]

That's how when people ask me, they're like, what's John Favreau like? I was, I'm always like, you know, a spastic, spastic.

[Jon Favreau]

I am pretty spastic. I am addicted to Twitter. Okay, we'll get into the show. We've put together a special show to send you off. You pulled some of your favorite clips from our conversations with various offline guests and we're going to play them later as a way to talk about some of the big themes and lessons we've learned from doing the show together over the last two years. But before we get there, we have a couple of news items we want to talk about. Our last few news items.

[Max Fisher]

As ever, news news was not going to hold back for us to have an all clip show week.

[Jon Favreau]

Last week, Twitter user I for success posted a truly terrifying 8 second AI video that now has nearly 6 million views. It features an extremely realistic looking news anchor sitting behind a desk reading this headline. In shocking news, J.K. rowling's yacht sank with her on board after being attacked by orcas off the coast of Turkey.

[Max Fisher]

Now that is funny. You have to admit that it's funny.

[Jon Favreau]

If you're listening to this in an audio only format, just go check out the clip on our YouTube channel. It is very worthwhile.

[Max Fisher]

It looks like a completely 100.0% authentic news clip.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep. I mean it's, it's, it's wild. Fittingly, the tweet accompanying this video read, quote, general population cooked. You can literally create news clips with VO3 now. What's even real anymore? So thankfully, this clip is of a random no name news anchor.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But you could easily imagine an AI model that's able to reproduce clips from cnn, the BBC, Totally. Even this podcast. So, Max, are we cooked?

[Max Fisher]

It's feeling a little cooked. It's feeling to me like this is the Jurassic park moment for AI Deepfakes. I remember that scene in Jurassic park where Jeffrey Goldblum says you were so focused on whether you could, you didn't think about whether you should.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, nice. I thought you were gonna Say the Raptors learn how to. Learn how to open the doors.

[Max Fisher]

It's that too, but it's. Jeffrey Goldblum is not in that scene, so I don't wanna talk about it.

[Jon Favreau]

That's a great to in there.

[Max Fisher]

It feels like this is something. This is Google's new V3, like, AI video generator. The second everybody saw this, we all realize this is a terrifying crossing of the Rubicon. This is a power that people should not have to be able to make AI deep fakes of videos that look 1000% authentic. It's very hard to tell. You can't really tell that it's fake. It can be anything you want. And, like, in the past, just a context set when this kind of thing has come up, like a new AI fake image generator. I have, of course, typically taken the contrarian view and said, like, it's not actually as bad as it might look. Because the way that misinformation works is not that it fools you by looking authentic. Right. The way that it works is it appeals to some psychological need. You know, you're a big Trump fan, and it's important to you psychologically to believe that he could not have possibly lost the 2020 election. And in fact, a lot of the most viral misinformation, like, looks terrible and it's very shoddy. It's like a, you know, a shitty fake headline. So that's not why it travels. And that's why I would always say, like, don't actually get too hung up on how convincing it looks, because that is not the main thing. But, like, I think this is different. That is just to emphasize that, like, I really think this is the thing that looks so convincing. It is a new kind of mis and disinformation threat that we're facing.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And I also think that some of the clips we've seen that are circulating online are funny enough and sort of not. Like, it's just too hard to believe.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

That they're so over the top. Like, you know, J.K. rowling was attacked by Orcas, right? It was like, Pete Hegseth. Like, Pete Hegseth died after drinking a liter of vodka in a contest with RFK junior, Right. Like, it's. It makes you think it's not as bad as I think it could be.

[Max Fisher]

It's not showcasing the danger.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Like, I read this piece on it in Verge, and they. They kind of came to the conclusion, like, yeah, well, if you really look and maybe you can tell and maybe it's not that bad, but, like, they have an example of someone showed like the Space Needle in Seattle on fire, right? Like, or maybe it was a terrorist attack. So something like that comes out, it jumps to social media, reporters pick it up and by the time they call local authorities to check and realize that it's not true, the, the literal fake news is everywhere, right? And like forget about news anchors and AI characters saying things that are shocking or not believable. Like what happens, the danger is stuff that is believable but also very damaging, right? So like imagine an anchor saying, oh, President Trump says he's levying a new 400% tariff on China, right? And watch the markets, right?

[Max Fisher]

Watch the market move, which has already happened from that, like a random tweet.

[Jon Favreau]

A couple, yeah, but there's things that could seem very believable, especially coming out of this administration because, because it's like there's almost no surprises from them. And I think that can get damaging really fast.

[Max Fisher]

I think the even greater danger than losing an ability to distinguish what's real, because I think we'll always be able to tell what's real. Like you can always like check the news, you can check against an article. I think we are going to lose the ability to distinguish what's fake.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Like being able to say something is known as fake versus like contested or uncertain or like I've seen different clips saying different things I think is going to become harder and harder. And all of the changes in our media environment over the last 15 years kind of feel like they've been building towards something to make, make an AI video generator like this as dangerous as possible. Like, how do people consume news today? For the most part, it's not by reading a newspaper directly or by watching TV news directly. Right. It's consuming decontextualized clips that they see on Reels, Twitter, TikTok, whatever. Not even posted by the original source, right. Often now they're posted by some like engagement bait account. And you just take for granted that it's real because look, that's a CNN anchor. This like looks like it's a real news clip or looks like it real event. But that is the perfect place for a fake TV news clip that would never actually happen to take purchase, circulate forever as proof of, or at least in muddying the waters of the truth in a way that is going to be very hard to like ever ascertain what really happened. Because it's like, I don't know, like you have a clip, you have a CNN clip that shows that I don't know, ICE open fired a bunch of immigrants. But like I have a fake CNN clip that says that actually they were open, they were fired upon first and just returning fire. So like, who's going to say when, who's right?

[Jon Favreau]

And then there's a clip of someone saying, well, this is the right clip. And the other one was AI generated. But is that clip AI generated? Right. I mean, it's, it can get pretty scary pretty fast.

[Max Fisher]

And also because it is. I mean, up until 20 minutes ago, if you wanted to make a fake news anchor clip, which people did, right, like these Russian troll farms did, it took a lot of effort. You had to get anchors, you had to build a set. Now you can do it in a few seconds. Anybody can do it. And I think that the.

[Jon Favreau]

It's only gonna get better.

[Max Fisher]

It's only gonna get better. It's only gonna get cheaper and easier. The amount of this that is about to flood all of us, I think is gonna be a big part of what is gonna make it so hard to different. You see one weird clip on TikTok where someone purports to say that like, Starbucks is funding the idf. You know, like your defenses are maybe going to go up and maybe be like, I don't know if that's true or not, but if you're scrolling TikTok, you see 10 of those in a row and they're all from people that look like they're business executives who work from Starbucks saying, we're so proud to be funding the idf. It's going to be a lot harder for those defenses to come up and you to know what's real or not.

[Jon Favreau]

The other thing I took from this is the entertainment industry's also cooked.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, because I know.

[Jon Favreau]

And again, prestige television and film probably survives for a while, right? The top, maybe forever, you know, where.

[Max Fisher]

You expect a certain amount of artistry.

[Jon Favreau]

Procedurals, cartoons, kids content cooked.

[Max Fisher]

The kids content part of it, I think is really disconcerting because it's already getting into kind of like content mill territory.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, yeah, sit and watch Charlie Favreau's YouTube scrolling for a little bit. There is some junk on that thing.

[Max Fisher]

Is he getting a lot of CNN deep fakes mostly?

[Jon Favreau]

No, just like the weirdest. You let it sit for like five. You let it go for like five minutes. The algorithm and some of the videos are just like, what are they doing in this video? Yeah, they're playing a video game, but they're not. But they made a computer generated. Well, I don't even know what they're talking about.

[Max Fisher]

I am really glad that the WJN SAG secured like the Hollywood contracts that they did with protections against AI. But you're right, it's just a matter of time until the like bottom 20% is flooded by this stuff. So we're all going to have to learn how to, I don't even know, differentiate it. I don't think that's possible anymore. Yeah, we're all just going to have to learn how to read and understand these clips that we see, knowing that there's an x percent chance that it's just fake.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and certainly the social media companies are not going to be helping.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. You don't think so.

[Jon Favreau]

Silicon Valley act as traffic cops here. Because yesterday our own pally Kieffer here, crooked, shared a TikTok with us from Arielle Lore, a popular beauty and wellness influencer who talks about how she came across a paid ad on Instagram that featured an unlicensed AI generated video of her hawking skincare products on a podcast. She contacted her attorneys who sent the company running the video a cease and desist. But rather than take the ad down, they blocked her on Instagram and then she reported the video to the fine folks at Meta, who also refused to take the video down because they say the video doesn't violate their community standards. Let's play a quick clip.

[Katherine Price]

So I'm going to play you just.

[Max Fisher]

A few seconds of the video so.

[Jon Favreau]

That you can see it for yourself.

[Max Fisher]

Looks stunning.

[Jon Favreau]

Thank you.

[Max Fisher]

But come on, tell us, what's your secret?

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, but don't go telling everyone.

[Max Fisher]

All right? This is my best kept secret deal, I promise.

[Katherine Price]

Honestly, you see, it's not even that complicated. When I was younger, I had a.

[Jon Favreau]

Ton of skin issues.

[Katherine Price]

I started noticing fine lines in my.

[Jon Favreau]

Early 20s and thought, no way. So what kind of community standards allow companies to use deepfakes of trusted influencers to sell shit without their knowledge?

[Max Fisher]

So I checked in. This actually does break Meta's rules. They changed the rules a few months ago specifically to bar this kind of thing. But like, you know, as we have learned time and again, they just like, they're not very good at enforcing this stuff. And it's not because they like secretly want this content. It's just because content moderation has always been an afterthought for them. It's always been kind of poorly run because the point of it, as I learned when I've reported on like the decision making behind how they do the content enforcement, the point of it is usually Just about avoiding bad PR rather than actually making the platforms healthier.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, then why did they. If it does violate their community standards, why do they tell her it doesn't.

[Max Fisher]

All of these things go through. It's not going to like the vice president of policy at Meta. It's going to someone who works at an outsourcing center who might live in, like, the Philippines and is, like, probably has a thousand of these on their desk. And they have these big rule books that are very confusing and contradictory. And they're like. They're just like any call center worker. They're just, like, kind of trying to get through the day to make their, you know, $4 an hour.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. Well, that's troubling because that's how much they care, which is not. I mean, like, the company cares. It's not very much. But I actually think this is really important to talk about because as much as we are concerned about the implications of these AI deepfakes at, like, a high level for, you know, politics or propaganda or, like, election interference, I think a lot of the malicious uses of it that we're gonna actually see day to day are gonna be like, scamming.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

You know, blackmailing people, character assassination, revenge porn, selling scam products like this clip. Or, you know, there's a lot of scams now where people get a phone call from someone that claims to be like a relative and being like, oh, stuck in Europe, wire me $3,000 to get home. You know, imagine if Love it keeps.

[Jon Favreau]

Saying, we all need code words.

[Max Fisher]

He's right.

[Jon Favreau]

We all need our own individual. Absolutely right that you give out to friends and family.

[Max Fisher]

It's crazy that we live in that environment where you need to prove that you are the person you say you are. And by the way, don't email that code word. But also, how are you going to get it out to people?

[Jon Favreau]

You have to go up to someone and be, like, looking around.

[Max Fisher]

What's your code word?

[Jon Favreau]

If you have suggestions for our code words, please send them in.

[Max Fisher]

I don't. Maybe we could get a sponsor to buy one of the code words. But, like, imagine like, you know, your grandmother getting shown getting emailed a video of you. Like, literally, you being like, I'm in Paris, I can't get a flight home. Here's my bank account number to wire me the money. Like, of course she's going to send that.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jenny Livingston]

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[Jon Favreau]

Now, you might be thinking this kind of greedy, destructive behavior calls for some regulation. You'd be right. But unfortunately, bad news. The greedy, destructive people running, running Congress, they disagree. Last week, as part of their big, beautiful bill, House Republicans passed a provision that would ban states and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for the next 10 years. The provision would affect quite a few blue states, like Microsoft's home state of Washington, that have passed or are contemplating AI guardrails to protect consumers. What do you think about this? And, like, does this become law and is it lawful?

[Max Fisher]

I mean, it's. It's crazy that this is the first, technically the first federal regulation around Internet data privacy. Is one saying no regulation? Yeah, like, for years, people have been saying, hey, you should pass a single law. And they said, okay, we've got it. Laws saying states can't pass laws. And it's not just blue states, it's a lot of red states that have air regulations. Like Utah has a ton, including one that specifically bars the thing that we just talked about, like using deepfakes to sell products. Will it pass? I don't. You know Congress better than I do. I did see that there were two GOP senators who expressed some opposition to it.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it doesn't. It seems like it probably won't pass because it's a. It's a change in law, and it's not a change. It's not a budgetary change which gets kicked out of a reconciliation package. But it's interesting, the people who are for it, their argument is, look, we can't have state by state patchwork regulations. If anything is a job for Congress. It is regulating AI on a federal level so that it's like nationwide rules that everyone understands, which is a fine argument. But then do that, right? Because basically what they're saying, like what you could also imagine is them saying, we do need some national standards, national regulation, federal. Federal regulation on this. And before we can get around to doing that, states can do what they'd like. And then ultimately, if we pass something on the national level that can sort of take precedent over all the different state regulations. But that's not what they're doing, Right. They're basically just like, just hold on, we're going to get around to it, even though we can't fucking do anything in Congress, we will get around to federal regulation. And until then, nothing.

[Max Fisher]

It's just lobbying by trade groups. It's just a giant corporate handout. And by the way, like Having, having state regulations for things that we buy nationally. Happens all the time. Like it happens with food regulations, happens with water, like, of course things can do this.

[Jon Favreau]

There's no reason not to do that. Speaking of political parties with silly ideas, the New York Times reports that donors and strategists inside the Democratic Party have been developing a new $20 million plan to win back the support of young men. The plan, the plan is codenamed. It's not a good plan, Sam, which stands for Speaking with American Men. So far so good and promises investment to quote, study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, that's less good.

[Jon Favreau]

Among the plans, recommendations, buying ads and video games, all I could think of when I read this is, careful when you approach the men in the wilderness.

[Max Fisher]

Call an adult.

[Jon Favreau]

Do not cancel them right away. Be careful not to cancel them. Listen to what they say. Do not blame them for all the society's ills. Maybe you can bring them back.

[Max Fisher]

That's a. Call your local 80 year old Democratic elected official to come and speak to them on your behalf. They're trained for this.

[Jon Favreau]

Don't scare them. Approach them carefully.

[Max Fisher]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you make of this? Do you think, you think it's a syntax problem?

[Max Fisher]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

What is the syntax problem?

[Max Fisher]

We've always said it's syntax. We've always said that on this show. I mean, so like, just to context, Seth, this is not actually, I think something the Democrats are doing.

[Jon Favreau]

It's not like the DNC is doing it. Some group somewhere is doing it.

[Max Fisher]

Right. It's a. Some group. Group, like put together a proposal. They're trying to get money for it. But it does speak to what, at least this one firm thinks the decision makers in the party will spend $20 million for. I mean, this is the kind of thing that you pitch if you were pitching a bunch of 70 and 80 year olds. And maybe that's the problem. More so than do we understand the syntax of young men. And I should also say that like, not all of it was bad. The one other detail they revealed about this proposal, which again will probably not actually happen, was above all, we must shift from a moralizing tone. That's probably pretty good advice.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah. There's just, here's my issue with it. The way that Democrats talk about winning back groups. And I'm not talking about pundits like us. Right. Which is fine.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But like Democratic politicians, party leaders, it, it leans way too heavily into anthropology.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like we are going to study these, these foreign people who we have no idea about. And it made me. And it's funny because it's now it's, it's men, right. So it's like a category we are intimately familiar with. But I'm imagining like, is this how Democrats sound to rural voters, to independent voters, swing voters, people who switch back and forth between parties, People who decide they don't want to vote because they don't think it's important like this. It's not just a moralizing tone, though. There's some of that. It's a, like we are here on high trying to dissect them. The magic formula to win you back. And we're just going to talk and talk about it. And like Republicans don't do that.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

They just do the thing, right. That they believe is going to win the voters back.

[Max Fisher]

Well, I mean, what could be a clearer way to signal that the party leadership considers, quote, unquote, men, which we know of course actually refers to specific subsets of men to be something that is separate from the Democratic coalition and outside of it, whereas the Republican coalition has learned to.

[Jon Favreau]

Half the population.

[Max Fisher]

Right. Slightly less than half. Slightly less than half. It would be a good block to get, I would say. But I think the, to your point, the Republican Party has learned to speak to these men in a way that sounds like they are talking to each other because they are natively part of. Now I sound like an anthropologist, natively part of that population. And that's why I think that the, the issue is not do the 80 year olds in party leadership have the right talking points for knowing how to quote, unquote, speak to men. It's the fact that they are from a totally alien group to the people that they're trying to get as voters. I do think it's a party leadership problem in my eyes.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's also a, I mean, it's an education issue too. It's like, like very highly educated people using syntax and language. Forget it. It's not the, it's not that like the men are the issue here. It's the, it's the elites in the party who do not talk and act like or have contact with or know what the lives of these voters are like, whether it's men, whether it's rural voters, whether it's whatever. And there are stereotypes and there are, you know, of what these voters are like that everyone traffics in that I just think are not necessarily helpful.

[Max Fisher]

I do think there is also, I mean, just to like kind of level Set, like how you know how to think about this. Like, part of it, like reading between the lines, it feels like this is kind of more a pitch for trying to get donors to hand over money. Like, these are plans that exist to solicit donations rather than the plans that exist to be implemented. There's also, it made me especially.

[Jon Favreau]

There's one group of people who are silly enough to part with a lot of money based on hope, based on shit like this. I mean, it's donors.

[Max Fisher]

Many such cases, especially liberal donors, I mean, conservative donors have their. They also. They just kind of want to be like, indulged in like culture war too.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Oh yeah. They have a different set of problems, much more damaging.

[Max Fisher]

But it made me like, especially that line about, like, you know, above all, avoid a moralizing tone. It made me think about this thing that happened when I first got hired at the Times, which is the guy who had hired me also brought in around the same time this outside consulting firm to do this, like, huge investigation that was basically the same thing. It was like, how do we get young readers? Why don't we have young readers? Why are they all watching their MTV and reading their Vice news? And I did an interview with one of these, like many very high priced consultants. And the questions that they asked me were so stupid and obvious. It was like, should you use social media to promote your work as a reporter? Or like, what do you think? Should we put articles on the website too? Should they go on the Internet before the newspaper comes out? And I went and talked to the guy who'd hired me and brought in this firm. And, and I was like, these guys you hired are idiots. Like, why did you hire them? What are you doing? And he was like, look, we knew exactly what they were going to tell us before we even hired them. We knew what the report was going to say. Like, writers should have more voice, you know, engage with readers more. Like, don't do he said, she said, he said. The point of bringing them in was not that we thought we were going to learn something. It was to force internal change, which is very hard to do internally. And you need this kind of outside report to tell you, like, you have to do this thing differently to like end the internal debates. So it's a good example.

[Jon Favreau]

No, because that happens in politics.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, any big institution.

[Jon Favreau]

This is why consultants get hired, right?

[Max Fisher]

So things you already know.

[Jon Favreau]

Luke Winky had a great piece in Slate last week about why it's so embarrassing to watch Democrats try to find a liberal Joe Rogan writing You simply cannot concoct Joe Rogan's brain chemistry through the fires of consulting. Which is to say that Rogan's rise is a product of the ebbing cultural tide rather than its author. Unfortunately, the donors scraping vast tranches of cash into the coffers of lived up Twitch streamers will likely be the last people to figure that out. Devastating. It's a great line Wiki then offers a very funny list of alternative ideas Democrats can try to win back young men, including a Daft Punk reunion tour, Ezra Klein style abundance policy for the deregulation and availability of original Formula 4 loco, and an Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Fortnite skin.

[Max Fisher]

I don't pay anything, whatever the price is.

[Jon Favreau]

What was your favorite suggestion from the piece?

[Max Fisher]

I mean, obviously the one that was written to troll you specifically. People who have read the piece already know what I'm talking about. Quote the addition of Luigi Mangione to the Crooked Media podcast network. First cast Sydney Sweeney or Bernie Sanders?

[Jon Favreau]

Sweeney or Bernie Sanders killed me. So funny.

[Max Fisher]

Am I the only one who fucking read Luigi Mangione's Reddit history? His first guest is not Sydney Sweeney. It's Ezra Klein. Oh, it's Jonathan Haidt.

[Jon Favreau]

Luigi Mingioni has been pilled by a few things. Abundance is one of them.

[Max Fisher]

Abundance is one of them. And like, look, I'm not saying that I know for sure that he was a friend of the pod, but his Goodreads is like 40% overlap with our guest list. Which is again, a very funny troll of you specifically. But I bring up Luigi because of course it's the perfect transition for you to reveal my replacement. Luigi Mandy, direct from Zooming for prison.

[Jon Favreau]

That is right. Yeah, I said I didn't want to do remote for a co host, but with Luigi Almond. Yeah, absolutely. It was funny that Luke in this piece wrote these. These ideas, these suggestions are mostly the result of a brainstorm in my Dudes Only group chat, which is composed primarily of other Obama voting 30 something boyfriends and husbands, none of whom is Ivy League educated. That gives us some authority, right? I don't work except for the 30 something. I'm there.

[Max Fisher]

I don't listen. 40 is the new 30 something. That counts.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, I thought that was pretty funny. All right, before we jump to break some quick housekeeping on June 6, Lovett is teaming up with the Bulwarks, Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell for Free Andre a fundraiser at World Pride hosted by Crooked Media and the Bulwark at the Lincoln theater in Washington D.C. the show will be like a Love it or leave it the Bulwark Podcast Crossover Live event, which means great conversations and probably some fun insults thrown between Lovett and Tim. Hopefully Sarah gets to say a few words. Poor Sarah. They're going to be celebrating pride and most importantly, raising money for the Immigrant Off Law center, the group representing makeup artist and actor Andre Hernandez Romero and others who disappeared to El Salvador without due process. Before the live show, Votes of America will join forces with the Human Rights Campaign for a protest at the US Supreme Court to bring more attention to this important cause. It'll be a big gay DC Live show for a great cause. Get your tickets and RSVP for the protest at cricket.com events when we come back, Max and I are going to talk through some of our favorite offline moments. Offline is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It is our right as Americans to choose how or if we worship. But here's the thing. Not everyone is cool with this shift. A lot of political folks who call themselves Christian nationalists, they're working overtime to insert their beliefs into our laws, our schools and even our personal lives. That's where the Freedom From Religion foundation comes in. They fight to keep church and state separate like our founders actually intended. So if you believe in keeping organized religion out of government, FFRF has your back. Join them. Go to FFRF US Freedom or text offline to 511-511 and become a member today. Text offline to 511-511 or go to FFRF US Freedom. Because the only thing worse than someone forcing religion on you is when they do it by law. For membership information, text offline to 511-511. Text fees may apply.

[Jenny Livingston]

Building a business may feel like a big jump, but On Deck small business loans can help keep you afloat with lines of credit up to $100,000 and term loans up to $250,000. OnDeck lets you choose the loan that's right for your business. As a top rated online small business lender, OnDeck's team of loan advisors can help you find the right business loan loan to fit your needs. Visit ondeck.com for more information. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, Max, when we first started talking about how we wanted to close out your final episode on this podcast, you mentioned you wanted to talk through some of the big themes of the show and check in to see if we're actually living any of the lessons we've learned.

[Max Fisher]

Absolutely not.

[Jon Favreau]

Spoilers. No. Yeah, I'm not. At all. So today you've pulled a couple of your favorite clips from the show, which we're gonna play and then discuss. Kicking us off, I believe, is a clip from the offline challenge. So there's this thing I always like to pitch it to men over 30. Uh.

[Max Fisher]

Oh.

[Katherine Price]

It's called I'm Barely Over 30 Therapy.

[Max Fisher]

It's great. I thought that's what this was.

[Jon Favreau]

It's great. No, no. This is a podcast. This is a podcast.

[Max Fisher]

It kind of feels like therapy.

[Jon Favreau]

Famously. A lot of you guys mistake the two, but it's okay. But who am I? I'm just another podcast hoax. I'm just calling balls and strikes. That's all you're doing.

[Emma Austin]

That's all I'm doing.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm just calling balls and strikes.

[Max Fisher]

I would like if at the end of this, our big hack for everyone for how to treat your smartphone addiction is get a podcast.

[Katherine Price]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Get a podcast, everyone. Yeah. And that is. We should get your podcast and then keep your phone in the other room while you're. While you're hosting the podcast. Ugh. Dumbfee.

[Max Fisher]

Can I just say, she was wrong. This podcast is 100% therapy.

[Jon Favreau]

I know, I know.

[Max Fisher]

As we are about to cover.

[Jon Favreau]

As we're about to cover, Jokes aside, we're gonna play a related clip from our conversation with Katherine Price, author of how to break up with your phone, who helped us out along with Caroline Dunphy, who you just heard with the offline challenge. Let's listen.

[Emma Austin]

For me, I think that one of the most powerful takeaways for myself that really solidified this is the observation that ultimately our lives are what we pay attention to. And meaning that, you know, whatever you're paying attention to, that's what you're actually going to experience in the moment, and that's what you're going to remember. And that means anytime we're making a moment to moment decision about where to direct our attention, we're actually making this broader decision of how to live our lives. And I think that's something that you both have been touching on in your conversations over the past month about this in different ways, but to me, that's been so powerful. I actually had a bracelet made for myself that says, pay attention, and it's her. That's like my version of a tattoo. Like, I don't want to commit to a tattoo, but I'll wear a bracelet. But it's A reminder that, like, that's what's at stake, you know, we're going to die and we have the chance right now to live.

[Jon Favreau]

We are going to die.

[Max Fisher]

Actually, right before we recorded, Emma pointed out to me she was like, two of these clips reference dying. Are you worried about what message that's going to send to Listers? So just to be clear, I am not dying.

[Jon Favreau]

No, no. Max is just moving to now. I'm not dying. But we are, we all are gonna die. So that's important to talk about as you leave the show. How has your relationship with your phone changed?

[Max Fisher]

So, something that Katherine Price really helped me understand and something that we have subsequently talked a lot about, like Chris Hayes wrote a whole book about, is that this war to reclaim our, like minutes and hours of our day through our attention that Silicon Valley is trying so hard to take away from us and steal from us. It's not just a personal wellness issue and it's not just a happiness issue, although it's definitely that. It's also foundational to the loneliness epidemic, to social atomization into our country's veer into distrust, far right politics, division, authoritarianism. Right. It is literally, I think a front and one of the most important fronts, as crazy is that idea initially sounded in the fight to save our democracy. And that's like, I think seeing that and seeing that it, it's really important to retake your attention from your phone, I think is one of the big things that got me to really take it seriously. I have a few lessons for us that I feel like, like putting together like all of the different, like challenges we did, the little studies we ran to manage my own relationships, my screen. Okay, I have two foundational tips everyone should follow. Two expert level tips and then two top tier tips for the screen time. Kung fu masters who actually like achieved nirvana.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm excited.

[Max Fisher]

It's definitely not me. I'm like somewhere between foundational, extra level. Okay, foundational number one, your phone goes in the other room overnight, or like I know you can because you've got like baby monitor stuff, but like the other side of the room just like away from your hands overnight. So easy. Changes your life huge. And the other, and this is from Katherine Price, is when you catch yourself scrolling, ask yourself what impulse you are chasing in that moment. Like, what is the emotional need that you were trying and almost certainly failing to fulfill by scrolling on your phone? And once you think about that, it's always like scrolling. TikTok is not easing my anxiety about the world, you know, it's not easing the fact that I'm tired, whatever. So I'm gonna go do something else that will actually address that expert level. Walks. Walks every day. No phone, no headphones or just phone in the back pocket, whatever. And the other one, raw dog and a walk. Just raw dog and a walk. That's right. As Mark Zuckerberg would say, probably many times in a row, very awkwardly. The other is. Do you remember the Maggie Hammerman posting rule?

[Jon Favreau]

I forgot what it was.

[Max Fisher]

I love this. I love this rule. So, okay, this is about when you determining when you should post on any public facing social media. I'm not talking about like Instagram among friends, but like post on Twitter, post on TikTok. Ask yourself, does this need to be posted? Does it need to be posted by me? Now you are one of the few people because you for some reason have the year of J.D. vance and Elon Musk. Like sometimes it does need to be posted by you because I don't get responses from those guys. But for the rest of us, 99% of the time, you're gonna realize actually I don't need to post that. And by posting it, I'm just like spinning myself up. I'm chasing engagement, whatever. Okay, now the real master level tips the absolute, like levitating five feet above the ground, black and white screen all the time. It's hard. I go off and on. I'm off right now.

[Jon Favreau]

That's why it works.

[Max Fisher]

And the other one, I can't remember who gave us this. It might have been Catherine Price. Put a post it note over your phone and just write on the post it note like screen time or no. Or do you need to look at this? I did that for months. It was great. Do you know what our screen time numbers got back to? I was listening back to these offline challenge episodes. Do you know what you were at when it ended?

[Jon Favreau]

No.

[Max Fisher]

45 minutes a day.

[Jon Favreau]

How did I do that?

[Max Fisher]

I don't know. But you did it for like weeks. Weeks in a row.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm so. I've really backslid.

[Max Fisher]

Would it miss those extra four hours?

[Jon Favreau]

My big lesson from this is. And this is not a cop out or to try to excuse my behavior.

[Max Fisher]

My this is not a cop out T shirt.

[Jon Favreau]

But. And a number of guests have said this to us. It really is so much more than about individual willpower.

[Max Fisher]

Totally.

[Jon Favreau]

Like there are structural absolute constraints and incentives that are. That make it quite addictive. Right. We can. People can debate, is it. Is it a classic addictive thing like alcohol or Whatever. But it is addictive.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And so try as I have to, like. And I do a whole show about it, you know.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

To keep some of these habits or tips that you can. Yeah. It is very, very difficult. I do think that I have found most success in, at the very least, clocking in my own mind when I am scrolling for no reason. The point about intention. Right. Like, what am I. What am I looking for?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right. And what is the need that I'm trying to satiate totally with my online behavior right now.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And I don't obviously always think about that all the time, but when I do, it doesn't necessarily, like, take me off my phone, but it's like, okay, well, I'm going to go look for an article about this or this piece of news that I'm actually interested in, or I'm going to text a friend or I'm going to do whatever, or I'm like, looking for some kind of connection that I'm not getting. And sometimes I can fix that, sometimes I can't. But just the act of clocking it and being more intentional about how you're using your phone has helped me a little bit.

[Max Fisher]

Totally. And I think it's a good point about how many things are structurally engineered against us. The fact that this is where all the socializing happens, where all the information is. So I think you can be forgiving with yourself about your. And I'm speaking like, to listers now, not just to you, but you can be forgiving to yourself with your ability to actually get the screen time numbers down. But maybe try to be strict with yourself about just being aware in your own mind of what you're doing and why you're doing it in the moment. And that will actually get a lot of the work done for you.

[Jon Favreau]

It does. I believe the next clip you pulled for us is from my recent interview with Lauren Greenfield, who directed the excellent FX docuseries Social Studies. Let's play that clip.

[Simone]

That's what happened in our group discussions. Like, at first it's like, wait, I don't have my phone. But then they really loved it and they talked about that. And I think when everybody doesn't have it, it creates new ways of communicating. And actually what they said at the end, they brought up this. They said, we all want to be off phones. It's so great to talk to each other. But they brought up the new existential question, do you exist if you're not on social media? And they were like, no, people forget about you. So that's the catch. 22 is, like, if you're the only one off of, is kind of too punitive because it takes you outside of social life, which is hard for a teenager.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you think? Has this show made you more or less, hopefully, for future generations who are growing up with the Internet, smartphones.

[Max Fisher]

It's an interesting way to put it. Kind of both. I definitely feel like this is something I am still on the cusp of fully understanding. It feels like we are just kind of starting to get the picture of what these phones and the Internet mean for teens right now. And every time I hear something, I'm surprised. Every time I learn something new, I think there's a lot I still have to learn about this picture. Definitely makes me more concerned for them because I'm also constantly learning ways that this is distorting for them that I never even thought of. But also more optimistic because one thing that I took away from this interview, from the social studies documentary and from, like, every focus group you hear from teens is who is sounding the alarm about this? It's the teens. It's the kids in school who are saying, like, hey, these phones are really bad for us. We're aware of it. We're all like, they're talking about it to each other, which is really impressive. I don't know if I would have had the wherewithal to have that kind of conversation with my peers when I was 14. But it's important, I think, to kind of stay connected to the fact that, like, this is not, like, the. I don't know, the rap panic of the 90s where it's like, concerned parents trying to take their phones away. Like, do you know how fucking bad something has to be for teens to tell grownups, take this thing away from us. It's really dangerous for us.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think when we hear it's bad for you, I think the examples that pop up for people who do not study this stuff, like we do are a lot of harms we've talked about, which is, like, you can violence or sex or, you know, things that kids shouldn't be seeing on their phones and all that, and. And sort of bullying, right? And all this kind of stuff. But there is, I think, maybe the most pernicious effect of being on your phone all the time is also hardest to measure. And it's a little more subtle, which is like, if our children are growing up at a developmentally critical time in their lives, and they are mediating their relationships and their development and their academic growth through Screens, instead of with other human beings, you are losing something critical about what it means to be a human being. Yeah. And I worry most about just the sheer volume of time that you are just on a screen, growing up and not dealing with someone else. Because I think screens are fundamentally antisocial. Antisocial. And not just in the loneliness sense. But like the relationships you make online are not the same as the relationships you have. Even the best form of relationship you can have online, which is texting, direct messaging with one other person, you still are missing their emotions, their facial, you know, reactions to what you're saying to them. It's just not the same neurologically. You don't experience it neurologically and, and that's the best version, but that's clearly not what's happening. And there's a lot of, I mean, we've talked and AI is going to make this worse. Right. That you're going to start having relationships with chatbots.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's just, I really want my kids to just grow up in a world where they have these in person relationships and they are spending plenty of time with their friends, with us, Emily and I, with other human beings, with their teachers, and not just sitting for hours and hours by themselves on screens.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. You have a innate biological need to look at other human faces and interact with them. And I think that's something that we are becoming aware of partially because we are losing. We're no longer having that need fulfilled. I mean, the good news is that there are a number of cities, states, school districts that are banning phones in schools. So I think that we are going to learn a lot and get a lot of data about the difference between or the, what the, what it means for you as a kid to spend a lot of time on a phone versus not spend a lot of time on a phone. I think that will be very demonstrative for people.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think that, I think that we are living through the backlash right now, or at least the beginnings of the backlash. I don't, I'm not hopeful that if we just sit back and do nothing, the backlash will happen on its own.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But I do think there is an opportunity now, and especially there's an opportunity for millennial parents, because Gen X parents and older didn't really have the experience of knowing how damaging phones and screen time can be. We all do because we have partially lived through it.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

The generation Gen Z is going to be living through it even more so as they become parents too, they'll like. So I do think the opportunity for a backlash to this is there, but it's going to take people to actually, you know, make some noise about it.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, well, it's one of the things that I am excited to listen to this show for especially is both tracking how that backlash continues to play out and also just what we learn about kids and teens experience on phones.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, for sure. Offline is brought to you by Zebiotics Pre Alcohol. You guys know how much we love Zebiotics. It's called Pre alcohol.

[Max Fisher]

You bet.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jenny Livingston]

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[Jon Favreau]

All right, this next clip is from another popular offline theme that we touched on earlier, the relationship between the right and masculinity. A couple months ago, you talked to the Rolling Stones, Jack Crosby about the UFC and Trumpism. Let's play that clip.

[Jack Crosby]

The right wing has successfully been able to present a definition of masculinity in this country that involves sort of the constant threat of an ability to inflict violence. They have created a world in which everyone is coming to take from you, and things that scare you or frighten you are out there. They're projecting this on to the athletes that they're seeing. When you get that in such a distilled fashion in terms of fighting, it's like you go in there, you're rooting for your guy and your guy wins. He, like, you know, slips outside of that jab coach comes back with a right cross and it lands flush, and the other guy just goes out like a light. You see him just crumple.

[Max Fisher]

You're.

[Jack Crosby]

You're projecting everything that's wrong in your life onto that moment, right? And there's a feeling of when you see the right guy go down in your mind, the right guy get hit and get punished, get knocked out, get that? There's, there's a sense of, like, that catharsis and justice where it's just like, you know, oh, for that little second, right, the guy who was fighting for me, he won. And all is right in the world.

[Jon Favreau]

As you leave this show, do you think you finally understand the manosphere?

[Max Fisher]

I actually do feel like this is one of the things where my thinking has most changed and where between talking to Jack and listening to your conversations with people like Hasan Piker, I've really come to understand something I didn't before, which is the why the kind of Trump coded UFC manosphere world content is speaking so powerfully to a lot of men who are otherwise not particularly engaged in politics. And it, like Jack said, it is politics as combat and catharsis, not in the sense of like, oh, I want a guy who'll like, fight for me, but in the sense of I want someone who will dominate and humiliate others on my behalf in a way that I can kind of vicariously identify with, that will make me feel strong and powerful. And now, instead of me being. Being the one who feels pushed around by the world, I'm the one pushing others around through this politician or this fighter who I follow. I'm the one who's in charge. You know, I'm the one taking what I want instead of having things taken from me. So, to me, what kind of the manosphere has come to mean politically is this kind of feedback loop between sports, podcasts, media, Trump, that is very effective at both creating and then fulfilling a desire for violent catharsis and domination.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And it's. It's so closely intertwined with grievance politics, which is the politics of the right, right, today. I mean, in some ways, it has been for quite a while, but, like, especially in the Trump era, and I think young men, especially growing up today, you know, it's. They live in a world where a lot of people tell them that they're the problem, right? And a lot of men's behavior is the problem. But if you don't necessarily feel privileged in other ways or you don't recognize your privilege or that your gender gives you, but you're like, well, I still can't get a job. I can't provide for my family. Everything feels fucked up. People are telling me that I suck, that my generation, you know, and. And I don't really know where to go from here. Then someone coming along and saying, like, well, all the people that are annoying, if you can't be helped, at the very least, we can hurt the people that you don't like.

[Max Fisher]

Right? And there's a story that a lot of men have heard that, you know, we used to be, quote, unquote, we used to be in charge. You used to be in charge. But now, because of all this bullshit lib equality, you had to give that up. And there's people, and there's some nefarious agenda behind that, and that's the political narrative that gets assigned to it. But I do think that on, like, on a, like, basic, like, human evolutionary level, I think there is a real, like, I think we. This is an uncomfortable lesson of the Luigi Mangioni craze is that there is a deep human desire for politics of.

[Jon Favreau]

Hurting people, and that may show up. And it does show up, I think, more in men than in Women, but it is not necessarily confined to one gender.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, this is a. Look, the human animal is kind of fucked up. And we have, like, our higher angels. We have things about us that are not great. And this is one thing that our politics forever and ever have kind of had an unspoken agreement not to indulge.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Max Fisher]

Like we don't have public executions in the town square. There's this kind of consensus among the parties, political establishment, that it's not good to chase people's votes on their desire to see other people hurt on their behalf. And that is broken down. And they've broken down specifically with the gop, which has learned to capitalize on this because the party institution collapsed and that has put them. And it's the lessons from this. I don't really know what to take from. But they have. They have exclusive access to the grievance, to the point of inflicting violence on your enemies vote. And that's a big vote.

[Jon Favreau]

And one of the many ways that I think the Internet era we live in plays into this is by dehumanizing people totally. And just making it seem like the person you are attacking online or the video you see of someone being hurt, it's not real. I mean, you know, it's real, but it's not happening to someone across the table from you. It's not happening to someone in your life. Right. And so you can be removed from the violence or the hatred by having it on the screen instead of in real life. And therefore, it's more fun to indulge. It's more fun to indulge.

[Max Fisher]

Totally.

[Jon Favreau]

You can mock it. You cannot care that someone killed someone else, that someone got deported for no reason.

[Max Fisher]

Like, that's all the emotional upside, but none of the actual, like, damage to your human psyche.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And that, I think, can lead to some very dangerous places.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You also pulled this clip from an otherwise fun conversation we shared with YouTuber Simone yet about puzzles. Let's listen.

[Katherine Price]

I remember going to this. This YouTuber who Karen puzzles. She just makes puzzle videos, like jigsaw puzzle videos. And she was having a launch party. I know.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Katherine Price]

It was like maybe 10. And she brought in a bunch of puzzles. 10 people in a bar just sitting, working on a jigsaw puzzle. And it was so lovely in the sense that it took all pressure off of keeping a conversation. It made it so not awkward to remain silent. I also, like, broke up with somebody, or we were breaking up if we were working on a Lego set during the breakup conversation, which also in retrospect ended up being a really nice way because was it. It added this natural breaking point of the conversation. Like it gave us a choice to enter the conversation in and out. And I think that, like, it's so hard to like, be like, we're going to hang out or we're going to keep a conversation, like, I just want to be side by side with somebody.

[Jon Favreau]

This is a great clip because I think it captures many of the discussions we've had about loneliness on this pod, as well as the choice we're all constantly making between spending time on our devices or time with actual people.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

How have your thoughts on loneliness in the digital age changed since you joined?

[Max Fisher]

I mean, I think this, this clip kind of speaks to how I think about it now. Where at the. A year ago, two years ago, if you would have asked me about the loneliness epidemic, I would have talked about like, the extreme edge cases. I would have said, oh, it's people who, you know, spent their, you know, childhood in the pandemic and lockdown, didn't learn how to socialize as people who spend 20 hours a day on video games. And what I've come to understand from talking to people like Derek Thompson and others is that the loneliness epidemic is not actually a loneliness epidemic per se. It's a social isolation. It's a voluntary social isolation epidemic. It's people choosing it and ending up feeling the effects of loneliness, even if they don't clock that they're feeling. They don't clock that that's why they feel anxious, why they feel angry or isolated. And the reason that that's is because it's just our environment now. It is just easier day to day to just choose. You know, you've got an endless world of content on your phone, an algorithm just for you that's so addictive. You've got food delivery and like, socializing is so fun and rewarding, but it can also feel a little taxing well into the.

[Jon Favreau]

The flip side of it's so much easier to do it on your phone. It's so much harder now for so many people to do it in real life because we've been on our phones and it's so easy to do that that you end up it just because if you're sitting with someone. This is why Simone's example was so great about like building either building the Legos when you're breaking up with someone or. Or the puzzles because. And I do think it's gonna be important, and especially these younger generations to find ways to allow people to Be with each other and socialize where it's not so much pressure that it's just like two people sitting at a table with no external stimulants to like help the conversation go. Like, I think what those suggestions are good, because I do. We want more people to be speaking with each other, seeing each other in person, hanging with each other, but we want to facilitate it in a way that we might not have had to before because everyone now is so used to just mediating all of our relationships through technology.

[Max Fisher]

Right. It's like in person. Socializing needs a really sharp marketing team. Like, they need. It needs someone to come in and say, like, you are losing the war for people's attention because you're not giving people enough dopamine. You're not giving the like popcorn stimulus that they get from everything else. Which to your point, is why? Part of why it's so great to like have an activity that like, you click together little Lego pieces, whatever, but also that takes the burden of it down a little bit, makes it a little bit less emotionally taxing. Like, Derek talked about how so much of the isolation that we're experiencing is not people who like, don't have relationships and don't know how to break out of it. It's just people. It's all of us making these day to day choices about, like, I'm gonna stay home because it's easier, because having dinner with someone feels like too much work. There's actually a name for the kind of activity Simone was describing. Forward facing activities. Have you heard this? Yeah. Cause it's like you're with somebody, but you're both facing forward because you're working on a puzzle. You're in a kickball league. You know, you're in like a cycling group, whatever.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I do think the one place that I have improved a lot, especially with regard to the phone, is in group settings with other people where I'm socializing with like, you know, like, so we had two couples over Monday for Memorial Day and their kids. And I think in the 2, 3 hours they were there, I like didn't look at my phone at all.

[Max Fisher]

That's great.

[Jon Favreau]

Just didn't. Because I'm just like, I'm with. And at dinner too. I'm much better at dinner now with my own family to just like put the phone in the other room. That part I'm doing, it's the time, the screen time's really adding up when I'm just with me.

[Max Fisher]

That's the hardest part. That is the hardest part. Is those minutes and days.

[Jon Favreau]

And by the way, that does make you lonely, too.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, no, absolutely. Because it is.

[Jon Favreau]

Again, we've talked about it. It's the illusion of connection, which is the big problem with technology.

[Max Fisher]

Well, and also if you've got four and a half hours a day, like, like, you know, you could be spending that seeing some people.

[Jon Favreau]

I could. I could. And I would like to.

[Max Fisher]

People other than Elon.

[Jon Favreau]

Does anyone want to hang out finally?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. Email offlinerooked.com if you want to hang out with John.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm losing Max. I'm losing a friend right now, so I'm going to need some more.

[Max Fisher]

Again, I'm not dying.

[Jon Favreau]

Losing a friend. I'm sorry about that. All right. You wanted to close us out with this clip from your interview with Jenny Livingston, a woman who blogs about living with cystic fibrosis, who wrote about what she learned about life and her relationships when a miracle drug extended her expected lifespan from 25 years to 80 years. Let's listen.

[Lauren Greenfield]

To have had such a close relationship with death through the loss of my sister and my friends, contemplating my own death, I think really it gives someone the opportunity to just read, really, really embrace life. And I have done that so good. And I don't want to stop. I don't want to forget what that felt like to be in the trenches. And now I have more opportunity and more freedom to kind of explore life and to be bothered by the small things. And I don't want to forget, you know, where I came from. Like, I just really love that person perspective that I have.

[Max Fisher]

What do you do to kind of help keep yourself focused on that?

[Lauren Greenfield]

This is kind of a funny thing. I. I literally have an app, really, on my phone that five times a day sends me a text message saying, remember you're gonna die. And then you open it up and it has this quote. And sometimes it's kind of silly. Sometimes the quotes are like beautiful pieces of poetry about life and death.

[Max Fisher]

Death.

[Lauren Greenfield]

Sometimes it's comical, sometimes it's very dark. But yeah, it's. It's an app. But five times a day, randomly, we'll just be like, bing, you're gonna die. This is something I practice intentionally, but I also think it's just kind of inherently who I am or who I have become. And so a little reminder, you know, just a deep breath even, and like, like, this is a really beautiful moment. Like, cherish this moment or this totally doesn't matter. Let it go. You know, I think I have become pretty good at doing that naturally. But sometimes a text message from an app reminding you you're going to die can also be a good way to, like, come back down to earth.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, Max, why did you want to close us out with this reminder that we are going to die?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, it didn't need to be kind of a macabre. I mean, it's supposed to be uplifting. I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

No, I think it is quite uplifted.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, good. I love talking to her. It was so fun. I mean, one of the great challenges I think we're all facing right now and that, like, in some ways, all of the discussions about is how to live an actualized, fulfilled life that is present and that is to our values at a time when our attention and what we think and how we behave is being pulled at more and more by these giant trillion dollar tech companies. And, you know, when our country is in crisis, every day, like, every day is an emergency. Every day is scary. But at the same time, you know that you've got to live. You've only got so many hours and days. That's what your life is. Your life is hours and days. And don't give them to Trump, you know, don't give them to Mark Zuckerberg or fucking TikTok, both, because that's the only life that you have, but also because, you know, if you do care about saving democracy and fighting against Trump, then you've got to be able to be present for that. You've got to be actualized. You have to be in control of your own attention. So it's not about balancing living a happy, fulfilled, present life against how to be engaged in saving our country. They're actually the same thing.

[Jon Favreau]

I think I, for a very long time, just thought a lot about death and was, like, terrified of death, really. And. Oh, yeah. And then I've come to learn that trying to avoid it or freak out about it neither are helpful or do anything or change the reality of it. And so the only way to grapple with the fact that that's going to happen is to look around and start appreciating. I mean, it sounds so cliche, simple, and it's so much harder to do, especially in the digital age, right? But is to be like, all right, that's. That's out there somewhere. I can't control that. What I can control is what I'm doing with the hours that I have right now, right? And with the days that I have right now and with the relationships I have right now, and when I'm doing What I'm doing as I'm going through the day, am I, you know, am I. Am I making the most of it?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Am I doing something that I feel is either satisfying to me or will have some kind of. And, you know, we're politically minded, will have some kind of impact on the world around me? And I even think about that with the stuff I do in politics or with the stuff I do in the show, or even with the tweets, right? Like, is this going to have potentially some impact? Is it gonna maybe change someone's mind?

[Max Fisher]

So much pressure to put on yourself, though?

[Jon Favreau]

That's just my crazy personality.

[Max Fisher]

But you. I think that part of what I took from this is that you do have to think about what is. What is going to bring a happy life for you, too. Yeah, that's. That's, I think, just as important it is.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's hard to. I think for a lot of us who are like, type A personalities into politics, it's true. It is a lot to think about.

[Max Fisher]

Like, this doing, is this accomplishing a task?

[Jon Favreau]

Is this accomplishing enough? And which, again, technology amplifies that feeling, right? That, like, we have to be more productive, we have to accomplish more, we have to do more. We can get to the end of the Internet, we can get to the end of the Twitter feed, right? We can consume if we just get more information, if we just learn more and get more information, we will solve the problems.

[Max Fisher]

Send enough tweets.

[Jon Favreau]

Send enough tweets, right? Where there's always a way to solve the problems, and sometimes there's not a way to solve the problems.

[Max Fisher]

Sometimes the thing you have to do is just live a happy life in that moment, for that moment. And that is one of the things that, like, I think about the conversation with Jenny a lot and about the lessons she learned from the time in her life when she thought she only had a few years, the lessons that she'd learned from when she got this miracle drug, and all of a sudden she got another half century, like, what does that feel? And she had this kind of experience that I try to reconnect with a lot because most of us will never have it, of having to suddenly decide all at once, and as an adult, like, having the decision literally put to her, what kind of life do you want to lead? Because she thought she was not going to have it. And all of a sudden she's got these 50 years, who do you want to be? What do you want to do at that time? And something that I found so striking and so powerful is how much energy she puts towards staying connected to the part of herself before this drug when she thought that she was going to die much younger than she is now. And the value that she has in knowing who she wants to be in that moment, rather than thinking about what's the bigger thing I'm trying to do or what's the thing happening a year from now or 10 years from now that being connected to. I mean, she would talk about it in, like, her relationships with her family. She was like, she had the best relationships with everyone in her family because she really fucking valued those relationships.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Because she thought, you know, I only have so much time with this person. Which is, of course, true for all of us. But she knew it in a way that most of us do not know it in any given moment. And I think that knowing that, even if, you know, it sounds kind of hokey to say, like, remember, you're gonna die, so value your time with each other. Like, being present is. Have to be present to have the hours, have the minutes, and make them as good as they can be. And that will. That will take care of the bigger stuff.

[Jon Favreau]

Stuff.

[Max Fisher]

I really think it will.

[Jon Favreau]

It also sounds very cliche and maybe generate some eye rolls. Would have for me before I had kids. But, like, having kids has taught me, or it's helped me live in that moment more. Just be like, the other day, Teddy can now sort of like, crawl up on the chair in my office, and he crawled up on the chair in my office, and he took the pillow, throw a pillow on the chair. And he threw it on the ground, and I laughed, and then he saw me laugh. And then he went and he picked it up again, and he threw it off again, and I left. And then he started laughing. And he can't say many words. He could say, like, five words, sure. But then for, like, 15 minutes straight, the two of us just played this game where all that happened was he'd take the pillow, throw the pillow, I'd laugh, he laugh, and then he's laughing, I'm laughing, and I'm like, that's beautiful. It's. It's.

[Max Fisher]

That's life. That's what it is.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's so funny because during that time, what fell away was like, how long are we gonna do this? What should we do next? Is anyone else. Am I supposed to be doing something else? Do I need to? Like, yeah. And I thought, like, oh, I'll remember this forever. This little moment of, like, the first time my youngest son is, like, really Just laughing his ass off with me, you know, and, like, that's the kind of shit that you don't. I wouldn't have appreciated that before I'd necessarily had kids. And. And, you know, there's other things that will make you realize that as well.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But it was. Those moments are starting to be making me realize, like, oh, that's how you live life.

[Max Fisher]

That's what life is composed of. Yeah. And it's even more important to remember at the times when we feel so many other things tugging at us, telling us not to be present, but to be, you know, in our phones or on the news or. Can I go out with a piece of advice that I related on our election episode? But I say it to people all the time, so this is some. Some secondhand advice that I got. This is. Came from a friend whose parents grew up in Argentina. And my friend asked her parents, you know, what is your advice? Because Trump had just been reelected, of course. And her advice was, how do I get through this? Because you went through something terrible. And, like, I don't know how similar it will turn out to be or not be, but this military junta that took over Argentina. And she said, antonia, you have to stay fabulous. And I think that that's great advice. And if there's anything I want the listeners of Offline to remember, for Max, it's staying Fabulous.

[Jon Favreau]

I love that. That is a great place to end. Perfect. We love you, Max. We're gonna miss you so much.

[Max Fisher]

I'm gonna miss you guys too. And hopefully I'll be back.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, you have to come back.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Because it's not a goodbye forever.

[Max Fisher]

Give a fabulousness re injection.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. We need you to come be fabulous. Thank you so much. You know, we wish you and Julia all the best, and we will miss you so much. And thank you for lending your brilliance to the show. And you know what? This show is fucking therapy. Dumpy was right.

[Max Fisher]

This is a great session.

[Jon Favreau]

We're each other's therapists, and now all the rest of you have to listen to it. So.

[Max Fisher]

And we do take healthcare, and we do.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, everyone. Thanks, Max. Cheers as always. If you have comments, questions, or guest ideas, email [e-mail] and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform for ad free episodes of Offline and pod. Save America exclusive content and more. Join our friends at the pod subscription [e-mail] friends and if you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with John Favreau YouTube channel don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich Frank. Jordan Kanter is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Seglin. Delon Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer and Adrian Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East Some.

[Jenny Livingston]

Say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer because of the way it promotes growth.

[Max Fisher]

Some say Odoo is like a magic.

[Jenny Livingston]

Beanstalk scaling with you while being magically affordable. And some say Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting and more are like building blocks.

[Max Fisher]

For creating a custom software suite. But I say Odoo is all of it.

[Jenny Livingston]

Fertilizer, Magic Beanstalk building blocks for business.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, Odoo. Exactly what every business needs.

[Jenny Livingston]

Sign up at odoo.

[Max Fisher]

Com. That's odoo.

[Jenny Livingston]

Com.