Elon Wellness Check, The Anti-Doge Revolt, and Some Actual Good News

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau – Episode Summary
Episode: Elon Wellness Check, The Anti-Doge Revolt, and Some Actual Good News
Release Date: February 27, 2025

In this episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, hosts Jon Favreau and Max Fisher navigate through a spectrum of pressing issues at the intersection of technology, government, and society. The conversation spans from significant government resignations amid technological upheaval, Elon Musk’s controversial interactions with federal agencies, the advent of an armed rideshare service, to uplifting news about educational policy reforms and groundbreaking advancements in artificial intelligence for biomedical research.

---

Government Resignations and Privacy Concerns

The episode opens with a discussion on the mass resignation of 21 staffers from the United States Digital Service, now humorously dubbed the "Doge Service." These tech professionals quit in protest against efforts to significantly overhaul federal systems, raising alarms about potential data privacy violations. Jon highlights the gravity of the situation:

“On Tuesday afternoon, 21 staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency resigned, citing Doge's ongoing work to dramatically reshape the federal government.” (02:37)

Max Fisher elaborates on the implications, emphasizing the risk to sensitive American data:

“There was a GSA tech worker who resigned... for attempting to download American's private data.” (04:31)

This collective action is portrayed as a courageous stand against the misuse of technology in compromising governmental integrity and personal privacy.

---

Elon Musk and Federal Government Dynamics

A substantial portion of the conversation critiques Elon Musk's influence over federal agencies and his broader impact on societal structures. The hosts speculate that Musk's motivations may include monopolizing data for artificial intelligence development or leveraging government contracts for personal gains. Jon articulates this concern:

“He wants recognition... And the fact that it is driven from this like deep emotional insecurity need, I think is part of what brings out this authoritarian impulse.” (41:35)

They discuss Musk’s strained leadership at Tesla, noting investor dissatisfaction and declining stock values:

“Tesla's stock is dramatically overvalued... The stock price has been sliding for a couple of years now.” (35:25)

This segment underscores the potential destabilizing effects of Musk’s distracted leadership on his ventures and the broader tech industry.

---

Emergence of the 'Protector' Rideshare App

The hosts introduce a new development in the rideshare market: Protector. Described by one of its founders as “Uber with guns” (43:25), Protector offers armed veteran and former law enforcement officers as drivers to provide personal protection. Jon mocks the concept, likening it to a surreal “Silicon Valley” plot:

“Protector is Uber with guns.” (43:25)

Both hosts express skepticism and concern over the normalization of armed escorts in everyday transportation, highlighting the potential for increased violence and ethical dilemmas.

---

Positive Developments: LA’s Cell Phone Ban in Schools

Transitioning to more uplifting news, Jon and Max discuss the Los Angeles Unified School District’s implementation of a district-wide cell phone ban, marking it as the second largest school district in the country to adopt such a policy. Max comments on the initial success:

“Going forward, all students are prohibited from using cell phones... A lot of people are just complying.” (53:07)

They note the peaceful compliance and suggest this could serve as a model for other districts aiming to reduce digital distractions and improve student focus and social interactions.

---

AI in Biomedical Research: A Breakthrough in Fighting Superbugs

The episode celebrates a significant achievement where artificial intelligence dramatically accelerated the discovery of mechanisms behind antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Max explains the breakthrough:

“Two days later, it spat out the same answer they spent decades trying to get to.” (56:11)

This AI tool, developed by Google, enabled microbiologists to solve a decade-old problem in mere days, showcasing AI’s potential to revolutionize biomedical research and address urgent public health threats. This segment highlights the dual-edged nature of AI, demonstrating its capacity for immense good alongside its more controversial applications.

---

Offline Challenge: Enhancing Focus and Reducing Digital Dependence

A recurring segment addresses the "offline challenge," where hosts attempt to improve their focus by reducing phone usage and engaging in offline activities like reading and puzzles. Jon shares his positive experience with reading:

“I loved it, love every day doing it.” (62:27)

Max reflects on the difficulty of maintaining focus without digital distractions but acknowledges the benefits in enhanced presence and mental clarity. They emphasize the importance of cultivating habits that prioritize direct engagement over digital consumption, advocating for intentional breaks from technology to foster better mental health and interpersonal connections.

---

Notable Quotes

• Jon Favreau:

  “On Tuesday afternoon, 21 staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency resigned, citing Doge's ongoing work to dramatically reshape the federal government.” (02:37)

• Max Fisher:

  “There was a GSA tech worker who resigned... for attempting to download American's private data.” (04:31)

• Jon Favreau:

  “Protector is Uber with guns.” (43:25)

• Max Fisher:

  “Two days later, it spat out the same answer they spent decades trying to get to.” (56:11)

• Jon Favreau:

  “I loved it, love every day doing it.” (62:27)

---

Conclusion

Offline with Jon Favreau adeptly balances critical discussions on the interplay between technology and governance with moments of personal insight and positive news updates. The episode offers a nuanced exploration of how digital overreach, influential tech leaders, and innovative policies shape our collective culture, while also highlighting promising advancements in AI that hold potential for significant societal benefits. This thoughtful blend ensures listeners are both informed and engaged, providing a comprehensive overview of the current technological landscape and its multifaceted impacts.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by Factor. Ready to optimize your nutrition this year, Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. Lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto Meals. Based on a randomized controlled clinical trial with Factor Keto. Results will vary depending on diet and exercise. With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. Choose from preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein plus, or Keto. Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfasts, grab and go snacks and more add ons. Reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust and convenience that can't be beat. Love Factor of years ago, even before they were a sponsor of this podcast. I've tried Factor and it's really great. You can pick out. There's new meals to pick out each week. They're really tasty. They're takes almost no time to heat them in. It's like you're having a fresh meal every time you, you, you eat a Factor meal. Really good. Great variety. Enjoy it very much. Eat smart with Factor. Get started@Factor Meals.com FactorPodcast and use code Factor Podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code Factor Podcast at Factor Meals.com FactorPodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. I did tweet Peter's piece at him and I said, elon, here is some fan mail from some Trump voters.

[Max Fisher]

You are truly not going to be happy until Steel Team 6 is rappelling onto the roof of this building.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Max Fisher]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

Hope you brought some good Doge puns today.

[Max Fisher]

Well, the news cycle, John, has really been gone to the Doge with Elon and Trump these days. It's the tail John wagging the Doge. No. If this goes on long enough that we see Doge Days of Summer headlines, I am going to start ramming cybertrucks off the road. I'm not going to be able to.

[Jon Favreau]

I am waiting for a Doge Days are Over title.

[Max Fisher]

Aren't we fucking all?

[Jon Favreau]

Aren't we all?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, we. So we have a. We're going to talk about that. We have a lot of news to cover this Week. We're going to spend the whole show going through it all. And don't worry, we actually have some good news for you all today, including a new rule that bans phones in classrooms in LA public schools and an objectively positive story about artificial intelligence.

[Max Fisher]

I am really excited to talk about that, to get into that one.

[Jon Favreau]

But first, Doge.

[Max Fisher]

Doge.

[Jon Favreau]

On Tuesday afternoon, 21 staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency resigned, citing Doge's ongoing work to dramatically reshape the federal government. Nice way to put it. In a letter first reported by the Associated Press, the staffers wrote, quote, we will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize American sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize Doge's actions. According to NPR, the 21 staffers appear to have joined the United States Digital Service, the technology unit that was renamed United States Doge Service before the Trump administration. So this is not Elon's crew. It's not like Big balls resigned.

[Max Fisher]

Right. But these are still existing tech people who are refusing to help. Big balls, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And there's still people who worked in senior positions at major tech companies before taking presumably a pay cut to come use their talents to help make government work better. And they were so worried about what they saw that now they've quit their jobs. Yeah. What do you make of all this?

[Max Fisher]

I am really glad that we are talking about this. Like I understand why this is not grabbing as much attention as Doge, like dismantling all of our institutions, but the seizure and privacy violations of Americans data, I think the consequences of it could be really big and could take years, years to play out. I mean, they are in IRS records, Social Security records, that implicates medical information, bank account numbers. There was a GSA tech worker who resigned when the Tesla flunky who got appointed as the head of the agency asked, you may have seen this for permission to not just view but to personally download American's private data and information to his computer and would not explain why he wanted to do that.

[Jon Favreau]

It's every, I mean, people don't like.

[Max Fisher]

That, let me tell you.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I was, and I was asking, you know, I wonder how feelings about privacy are now. And I was wondering if there's a generational shift because young people, and we heard a little bit about this, we heard a little bit about this anecdotally around the TikTok thing where young people were like, oh, I'll give the Chinese government, my data, who cares? Like life's an open book now. But you know, there's still like 70% of people who are really worried about how the government is using their personal data. This was from 2023. This a Pew survey in 2023. I would love to someone somewhere to pull it again now.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

2025, after the headlines of the last month.

[Max Fisher]

We are also, we're talking about data that goes way beyond even the pretty severe privacy violations that you get from a Facebook or a TikTok. And like, I agree that this is the kind of thing where I think it's not going to be. It understandably will not be immediately obvious to people. It's like, well, I sent that information off to the IRS anyway, so why do I care, right, if this is like getting flown around by like the big balls Doge crew. So like for the purposes of helping people understand why this is really scary, that information is now out in a way that it was protected, it was behind systems, behind all these firewalls. It's no longer anymore. There are a million ways that bad actors could exploit that information. There's blackmail and targeted harassment are the ones that I worry the most about, which is already something we see this administration doing of critics, political opponents, reporters, Democrats, businesses are especially vulnerable to this, especially media companies because of the amount of the information they have to give the government. There's also a huge black market for exactly this kind of data. And like, think about the fact that a company like Facebook spends millions and millions of dollars trying to get personal information on you that is much less valuable than this. And the fact that hostile governments spend billions of dollars on hacking programs meant to get again just 1/100th of the data that's streaming across fucking big balls gaming laptop on any given day now. And if he is not going to sell it to them, the fact that it's all these kids who are using unsecured machines to access your data means going to be easier for bad actors to get it.

[Jon Favreau]

I, I was talking to elected Democrat who said that when they did a town hall in a very rural part of their state, they were asking people sort of like what's, what do you think of the last month? And you know, the people like the general idea of government efficiency, no surprise there, that shows up in the polls. Yeah, they were very worried about cuts to retirement programs, cuts to health care. And what kept coming up is they're very worried about their personal data and personally.

[Max Fisher]

Really?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Wow. I mean it makes sense what it is I think traditionally.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Conservatives.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

From long ago.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, you worried about government having too much of your information. They worried about privacy. Right.

[Max Fisher]

Like that is overreach.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. That's not. I mean, and now, you know, I'm sure it's across the political spectrum, but.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, people who are generally in, in redder areas.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Probably a little worried about that.

[Max Fisher]

Hearing about this crew that does not have their benches. Let me ask you this about these. All of these resigning tech workers. I like resigning in the face of something that you consider to be unconscionable is incredibly brave and courageous. Are we sure it's the most effective method for slowing down Elon's desire to turn the federal government into his personal money pinata?

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's very, I think it's like job by job.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like it depends on where the job is.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

So I think in this case, and of course, Elon responded to this by saying like, oh, these were all Obama holdovers and they weren't, you know, they're just partisan Democrats and I would have fired them anyway if they didn't resign. That was sort of his hole. Yeah. And look, they are, they, like I said, they. A lot of them came from senior positions at Google, at tech companies. And so they were working to make government more efficient. The purpose, a sensible purpose of doge. Right. But if they all leave but make a big stink and, and try to tell everyone, hey, it's dangerous what's going on here. I do think that's useful.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I think when you get to, you know, FBI agents who are suddenly worried about Dan Bongino and Cash Patel. I, I think I would rather them stay in their positions.

[Max Fisher]

I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

Same thing with Justice Department lawyers. Same thing with people in the Defense Department, in the CIA, like the sort of intelligence law enforcement services. I think I would rather rather the deep state stay where it is.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Because, you know, who knows what happens if it's just a bunch of MAGA chuds.

[Max Fisher]

Right. And there's. I think it's worth remembering there's nothing Trump would love more than for every civic minded federal worker to resign. And I take your point about resigning, especially in large numbers, as a way to call attention and say, like, this is so outrageous. I was willing to leave my job. That does kind of presume that there's an outside institution that is going to read that outrage and then check the Trump administration. Congress has made very clear it's not going to do that. I think if we get to a situation where Control of the house flips in a couple years, then that starts to make a lot more sense. But something I would say, if anyone is listening who is considering resigning, is that, you know, nothing succeeds like malicious compliance. It was truly one of the great art forms of our time. You know the word sabotage, I don't know if you know, this comes from the French word for wooden shoes. The wooden shoes that workers would put into textile machines in order to slow them down. So just think about what kind of wooden shoes you have at your desk.

[Jon Favreau]

Which I always say, again, we're only advocating things that are completely legal here on offline. Civil disobedience is civil.

[Max Fisher]

We're having fun. Come on.

[Jon Favreau]

So Wired has a great story, a very terrifying story.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

About the privacy concerns. Yep. And this was about the Trump administration, how the Trump administration may be using new software to monitor employees.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

So one government employee, a researcher with the Army Corps of Engineers, told Wired that after filing a charge against the Trump administration for violating his union's collective bargaining agreement, he began receiving anonymous emails that included personal information like his nickname, travel details, and the color of the notebook he typically uses that he believes were gathered off of his work laptop. What did you make of this report? And do you think there's. There's. There's merit to these. These concerns here?

[Max Fisher]

So a point that Austin made is that you don't necessarily need to surveil every single employee. You can kind of. Is it, like, scaring people? Kind of the point, you know, you can't. There's 3 million federal employees. You can't monitor all of them, but you spy on a few, use what you find to hurt them, and then that scares everyone else into kind of compliance, because I don't know if they're watching my machine. There's a detail in the Washington Post that a bunch of IT workers told this Post reporter that they. That they. All of their systems went down for two hours, came back on, and they think that it's because Doge was installing spyware on all of their systems. I do think that we are going to see them use this to intimidate federal workers who they see as not compliant, which was a big objection from Trump the last time around, is that the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, would not execute on his extremely illegal orders or to justify purges. Like, did you see this NSA chat log Lee thing? So this is. There was a chat log, quote, unquote, leak. Boy, I wonder where they got it from. A. Some sort of a chat that was being used by workers at the nsa, CIA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the dia. And this has been a big thing in conservative media. Now, all they did was discuss trans issues and make fun of Ben Shapiro, both of which are wonderful pastimes.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our bread and butter.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. That's what we do here. But Tulsi Gabbard was like, this is DEI infiltration. Promised that she was going to do purges, and she's already fired 100 people. Right? Yeah. So if they are looking to purge people from, let's say, the intelligence agencies, this is a way to send a signal. If you don't give us the, you know, do what we want you to do and act as Trump's personal security agency. We're spying. And you will find an excuse.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, I think it is pretty clear they've decided we want to eliminate everyone in the federal workforce again, which is 2 million plus employees.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Who's not completely loyal. How do we do that? Very cumbersome.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

To just go and interview people. Right. So, like, you scoop up all their data. There's talk of using AI to kind of go through, like, you know, words that are. That they flag that this person's disloyal because they used the word diversity once in an email.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it sounds silly, but, like, that's actually, actually what's happening right now. Right? Yeah. So, of course this is what they want. All everyone's access to everyone's personal data.

[Max Fisher]

Right. And to blackmail people because they'll. They'll find something that somebody doesn't want out, and they'll say, we're going to go leak this to National Review unless you do what we want.

[Jon Favreau]

I brought this up briefly on Pod Save America, but it feels very relevant to offline talk to you guys about it, too. On the focus group podcast this week, Kara Swisher told Sarah Longwell that she believes Elon Musk is hoovering up data at the federal government because he's run out of publicly available data to feed into his LLM and that he intends to train Grok or whatever stupid AI system he creates next on the private data he's stolen. How plausible do you find that theory?

[Max Fisher]

Come on. Why are you asking me this? It is. Okay, look, we're all trying to figure out what's going on here. It's reasonable to throw out theories. It's a little Silicon Valley brain, I feel, to look at the expanse of the American federal government, a set of overlapping institutions built over 200 years, and say, well, of course the greatest thing of value here that one might want to extract is a data set to feed into your AT LLM. I don't think this is going on here. Well, and anyway, Elon has.

[Jon Favreau]

I do wonder why. So the federal employees. We know why that he wants their data? Right? Right. Because he wants to fire them. Why does it. Why are they all looking for access to, like, the treasury stuff?

[Max Fisher]

Irs, I think they know.

[Jon Favreau]

Medical information.

[Max Fisher]

I. I was. Like. I was saying, this is. There's an entire economy around people's personal data. It's what the biggest companies in the world are built around. As in trafficking and personal data. This is personal data that the Facebooks of the world have never even dreamed of getting their hands on. Foreign governments want to get their hands on this data. Now, I don't know what their specific plan is. It might just be, we know this is really valuable. We have access to it today. So let's put it on a fucking thumb drive.

[Jon Favreau]

Right? Yeah, that's. That's true. I guess that's my.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm agreeing with that too. And then, like, maybe give it to an AI.

[Max Fisher]

Right?

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe we can feed into AI. Maybe we just have it. Maybe we sell it on the black market. I don't know. You might as well keep it. Just pop it in a CSV.

[Max Fisher]

Right. Right. I just. I like. What is. What is training Grok on all of our phone numbers gonna do to make Grok better?

[Jon Favreau]

And Grok needs to be better. We're gonna talk about this later. But Grok is. Grok is really turning on Elon.

[Max Fisher]

I know. I was gonna say Elon has got bigger problems with Grok, which is that it continues to just own his ass every single day. So I don't know if giving it all of her socials is gonna be the thing that stops it from constantly shitting on him.

[Jon Favreau]

He also could be motivated by what having near total control over the federal government could do for his many ventures.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

That depend on contracts and regulatory approval from the same federal government. This story did not get as much attention as I think it should.

[Max Fisher]

I totally agree.

[Jon Favreau]

Wall Street Journal reported that a major ad conglomerate was told by top executives at X, including our pal Linda Yakarina, The Yak attack. Yak attack.

[Max Fisher]

Yak attack on our institutions.

[Jon Favreau]

So the execs at this ad conglomerate were told by Yak Attack and other and other lawyers at X that they needed to spend more to advertise on X. Yeah. Quote or else. Big coincidence. The ad conglomerate just announced a big merger that could still be Blocked by the Trump administration.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Doesn't really seem on the level, huh?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. And it just to really underscore this. So it's. It's a company called Inter Public Group. They represent a bunch of other companies that do advertising. This threat was made back in December, right. When they were talking about this $13 billion merger. And right around the same time, that Yak attack made this implicit threat that we're going to torpedo your $13 billion merger unless your clients come back to us. Representative Jim Jordan came out and threatened to block the merger because he considered an antitrust violation, that they were not advertising more with conservative news agencies. And sure enough, as best we can tell, the advertisers did come back. So it worked. And one thing that I would just, like, it's not just about, like, oh, they're getting some more money out of Walmart to advertise on Twitter. Like, coercing companies to give. Using the power of the state to coerce companies to give Elon Musk money. That's scary. That's authoritarianism. That is what that is. And if you. I know it's easy to think, like, well, it's just big companies, they're just spending a little bit on Twitter. What does this really matter? Like, what about when that power gets targeted at individuals, right. At media companies, at labor units, like, hey, Microsoft, move all your offices to a red state, you know, or else. Or we're going to come after you with a regulatory power. So, like, hey, United Auto Workers, stop trying to unionize Tesla plants, or we're going to close your chapters at Toyota. Like, I think this is a really scary line that has been crossed here.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And we will look. And we know that Elon was like, they were suing the advertisers because they thought that, like, free speeches, you must advertise on my platform collusion that you're all deciding not to advertise. And this is. I don't know what fucking legal theory they came up with for this. They want to see. So now it's like, oh, well, now we have the power of the state, so now we can just use that. No, Elon is full. I mean, it's just so not surprising.

[Max Fisher]

He's.

[Jon Favreau]

He's out there last week, two weeks, been saying, like, every judge that rules against them should be impeached.

[Max Fisher]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

And that, like, how can we have judges block the will of the people? I mean, it's just like, it sounds so fudgeing close to just what you'd hear from a demagogue authoritarian. It's like, it's, it's right there.

[Max Fisher]

It's, I mean. And also 60 Minutes reporters should be jailed because they reported on Doge in a way that I don't like. No, this is, this is very literally and very explicitly the playbook for like, I don't know what better phrase for it, early onset authoritarianism. Like this is what it looks like when you are like a third of the way down the transom. Like they're, this is all part of signals that they are sending not just to Twitter advertisers, but to businesses more widely. We are going to make it illegal to do business in a way that does not personally enrich us, which is some like real tin pot dictatorship.

[Jon Favreau]

Washington Post headline today, Elon Musk's business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding. Of course, and that's, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink's now looking, getting looked at for a contract to do the broadband that the Inflation Reduction act had invested in. That of course didn't actually connect anyone.

[Max Fisher]

Guess who's bringing in to replace all those FAA jobs.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, right, SpaceX, right?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, right. You gut the institutions and then you replace it with your cronies. That's right, with your cronies who maybe they do the job, maybe they don't. But that's not the point. The point is that you're enriching yourself off of that.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by Deleteme. Data brokers make a profit off your data. Your data is a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details. This can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, harassment and unwanted spam calls. But now you can protect your privacy. That's why we recommend DeleteMe. DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data brokers. Sign up and provide Deleteme with exactly what information you want deleted. And their experts take it from there. DeleteMe sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. Deleteme isn't just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you. Constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. To put it simply, Deleteme does all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from data broker websites. This is really important. I've had this done before. Oftentimes you have to do it multiple times because it keeps popping back up. But you really don't want your information out there. And you'd be surprised how much of your information is out there and your family's information. So Delete Me is really great for this. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting offline to 64,000. Text offline to 64000. That's offline to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details.

[C]

This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series, the Daily Show. John Stewart and the Daily show news team are covering every minute of every hour of President Trump's second first 100 days in office with brand new episodes every weeknight. From the lowest lows to the highest lows and everything in between, they'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's the Daily show, new tonight at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount Plus.

[Jon Favreau]

So whatever Elon's up to, which is, you know, multiple choice, you can pick them all. All the above.

[Max Fisher]

They're all it could be. It could be all the above for.

[Jon Favreau]

Feels like all of this may be going to his head.

[Max Fisher]

That's not all that's going to his head.

[Jon Favreau]

I was going to say, at the very least, seems like he's really going through something.

[Max Fisher]

He does.

[Jon Favreau]

Last week he appeared on stage at CPAC wearing oversized sunglasses, a gold chain, and a dark maga hat, all while wielding a chainsaw. Then he sat down for an interview with Newsmax and said this. I am become meme. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much I'm just living the meme. It's like there's living the dream and there's living the meme and it's pretty much what's happening, you know.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, pretty much I'm great. Pretty much he's so funny. I think he has become manic episode. If you have to say you are a meme, you are not a meme. That's not. That's how that works.

[Jon Favreau]

Like also screams about, like, legalizing comedy.

[Max Fisher]

There was a. I know just the lazy someone.

[Jon Favreau]

Someone just helpfully printed the transcript of the Elon interview at cpac, which is even funnier to read it because there's a lot of like, legalized comedy. He seemed very like he was having some kind of an episode, I think. Couple possibilities. It's been reported that he does a lot of drugs. Yeah, right.

[Max Fisher]

It sure has been.

[Jon Favreau]

But also it did have the energy of someone who was like, this is the new click that I'm trying to fit in with to.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

To engage all these freaks at cpac. And so I need to be funny, but I'm like an awkward person.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And so I'm gonna try. Like, he seemed like he was trying really hard to be cool, to fit on the stage. Yeah, that was sort of.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, this is his story from the beginning. Like, truly going back decades, has been trying to buy his way into certain kinds of status. Status is a big acceptance. Like, this was a lot of him. Like, getting involved in Tesla was. It's like he wants to be the, you know, the cool Iron man guy from the future.

[Jon Favreau]

And he, the Iron man thing is real. He wants to be seen as Tony Stark.

[Max Fisher]

Right. But he's not an engineer, he's not an inventor. So it was all just trying to use money and pull whatever levers to try to get there. Like, but you can't buy your way in to being cool. Like, definitionally, by the way, we really used to have a better class of right wing attention trolls in this country. I don't know what happened better. Oh, remember like Milo Guianopoulos?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Remember Weave? I mean, horrible people, monsters. But at least they treated our attention as something that was worth stealing on the merits with the most horrible things you've ever heard.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Like they triggered us in a really effective way.

[Max Fisher]

Right. As opposed to. Elon is just trying to like buy his way into a position of influence so he can destroy institutions in a way that we will have to pay attention to him. I mean, it really does seem like he is having a like Kanye style slow motion, like full break.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I feel like we're in the middle of it and who knows? He was at the, he was at the cabinet meeting today. We're recording this on Wednesday. He was at Trump's cabinet meeting and he was the first one to speak. He had his, he had his tech support T shirt on and his dark MAGA hat and he was talking about mistakes that they make and we're going to correct them. He's like, like we accidentally stopped Ebola protection for a minute. He's like. But, but then we realized it. We put it back. We put it back.

[Max Fisher]

Wow, what a great guy.

[Jon Favreau]

What a great guy.

[Max Fisher]

So do you, do you feel like the public is, is going to turn on Elon or is turning on him or does it matter?

[Jon Favreau]

It. I think yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so the polling all shows that his, his approval ratings are underwater. They have been falling. Yeah. But we haven't had any. Like, we've got some focus groups now. So Puck and Echelon had did some focus groups on Elon. Peter Hamby, our friend Peter Hamby wrote about this and it said, hold on, I'm going to read from the piece. It says, despite the abundance of public polling about the administration since Trump took office, we haven't seen many focus groups which lend useful textures that polls don't capture. Polls, for instance, don't tell you that Musk is a, quote, weird nerd, which is how Adam, a Trump voting hockey fan from Macomb County, Michigan.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Described the billionaire last week. Or that he's a, quote, complete tool, as Michael from Milwaukee put it. Or scary Taisha in toledo, or Selfish DeAndre, also from Milwaukee and just looking to enrich himself, perhaps. Eric, a real estate appraiser from Pittsburgh, put it most poignantly, quote, extremely radical, scary. I just shudder that Trump has given him carte blanche.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, if you are a Trump voter, either a die hard or just like Trump curious voter, and you voted for him to some extent, I know this is not everyone, but a significant share because you like the Trump show because he's funny, he's charismatic to you. You kind of like when he's on tv, you like the things that he says. And instead you get this guy who is off putting, who is like desperate, who is like really the opposite of the energy that Trump brings. Yes, I could see how like, I don't like that. That's your approach to politics. That's what your priorities are. But you would, I think you would feel like you were being robbed of what you signed up for.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, it's interesting when I listened to that, to Sarah's episode with Kara they had done, it was some focus groups talking about Elon. But it was the focus groups seemed like they were conducted in the period before Trump took office in like late December.

[Max Fisher]

Really?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And so at least some of them, some of the, some of the clips at the beginning, some of them were. And so those, some of those people were positive. They were Trump voters, Biden, a Trump voter. So those people were positive about Elon in the sense that they were saying, well, he is really smart in business, he's a genius. And it makes me feel comfortable that someone that smart is going to be in the government because they all are for government efficiency. Even a lot of Democrats are. People think that the federal government spends, you know, too much of their money wasted on things, too much inefficiency, slow, all that kind of shit. A lot of some of it is true. I've worked in the federal government. Even then there was some concern, like, well, he is really rich and he's got his own companies and his own thing and like, is he going to be looking out for us? I think that every single thing he has done, like, I think Elon had some goodwill from people, Trump voters and others.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think every single thing he has done since Trump took office has just like depleted that goodwill.

[Max Fisher]

It's really burnished that. It does feel like, I don't know if it's going to matter, but it does feel like a notable data point that a number of federal agencies, not all of them, but a couple of them, felt comfortable telling all of their employees, don't answer this like, doge, justify your job email. I don't know how or when that ever adds up to anything, given that the only remaining check on our unelected leader, Elon Musk, is the elected leader, Donald Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I, I've been thinking about this a lot, obviously.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I think with Trump, Trump's message is, you know, the establishment, the institutions, everything's broken. They're all elites, they're all after you and I'm a, you know, I'm a class trader and I'm for you and it's for the people and it's America and the people. Elon's message is all the elites are bad in the institution, stuff like that. But like, you know what, I'm the genius and the machines are going to fix everything, right? We're going to have the robots, they're going to take care of it all. People don't really matter to Elon that much. He talks about like the will of the people, but he's not a people guy. And I think he plays into people's pre existing concerns about big tech and the tech industry, which is concerns that these people want to automate away all of the rest of our jobs, that they don't care about our privacy, they're cavalier about our personal information and they are the reason that we started this podcast. Right. Like we are addicted to our screens. They are trying to extract our attention from us and monetize it. Like he's feeding into all that. And I don't think you get a lot of support for the techno authoritarian vision of the future in the way that you might get support from the traditional MAGA style populism as bullshit as that is too.

[Max Fisher]

And Trump in the past has specifically tried to exploit and use to his advantage skepticism of Silicon Valley. And like you're saying everything that he has tried to sell to. I don't think he cares about what his non supporters think, but what he's tried to sell to his supporters of who he is and what he's bringing them is being pretty significantly undermined by Elon Musk.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

I don't know if he doesn't see it, doesn't care. Cares more about the like billionaire tax cuts that he's pursuing. But I think the degree to which he is not responsive to the way the people around him are hurting his image with his supporters in the way that he was in his first term is so worrying to me. I am almost a little nostalgic for first term Trump and like a sick perverse way because like, well, at least he would play this constant game of like shaking the bag of rats to try to get everyone in his team to fight each other.

[Jon Favreau]

I think that once you have been investigated by federal government, state governments, charged criminally.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Nearly assassinated twice.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

That you were like, he wants to burn. I'm not going to really care or believe.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Bad polls at this point. I mean, Joe Biden didn't believe his polls when it was his own pollsters and everyone in the party telling him like, you're in a bubble in the White House. So I actually don't think Trump. I don't think if there's any.

[Max Fisher]

Not getting through to him.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. I think it's. The question is, and Trump's never going to have to run again. Right?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

He's, he's never running another campaign. Whether he tries to remain as president.

[Max Fisher]

Is a different question.

[Jon Favreau]

We know he's not going to run another campaign, so what does he give a shit?

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's. The question is do Republican politicians who do have to run again.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Finally get like, okay, Elon Musk, which is, you know, some of these agency heads.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Are Republican politicians or were. And you're starting to see members of Congress. Lisa Murkowski had a very strong statement about Elon Musk. Thom Tillis not a strong statement. But was like, he's got to be a little careful here.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, you're getting some of that in Congress.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

So that I would, I would look at that more than I would look at Trump stuff.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. That's interesting.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by Haya. Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise filled with two teaspoons of sugar. Unhealthy chemicals and other gummy additives growing kids should never eat. That's why Haya created a superpowered, chewable vitamin. Haiya fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diets to provide the full body nourishment our kids need with a yummy taste they love. Formulated with the help of pediatricians and nutritional experts, Haya is pressed with a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies, then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and minerals to help support immune system energy, brain function, mood, concentration, teeth, bones and more. It's non gmo, vegan, dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free and everything else you can imagine. Hayya is designed for kids two and up and sent straight to your door so parents have one less thing to worry about. Charlie takes Hay vitamins. He loves them. My son, 4 years old and he's taken them for a few years. We don't want him to have too many sweets. We do want him to have vitamins because he basically only eats spaghetti, pasta, you know, Mac and cheese. That's, that's his full diet. So you need to give him some vitamins and he does like these even though they don't have all the sugar that other vitamins have. Are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens? I am. Haya also now has Kids Daily Greens and Superfoods, a chocolate flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids packed with 55 plus whole food ingredients to support brain power, development and digestion. Just scoop, shake and sip with milk or any non dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order to claim this deal you must go to hyahealth.com off this deal is not available on their regular website. Go to Haya H I Y A H E a l t h.comoff hail and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.

[C]

This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series, the Daily Show. Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are covering every minute of every hour of President Trump's second first 100 days in office with brand new episodes every weeknight. From the lowest lows to the highest lows and everything in between, they'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's the Daily show new tonight at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount. Plus.

[Jon Favreau]

Turns out that his, his. Elon's quest to become meme may actually be getting in the way of other things in his life. Like running Tesla.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Where his reduced presence has begun stirring dissatisfaction within the company, according to the New York Times, which reports that some investors are beginning to doubt Musk's leadership. No shit. What do you think happens at Tesla if. If Elon keeps going.

[Max Fisher]

So I have said many times on here that Tesla's stock is dramatically overvalued and that not just in the sense that like I dislike Tesla or like it's a feelings thing, but like stock prices are pegged to earnings. Every industry has a standard price to earnings ratio. Tesla's is seven or eight times what it should be based on the auto industry price to earning ratio. And that matters because that inflation is where Elon gets all of his wealth. Yeah, because most of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock. So that's where he gets a lot of his power. Tesla's stock price has been sliding for a couple of years now. And everyone has been kind of waiting for the day when reality catches up and the mystique finally falls away and Tesla's stock price collapses down to what its actual price turning ratio said it should be, which would eliminate most or an enormous amount of Elon Musk's wealth. And it looked like we were headed in that direction. And then the election happened. The stock price exploded because people were pricing in just a corruption premium that he is going to. And you know, you see how they got there. Obviously he is doing a lot of corruption for his businesses, but it is sliding back again and really fast. It's been a 37% drop since the election.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow.

[Max Fisher]

8% on one day. And Tuesday. It's really bad when your stock loses 8% of its value in a day when you're the unelected strongman despot of the country in which that company resides is really hard to fuck up that much. Partly this is bad numbers. I don't know if you saw this, but Tesla's sales halved in Europe just over the past year. I mean, that's not considered good business. No, but I think a lot of it is. Just that everyone can see he's not minding the store. There was audio that was leaked to the New York Times of an executive at Tesla basically saying that to employees that we know he's not present. His personal brand is becoming.

[Jon Favreau]

Sounds like you could use the offline challenge for focus.

[Max Fisher]

I don't know if I'm going to say Elon Musk. Come on offline. I don't know if I'm ready to go there. But if he wants to follow along with the offline challenge, it might be the most important thing that we ever do. His brand is extremely toxic, which is hurting him, especially in Europe and I think also in the United States. And also he is just like clearly mentally not there right now.

[Jon Favreau]

How do you feel? Like I don't want to root for Tesla to do poorly in a way, in a weird way. Right.

[Max Fisher]

Because like I very happy to root for that.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I don't want Elon Musk to get richer. I want Elon Musk to fail.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't like Elon Musk. I don't know if anyone has sensed that from this podcast, but like we need electric cars, we need electric car companies. Like I don't want to lose the focus of like that electric cars are a good thing. Now I would give anyone advice who's thinking of buying an electric car to not buy it, to buy a Rivian, buy something. There's plenty, plenty of great electric cars. Now you don't have to. Tesla's not the only one out there. But like, boy, do I wish, you know, Elon could walk away from Tesla permanently and there'd be someone else running it.

[Max Fisher]

That is true. I mean the thing is, is that as an electric car company, Tesla has been failing for a few years now. Its share of the market has been dropping really precipitously. Now it started from a high of like 55% of the market, which is huge. But it is shrinking because we're getting a lot more entrants, there's a lot more competition. They keep promising they're going to come up with it's going to be a cheaper model, there's going to be a self driving model and they keep not doing it. But yes, I agree. If you could replace Elon Musk's Tesla with a, a different Tesla that made.

[Jon Favreau]

This, we need as many electric cars as we can get.

[Max Fisher]

Of course, absolutely. It's a net good for the world by a huge margin. If we're making more good electric cars. I agree with that. But also don't buy a Tesla right now. But I don't think if you have one, I don't think you have to sell it. No necessarily. I think that's okay. I'm not egging your car.

[Jon Favreau]

Drive it off a cliff.

[Max Fisher]

I might cybertruck. I have to look askance. If you've got a cybertruck. I'm sorry.

[Jon Favreau]

Those things are fucking hideous.

[Max Fisher]

They're so hideous. And it's also, and that's not a.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't like Elon opinion. If I don't care who, I don't care where that came from. If I didn't know it was a Tesla cybertruck, I think it was hideous.

[Max Fisher]

I do. It's also so closely associated with him. It's like you might as well just write I love Elon on the side of it.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Also turning on Elon X.

[Max Fisher]

He really can't keep his house in order.

[Jon Favreau]

Last week he posted some crazy lie about President Zelensky gets corrected by his own Community Notes feature and then tweets. He's working to quote, fix Community Notes because it's quote, increasingly being gamed by governments and legacy media.

[Max Fisher]

I love this deep state. The deep state.

[Jon Favreau]

Brock is turning on him. The Community Notes are turning on him. But really like he, he thinks that anything that is reported by any media that is not like not what he wants. Blue checked fans of his or like Tucker Carlson or Trump regime media is just not.

[Max Fisher]

Is not fact, is illegal. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I can't get too worked up about the Community Notes thing largely because if you're going to Twitter for news and information that you expect to be accurate, like whatever's going on with Community Notes is just the start of your concerns. But it is very funny to me that Elon Musk, who's so deeply craves just approval and validation, I guess because his dad didn't love him like that kind of seems to be the consensus of a lot of the biographers here is going on these week long benders, ripping out the wiring of our most important institutions just to try to get us to pay attention to him and applause him. Now getting jeered and owned by the very platform he bought himself for $44 billion, like the best. That's kind of funny.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh yeah.

[Max Fisher]

He bought a $44 billion Hallmark card to himself and opened it up and it said fuck you. That's funny.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know. Still a good purchase for him if all you want is attention, that's. Which is what he wants.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, we've talked about this before but you know, he wants recognition, right? He's getting attention. Getting attention from us.

[Max Fisher]

Look, I don't. He seems to like just the straight up attention. I agree that he wants recognition as well. And the, the fact that it is driven from this like deep emotional insecurity need, I think is part of what brings out this authoritarian impulse that anyone who criticizes him, especially if it's prominent, is so threatening to him psychologically that he kind of has to see it as a malicious lie. That must be illegal. And that reporter must be jailed.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

And it, like, I know it feels simplistic to boil it down to, like, his emotional issues from his childhood, but that really does seem to be a lot of what's going on here.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I would like to get the. The video footage of those focus groups and the people calling them a complete fool and just, like, somehow just get him to make. Force him to watch it. I mean, like, it's on the screen of the next, you know, CPAC he goes to or whatever.

[Max Fisher]

If I know any one person who is not actively in the Trump administration with a proven track record of getting Elon Musk to look at things on the Internet is sitting right here in front of me. Well, I think. I think. And you know, Sarah Longwell, we can make this happen.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I did tweet Peter's piece at him and I said, elon, here is some fan mail from some Trump voters.

[Max Fisher]

You are truly not going to be happy until Steel Team 6 is rappelling onto the roof of this building. And I love your courage, but I am going to be wearing it.

[Jon Favreau]

Like I said, I think that Trump is already planning on sending them to extricate Bolsonaro.

[Max Fisher]

Maybe we'll stop by here on the way back.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe. Perhaps. Who knows? All right. Promised you all a couple of good pieces of good news, but before we get there, we got one more ridiculous piece of news that we have to talk about. We didn't have time last week. We have to talk about.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, my God.

[Jon Favreau]

So last week, a new rideshare app. No problem there. It launched and it's called Protector. What differentiates Protector from Uber and Lyft is that its drivers are armed. The app's profile in the App Store reads. With the click of a button, Protector users can schedule veteran and former law enforcement private security personnel to serve as personal protection when needed. Or in the words of one of the app's founders, protector is Uber with guns. Talk about Silicon Valley brain.

[Max Fisher]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

That is a fucking storyline right out of Silicon Valley.

[Max Fisher]

How many articles about this I read to the end, Waiting for, like, it's a bit, right? It's all a performance art joke, is it not?

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, maybe it is. I never thought about that.

[Max Fisher]

I know. I think, unfortunately, I think it's real.

[Jon Favreau]

Because I saw that. I saw the founder tweeting about it.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And then people were like, they've Got ads and like, Aaron Levy from. From Box, the founder of Box, was like, you just created a hundred thousand jobs. This is amazing. I'm like, what. What are we. What's happening?

[Max Fisher]

But then.

[Jon Favreau]

Then you see that. You're like, oh, this is why Elon Musk. This is.

[Max Fisher]

This is why. This is the ego. This is the mindset produces.

[Jon Favreau]

This is the mindset. Like, oh, well, obviously there's a bunch of people with guns sitting around.

[Max Fisher]

So did you.

[Jon Favreau]

Who don't have jobs and there's cars and there's people who are worried about their security.

[Max Fisher]

Boom. I mean, dollar idea. Ironically, as we just mentioned, Seal Team 6 is after you. You could probably use a protector.

[Jon Favreau]

Don't think that wasn't going through my head when I was reading. When I was reading the prompt. Don't think that wasn't going through my head.

[Max Fisher]

Look, John, I can't tell you how many times I've been on my way to LAX in an Uber, cruising down the 405, and thought, you know, this traffic is annoying. If only it also came with the risk of an accidental firearm discharge is really what we need. So I should say I believe this is not just for an armed driver, but an armed escort. Generally, like, a lot of the use case they're selling is someone to walk around with you, but, like, because you.

[Jon Favreau]

Want that person to be sort of a temporary hire you've never met before. When someone with a gun follows you around ostensibly to protect you, you know, you don't really want to know that person. You want to just passing, you know, how many stars? Oh, oh, you know, 3.7, whatever, that's fine.

[Max Fisher]

So I keep wondering that, like, that part of the pitch meeting, specifically, it's like, you know what consumers want? They really want an app that lets you press a button to have a weird stranger with the gun charge up to your front door saying, john. John. Anyone for John? Anyone for John? Like, hey, VC investor, you know, going to the mall. What if you took that experience, everything you liked about it, and then added in the bank shootout from he one of the. Did you watch any of the ads?

[Jon Favreau]

No.

[Max Fisher]

One of the ads brags that a former Navy SEAL sniper is one of their Rentigoons.

[Jon Favreau]

Jesus Christ.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, that's what I want. Give me the trained killer who's so fucked up from whatever he did in Afghanistan that he has to slum for hourly Rentigoon work. That's the guy. I want safeties off while he's marching me through the Atwater farmer's market.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like, hey, do you like the music? Do you want no music? Do you want to silence or no silence?

[Max Fisher]

Semi automatic.

[Jon Favreau]

Semi automatic.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Just tell me what your preference is. Are. I got some mints and I got some extra clips.

[Max Fisher]

A little usb.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's what. That's what we're doing.

[Max Fisher]

Did you see the videos marketing this around Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO? Oh, yeah, that's a. They have this whole campaign that is like, what if Brian Thompson had had protector and they staged it. They staged a video.

[Jon Favreau]

Did they get someone to play Luigi?

[Max Fisher]

I. Yes. They don't. They don't. Absolutely. They staged it. Except it's one of their goons there to karate chop Luigi Mangioni into submission. One of them also shows it like just in this video shooting Luigi Mangione in the stomach, which is like. Okay, so if fantasizing about anti violence violence, $700 a pop. If you want to have a guy like follow you out of the gym with a gun, I guess.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, you know, we might get to the point where that's necessary. I just said we're just. We're dipping our toes. This is early onset authoritarian.

[Max Fisher]

I know, right? Well, I mean, this is actually a. I promise I won't take us down this tangent, but like, privatization of security is a huge thing in countries where the rule of law is disintegrating because you can't trust the police because there's corruption. So you hire your own security, which then feeds into this like, vicious cycle.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, you're right. I did not want to go.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, sorry, sorry.

[Jon Favreau]

But thank you for pointing it out.

[Max Fisher]

You're welcome. I thought we had some fun jokes and I thought, you know, what we need is something really upsetting.

[Jon Favreau]

I have to say, Emily listened to. I think it was pods Day of America yesterday or something. She caught up on some of the pods.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, nice.

[Jon Favreau]

Busy, busy mom, right? She's kind of cool, caught up on the pods. And she was like, she texted me and she was like, I was just listening to the pod and now I don't know how you sleep at night.

[Max Fisher]

I mean, you don't. That's part of the premise of the podcast. That's not happening.

[Jon Favreau]

I really felt. I was like, she. She sees me now. She gets it. She's like, now I. You come home and she's like, this is.

[Max Fisher]

This is.

[Jon Favreau]

The news is really bad. I'm like, yeah, no, do you.

[Max Fisher]

I know we're going to get to folk, but like, do you find yourself like lying in bed kind of spinning up about the News.

[Jon Favreau]

Not with all the Xanax. I don't. I don't actually. I'm doing.

[Max Fisher]

That's great.

[Jon Favreau]

It is no joke. Taken a lot of, like, therapy, our challenges, thinking about, like, other stuff I do. I have been able to turn it off now at night. Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Because otherwise, I know that's when it's really dangerous is because that's when you start, like, really spinning up. And that's when I know we'll get into it. Like, I find it really valuable to be able to turn that off. I did take a Benzi for the first time last week and it works.

[Jon Favreau]

It does help.

[Max Fisher]

It's really effective. I. I find that it's things I don't foresee getting upset about that upset me the most. Like the U. N. Vote over Russia invading Ukraine. I, you know, I would not think that that would upset me, but I think because I didn't anticipate it, like, I really spun out for a day over it.

[Jon Favreau]

So I. Yes. That kind of thing would normally spin me out on Sunday night. I was like, okay, going to bed. I wake up tomorrow and think about the show Pod Save America, right? And I'm on a text chain with Tim Miller and some others. Our friend Tim Miller from the Lord. And Tim was like, oh, Bongino at deputy FBI, you know, And I. And I was like, no, no. And then in my other text chain, someone was like, oh, damn, Bongino and everyone. And you know, and. And Tommy was like, as he said on Pod Save America this week, he's like, this is the kind of thing where you think, like, if we were going to be an autocracy, like, how would this be different?

[Max Fisher]

Right?

[Jon Favreau]

And that. And all of a sudden I was like, am I going to spend. And I was. I was thinking about sitting at my laptop and like, looking up Dan Bongino things he says. And I was like, you know what?

[Max Fisher]

Same.

[Jon Favreau]

No, I'm like, don't, don't put the phone down. Yeah, I can talk about Dan Budget. I'm going to talk about him on Pods of America tomorrow. I'm going to read all the stories tomorrow. I don't need to do that to myself tonight.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

What value is that to do that to myself? And I like, tweet about it, talk, commiserate with everyone, freak out about it. Like, there's just. It's. I'm not saying that. Doesn't mean it's. That's very bad. You're saying, like, I don't. That's not healthy for me right now. To deal with that.

[Max Fisher]

I had. It's so funny you say that. I had literally the exact same arc with the exact same piece of information where I was texting with someone about it and I was going to look up information about him in order to express back to someone who already agreed with me about why this was so bad.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep.

[Max Fisher]

And I was like, why? Why do we need to do this? And I'd like, this is not just something that is specific to us because we work media. Like, I feel like I get questions from people all the time where it's like, I feel like it's my obligation as a citizen to keep up on the news and like read all the news articles because I have to be engaged. And it's like, yes, that is true to an extent, but turning it off is like really, really important.

[Jon Favreau]

It is. It is. Offline is brought to you by Mint Mobile. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money too. After years of overpaying for wireless, crooked staffer Nina finally got fed up from crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks that actually cost more in the long run and switched to Mint Mobile. Nina's now saving $40 a month since ditching her old wireless plan. The service is so reliable and affordable, she even convinced her mom to make the switch to Mint Mobile. Nina convincing her mom to switch phone plans is very on brand. Very on brand. Nina is someone who tries to get her seatmates on airplanes to register to vote and then knock on doors. Yes, that's right. We've. We've knocked on doors sometimes. We're Republicans and it's very funny to watch. Say bye to your overpriced wireless plans. Jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All plants come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] offline that's mintmobile.com offline. Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[C]

This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series, the Daily Show. Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are covering every minute of every hour of President Trump's second first 100 days in office. With brand new episodes every weeknight. From the lowest lows to the highest lows and everything in between, they'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's the Daily show, new tonight at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount. Plus foreign.

[Jon Favreau]

Speaking of turning it off.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

What a segue. Here's the good news. Last Tuesday, February 18, a district wide cell phone ban went into effect in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second largest school district.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Going forward, all students are prohibited from using cell phones, not just in classrooms, but for the duration of school hours.

[Max Fisher]

Amazing.

[Jon Favreau]

While the ban is still relatively new, the news among parents in Los Angeles is that it's going well. Also, there's an laist story that going to. Here's the headline. Lausd's really, really annoying Cell Phone Ban may be working.

[Max Fisher]

All right. Thanks, Taylor.

[Jon Favreau]

The students are like, you know what, I guess the dean of students said that about 70 phones were confiscated outside of the classrooms, but a lot of people are just complying. And the kids that they were caught, they said, oh, my fault, won't do it again. And then they handed over the phones. It was very peaceful.

[Max Fisher]

Amazing.

[Jon Favreau]

I know that's.

[Max Fisher]

A peaceful transfer of.

[Jon Favreau]

Power, but so far it's going well. No complaints. No one freaking out, no student revolts. Everyone's just doing it.

[Max Fisher]

We have always said everybody wants this, including the kids. Including the kids. What they don't want is to be the one kid without their phone. Because that's hard. You're isolated, everybody. This shows up in surveys. It's not just us making it up. The kids want to be an environment where the phones are taken away collectively. We all do it together. It's kind of an argument for having the state, the existence of a state, to be able to collectively organize on behalf of the greater good.

[Jon Favreau]

So I think we're going to have the state so it can take all of our phones. You know what, basically that's what Elon's doing anyway.

[Max Fisher]

But that's the one thing that he's not taking is our phones.

[Jon Favreau]

Our, our info. Just.

[Max Fisher]

I think we're going to learn a lot from the way they're doing this. Specifically. I don't know if you saw this. They're doing a 5050 split between schools of some schools, it's an honor system. They just tell the kids you can't have your phone out and that some schools, they're saying it's these timed magnetic pouches where the kid keeps the pouch. You put the phone in the pouch, it's timed, it's sealed, and then at the end of the school day it opens back up. I think that's going to be very interesting. We'll learn what works, what people are comfortable with, not comfortable with. I think the fact that everybody seems to be bringing aid, like let's try this, we're excited for it, attitude is going to make it really useful for learning lessons and what works.

[Jon Favreau]

I feel like the over time the honor system will win out because people get so used to not having it.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, I see.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what I'm saying? Then it's like, then you stop thinking about it, it becomes a habit. Right. Which is ideal. That's what we want.

[Max Fisher]

It's going to really undercut this week's Focus Challenge, which is timed magnetic LA school system pouches. No, not really. Although I wish I had done as I say that. Why didn't I do that?

[Jon Favreau]

Damn it.

[Max Fisher]

I do think that his success in LA will cascade too, because I think everybody wants to. Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

One other piece of good news. The BBC reported last week that a complex problem that took microbiologists a decade to get to the bottom of has been solved in just two days by a new artificial intelligence tool. We have been talking a lot about all the scary uses of AI. One really exciting potential use of AI is around biomedical research, new cures, treatments, everything in sort of the health world could be very, very exciting. Why don't you talk to us?

[Max Fisher]

Okay, so this story that you talked about has to do with a really big problem. Superbug diseases which are immune to antibiotics. And when you talk to people about like the four or five problems we face, like as a species like this is up there with climate change. So this team at Imperial College London spent decades trying to identify this very specific particular thing, the mechanism that makes those superbugs immune. It's not a cure, it's just understanding the process of it. They got an answer. And then as this test, before they published that answer, they separately asked Google's medical AI's tool called co scientists to try to figure it out, offer up some hypotheses. Two days later, it spat out the same answer they spent decades trying to get to, as well as several other hypotheses that they said have been proven. So Promising. They're already pursuing them. The lead scientist told the BBC that when he heard the news, he was out shopping with a friend. And he told a friend, leave me alone for an hour because I have to go digest this. And he said, this will change science, definitely.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow, that's cool.

[Max Fisher]

Can I give you the. Like, the bigger. I think this is so amazing. So, yeah. Okay. Why is this a big deal? It's part of a larger story of AI being used to discover new medicines. Right. New drugs. Let me give you an example of how drug discovery normally works without AI. One of the most common methods. A lab will literally collect dirt samples from around the world, shipped in from all over the world. They search the dirt manually for bacteria, isolate the bacteria, that manually analyzes DNA for specific sequences in the genes that suggest it could be useful as an antibiotic. Then they turn those into antibiotic samples, which they test in a petri dish alongside various diseases, see if it kills the disease. It's very labor intensive. This lab that. The New Yorker reporter is also a doctor named Drew Kular, who was writing about AI in medicine. This big lab that he visited is huge. Tests about 100 compounds a month this way. But the number of hypothetical possible compounds that scientists want to test is 10 to the 60th power, which is more than the number of atoms in the solar system. So we are doing drug discovery by that meme of infinite monkeys typing in infinite typewriters until they generate the works of Shakespeare. And it's a losing battle. Superbugs are getting more and more resistant. Drug discovery is slowing. It takes 10 years.

[Jon Favreau]

RFK Jr. Is the health and Human Services Center.

[Max Fisher]

That's not helpful. There's this observable phenomenon where the amount of investment it takes to develop a new drug doubles every nine years because it's like you can only do so much brute force. So, okay, AI opens up a completely new way to do drug discovery. You train AI on huge existing databases of known drug compounds. There's just an enormous number. Then give it a disease you're trying to combat. It will generate entirely new drug formulas at the molecular level that might do it. So instead of literally scratching the dirt, hoping to coincidentally discover one compound in 10 billion kajillion that might cure the disease. AI can just dream one out of nothing. And so far, those compounds have a much higher success rate than the like testing things in the dirt method. Can I give you two examples of this working already? Because I think this. I know we're going on. I just think this is so cool. So one lab was trying to find a drug to treat something called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. So lung disease, remember, drug development can take a decade. Of that, it's four years just to discover the treatment. Slab used AI they got one. In 18 months, the AI spat out 79 possible treatments. They tested them. One of them worked.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow.

[Max Fisher]

Just like that. Another one lab trying to find a new antibiotic for E. Coli. This is huge because E. Coli is everywhere. Their AI spat out again right away, 100 compounds that could work. Half of them succeeded. Normally, the success rate is like one in a billion.

[Jon Favreau]

Holy shit.

[Max Fisher]

A lot of those were similar to existing antibiotics. One was totally new. And you know what? It turns out that it defeats superbugs that were thought to be totally immune to antibiotics.

[Jon Favreau]

That is in. That is wonderful.

[Max Fisher]

Just like that. Isn't that cool? I love AI IT now. Honestly, every time I open up like Gmail or message on Apple and it does that shitty little suggest tech service, I'm like, you could be doing something so much more useful right now. You're wasting your time with this. Well, I mean, go discover a cure for cancer.

[Jon Favreau]

Obviously, I was joking. I love AI, but, like, it's what we said since the beginning of these AI conversations, which is like everything else, like every other technology, it is a tool. Tools can be used for good, tools can be used for bad.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Social media tool.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Good, Bad. Mostly bad.

[Max Fisher]

Now a tool with tools on it.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Great place to stop. All right, in a minute, we're going to check back in in the offline challenge. But before we do some quick housekeeping, we got a new episode of Inside 2025 out. Dan and I chat with our former White House colleague Jen Psaki to break down how modern presidents have used the press to their advantage, what it takes to control the narrative, and whether Democrats are up to the task of leading us through this uncharted territory. It's all about presidential communications, communications directors, communications, the message strategy, comm strategy, press strategy. Jan and Dan both have some really great ideas. To listen to this exclusive ad free episode, subscribe to friendsofthepod.com friends or directly from the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts, you can get started with a free seven day trial. All right, let's check back in on the offline challenge for which we are testing different ways to improve our focus so we can be more present, more in control of our attention. This last week, you and I spent time reading every day, 20 minutes of reading with no other distractions, as well as working on old pen and paper puzzles. What did you think? How'd the games go for you?

[Max Fisher]

I thought the games were kind of fun. If nothing else, it's a really good alternative to being on my phone in the mornings. They are, I'm going to be honest, a little boring. It turns out our digital ecosystem is very entertaining and stimulating in a way that no offense to the sudoku writers, but you're just not matching it. But I understand that's part of the mental muscle building here. And I did find over time, I was having a better time at staying focused for 20 minutes in the games. Did you keep up on them?

[Jon Favreau]

Did not like the games.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, okay. Fair. That's fair enough.

[Jon Favreau]

The reading part. Loved.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. The readings.

[Jon Favreau]

And like, I. It's. Last night I did it again. I've been reading for more than 20 minutes a day and put my phone somewhere else.

[Max Fisher]

Love that.

[Jon Favreau]

I did put, like, a timer on my phone just so I know, because I didn't want to, like, keep looking at my phone to look at the time. Right. So I put the timer on the phone somewhere else, had no other electronics around me and had like, our. Just a real book.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Not on a Kindle.

[Max Fisher]

That's great.

[Jon Favreau]

And absolutely loved it. Love every day doing it. Look forward to it every day. The games, I was like, oh, what am I gonna do my 20 minutes for these games? And then I was sitting there at the games, and I'm like, come it just that this is a me problem. But I'm like, I have the mind where it's like, I need to be productive all the time.

[Max Fisher]

Something.

[Jon Favreau]

And even if I'm. When we were doing the walks that I really like too, and I wasn't listening to anything on the walks.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

That was still like, feels my mind wander. And so I'm accomplishing something. The reading, I was accomplishing something. I'm like, this game, I'm not accomplishing anything. It's 20 minutes. I could be using doing other things.

[Max Fisher]

You figured out where the seven goes. Come on. That's. You don't think. That's not important.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, but the. But the reading stuff, I. I really liked I reading.

[Max Fisher]

I have to be honest with you. I think I'm gonna need to put more work into this one, which is absolutely pathetic. Look, I loved it. I. The nights when it was working for me, I would blaze through, like, 20, 30, 40 pages, have a great time doing it, and would feel much better the next morning and the entire next day, like, feel more focused. Really felt the effects of it. But some nights I would spend half an hour just staring at the same paragraph, like getting mad about Trump or whatever. And like I want to keep working on this because I did find myself getting better at it over time. I've been trying to do a little bit more reading over the last couple of months and it like it really does build on itself. But I do think about how I used to be able to spend a 12 hour flight, like plowing through one novel in one sitting. And that feels absolutely unattainable now. But I believe that with practice I can get back there and that it is incredibly productive to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

I will say I have been reading Abundance Ezra Eric Thompson book that's coming out soon and I, I did find myself because I'm, I think it's a great book. Everyone should read it when it comes out. And it was very exciting to me as I was reading it. But it started making me think about all the like, political messaging around it and this. So I would, I find myself stopping and, and thinking about politics, implications, other things. And I was like, oh no, no wait, you're supposed to be reading. Supposed to be reading. So like that it was a good muscle. It's a good, it's a good thing to do for your, for your brain.

[Max Fisher]

I've been doing specifically novels for. Exactly.

[Jon Favreau]

I should have done some. A little. I may do that next.

[Max Fisher]

I'm reading my brain Fen, which I know is, I'm 10 years late on a book that I just read before this that like might be of interest to listeners is Profit Song, this book that came out two years ago by Paul Lange. It won the Man Booker Prize.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I was gonna say I've heard the.

[Max Fisher]

And it's like kind of a like political parable that takes place in Ireland. But it's about the changes that come in daily life with an authoritarian government coming to power. Which I know sounds depressing, but it was like, it was helpful to kind of think through it and it just wonderfully.

[Jon Favreau]

Silver linings. Yeah. How are your pickups? I have not looked at my pickups.

[Max Fisher]

I am actually, I'm up a little bit. 63 a day last week, up to 70 a day this week. And I, I, I think maybe this is true for both of us. I have fully stopped tracking my sleep.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Because that's not the Fitbit that I was wearing to sleep. I kept waking up in the middle of the night and finding that in my sleep I had taken it off and stuffed it inside of the pillowcase. It was like I Need to listen to what I am telling myself.

[Jon Favreau]

I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that.

[Max Fisher]

And I will say we're finally tied.

[Jon Favreau]

Ooh.

[Max Fisher]

On the paintings.

[Jon Favreau]

Ooh. I'm at 259.

[Max Fisher]

Really? Oh, so you're up.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, that's daily. Oh, Last week's average. Yeah. 257.

[Max Fisher]

Okay. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

That is.

[Max Fisher]

I see you're about. You're holding, but do you feel better? You sound like you feel. I really feel much more focused.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. Because my. It's. The pickups is. It's an interesting metric that we're using, but, like, I think for focus. If you're not in a focus period and you're just checking your phone. I'm gonna pick up my phone a lot.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But I'm realizing that when I have. For either the challenges that we've do it. We've done or just other things, like when I'm need to focus.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

It's. I'm not picking up my phone a lot.

[Max Fisher]

Yep. I find the same. I find that when I am with friends, I feel much more present. Something that I had noticed in the past that I really hated is I would be. Especially if it was like, one on one, like, I was grabbing a drink with a friend. I would feel like 30 or 40 minutes in, I would start to feel this twitch of like, I kind of want to check my phone. I kind of want to. Oh, I felt my phone vibrates. Push alert. Is it a news alert? I kind of want to check it, and I feel that pull a lot less. I have a much easier time being present. And I have a much easier time, like, turning off the Trump show in my own mind, which is, you know, to your point. Not to say that I'm not freaked out. I'm pretty far down the curve of how freaked out that you can be. But I have a much easier time not thinking about it when I don't want to think about it, which I think makes it feel much easier to cope and to, like, engage in it when I need to engage in it and not get that burned out, hopeless feeling 100%.

[Jon Favreau]

So this next week is our final challenge.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

What are we doing?

[Max Fisher]

Okay. I am really excited about this one. It's very simple. No phone in the bedroom. Phone spends the night downstairs. And this is to do. This is huge. It's to do two things. One is you don't look at your screen before bed, which disrupts your sleep. The other is you don't have it on your Nightstand, which I swear also disrupts your sleep. I think you just know that it's there and you want to look at it. Also means you. When you wake up in the morning, you don't look at it. I know this sounds small.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm excited for this.

[Max Fisher]

I have been doing this since December. I started.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay. And we're doing these challenges together. I.

[Max Fisher]

Listen. I could not wait. I knew it was on the calendar, and I was like, well, I can either survive to the challenge and get a head start, or I can follow the rules. It was hard at first. I swear to you, it changed my life. It genuinely changed my life. I have had this problem for years that I sometimes struggle with feeling, like, really foggy for a couple of days a week. Do you know this feeling? It's, like, mentally slow. I don't feel as articulate as I want to be. Like, I can't focus. I feel less creative. And I was trying everything. I was cutting out booze. I was exercising more, changing the time. I know it's not something I did lightly, let me tell you, changing my diet. I was even doing this thing for a while where I'd wake up in the morning, the first thing I would do is have a phone call with somebody because I found that that worked. Now, I think the reason that worked is I wasn't looking at my phone because I was talking into it. I did this. Just put the phone downstairs, and I swear to you, in, like, two weeks. 90 solved. And you still have.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you have a clock on your nightstand so you know what time it is?

[Max Fisher]

I do. I got a. I got a little. A little plug in analog clock you can get. There's one off of Amazon that, like, looks kind of pretty. It's like fake wood.

[Jon Favreau]

Cool. All right, I'm. I'm doing this.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

This is exciting.

[Max Fisher]

Nice.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, everyone, that's our show. We'll see you all back here next Thursday. 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. You are never too busy for wholesome meals with HelloFresh. With 50 weekly recipes customizable to your preferences. You can skip the grocery store and still make easy, affordable meals delivered to your door. For even faster options, try 15 minute meals, prep and Bake options or Ready made Meals. Get a free high protein item for life and up to 10 free [e-mail] hellofresh 10 free 1 per box with active subscription free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan.

[Max Fisher]

TaxAct can think of a million things more fun than filing taxes. TaxAct is going to name some now. Sitting in traffic, folding a fitted bedsheet, listening to your co worker talk about his fantasy team digging a hole. Digging an even larger hole next to that original hole. Unfortunately, TaxAct's filing software can't make taxes fun, but TaxAct can help you get them done. TaxAct let's get them over with.