Jon Gets Hacked, Woke Offline Pope, and How Jia Tolentino’s Brain Finally Broke

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau: Episode Summary
Release Date: May 15, 2025

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Overview In this episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau, alongside co-host Max Fisher, delves into a multifaceted discussion exploring the ramifications of technology on our lives. The episode covers Jon's personal experience with a Twitter hack, a critical examination of the recent actions taken by the U.S. Copyright Office regarding AI, the unexpected rise of a "Woke Offline Pope," and an in-depth interview with author Gia Tolentino about her transformative experience navigating the digital age.

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1. Jon Favreau's Twitter Hack ([03:14] - [11:38])

The episode kicks off with Jon Favreau sharing a personal anecdote about his Twitter account being hacked. He recounts receiving a seemingly legitimate email from "X" (formerly Twitter), which led him to inadvertently compromise his account by entering his password and two-factor authentication code on a phishing site. The breach resulted in unauthorized activity, including unexpected retweets promoting crypto scams.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau ([03:14]): "My Twitter account was hacked."
• Max Fisher ([06:02]): "I don't know what's going on."

Jon details the measures he and his team took to regain control, highlighting the prevalence and sophistication of such phishing attempts. Max Fisher expands on the widespread nature of these scams, mentioning notable victims like Joel Khalili and various public figures.

2. AI and Copyright Controversy ([19:04] - [26:32])

The conversation transitions to a significant development where President Trump abruptly fired Shira Perlmutter, the director of the U.S. Copyright Office, following a report that criticized tech companies' use of copyrighted material to train AI models without proper compensation. This report marked a pivotal stance against what it deemed illegal use of intellectual property for AI development.

Notable Quotes:

• Max Fisher ([20:04]): "Making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works... goes beyond established fair use boundaries."
• Jon Favreau ([25:21]): "AI is replacing these based on value that other people created."

Jon and Max discuss the implications of this report, emphasizing how it challenges the foundational business models of AI companies that have relied on unlicensed content. They debate the internal conflicts within the Trump administration and the broader cultural war between anti-tech factions and proponents of technological advancement.

3. The Rise of Pope Leo XIV ([27:25] - [34:30])

A surprising turn in the episode introduces the election of Robert Prevost as the First American Pope, taking the name Pope Leo XIV. Pope Leo XIV's encyclical addresses the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, emphasizing the preservation of human dignity and labor against the backdrop of technological advancements.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau ([27:24]): "The woke Marxist pope is actually the woke offline pope."
• Max Fisher ([31:03]): "Pope Leo talks a lot about Catholic social teaching..."

The hosts dissect Pope Leo XIV's message, drawing parallels to previous pontificates and discussing its potential impact on both religious and secular communities. They explore how the Pope's stance reflects a broader societal concern about the dehumanizing aspects of AI and technology.

4. In-Depth Interview with Gia Tolentino ([36:49] - [83:05])

The highlight of the episode is an intimate interview with Gia Tolentino, author and New Yorker staff writer. Gia revisits her groundbreaking essay, "My Brain Finally Broke," where she articulates the deteriorating boundary between online and offline realities.

Key Discussion Points:

• Impact of the Internet on Reality Perception: Gia explains how the overwhelming influx of digital information and AI-generated content has eroded her ability to discern reality from fiction. She shares personal struggles with maintaining a clear distinction between her physical experiences and online interactions.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Gia Tolentino ([37:41]): "The Internet had actually damaged my perception of what was real."
  • Jon Favreau ([40:06]): "Everyone is exhausting, people are afraid. People feel like the resistance didn't work the first time."

• Parenting in the Digital Age: Gia and Jon discuss the challenges of raising children amidst pervasive screen time and the Internet's omnipresence. They touch upon strategies to foster real-world connections and the importance of limiting digital exposure to nurture healthy cognitive and social development in children.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Gia Tolentino ([74:04]): "Being outside doing things... is what keeps the worthwhile parts of the mind busy."
  • Jon Favreau ([75:04]): "Spend as much time with them as possible without screens to help them understand how fulfilling life can be without the screens."

• Civic Engagement and Mental Health: The conversation delves into the paradox of increased information accessibility yet diminishing individual agency to effect change. Gia reflects on the emotional toll of witnessing continuous global crises without perceiving tangible avenues for intervention, leading to a sense of helplessness.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Gia Tolentino ([58:55]): "It permanently damaged my sense of our government's remaining capacity for moral action."
  • Jon Favreau ([63:09]): "Alan De Baton writes that following the news feels like watching helplessly while a close friend drowns behind a plate glass window."

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5. Concluding Thoughts ([83:05] - End)

The episode wraps up with Gia and Jon acknowledging the difficulty of navigating a world saturated with digital distractions and misinformation. They emphasize the importance of real-world connections, community engagement, and maintaining mental resilience in the face of technological challenges.

Final Insights:

• The necessity of balancing online presence with offline experiences to preserve mental health and societal well-being.
• The role of trusted institutions, like the Vatican under Pope Leo XIV, in providing ethical guidance amid rapid technological advancements.
• Gia’s commitment to fostering environments where the next generation can thrive beyond the confines of digital screens.

Closing Quote:

• Gia Tolentino ([81:16]): "The worthwhile parts of your mind... are those which have resisted or eluded the incentives of the Internet."

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Conclusion This episode of Offline with Jon Favreau offers a compelling exploration of the intersection between technology, society, and personal well-being. Through personal anecdotes, critical analysis, and thoughtful dialogue, Jon Favreau and Gia Tolentino shed light on the pervasive influence of the Internet and AI, urging listeners to cultivate a healthier balance between their digital and physical lives.

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Subscribe to Offline with Jon Favreau on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation about living happier, healthier lives both online and offline.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Gia Tolentino]

Not that I remember any single thing that I've ever done or said in my entire life, but I'm sure when I came and talked to you about trying to be less online, you know, in 2021, what I said was like, it had always been self evident to me that to maintain any sort of workable relationship with the Internet, personally or professionally or intellectually or whatever, it had to be clear that physical life was more important. That like, what happens civically in physical rooms is more important than whatever gets translated into the discourse or, you know, whatever. All these things that like, actually what is in front of me physically, my community, blah, blah, blah, more real to me than anything that's happening online. And this year that sense scrambled. It was like the Internet had actually damaged my perception of what was real. And that had always been so physically instinctive to me.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Max Fisher]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

And you just heard from today's guest, author and New Yorker staff writer Gia Tolentino. Gia was our very first offline guest.

[Max Fisher]

Max, that's so fun.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. All the way back in October of 2021.

[Max Fisher]

Great guest to launch with Everybody loves Gia.

[Jon Favreau]

Everyone Loves Gia is still one of my favorite conversations. I've been looking for an excuse to have her back on. And then the other day Emily said, have you read Gia Tolentino's latest New Yorker piece? Because it's you, basically. And then I saw the piece is called My Brain Finally Broke.

[Max Fisher]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

And I thought, yes, that. That does sound like me. It does sound like I relate to.

[Max Fisher]

That headline big time.

[Jon Favreau]

So I asked you to come back on the show. We talked all about this feeling that the world on our screens now often feels more real and relevant than the offline world.

[Max Fisher]

Totally.

[Jon Favreau]

And how reality itself is becoming harder to ascertain, especially with AI taking over our feeds now.

[Max Fisher]

The lines are blurring in a.

[Jon Favreau]

Very much so in the Trump administration, second term is involved and we talk about it all. We also talk about how we're both parenting in this moment of endless horrors. Our kids are the same age, so we are wrestling with similar issues there. All in all, it was a great conversation that you will hear in a bit. But first, they finally hit me where it really hurts.

[Max Fisher]

Max, they got you.

[Jon Favreau]

My Twitter account was hacked.

[Max Fisher]

Your greatest vulnerability.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like, take anything from me. Don't take my Twitter account.

[Max Fisher]

I told you not to set 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 as your password. How many times times did I tell you my challenge?

[Jon Favreau]

So last week, on Friday.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, walk us through it.

[Jon Favreau]

I received an email from what looked like it was. Appeared to be an email from X.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I've received many of these fishing attempts in the past. I did not just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. Usually you see them and they look similar and then you look at the. From like the. The address where they're from.

[Max Fisher]

Something crazy.

[Jon Favreau]

Like. You get it this one. The. The address was x.com, though there was a. I should have seen. There was like a dash before the X. Yep. So I should have seen that. And then also it had a. A picture of one of my tweets and it was a screenshot of an NBC News story, which I then linked to in another tweet. Because of course, you know, links don't. Links don't travel far. And it said, there's a copyright infringement issue with you posting this. So it was very specific.

[Max Fisher]

Right?

[Jon Favreau]

And I was like, that's weird. First I was like, what are you. What are they talking about? They're like, everyone screenshots that you know. And they're like, just so. They're like, click here. So I clicked, and then it went to a page that it looked. And I was like, it looks like the X.com page. Because I was. The clicking is one thing, but I was like, I'm not going to Enter anything until I.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Then I pulled up the X.com homepage like in another separate browser, and it was exactly the same.

[Max Fisher]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Exactly the same. And then it was like, so your. Your. Your account will be shut down or suspended in 24 hours unless you file an appeal. So then I. Then I'm. Then I clicked. And then I put in my password and. And I have two factor on. And they sent a code to my phone. And then I put the phone. The code in.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, no.

[Jon Favreau]

To sign up. Cause I'm like, oh, well, this is the. It's. It's triggering my two factor. And I'm getting an. I'm getting a text from X. Oh.

[Max Fisher]

So you entered the two factor code in the fake website, and somewhere on the other side of it, there's someone entering that into the real website. Okay, gotcha.

[Jon Favreau]

Somewhere very sophisticated.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And. And that's when everything froze. And then suddenly I was locked out of all my accounts. And then I got an email from X saying the email associated with your Twitter account has changed to an email that I couldn't.

[Max Fisher]

But good news, you got your account back and then found out about a great crypto product that you wanted to share with your followers to let us all know about.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, there was. There was some crypto tw. There were a few Michael Jordan takes, which I'm famous for. You just retweeting Michael Jordan? I know, it's very weird. Very weird.

[Max Fisher]

I wonder if that's part of the scam or if this, like, Serbian hacker just loves Michael Jordan.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know what's going on. Anyway, so this was Friday afternoon, and I didn't get my account back until Monday afternoon. It was a long weekend, Max.

[Max Fisher]

So I want to walk through what happened here because these scams are rampant now. They're actually happening all the time. Let me list through some other people who. I was shocked at how many people this has happened to. Wired reporter Joel Khalili, which. That should make you feel a little bit better. Like, if anybody is going to know how to avoid this is going to be someone like that 50 Cent who got scammed as part of a script. These are all crypto schemes. A crypto scheme that allegedly made $300 million. The official accounts for the NBA, NASCAR, and the New York Post. Even the brainiacs, the New York Post, Metall. Sydney Sweeney and Hulk Hogan.

[Jon Favreau]

Not Sydney Sweeney.

[Max Fisher]

I know. Not both Lara and Tiffany Trump. And my favorite, the official account for the securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates. Which is kind of funny. You got to Kind of appreciate that.

[Jon Favreau]

One of the reasons they got me.

[Max Fisher]

Is my first question because I have gotten this email and it's very convincing. I almost clicked on it. In fact, I took a screenshot of it and sent it to somebody and said, could you believe they're going to lock my account?

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Max Fisher]

That's how over this thing that I post.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and the reason that I thought that is because of the new leadership of X and how what, you know.

[Max Fisher]

Something they would do if this had.

[Jon Favreau]

Been pre Elon Twitter. I would be like, they're not going to fucking suspend my account over a copyright issue. They could like tell me to take down the post or whatever else, you know, but like, you have to file an appeal because they're going to shut your account down.

[Max Fisher]

It seems real.

[Jon Favreau]

Like that's. That's crazy. But in this company, right. It's like, who? I don't know.

[Max Fisher]

It is kind of a feature of the fact that we are all using this website and app that we all know just like doesn't work because Elon Musk fired 80% of the staff. So we assume it's going to be a shit show. We assume it's going to look bad. And also it seems totally feasible that because he deleted or locked a ton of people's accounts over stuff like tweeting news links that he didn't like.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep, that's right.

[Max Fisher]

So I. It's something that I wanted to ask you about is that I have seen some joking speculation that like Elon was behind this. Yeah, no, as like revenge for you being right. And I think we agree that that's not the case. This is just a normal phishing scam, just crypto pump and dump. My read is actually slightly different here. I think this was divine intervention. I think this was God descending from heaven to say, John, maybe it's time to take a break from Twitter. But John, tell us what you did with this divinely granted screen time break though. Because it wasn't spend more time with your family. Right. It wasn't take up a writing.

[Jon Favreau]

I will just say that it's funny that you mentioned that because my closest friend from childhood and college roommate who now lives in la, Josh, he. He texted me and his text said, I feel like the universe gave you a beautiful gift.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

When your Twitter got hacked, you could have just walked away and sailed off into the sunset. Yes, Josh.

[Max Fisher]

No, you're like Robert De Niro. And he. You can't walk away.

[Jon Favreau]

So here's what happened. So first I. First I was a little Nervous that the hack had gone, that it was going other places.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I just want to. I sent so our Cricket HQ Slack channel, which is everyone at the company. I said, anyone have any good advice what to do if your Twitter account has been hacked? And, you know, a couple of people saw it as a content opportunity? Our producer Claire said, will you please share about this on Terminally Online?

[Max Fisher]

Always be contenting.

[Jon Favreau]

David Alito. Maybe sign you need a break. That was what I'm like, is anyone gonna help me? Hashtag offline challenge.

[Max Fisher]

John, we are trying to help you.

[Jon Favreau]

Your fiance said, elon's revenge. Smh. So, yeah, that. That's the sort of support I got here. Crooked.

[Max Fisher]

So was it. Was it your idea to do what you decided to do instead of taking a screen time break, or was this somebody's pitch?

[Jon Favreau]

No. So Kayla, who runs social media for us, she. She was like, you know, you could take over the Cricket account. And she's like, maybe we should, because if you can then publicly say that you can't get it back and so then maybe you can like start a public beef. And I was like, I don't think that's. I don't think public pressure right now is the. Is the best way to go.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

This was Friday afternoon when I couldn't get it back. I. So I was worried that other things were hacked. So then did a whole, you know, had people help me figure out that, like, everything else was safe. So that was good.

[Max Fisher]

Change out your password.

[Jon Favreau]

And then I went home Friday night. Oh, and then I. And then Jordan Silver said that he had heard Joel Kim, booster on Las Culturistas, say that this happened to him and he had to get his lawyer involved.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And it took like weeks. And I don't know if he ever got it. I think he left Twitter.

[Max Fisher]

It's very. Some people, and I had no idea if they get locked out of their account, they just can't get back.

[Jon Favreau]

So then I was really. So I talked to our companies, to Crooked's lawyers, and. And they helpfully reached out to X because I had like, reached out to them, but you get all these automated responses. You can't get a real person.

[Max Fisher]

There's nobody there.

[Jon Favreau]

And even with the lawyers on it. And they. And then X reached out and asked for a picture of my. My license so they could verify it was me. And then they asked for an email, another email.

[Max Fisher]

It wasn't another scam.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I had the lawyers being like, okay, they're gonna ask for your license. I knew that. Yeah. Anyway, so the. The process was crazy. But anyway, go home Friday night. And I have no Twitter.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And this is.

[Max Fisher]

So now what?

[Jon Favreau]

This is not, like, offline challenge.

[Max Fisher]

You're just staring at the abyss where.

[Jon Favreau]

It'S not on the phone, but you can jump on the laptop. There's no Twitter.

[Max Fisher]

And I'm like, that's a good thing.

[Jon Favreau]

I know. I was shaking. I was shaking. Friday night was rough. Saturday morning was rough. And by Saturday afternoon, I was like, I think I'm gonna go back to Kayla's idea. And I, like, sheepishly text Kayla. And I was like, okay, can I get the password for the company's account? Because I think I want to do this.

[Max Fisher]

So you realized that you had a crippling heroin addiction, and your response to that was, maybe I'll try cocaine. I can't get any heroin this weekend. Can I read what you tweeted?

[Jon Favreau]

You know what? The cocaine was not as good.

[Max Fisher]

It never is, man. Never is. You tweeted out on the official crooked account. In the meantime, I'm taking over the crooked account to follow the news and feed my debilitating addiction.

[Jon Favreau]

I.

[Max Fisher]

Look, I appreciate the honesty. I do.

[Jon Favreau]

You see? And Tommy responded later. This is dark.

[Max Fisher]

I saw that. I swear. All worried about you. Was there no part of you that was like, maybe this is an opportunity to follow Joel Kim booster and to say, maybe I don't need to people listening.

[Jon Favreau]

Not at all.

[Max Fisher]

Look on your face. You're like, why would I think that?

[Jon Favreau]

Let me tell you what was getting me. What was getting me is not being. Not figuring out how to follow developments in the news. Sure. And because I was, like, going on the New York Times, I'm like, this is so slow updating anything like where. And then I look. Then I went on Blue Sky.

[Max Fisher]

Okay. Which did we ski?

[Jon Favreau]

I did not ski.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

But I was following the news. And it's just. It is not a. I'm not going to do my typical Blue sky complaining, but it is not a big enough platform yet with enough users. It's true that it is updating on a regular. Like, it's not fast enough.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Does it now? Does the news really need to update that fast? Probably not.

[Max Fisher]

Right?

[Jon Favreau]

That is part of the addiction.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I will say that the being on the Cricket account, we don't follow as many people from the company as Cricket account.

[Max Fisher]

You follow me? What more do you need?

[Jon Favreau]

We don't follow, like, tweet once constant news people.

[Max Fisher]

It's true. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Which, you know, maybe it's a media company, but we follow our hosts and we follow some other people, you know, but, like, not a lot of. So. So I'm scrolling on the company's feed, but I'm like, this is not that great.

[Max Fisher]

You're not getting the good stuff.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm not getting the good stuff.

[Max Fisher]

It does take a long time.

[Jon Favreau]

So I kind of stopped, and by Sunday, Sunday was Mother's Day, and we let Emily.

[Max Fisher]

Great time for doom.

[Jon Favreau]

Scrolling great. Well, we let Emily, like, sleep till much later. And so I had the kids all morning, and then we did a whole family thing in the afternoon, so it was just a big family day. And I did not scroll because I didn't think the crooked feed was that all that great. And. And you know what? I was pretty happy by Sunday night.

[Max Fisher]

Really?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

Wow. It's crazy how we keep trying these experiments where you take a break from Twitter, you're happier, feel better about the world.

[Jon Favreau]

I did have a little anxiety as I was trying to figure out what to cover on Pod Save America Monday morning. I mean, the jet happened, right? So that was easy enough, but as I was like, you know, and our producer Saul sends a note at night, and that's helpful with what the news is. But it's like, again, I wake up Monday morning, and usually I am, like, mainlining the news for the pod. And I woke up and it was just like. I felt. I felt a little bit drift.

[Max Fisher]

I do think to. To be, like, slightly sympathetic. There is something to the fact that so many of our media institutions have just adjusted to an ecosystem where the news addicts like you and me, who really want to be up on everything, also have Twitter. So they are not trying to play the same role as Twitter. So, like, the New York Times homepage is kind of designed for someone who also has Twitter up on the next screen, and that's, like, their fault. But it does make it hard to get your news in an ecosystem that has kind of evolved to have this big hole in the middle of it that is filled currently by Twitter. I definitely learned that during the tariffs and, like, economic collapses, like, you do kind of rely on it for better or for worse.

[Jon Favreau]

I know. And I do think if someone was like, okay, you can't post all weekend, and all you can do is just, here's a feed of news of all the reporters and the, you know, the biggest outlets, and all you can do is, like, I would be okay with that.

[Max Fisher]

Right? You know, you kind of didn't have that.

[Jon Favreau]

Now I. Again, I don't need to be that addicted to the News.

[Max Fisher]

But that is also the thing we.

[Jon Favreau]

Learned was to post a lot.

[Max Fisher]

Right. So I am almost afraid to ask this since I think I already know the answer, but has this experience at all changed your relationship to Twitter or your phone? No, no, no, I didn't, I didn't.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I, you know I had been.

[Max Fisher]

The New Year's resolution is holding strong. It's just which people was to post more.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. I had been before this happened. Like really. And I'm doing this for like two weeks now. After the kids are in bed and Emily and I watch tv, I just put the phone somewhere else.

[Max Fisher]

Great. That's great. That's huge.

[Jon Favreau]

Because if the phone is not around me.

[Max Fisher]

Yes. Do you feel better? Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

If the phone is around me, I will go to Twitter.

[Max Fisher]

What are you guys watching?

[Jon Favreau]

We watched four Seasons.

[Max Fisher]

I didn't know it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's on Netflix.

[Max Fisher]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Used to be it was like an Alan Alden movie that they've now at Tina Fey.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Redid as a series. So that was fun.

[Max Fisher]

That sounds great. Sounds love.

[Jon Favreau]

And I'm watching the studio.

[Max Fisher]

Love the studio.

[Jon Favreau]

So good. Hacks is amazing. Hacks is one of the best seasons.

[Max Fisher]

You're not watching andor are you?

[Jon Favreau]

No, I don't get into other Jon Favreau's work.

[Max Fisher]

I don't think he's attached to this. I will say it is a very. It is a show with a lot to say politically. I won't give you the full. I could do two hours on it right now. I'm gonna spare you. But it's, it's excellent. And I think you don't need to be like into Star Wars. I know it sounds cringe to advocate Star Wars IP but like you don't need to be into it to appreciate the show.

[Jon Favreau]

OK. Foreign. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Mental health awareness is growing, but there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey say they have avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. When people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them, it impacts families, workplaces, entire communities. This Mental Health awareness month, let's encourage everyone to take care of their well being and break the stigma. The world is better when people are healthy and happy. We're therapy boys.

[Max Fisher]

We are.

[Emily]

We're therapy boys.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, you've heard us say it before. It's great. You know, we're now trying to make sure there's a stigma on people who don't seek therapy.

[Emily]

Yeah, that's Right.

[Jon Favreau]

We're trying to reverse the stigma, not just get rid of it.

[Emily]

You're not in therapy.

[Jon Favreau]

Stigma, stigma. Better help has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapist from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists with a wide range of specialties. Better Help is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. Go to therapy, try it out. Everyone needs it, Everyone could use it. Everyone feels better afterwards. We're all better with help. Visit betterhelp.com offline to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. H E L p.com offline.

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[Max Fisher]

Well, speaking of IP, okay, how about that beautiful transition.

[Jon Favreau]

Let's talk about some actual news. On Saturday, roughly 24 hours after the US Copyright Office released a detailed report raising concerns about tech companies using copyrighted material to train AI models, President Trump fired Shira Perlmutter, the agency's director. The report concluded that, quote, making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries. So basically, using copyrighted material in AI systems is not legal, especially without compensating the people who created that material.

[Max Fisher]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you make of all this?

[Max Fisher]

So I think there are two ways that this is actually like kind of a really big deal. One is what it says about what's happening with big tech AI, where that's going. The other, which we'll get into, is that there was kind of a civil war within Trump world over the weekend about this. That is very revealing, but unlike I.

[Jon Favreau]

Couldn'T follow it, by the way. So I know over the weekend.

[Max Fisher]

So on the like significance of it for tech, like we've had hints since the beginning of the big AI arms race rush that these companies are all stealing intellectual property, they're stealing books, they're stealing newspaper articles to illegally train their models on. And partly that is out of greed of not wanting to pay people for the rights for it. But I think mostly it's out of competition with one another where each company wants to be the first to develop a dominance dominant AI model the way that Google did with search. And it takes a long time to strike AI deals with like every book publisher, every AI company, it's a lot faster to just steal it and just steal the material. So the AI companies faced a bunch of lawsuits over this from like publishers. And it has been gradually coming out in dribs and drabs through these tiles that like, yep, they did exactly what everybody thought. They were just like bit torrenting giant files of pirated books to illegally train their models on. I think with the hope that they could just like, like get away with it, pay some traffic, pay some like speeding fines basically, but then have an AI that would make them a bazillion dollars. But in the middle of all this, just a few days ago, out comes this bombshell Copyright Office report arguing that stealing aside the entire practice of training AI models on publicly available data is a violation of copyright laws. So like the entire basis of these models is a copyright violation. Which means that not only to keep the models going do they have to cut IP deals with every single publisher they've stolen data from, but they have to do it retroactively, which is just like, you know, completely pulls the foundation out from under this entire business model because they've already done all this copyright violation, the publishers have all the leverage.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and we should say that the report does not have the force of law behind it.

[Max Fisher]

No, it doesn't.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just recommendations and it doesn't say even the report, and this is important because of what happens to the person gets fired form letter gets fired. The report itself said, you know, it still might be too early for government intervention because there are licensing deals being worked out. But this is what we think, right? It does. As this isn't. This is being fought out in the courts right now. There are many different cases about copyright and AI and what the courts would do is they think about this and think about ruling on this is they would look to the government to see what the US Copyright Office says about this. So in that way it's a big deal.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, it's not. It wasn't. It wasn't like a silver bullet in and of itself. It was another. Any big step towards undercutting these business models.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So, so they put out the report, they fire P. Perlmutter and her boss and her boss, which was at the.

[Max Fisher]

Library of Congress for some reason, I don't really.

[Jon Favreau]

And they put into, they put in. Were there. Did they put in the Doge people?

[Max Fisher]

So I, this is the drama is what happens after they are fired. Because we know now from reporting by Tina Nguyen at the Verge that it was probably Elon Musk and David Sacks behind the firing. But then the big fight is over who is going to replace them because there is immediately this huge internal backlash from Mike Davis, who is this like kind of crazy MAGA lawyer who's very anti tech and a bunch of the anti tech MAGA people and like MAGA content creators, including Laura Loomer, who immediately got very upset about this as this is far right nut job Laura Loomer. Mike Davis gave a quote to the Verge. He said, quote, you can say, well, we have to compete with China. No, we don't have to steal content to compete with China. We don't have slave labor to compete with China. It's a bullshit argument. And then this, like, MAGA wing got Trump to send three replacements in who were extremely anti tech, like even more anti tech than the people they were replacing, including a guy, Ted Blanche, who is Trump's personal attorney in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, yeah, you don't remember Todd Bl.

[Max Fisher]

I not, I was not up on the Todd Blanche lore, but I, I am now the. A lawyer who worked with Republican Representative Jim Jordan in the House Judiciary Tech investigation. So this is like really, really anti tech. Like from term one, people. It's a big L for the Elon Musk wing who thought they were doing this coup.

[Jon Favreau]

And then Trump retruthed Mike Davis's complaint about the whole thing.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Which is like, like before, before everyone knew that they had replaced the Perlmutter with the anti tech.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Trump people. And Sarah was like, does he know what he's doing here? But clearly he was like, no, no, everything's good now.

[Max Fisher]

Yes, yes. It was very funny to see him retruth someone's criticism of something he had done the day before. But it, it looks like what happened was there was this big fight between the Doge Elon Musk, like crypto people and the old, like, MAGA culture war people and the mega culture where people won.

[Jon Favreau]

But, and I am, I am with the mega culture war.

[Max Fisher]

I know, I know. I was gonna say it's a real sign of the times when you're rooting for the Laura Loomer wing of the party.

[Jon Favreau]

So hard on this one. No. And here's why. The Copyright issue is bad enough, but. And this is connected to it AI as it continues on and gets faster and bigger and smarter and all the, the rest of it's going to replace a whole bunch of jobs, a whole bunch of like, industries, professions.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And the idea that we. It is, it is replacing these based on value that other people created.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

That it stole.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

So that the tech companies can make a ton of money and the tech companies refuse to pay for it, pay what they should have paid for it, because that doesn't help their business model because they still don't even know how to make this profitable for themselves. And so it's like all these people that has created all this value and all this content and entertainment and knowledge and everything else, we're just gonna steal it all and then you're all gonna be out of a job.

[Max Fisher]

Right. And they're gonna produce a cheap, shitty version and pay you nothing.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And you can just consume. You can just, you can just use ChatGPT. Get yourself a, get yourself a bot friend, Chatbot friend. And you know Sam Altman's like in Universal Basic Income, you. Yeah, I'm sure that'll work too. We'll just cut you a check every month and you just sit around glued to your computer while we make all the money.

[Max Fisher]

Your doge dividend of 3 cents based on your. Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Real Elon. This is, this is. Talk about this with Zuckerberg and the 15 friends. It's like this is an anti human ideology that they have.

[Max Fisher]

It really is. Yes. Seeing and seeing how much they want to train these chatbots to like, replace people. And I keep thinking about that Apple ad that came out last year. Remember where it was training. It was an Apple ad for their AI services. Maybe it was Google, actually. I hope I didn't just slander. I slandered one of them. So we'll just say it comes out evenly. The ad was, oh, it's Christmas or it's like your anniversary Father's Day or something and you forgot to get something for your partner. So just have the AI bot create something for them. Create like a card for them based on like training data. And it's like, oh, you just want to remove all of our most human obligations to each other in our relationships and replace it with like, like a little chatbot widget.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, guess who doesn't like that? The Vatican.

[Max Fisher]

Okay, there we go. Rare, offline Vatican. Laura Loomer agreement on something.

[Jon Favreau]

Last week, Robert Prevost, who hails from the south side of Chicago, became the First American pope. He decided to take the name Pope Leo the 14th. And then he explained to his fellow cardinals that he chose the name in honor of Pope Leo xiii, who served as head of the Catholic Church during the Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV told the crowd, quote, in our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.

[Max Fisher]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Turns out that the woke Marxist pope is actually the woke offline pope. You can still sing that to the tune of Pink Pony Club, fortunately. Should we invite our offline pontiff onto the. Onto the pod?

[Max Fisher]

Oh, my God. I feel like Vivek Murthy and Lina Khan are now facing some real competition for third chair of the show. We're going to get. He's not going to be busy, right. We can get Leo on here.

[Jon Favreau]

I think we can get one of his brothers. They're all over TV all the time. Although I think they're a little more maga. What did you make of this?

[Max Fisher]

I thought it. I think it's really interesting as kind of of a data point about, like, where we are culturally. Like, I. It made me immediately think back to the story I told on here a couple weeks ago about an Easter sermon that Julia went to, where the pastor kept being like. Kept talking about protecting kids from the Internet. Like, I think we're at a point where concern about AI and technology is bubbling up to a kind of cultural consensus.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

And I think you see that reflected in what he said. And he's especially like, he's a relatively young guy. I mean, he's in his 60s, but he's not that far removed from working with. With regular people, with parishioners. So it makes me think that this is like, reflects the kind of concerns that he is listening to. But I'm curious what you think. Like, do you think this is going to. Does it matter that he is like.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, I think it matter. I mean, will it be effective? I have no idea. Yeah, I think it matters. I also think it's not surprising there. So Pope Francis also had these same views about AI.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, I didn't know that.

[Jon Favreau]

And there was an encyclical that the Vatican released at the end, at the beginning of January or the end of January this year. And just going to read some of it. Since AI cannot offer this fullness of understanding, approaches that rely solely on this technology or treat it as the primary means of interpreting the world can lead to a Loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things and for the broader horizon. Human intelligence is not primarily about completing functional tasks, but about understanding and actively engaging with reality in its. All its dimensions. And then it says a person's worth and then it talks about he's very. And. And Leo, this Pope is very worried specifically about replacing labor and. And people's jobs, stuff like that. And it says drawing an overly close equivalence between human intelligence and AI risks succumbing to a functionalist perspective where people are valued based on the work they can perform. However, a person's worth does not depend on possessing specific skills, cognitive and technological achievements, or individual success, but on the person's inherent dignity grounded in being created in the image of God. And I do think that when you read the encyclical, it is a as much of a response to the techno futurist.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Sort of transhuman view of the world that Elon represents and that I do think some of the MAGA people who are maybe in more of a religious tradition oppose than. Than anything else.

[Max Fisher]

It is so interesting to hear them couch it in protecting the idea of there being something sacrosanct about being human.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Max Fisher]

And about that being under threat by technology. That obviously resonates with me, even though there is something a little bit cyberpunky about it. Like I'm. I kind of surprised to find myself reading more religious voices these days. I'm not like a religious person at all. I'm not spiritual. I don't like the organize or like always been like, you know, kind of apart from it. But I do think that it does make a lot of sense that that would be where a lot of the reaction to these trends from big tech and social isolation would come from. Because you know, what is a big religious organization if not a community place to come together, a set of shared values that would link people? I mean it's a lot of what we talk about here about Robert Putnam Bowling Alone, the loss of third spaces. That's like. That's a role that religion has played in human civilization for thousands of years.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And, and you know, Pope Leo talks a lot about Catholic social teaching and that was a big deal for the last Leo as well. Catholic social teaching is in some, you know, it's like the right thinks of it is commie at this point. Communist. You know, I mean I went to a Jesuit college, so it was very like social justice was at the core of that. And so everyone's always like oh well poke. But. But really Francis and Now, Leo.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I think they're, their beliefs are grounded more in the Catholic social teaching that you're right. Like people are not. I mean, he says later, you know, the, the logical consequence of the technocratic paradigm is a world of humanity enslaved to efficiency, where ultimately the cost of humanity must be cut. I mean, it sounds like a pretty, pretty lefty.

[Max Fisher]

It does. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But that's the point.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah. I mean, I think that there's. I was thinking a lot about the last Pope's first few years and the emphasis that he put on the global migration crisis specifically, which is obviously a thing for him, like throughout his 10 years. That's the word for when you're a Pope.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Tenure, let's say tenure.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Rain. Not rain.

[Max Fisher]

It's not rain your term, you know, his first trip was to the island of Lampedusa, which is an Italian island, the Mediterranean, where a lot of refugees would be their first stop and they would get like, maybe let into the eu, maybe horribly mistreated there. And obviously he did not like single handedly solve the global refugee crisis, nor did he solve the far right backlash to immigration. But I do think if you look at, especially the politics within Europe, him just being a voice and a prominent figure to say, we all know what's right here and we all know what's wrong here, and we have to make space for that and keep that in mind. I think that you probably don't get things like Germany letting in a million refugees in 2015 without that. So I don't know what the specific line is. Like, I don't know that Congress is going to pass like better AI regulations because of Pope Leo, but it's also not out of the realm of possibility. And I do think there is something to having such a visible cultural figure who, whether you are Catholic or not, kind of like everybody agrees is a moral authority and he's going to. Moral voice in the world.

[Jon Favreau]

Someone really matters. Someone does not offer a moral or ethical compass around AI that is not immediately seen as, oh, this is a politician compromise. Exactly.

[Max Fisher]

What do we always talk about? We talk about the importance of institutions.

[Jon Favreau]

That's right.

[Max Fisher]

One of the last trusted institutions globally.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And they've had some, they've had a rough.

[Max Fisher]

I know, it's kind. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have expected that that would be the outcome, but it's. I think that's a lot of. That is Francis's stewardship.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's right. All right, in a minute we're going to jump into my interview with Gia Tolentino. Before we do some quick housekeeping, Amanda Lippman. She has her new book out. It's called When we're in the Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. It's out now. Now it's a. It's the latest from Crooked Media reads Amanda started Run for Something, which helps young people run for office for local office. And in this book, Amanda shares what it looks like when a new generation steps into power, not just in politics, but business, activism and everyday life. We really want to help Amanda get onto the New York Times bestseller list. So get your copy of when we're in [e-mail] books now or wherever you get books. Up next, My conversation with Gia Tolentino offline is brought to you by fatty15 have you heard about C15? It's an essential fatty acid that's naturally found in whole fat dairy products. But over time, our intake of these foods has decreased. Combined with the Natural decline of C15 as we age, many of us aren't getting enough of this important nutrient. Introducing fatty 15C15 supplement. A simple way to replenish your body with this essential fatty acid. Co founders Dr. Stephanie Venn Watson discovered the benefits of C15 while working with the US Navy. Backed by science and supported by over 100 studies, C15 helps support cell function and resiliency and can be a valuable part of your long term health strategy. Fatty 15 is vegan, 100% pure and free from flavors, fillers, allergens or preservatives. Best of all, fatty 15 comes in a gorgeous reusable glass bamboo jar and refills are shipped right to your door. So do yourself a favor. Replenish your C15, restore your health and let your cells do the heavy lifting with fatty 15. Fatty 15 is on a mission to optimize your C15 levels to help you live healthier longer. You can get an additional 15 off their 90 day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com offline and use code offline at checkout.

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[Jon Favreau]

Gia Tolentino, welcome back to the show.

[Gia Tolentino]

Hello. How you doing?

[Jon Favreau]

Good. You were. You were the very first Guest on this podcast all the way over that October of 2021. It was three and a half years ago, really. I know. I was. Well, like, does that feel like just yesterday? Does it feel like a decade ago? I don't know. Time's lost all meaning. I can't tell.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, I was gonna. I was gonna guess 2023. So, yeah. Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

It was a long time ago. Good to see you too. I've been meaning to have you back on the show. And then I read your latest essay in the New Yorker, my brain finally broke. Which I think headline, right, perfectly captures, at least for me, what it feels to live in, like, in this moment. For people who haven't read it, when and why did your brain finally break?

[Gia Tolentino]

I mean, it's such a good question. You know, I really couldn't answer that for you. I was asking. I live with the writer Max Reed, and we were like in this little mini commune situation. And I feel like I. Like one day we were just sitting around on a Sunday and I was like, max, does your brain feel bad right now? And he was like, what do you even mean, Gia? Like, are you asking since, what, 2016, 2020? The pandemic, the birth of my first child? What are we talking about? The second Trump presidency? There are so many landmarks at which one could say, but I think I was feeling kind of extraordinarily foggy, basically, once Trump got into office for the second time and. And started blitzing through the sort of breakneck, sort of executive orders and like all this project 2025 just rolling out like a cartoon tongue on like Looney Tunes, you know, I felt like we were all having. Many of us were having a strange response to this because outrage felt almost outdated. I had personally lost all sense of sort of civic reality or what one could even do about atrocities that the government is facilitating or permitting since. Since Gaza. And I think what made me decide to write it was the feeling that, you know, when I looked at my phone, I felt like I used to have a handle on how the Internet was distorting things or what kind of distortions it was presenting. But I started to just look and just the instinctive searching for, okay, that's real, that's fake. It started to not work anymore. Like the calculus was wrong. Like, I didn't trust Google. I didn't trust the websites that I would look at. When Google would send me to something, I'd be looking at something and I would think, wait, a machine wrote this? I started to feel that reflexive fact checking impulse Slacken in a really scary way. And there was this whole category of sort of AI generated things that even asking the question, is this real or is this fake? No longer pertained in the same way. And it was that in particular, that sense that, like the traditional thing I would do when I would look at something and be like, is this real? And what does this mean? Both halves of that question, There was not a clear cognitive path to investigate that question. Does that make sense at all?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, here's why it makes sense to me, because I have been since the, since Trump took office again. You know, there are a lot of explanations of why this time feels different. And people will say everyone is exhausted, people are afraid. People feel like the resistance didn't work the first time. Right. And so there's all these sort of, like, political explanations. And I feel like we've been missing what has changed about the Internet and our phones and our screens. And I think you capture that well, because, you know, you were saying that the idea that Trump is harnessing the acceleration of the Internet to do so much damage so quickly, you know, it's become like, cliche to talk about Steve Bannon's flood the Zone strategy. But it, it does feel like so much of what Trump is doing is connected to both the speed of the Internet these days and like the blurred line between online and offline. And I, I just don't know that if any account of this era is complete without that part of what's going on.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right. I think, you know, I think the Internet has profoundly damaged all of our senses of the real. And I think the thing that got to me this year was that for a really long time, it hadn't damaged mine. I'm sure that when I came on, not that I remember any single thing that I've ever done or said in my entire life, but I'm sure when I came and talked to you about trying to be less online, you know, in 2021, what I said was like, it had always been self evident to me that to maintain any sort of workable relationship with the Internet, personally or professionally or intellectually or whatever, it had to be clear that physical life was more important, that what happens civically in physical rooms is more important than whatever gets translated into the discourse or whatever. All these things that actually, what is in front of me physically, my community, blah, blah, blah, more real to me than anything that's happening online. And this year, that sense scrambled. It was like the, the Internet had actually damaged my perception of what was real, and that had Always been so physically instinctive to me that this is the world, this is the physical thing that is important. But this year it was like the strange things that were happening on the Internet started to feel. And everything was laced through with the surreality of the Internet and it started to feel more accurately descriptive of political and civic and, you know, social reality than what was going on physically. And that really scared me. And I think that there, you know, I think what I was trying to get at with this piece is I think there is a Internet based, there's a phone based permission structure to detach from reality entirely. You know, I think that we have all felt that moment to moment. I think that those of us for whom it is our job to, you know, try to. I think that's what also scared me. It was like, technically it's kind of part of my job to try to, you know, resist insanity or whatever. Like, it's like. And even though this is like both kind of my job and also something that like, I'm kind of inherently invested in, I was like, I'm kind of losing my ability to do this. Like, I. There was this whole category of thing that I would look at and I was like, what is this? And you know, and it was, and it was any number of things, right? Like, it was like the fact that like so many fake images of kids in Gaza have gone viral alongside a bunch of other AI slop. And whether something is real or whether something is fake, there is just this mushroom cloud of stuff generated every millisecond that is there to cloud whether it is real or fake for anyone else or something like that. And I think, yeah, you look at enough TEMU ads or whatever and you're just like. And you log onto x.com and every single paid advertisement is someone that's in the middle of a psychotic break. And every reply is someone who's also in the middle of a psychotic break. And, and that's literally what the platform is prioritizing. And you're just like, wow, the world's kind of incomprehensible. And you detach for whatever, 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 5 minutes, the rest of that day, that week, you have a weird week or it can go on for longer. And I think that's the thing that started to. I was like, this is happening to me. Surely this is happening to a lot of people. And the fact that I think we've all dealt since 2016 or really since, I don't know, the Iraq war, whatever, with this sense of, of do we Tap out for a second. Do we tap back in? I think we Learned from the 2016 era that the sort of dumbest and most performative kinds of orange Cheeto resistance, whatever, it's not useful. But it kind of felt like there was something in the air that maybe people were detaching for longer and kind of in a more existential way, and that the nature of this detachment was itself corrosive. It wasn't a break, it wasn't a regrouping. It was kind of like the satellite was moving away from the mothership and maybe never to return.

[Jon Favreau]

I feel like there was more. It felt like there was more connection. Like we were like part of a community, not necessarily people we knew, but like everyone was sort of trying to figure out how to move forward and beat Trump. And maybe this is a one time thing and we're gonna do marches and we're gonna do this and all that. And now it feels, feels a lot more decentralized, lonelier, more individual, because you have this, this need to sort of detach. But I've been sort of obsessed with like, one of the most salient dividing lines now politically, especially in the last election, is people who didn't pay attention or don't pay attention to the news very closely, like, voted for Trump by a healthy margin. People who get most of their news from social media voted for Trump by a smaller margin. And then people who paid close attention to the news, whether it's television, digital sites, wherever, voted for Kamala. And so then you have this big swath of the American public who is not consuming political news on any kind of regular basis. And then all of these horrors start in January of 2025. New horrors from Donald Trump. And I found myself, you know, I follow this every day. This is my heart misses my job. And I'm just like, this is so awful. How are people not freaking out about this? And I do think that part of the answer is they, they're not paying attention. And the reason they're not paying attention is because it's. You don't, you don't know what paying attention actually will do. Like, for, like, how will it, how will it help the situation? How, like, how do we have agency in this kind of world anymore? Right. The Internet sort of like levels everything so that there is a horror that you see one second and the next second it's AI slop, and the next second it's something funny, and then we just forget about it.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. And I think that even people who do pay attention to the news There's a question of like, what does this attention mean now? And I think there's even like, one of the things that I was trying to. That was also getting at me at a really deep level was that I felt that we had kind of lost. We have. I certainly have lost the language or the register. I'm sure you felt this with which to kind of tonally describe what this is. You know, the fact that it just didn't make sense. One wants, one has an old fashioned desire to say that's illegal or like that's fascism or that's horrifically unjust. But it's like that doesn't matter anymore. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter anymore because of the mechanisms of the Internet and the way that, that, like, what even constitutes an outrage, I think has just been wildly scrambled by the nature of the Internet in the last eight years. Like, it's like, there's no, like, it's spooky the way that kind of. There's no language for what the outrage should be. Almost.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and there's also what stage we're at in it. There's also like a daily and now hourly amnesia that it causes. It's like every, every hour is memento. You know, it's just like we, I mean, I think about this in the context of, just to give an example, the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. And so they, they ship this guy to a prison in El Salvador and people aren't really paying attention. And you know, then a bunch of people start yelling about it. I was yelling about it. You know, you do your videos, do your podcast, everyone else is talking about it. And you know, suddenly now people are worked up a little bit and now, you know, the courts are ruling in the right way. And then of course, the Trump administration's like, no, we don't care. And then there's like five tens of others like him, and now there's like twenties of other. And then they're like, pick, they were kidnapping college students and now they're maybe sending people to Libya. And it's just like it starts proliferating and you can already feel the attention on that story, or at least on that policy slipping away. Because it's like we had that moment, everyone, we got everyone's attention. People freaked out a little bit, but no one can sustain keeping the attention on it. And I think the Trump administration knows that. Oh yeah. And whether it's intentional or not, that's. It's helping them. Certainly. I thought about this I remember even when the war in Ukraine started in Gaza, right? Which is. I'm like, putin knows this, Bibi knows this, and now Trump knows this, which is like, if we just hang on and keep doing what we're doing, they're all going to get tired out. And if they're not tired, they're just going to stop paying attention and they're just going to be distracted, and then they're going to move on with their lives because we can just wait them out.

[Gia Tolentino]

There's also something, too, to what you were saying that applies to all these cases where it's like, it's not just they're going to keep going. They're going to repudiate the very idea of outrage by being like, sorry, we're going to do it to 20 more 20x. We're going to 20 exit tomorrow, and then we're going to 100 exit the day after that. And it's like, the thing you thought was so awful that that, don't worry, that has been seamlessly and irreversibly stamped onto the past. It happened. And it's gonna. You know what I mean? Like, how could it not be conscious? I mean, the, like, Trump is. And Musk and all these. They are creatures of the Internet. Like, they have. They are where they are because the most sort of psychopathic aspects of their. Of their temperamental preset map perfectly onto the worst incentives of sort of information distribution on the Internet. And so they, like, they know that actually because of the Internet, there is, right, this, like, new sort of civic permission structure to do anything you want, because piano is dropping on all of our heads every 30 seconds, you know, like migrants at Guantanamo. And then it's like, what, 500 million condoms in Gaza? Like, it's just, you know, you can't. And actually, the Kilmarrega Garcia thing, I've been kind of privately flagging these moments of, like, these would be part of my sort of historical record timeline of, like, when it all really dissolved and. And when Trump on Truth Social, like, tweeted or whatever, that picture with the fake ms.13 when he posted. Yeah. And it was like, that was really emblematic of what was troubling about the. Like, you can't ask if this is real or if it's fake, because that's not even a sufficient question to describe the way people are working anymore. Like, he tweeted a picture of, I think, real tattoos. But then, like, it was like Ms. Paint, like Ms. 13, like, it was so clearly photoshopped. They were not real. They were not Photoshopped in a way to be convincing and it didn't matter, you know, and it's like you're saying.

[Jon Favreau]

And then the, the discussion became. It's what it does to the debate too, because there's so many levels. And at the fundamental level of the debate is like, you sent, you sent this guy to prison, right? And you admitted that it was the wrong thing to do and the Supreme Court told you to bring him back and you're not doing it. Like, that is the fundamental story. But then he tells Terry Moran, well, it says Ms. 13. He's like, well, no, doesn't. That was Photoshop. And then there's a debate about the Photoshop where there's some people where Donald Trump, you know, believes or doesn't believe or at least is telling us that he thinks it's real. And then you've got a lot of his supporters on tv, on Fox and elsewhere, and they're like, well, obviously the MS.13 wasn't real, but those tattoos do mean MS.13. It's like, well, that's not true either, you know, but all of this is beside the point, right? It doesn't matter if it wasn't real. It doesn't matter if the tattoos mean it did. Like, like you sent them there for the wrong reasons and you got to bring them back. That's the debate. But we don't even get there anymore. That's like lost in the dust, right?

[Gia Tolentino]

The question, like the very project of ascertaining reality is itself being used as a force field for, you know, for the rest. And like that, I mean, the sort of like physics of this is existentially is. Yeah, I mean, anyway, my brain broke and I, like, I was, I was like, well, my brain, my brain broke and I was like, I can't write anything because my brain's broken. And then that, that, that lasted for like four months. And I was like, well, maybe I could write about my brain being broken.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

Plus, you write, and you just, you mentioned Gaza, like, you write that your, your psychological reaction to Trump and, and your civic sense of what ought to be done under the thumb of this administration has been radically altered by the war in Gaza. Can you talk a little bit about why?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, I think. I mean, so, like, that's. That's the sort of dark star example. That's the. That's the shadow, the sort of sucking, horrific void underneath all of this for me. Right? Because it's like, you remember, you remember, like, four days after the bombing campaign started, you remember, like, the first. The Al Shifa for the first time, you know, they were like, who bombed the hospital? And Israel was like, we would never bomb the hospital. You know, and then the debate became like, did they actually bomb the hospital or not? And it's like, I mean, the patterning of the last 18 months was like, every day you look at things that you're like, this is incomprehensible suffering that is being funded by billions and billions dollars of our taxpayer money every year. And everyone in our government, at least for a while, was like, wholeheartedly in support of it. And you're like, how, Like, I think it broke something in a lot of people, right? Like, it was like the marches were every weekend, multiple times a week, self immolation. So many arrests, so many highway blockages, so many continual protests outside every congressperson House office. You know, like, I. Innumerable letters that I've written, innumerable marches that my children have been dragged to. And it was. And it was like, at some point, it just became clear that it wasn't gonna do anything and everything was just gonna keep happening. Everything that seemed inconceivably cruel and unjust, and it would just keep happening. And there was really no one in power that had had a real investment in stopping it. And if that has been true for this long with this. That is still happening, with the aid blockade now going on however many weeks or whatever, it's like, what are we gonna do about Trump? And I think for a lot of people on the left, I think it was just like, it permanently damaged my sense of our government's remaining capacity for moral action, you know, or to stop a train or to stop cruelty in its tracks. And it's bad because, I don't know, I haven't have I sent any letters about things in the last 90 days. Like, I like about, I don't, I don't know that I have actually, like, I think I've signed some things, but, you know, like, I have it because it's like no one, I don't know, no one's doing, no one's doing anything. The Democrats aren't doing anything about anything.

[Jon Favreau]

I think you said in the piece that, like, what's the use of screaming? We're going to be stuck in the room with him for four years. Years. There's a little feeling and I, you know, I think about that too, because I, you know, part of what we do here is to try to give people tools and information and ways to get involved, and we continue to do that. At the same time, I'm like, well, it's four years of this, and even if we, and we, we got to win the midterms. But I'm like, what does winning the midterms means? Well, it means, I guess Democrats can stop a legislative agenda while he's doing most of the this without legislation. Democrats have subpoena power again. Well, are they going to actually answer the subpoenas? Probably not. So, yes, we absolutely have to win the House back and we have to stop their legislative agenda. But the, like, we're still stuck with him for four years, and then what do we do at the end of four years? You know, and so the, I think at one point you said something about, like, the future, the future is inconceivable and like, the past is, the past is gone. And so we're just like, stuck in this present that is like, just. And it's like replenish. It's like endlessly replenishing. Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

And I think part of the thing with Gaza, too, is sort of like, do Democrats care about the suffering and death of the marginalized? You know what I mean? Of the profoundly globally marginalized, do we care? Do we, despite the rhetoric, do the Democrats care? I mean, no one wanted USAID to shut down on the left, I'm sure, but it instantly sort of refracted huge amounts of the American population and the global population as fundamentally disposable in the eyes of many, many, many, many people in power. You can't ignore the fact that an enormous amount of needless innocent death and suffering took place with the US's full support every single day for. We're going to hit two years really, really soon. And, and Democrats didn't really do anything. And I found it, like, really chilling. And disappointing that I had such little reaction to the inaction of the Democratic Party after Trump came back in office. It scared me how much. I was like, yeah, well, what else was I going to expect from you motherfuckers? And I was like, that's not.

[Jon Favreau]

A.

[Gia Tolentino]

Really bad, bad vibe.

[Jon Favreau]

And I've. And I've.

[Gia Tolentino]

For someone that really believes in, like, civic participation.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

You know, it's.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, look, I've. I've felt it, too. And, And I have yelled about it, and then I've also been like, okay, well, what are they. What are they gonna do? What can we do? I mean, I think to the Gaza point, too. Like, there. There has been horrific bloodshed, you know, genocides, murder, for, like, most of human history. Right. We've had these, like, horrible, horrible. I think that to go back to the Internet for a second, I think one of the hopes of the Internet age was it will be harder for that to happen because now we're all having to look at it every single day. We'll have to look at it every day, and we'll all be witness to it now. We're all witness to it, and we have more information and more insight into actually what's happening. But we don't necessarily have more agency because of the Internet.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, we should. We still have agency, but it's. Everything happens so fast. And, you know, I think about this, too. I think about the war in Ukraine, right? That happens. Like, it just slaughter. Putin is slaughtering people. There's. There's, like, 20,000 children who have been kidnapped from Ukraine. There's just the images of people. Kids from Gaza is, like, horrific. You brought up usaid. That was, like, the first thing I was so fucking incensed about in the Trump administration. And I haven't thought about it now for, like, a week until you just mentioned, or I guess Bill Gates said, you know, elon Musk is killing children. And it came up in the headlines again. I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, he is. And I was just. I. There's this. There's this line from Alan De Baton where he writes in. In News A User's Guide. And I think I've thought about it, like, throughout the Trump era and even before that. And he talks about how following the news can feel as though we are daily being invited to watch helplessly while a close friend drowns behind a plate glass window.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And that, to me, is like, so much of the experience of watching the news unfold, particularly in the Trump era, on our phones.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. And there, there's kind of, you know, all of the, the very, all the specifics of this aside, I do think there's an accumulative effect of not just, you know, basically ever since Zuckerberg said that thing about you know, the squirrel dying in your front lawn and a person and starving in Sudan or whatever he said, it's like there is kind of an accumulative effect on all of us. The permission structure to detach from reality. The foundation of it has been led as soon as we had access to sort of feed based information. We saw things that we had no hope of changing basically since we started seeing like close up cell phone footage of people in natural disasters like across the world. All of that has I think slowly and now, you know, it's metastasized and it's like exponentially more dire for all of these reasons. But yeah, there is something inherently about like the sort of oh well, my email. You know, like it's.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah, like I, like I saw this image, it's horrifying. Maybe I post about it, it, maybe I talk to someone about it, maybe I write a letter, maybe I go to a protest. It's like, and then what? And, and you know, I think to myself, okay, well, Civil rights movement, most successful non violent movement certainly in the United States history. That took you know, a decade, two decades, mult, many decades. And but there was something different in that. Like I don't know without the Internet back then. Like you knew that there was some progress or you felt like ok, taking a step forward, this is good. Or maybe you weren't seeing all the horrors every day. Like there's just, I always wonder like how did they do it and keep up and not feel like this is pointless, we have no agency, we keep getting beat down by these assholes. We're never gonna, you know, we're never gonna have the right to vote, we're gonna have right equality. And it just seems, it seems so much harder now.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, if you think about like, I mean what did a presidential debate look like in the 60s? Like what were the blocks of times? I don't know actually. But like what. It wouldn't be the 45 seconds that everyone's getting for speech and rebuttal now. You know, like there was, that was the single sin and the single attempt at redemption and the single. Yeah, I mean obviously not single. There was a lot of other stuff but you know what I mean, that had the stage probably that was the singular thing in the backdrop of people's consciousness for years and years and years. It would not be possible for even something of that magnitude to hold attention for that long now.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Gia Tolentino]

For people to.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I mean, I was thinking when John Lewis had his skull bashed in on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, this was part of the strategy was, we're going to be nonviolent and we know that there's going to be violence visited upon us. And that should shape, hopefully would shape public opinion. When that happened, that led the nightly news on all three networks, which had a reach of tens of millions of people all watching the same thing. And so public opinion starts to change. There is no medium whereby a news event captures or is broadcast to the most of the country at the same time anymore.

[Gia Tolentino]

I mean, people don't agree that Biden won in 2020, you know.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Gia Tolentino]

Like. Like. And not just like, people, like, plenty of people that are, like, elected. It's like there's, you know, like, there's no. I mean, I have not in any way given up on like, messaging and communication and policy and like, the policy platforms that I believe in and like, the way that. That actually does communicate. You see the audiences at the Corny, but, you know, literally, God bless them, the oligarchy tour, like, there are ways to cut through. There are ways to communicate the truth about reality. But. But like, like, I. I have not detached from reality. Like, and I, I don't. I. I wrote this piece in part because I was like, you can't. You can't. Like, you. You can't actually do this. You don't want to do this. And the feeling that's kind of the fog that's growing between you and reality, you got to kind of bat through it. But. But I, I do think that traditional methods are not working.

[Jon Favreau]

No. And. Well, one. One reason I think about it differently now because there's part of me that I'm like, you know, is this good for my. Is this good for my mental health? Obviously, this is my job. But, you know, wouldn't it be easier to, like, detach from the news and to just go, like, live my life and stuff like that? But, you know, we both have kids, and I think last time we spoke, I think. I think your eldest daughter is like a couple weeks apart from Charlie, my eldest son. And now you have a second. And I think they were in the. I think you have a 2023 baby, right?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And I do, too. I have a 10 from 2023.

[Gia Tolentino]

Good age gap, right?

[Jon Favreau]

It's a great age gap. It's a Great age.

[Gia Tolentino]

It's a great age gap. We love it.

[Jon Favreau]

But I feel like last time we spoke, we were trying to figure out, like, which parts of our lives were exhausted because of parenthood and which was the pandemic, and now we're all past that. But how is being a parent changed your relationship with the Internet screens and how you think about your kids relationship to screens and the Internet?

[Gia Tolentino]

Unfortunately, like, thinking about my kids growing up in this political system, I'm sort of like. It's almost. It's like turning me into a member of the Weather Underground a little bit. Like, I'm sort of like. Like, I'm just gonna be real with you. Like, that's kind of where I'm at when the time comes to explain the just profound immorality of our policy structures. And then they're like, what do we do about it? I don't. I'd be like, well, I write letters and I go to protest, and I vote in all my local elections. It's like, they're gonna be like, that's clearly not working. And I'm gonna be like, I know. Let's read these biographies of the Weather Underground founders together. Like, I'm just like, I.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, they're Be like, well, that. That didn't end well for them either. Like, I know. So we're sort of stuck. I don't know.

[Gia Tolentino]

I'm kind of on the. Like, violence works, though. Like, it's like the. The sort of. Andreas Malm, you know, Like, I. Like, I'm. I'm kind of like, I don't know. Like, you. Look, riots do work sometimes, and there's, like, a reason the state has such an absolute monopoly on violence. Because it works. You know, like, obviously it didn't. The. The Weather Underground bombings didn't really do a lot for anyone, but, like, I don't know. Like. Like, that's what I think about when I have to answer for world that I believe in participating in and the ways that I've advocated for participating in it. And the. And what has happened, you know, with, like, being peaceful, like, I don't know, whatever, but with.

[Jon Favreau]

No. I. Look, I think this is fascinating because we did a whole series on the Weather Underground with Bernard, Dean Dorn's son, and he interviewed his parents, he interviewed Bill Ayers and all of them. And the fascinating thing about the series is, is you both understand why they went down that path. And you can also understand why, at the end, ultimately, it doesn't. Doesn't work. Not just because it's like, not a good tactic, but because what it does to the people, how people end up being radicalized in that way. Like, they sort of lose the sense of what is politically effective and, like, what is actually going to bring change. And so it's like, it's interesting. It's also a little. It's dispiriting in that you're like, okay, well, this isn't working. That's not working.

[Gia Tolentino]

Like, well, the human ego. The human ego implodes it all, you know, like, for sure, for sure. And yet, I mean, I'm definitely like, all of these. All of these fuckers, like, in the. Like, I'm like, I'm for sure, like, done with propriety. Like, I'm very much like, these people should never know piece again, you know, Like, I'm not advocating for violence, but I'm like, they should not know a nice meal at a restaurant. Like, please. But, but. But the screens thing. So I think this is one of the reasons that I noticed this feeling in my head and that I was trying to parse through it in this piece was that I was sort of like, okay. A thing that has worked for me for, I don't know, 25 years of being on the Internet, like, has been like, okay, the real world is more important to me than the Internet. And the Internet is this vast sort of like, labyrinth playground than hellscape. But, you know, all these things that's been to me in my life, my entire professional realm, whatever, like, it's enormous. But I'm a human animal, and what's going on physically in front of me is more important. I kind of had the hope of passing that down as sort of just a vague rubric of how to handle it and just let the physical world feel realer to you than what was on a screen screen. But then I started to lose my access to that being kind of an automatic instinct and this being, like, a principle that's extremely important to me, that I've talked about a ton, that I try to practice and reinforce in so many ways. And that. I mean, that is. But that is what I think, right? Like, I think I want them to understand it is my only hope that they have something that absorbs them more than a screen does. It can just be a couple things. You know, it could be eco terrorism. You know, it could be. It could be playing the guitar, or it could be ecoterism. It could be any number of things. But it. But it's like, as long as there's something that, you know, like, yeah, whatever, Drawing like it's sort of like as long. Yes. Like with my older one, I'm like, okay, well you really like, she, I mean, she used to go to bed at 9. So like, that girl has watched like a whole movie like every day of her life. Like, I'm like 7:30, I'm done parenting. You know, Like, I'm like, that's, that's really, I'm tapping out, you know, but, but it's like she knows that it feels better to move around and to do things and to have her hands in things and to be outside and be with her friends, you know, and sort of like, maybe that's, maybe that is replicable. But then there was something about this year. I was like, I don't know, you can lose that pretty fast. Especially as an adolescent, especially as someone who's like sort of of, you know, entire social experience is pre mediated. Before you ever. I've been writing a piece about like how Gen Z is not having sex as much anymore or whatever. And you know, I've been thinking about this in terms of young people that are a generation older than mine. How do you think about it with your kids and screens?

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it's weird. There's almost like an envy when I'm watching Charlie now play, like without screens, right? Because it's like the imagination is there and he's telling, he's making up stories and he just loves being outside with his friends and he's running around. And then, you know, there are the times when. Same with you, it's like, okay, I gotta stop parenting for like an hour. So here's your iPad and you could do YouTube kids. And here's Ms. Rachel and here's Blippi and whatever is Cocomelon. Whatever, whatever, you know? Yeah. And that's fine. And when he's done, you know, you can. As he's getting older, you can start to feel him being like, well, I just want to do like another half, you know, a little more time on the iPad. A little more time. And I'm like, no, no more time.

[Gia Tolentino]

That's just starting for you. That's.

[Jon Favreau]

But it's like, it's hard to explain. I'm like, I've been telling him. I'm like, it's gonna, it will rot your brain.

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh yeah. You're like, you're like this. You're like, no, no, no, no more phones. I'm like, no, you gotta turn it off. You gotta turn it off. What?

[Jon Favreau]

That's exactly right. And he knows now. Now he takes My phone and he throws it, which is very funny. But I guess the only thing I can think of is to. To, like, spend as much time with them as possible without screens now, to help them understand how fulfilling life can be without the screens and to, like, encourage the play dates and encourage the activities that get us outside, that get us out of the house, that get, you know, and we're in la, so it's helpful. We can, like, be outside a lot. And he loves being outside and to just sort of, like, stave it off as long as possible. Because I know it's coming. Like, I know there's gonna be the moment when it's like, oh, everyone has a phone and I have a phone. And, you know, and then, then. And then that's it. But I feel like these are such formative years that maybe if we give them enough experience of reality without the screens, then it'll be something that stays with them. And I don't think that's going to be like, something that immunizes them from something that is not just within your own personal choice, but maybe it'll give them a foundation.

[Gia Tolentino]

I do also think that there's a difference. Like, right now, they. They don't really experience the Internet as something that reads, that is surveilling them in the way that it actively surveils all of us. Yeah, like, they, you know, probably all four of our kids might already have like, a data profile, like some sort of data matrix attached to, you know, like, who knows? But. But they are not being read and targeted very specifically by the Internet the way that an adolescent, a preteen and adolescent, or, I mean, you know, even a. And it's like.

[Jon Favreau]

Like.

[Gia Tolentino]

When it's like, oh, here's Aladdin, you know, and you're gonna sit down and you're gonna watch Aladdin. And it's not like. It's not like the sort of dynamic insanity of, you know, you're looking at something. We look at our phones and it looks back and it adjusts to, you know, to whatever, to like, open the wormhole in front of us. Like, I think I will be alarmed in a different way when I see how that actually works for them and when the Internet starts acting back on them in a very active way. But right now I'm like, I'm loving. Here's Aladdin, you know.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, Charlie had this habit of he would. Because he doesn't sleep. And I wake up at 5am and then at 5:30 he comes down and he wants to sit on my lap. In my office at home and I'm answering emails and he is watching, watching YouTube. But I have had to, like, that's when the algorithm. Because, like, then the video stops and then it gives them another one, and then it gives them another one and it starts. And then we're watching like, the.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And I was like, we gotta stop the autoplay. We gotta stop the algorithm. We gotta maximize it so he doesn't look at the thumbnails and be like, I want to watch that. Because you start to see the attention span shortened too. And he's like, I want to watch this one now. I want to watch this one. Yeah. So it's tough, though. It's tough.

[Max Fisher]

Tough.

[Jon Favreau]

It's. But hopefully, you know, hopefully we can lead by example.

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[Jon Favreau]

I know.

[Gia Tolentino]

I was like. I was like, what am I going to use for a headline, like, the next time my brain breaks? You know, I was like, yeah, it.

[Jon Favreau]

Can only break once. What's up?

[Gia Tolentino]

I really. I really blew my brain breaking load on this. Like, it's gonna happen again.

[Jon Favreau]

You talk about trying to convince your. Your kids that the. That the worthwhile parts of their minds are those which have resisted or eluded the incentives of the Internet. What's keeping. What's keeping the worthwhile parts of your mind busy or at least fulfilled these days?

[Gia Tolentino]

I don't know. Yeah. Being physically face to face with people, anytime you're doing it. Right. Like, it's like. Yeah. Being outside doing things, you know, like. Okay, what do I think actually, what do I mean by that? What do I mean by resisting the incentives of the Internet? I think by that I mean self surveillance. I think, I mean sort of an inhuman consistency, like a narrowing and a siloing. And so it's like being with friends, going out, like, just like unsurveilled experience, doing things in community groups, doing things at their school. You know, like, the thing about what's going on right now is it's. It's like, I don't like the way that the Internet harnesses extremely human things about us and makes it of sort of monetary use to, like, evil companies. Right. Like, you feel when you have a child that, you know, like, the most humanly valuable moments are of no monetary use to anyone. They are mostly unsurveilled. They are unrecorded. And at the times in my life when I have been most sort of operating in adherence to the incentives of the Internet, I am making myself useful. I'm making myself monetizable. I'm making myself Sort of consistent and whatever. And, and it's like real pleasure. It's not monetizable. It's almost always unsurveilled. It is of no use to anyone. It is not. And that is why it's valuable. And I think that kind of relates to the civic thing too. There's a part of the back of my head that's always thinking about what forms can dissent take right now and what are the meaningful ones. And I'm trying to, to, like, what could be. What can, like, elude capture. What could elude the bad kind of capture and what kind of. Yeah, I think I'm trying to think even in the realm of, like, disobedience rather than dissent, even.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

And like, that's, yeah, like, so the parts of the parts of me that are resisting the incentives of the Internet, of the parts that are unrecorded, disobedient, pleasure focused, and just there, like, in the world. And.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I think about that a lot. And for me, talking about ways to dissent and organize in person with other people without screens, and knowing that, like, some of it is going to be clumsy, some of it is going to be silly, some of it is going to be like, like, that's not realistic at all. But we're all talking about it. We can connect about it. Like, I, I know that I always feel better after those conversations, whether it's effective or not. Like, you know, that's a larger conversation. But again, that gets you. That pulls you into that utilitarian space that the Internet does where it's like, we've got to figure out something that is, like, immediately effective. It's like, yeah, ultimately we do, but we also, like, the sort of, the best ideas come when you are connecting with other human beings and trying to figure something out together. And usually that's a lot more valuable than trying to figure something out on your own in your own brain, with your device in your hand.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, it's as simple as just like a lack of mediation and compliance. Like, yeah, and it's like. And maybe that's like, yeah, I feel like that's. Those are kind of the vectors that I hope can be operative with my kids, you know, that, that, like, I want them to have a, have a physical sense of that. That what they want actually may be just to get rid of all of the forms of mediation that will present themselves to our children at age 11 is like, actually, it's so much easier to just like, do this all over text. It's like, I want them to learn like no, you know, like it's better.

[Jon Favreau]

To hang out, you know, and it's and it might not be easier, but it's going to feel better afterwards. Yeah, Gia, thank you so much as always. I think we figured it all out.

[Gia Tolentino]

We'll do the as usual, we figured it out.

[Jon Favreau]

We'll do this every couple years until we fix the Internet. It's going to be great. 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 in Pod Save America exclusive content and free. More Join our Friends of the Pod subscription [e-mail] friends and if you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, Tik Tok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich Frank. The show is mixed and sound edited by Dan Ferrell. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Segland. Delon Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer and Adrienne Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.

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