Why Elon Lies About DOGE and How To Fix Your Focus

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau: Episode Summary Title: Why Elon Lies About DOGE and How To Fix Your Focus
Release Date: February 20, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, hosted by Crooked Media, Jon Favreau and Max Fisher delve into the pervasive impact of the internet and technology on our focus and societal dynamics. Skipping over advertisements and non-content segments, the hosts navigate through current events, conspiracy theories, and expert insights to explore how our digital lives shape our cognition and culture.

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2. Elon Musk’s Latest Moves: DOGE and OpenAI

Jon Favreau and Max Fisher kick off the episode discussing recent controversial actions by Elon Musk. Over the past few weeks, Musk has attempted to access highly sensitive personal data, including Social Security numbers and bank accounts, raising serious privacy concerns.

Notable Quote:

Jon Favreau [04:03]: "In the last few weeks, special government employee Elon Musk has attempted to access our most personal data, including Social Security numbers and bank account information."

Musk also made an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to acquire OpenAI’s nonprofit assets, igniting a fierce conflict with Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO. Altman swiftly rejected the offer, highlighting the deepening rift between the two tech moguls.

Notable Quote:

Sam Altman [07:26]: "No, thank you, but we will buy Twitter for 9.74 billion if you want."

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3. The Feud Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman

The hosts examine the origins and escalations of Musk and Altman’s feud, tracing back to Musk’s initial involvement in founding OpenAI in 2015. A power struggle in 2017 led Musk to attempt to oust Altman, resulting in Musk’s departure and subsequent lawsuits alleging OpenAI's deviation from its nonprofit mission.

Notable Quote:

Emily Horne [07:16]: "He wanted OpenAI. He lost. It was purely a power struggle."

This ongoing conflict has broader implications, especially with Musk’s recent alignment with political figures like Donald Trump, suggesting a convergence of tech power and authoritarian tendencies.

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4. MAGA Conspiracies and Social Security Claims

Jon and Emily delve into the rise of conspiracy theories propagated by Musk and his followers on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). One such claim alleges rampant fraud within the Social Security Administration, asserting that benefits are being erroneously paid to individuals aged 150 years.

Notable Quote:

Elon Musk [18:22]: "Doge found evidence that the program is paying out benefits to 150-year-olds."

However, investigative reporting from Wired debunked these claims, attributing the misinformation to misinterpretations of outdated programming data.

Notable Quote:

Jon Favreau [18:27]: "It's a coding error. They misread the numbers in the database."

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5. Scott Perry’s USAID Claims and Nigeria’s Reaction

The episode covers Congressman Scott Perry’s controversial statements accusing USAID of funding terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram through programs like the Women's Scholarship Endowment. These unfounded accusations have sparked outrage in Nigeria, leading to calls for severing U.S.-Nigerian partnerships.

Notable Quote:

Emily Horne [11:14]: "It's a statement of fact. It is an open secret and nothing new."

The misinformation has significantly tarnished the U.S. image in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, despite Apple’s efforts to educate the public using visual evidence of USAID’s genuine work.

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6. TikTok’s Reinstatement on App Stores Amid Regulatory Challenges

Jon and Emily discuss the fluctuating status of TikTok in major app stores. Despite a Supreme Court-upheld ban, authorities received assurances from the Justice Department not to enforce the law strictly, allowing TikTok to return to Apple and Google’s platforms.

Notable Quote:

Emily Horne [29:35]: "It's the law on the books... but they're not enforcing it."

The conversation highlights the complexities of regulating global tech platforms and the potential for executive overreach undermining established laws.

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7. Offline Challenge: Reclaiming Focus

The hosts reflect on the ongoing offline challenge focused on enhancing personal focus and reducing digital distractions. They share their personal struggles and successes with implementing strategies such as setting aside distraction-free work blocks, turning off notifications, and adopting new habits to improve mental clarity.

Notable Quote:

Emily Horne [40:26]: "I found it really annoying and really disruptive. It did not improve my focus at all."

Jon shares his difficulties in maintaining focus without constant device access, illustrating the pervasive challenge of digital interruptions.

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8. Expert Insights: Interview with Dr. Gloria Mark

A significant portion of the episode features an in-depth interview with Dr. Gloria Mark, a psychologist and professor at UC Irvine. Dr. Mark explores the concept of attention as a finite cognitive resource, detailing how multitasking and constant interruptions drain our mental capacities, leading to stress and burnout.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Gloria Mark [53:36]: "Our mind has a limited capacity for cognitive resources... multitasking... drains our tank."

Key Discussions:

• Attentional Capacity: The metaphor of a "tank" representing our cognitive resources, which get depleted through multitasking and interruptions.
• Impact of Task Switching: Rapidly shifting focus between tasks increases stress and reduces overall productivity.
• Self-Interruptions: Approximately half of daily interruptions are self-imposed, stemming from habits like procrastination and seeking distractions.
• Consequences of Drained Attention: Chronic depletion can lead to burnout, reduced executive function, and increased susceptibility to misinformation and cynicism.
• Recharging Strategies: Dr. Mark recommends practices such as meta-awareness, intentional focus, taking breaks, walking in nature, and practicing forethought to manage and replenish cognitive resources.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Gloria Mark [74:28]: "Practicing meta awareness... become more intentional with our actions."

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9. Practical Strategies for Enhancing Focus

Building on Dr. Mark’s insights, Jon and Emily outline actionable techniques to reclaim focus and mitigate the effects of digital overstimulation:

• Meta Awareness: Being conscious of automatic digital behaviors and questioning the necessity of each interaction.
• Intentionality: Setting clear intentions for device use, such as allocating specific times for checking emails or social media.
• Nature Walks: Incorporating brief walks in natural settings to refresh cognitive resources and enhance creativity.
• Forethought: Visualizing desired end-of-day states to motivate sustained focus during work periods.

Notable Quote:

Emily Horne [77:22]: "Imagine where you want to be in the evening... it’s a powerful mechanism."

Jon shares his own attempts to implement these strategies, including reading before bed and engaging in puzzle-solving activities to strengthen focus.

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10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode wraps up with Jon and Emily reflecting on the interconnectedness of digital distractions, mental health, and societal well-being. They emphasize the importance of taking proactive steps to manage attention and foster healthier relationships with technology.

Notable Quote:

Emily Horne [79:18]: "We have to be thoughtful about the fact that using these platforms compromises us."

In promoting the Offline challenge and sharing personal anecdotes, the hosts encourage listeners to adopt healthier habits for a more balanced and focused life both online and offline.

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Overall, this episode provides a comprehensive exploration of how digital distractions, fueled by influential figures like Elon Musk, contribute to widespread attention fragmentation and societal cynicism. Through expert interviews and practical advice, Offline with Jon Favreau offers valuable insights and strategies for reclaiming focus and enhancing mental well-being in an increasingly connected world.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is brought to you by bookshop.org local bookstore right in Larchmont that I love. Chevalier's Bookstore, one of the oldest bookstores in Los Angeles.

[Max Fisher]

Got a pretty woke sounding name if you ask me.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, you know what? They got some pretty woke books too, because they've got democracy or else.

[Max Fisher]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Oh, really?

[Jon Favreau]

It wasn't a plan signing. I just drive by shopping.

[Max Fisher]

You have with you at all times.

[Jon Favreau]

Hey, are there any books of mine.

[Max Fisher]

In here that just sign a couple books, sign a couple boobs, go home.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Wow, that's actually cool.

[Jon Favreau]

That's great.

[Max Fisher]

I didn't know that I'm going to use that.

[Jon Favreau]

You can now support local independent bookstores even when you read digitally. You can browse and purchase on bookshop.org and read right in your device's web browser. Or for the full reading experience, download the app for iPhone or Android. Every purchase financially supports local independent bookstores. Bookshop.org even has a handy bookstore map to help you find local bookstores to support in your area. Need some help picking your next read? The new books section of the website is updated weekly, so you'll always find something new and interesting to add to your library. Use code offline10 to get 10% off your next [e-mail] that's code [e-mail] we're.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Part of a busyness culture. And the business culture is that we have to occupy our minds every minute with something. And so if we're not occupying our minds with work, well, we turn to the news as a way to occupy our minds. Right? So just pulling away from, you know, any kind of tech and anything that's reminding you of work, what's going on in the world can help our minds recuperate.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Emily Horne]

I'm Max Fisher and you just heard.

[Jon Favreau]

From today's guest, Dr. Gloria Mark. So we're in the middle of this offline challenge that's all about reclaiming our Focus, which seems especially important right now as we're all trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and how we stop it. So Dr. Gloria Mark, who's a researcher at UC Irvine, has literally written the book on how to reclaim our focus. It's called attention Span, a groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity. Max, you sat down with Dr. Mark to talk to her about our challenge and what it takes to find focus and fight distraction. How was it?

[Emily Horne]

Super interesting. We got a lot into the science of focus. What's happening in your brain when you feel like you can focus versus when you can't. Actually came away feeling really optimistic in a way that I feel like you usually don't in these kinds of conversations where you're like, everything is destroyed, your focus and you're doomed in the modern ecosystem. And there are actually a lot of little habits that we kind of all have without realizing it that are breaking down our focus day to day. But once you can see them, actually pretty easy to engineer a lot of them out of your day in a way that I have already found is making me feel more focused, calmer, more present, and just like my brain is a little bit more settled. She also talked about something that I thought was really, really interesting, that people who have weekend focus, for whatever reason, maybe you were just looking too much at your smartphone that morning, whatever. As a result, you will feel less in control, less agency. And that can make you feel more cynical about the world and therefore about politics. And I thought it was so striking. I can see that she drew felt that exactly right. As soon as she. I was like, of course. And it was such a clear, like empirical, grounded one to one from something where we have talked about all the time on this show, which is that the isolated doom scrolling culture we have just systemically is structured in a way that pulls people towards the right. So it was really helpful to see that articulated.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, stay tuned for that optimism because first we have some stories for you.

[Emily Horne]

We do.

[Jon Favreau]

In the last few weeks, special government employee Elon Musk has attempted to access our most personal data, including Social Security numbers and bank account information. Also in the last few weeks, he's.

[Emily Horne]

Accessing my damn last nerve, am I right? Sorry, I'm so sorry to interrupt you for that garbage.

[Jon Favreau]

Honestly, that was worth it. Also in the last few weeks, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk attempted to take over one of the biggest artificial intelligence companies in the world. There is no evidence that those two stories are related.

[Emily Horne]

Well, I trust that he would keep them separate yeah, of course.

[Jon Favreau]

But Elon did join with a group of investors to submit an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to purchase OpenAI's nonprofit assets. The bid immediately reignited the Kendrick Drake feud between Musk and Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI, with Altman immediately shooting down the bid, tweeting, no, thank you, but we will buy Twitter for 9.74 billion if you want, and then telling Bloomberg he feels for Musk because we'll let him explain.

[Emily Horne]

Do you think Musk's approach, then, is from a position of insecurity about X?

[Jon Favreau]

Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy. You feel for him? I do, actually.

[Emily Horne]

I don't think he's like a happy person than. I do feel for him. Okay. Do you worry that he has this proximity to the president and he can influence the decision making of the US Presidency and policies around this. This agenda? On AI not particular.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe I should, but not particularly. I definitely agree with him on. Yeah, everything comes from a place of insecurity. He does sort of seem like a happy guy these days, though, watching him. I don't know if you caught the Hannity interview with Trump and Elon.

[Emily Horne]

I didn't. I saw the press conference. That was enough for me. The.

[Jon Favreau]

The interview is something he's. They really love each other.

[Emily Horne]

He's riding some kind of wave. I don't know if it's chemically abetted.

[Jon Favreau]

Or not, but I've never seen Trump be so nice to someone I know. Really weird.

[Emily Horne]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

Elon almost was, like, crying at one point because he was saying what. What a wonderful president and person Donald Trump is.

[Emily Horne]

So my prediction that Trump was going to turn on Musk out of jealousy is really doing well. I think. It was really one of my many great calls.

[Jon Favreau]

You were not. I mean, I think most people thought that. Yeah, I thought that might happen.

[Emily Horne]

They've clearly got some sort of symbiosis going.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Well, maybe it's because they're both authoritarians. They're. They're rich, powerful authoritarians who are now in charge of the country. So maybe that's the common ground.

[Emily Horne]

Right? Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like Occam's razor.

[Emily Horne]

They're pulling everything up by the roots. He's not. Musk isn't trying to check him. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

They don't like people questioning them and they like having a lot of power and they think their ideas are the best.

[Emily Horne]

Do you think. How many times do you think you have to tweet at Elon Musk before he will mention you by name to Donald Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

No, let's don't ask me that.

[Emily Horne]

Be kind of fun to get.

[Jon Favreau]

Every time Emily checks Twitter now and sees that, she's like, why are you putting yourself on his radar screen? I don't know if I love that.

[Emily Horne]

What could go wrong? Come on. A little.

[Jon Favreau]

At least he's responsive. You know that's true. Because he's got nothing else to do.

[Emily Horne]

I know a lot of people don't answer my text messages. Elon Musk is responding.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, back to our friend Sam Altman. Elon and Sam have been feuding for a while now. What's going on there, and what was with the hostile bid?

[Emily Horne]

Okay, so the backstory here is that Elon Musk helped Sam Altman to found OpenAI way back in 2015. In 2017, Musk instigated a power struggle. He tried to push out Sam Altman, take control of the company. He lost. He quit in a huff because he's a giant baby. The next year, he sued OpenAI just out of, like, personal vendetta, claiming that OpenAI was not fulfilling its mission of being a nonprofit for the betterment of humanity. He's kept the suit going ever since. When he did that big warning, like, a year ago where he said, AI is going to destroy the world, that was part of this personal vendetta. He froze Altman out of Mar A Lago as part of his, like, you know, revenge rage against him.

[Jon Favreau]

So is. Does the beef start with, he just doesn't. He wanted OpenAI to himself.

[Emily Horne]

He wanted Open AI. He lost.

[Jon Favreau]

I think he got it, like, disagree with the direction that Sam was taking?

[Emily Horne]

No, it was just purely a power struggle. And I think it's mostly that he. The embarrassment of having lost control of that. So this stunt where he offered all of this money for OpenAI is designed, I think, very specifically to sabotage OpenAI's efforts to go private. It's a nonprofit. They want to go private. In order to do that, they have to buy out the nonprofit that owns the company. They write what they want to set their own price for that. Right? They want to say OpenAI is worth $1. So that's when it's going to cost us to buy it out by Elon Musk making this bid and OpenAI refusing it. They are creating a potentially legally usable data point that the company is worth more than 97 billion. So the idea is to create the, like, storm of threat of litigation if they now buy themselves out for less than that. So it's just, it's to make them lose money, which is all just part of this personal bullshit. There are, I think there are some, like, the stakes of their rivalry have really gone up since Trump has won because it's like everybody's trying to get their position at the court of, like, corruption and authoritarianism to get their hand out. Sam Altman completely outmaneuvered Musk to get the Project Stargate thing right. That, like, Musk was furious about this. According to the Wall Street Journal, he was fuming to people because he didn't want his rival, Sam Altman, to get that money. And, like, Allman did go around him to get it.

[Jon Favreau]

Does this man not have his hands in enough shit right now? Elon Musk? Like, what?

[Emily Horne]

Yeah. There's a certain type of person who I feel like you encounter over and over again when you track these, like, right wing authoritarian movements, that it's just. There's just a bottomless hole of need somewhere and, like, grievance and anger. And it's like there's no number of feuds or vendettas that are what brought.

[Jon Favreau]

Elon Musk and Donald Trump together.

[Emily Horne]

I know.

[Jon Favreau]

The secret sauce.

[Emily Horne]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Bottomless well of need.

[Emily Horne]

And. And you said, what if Jon Favreau was the target of that. What if you are angry at me?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's. That's. Hey, Cash Patel. Right here. All right. I want to talk about some of the MAGA conspiracies that have been floating around on all kinds of platforms thanks to the good work of Elon and the Doge Bags. In fact, it seems like we've now come to see that one of the defining features of Doge. Yeah. Is Elon and his fanboys on X telling us that they have uncovered massive fraud and corruption because they looked at some government spreadsheet that's been publicly available for years. Forever.

[Emily Horne]

Right. And then there's a screenshot of the spreadsheet that completely invalidates their tweet.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. Because then they. They read it wrong or they can't understand it, or they don't bother to learn anything about why the money is being spent. So they just make up a good story about it that feels right to them. Is that right?

[Emily Horne]

Yes. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay.

[Emily Horne]

I think that's about it. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it's been. Some of the misinformation and conspiracies have been getting pretty bad over the weekend.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You sent us a story about the reaction in Nigeria to an offhanded remark made by USAID from Republican Congressman Scott Perry, what was happening there.

[Emily Horne]

So it is wild to me this has not gotten more attention in the US it is a huge story internationally. So. Okay. Representative Perry, who represents, I think like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, claimed at a congressional hearing that he had discovered a secret USAID program that funds isis, Al Qaeda and the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, said it's been ongoing. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, it gets worse. Ongoing since the Obama administration. Quote from this congressional hearing, you are funding terrorism and it's coming through usaid. You are paying for terrorism and not like an indirect way. He said this money is going to build terrorist training camps around the world. John, would you like to know.

[Jon Favreau]

Creates jobs.

[Emily Horne]

Would you like to. That's true. It's a job creation. Yeah, unfortunately, they are. These are overseas jobs. So we're offshoring. Bring those jobs home. I say bring those jobs home.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what? I think Donald Trump's doing a pretty.

[Emily Horne]

Good job of that because that is true. Yes. So would you like to know the name of the program that is secretly funding all of these terrorist groups around the world? According to Representative Scott Perry, yes. The Women's Scholarship Endowment.

[Jon Favreau]

That is why. Well, how do you connect those dots?

[Emily Horne]

His proof is that the programs operate in places like Afghanistan where women are restricted from asset accessing education, and they are women's scholarship funds meant to educate women. So therefore, qed. That money's going to somebody, it must be going to the terrorists, which I simply could not make any less sense.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, I'm. This is now connecting something for me because last night we're recording this Wednesday on the Hannity interview with Elon and Trump.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

They start talking. First of all, Sean Hannity's interviewing them and he's got the scrolling list of programs that USAID funds, you know, and it's like, you know, a trans ballet and, you know, Portugal. It wasn't that. But and then one of the things. And Elon's like, yeah, no, we're funding just some of the worst things around the world. Like, you know, we're funding the Taliban. We're actually like, USAID money is going to the Taliban.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah, it's not. It's not going to the Taliban.

[Jon Favreau]

But also it's like, if. Clearly, if it's going. If. Because is the. If the Taliban is in control of Afghanistan now and we're funding programs there, like, is that what they're. I don't know why I'm trying to find out a real.

[Emily Horne]

It's. It's Literally, like, you can Google these and you can look at pictures of like, contractors with USAID teaching women how to read. Like, there's no, there's no mystery here.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like reading terrorist manuals.

[Emily Horne]

Reading terrorist manuals. Yeah. So this went like super, super viral, especially in Nigeria, where Boko Haram operates. They've killed huge numbers of people. The Wall Street Journal reporter Drew Hinshaw said that this is all over Nigerian television, Nigerian newspapers who are all picking it up because a member of Congress said it. There's been an absolute firestorm of outrage in the country. For context, Nigeria is Africa's most populous country. It is, like, strategically one of the most important in the continent to its future. Nigerian politicians are now calling for their country to end its long term partnership with the United States to demand compensation. A prominent former Nigerian military leader went on TV and said, this is a statement of fact. It is an open secret and nothing new. We all know that foreign governments don't want Africa to get settled because it would not favor them. So this has become, thank you to Scott Perry, accepted fact for huge numbers of people around the world.

[Jon Favreau]

Any of our international listeners just, you know, don't listen to anything I know members of Congress say, especially Republican members of Congress.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah, well, I mean, the image of the United States is like, it is very, you know, a little tarnished right now. In some parts of the world. Yes. But if you travel a lot, I am, or what, when I was traveling a lot for work, was constantly surprised by, even in places where you would think it would be very tarnished. Like, people really want to think the best of the United States. They really want to think the best of the United States. Governments, U.S. institutions. This is famously a big thing in big parts of sub Saharan Africa too. So I think that like, that, you know, a member of Congress said this is happening, they uncovered it. People are more willing to believe that because they want to trust the United States.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, friends, in Nigeria, the member of Congress you heard from did have his phone seized by the FBI for text messages.

[Emily Horne]

Really?

[Jon Favreau]

During the January 6th investigation. Oh, yeah, Scott Perry did. He really, like, literally got his phone seized by the FBI. So that's who you're dealing with there.

[Emily Horne]

So how far away from him claiming that January6 was a USAID operation?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, you put it out there now we're going to hear it. We are going to hear it.

[Emily Horne]

Next time you're tweeting with Eli, don't tell him that I said that, please.

[Jon Favreau]

So speaking of that, actually, before we move on the news. You see the news that obviously that Bolsonaro. Yes. Is getting charged working justice system.

[Emily Horne]

It's crazy to see.

[Jon Favreau]

And I forget who sent me the story last night. Tommy maybe. And my first, my, my first reaction was There is a non zero chance that Seal Team 6 gets sent in to Brazil to save Bolsonaro from trial. Yeah, it's funny, right? It's not zero.

[Emily Horne]

I don't want it to happen but that movie would rip zero Dark Thirty, Brasilia.

[Jon Favreau]

Gotta save autocrats all over the world. That's whose side we're on now. Offline is brought to you by fatty 15. 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 15. C15 supplement. A simple way to replenish your body with this essential fatty acid. Co founder Dr. Stephanie Van 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. Just pure C15 in a gorgeous glass jar. It's designed to fit easily into your life with refills conveniently delivered to your door. Because even your C15 deserves to live the set it and forget it lifestyle. 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 using code offline at checkout. So you know, as we've pointed out, most of these conspiracies and the bad information comes directly from Elon himself. He's also been saying this week that there is rampant fraud in the Social Security Administration. He says Doge found evidence that the program is paying out benefits to 150 year olds. That is not true.

[Emily Horne]

It's a coding. It's the way that the numbers render in the system. It's very easy to prove they've all.

[Jon Favreau]

Misread the numbers in the database. Wired did done some great reporting these last few weeks. It was this quirk and this was like a 60 year old programming language used by the Social Security system and many other government systems. Too late now. All the maggots think Social Security's got fraud, including Head MAGA President, United States. Now Trump's been posting about this fraud and Social Security. So who knows where the fuck this is going? Do you feel like it's just, is it just over the last few weeks this is all kicked up, is it DOGE stuff? Because most people don't know much about the internal workings of government. Like, it's, it's interesting that it's just getting a lot worse.

[Emily Horne]

It does, it feels, at first it felt incidental to me. It's like it felt like, oh, it's Elon posting. It's like they don't know what's going on or they're just like ripping stuff out and then trying to justify it after the fact. And I know like, everybody's kind of asking like, is this a strategy? Like flood the zone with, are they just stupid? And it's like, first of all, it can be both.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Emily Horne]

And it's like you look at some of these and like, did you see David Sacks as the Aizar tweeted, nobody knows what the national debt went. Jordan, you're not allowed to ask. That's not. There's no grand strategy behind a tweet that stupid and that embarrassing. Some of it does look more deliberate, like deleting all the USAID grants from the USAID website, which they did, and then turning around and then saying, nobody knows where all this spending is going. It's a big secret conspiracy we have to uncover. And it's like people do have a capacity to convince themselves of things that they think are advantageous for themselves to believe, which I think explains some of the, like, embarrassing Elon Musk tweets that look so stupid. Obviously all of this kind of serves an agenda of portraying the government as a big, deep state conspiracy that needs to be taken down. I saw a tweet which I sent you by a Twitter user named Punished Ariel, who I checked. She doesn't seem to be problematic. So that's great. We can quote her on the show. She said that the of the MAGA movement quote, it's people who are furious. They don't understand how things work. Everything looks like a conspiracy if you don't understand it. Which I thought was a really good way to put kind of both the bottom up demand for this and why it is useful for the people pushing it.

[Jon Favreau]

I have a few theories here. Which one is now that they control everything and most institutions.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Because they are a grievance based movement.

[Emily Horne]

Oh, right.

[Jon Favreau]

They are going to need new villains or constant villains.

[Emily Horne]

They have to remain in the opposition.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Because they can't just be like or out there fixing stuff for you because honestly that's what Joe Biden tried to do.

[Emily Horne]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Like we're fixing stuff, we're delivering. No, no, you need to have the we're delivering contrasted against the villains that are trying to stop you. So what's left is deep state government and look at all these conspiracies we're digging up. And I think when you, whether or not there's a strategy or whether or not it's intentional, when you are as brain rotted as all they, all these people are, you go into your investigation of government spending with certain preconceived notions about the government. Right. They think that they're, they believe in the deep state, they believe that there's corruption, they believe that there's criminality of all in the government. Right. So they believe this stuff. So then when you find a spreadsheet like that, you're going to be like, oh, it confirms what I already believe. I mean it does. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah. To, to your point about needing to stay in the opposition. I saw a TV interview with, I can't remember who was somebody in the cabinet. It might have. J.D. vance. It might have been someone else. Where it's going on and on about how the government is doing this and we found the government doing that. And the interview had to say, you are the government. And it's like they really are trying to both have all the power of being in the government, but also like somehow being outside of it in the opposition. This does feel like, to whatever degree, it's just like a natural evolution or a matter of deliberate strategy. The ultimate, maybe inevitable endpoint of distrust of institutions and experts as an organizing belief system. Like we've gotten, we've gotten to a place where the mere existence of an institution that manages aid or the budget or federal law enforcement must be corrupt and it must be lawless. Just because it's an institution and therefore it exists beyond my control or it's hard for me to understand or it feels opaque and therefore it must be destroyed. And that is a really, really useful and advantageous belief system to have. If your goal is to destroy the constitutional order, yes, to appoint yourself as an unchecked despot or if your goal is to destroy the federal Government to convert all of its functions into private contracts for your businesses, like Elon Musk. Or just to get billionaire tax cuts.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, on. Just on Social Security, you know, Donald Trump keeps saying, won't touch Social Security. Republicans in Congress say they won't touch Social Security.

[Emily Horne]

Oh, but now the fraud.

[Jon Favreau]

But now the fraud.

[Emily Horne]

Get the fraud.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, exactly. So it opens up an opportunity for that again, whether intentional or not. Right. I was arguing on Twitter, as I can't stop myself from doing now with one of the all in besties.

[Emily Horne]

Which one?

[Jon Favreau]

Chamath. Yeah.

[Emily Horne]

You know, I tried to. I tried to interview him once. He was good for like, a minute. He really was. Between when he left Facebook and between, like, a certain moment in the Trump years, he was, like, really a critic of Silicon Valley. Very thoughtful.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, that's why he's like. And now he's, like, lost his mind.

[Emily Horne]

He's totally scratched.

[Jon Favreau]

So he. Because the. He jumped on the Social Security conspiracy bandwagon with his long thing, and I, like, sent him the Wired store or whatever, and then he just, like, went crazy, called me all kinds of names. But then he was like. He was like, well, why are you. Why can't you see this? Are you upset that you're. That your gravy train is ending? Is that what it. Are you in on it? I'm like. I was literally like, you know what I'm talking about. What gravy train? What am I. I'm getting something from the Social Security. What do I have, like, dead people's Social Security numbers that I'm collecting benefits?

[Emily Horne]

Pro payout. Yeah, it's. It's really like.

[Jon Favreau]

That's like, you're. Is that a bit that you're doing, or are you just that fudgeing crazy?

[Emily Horne]

I mean, it feels like an idea that we arrived at by the end of the first Trump term, which was that any political opposition was by definition illegitimate because it opposed Trumpism and therefore was undemocratic. And it feels like now we are a place where anybody who's not on my side and doesn't agree with me is by definition corrupt on the take and on the take and on the do.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that really. And that. That's specifically from, like. I mean, it's. Trump does it all the time, but it's like a very. Elon.

[Emily Horne]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

And his crew thing.

[Emily Horne]

Flip it back on an accusation. Where are you at these days on using Twitter? I mean, using it, obviously, but, like, how are you feeling about it? Because I feel like so many people I know are like, really pulled in two directions on it.

[Jon Favreau]

I. I would say, like, two weeks ago, I was like, this is probably not worth it anymore because it was just getting. I think I talked about it last week on the show that I sort of, like, turned off replies from people I don't follow on a lot of my tweets because, like, it's just getting. What's been interesting this last week is I don't know what's happening, but I think some of the Doge incompetency and fuckups have, like, reignited something in people who are opposed to this bullshit, because I am now, as, of course, I'm posting up a storm, as always, but I'm noticing there's a lot more people like, these fuckers. Like, what is Elon Musk doing? Like. Like, there's more of a resistance. There's more of a resistance to it on X than there had been before.

[Emily Horne]

And that is. That is these people's community.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Emily Horne]

They, you know, not Elon, he's off in some, you know, who knows what world his mind is in? But the VC people, the all in people, do they live in a bubble. But it is a bubble that does exist on Twitter.

[Jon Favreau]

And I don't necessarily think it's people who are supportive of Trump and Elon who just, like, you know, switch sides or.

[Emily Horne]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's people who are just kind of quiet because it's just so nasty there and are now kind of feeling more comfortable. Like, no, this is a little crazy. Yeah. And so I do think, you know, and I keep toggling back and forth between. I'm not really posting on Blue sky, but I keep checking it once in a while and I don't know, I still think. I still wish a lot of the folks on Blue sky would, like, come back and join the fight on Twitter. Like, I think it is. I go back and forth on this because everyone's probably like, what, you very schizophrenic on this.

[Emily Horne]

But, like, I think it's a real. It's a really difficult dilemma.

[Jon Favreau]

It's a difficult dilemma.

[Emily Horne]

Tough one.

[Jon Favreau]

And I. I just. We have to have some place where public debate about this is happening.

[Emily Horne]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And we can argue and debate with some of these people.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

For other people who are sort of watching this to say, oh, yeah, Twitter, the ideal place.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Absolute fucking lutely. Not before, Elon. It was not the ideal place. We've talked about this many times. But it is maybe one of the only places right now.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Where you're actually Getting people from, with different beliefs and viewpoints, like, gathered together to argue about stuff. I think right now there might be some value in that.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah, I see that the Doge stuff feels, it does feel like a moment where there are things specifically happening on Twitter such that it is useful to have a direct counterweight to it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Emily Horne]

I would say, broadly, I, I feel less and less good about using Twitter. Every time I open it up, it just feels more compromised and more compromising and just like general usage as I like play to get place, to get news or to like share my thoughts. It feels like the utility is not zero and it's definitely there individually. But I also, I feel bad about participating in an ecosystem that is designed to personally benefit Elon Musk and his politics.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah, I'd say I know I go it's.

[Emily Horne]

But I don't, I also don't feel good about turning it off and walking.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Well, that's going to say that's all true. And it's also true. That's like, it's the, you know, it's the reality we're living in.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know that he owns the platform.

[Emily Horne]

Right. But, and this is also, I mean, I don't, I know it doesn't. People don't love it when I compare us to a backsliding democracy because we.

[Jon Favreau]

Are last week's guest. It was a whole interview about that.

[Emily Horne]

That's good. That was a great interview. I love Steve, but I mean, this is the compromise that you have to make in any country.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Emily Horne]

That is even much further down this, where we are in the spectrum that it's, it's always. Because they own the arenas for public discourse. So you're always kind of compromised participating in it, but you can't give up. But you should also be thoughtful about that fact.

[Jon Favreau]

I agree. Agree. Speaking of misinformation, TikTok's on again, off again relationship with the app stores is officially on again. That's right. The short form video app that was banned by a law that passed overwhelmingly and upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court has nevertheless returned to the Apple and Google app stores. This is after both companies received assurances from the Justice Department that it would not in fact enforce the law. Because these days the president is in more of a pick and choose kind of mood.

[Emily Horne]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

When it comes to laws.

[Emily Horne]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

So Austin loved that one. Laptop.

[Emily Horne]

We're all upset.

[Jon Favreau]

We're all upset. Max, can you explain why these app stores took so long to allow users to download TikTok while nothing had really changed.

[Emily Horne]

Nothing actually happened. So, okay, you could be forgiven for forgetting this little detail, but there we do have this thing in America called the law, at least in theory, and.

[Jon Favreau]

The law we have in the past, we have.

[Emily Horne]

Well, that's the question. That's the open question. The law on the books, as you mentioned, passed by Congress, affirmed by the Supreme Court, is that TikTok is banned notwithstanding any kind of temporary waiver. So that law.

[Jon Favreau]

And by the way, you can only in the law says that you can only do the waiver if there's a deal on the table. And there is no deal.

[Emily Horne]

Right. Which they're not even pretending to actually comply with. It's the barest fig leaf. The law did not cease to exist just because Trump issued an executive order saying, no, thanks, I don't like this law. No, thank you very much. So Apple and Google wanted to comply with that because they didn't want to expose themselves to any legal liability because, you know, laws. Um, reportedly they got letters from the DOJ saying, we are not going to enforce this. And they felt that that in writing was enough to go ahead with it. Reading between the lines, you kind of have to suspect that they also got the hint that Trump really wanted the win on bringing TikTok back and that there would probably be consequences for them if they didn't. So I understand why they felt they had to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. That this law goes in the pile of. More of a suggestion, more of a sketch.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah, that's right. Well, that's why Congress is here. They feel is they offer their little thoughts and Trump does with what he wants.

[Jon Favreau]

Less. Less. Less consent, more advice.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah, that's right. And the advice is mostly, good job, sir.

[Jon Favreau]

Not the word I would have used calling Zelensky a dictator. That's what. That's what Tom Tillis said today. Not the word I would have used.

[Emily Horne]

But we're not to a full Susan Collins concern.

[Jon Favreau]

Not concerned.

[Emily Horne]

So we're not. We're not using the full powers of Congress, which is when Susan Collins is concerned.

[Jon Favreau]

So is the. Is the. Does the TikTok is banned story, does this ever come to a conclusion? Are we just not going to enforce the law? So you think he's going to do a deal?

[Emily Horne]

I. No. Why? Why? He doesn't need to. I also, that. That's work. It's not a work kind of a guy.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Emily Horne]

So I was looking back over if.

[Jon Favreau]

He, if he came to some kind of deal, he would love where either he, he and his friends financially benefit or maybe More importantly, works out some deal with the Chinese government where, guess what? TikTok's not showing anything anti Trump.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure, you know.

[Jon Favreau]

We'Re not, we're not fucking with the algorithm that way.

[Emily Horne]

I mean, TikTok putting out push alerts, lying about how Trump is a hero. You think they're not going to put their fucking finger on the algorithm?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, that's what I'm saying. You do? No, no. I mean, I do wonder if Trump is thinking to himself, like, there is value. Leave it dangling in having a deal.

[Emily Horne]

He loves to leave it dangling, much.

[Jon Favreau]

Like he did with Eric Adams and now he owns New York City, you.

[Emily Horne]

Know, so it's awesome. It's an awesome system. So I, I was trying, I was thinking through, like, okay, what are the legal avenues here? Like, what could they do with a deal? And I was looking over my notes and I was like, what am I doing? This is so quaint. The idea, like, laws, the courts, like, that they would be treated that Trump is going to be like, oh, my God, what if I don't comply with the law? As if he cares, has any conception of it. Like, it was 40 days ago, I was writing down all these scenarios about, oh, what would he have to do to sell it, and it's like, oh, well, now laws aren't real anymore, so that's solved.

[Jon Favreau]

I will say I asked Leah Lippman about this on Pod Save America, I don't know how many weeks ago, because I'm like, is this just an example of. We keep saying, like, what happens if Trump defies the courts? Is this him defying the courts? She said, it's not quite the same because the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law.

[Emily Horne]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But no one has sued right now because I don't think anyone might. We'll see who has standing. Or maybe no one wants to. I know, saying, like, I am harmed by the fact that the Trump administration has not enforced this.

[Emily Horne]

There's no mechanism for John Roberts to say, you have to get rid of TikTok.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And you would have to have that. And so far, no one has sued. So, like.

[Emily Horne]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

We'll, you know, maybe we're speaking too soon on this. Maybe they'll follow the law of someone's. But again, it's. How do you prove, like, you've been, you've been hurt by the lack of a ban.

[Emily Horne]

Right. I mean, a Congress could say, we would like for you to follow the laws, but they have decided that they don't want to have constitutional authority anymore. I mean, I think like will this ever actually come to a conclusion? I think is not at this point is not really a question about Tik Tok or the law anymore. I think it's just a question that is tied up in what is our constitutional order going to look like.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's going to look like TikTok.

[Emily Horne]

It's going to be short form vertical video, Constitution, Constitutional order, doom scroll constitutional order. Look it part of the Constitution like it's not lost. It could come back in piecemeal in 2026 if Democrats retake Congress in 2028. Like you know Steve said he'd like Trump could lose. You know, maybe in the late 2000-40s Colonel President Barron Trump institutes perestroika and we have laws again. But if it doesn't come back, then yeah, I think the TikTok ban is just whatever Trump says it is.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that sounds about right. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Do you ever feel like you're not making the most of your money? Of course, right? You're either you're spending too much of it or you're keeping too much in savings.

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Emily Horne]

It is a nice change of pace.

[Jon Favreau]

The Washington Post recently reported that security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a backdoor allowing the UK government to retrieve all content that any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud. At the moment, it appears that Apple is unlikely to comply fully with the order, but may stop offering encrypted storage specifically in the uk. What the fuck is this? So what are they doing in the uk?

[Emily Horne]

I want to.

[Jon Favreau]

We have enough problems.

[Emily Horne]

Prepare people. You might want to sit down if you're walking. I'm about to defend Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is on the right. That is how.

[Jon Favreau]

And not in refusing backdoors. Yes, yes, I agree.

[Emily Horne]

They. So okay, so some context here. Apple has end to end encryption which means that even Apple corporate can't access your device. And this is a real thing. It's been a real thing for years. U.S. law enforcement was initially like upset about it, but whatever, they let it go. UK law enforcement has been fighting with Silicon Valley about end to end encryption for years. And Apple said in a submission to Parliament last year in anticipation of this that they will absolutely not build a backdoor under any circumstances. So this is.

[Jon Favreau]

WhatsApp doesn't have a backdoor. At least they didn't before Meta. They still say they don't.

[Emily Horne]

They say they don't.

[Jon Favreau]

I, I believe obviously signal. Right. Like, so there are some. These are like end to end encryption. Yes, this is. And it frustrates law enforcement.

[Emily Horne]

Right, because they would like to say we want to get on that phone and they say we literally don't have the capability to open it up for you.

[Jon Favreau]

Basically when you hear that people have gotten these messages, it's like it's either on the phone already because so it like they haven't deleted it. It's a screenshot.

[Emily Horne]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But like you delete shit from end to end encryption, it's truly gone.

[Emily Horne]

Yes. And this is even worse than it sounds for a couple of reasons. One is that the UK order would apply globally. So actually anyone is potentially at risk of being accessed by UK law enforcement without any sort of public notification. Another, and I think the bigger risk here is that this becoming a public fight creates an incentive for other governments to try to pile on. There are so many governments out there that would love to legally force Apple or these other companies to have back doors.

[Jon Favreau]

Hopefully not ours, but who knows?

[Emily Horne]

I know. Yeah, well I'm sure they would all. There's so many authoritarian governments love it.

[Jon Favreau]

And it like I said, hopefully not ours.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah. The scenario that you worry about is they see, oh, it's the uk, this really rich, important, powerful country now, India can jump in, Russia can jump in, and then you start to worry if there's a kind of camel breaking or straw breaking the camel's back. I also think this is really, really unhelpful if you care about reining in big tech, especially at this particular moment, because there is a huge fight we've talked about before, ongoing right now between Silicon Valley and Europe over European tech regulations. European tech regulations are way, way out ahead of us. They're really strong.

[Jon Favreau]

This is part of J.D. vance's Exactly. Tirade in Europe a couple weeks ago.

[Emily Horne]

Right. It's the Trump administration, this is their quid pro quo to Silicon Valley for helping them out, is that Silicon Valley really wants the Trump admin administration to pressure the Europeans to roll back those regulations, which don't just benefit Europeans, they benefit all of us because they create transparency, they change the corporate culture or the least behavior in Silicon Valley. So it really benefits all of us. And this makes Trump and Silicon Valley look like the defenders of user privacy against European regulations run amok, which I think in this instance it a little bit is.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I mean, law enforcement has a lot of tools and of course, when they're tracking down, you know, terrorists and stuff like that, you know, you want them to have all the tools possible but one back door. I know it's not just for the terrorists. It's not just for the, the worst criminals. Right. It's everyone.

[Emily Horne]

It's crazy that they're pushing on it now too.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like all time.

[Emily Horne]

Like the war on terror is like, it's pretty much over. Like, what? It's not a suggestion.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, on the topic of giving up our iPhones, let's check back in on the offline challenge. So this week we were supposed to work on deep focus, specifically setting aside actual blocks without any distractions to get work done. Did you get a chance to do that? How did it go?

[Emily Horne]

No, poorly. I would this. I mean, I tried it. I said, you know, blocks of time, put it on my calendar, do not disturb on my devices. I'm just going to work. I'm not going to check these things. I set specific times of the day to check my email and I found it really annoying and really disruptive. It did not improve my focus at all. I actually. This comes up in the conversation with Gloria. Mark. Sometimes breaks are actually helpful for your focus. So forcing yourself to stare at a screen for two hours when your brain doesn't want you to can actually be Counter. Yeah, it's counterproductive. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I did not like this one. I just find it very hard to do. Not. Not hard to focus or, like, hard to even set up. And, like, I did the do not disturb on my laptop, and so that was fine. And then I started seeing the icon, the notification, the badge.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I was like, I thought that do not disturb took care of that. And then I was like. So then I started settings.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

No, now I have to go into notifications and turn off all badge icons across all my devices. So then I did that, and then I'm like, trying to prep for the. For Pod Save America Monday. And I'm just staring at the screen, staring at the screen. But then I'm like, oh, no, they. Some. They need to. They need me for the Checking the clips and making sure those are good. And then Reed was trying to get me for something else, and I was like, what? And then Emily wanted me, and I'm just like, I. I don't know. I. I need to be. Yeah, I need people to be able to reach me.

[Emily Horne]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And also I need to prep. And now I've been prepping for too long, and what's happened? What's happening in the world, I gotta check.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Only because of my job, not just because I want to, like, go yell online somewhere, you know? So that was just really hard.

[Emily Horne]

I have to say. It's very game of you to fuck up the entire company and also your family life on behalf of this offline show. It's really good of you. I found it annoying and then turned it off and walked away. So your commitment is. No, listen, I appreciate it. Look, I'm glad we gave this one a shot, because this is the number one tip you get on a specific class of extremely popular, like, male optimization culture, like the Andrew Huberman the, like, deep flow state. And I think that it's useful to show that it is not working for what we want it to do, because what that entire way of thinking optimizes for, I do think optimizes for the wrong thing. It optimizes for productivity, for, like, working time. And it's like when Derek Thompson was on, he talked about how there's this ideal that you see in these podcasts and in these videos that is solitary. That is like a, you know, a very masculine male figure alone with his fucking protein shakes and vitamins and sitting alone at a desk coding and then going to the gym. And I think that we are trying to understand focus and wellness much more holistically as part of A media and political ecosystem that is harmful to us, harmful to our society, to our politics. It isolates us and it makes us harder for us to actualize who we want to be as people.

[Jon Favreau]

I liked our walks a lot better.

[Emily Horne]

I was going to ask if you're. If you're sneak in the walks in.

[Jon Favreau]

I did one this weekend I've been doing. I did and I honestly, I could have taken my phone and I was like, no, I'm just going to do it.

[Emily Horne]

Do you really?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Emily Horne]

That's great.

[Jon Favreau]

No phone, no headphones. Yeah, I did it because that's how much I liked the last one.

[Emily Horne]

I. I cut it out for the first half of the week because I was like, oh, we have to do good science. But as I'm learning, my commitment is much thinner than yours. And I brought the walks back because they're amazing.

[Jon Favreau]

They're so helpful. How many phone pickups? What's your. What's your average phone pickup?

[Emily Horne]

Phone pickups. 63 pickups a day, down from 72. Sleep. Not amazing. 3 hours and 42 minutes. So I'm. I'm entering Favreau territory. I frankly don't know how you.

[Jon Favreau]

Three hours and.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, wow.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Jesus.

[Emily Horne]

It's been a week.

[Jon Favreau]

That's rough. I am down to 200.

[Emily Horne]

Okay, that's great.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know what it was down from. It was 270something. I forget what last week to 280 and last. And last week was like 215 or something or somewhere around there. Anyway, I'm a little lower.

[Emily Horne]

We're dropping. The numbers are going down.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I love that. What are we doing this week?

[Emily Horne]

So this week have two activities and I'm just step out for the other one for a second. So the first one is reading 20 minutes a day. I'm really excited for. I think this is going to be a good week. This is going to make up for last week. There's all this research showing that reading for 20 minutes a day enhances your focus, reduces stress. It activates parts of your brain that do not otherwise activate and that will stay activated for several days. So the. You get this like halo effect that really lasts.

[Jon Favreau]

Cognitively, I might read like real books. I'm like not on my Kindle even.

[Emily Horne]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Because I had this last night, went to bed. I had an hour before bed and I was like, I'm not gonna watch it. I'm just gonna read. I'm gonna read. And I grabbed my Kindle, put my phone away. Nice and even on the Kindle. I started reading one book and then I'm like, yeah, another book. Because it was also like, I don't have it. I never get this time. And I want to read and I gotta use it, optimize it. I have to optimize the time, which is going to be the best book to optimize the time. And I couldn't figure it out and I ended up like, it sucked.

[Emily Horne]

I. I love my Kindle, but I have found as my focus as eroded over the years, my Kindle is full of like. Like 300 book samples that I have all read half of and like two books that I've read. So, yes, I got Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. So I'm only 10 years late on this one. Yeah, no, I never read it, but it's amazing. It's really good. Do you know what you're gonna read?

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know what. I. I'm just. I set myself up for this. Oh, I'm.

[Emily Horne]

I am very Elon Musk Bio.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just so on brand for me. I'm reading Ezra and Derek's book. Are you really The. The new Abundance book?

[Emily Horne]

Oh, that's great.

[Jon Favreau]

Forgive me if I don't know the exact title is something about a Ben.

[Emily Horne]

I think it's just Abundance.

[Jon Favreau]

Abundance. Oh, great. I nailed it, right?

[Emily Horne]

Can we get it? Okay. Austin says yes.

[Jon Favreau]

When they're going to be here in Los Angeles, when they're on their book tour, they're doing events. I'm going to be moderating one of their events here in la. So I was like. And I just. The hard copy arrived here in the office. So I saw it on my desk and I'm like, this is the perfect, Perfect.

[Emily Horne]

It's perfect.

[Jon Favreau]

Kindle going to read this book?

[Emily Horne]

Yes. And you're pre. Prepped for the. I mean, I am hoping that the reading will be beneficial in itself and that also building back up the ability to read, which, like, I know is eroded for me. There's a ton of research showing it's eroded for a lot of people. Means that hopefully after a week or two of this, the next time I'm feeling whatever I'm feeling that makes me want to reach for my phone, maybe I'll reach for a book instead. Yeah. And then how much better am I going to feel? And then maybe, by the way, at the end of the day, like you're mentioning, instead of looking at my fucking Twitter feed for 30 minutes and then sleeping terribly. Yeah, maybe I'll read a book and then Sleep. Great.

[Jon Favreau]

That would be great. What's the other thing?

[Emily Horne]

Number two, puzzle books.

[Jon Favreau]

Whoa. Oh, this is cool.

[Emily Horne]

20 minutes.

[Jon Favreau]

Honestly.

[Emily Horne]

Daily puzzles.

[Jon Favreau]

I used to love these as a kid.

[Emily Horne]

I started the. The one where it's like you're solving a murder mystery by doing puzzles and it's actually really fun. So. Okay. This is based on a recent NBER study by Christine L. Brown and a few other researchers. They did this experiment with 1600 school kids, adolescents aged 9 to 11 in India. They gave them 20 minutes a day of simple puzzle games to do just like a maze, rotating shapes. And they found that it. It led to a 22% increase in their focus and a huge increase in their school performance, in some cases significantly beyond studying with that time.

[Jon Favreau]

Really?

[Emily Horne]

Yes. So just the improvement in focus that came just from doing a dedicated pen and paper game made them that much better off. And I thought that it was appropriate that we were in a level of focus crisis that put us about on par with rural poverty, India, Adolescent experimental research subjects.

[Jon Favreau]

If we're lucky.

[Emily Horne]

If we're lucky. That's right. Yes. I hopefully. And I'm going to do it at the start of the day over coffee instead of looking at my phone.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow, that's cool. I don't know when I'm going to do it, but I'm going to find the time.

[Emily Horne]

That's fun. I think you'll like it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's going to be great. I'm going to do it. Maybe I'll do it all at once. The 20 minutes. Are you going to do 20 minutes? Reading into the 20 minutes of the puzzle? Are you going to separate them?

[Emily Horne]

Puzzles in the. I actually did it this morning.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay.

[Emily Horne]

Just because I had it. I did it over the coffee like I said, instead of looking at my phone. It was great. I can't tell you how much better I feel. Yes, that's the plan.

[Jon Favreau]

Cool. All right. Before we break this Sunday's episode of Pod Save America. The the the new Sunday series.

[Emily Horne]

I love it.

[Jon Favreau]

Love it. Is interviewing Bill Maher. Poor. I saw poor Emma watching. Having to watch Bill Maher stuff on her laptop. She's helping him prepare.

[Emily Horne]

I listen. I'm so excited.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, all these conversations are fascinating. He's gonna help. Love it. Break down where we stand and what the future holds for the Democratic Party. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. And for an ad free experience, subscribe to Friends of the podcast for a limited time. You can save 25% on new annual subscriptions now through Saturday, February 22nd. And if you're already a monthly subscriber. Upgrading is quick and easy. Just head to qriket.com friends all right, after the break, Max sits down with focus expert Dr. Gloria Mark. Offline is brought to you by Three Day Blinds. Tired of low quality blinds that allow too much light in or barely provide any privacy? If your blinds are in need of an upgrade but don't know where to start, we have the solution for you. There's a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters and drapery. And it's called three Day Blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the U.S. and right now, if you use my URL3dayblinds.com offline, they're running a buy one, get one 50 off deal.

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[Max Fisher]

Yeah, yeah, we have.

[Jon Favreau]

You know where we could use it in the office that you and me and Tommy share.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah. You know what?

[Max Fisher]

We want to. Actually, you know what? This will be part of a three actual.

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Apparently everyone else got them here and they're great.

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[Jon Favreau]

Right now we look like we are. We're just. We're just a bunch of accountants sitting in an office. Because in the 1980s, because we're like, we've had to move our desks certain ways because the sun coming in is too much.

[Max Fisher]

And so the three of us all face the same direction. Like we're in the.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

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[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

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[Jon Favreau]

Like the blinds?

[Max Fisher]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Emily Horne]

We are back. Here to talk. With me is Gloria Mark. Gloria is a psychologist and a professor at the University of California, Irvine where she studies attention. How it works, what it does for us, why we are losing control of it. She is the author of a great book on the subject titled Attention Span. I read it this weekend. Gloria, welcome to Offline.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Emily Horne]

So it is no mystery, especially to regular listeners of this show, why our attention is so fragmented these days. We live surrounded all day, every day by devices and apps designed to tax our attention. We face constant interruption, overstimulation. But something that you explore in your work that feels really important to me is that the consequences of this go way beyond just shortened attention span. So can you talk about this idea that attention is a finite cognitive resource and what happens to us when that resource starts to get drained or depleted?

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yeah. So you know, the psychological explanation is that our mind has a limited capacity for cognitive resources. You can think of it as attentional capacity and there's things we do throughout the day that drain this resource. So I like to use the metaphor of a tank, right? And if you get a really good night's sleep or if you're on a vacation, in fact, I'm going to be going on a vacation pretty soon to Costa Rica. This can replenish your tank of resources. So you are fresh, you're ready, you can dive into whatever task you want to do. But things we do throughout the day tap into this tank and drain it. So one of the big things that drains it is our multitasking. And multitasking doesn't necessarily mean doing two things in parallel, because humans aren't wired to be able to do that unless one of those things is automatic. So I can walk and text, because walking is automatic. But as soon as a bicyclist comes along or I'm at an intersection, I'm going to stop texting and pay attention. So I can't do two things in parallel when I'm paying attention to two things. So during the day, we multitask a lot, which means shifting our attention from one thing to another. And we shift it very rapidly. We might start off, you know, for me, I might be writing an article, and then suddenly I have this urge to check email. So I switch to email, or I have an urge to look up something online that's not even related to the thing I'm working on. So that's just an example. And we do this all day, and we have found measurably that people's attention averages about 47 seconds on any screen, computers and smartphones. So we're just continually switching our attention throughout the day. This is not good for those resources because they're draining. Now. Another thing that drains resources is our being distracted by all kinds of things. The distractions could be notifications, it could be something even within ourself, because it turns out that about half the time, we tend to interrupt ourselves. We tend to blame all of these interruptions and distractions on some external source. But actually, a lot of distraction comes within us, and our distraction to something else takes up cognitive resources. And then we have to pull our minds back and we have to reorient to that place we were before we attended to the distraction. So that that's another way we. Our minds get drained.

[Emily Horne]

Can you talk about what happens when that attention gets drained? I know, for example, that you did a study with people where you took them off of email. And so you got to see the difference in what happens. When there are people in an office using email, their attention is getting taxed, their attention is getting drained, and people in the office who are not using email, so are not having that experience of their tank being tapped out. What did you learn about what changes for the people who are not having their tank depleted?

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

The short answer is that people don't get as stressed. So when we're shifting our attention rapidly, we know that it causes stress. So in the research that I do, I use sensors. And rather than bringing people into a laboratory, I go to where people are, and I call this creating living laboratories. And I just equip people with sensors, heart rate monitors, I log computer activity so that we can get a measure of their stress and their attention as they're going about their daily work. And we find that the faster the frequency is of shifting attention, the higher is the stress. And in the study you talked about where we cut off email in an organization for work week, we found at the end of that workweek that people's stress had gone down significantly. So, yes, we're using all these very precious cognitive resources to keep track of what's going on, to reorient back to that interrupted task, and it drains these resources, and it causes stress. Now, there's a part of our mind that's called executive function, and this is a really important part of the mind. It's probably the most important part. And you can think of it as the CEO of the mind, because it helps us with decision making, it helps us pursue goals, and very importantly, it helps us stay on track and filter out distractions. Now, when we get tired, when our mind gets fatigued, it can't do its job to filter out distractions. And so we become even more susceptible to distractions. So we get into this vicious cycle where we get distracted either by something outside of us or something internal to ourselves. This causes us to be stressed. It causes our minds to get fatigued, our executive function gets fatigued, and then it just can't do its job to help filter out distractions as we go about our work.

[Emily Horne]

I'm really glad that you brought this up, the idea that task switching is something that taxes your executive function and that it can have consequences for you throughout the day. Because I was reading about this, I realized, oh, of course, task switching is something I do mindlessly all day. You know, I'm going between work and my email. If I'm watching a movie, I'm pulling up Instagram and something that I took away from your book, and tell me if I'm understanding this right, is it's not just that I'm taxing my attention in that particular moment, but Because I'm doing that task, switching throughout the day. The consequences of that are actually with me all day, all through the rest of the day, because that. Can you talk about what, what happens when you. What is happening in my brain or in my body when I have spent too much time, let's say, in the morning in an activity where I'm switching back and forth that I might feel the consequences of without realizing it in the afternoon or evening.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yeah. So it goes back to that metaphor that I was using about the tank, the tank of resources. It's draining. And there's another thing that causes that tank to drain. And that's just a function of the amount of time that we're up, up since we woke up in the morning. So the tank naturally drains simply because we spend more hours awake. Right. And we have to use some of our capacity while we're awake. But then on top of that, when we're switching our attention so rapidly. Right. Multitasking, and when we're not taking sufficient breaks, which is pretty normal for a lot of people, then that tank drains fast and we get exhausted and we get stressed. But the real danger is doing this day in and day out is when stress gets to the point of reaching exhaustion, and then that can become burnout. And that's very serious.

[Emily Horne]

Well, I want to ask you a little bit more about burnout in a moment, but just to spend a little bit more time on how we might be exhausting that tank without even realizing that we're doing it. Something that you mentioned, mentioned earlier is that in some studies that you have conducted, something close to half of the interactions that we experience over the course of the day are self imposed, which is something that you read it and you think, wait, that can't possibly be right. And then you go about the next day and you realize, oh, of course I'm interrupting myself constantly all throughout the day. This is something I actually learned last year. We did as an experiment for the podcast. I switched to a flip phone from a smartphone. And something that I realized I was doing is I would be walking down the street in the elevator and I would look down and all of a sudden I would have the flip phone in my hand as if it was a smartphone that I could scroll through. And I started to realize, oh, I'm doing this constantly. I'm interrupting myself without even realizing I'm doing it. Why? Why would I do that? Why do people interrupt themselves? Even though we hate interruptions and we know how costly it is for us.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Right. We're habituated to self interrupt. I mean, there are a lot of reasons we're bored.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

As soon as you start to become bored, it creates an opening for self interruption for other thoughts to pop into our heads. And oh, I think it's much more interesting to look at the news or go on Wikipedia than to do the work. I'm working on it. Another reason is procrastination. So self interruption is just a great solution for procrastination. You don't want to work on the task at hand and so you self interrupt. So it's basically that we're opening up our mind for all kinds of thoughts to pop into our heads and we act on them. And we act on them because we're in front of the world's largest candy store, we can just easily go to a site and satisfy that curiosity.

[Emily Horne]

Something I thought was so striking and I, even though I just finished your book, I'm already trying to apply it in my day to day life because it was such an aha moment for me is that the more non self imposed interruptions that we experience, the more self imposed interruptions we put on ourselves as a result. And so something that I'm realizing now is that if I get interrupted five times in the morning by email, I'm now gonna interrupt myself five more times in the afternoon because my brain has habituated itself to it. Which is scary, but is also empowering because it means that if I could put in a little more effort to weed out those involuntary interruptions earlier in the day, I'm gonna feel the effects throughout the rest of the day. Am I understanding that research correctly?

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

So what we did is we looked at our data and we looked at the number of external interruptions. So interruptions from all kinds of sources. Email notifications, social media notifications, phone calls. And then we also looked at self interruptions where people are interrupting themselves. And as you describe, when the frequency of external interruptions declines, what happens is our internal interruptions, our self interruptions kick in and we do that more. And it's as though we are just determined to be interrupted. And the way I interpret this finding is that we have habituated to being interrupted regularly, whether it's by something external or something from within ourselves. And we continue that pattern. Right. We, we are creatures of habit and we continue that pattern because our attention spans just cannot hold out for longer periods.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah. And that, I mean, I know you're going on vacation, so you're maybe about to experience something that I have experienced that led me to realize exactly what you're describing, which is that the first couple of days when I quote, unquote, unplugged, I cannot get myself off of my phone. Because what I'm. I am experiencing, if I'm understanding you right, is that it's not just that, oh, the world is imposing interruptions on me. I'm actually addicted to those interruptions and I will reintroduce them in myself. Now, the flip side of that, and the good news is that if I have been able to pull myself away for long enough, and maybe you're going on a nice long vacation, you'll experience this. I have actually found that I am able to break that addiction a little bit it and stop interrupting myself. But I am realizing how much I am an accomplice in my own interruption ecosystem.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yeah, of course, of course. We do have the power and the agency to be able to pull away. Right. And sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the fact that we do have that agency.

[Emily Horne]

So to follow up on the idea of burning out, and I think this is so important, which is, you know, of course, the idea that all of this interrupting and cognitive drain leads to feeling physically and mentally exhausted, which is something, you know, anyone has experienced, anyone can relate to. But something that you have said that I really wanted to follow up with you on is that burning out our attention doesn't just physically exhaust us, but can also make us feel cynical about the world. It can make us feel powerless or like we don't have agency. It makes us feel less able to gather the mental resources to deal with the world or to go out and to socially engage with other people. And I almost can't overstate how important I think this connection that you've made is. Like, we talk a lot on the show about the idea that there is in some sort of way a self reinforcing feedback loop between our digital addictions and shattered attention, which then feeds into a culture of isolation and loneliness, which which itself feeds into a kind of politics of cynicism and doomerism. But it sounds like those might be much more physically and viscerally linked than even I understood. So can you talk about this idea of a connection between burning out our attention and feeling cynical or a lack of agency in the world?

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yeah, that's right. It also connects to the idea of executive function, that when our executive function is just so fatigued, it just can't do its job to help our minds function the way they should. When people are burnt out, they are demotivated, they are disengaged, they just Cannot. They don't have the capacity to be able to pay attention. So burnout is also connected with chronic disease. So being stressed and going to the extreme of burnout actually can physically harm our bodies. So it leads to cardiovascular disease. So it's not just in our minds, but, you know, physically, our bodies can feel that effect.

[Emily Horne]

So if I'm understanding you right, the kind of causal chain here is I do a lot of task switching in the morning. I'm on my email, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter. As a result of that, I wear out this kind of mental muscle of executive function, which is the part of my brain that helps me to stay focused on any given task. That kind of puts me in control of what I'm doing with my attention and my mind, and that I might be on some level emotionally interpreting my own lack of executive function, my own lack of self control, as something that has much wider significance as feeling less in control of myself and therefore of the world. And that might make me feel more cynical about the world, more cynical about politics and what I can kind of do to affect the community around me. And then maybe as a result, instead of going out and seeing friends that night, which will help me recharge emotionally and feel better, I stay in and scroll my phone and end up feeling even worse.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

That's a good way to characterize this cycle. So the definition of stress is when we just don't have the resources to meet the demands of the environment. And when a person is burnt out, it's this chronic inability to garner up the resources that we need to be able to address what's going on in the world. And that's why we can't be engaged. That's why we're cynical. It's a terrible situation to be in. And I would also say that another thing that feeds into burnout is the inability to psychologically detach from work at the end of the day. So, you know, ideally what we need to do is at the end of our, you know, formal work hours, is to detach and to do something other than work and, you know, something other than answering emails or writing, but to really give our minds a chance to replenish. I also want to emphasize that, that it's not just our devices that leads to burnout. It's our devices on top of a layer of a lot of other things going on. Right. People are already stressed from financial concerns, could be from relationships, conflicts from politics. There's so many other things going on. And the use of the Devices and wearing out our minds is on top of that whole other layer. So it's not just technology alone. Technology is a big part of it, but there's this interaction between what we're doing with our tech and all these other things we're experiencing.

[Emily Horne]

I wonder if that feeling of struggling to disconnect from work at the end of the day might also extend to struggling with feeling like we can disconnect from the news at a time when that feels like something that implicates all of us in a way that feels kind of like work, because it feels like an obligation, and it feels like something really important that we have to emotionally engage in. And I don't know about you, but I already feel on my best days, like that is taxing 100% of my emotional resources. And on tougher days, it, you know, I definitely don't have enough to deal with it.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

It's absolutely draining our resources to follow news. Our culture is that of a productivity culture. Right. And it goes back historically, you know, the Protestant work ethic. And, you know, there's. There's this pressure for us to be as productive as possible, which means we. We need to work as long as possible. But there's another aspect to it, and that's we're part of a busyness culture and the business culture is that we have to occupy our minds every minute with something. And so if we're not occupying our minds with work, well, we turn to the news as a way to occupy our minds. Right. So just pulling away from, you know, any kind of tech and anything that's reminding you of work or what's going on in the world can help our minds recuperate.

[Emily Horne]

Yeah. I would like to give everyone who is listening my permission to disengage from the news as much as you feel like you need to, because it's really important to being able to engage with the news, your loved ones, your work, when you need to, because you have those finite cognitive resources. So you talk in the book about how there's actually a lot we can do to recharge those resources, which was good news to me because it's easy to feel pessimistic because our environment has gotten so good at defeating our control over our attention that there is actually a lot we can do to recharge it. Can you talk about some of those techniques?

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yes, there are things we can do. Let me start with something that I call practicing meta awareness. Now, during the pandemic, my university offered us a course in mindfulness. Mindfulness based Stress reduction, which I think probably a lot of listeners are familiar with. But it gave me this idea that we could do something related when we're on our devices. So mindfulness is about teaching you how to focus in the moment, right? You focus on things like your breath or your senses. But when we're on our devices, it's also really important to be aware of what we're doing. And a lot of things that we do on our devices are automatic, like going to check the news or checking email, or checking social media. And this idea of meta awareness is to become aware of these automatic responses that we have. And when you can become aware of them, you can check them and you can say, ah, you know, I have this urge to check the news. Do I really need to check the news? Is it going to be good for me right now? No, it's probably not. So if you become aware of your actions, you can become more intentional. When you're intentional, you can form a plan. And so I can say, okay, I am going to work 30 more minutes and gee, maybe after 30 minutes I won't even have any urge to check the news, but I can give myself permission. Okay, I'm going to look at, for two minutes, I'm going to glance at the news. What's even better is to step up, walk around or go outside. That's an even better, even better use of our time.

[Emily Horne]

Why is that better? Why is going for a walk something that's better for our attention?

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yeah, because research shows that just a mere 20 minute walk in nature with some kind of exposure to nature can significantly refresh us. I've done research where we found that people are actually more creative. They have better. It's called divergent thinking, which is thinking of different ideas. Oh sure, yeah, just after 20 minutes. And you don't have to be in a forest or a park, but you know, having exposure to a tree or birds or you know, something that's nature.

[Emily Horne]

Related and that can also help recharge that tank of attention when it feels depleted.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Absolutely, absolutely. So that's one thing we can do. Another thing we can do is to practice forethought. And what that means is imagining our future self at the end of the day. And I like to use the end of the day as a timeline. Whenever you have the urge to check news or social media, visualize where you want to be in the evening, how you want to see yourself, and really importantly, how do you want to feel? And I want to see myself relaxing on the couch. I like to, you know, lean back on the couch and read something. And how do I want to feel? I want to feel relaxed and I want to feel fulfilled and rewarded. And the last thing I want to visualize myself doing is working on a deadline at 10 o'clock at night, because I've been there and I know what that's like and that's a recipe for burnout. And so this visualization, if you can make it very concrete, it's very powerful and it can stop us in our tracks and it can help us keep going. So practicing forethought.

[Emily Horne]

So the idea is that imagining my evening as I want it to be will help me focus more now so that I can complete the task that I want to work on and I will get to spend the evening as I wanted to and not catching up on work.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Yes, that's right. So, and again, the more concrete of a visualization you can make, the more powerful it can be. But it's a very, very, very good mechanism to use.

[Emily Horne]

Well, I am already picturing myself with a glass of wine at the end of the day, so that seems like a perfect place to wind down. Gloria, Mark, thank you so much for coming on offline.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Ilic Frank. Jordan Kanter is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Seglin. Delon Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer and Adrian Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Dr. Gloria Mark]

It.