Poddington

Summary

Red Scare Podcast Summary: Episode "Poddington"

Release Date: July 30, 2025

Hosts: Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova
Description: Red Scare is a cultural commentary podcast hosted by bohemian layabouts Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova.

---

1. Personal Health and Wellness

The episode begins with Anna and Dasha discussing their personal health routines and wellness practices.

• Anna shares her struggles with bloating, attributed to her consumption habits:
  "[02:03] Anna: Like my tits are like flopping out of my bra. Which I guess could be sexy, but it really just feels like squishy and disgusting."

• Dasha mentions her shift from beer to kombucha for its prebiotic and probiotic benefits:
  "[00:42] Dasha: Just drink a kombucha."

• The conversation touches on the use of red light panels for anti-inflammatory purposes, highlighting their varying experiences and skepticism:
  "[01:08] Dasha: That help. Right."
  "[01:21] Anna: I don't have one. I need to buy."

2. Podcast Recognition and Media Landscape

Anna and Dasha express frustration over their podcast, Red Scare, missing out on a reputed top 100 podcasts list.

• Anna criticizes the inclusion criteria of the list, questioning the absence of influential podcasts like Red Scare and Comptown:
  "[03:25] Anna: No Red Scare, no Comptown, no Joe Rogan."

• They debate the saturation of the podcast market, suggesting that many new podcasts lack influence:
  "[03:43] Dasha: I mean definitely. And on a red. Come on. 100. Yeah. You're saying there's 100 podcasts better than us? That can't be."

• The hosts also touch upon the perceived decline of media institutions like NPR:
  "[05:34] Dasha: Yeah. NPR just shut down."

3. Critique of Social Credit Apps and Gender Dynamics

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing a new app named "Tea" and its implications on gender relations.

• Dasha introduces "Tea" as a social credit system for men, allowing women to rate them based on their behavior:
  "[06:40] Dasha: It's a great way of archiving and I'm sure things like this have existed before."

• Anna expresses skepticism, comparing it to existing platforms like Twitter:
  "[07:03] Anna: Yeah, we already have that. It's called X."

• The hosts delve into discussions about the New York Times article "Why It's Hard to Want Men," exploring themes of hetero-fatalism and modern relationship challenges:
  "[07:44] Dasha: Yeah, we're gonna talk about this New York Times article."

• They critique the article's portrayal of men, suggesting that it rationalizes men's avoidance of commitment under the guise of anxiety:
  "[93:46] Anna: He's, like, trying to buy himself some time so he can maybe get hard because he's like, not that into you."
  "[94:09] Anna: She's trying to just stay friends with him, AKA hoping he'll want her enough. She doesn't."

4. Discussion on Filmmakers: Ari Aster and Woody Allen

Anna and Dasha shift their focus to film analysis, particularly critiquing filmmakers Ari Aster and Woody Allen.

• Ari Aster's Films:

  • They discuss Ari Aster's attention to human psychology and the portrayal of emotional and psychological turmoil in his films.
    "[25:14] Anna: Ari Aster externalizes the emotional violence between things."

  • Beau's Afraid is analyzed for its depiction of small-town dynamics during COVID-19 and the intricate relationships between characters:
    "[58:32] Dasha: Pedro Pascal is the mayor, who's kind of like a Justin Trudeau style."
    "[63:22] Anna: But then, like, you know, it's like how they say that there's, like, three sides to every story."

• Woody Allen's Films:

  • The hosts critique Woody Allen's personality and filmmaking style, juxtaposing his prolific nature with perceived arrogance:
    "[32:44] Dasha: And not even very well. But yeah. Most people are covert, as you like to say, and so they have a fundamental ambivalence because they hate themselves but are obsessed themselves."

  • They discuss the thematic elements of his films, such as obsessive relationships and the depiction of women:
    "[88:29] Anna: They're like, they're an aberration."
    "[87:51] Dasha: I think it's not normative. I think it's cerebral. But that's okay."

5. Analysis of Relationships and the NYT Article

A deep dive into the complexities of modern relationships, drawing insights from the discussed New York Times article.

• The conversation revolves around men's reluctance to commit and the impact on women's experiences:
  "[98:12] Anna: Yeah. They're telegraphing it to you. And what they think are delicate and elegant terms because they have an image of themselves as being good guys..."

• They critique the use of therapeutic jargon to explain relationship struggles, suggesting it dilutes genuine communication issues:
  "[93:30] Anna: And then there's a hermeneutical labor. They have all these, like, where women are more obsessed with their relationships than men are..."

• The hosts advocate for direct communication and self-respect over relying on external explanations for relationship drawbacks:
  "[133:16] Anna: But part of that also setting boundaries when they do you wrong for sure."

6. Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Towards the end, Anna and Dasha reflect on the challenges of modern relationships and the need for genuine connections.

• They emphasize the importance of treating others as autonomous individuals and the value of self-respect in relationships:
  "[132:36] Dasha: It's like a good empath exercise. To not just see people as human beings but to sort of see them like for who they were as children."

• The episode concludes with musings on societal shifts, gender dynamics, and the perpetual struggle to find meaningful connections in an increasingly complex social landscape:
  "[138:35] Dasha: But we've come to this, like, up stage in late capitalism where women are like, the breadwinners, which is, like, automatically for men."

• Anna and Dasha reiterate their frustrations with the current state of gender relations and relationship expectations, highlighting the pervasive sense of disappointment and frustration:
  "[141:05] Anna: I think I'm going to be charitable and say that this is not a woman problem. This is a people problem."

---

Notable Quotes:

• Anna on Personal Struggles:
  "[02:03] Anna: Like my tits are like flopping out of my bra. Which I guess could be sexy, but it really just feels like squishy and disgusting."

• Dasha Introducing the "Tea" App:
  "[06:40] Dasha: It's a great way of archiving and I'm sure things like this have existed before."

• Anna Critiquing Podcast Rankings:
  "[03:25] Anna: No Red Scare, no Comptown, no Joe Rogan."

• Dasha on Gender Dynamics:
  "[93:46] Anna: He's, like, trying to buy himself some time so he can maybe get hard because he's like, not that into you."

• Dasha on Relationships:
  "[133:16] Anna: But part of that also setting boundaries when they do you wrong for sure."

---

Conclusion:

In this episode of Red Scare, Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova navigated a labyrinth of topics ranging from personal wellness habits to incisive critiques of modern media, societal shifts, and the intricate dance of gender dynamics in contemporary relationships. Through candid conversations and sharp observations, they dissected the underlying tensions in today's cultural and interpersonal landscapes, offering listeners a blend of humor, frustration, and keen societal insights.

Transcript

[Anna]

Confirm we're going to be back.

[Dasha]

Copy.

[Anna]

We are back.

[Dasha]

We're so bad. I'm not bloated anymore.

[Anna]

I'm bloated for two.

[Dasha]

Just drink a kombucha.

[Anna]

Oh yeah. How did you diplo start taking it easy on the beer?

[Dasha]

Yeah, I instated a note. Drinking beer in the home rule.

[Anna]

Smart.

[Dasha]

Because that was a big is. I love to drink a big beer for no reason at home.

[Anna]

Right.

[Dasha]

And instead I drink a kombucha.

[Anna]

Okay. And that has prebiotic and probiotic properties.

[Dasha]

That help. Right. And then I used my red light panel last night, but I don't feel like. Yeah, I think it's too soon to tell.

[Anna]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[Dasha]

Are you using the red light panel?

[Anna]

I don't have one. I need to buy. I still have not invested. But that has anti inflammatory properties.

[Dasha]

Allegedly.

[Anna]

Yeah, yeah. I don't really don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm not like to drinking two bottles of wine a day.

[Dasha]

I don't know what's wrong.

[Anna]

Complaining about. Is it pms? Am I correct?

[Dasha]

Gluteal. I hate molecular.

[Anna]

I hate being bloated. It makes you so irritable and like depressed. I feel like the mom from what's eating Gilbert Grape.

[Dasha]

It's awful.

[Anna]

Like my tits are like flopping out of my bra. Which I guess could be sexy, but it really just feels like squishy and disgusting. Like utterly demoralized. Yeah. They went to the gym finally after a hiatus of a week. And that made me feel even more bloated because when you lift it, you it's so hard.

[Dasha]

The rest and recovery. Using AI to optimize every aspect. Are you using AI to optimize every aspect of your life?

[Anna]

Nope.

[Dasha]

Are you using it at all?

[Anna]

Nope. I'm like barely going on Twitter, dog.

[Dasha]

It's an amazing tool.

[Anna]

I'm tapped out.

[Dasha]

That's good. You're not going on Twitter though.

[Anna]

No, it sucks. It's bleak out there.

[Dasha]

It's really unbearable.

[Anna]

I saw Perry Abbasi posted like a hot bikini pic of me and I was like, oh, finally some attention. And then I was like, what the. I don't care. This sucks. I don't even give a about that. But no, I just have to take it easy and blow. Saw that there was 100 top podcasts list from like a list of lies.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

No Red Scare, no Comptown, no Joe Rogan. Just kidding. I totally understand why they wouldn't put Red Scare or a podcast called Come Town in the paper of record. But Joe Rogan, Come on, that's crazy.

[Dasha]

I mean definitely. And on a red. Come on. 100. Yeah. You're saying there's 100 podcasts better than us? That can't be.

[Anna]

I don't think there are even 100 podcasts. I know like everybody and their brother has a podcast and there's like thousands of like low be literally who podcasts and everybody's always trying to start one even though like the moment has passed. But like on hundred influential podcasts there's maybe like 12, 15 where one of them two dope coins. That's code for red. It's like the black that was on there. Yeah, it's like the black girl podcast. And I got like briefly interested in it cuz I was like, ooh, it's just some hood rats talking smack. Like they're on there. Like he ain't you. Right. He better be paying for your hair, your nails, your toes. He better be bringing food for all your kids, not just the one he have with you. But you know, it's not that. It's not like baps or whatever. It's definitely two girls who sound like Brianna Joy Gray and IO Ada Beery or whatever quickly lost interest.

[Dasha]

They went to Bard, one of those school.

[Anna]

We was coming out of the Bennington Project. But yeah. What is 2 Dope Queens?

[Dasha]

I remember that vaguely. I don't know if it's still. Was Chapo on there. It has to.

[Anna]

I had. I would assume so. Like they have to be. I'm not even saying that you have to like these podcasts. Like you don't have to be a fan of like Joe Rogan experience. But he's just unequivocally.

[Dasha]

Well the list if it's measuring influence. Yeah, definitely.

[Anna]

He's literally the most influential podcaster of all time.

[Dasha]

Yeah. NPR just shut down.

[Anna]

Oh really?

[Dasha]

Or something. Something else was in the news. Yeah.

[Anna]

I think NPR Trump pulled funds.

[Dasha]

Cold bear.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Canceled. I keep seeing all these think pieces I can't bring myself to read that I know are like about how the landscape is becoming harsh for center left comedians or whatever. But it's like no one was watching that show. Even my parents don't watch that show.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And I'm from a late night family.

[Anna]

Yeah. Like nobody that all the. They're all falling like dominoes. It's like about time. I mean no, I got like how symbolically it spells the end of an era.

[Dasha]

Because it's fake. That's why.

[Anna]

What were we on about?

[Dasha]

It doesn't really matter. I was going to talk about this great new app.

[Anna]

Right, Right.

[Dasha]

Called Tea.

[Anna]

Yeah. What's the T on T? What is Tea?

[Dasha]

Oh, Tea is like, actually. Oh. It's a. Like a. Kind of a social credit score system for men. For women to, like, write men.

[Anna]

Yeah, we already have that. It's called X.

[Dasha]

No, this is like, only women can use it. And then you can type in a guy's name and then see his.

[Anna]

How much of a piece of he is.

[Dasha]

Yeah, it's like China.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

You can see what his social credit score is.

[Anna]

Interesting.

[Dasha]

And it's got men scared.

[Anna]

But the men obviously don't sign up for this.

[Dasha]

No. That.

[Anna]

They're just automatically in the data pool and their online histories. It publishes their porn search.

[Dasha]

Yeah, it's in. We're gonna talk about this New York Times article. Right, Right.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Called why It's Hard to want Men.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Something like that about hetero fatalism.

[Anna]

Yeah. AKA heteropessimism. They even have a term for it now. But this actually the app that you wanted to talk about.

[Dasha]

Oh, yeah. Was. It's called. Well, I almost didn't want to talk. I wanted to gatekeep it because I want them to pay me, but they should pay me anyway because I've got a lot of really good ideas and I need more people to use it to improve the AI. Right. But it's called Alta. Maddie told me about it yesterday when we were hard at work on my depop store. And then I. It's like a closet. You put all your clothes in it. You take pictures of them or find pictures of them online. And then it like. Well, it's a great way of archiving and I'm sure things like this have existed before, and maybe there's even better versions because a lot of the functionality is pretty bad. But that's partly due to just AI, I think.

[Anna]

Right.

[Dasha]

I have ideas, but if you work at Ulta, you can reach out. You can reach out. It's like a L, T, A, Like Ulta. Ulta.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

It's a bad name.

[Anna]

Yeah. Sounds like a dog breed.

[Dasha]

But I'm not in the tech space. But if I was Peter Thiel.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

I'd probably invest in something like this.

[Anna]

Sasha, there's your in. That's how you're gonna get the Teal box.

[Dasha]

Tell him about the. The closet.

[Anna]

Great new app called Tea.

[Dasha]

You can put Peter Thiel on it. There's an app called Teal that you sign up for to get teal money.

[Anna]

This sounds like Some kind of, like, nightmarish app that gay guys came up with to so discard. So discord between the sexes. Yeah. Like, don't we already have enough of women bashing men?

[Dasha]

Jesus Christ. I'm gonna download it and look up.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Our friends and family members. It just seems like it's got to be illegal.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Or like, it's a loss. Rather it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. I should say. Maybe not criminal, but definitely seems like.

[Anna]

A mess from the shitty media. Men. Listen. Need more of that.

[Dasha]

No, we haven't.

[Anna]

We need to drive a further wedge between the sexes so they thoroughly hate each other, I think. Oh, there's apps for brewing tea.

[Dasha]

Such a boomer. Okay, so there is a. Are we dating the same guy?

[Anna]

Yes, you are.

[Dasha]

Which is.

[Anna]

You don't need a nap for that.

[Dasha]

But then this is called tea dating advice. I look up Riley. It's like, he's married.

[Anna]

He gay. I had a dream.

[Dasha]

I have all these. Not a ton, but it is kind of a weird motif in my dreams where Riley will cheat on me or reveal to me that he's cheated on me. But the. The nightmarish part of it isn't the infidelity as much as he's like, remorse. He's super remorseless. Which, like, isn't.

[Anna]

Really doesn't correspond to his personality at all. But he's like.

[Dasha]

And I'm not. And I'm not sorry. And I'm, like, all upset and the dream and stuff. Then I wake up feeling, like, agitated, irritable. How are they gonna know? How can they even verify that you're a woman? Can't. Men.

[Anna]

So true.

[Dasha]

Okay, everything is anonymous. Screenshots are impossible. All women are verified. Oh, you have to send them, like.

[Anna]

A picture of your. They have to transvestigate you before they let you on t. Exactly.

[Dasha]

Because otherwise you could just change your sex on your id. It'd be too easy. It'd be too easy to infiltrate and write. Like, is what kind of guy has good review. Like, who's going on an app to be like, this guy's great.

[Anna]

Yeah, I hope he. I hope he. I hope he has a really good life. He's not at all a rapist.

[Dasha]

I want this person to be happy. No, it's gonna be, like, scorned ass. Like Gene. Whatever her name is.

[Anna]

Eugene.

[Dasha]

Yeah, well, the woman who wrote that article's name is also Gene. And she's written. Yeah, she wrote a creepy article. I guess she has a twin. Yeah, she wrote a piece in the New Yorker about how she gave her twin away at her wedding. That was like, about twin died.

[Anna]

I didn't read it because that's so up and dark. So she has like a normal, well adjusted mess. Yeah, it's gonna be a bunch of no man ass having fives and sixes, digging up dirt on the hotter girlfriend's boyfriends. What a nightmare. I. I had this with.

[Dasha]

Should I say I'm single?

[Anna]

Yeah, you may as well, right? Yeah. I had this like, with my. My kid when I. When I sent him to daycare. I was like, I need a credit score on how much of a piece of shit my kid is. No, that there's like an app that you have to download at the school and they just like give you like minutes of the day. It's like meetings, you know, they'll tell you like, what he ate, what he drank, what activities they did, post a bunch of photos and I was like, nah, nah, nah. I'm paying you to take care of my kid while I work, AKA return videotapes and play on my phone. Yeah. And like, you don't have to inform me, like, keep me abreast of the minutiae of the day.

[Dasha]

Day.

[Anna]

I trust you and I don't want to know.

[Dasha]

And do this through an app.

[Anna]

Yeah. So a teacher has to write you upload all this. No way. And if there's like CCTV footage of some like, Chinese or Haitian teacher, like wailing on him, then they. I take him to court or whatever. But like, this seems horrible. Like, I don't want to know anything about the man I'm with. I don't care. Don't care where you were born, don't care what your parents do, don't even want to know their names. Don't care what you do for work as long as you have enough money.

[Dasha]

It seems just awful. It seems like a terrible idea.

[Anna]

Yeah. Like, why would you want to like, voluntarily go on an app and trigger yourself, like, psy up yourself into.

[Dasha]

I mean, there's so little with Yelp. At least there's some like, pro social incentive. Mostly people will overrepresent their negative feelings online in general, but at least like.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Anyway, the app's been great because I.

[Anna]

You're like, digging up dirt on Riley. He went to his church group meeting two hours ago and did some woodworking in the studio. I. Piece of shit.

[Dasha]

I have to make an anonymous screen name and I put ev woman, but that one's taken. So now I'm back to the drawing board.

[Anna]

I'm pausing that nasty woman is taken. I'm going to start a T profile just for fun. That's what I'm. Seems like a good use of our time. Yeah. Spy.

[Dasha]

But first you're going to want to get on Ulta clothing app and take pictures of every single item of clothing you own and upload them. And then it'll AI generate outfits for you based on. You also put in your profession. I keep changing mine because it's. It kind of gives you different looks based on what it thinks your day will be.

[Anna]

Yeah. It's like the Kibbe app or whatever.

[Dasha]

It's obviously if I think for more professional women.

[Anna]

Right. Like girls who shop at Aritzia who.

[Dasha]

Already have a really easy way to style themselves.

[Anna]

Yeah. I was telling you, it reminded me of like, the you can put all.

[Dasha]

Your Aritzia clothes in there and it'll mix and match them carousel with the.

[Anna]

Screen that Cher had in Clueless. Or she's like, oh, like, pushing buttons.

[Dasha]

It's exactly. It feels exactly like that. And it is. It's put me in such a good mood.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And I think it's gonna help with my online shopping addiction. And that's what I think.

[Anna]

That.

[Dasha]

Because the AI is the.

[Anna]

This is. This is like when they hang it. Hand out needles and crack pipes to drug users because it's supposed to be.

[Dasha]

I wrote down gay little outfits are like heroin to me. I love here I have, like, the female autism of, like, category. Like, how I like to categorize. And then. But then I'm always convinced that I, like, need something else to make a new cute look. But the truth is I have mostly everything I need almost if I just can buy one more thing. Anna. But it's not really about the having the things. It's about the package coming in the mail.

[Anna]

Yeah. The Lacanian object. Do whatever.

[Dasha]

Just get a box. Don't ever open it. And then sort through all my clothes on a digital avatar that looks like elephanting instead of me.

[Anna]

It's like a pog. A really fat ass. Yeah. I'm like, this looks just like me. Alter. I need an outfit for my next dick appointment. Make it snappy today.

[Dasha]

Yeah. I was like, my computer got fixed finally. So I was like, I'm going to the Apple Store. And it was like, it gives you, like, gay. It's like, it's slop, you know, because it uses the same, like, stupid AI like, you know, it's like, here's your Grand Central glow outfit or your, like, Apple Store diva outfit.

[Anna]

And then I just like, don't I.

[Dasha]

Just wear like a long sleeve T shirt and some clogs anyway.

[Anna]

Look like a school shooter. Oh, man, I don't care. But.

[Dasha]

Again, the other not. I'm not receiving ultimate. Let me get ahead of the ultimate money allegations and say that they're not paying me, but they really should because I could just. I have ideas. I'm not even going to say I must sign them for free. Sorry.

[Anna]

M. Let's see. God, I really. I just.

[Dasha]

I wrote see your clothes in a new context. An underlined context.

[Anna]

The context. The context of your phone. Yeah. See your clothes on the screen. See your clothes in an even more depressing and weird light. Take your clothes from the floor of your bedroom to a cold blue smartphone screen.

[Dasha]

And then imagine what it would be like if. Well, you know, I was so anti AI for so long. Yeah. And I still do, you know, think it is satanic, so to speak. You know, and there's something like evil in it, but it's not the most evil.

[Anna]

It's pretty. The one Mike Cernovich was like sounding off about metal and how his parents. Yeah, my parents never let me listen to bro, don't.

[Dasha]

Don't stop demonic Satan music. You're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about.

[Anna]

White. A white man. Have some pride and self respect. But no, there's a lot of far more demonic things in this world such as AI and social media. Like being a demon on Twitter is way worse than listening to heavy metal.

[Dasha]

Being a Twitter listening to discordant sounds to an electric guitar. I know. Well, Cerno, you know, I've been against him since he was talking about sleepovers. He was counter signaling sleepovers really hard.

[Anna]

He's a weird guy and I'm like, love Shauna, though.

[Dasha]

Yeah. God bless them and their family. I feel bad that he doesn't let their kids. His kids have sleepovers to listen to metal or go to his sleep.

[Anna]

The meaning of pain.

[Dasha]

They can't listen to the brain bombs. They can't go to a sleepover and watch a beheading video. Yeah, but you don't even have to, bro. You're not even have to.

[Anna]

You're not even screen maxing your kids on beheading videos. They're going to grow up to be pussies.

[Dasha]

I mean, sleepovers are formative. I get where he's coming from. Like, statistically they are maybe the most likely to get molested or deaf. Be exposed to something, you know, bad at a sleepover. But that's Part of life.

[Anna]

Yep.

[Dasha]

Not the getting molested. Ideally, you know, you can take the probability, but you got to take a little risk. That's what it means to live.

[Anna]

Don't let your kids sleep over at.

[Dasha]

Poor people's houses if you can.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

You know, a lot of people don't have that luxury.

[Anna]

Like I'm dropping my kids off to get dick down.

[Dasha]

I, you know, I spent. I had a lot of bad experiences at some poor kids houses, but same made me who I am, so.

[Anna]

What a lot of strange racialized activities that got me into noticing at a young age that I would prefer not to repeat on this podcast.

[Dasha]

I mean even when I lived in Section 8 housing.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

I was.

[Anna]

Oh, you did that. Just gonna talk and play.

[Dasha]

Sorry, mom and dad. Yeah. Even when I was on the block, I still. There was a lot of white kids around.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

I hung out with white kids especially because I was foreign.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Like it was. Yeah. Even they didn't want to hang out with me.

[Anna]

Yeah. Weird. And had like I was eating a weird bag lunch with like sardine sandwich. Like get away from me. Weird freak.

[Dasha]

I'm diasporic.

[Anna]

That's my app.

[Dasha]

What? Diaspora. What is that?

[Anna]

I don't know. Just an app called Diaspora and it's a place where immigrants congregate.

[Dasha]

That's a good idea. That's called Twitter.

[Anna]

To build a vibrant sex positive community.

[Dasha]

I want to get on T, but I can't think of a screen name.

[Anna]

We'll get there. You can do it like tomorrow when you're not podcasting and. Or drunk.

[Dasha]

I'll report back for sure.

[Anna]

I'm gonna do it too. Just because there's some. Some guys names I want to plug into.

[Dasha]

That's what I'm saying.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Not.

[Anna]

Not the guys who think though.

[Dasha]

I bet no one we know is even on it. I feel like it's very though because. Yeah, it's mainly for like dating app users, you know, who are circulating.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Sexually available economy. And so they have exposure to different people.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And that's kind of normie behavior. But I'll be curious to see. Talk about this New York Times article. Or should we talk about Eddington?

[Anna]

It's up to you. I like dawned on me that the theme of this podcast is the way that people torment and punish one another using language. Like language and pretense. Like politics, ideology.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

Therapy speak. I mean enlightenment, empathy. Like the.

[Dasha]

The kind of like subversive genocide. Yeah.

[Anna]

And like below the surface ways that people.

[Dasha]

Holocaust.

[Anna]

Yes. This is the big theme of Ari Aster's work, by the way, is like everything having a kind of COVID emotional and psychological valence.

[Dasha]

I feel like the real through line in his work is his hatred of.

[Anna]

Women and white people. Like he has a very ordeal of civility thing where he. I don't think he's like super like conscious or intellectual about it, but he like, like Midsommar is literally like, you know, in the first paragraph of his. Speaking of sleepovers, like in the first paragraph of his New York Times profile where he was like, you know, I'd go over like the, you know, goy kid, like the white kids houses and they were so wholesome and so sweet and I was like, this is so scary and uncanny. There's something like percolating beneath the surface and it's actually evil and da da, da.

[Dasha]

Well, Midsommar, I learned from the New York Times profile though maybe I knew this priority was financed by some Scandi Institute.

[Anna]

Oh.

[Dasha]

So they had. They stipulated that it be a folk horror movie.

[Anna]

They're self hating communists, but they also.

[Dasha]

Part of it was that the American tourists die at the end. He had kind of like guidelines with Midsommar.

[Anna]

Interesting.

[Dasha]

I don't know. Yeah, I don't think he came up sort of with the idea of Scandinavian folk horror.

[Anna]

He's a subversive Jew. Yes. But all, all that said, I actually just like am a huge fan of Ari Aster and think he's like.

[Dasha]

Smart.

[Anna]

And interesting as a filmmaker. I was thinking about how like you can't really appraise his films. Like I say that literally with like. Every time I say something mean about somebody, people are like, oh, you're a fucking bitch and you must hate them. And every time I say something nice about somebody, they're like, you're kissing their ass and pandering. And it's like it's the other way around. When I say something nice about you, it means I hate you and think you suck. And when I say something mean about you, it means I have like an affectionate sense of respect for you. Don't get it twisted.

[Dasha]

This is how we. You decode.

[Anna]

Yeah, but I love his obsession with human psychology and human nature because I like share that with him. And I think that there are a lot of like ulterior motives that people trade.

[Dasha]

He's a great filmmaker. He's extremely smart.

[Anna]

He's just smart. He's like, literally there's no smart filmmakers like you. And Arias all retards. There's. There's no other filmmakers who have like, like young Filmmakers, let's say, like under 40s or whatever, who have a strong sense or like, understanding of human nature.

[Dasha]

I. That can't be true.

[Anna]

I mean, we don't know them. Yeah.

[Dasha]

And there's some old timers, you know, that are out there still doing their thing.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Mostly in continental Europe.

[Anna]

Hanicky comes to mind, even though he's like a woke tart. But one of my faves.

[Dasha]

I mean, I do love bonello.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

You know, anytime I say something nice about someone, people say she's just trying.

[Anna]

To get cast in the film. Like, that's only half true.

[Dasha]

But I mean, acting sucks.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

It's really hard. It's super duper hard. No, but you have to go. You know, it's like you sit in a. It's. It's not. I'm not dying to act.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And if you're not like a movie star, which also sounds, like, horrible in its own way, it's extremely boring.

[Anna]

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah.

[Dasha]

And it's a lot of, like, hurt. Hurry up and wait.

[Anna]

Demoralize.

[Dasha]

Everyone uses you like some kind of. You're. You don't have any subjectivity. You're just a plaything for some director to tinker with.

[Anna]

Yeah, totally. Some. Someone asked me if I was allowed to call Ari Aster a subversive gun. The podcast. And I said like, well, I'm going to plead the 1 8th rule, whatever, like the hood pass. But yeah, I can, because it's all love. I mean it in a nice way.

[Dasha]

As he should be. Yeah, yeah. No, he.

[Anna]

I mean, I think he's talented and funny and I like what he does. And I was thinking about, like, the last two movies we reviewed, which were Nosferatu and Anora. And with those movies, you could watch them and definitively say, like, I think this is good or I think this is bad, like, depending on what your subjective, like, tastes and preferences were with Ari Aster movies. Like, you can't really do that. Yeah.

[Dasha]

I mean, some might. And I guess he has his detractors.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Because he says in that profile, which is a real. They're really glazing him. And the who's. Whoever his publicist is is doing a great job.

[Anna]

I know. And he's like, oh, oh, in the profiles. Oh, I really hate talking about myself. I'm just a lowly, hunched over ju. Who happens to make. Who me. It's not my fault that all my friends love me and want to talk about me ad nauseam.

[Dasha]

Can I.

[Anna]

It's. You know what? It Is.

[Dasha]

Can I read the Orson Welles quote?

[Anna]

Yes, yes. It's the Orson Welles quote on Woody Allen.

[Dasha]

He. Okay. First.

[Anna]

Yeah. Well, I'm so neurotic and hypochondriac. Oy vey.

[Dasha]

I hate Woody Allen physically. I dislike that kind of man.

[Anna]

I can hardly bear to talk to him.

[Dasha]

He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge. He is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy, but he's not. He's scared. He hates himself and he loves himself. A very tense situation. It's people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest.

[Anna]

So true, King. So true. So true. It like.

[Dasha]

Yeah. That immediate.

[Anna]

Yeah. I think Aries are. Is arrogant. He's arrogant. He has.

[Dasha]

Of course he is.

[Anna]

He has drive. He has vision. He knows what he wants. He can extract that from people. Yeah.

[Dasha]

It's not an accident that he's.

[Anna]

Yeah. And I. I fully believe him. That he feels uncomfortable and uneasy talking about himself.

[Dasha]

Maybe to a journalist. When you know you have. There's. You don't trust them and are anxious and scared generally already. But then you send in some viper writer to profile you, and you don't know what they're gonna, you know, run with. And like, a couple years ago, a New York Times reporter probably would have written something very different about Eddington.

[Anna]

Exactly. So true. I was reading that profile and thinking of the Orson Welles, Woody Allen quote. I found that it was also making me sort of, like, irritable and annoyed. Like, this is. Can we just drop the weird Jewish pretense? Like, this is a puff piece. Because you have a publicist currently engaged to promote your new movie, but it's.

[Dasha]

Also not his fault.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Speaking from experience. As an acclaimed filmmaker. No, as someone. Yeah. Who. Like, when I had a publicist and I had to do these old profiles, I. My guard was down way too low, frankly. But he really don't. Like. They're crafting a narrative. You can't. What's. Who was it who said that you can't trust writers? Joan Didion.

[Anna]

Sylvia Plath's mom. After she, like, threw her under the bus.

[Dasha]

I think Joan Didion said. Yeah. That you should never trust a writer. And that part of the reason she was so successful was because she was.

[Anna]

So petite and unassuming. Yeah.

[Dasha]

And so she could weasel her way in and get people to let their guards down.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

Yeah, but we really like, you know, he has very little say about what actually gets transcribed. And you just. Especially when they're shadowing you, which it sounds like they were vaguely. And they talk to other people. Not me, dear friend of Aria, but other. You know, you get a black guy, you get a woman.

[Anna]

Did they have a woman in that profile?

[Dasha]

Toni Collette.

[Anna]

Oh, right, right.

[Dasha]

I want to talk to his mom. Yeah, I want to talk to his mom who messed him up so bad.

[Anna]

Well, his gave him a drummer and his mom is a poet. Well, when Lenny gets his New York Times profile 25 years from now, is he a genius? That's what they'll say about us. His dad was a drummer and his mother was a poet.

[Dasha]

His mother was a wordsmith of sorts.

[Anna]

His mother was a cold hoaxer. She coined the phrase detonate the vest, which hasn't really taken off since then. Her life went totally downhill and she was ejected from a bar and ended up living on the street, sleeping in her Rachel Comey Puffer Parker. The end. I read that part and I was like, damn, they really crank these shoes out in a lab. It's like everybody's dad, oh, yo, daddy. A drama too.

[Dasha]

Oh, your dad likes jazz. So does mine, right? But he says of his detractors, why can't you just fucking like it? Which is relatable, but also, you know, that's how it works.

[Anna]

I mean, he's like self aware enough to admit that, like, he wants people, of course, to like and even like, love his films.

[Dasha]

And he wants people to think he's a genius, right? Obviously, yes.

[Anna]

I mean, his core construct, the reason that he's like ambivalent about decisions and quote, lacking in confidence is because he views other people with contempt. Because he knows they're stupid and he feels guilty that he feels that way. And he's correct in thinking that they're stupid. That's Woody Allen's problem too. These guys are smart. They get it. And everyone around you is just like a norm groid npc. And you have to like schmooze and mingle. That's. That's really what it is. It's like you cannot acknowledge, as Orson Welles could, for example, because he was less neurotic and had less of an internal monologue running at all times, that you simply do not respect most people, yet you crave their acceptance and approval. You hate yourself for wanting. You love yourself for wanting men.

[Dasha]

And that's really the narcissist's dilemma. The dilemma, the ordeal of the narcissist isn't loving yourself. You know, very rarely is there, like, a grandiose narcissist. All Orson Welles.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Who feels like he's burdened by even pretending to be modest.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

And not even very well. But yeah. Most people are covert, as you like to say, and so they have a fundamental ambivalence because they hate themselves but are obsessed themselves.

[Anna]

Yes. Yeah.

[Dasha]

Which is a kind of love.

[Anna]

Yeah. When they hit you with, like, the dsm, like, textbook definition of narcissism, it's characterized by egocentrism, grandiosity, excessive self love. It's like. It's not excessive self love. It's excessive self preoccupation. Occupation in either direction. Very often you, like, toggle between extremes, but the Jays have really mastered this craft and made an art form of it. I say that like, in a positive sense. Like, I'm such a Woody Allen head.

[Dasha]

Same. Well, that's part of the ordeal.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

The insider outsider status.

[Anna]

Cutting everyone else down to size.

[Dasha]

Yeah. The nebbish anxiety. I mean, it is. But he just played by him or the writer, whichever.

[Anna]

Or problem construct, whatever you want to call it, is that he understands that he's literally smarter and better than everyone else and feels a tremendous amount of guilt over it. Whereas a guy like Orson Welles would simply just be like, yeah, dope.

[Dasha]

I don't know. He spends a lot of time with actors.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And, you know, they had Joaquin Phoenix love him to death. You know, he's chiming in. But whenever there's this, like, director, actor relationship being discussed, you're, you know, you're about to hear some of the most annoying ever to go.

[Anna]

I'm happy for you, or I'm sorry that happened.

[Dasha]

Each other's like, worst. You know, they're like, he. Of course he sees how brilliant I am because I understand how brilliant he is.

[Anna]

And we just.

[Dasha]

We're. We're like, were locked in together, you.

[Anna]

Know.

[Dasha]

And I know that he, you know, he isn't like a recluse. He's not like Todd Solins.

[Anna]

Oh, Arya. Yeah. No, he'd be sitting reading his book in the park.

[Dasha]

I see his.

[Anna]

I'm not going to dox his location.

[Dasha]

But no, he's at the restaurant with the guy from.

[Anna]

We be running up on him. Yeah, yeah. He's like, fine.

[Dasha]

He's around, you know, and actors are some of them.

[Anna]

Oh, yeah. Stupidest people.

[Dasha]

What the.

[Anna]

The. When he was up at the restaurant with the guy from Girls. Yeah. Yeah, we were there. Hey, you guys. So nice to see you. Hope all is well. Hope this finds you well. Perf.

[Dasha]

I like Ari. I think he's really. You know, I mean, I gave him a lot of. Whatever. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna.

[Anna]

Don't. Don't blow up your spot.

[Dasha]

I just. I gave him notes on Beau is afraid. Very thoughtful.

[Anna]

Uhhuh.

[Dasha]

No, and I know. I understand. No invite to the premiere.

[Anna]

Damn.

[Dasha]

I saw Chloe Cherry up in there.

[Anna]

Damn.

[Dasha]

Like, was she giving you notes on Bo as a friend? Giving? No, not even. Not even. Because it's also just some publicist list. I don't expect him to be, like, micromanaging and, like, making sure I get.

[Anna]

Invited somewhere.

[Dasha]

Because I told him some of my great thoughts one time. Whatever. It doesn't. You know, I don't think he's a genius. I'll just say it, but I don't mean that. I think that's a good quality.

[Anna]

I don't think he's a genius either. And I don't think anyone.

[Dasha]

Stanley Cooper.

[Anna]

I think if you really think it through, if you really iterate it through. You don't want to be a genius.

[Dasha]

Exactly.

[Anna]

I grew up with a genius. That was hard. You don't want that. No, it's torture.

[Dasha]

I am a gm. It's the worst.

[Anna]

No, it's the worst. It's the worst. It. It's much more fulfilling to be, like, a higher midwit who's good at what they do and pleasant to be around and easy to work with and has kind of like strokes of genius. Everybody has strokes of genius, by the way, even the most people.

[Dasha]

He's gonna make, like, a ton of more movies.

[Anna]

I don't know why these auteur boys are so, like, fixated on being seen as, like, great geniuses. I mean, it's a male trait.

[Dasha]

It's their ego. And it's like they. I just have this idea, and he's, like, living the dream more than, you know, a lot of filmmakers that I can even think no one really else is coming to mind who's like. I mean, he made.

[Anna]

He's like his. His shit just keeps making less and less money.

[Dasha]

That's because it's getting more and more expensive because he's getting more and more license and more and more, you know, he gets. He's going to get to fulfill some, like, epic cinematic vision. Yeah, because he's going to.

[Anna]

He's going to like Megalopolis too.

[Dasha]

Yep. He's gonna get the press that says he's a genius. It's gonna, you know, I get why you do. You know, you get the press that says you're a genius. Oh, no. So am I shouting?

[Anna]

No, it's fine. I think that's like Leia stomping around upstairs.

[Dasha]

His dad was a drummer. His mom was a podcaster. His mom's podcasting partner. It was cackled in his house.

[Anna]

Films have been increasingly brilliant and decreasingly profitable. We should get that guy in the pod.

[Dasha]

I thought of actually texting him and asking him, but I thought it would honestly scare him. It would scare him and I didn't want to even like he would actually.

[Anna]

Drop his act of lacking confidence and being low self esteem and truly feel that way and be like, I don't.

[Dasha]

Yeah, I don't think he would want. Want to.

[Anna]

I should. He ever come on the pod.

[Dasha]

I don't open invite by open invite.

[Anna]

But I don't want to talk to him about his movies. I want to talk to him about his mother. His mother. His ordeal of civility. Whether he prefers MGMT or Crystal Castles, that kind of thing.

[Dasha]

Just couple millennials chopping it up. No, I don't know. I guess he's probably done like some a 24 ass podcast.

[Anna]

Definitely.

[Dasha]

But yeah, I don't think he.

[Anna]

I want to make him sit in.

[Dasha]

The chair in the office, hot or smoking cigarettes. He can't breathe. Literally.

[Anna]

A night, my ass. My asthma's acting up. My allergies.

[Dasha]

Well, there's. Yeah, I mean in this one and Beau is afraid. There's similar, like there's a scary vagrants, right? There's kind of like blonde blondes. Scary young blondes that are like nebulously desirable.

[Anna]

Horny. Yeah, yeah.

[Dasha]

And then shiksa. Yeah. And then horrible mother. You know, Beau's Afraid really is about like having a devouring mother.

[Anna]

I unfortunately, like, I. I had this like great inspiration, ambition to watch Beau's Afraid. And then you informed me that it was like three hours long and I was like, nah. But I read the Wikipedia.

[Dasha]

Nice.

[Anna]

And it's like about how a guy's like routine and casual life spirals horribly out of control. And there's some severe head trauma which seems to be a recurring leitmotif in Ari Aster films as it is in Eddington. And I was like, oh, wow, this is like some guy actually made the Louis CK bit movie about a dude whose life gets like progressively worse with no redemption arc.

[Dasha]

Yeah, I like his bleak outlook.

[Anna]

Yeah, yeah, I like that kind of like self deprecating humor that's like universalizing versus particularizing in nature.

[Dasha]

Right. There's no one. No one's like, there's a protagonist, ostensibly, but not like a heroic one.

[Anna]

Yeah. I also like how the, the Jack Mason review of Eddington was this about how you can see Joaquin Phoenixes. Yeah. Like full frontal penis. He's like the girl in the New Yorker or whatever New York Times article who's like, I have to quote. So funny. No, I'm sorry, I gotta read the quotes. So funny.

[Dasha]

It was like in some Hobbesian state of nature, she would bow to the prettiest penis.

[Anna]

Yeah. Oh, here. Privately, jokes aside, I'm quite susceptible to penis. Like I worry that in some Hobbesian state of nature I might just automatically kneel to the prettiest one.

[Dasha]

This is the worst writer.

[Anna]

I feel. I feel like my haters on Twitter. I'm like, you're 40 and have a kid. Sims meme psycho.

[Dasha]

We'll circle back.

[Anna]

We'll circle back.

[Dasha]

We haven't even.

[Anna]

I love that. That Jack Meta memed the fact that people want to see. Well, that people have grown accustomed to his reviews having a mention of like male full frontal dick and balls. And then I watch that part and it's like, comes like, I'm going to spoiler it. It comes at the very end where. When the Joaquin Phoenix character has become like a vegetable due to like a horrible violent progression of events and is wheelchair bound and living in some like track housing or whatever with his mother in law who's become his primary caretaker and a male home health aide who she's having a bizarre sexual relationship with. And he's being like the, the aid is picking him up from his wheelchair and putting him on a toilet.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

It's like one of the most unsexy depictions of male dick and balls, which are unsexy to begin with when you like see them in a non sexual context.

[Dasha]

All of those like celeb nudity archive sites are always so make me feel so gross because it's like a lot of like nude scenes in movies often are like, like Carey Mulligan in Shame is like, you know, she's on like Mr. Skin or like Fat Bello and like guys are like jacking off to like just nude bodies that are like in context, very sad.

[Anna]

Yeah, that seems really cool.

[Dasha]

But yeah, to think that there's like a gay guy watching that scene being like, oh, look at his.

[Anna]

It reminded me of the time that like I barreled out of the home in the a.m. to get a coffee and the like famous homeless guy of Dime Square who beat up that gay guy once and it was like, on the loose.

[Dasha]

He's straight out of Ari Aster that.

[Anna]

Yeah, he was like, laying on. On those crates that they have outside of like the watermelon slushy bodega with his like, flaccid penis out as if he had just jerked off. And I was more traumatized. Like, I've seen like so many dead bodies here after the pandemic. Speaking of which. Just like dead crackheads laid out in the street. Like, nobody calling the cops. Like, really depressing. It's like gauze out here. I was like, so scandalized by seeing like, like a vagrants flaccid dick first thing in the morning. There was like flies circling. Oh.

[Dasha]

Yeah, that's. I'm sorry. Sorry that happened.

[Anna]

I should comment now. I remember when my mom used to call me up in the early days of the podcast and be like, you girls are so amazing. Melanci. I love what you're doing. Can you guys cool it with the dick sucking references? You're vulgar and trashy and I'm ashamed to know, you know, it was disgusting and depressed. I never want to see a man's penis ever.

[Dasha]

Never in a.

[Anna]

In a non sexual context.

[Dasha]

I mean, I. I appreciate the male form. Not like quite as much as, you know, that broad over the New York Times, but yeah, like a Dave Hockney line drawing, like a taint. And it's cracking a window.

[Anna]

One of my escaping out of the window like those sewer Jews.

[Dasha]

Anna, where are you going? I think. Well, Aster's obviously very gifted as a filmmaker. Technically. He has incredible attention to detail. Detail always according to that profile.

[Anna]

He, like, lines up all of his own shots, which I don't know how that would mean. You probably know more about this.

[Dasha]

That's not, like, super unusual. He doesn't.

[Anna]

I thought Kubrick did that.

[Dasha]

Kubrick famously was, like, very difficult, you know.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And exacting.

[Anna]

Yeah. But, like, why wouldn't you be as a filmmaker? Like.

[Dasha]

Well, some people are more collaborative.

[Anna]

Sure.

[Dasha]

Like, I'm not that I am in certain ways, but, you know, I kind of. Yeah, but especially me. If I was really trying to, like, realize a cinematic vision, maybe I would be more. Sorry.

[Anna]

We. We should talk about the movie because we've spent 30 minutes trying to. We've been like, trashing Ari Aster's character and personality.

[Dasha]

Known. No, we love him to death.

[Anna]

Oh.

[Dasha]

But, like, I noticed even Beau was afraid. Was very. Did make me feel very immersed in fear in, like, a lasting way. And I Like, did think of it often. And in this one, even when I, like, went to the bathroom, like, the people around me, like, chattering and stuff, like, it felt. Felt, you know, he's does have this way of, like, depicting reality as this, like, smothering kind of misanthropic thing that.

[Anna]

But it's very subtle and nuanced. And I think with this movie, you really get two movies in one. In one, because there's, like, a first half that I liked more and a second half that I liked less. Jack mentioned this.

[Dasha]

Well, I didn't. I disagree with Jack that it's too soon to make a movie about COVID I.

[Anna]

Don'T. Yeah, it's a weird. It's a weird premise to. To make a movie about COVID because I think, like, the fact of the matter is that it's an episode that is very foggy in all of our minds and that we've all repressed, even though we remember, like, the lockdowns, the vaccines, the weird and arbitrary rules and regulations, the. The. The way that they were suspended without notice for the BLM protests.

[Dasha]

I honestly found this film a little derivative of the code, which also takes place in the Southwest during COVID.

[Anna]

And.

[Dasha]

It'S about people going on it. They found.

[Anna]

Well, that was the best part of the movie for me, was the way that he seamlessly integrates people playing on their phones. Because, like, with most movies, you get, like, either this really weird anachronistic vision where, like, no one's on their phone, or it's like you're, like, in an Elliot Gould, like, 70s, like, crime dramedy.

[Dasha]

Or whatever, or people talking on landline phones for no reason.

[Anna]

Or, like, you get, like, weird.

[Dasha]

Some stylized, like, bubbles on the text that aren't even really what the phone looks like. And I was like.

[Anna]

Like, the most smothering element of it was how all these people were living in bubbles and then, like, retreating to their phones. Yeah, because I think, like, the thing with COVID like, I was. I watched that Hunter Biden interview with this guy Andrew Callahan that you, like, sent me. And the guy asks him, like, was 2020 the year when the world went crazy? And Hunter Biden actually had a pretty good answer for that. He's like, no, the world's always been kind of crazy, but it's like when.

[Dasha]

The world's always crazy when you're smoking crack. This mixed up world.

[Anna]

Yeah, I was. I was really taking notes during that interview. I'm gonna start cooking CR when he starts.

[Dasha]

I saw the clip of him Talking about crack. I was like, wow.

[Anna]

He's like, I don't want to put any positive ideas in anyone's heads or, like my own. My own. Or like, trigger any euphoria on my part. And I was like, he's like a.

[Dasha]

Genius of smoking crack. But he's like the oral fixation when you hold the tube up to your mouth. Remember he was making those paintings too where he was blowing paint out of a tube.

[Anna]

No, he had like that art show. Yeah.

[Dasha]

And his practice is all.

[Anna]

All involves like, oh, he just like me for real. He's like a fail son with an art show. That's so cute. No, it's. It was really, like, remarkable and psychedelic and oppressive the way that, like, Ari Aster depicts how, like, we're all constantly on our phones. Yeah. Yeah. I think, like, nobody really has, like, a totally clear picture of what happened during COVID even though obviously we've like, intellectualized it, theorized it. Like, we know that there was like a lab leak and a series of COVID ups. And I. I thought it was really brilliant to set it in like a small town setting. Like, as they point out, like, this is weird because there's no Covid reported in Sevilla County. But all the typical dynamics that you saw in the big cities are playing out there too, which, like, you know, it's like the Victor Shklowski makes strange the mundane.

[Dasha]

So Joaquin Phoenix is the sheriff.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Of this town. And Pedro Pascal is the mayor, who's kind of like a Justin Trudeau style.

[Anna]

Yeah. He's like a libtard technocrat in the mold of like, Gavin Newsome or Kathy Hochul. He wants to build a data center.

[Dasha]

Well, yeah, the data. Okay. I didn't understand what happened with the third act.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And conclusion of the film, where then his mother in law was then involved with the.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Data center.

[Anna]

Yes. Yeah.

[Dasha]

Which didn't. I mean, I guess I just felt kind of stupid because I was like, no, you shouldn't.

[Anna]

It's like it made no sense.

[Dasha]

It didn't really make sense.

[Anna]

The whole thing was about the kind of emotional and psychological subtext of data pulsating. Yeah.

[Dasha]

The physical data.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Housing of the data, but then also their phones.

[Anna]

Yeah. And there's like a good quote from Martin Scorsese about how Ari Aster externalizes the emotional violence between things. It begins in like May 2020 in this, like, southwestern small town. And then there's like all these different dynamics. There's the rivalry between Joe Cross, the walking Phoenix character, and Ted Garcia, the Pedro Pascal character. There's like a love rectangle between the one, like, hot, serviceable blonde girl in the town and these three guys, the.

[Dasha]

Kind of random boy.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And then the son, the mayor's son.

[Anna]

Eric, the son's best friend, Brian, and, like, the young Deputy Michael, who are all, like, vaguely involved with her. There's like, the crumbling marriage of the sheriff and his wife, played by Emma Stone, which is accelerated by the fact that, like, her crazy, like, conspirator mom moves in.

[Dasha]

My qualm, my big qualm with the Aristor genius allegations is aesthetic, which is.

[Anna]

What say more his.

[Dasha]

In this one, Emma the wife, Emma Stone's character, she makes these creepy dolls. In Beau's Afraid, there's this kind of like, magical kind of like theater home stitched. It's hard to. It's a little like Tim Burton. Y.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

It's a little like. There's just always some. And a lot of his movies and this is just a personal thing and it's. But it's something that's like, I see reoccurring in his films that it just feels a little, like, angst. Angsty.

[Anna]

It's almost like his Jewish vision of what white people be like.

[Dasha]

Yeah, they'd be cutting.

[Anna]

Yeah. And, like, the wife, Louise, is makeupless and depressed. She has, like, the Etsy business of making, like, sewing doll, like, weird, creepy dolls out of, like, pantyhose or whatever. One of the best parts of, like, the depiction of, like, how thoroughly, like, data has infiltrated our lives is, like, how increasingly intrusive and sinister it's become in terms of, like, just people, like, casually filming each other in order to, like, cancel each other for online clout.

[Dasha]

Mm.

[Anna]

Like, there's always somebody in the background whipping out their phone to monitor, like, thought crime. Like at the grocery store, at the BLM protest. Like, everybody has their phone out. There's the. The Austin Butler character, Vernon Jefferson Peak, who's like, this online self help guru in the mold of, like, a Russell brand, like, rocker vibe covered in tattoos.

[Dasha]

Yeah. Who has, like, kind of like a molested and incoherent cultish worldview that he's pedaling.

[Anna]

He, like, claims that his father sold. Sold him to, like, pedophile cabal. And he was the only one to, like, he was the only kid to escape. They were, like, creepy Bohemian Grove child sacrifices.

[Dasha]

They were hunting. Yeah.

[Anna]

And he, like, basically parachutes into these, like, people's lives and steals Louise from Joe by pretending to be into her, like, arts and crafts.

[Dasha]

And it's Implied that she also was maybe molested and then.

[Anna]

Or she claimed it's. Well, it's interesting. She leaves because she uses her unlocked, repressed molestation memory basically as a pretense to leave her husband for another guy.

[Dasha]

No, because he says she was raped and. By Pedro Pascal.

[Anna]

Yeah, but she's. Yeah, she doesn't want the.

[Dasha]

She's.

[Anna]

And he's, like, clearly, like, a dark personality, a la Andrew Huberman Pascal. No, the. The influencer guy.

[Dasha]

Oh, yeah.

[Anna]

And he's. He's possibly a fed. There was a part where he talks about his dad being a civil engineer in D.C. and working for the government. And he talks about, like, he. When he died, my brain reset or whatever. It's, like, very fed coded. I thought the dynamic between the mother and daughter was very relatable. Like the. The schizotypal, extremely online mother yields a depressive, malcontent daughter who's, like, constantly bedridden.

[Dasha]

And the mother was very well depicted as being this, like, extremely, like, intrusive, but still recessed character. Like, there's that scene where he's talking to her through the. I mean, once again, I give a masterful, really filmmaking. And I did like it.

[Anna]

Well, you mean the one he's talking.

[Dasha]

To her through the screen door and then the mother's, like. You can't even see her because she's, like, obscured by a curtain. But she's talking. And you can always kind of hear her talking.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

And it's always this, like, conspiratorial idol chatter. That's this very psychological feeling of, like, a matriarchal longhouse. An overbearing female presence that's, like, illogical and chaotic, but, like, ever looming and threatening.

[Anna]

Yeah. It brought me back to being raised by. Yeah. And you have all these instances of, like, people basically, like, controlling and manipulating and punishing each other using these arbitrary pandemic rules. They're both, like, minor and major. Like that. The opening scene where the cops in masks are, like, flexing on the sheriff because he has rank over them, but he's in their jurisdiction. Like, Gray Area, the city council meeting that takes place in the bar with takeaway drinks only while they're trying to keep out the vagrants. Yeah. The people, like, filming and clapping for. In the grocery store and for the BLM protest. Like, just the fan. Like, the families being cooped up in close quarters. Like, during quarantine, everyone, like, hissing six feet at each other. And then, like, so, like, Joe and Ted. Joe starts to.

[Dasha]

So he starts a mayoral bid he's running for mayor because he's in opposition.

[Anna]

Yeah. They're, like, locked in this permanent standoff that culminates with Joe announcing his mayoral bid because Ted's term is about to end.

[Dasha]

Which makes his wife unhappy.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

And then she leaves after he implicates her in his attempts to smear.

[Anna]

Yeah. He calls Ted a sexual predator. His, like, poorly attended town hall, like, the Greek Mexican restaurant. Ted's an interesting character. There was a point where I think Joe accuses him of, like, not challenging the catch and release policy of the governor, who he's beholden to, which makes it hard for the cops to do their jobs and apprehend criminals and retain talent. His campaign ad is about fighting the pandemic and, quote, racial and economic inequities. Then, yeah, you find out that Ted basically has, like, a history with Joe's wife because kind of, like, it turns into, like, opportunistic Me too arc. Yeah.

[Dasha]

That didn't feel so significant. If it didn't seem that important, like, they would have. Could have had the same conflict that they did.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Without even the wife, who, like, there wasn't that much emotional investment in any anyway.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Like, you weren't, like, rooting for their marriage.

[Anna]

Yeah. But the I like the idea is that, like, you know, it's like how they say that there's, like, three sides to every story. It's like Ted downplays his involvement with Louise and claims that he never touched her, even though she became pregnant and had to have an abortion.

[Dasha]

But none of this is really, you know, it seems that the mother in that situation also was a big, you know, that Louise maybe wouldn't have even.

[Anna]

Yeah. But then, like, Joe claims that Ted is a sexual predator, which is also clearly not true, and that prompts the wife to. To leave him. Probably. It was some vague, like, misdirected, like, puppy love fling, though it's, like, very unclear. The BLM scenes were, like, very obvious, but very funny. And that it's, like, mostly white people protesting the systemic racism and police brutality. And they're, like, yelling down the black cop who's, like, literally one third of the police force because there's three of them.

[Dasha]

Right. The recurring joke of something being on stolen land.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Was quite funny. And, yeah, I don't agree with Jack's critique that because we haven't had, like, meaningful justice with COVID that it isn't up for, like, being made fun of or.

[Anna]

Well, yeah, I think it's actually kind of, like, bold and brazen to make a Covid movie before the body's even gotten cold. And, like, I mean, Eugene Kolarenko did it, mind you.

[Dasha]

Just saying.

[Anna]

But, like, you know, like. Yeah. Movies are in development for years. So you must have hatched this plan while Covid was still raging or, like, right after.

[Dasha]

No, he. Bozo. I mean, maybe. I'm sure he's got a lot of irons in the fire or whatever the saying is. But Beau's Afraid came out post pandemic. So I think it was made, or at least written with some, like, quick hindsight. I mean, it's been five years, which is great.

[Anna]

It's like when Hunter Biden is like, I've been sober for six years, and I'm, like, doing the math. Like, that can't be true. There's no way the racial dynamics were depicted well in the sense that, like, they were totally fine and normal and everybody got along, and it didn't occur to anyone until BLM came to town. Yeah. And they started realizing that, like, blacks and Hispanics are actually antagonistic toward one another.

[Dasha]

I thought it was also brave to write, like, set it in a real. Maybe not the town, but at least, like, the setting was. Was realistic and the events were real. They didn't, like, come up with a fake disease that's supposed to be coronavirus. They, like, are addressing and. Because fundamentally, I think films should be contemporary. And Eddington was successful in that. Which is major because most movies are just slob.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

That, like, feels neither here nor there or, like, take place in kind of like a. I mean, we. We. Promising Young Woman comes to mind. Which we reviewed. And one of the things that really bothered me about that was that it took place in this kind of, like, any town, usa. It was, like, super vague.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And then just had this, like, a veneer of, like, ideology over it that didn't really ring true or make any sense. And this because, in part, like, the ideologies of the characters are so incoherent. Felt more realistic.

[Anna]

Yeah. Well, it's very clear, like, nobody really has any politics and nobody stands for any. People stand for nothing. They're just doing what is socially and professionally expedient for themselves and, like, getting out petty grievances against their neighbors. I like, like, the subplot of Brian, Eric's best friend, becoming a BLM activist for some.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

And he starts, like, aping their rhetoric. He's talking about, like, challenging institutions, dismantling whiteness and not letting whiteness reassert itself to his parents at dinner. And then the dad goes like, are you retarded? You're white. And then later, after he takes credit for, you know, becomes a hero in the final act, Kyle does like a 180 and becomes like a Rittenhouse style right wing influencer.

[Dasha]

Yeah. Or like whatever. Influence.

[Anna]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dasha]

He leverages it.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Into a social media career.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And there's that part where he's giving, like, it's not a eulogy, but at the other, having some memoriam. And he says that as a white man, I'm gonna sit down and listen as soon as I'm done making speech. And there's just. Yeah. There's jokes like that. That feel that are like that land.

[Anna]

Yeah. I mean, the view of the police is like broadly sympathetic and that they're, like, depicted as like, bumbling but well meaning.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

Like local guys who aren't total monsters.

[Dasha]

Yeah. That actor from Yellowstone who I love.

[Anna]

Which one?

[Dasha]

The other cop guy.

[Anna]

Oh, he's hot.

[Dasha]

He's hot. You should watch Yellows.

[Anna]

I want.

[Dasha]

I've been missing. Yellowstone's over.

[Anna]

I want to watch it.

[Dasha]

But I've watched so much yellow stuff.

[Anna]

What's that actor's name?

[Dasha]

Look. Look it up. Sexy. There's a lot of. There's a lot of sexy guys on Yellowstone. And the Yellowstone spin offs.

[Anna]

Interesting.

[Dasha]

In 1923, there's a really hot guy. Wait, let's look this guy up.

[Anna]

He's like my type of guy.

[Dasha]

That sandy hair Luke. He's not really my type of guy, but I. Because I formed such a. I actually hated him on Yellowstone and was always telling Riley how he was a snake and a coward and stuff because of his character. But then seeing him again after not having seen Yellowstone in a while because it's over, I was like, it's like seeing an old friend. I was like, it's my friend from.

[Anna]

Yellowstone, Grimes, who I've never heard of before. I felt really bad because I was like watching the movie and I was like, oh, that like, blonde white cop who reminds me of so many former BF's is hot.

[Dasha]

Well, he also looks hot in a police uniform in Yellowstone. He's kind of wearing like medium flannels and stuff and looks kind of fat.

[Anna]

Sandy blonde pig.

[Dasha]

He's probably not fat.

[Anna]

He's chub. He's chunky.

[Dasha]

He thick. I'm gonna look him up on T later.

[Anna]

January 24, 1984. American actor and musician. Does gay country music. Whatever.

[Dasha]

He's awesome.

[Anna]

He gets blown to bits. Spoiler.

[Dasha]

The other cop, the black guy, who is the ex boyfriend or he's not object of the blonde BLM activist.

[Anna]

Yeah, but it's the best part. Like, not the best part, which is the people playing on their phones. One of the best parts of the second best part is how ambiguous all the dynamics are because it's unclear, like, who's lying and who's telling the truth. And he, like, there may or may not have been some fling between these two, like attractive young people, but he denies it and then they try to frame him. I thought the film was going to go into some, like, gay, like, Jordan Peele territory where they frame the black guy for the spoiler. All this culminates. And should I say this or not?

[Dasha]

You've already kind of given some spoilers. I think it's okay. It happens pretty early.

[Anna]

Yeah, I. It's like a two and a half hour movie.

[Dasha]

It's long, but the.

[Anna]

With.

[Dasha]

But it doesn't feel so long.

[Anna]

It felt pretty long to me, really. But I also. My attention span is cratered. And I was like going on my phone and I like, I went to see like a 10:30 screening. I dropped the baby off at school.

[Dasha]

And caught a matinee.

[Anna]

Took my white ass to the matinee. There was literally three people in the theater. It was like, me, some random Gen X white guy and some random Gen X Chinese guy. And then this walked in with a personal pan pizza and sat right next to me.

[Dasha]

And I was like, what the amc? I was at Regal Essex and they have pizzas there. I. I guess they have sliders at amc.

[Anna]

But like, that I don't understand. There's like two things. This. There's two things that make me, like, question, like, people's judgment in general, which is like, one, when you're like, in an empty movie theater or like any empty, like, communal space and you choose to sit next to another person instead, instead of like taking a whole row for yourself. Like, that's weird. And then the other thing that I've noticed lately is that, like, you know, there's a lot of vagrants out and about and people will plop down on the bench next to like a passed out homeless person and, like, sip their boba tea and go on their phone. And it's like, what, you're not afraid that this person's gonna, like, jerk up at any moment and try to like, kill you? Jerk off? Yeah. Like, why would you do that? I understand if it's like a crowded train, but yeah.

[Dasha]

No, I don't know. Couldn't be me. There was a woman sitting in our I saw a later matinee like around 2:30, but there was a lady sitting in our seats and we just sat in different seats.

[Anna]

Yeah, you didn't even care an hour.

[Dasha]

But then some guys came and we were sitting in their seats. So then you know. But we, I feel like that's part of the social contract is like if you, even if you have an assigned seat, you can sit somewhere else to give people like some space.

[Anna]

Yeah. In a totally empty movie theater. She was like.

[Dasha]

Which I think it goes without saying most people would prefer. I don't think that's like anti social.

[Anna]

Yes, you would prefer. You would prefer to create some space between you and stuff. Total strangers. And then I, I like debated in a weird like Woody Allen or Ari Aster s way whether I should inform, like I'm going to be on my phone because I'm taking notes for my job. I was like, no, this is gay. And I'm just not going to say anything.

[Dasha]

And she doesn't care. She's going to eat a whole pizza.

[Anna]

Crazy, psychotic behavior.

[Dasha]

It is crazy to eat a pizza at 10:30. Everything else is everything else. That's just, that's why. That's not the way to jump start your metabolism like a cold glass of lemon water or whatever you're supposed to have. But maybe she wakes up really early. Maybe she just got off work. I mean I. Yeah, she's working the night shift.

[Anna]

Like, I guess the other thing is like Ted is vaguely left coded and Joe is vaguely right coded.

[Dasha]

They're like blue, red, but kind of. They're not. I wouldn't even say it's so vague. Like Ted is doing the bidding right. Of the. When they're in the grocery store.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And he's like, it's not mandated. And he's like there's a. Whatever. You know, they're like, there's these like litigations and Ted is very much. Yeah, I guess kind of corrupt. And then. Which is implied by him getting this gift from the governor.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

It's also not super fleshed out, but.

[Anna]

He'S not even corrupt. He's like just suggestible and opportunistic which yields leads to corruption.

[Dasha]

Yeah. Like most corrupt politicians.

[Anna]

Yeah. He's not immoral, he's just amoral, which is possibly way worse. And then you have this picture of Joe as being this kind of bravely suffering everyman, but he turns out to be a total piece of shit too because he like assassinates Ted and his son in cold blood in the home while they're like Playing on their phones, which is really dark. That was like. It made me realize because I have this thing in my head that I like, just hate violence and gore in movies. But that's not true because sometimes I see violence and gore and I'm really keyed up by it. I just hate free for all, like misdirected or undirected violence. And I thought the scene where Joe assassinates Ted and Eric was brilliant. It was good.

[Dasha]

And great tension, you know, like, you do think it's the black guy because he gets sent the photo.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

The girl. Which is. Yeah. It's all very like opaque. But you are like as an audience member again, really good, like sequencing and pacing. I just. And I like even in, in the profile when he says like, why can't you just fucking like it? It's like. It is. It's annoying in part because it's like, okay, well, people are going to engage critically.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

And unfairly.

[Anna]

They're gonna have their own opinion with your world conclusions. Yeah.

[Dasha]

And. But I think it. He does have kind of like a populist impulse where he wants to agree that people like. He's not trying to like punish or. He's not too pretentious. He's just kind of the right amount of pretentious.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

But he still wants to like make movies that people can enjoy.

[Anna]

Yes. Because he's a covert narcissist who wants the approval of others but resents wanting it. No, but that part for me was like really kind of like sustained directional whatever. And then the second half of the film like devolves into this like blowout.

[Dasha]

It gets a little absurd.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

When there already is so much like quotidian absurdity.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

There. That's very strong.

[Anna]

Yeah. And like, I think Jack's take about it was that it devolves into like a kind of like generic anti woke slop. I didn't really see that so much as like he couldn't wrap the film up. One of the most redeeming things about Woody Allen films is that the piece of bad guy villain gets away with it in the end. But at what price?

[Dasha]

Sometimes.

[Anna]

Yeah, but he has a lot.

[Dasha]

The great thing about Woody Allen movies that he makes one every year.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

So they're all over the place.

[Anna]

Yeah. It's like real diminishing returns up in here.

[Dasha]

You know, he's had like phases in his career and like even now there's like some good ones, some bad ones, some charming ones, some, you know, But I think Woody Allen is a genius.

[Anna]

He is yeah.

[Dasha]

And that's not because every single one of his films is perfect. Because, like, when you look at the. And I actually think Orson Welles is wrong. And though Woody Allen is arrogant, it does take a kind of, like, confidence to be so prolific. That's kind of like, untimid and not like, Ari Esther's acting like what Orson Welles thinks. Woody Allen.

[Anna]

Yeah, well, no, I think Orson Welles is right about Woody Allen's, like, personality and character. But he's also saying it because he's just jealous because Woody Allen is such a good filmmaker. Like, I recently watched Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona back to back after, like, not seeing those movies ever for many years. And people were, like, trying to get me to watch them and whatever. And like, even those. They're like, kind of like late career whatever. Like, they're movies.

[Dasha]

I love Late career Woody. I love, like.

[Anna]

No, I know. I was like, oh, my God, these are, like, amazing. There's dope, like, the what's his name? Like the npc, like, narcissist Jonathan Riss Myers character. Yeah, yeah. Who's just like the most awful garbage person ever.

[Dasha]

Well, he's also not, like, he's not too arrogant to not just do Crime and Punishment. Blue Jasmine, another really good one. That's just Streetcar Name Desire.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

You know, he's wears his influences on his sleeve, but then has his own spin that he puts on stuff. I was thinking maybe me and you could take a trip to Barcelona.

[Anna]

Oh, we should. Yeah.

[Dasha]

To make a podcast called Anna Dasha Barcelona. Because it's about a blonde and brunette.

[Anna]

So true. When I was watching, I think we'd be Barcelona. When they were like, on this, it was like Scarjo and P. Cruise on the bench. I was like, oh, this is like Red Scare.

[Dasha]

Anytime I see a blonde and a brunette.

[Anna]

This is taking me back to Mulholland Drive.

[Dasha]

Scarjo is a really nice. I love when she's got the platinum.

[Anna]

Yeah, she looks really hot. Penelope Cruz looks really like all the women. He, like, frames women in a way that's, like, extremely flattering.

[Dasha]

He loves women, clearly.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

One of the most epic lovers of women and not prepubescent children of all time.

[Anna]

And it's like all the. All the women in this film, like, with all due respect, are like 5 foot 4 and 120 pounds. They're not.

[Dasha]

Not Mia Farrow.

[Anna]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dasha]

Not Me Affair, who's in a quite a big number of his movies. And.

[Anna]

But generally speaking, like, the. Yeah, the women in his films are like, Normal adult women who have a certain beauty to them because they're normal adult women.

[Dasha]

They're not. Some of his movies are about attraction to teenage women, but. And husbands and wives.

[Anna]

True.

[Dasha]

And probably some others. But then he's got, you know, Mighty Aphrodite. He's in love with a hooker.

[Anna]

But actually, these Jews want to be, like, all. All neurotic, and they. They like to, like, theorize, intellectualize, problematize their sexual attraction. But it seems like Woody Allen's attraction to women is, like, pretty wholesome and normative. He just likes all different types of women.

[Dasha]

I think it's not normative. I think it's cerebral. But that's okay.

[Anna]

Yeah, maybe.

[Dasha]

You know, and in that way, he is able. That's why he's able to depict women so well, because he, like, is effeminate. Fundamentally.

[Anna]

Woody Allen, to me, is, like. He exists in, like, a trinity with, like, Whit Stillman and Eric Roemer, where they make, like, kind of quiet, sober word cell.

[Dasha]

Well, that's not even really fair.

[Anna]

Civilized.

[Dasha]

Because he was making the zany stuff in this.

[Anna]

Yeah. But ultimately, like, that's what he settled on because that's his milieu and that's.

[Dasha]

Paris is fantastic and non. You know.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

It's a magical, realist film. Ostensibly. He. I'm telling you, he's all over the place. And it's because he makes a movie, tries to, every single year. And he's just driven the way that a genius is.

[Anna]

Well, I was kind of worried because. Okay, so Ozzy Osbourne died, Hulk Hogan died. And, you know, these things tend to come in threes. So it's like, who's. Who's next? Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood? No, like some boomer legend. Well, I won't know. I can say this now with full confidence and not cast the Armenian curse because.

[Dasha]

Please.

[Anna]

There was a guy who died who people were talking about called Chuck Manjoni. And I was like, oh, is that, like, Luigi's dad? But apparently he's some kind of, like, jazz trumpeter or trombonist who was talking about it. He was everywhere. People really love this Chuck Van Joni guy, who I've never heard of, but he's the third.

[Dasha]

Oh, okay.

[Anna]

So.

[Dasha]

So coast is clear.

[Anna]

So Merc Rat is almost over. In, like, two weeks.

[Dasha]

It's like, four more.

[Anna]

There's gonna be no more, like, boomer legend deaths.

[Dasha]

It's the longest Mercury retrograde ever. But I think I'm. There's a new moon, I heard.

[Anna]

Yeah. Leo Moon.

[Dasha]

We should pivot. To this article.

[Anna]

Oh yeah.

[Dasha]

Instead of randomly talking about Woody Allen movies.

[Anna]

Yeah. We can pivot to the article which is, you know, it's like an Ari Aster film.

[Dasha]

It's a nice article. It's.

[Anna]

It was so hard and it says so little.

[Dasha]

It says nothing. That's the worst part is that it truly says nothing.

[Anna]

The trouble with wanting men, it describes.

[Dasha]

Very particular social phenomena that is being experienced by this woman, the writer, and her anecdotally, by her friends.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

Where men are ghosting them.

[Anna]

Or it's like. Yeah, it's like this new POV essay about what it's like being like a single early middle aged woman in like the Brooklyn libbed hard scene. And, and basically her. The tldr is that men are flaky and non committal as always, by the way, they're down for dick appointments, but they don't want to like lock it down. And they've started using therapy. Speak about how they have anxiety to get out of like commitment and conflict. They can't just say, I'm just not that into you, which would be indelicate, but they can't do the noble thing and just ghost you. And I get it. This is understandably very maddening and frustrating and disappointing for women.

[Dasha]

Well, she says, I keep encountering and hearing about men who quote, can't have these men not heard of, quote, don't want to. And it's like, yeah, they don't want to.

[Anna]

They're telegraphing it to you. And what they think are delicate and elegant terms because they have a image of themselves as being good guys that women like you promote and encourage. By the way.

[Dasha]

It's nicer for them to say they can't because they have anxiety versus saying I don't want to because you're not hot enough.

[Anna]

Yes. Yeah. And now that she's written the story and you're and published it under her name, she's never getting a boyfriend again. I'm gonna read this.

[Dasha]

Shouldn't have opened up that marriage.

[Anna]

I'm gonna read this tweet by my fitness feelings. That was the best summary of this entire thing. Entire class of behaviors has emerged over the last 10 to 15 years among urban liberal men. Emotional avoidance, rejecting LTRs. I guess that means long term relationship, transgenderism, etc. Which are all about finding ways to punish and frustrate women from within the longhouse. These guys are like the ultimate cucks. They're cucked by women in society and they've adapted by depriving women of their Attention and affections. It's very obvious. And it goes without saying that if a man ever uses anxiety as an excuse for why he can't see you or commit to you, you should immediately stop sleeping with him and should probably just like never speak to him again.

[Dasha]

Yeah. She transcribes the text and several others in which she's sort of describing. Right. We all know about emotional labor, but.

[Anna]

Then there's a hermeneutical labor. They have all these, like, where women.

[Dasha]

Are more obsessed with their relationships than men are and are analyzing them more. And then they're burnt out, they're tired girl from trying to get these men to text them back because he ain't.

[Anna]

Bringing food for all my kids just for the one kid that I'd be having with him.

[Dasha]

Well, that's. Yeah. And then it's all described. There's. Yeah, it's like. There's tons of like, diagnostics of like, broader gender relationships that don't actually really graft on, I feel, and to like, the reality, like maybe for exactly like this subset of like a, like elder millennials who are reeling after the divorce, after their open marriage, which is, which is also psycho.

[Anna]

And I. Which is something that I'd like to get back to. But there's this whole, like, emerging pseudo academic journalistic field that's like scholar devoting to griping about it. The sexuality scholar, Asses Saracen. The writer and gender scholar, Sarah Ahmed. The philosophy professor Ellie Anderson. I would like to believe there's something purposeful, resistant, even radical in the hetero fatalist mode. But the more I voice it, the more I'm inclined to agree with Saracen that it can produce nothing but more of itself. They keep coming up with more terms like theorize their cope, normative male alexithymia, hermeneutic labor. Like all these like, insane terms for the obvious. The one thing that really stuck out to me is that, you know, she's so.

[Dasha]

She.

[Anna]

She tells a story about going on a date and then the guy hitting her with. I was really looking forward to seeing you again. He texted me the following week around lunchtime, but I'm going through some intense anxiety today. Need to lay low. Sad face emoji. Totally understand, I replied, but I didn't. Feeble, fallible. Looking forward is not longing. A man should want me urgently or not at all. Looking forward is also totally manipulative. Like he. He's keeping his options open even though he doesn't really want you. And the way to win with that is to just not Respond. Or to playfully call him a. Or a. And then she tells the story of, like, her friend who stayed seeing a lawyer who's great in person, but takes, like, a uncomfortable amount of time to respond to her texts about plans. And when she finally confronts him about it, he says that it got him thinking that he doesn't have the capacity to take whatever they have to the next level. To which she responds, I wasn't looking to escalate. I was just looking for clarity.

[Dasha]

Wrong.

[Anna]

And finally, he punishes her by saying her communication skills are too distant, desperate for them to continue dating. And, like, of course her friend group is like, all these chicks were like therapists or historians, like, who think they.

[Dasha]

Own Sex in the City. Yeah, I think she's Carrie Bradshaw, the way she's weaving these little. She's like. You can tell she's so proud of herself when she's, like, coming up with that part with the Hobbesian state of nature and she's got these annoying ass. I just know if I was a man, I would go through that.

[Anna]

Some woman was going to write a substance. I knew you would just go.

[Dasha]

I would vanish from her life like a ghost. I would. I wouldn't even send her the, like, maybe text. I would just.

[Anna]

Absolutely, really looking forward to taking you out to get some Ethiopian. But I'm suffering my.

[Dasha]

You're making me anxious because you're weird.

[Anna]

Xanax script right now. And I'm just like, so anxious right now. And so she and her woman friends, like, get together and gab about men and how shitty they are, which, you know, we'd be doing in our.

[Dasha]

We're all doing the hermeneutics as a thing.

[Anna]

But what's so remarkable about this article is how they take the anxiety excuse at face value.

[Dasha]

I know they're like, of course he's anxious, babe.

[Anna]

Yeah, of course he has anxiety, said one of them, a therapist who sat across from me at the restaurant. That's life. That's being alive and knowing and going to meet someone you don't know well, yeah, said the woman beside her historian. It's called sexual tension. Stay with it for a minute and you might get some. Like, how are these women even employed? They're so delusional. Like, he literally hates you and doesn't want to see you again, but is a coward and a. And is keeping the options open. Because when he's really down bad, he might want some, but, like, he doesn't. He doesn't like you. He thinks you're annoying. He knows you're gonna write an article about him?

[Dasha]

He definitely.

[Anna]

These men are clearly lying.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

About Anx. Like, and it's like, okay, like, after everything is said and done, like feminism wonder because it tried to make women equal to men and it succeeded by making men into women.

[Dasha]

Nietzsche talks about this.

[Anna]

They use that language of empathy and compassion and therapy and then it's.

[Dasha]

You've got them trapped. Well, she. This isn't okay.

[Anna]

This.

[Dasha]

This part is okay. If the experts. The experts say my romantic letdowns have some larger social significance. I'm not going to argue. The men I want are not wanting me badly enough, not communicating with me clearly enough, not devoting themselves to me. All this certainly seems calamitous enough to warrant an ism.

[Anna]

Me, me, me. I thought was ironic, but it's not.

[Dasha]

No, the whole thing, I'm like, is she is. It kept getting more and more like.

[Anna]

Self aware and parodying herself. It's like an Ari Aster film.

[Dasha]

Like, no, men are what is rotten in the state of straightness. And why shouldn't we have an all inclusive byword for our various pessimisms about them? Domestic pessimism. They still do less of the housework and child care, partner violence. Pessimism. Femicide is still gruesomely routine. Not among you or your cohort or anyone you know has ever been femicided.

[Anna]

Yeah, that shit happens in Juarez of Mexico.

[Dasha]

It happens to TikTok influencers who are like fuck cartel members and then end up making like a snuff video on accident. Erotic pessimism. The clitoris and its properties still elude many of them. That feels.

[Anna]

No, they don't.

[Dasha]

No, they don't.

[Anna]

That's like, they don't. They just don't want to win.

[Dasha]

Yeah, I feel like that was. That's something women were saying in like the 70s. They were like, oh, my. First of all, disgusting. I would.

[Anna]

I know. It's a gross word.

[Dasha]

So gross. Even just including to increase stigma around female orgasm.

[Anna]

Yeah, we should. So true.

[Dasha]

But like, men know where the clit is. Where the clit is.

[Anna]

They just don't care.

[Dasha]

And the petulantly proud masculinist subcultures that have arisen, at least in part as reactions to these pessimisms keep coughing up new reasons to fear, rage against, and complain about men. But those men are not the men my friends and I are feeling bleak about. It's the sweet good ones, damn it.

[Anna]

That's such an insane paragraph where it's like, we're gonna throw racist right Wing men under the bus for being. For expressing toxic masculinity. But actually.

[Dasha]

And the whole problem is that the men that she's encountering aren't toxic enough to be upfront, to be honest or committal.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

So they can't do anything. So then they. Because they don't want to be toxic.

[Anna]

Huh.

[Dasha]

Because they've been told by women who have, like, the culture in a vice.

[Anna]

Yeah. They have it by the ball.

[Dasha]

Yeah. Literally. That they need to, you know, signal and behave in these ways.

[Anna]

Yeah. Which is, like, mutually cooking.

[Dasha]

Now, these are unhappy.

[Anna]

So basically, these men are like French bulldogs who are taking a. On the side of the curb while the owner looks away. But actually, the owner is not looking away. She's, like, angrily scolding you and writing about it.

[Dasha]

Oh.

[Anna]

On social media.

[Dasha]

Well, then she. Yeah, she writes, like, longingly about some. Well, the guy she broke up her.

[Anna]

Marriage for who met her child.

[Dasha]

Huh.

[Anna]

But wouldn't commit to her. And they go on, like, lunch dates or, like, play dates in the park. With a child.

[Dasha]

No, no. She was alone and texted him.

[Anna]

Jay.

[Dasha]

Jay.

[Anna]

Yeah. But he does.

[Dasha]

It's unclear if he's met her child.

[Anna]

No, he did. There was a part where they. They sat, like, much later where they sat in the park with a child and he, like, gave her notes on her essay.

[Dasha]

Oh, that was. No, I think that was another guy.

[Anna]

Maybe another guy. But he was like, oh, you're flattening the men too much, or whatever.

[Dasha]

And then after she rips her life apart to be with Jay, who doesn't want her, which he kind of tells her, then she. There's just way too many, like, lengthy asides about different men that she goes on dates with who are, like.

[Anna]

Who don't like her at all.

[Dasha]

Don't really like her.

[Anna]

That's the funny thing.

[Dasha]

Because she doesn't want to have group sex or is too needy.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And then she describes. Yeah. Like a real thing, which is, like. Is summed up basically in, like, anxious and avoidant personality types.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Women just tend to be more anxious and men tend to be more avoided. But there's.

[Anna]

It's true the way I do it.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

That's like.

[Dasha]

There's women who are mad. Like, I've maybe never said I can't, like, do a relationship, but I've said, like, my life's crazy. I'm suicidal, so I can't have a.

[Anna]

Boyfriend right now, babe. I've just queued up all these dick appointments. But it's none of your business because we have to have boundaries.

[Dasha]

I'm reading the Bible right now, so I'm not going to be available for dating.

[Anna]

The glaring thing that you notice about libtard men and libtard women is that they simply do not like the people that they sleep with and couple with. They hate each other. And like okay, like I was gonna be like oh yeah, like you should. I was gonna like flex and you know, do the yellow sundress Evie mag thing and be like oh yeah, you should just get like a racist right wing boyfriend as all of my boyfriends have been. But like that's not true. That's like gay and pretentious. Obviously. Like dating, falling in love is like fraught with error and failure. Just but like by nature. And people again want to like introduce all these like contemporary explanations for it like oh, like social media, porn addiction, whatever. It's just very hard to find someone who you vibe with. And it happens maybe two or three times in your lifetime.

[Dasha]

And the problem with like therapy rhetoric is that it makes it impossible if everyone is engaging in some kind of like therapeutic program.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

To have expectations of people.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

But you have to because you have to, you know, be boundaried and also respect others boundaries and you know, you have to fill your own cup so you can give more. And you know like there's just all these ways that to drink your own.

[Anna]

C. So you can come more.

[Dasha]

But no, people have come up with all these ways to like avoid responsibility. Like the responsibility this woman had to her husband.

[Anna]

Well, that's the other thing she's completely blind to.

[Dasha]

It's like now she's having like a karmic retribution.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

Where she's going to realize maybe she should have stuck with her marriage.

[Anna]

Like. Yeah. Like tried to make it work. I mean like I don't, I don't know the details. Yeah. But it's like. Okay, but.

[Dasha]

Well, he was probably exactly the same as any of these other guys.

[Anna]

I don't. Yeah, just more because he married her. I don't understand like I don't know the details of their marriage but like the divorce is sort of a given and sort of like unnecessary. Even when you have an open marriage with a child. It's also like perverted to bring a child into an open marriage.

[Dasha]

Why the divor?

[Anna]

Well, because she's like completely like lacking in self awareness where she doesn't realize how she's like a horrible narcissistic monster who blew up her marriage for some guy who wasn't that into her. It's like hanging Out. It needed to be.

[Dasha]

It needed to be blown up. So she's trying to just stay friends with him, AKA like hoping he'll want her enough. She doesn't. She hasn't demonstrated like good character or judgment. Like, what man's is gonna want you? I mean, that's not like severely mentally ill or has like a personality disorder.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

That you're like your husband with.

[Anna]

Yeah. That you're.

[Dasha]

Who hasn't even made you any promises.

[Anna]

Yeah. And I, I understand. Like, I sympathize with her position that like women in general are put in this bad position we're making. Any. Are asking for any clarification is like ground for dismissal. And they have to act like they're like above it all in like good sports and whatever.

[Dasha]

Even that.

[Anna]

True. But you have to like ask yourself also, like, these women, they have this idea they want to be in a relationship for the idea of being in a relationship. But they have no sense of what purpose a relationship serves or like how.

[Dasha]

To be of service or how to be this classic home math stuff too, where people are overestimating their own value. And so they're. She needs to watch some homemade YouTube.

[Anna]

She needs some PDFs.

[Dasha]

I can send them to you, girl. Actually, I deleted them because they were taking up too much space on my computer.

[Anna]

Like your storage was being depleted. But like I said, I'm just gonna say like repeat what I said on Twitter. And I was like, okay, yeah. These men are all like disgraceful, like lived hard cucks. But they're not stupid. They know that the woman is not really interested in them, that she's not a value to them, that she cannot love them, but that she wants to be like narcissistically gratified by them in some capacity. She wants that a man as like a surrogate or accessory. So where is the incentive to enter into the relationship? Plus, like none of these women or none of these people seem to want kids, which makes relationships mostly pointless. People got really mad at that and like, okay, like they took it as like a kind of overly negative or pessimistic view of quote, relationships. But I think it was like truly like a well meaning attempt on my part to get people to think through like, what the project. Yes.

[Dasha]

What are you doing this for?

[Anna]

Yeah. And it's like, okay, like, I understand there are couples who like can't have children. I understand that there are gay couples. I understand they're like golden age couples. Like, there are various reasons why people couple and spend time together and love each Other.

[Dasha]

No, companionship is its own thing.

[Anna]

But my general feeling is that if you are young and healthy and heterosexual, there's no point to having a relationship like the ones you see young, healthy, heterosexual people having all the time, which is like, okay, you, like, cohabitate for five to six years. You maybe get a fur baby. The whole thing implodes in a cloud of resentment because, like, neither of you want kids. Like, there's no point to living with some dude for five years.

[Dasha]

I mean, to each their own.

[Anna]

Some people just do, like, the nobody nobody likes.

[Dasha]

Some people want to be part. Some people do like being partnered and are able to have good relationships without, like, the stress and prospect of, like, a family.

[Anna]

But it's.

[Dasha]

That's just a contemporary condition that. That's still.

[Anna]

Basically, I'm very simpatico to, like. Like, we're all like this. Like, none of us are. It's like, universally. Hunter Biden, whatever.

[Dasha]

As soon as I finish uploading every single item of clothing I own to the Ulta app, I'm gonna have a baby. I just need to get some product I need to do. I gotta get some stuff out of the way.

[Anna]

But even, like, you don't even have to. Like, people are like, oh, Anna, you're, like, on your high horse and being like, a moral. And like, you hold people who don't have children and contempt and think you're safe, superior to them. That's not true. Don't care. But, like, just. You have to have, like a. A vision or a purpose for your relationship other than being, like, glorified roommates for mad long.

[Dasha]

I mean. Yeah. That's the sack. That's, you know, it's not for everyone. But the sacrament of marriage.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Is virtuous.

[Anna]

Yeah. If you do, it's a good, healthy, nice, normal idea to do that.

[Dasha]

It's kind of. It's pretty Lindy.

[Anna]

And it's frankly weird to blow up your marriage.

[Dasha]

Well, this.

[Anna]

That was an open marriage in the first place to.

[Dasha]

Well, because it wasn't really open. It was like she probably pressed to open it because she wanted to this guy Jay, and then she got attached to Jay because women actually aren't hypergamous like Andrew Tate says. Like, women actually do pair bond. Typically with everybody pair bonds, they don't.

[Anna]

Want you to know this, but it's true. Like, literally true.

[Dasha]

I think men pair bond less than women. That's not true on a Dworkin ass tip. I think, because not. They're not having their body, like, penetrated. Maybe they have a Different. Like it's ontologically different for them to have sex. They have, they are, they want to not like. Yeah, they are able to have sex and not necessarily feel as pair bonded. Whereas like I think any. We're kind of healthy woman, you know, the Bonnie blues or whatever are exempted.

[Anna]

They're an aberration.

[Dasha]

You even if you think like, you're like chill and you don't. You're not gonna catch feelings. It's like once they hit the back walls, you're, you know, you're like, I wonder if he'll be my boyfriend and I wonder if. And all the stuff that she kind of says about how it. They're actually like, men are anxious because they think women want them to commit to them.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

But actually they only think that women think that they want. And it's like, no, no, no, that's not true.

[Anna]

Women just want you to commit to them.

[Dasha]

Women want you to commit to them.

[Anna]

To want them just want bf100 for sure. Yeah.

[Dasha]

They do not want to be in some gray zone situationship forever at all.

[Anna]

But I'm just. Why would they?

[Dasha]

Okay.

[Anna]

I'm just trying to do like a community public service, which is. I'm trying to tell young women that if a man is running game on you, if he's not committing, if he's keeping you in the gray zone, citing anxiety or trauma or whatever faggy like lived hard therapy speak. He's learned by observing you, you will have greater success by icing him than you will by being a persistent needy presence.

[Dasha]

I mean she gets at like something like this with the female pushing men withdrawing, anxious, avoidant dynamic. But she doesn't flesh anything out fully or take it. Implicate herself in any meaningful way.

[Anna]

Well, she has. Yeah. She suffers from like a terminal lack of self awareness. It's like frankly shocking.

[Dasha]

It's such a long essay too. And then. Well, the worst part. I'll read it. I'm going to.

[Anna]

I'm going to pee real quick.

[Dasha]

Okay.

[Anna]

Is there a vagrant yelling? I think so.

[Dasha]

Someone's shouting.

[Anna]

Anyway, what was the worst part?

[Dasha]

There was a lot of kind of.

[Anna]

There was a lot of like horrible.

[Dasha]

So I found it all. I. Sex in the City was one of my favorite shows, but clearly very damaging to a whole generation of women. And I'm. Now I'm watching and just like that. And to see them all now like post menopausal is. And the quality of the show is so much more like out. It feels like like someone with dementia wrote it. And there's all these, like, it's. It's a nice piece of, like, experimental television.

[Anna]

It's a fun thing to watch on an airplane. Yeah.

[Dasha]

But, yeah, she's clearly very like, Carrie Bradshaw brained.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

I've been wearing a tulle skirt that I bought on ebay that I love, but sometimes I am like, I feel I'm like Carrie Bradshaw.

[Anna]

Yeah. It's like, okay.

[Dasha]

Like, anytime I'm smoking a cigarette on the New York streets, wearing some. An outfit that's a little extra, I'm like Carrie Bradshaw. And the real thing with Ulta, the app.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Is that you can put all your shoes in it, but you can't really wear all your shoes. You're going to wear the same shoes.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

Realistically, all the time. So they should adjust for that. But anyway. Okay, back to the article. So one of the guys she goes on a date with.

[Anna]

Oh.

[Dasha]

Who she has sexual chemistry with. I forget which one this is because I just have a screenshot. But she says, he told me to slow, so it really makes my skin crawl. He told me to slow down. He needed time to get a better sense of how it works. I laid down. I lay back to murmur. Let him try stuff. And he warmed. Warmed to his own control, putting his mouth right up to mine, then pulling away when I tried to engage his tongue. I see what you are, he said, finally pinning my forearms. You're a bratty sub.

[Anna]

Amy Therese. He held himself. Amy Terese.

[Dasha]

He held himself there, just out of reach, breathing on me. I like to make you wait, he said. And then the whole thing wraps up with, like, a recall back to that part where it's like, gender relations have changed. Maybe for bad, maybe for good. Either way, they're going to make you wait. Oh, and just like that, I felt so bad.

[Anna]

That's worse than rape. It's.

[Dasha]

It's bad.

[Anna]

I would be so insulted if some guy, like, quote, made me wait during the sex act.

[Dasha]

I mean, like, he's, like, performing. I would feel worse as a man if a woman wrote about the kind of, like, the game. Trying to, you know. Oh, and that. That I didn't even screen cap.

[Anna]

He's, like, trying to buy himself some time so he can maybe get hard because he's like, not that into you.

[Dasha]

He's like, chill, chill, chill.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

I'm trying to figure out how I gotta watch porn on my phone discreetly. Gotta figure out how you work, babe. Some Lothario some. And then there's a part that I didn't even bother to screenshot because it grossed me out so bad. But she was rambling about how she has like masochistic sexual proclivity. Like she's.

[Anna]

Yeah, whatever. Welcome to being a woman. You're like automatically a bottom. Yeah, yeah. You like to be physically dominated by a man. The Hobbesian experience of being obsessed with penis.

[Dasha]

He pinned your face. Forearms down.

[Anna]

I think like words like penis and clitoris are like deliberately off putting because they should not be named ever.

[Dasha]

They're clinical.

[Anna]

Like we should never speak those words.

[Dasha]

Unless you're a doctor.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Or performing.

[Anna]

And they're like howling mutant. You have like late stage HIV lesions on your penis or clitoris. No, they're. I hate, Like I feel just. I feel like I need a rape shower. Even like saying those words on this podcast.

[Dasha]

All of it, Every description, every like descriptor she utilized when she and the other guy are listening to Weezer and laughing.

[Anna]

Yeah. And you're like, have you ever thought of the fact that if you like didn't do like the. The Daily show pod Save America, like recall, like recall, it would actually like probably go a long way to normalize male female relations. Like if you left some mystery. It's. It's like I saw a Twitter take today about how cameras have become so high res but you can see like every pixel. So like things like SNL performances or like Grammy performances just look like corny and cringe. They're like lacking in mystique. That's what happens also to the gender discourse when you constantly like do like Bart Simpson, like melting pizza slice meme moratoriums on your sexual relations in a paper of record.

[Dasha]

It's literally. It's worse than rape to like publish an article about somebody about sexes.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

It's like raping. It's worse than raping them, honestly. Obviously not like violently stranger raped, but whatever. Like gray area rape. People talk about acquaintance rape. It's acquaintance. Like diary.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Veiled as a like human interest article.

[Anna]

Well, I. The thing is like, I worry about libtards because they seem so like out of touch and not self aware, but like actually the kids are all right because like human intuition seems to be the same as always. And like, which is that these people should be avoiding. And like again, these men suck and they're weak, but they feel something instinctively. Mm.

[Dasha]

Which is that you're a bratty sub. Get over here, you bratty sub. And don't text me again. And by the way, I gotta go. And I don't even like you. Oh, are you a Masochist. I hate you, you stupid bitch. Well, this is such a type too of a woman, I feel that's like. Is the, like, divorcee, diarist, confessional writer.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

You know, who's like, ruined her life.

[Anna]

Yes. Who lacks, like, emotional restraint or personal discretion.

[Dasha]

It was like that other. I think it was in the New Yorker. It was about. They're always. There's always some woman they're trotting out who had, like, an open marriage and then she writes the same exact. The same exact thing happens every time where they have the open marriage. They start to covet another partner romantically and decide to get divorced.

[Anna]

Yeah, always.

[Dasha]

Every single time. Because they don't want the open marriage.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

They want to leave their husbands.

[Anna]

Yeah. But you know how well are there passive aggressive and can't ever accept responsibility, so they like, force the issue and like.

[Dasha]

And they have some therapist or chat GPT mediator telling them that they're valid, that their feelings are, you know, that you actually. Actually should prioritize yourself, which is like.

[Anna]

I said that you can handle this with the grace and gratitude that you're known for. When did men get so anxious about desire as the therapist and I said I didn't know. Yes, you do. My friend said it was when they were put on notice that they can't get drunk and grope us. Okay. Yeah, that's like half true. Me too. Was sort of like the final nail in the coffin for gender dynamics, but, like, who started it and why? And I like, I hate to dredge up like, the old the ogrs take.

[Dasha]

But it's like, well, she's copying to that.

[Anna]

Yeah, she, like, yeah, it's like, it is very like, as Cap put it on Twitter, it's like, very, like, watered down, like, five years too late. Like red scare takes. But like, yeah, it's like, okay, yeah, you. You conned yourself into thinking that you were responding to male aggression and hostility when you were really, like, lashing out at male passivity and indifference. And now you've made the situation worse because you're writing articles in major publications and going on T app to give men sexual credit scores.

[Dasha]

Dude, that sucks. I wouldn't want to get out there either.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

I don't want to be with any.

[Anna]

Of these studiously irreproachable male helplessness. Yeah, they. They study. They learned it from you.

[Dasha]

But it was men who dropped the ball in the first place by letting these women get too big for their bridge.

[Anna]

Yeah. By not, like, beating and raping enough.

[Dasha]

Just by they like something though, they. Ugh. I don't know how it got so bad, but I was listening to Dave Blunt and I was thinking about, you know, like he's got. I'd love to read a, like a think piece from him about how he has other. He had like everyone's got problems. Yeah. Like he's got girls who don't love him because he's obese. He's got girls who only love him for the fame.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

He's got girls who. His whole crew.

[Anna]

Like he's got whole different.

[Dasha]

Like these, like, like males and females.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Have problems.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And the one thing that's true is people will find ways to write confessional.

[Anna]

To cope about the problems by like blaming the opposite sex.

[Dasha]

But it really, it starts, you know, it starts with you. Well, if you're dating a guy who is with you while you're in your open marriage and he's non committal.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

You have to think about the part that you played.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

In seeking out someone that wanted to be with a married person.

[Anna]

She. She essentially also cops to this at some point where she's like. Yeah. The dynamic was ultimately convenient for him. Yeah. And like the date, like I get like the dating discourse itself is so toxic and it has a lot of viral potential because people love reading about things that are relatable to them or.

[Dasha]

Make them mad or make.

[Anna]

Yeah. Because they're relatable. And it's always like dating discourse is less interesting for what it says about like the gender war, the battle of the sexes and more for like what it says about like just like the general non gendered mechanics of like human psychology and social media.

[Dasha]

What passes even as discourse, I think is telling.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

There used. There was a point where there wasn't so much like confessional writing being passed over. Over as journalism by like using fake academic terminology.

[Anna]

Jargon. Yeah.

[Dasha]

To like describe terms or conditions.

[Anna]

So I'm unhappy and dissatisfied in my personal life and instead of taking action, I'm going to consult a sex theorist or sex therapist who's going to come up with some like weird pseudo academic jargon term to describe how men are naturally avoidant and non communicative in relationships.

[Dasha]

What else is new?

[Anna]

Yeah. When I could simply just try to do the opposite of what I'm used to doing.

[Dasha]

And not.

[Anna]

And be like a. My husband. Yeah. Or just look outside of my usual dating pool.

[Dasha]

I think her being a twin is very telling. I haven't done a deep dive, but that's one thing I noted. And twins are up yeah, they are.

[Anna]

Yeah. Well. And, yeah, it seems like the other twin is, like, private and well adjusted. Who cares? Yeah, but she's not. She's not like, a journalist who, like, live streams her sexual confessions.

[Dasha]

So gross.

[Anna]

So gross and, like, pathetic and dark.

[Dasha]

There was some Sex in the City.

[Anna]

There was a right wing account that, like, found a relatively flattering photo of this woman from 2023 and was like, well, okay, like, you're like a divorced single mom who's pushing 40. It's over for you. You've hit the wall.

[Dasha]

And.

[Anna]

Yeah, I don't know. It's like, not. Not true. No, no, no. But no, it's not. It's. That's. That. That's also, like, too, like, canned and performative. It's just, like, fake.

[Dasha]

It's too easy to find a picture of a female journalist.

[Anna]

Yeah, she's ugly.

[Dasha]

Of course she is.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

That's why she's writing.

[Anna]

Yes. Well, it's just that she's. It's not that she's ugly. I'm sure there's some guy who would find her, like, she's fine, totally hot and appealing. It's just she's, like, annoying and has a bad personality. And I think even in her, like, presumable aloofness, men can probably read that she's, like, needy and clingy for all the wrong reasons. Yeah, like, whatever.

[Dasha]

It's a mess.

[Anna]

It's just like, we're just gross. But it's like, yeah, okay, like, you know, like, dating. The relationships suck to some extent because, like, not even because it's, like a sexual or gender thing, but because you're, like, dealing with another person that you have to, like.

[Dasha]

Compromise for Carrie Bradshaw was the villain. You have to all re. Watch Sex in the City and see Carrie as being, like, treacherous, villainous, selfish, bad friend. Yeah, she's like, con. Like, you know, she's a great character, a great female anti hero.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

But too many females delusional who, like.

[Anna]

Find her, like, inspirational or aspirational or whatever. But it's like.

[Dasha]

Because they think they can live in a huge apartment and be a sex columnist.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Not in this economy, babe.

[Anna]

No. Gotta be a podcaster.

[Dasha]

You gotta do well. She is a podcaster.

[Anna]

And just like me. No, it's like, okay, like, obviously, it's very hard to find happiness in this life. As Hunter Biden points out, human experience is united not through love, but through pain. So wise King. Yeah, the other. When I was watching that interview, I was like, holy. Like, this is such an obvious Insight to have. I was like, oh, like the Irish curse that we speak of, like the Kennedy's, the Bidens, like just like these big Catholic Irish families where there's just like a lot of like death and tragedy and torment. The Irish curse is just intergenerational alcoholism. Just being an alcoholic. They're all alcoholics. They're like Russian people.

[Dasha]

Do we have any more alcohol?

[Anna]

Yeah, I have a White Claw.

[Dasha]

I'd love just a little more alcohol. But that's true. I mean the Russian, you know, all the great Russian novels are basically about brother, the brothers Caramels.

[Anna]

I've solved the mystery of the Irish curse. It's not supernatural, it's not a cult. It's. It's not some kind of like Gerardian thing. It's just you. All you boobs or alcohol addiction disorders.

[Dasha]

In Hunter's case, the crack.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Was electrifying.

[Anna]

Yeah. But I love how he said that alcohol is much more dangerous and fatal than all of the drugs combined, which is so true.

[Dasha]

Go.

[Anna]

And he was like, yeah, with crack cocaine, like it's like totally healthy and clean because you're burning out all the impurities.

[Dasha]

Better the healthier than cocaine.

[Anna]

Which intrigued me.

[Dasha]

Okay, I have to pee really quick.

[Anna]

Oh yeah, go on.

[Dasha]

But we can.

[Anna]

We can do a rapperoni.

[Dasha]

We'll wraparoni when I get out of the.

[Anna]

I don't think I have any more like glittering insights about this article other than that. Like, okay, you're never gonna find happiness in this life.

[Dasha]

But that's not the point.

[Anna]

But that's not the point. But the way that you approach contentment, all like sexual and gender stuff aside, is that you start treating other people as human beings.

[Dasha]

You start thinking means a self sacrifice.

[Anna]

Yeah. Compromise. People call it settling, but it's really not. And you have to just see other people again as themselves as subjective, autonomous human beings versus extras or characters in your biopic.

[Dasha]

I mean a good empath exercise.

[Anna]

I.

[Dasha]

Think is to not just see people as human beings but to sort of see them like for who they were as children.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Like at some point every person was like innocent and damaged by this fallen world. And like if you can really do that, and that's really hard to do, especially like on a day to day basis to live with, to like look at people with the kind of like, like love and empathy as you would a child. But it's like that's why it's a practice. You got it. You know, you have to like.

[Anna]

But part of that also setting boundaries when they do you wrong for sure. And when they hit you with the I've had low grade anxiety all day, you just like don't respond.

[Dasha]

It's not, yeah, he's sad or you make a joke. I mean, I've said this before, but I. People think ghosting is bad communication, but I actually think ghosting is really good communication.

[Anna]

I mean, I guess it depends on what stage of the relationship you're in. Like it's actually good and noble to ghost in the early stages, but kind of creepy and maladjusted to do it when you're like two years deep. Like, hey baby, leading a double life, go get us some cigarettes.

[Dasha]

But yeah, but early on and amongst people you aren't close or indebted to.

[Anna]

Yeah, you said this it. That is the message. When they're like, well, why couldn't they just like relay a message?

[Dasha]

They're not responding, they're gone, they'll see you in hell.

[Anna]

I don't want to defend these men because they're obviously like gross and losers personally wouldn't date them.

[Dasha]

Yeah, it's not really about the men.

[Anna]

No, it's about the like. I'm trying to like, trying to get women to like value themselves a little more and like have a little bit.

[Dasha]

More self respect and like, you know.

[Anna]

How hard it is identify what they want. Which is like impossible for women to do.

[Dasha]

But when you're in the trenches, you know, it's also like an early like possibly maybe promising. We've all been there.

[Anna]

We've all been there.

[Dasha]

We've all been like, you know, put our best judgments to the side to like scary agonize about whether some guy likes it you enough. And then in hindsight, it's all you have to ask. Name even.

[Anna]

Yeah, you have to ask yourself, like, do I even want the guy? My mom gave me a really good piece of advice maybe like 10, 15 years ago when I was like agonizing over a guy who, you know, who is like kind of like, I want to be your boyfriend, but like, I can't. Whatever, I can't commit. Like the, the, the heming and hing. She was like, well, you can have him if you want him, but do you really want him? And that really like, damn. Yeah.

[Dasha]

Yeah.

[Anna]

It blew my brain. I was like, wait, no, I. No. Well, and then. Do you have to. You should pee. But yeah, the last thing I will say is that like we've also come to this.

[Dasha]

Like I'm a masochist, so I'll hold it.

[Anna]

We've come to this, like, up stage in late capitalism where women are like, the breadwinners, which is, like, automatically for men.

[Dasha]

Yeah. That's like a realignment that has to be reckoned with that isn't being appropriately dealt with because of, like, the shift. The shift in material reality. It hasn't caught up with, like, the emotional and psychological reality. So these women who are going out on these dates and then being ghosted by these, like. I mean, how is a man gun.

[Anna]

They're not even being ghosted or whatever.

[Dasha]

They're basically being ghosted. They're being like.

[Anna]

They're, like, being slow.

[Dasha]

Ghosted. Yeah. Whatever you want to call it. They feel they're experiencing rejection and ambivalence from their chosen partners. And I'm sure that in this particular article, the men are in New York and probably, like, older and reasonably well off to have been, you know.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Even be kind of in the mix, I guess. But from a lot of men, it's like, how are you going to commit to someone if, you know you don't have anything to offer them?

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Not just materially, but emotionally in terms of, like.

[Anna]

Yeah. Life experience.

[Dasha]

And how can you respect someone who doesn't respect themselves enough to have expectations of you? So then women end up pretending like they don't have expectations and then playing these passive aggressive games.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And then everyone's just sort of disappointed.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And frustrated is what I think so.

[Anna]

True.

[Dasha]

But what do I know? I'm just happily there. No, it's hard. Relationships are really hard.

[Anna]

Yeah, they are.

[Dasha]

But I was talking to a woman recently who's getting married soon and was asking. Who I don't know very well, but was asking me about, quote, married life. And I haven't been with Riley for that long.

[Anna]

Like, they.

[Dasha]

She's been with her boyfriend.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

For so much longer.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

That I've been with.

[Anna]

Actually. You're the expert.

[Dasha]

Like, I was like, I actually, you know, I have some perspective on this specific, like, dynamic that we've embarked on.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

But in terms of, like, our. The length of our relationship, like, I don't know, you guys have probably been through way more stuff just through sheer, like, time.

[Anna]

Mm.

[Dasha]

But I'm a big advocate for getting married early.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And my advice.

[Anna]

Or, like, having a baby early, like, doing something of, like, consequence. Yeah. Consequence. Yeah.

[Dasha]

Not like, just. You said, like, being like, a glorified roommate to someone.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Indefinitely.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And being like, maybe he'll be ready. Like, you should not if it's been over a year.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

And a man does not Intend to marry or impregnate you with, like, real intent.

[Anna]

Yes.

[Dasha]

Non, ambiguously. Yes, you should leave him. And every year, month, whatever increment of time you spend with him past that is kind of on you.

[Anna]

Well, did you see that Twitter discourse of like the two gay guys who got hitched and apparently one of them was married to a woman who was his high school sweetheart for 17 years. And people were like, this is like an affront, a betrayal. How could he. It's like, well, if you're married to some dude for 17 years and you're living in apartment with fur baby, no baby on the way, and he has very obvious and marked gay face, like, you know what's up.

[Dasha]

A lot of women live in deep, deep delusion.

[Anna]

I think I'm going to be charitable and say that this is not a woman problem. This is a people problem. Most people live in a deep delusion and denial are extremely suggestible.

[Dasha]

I'd also like to say, as a notable misandra and misogynist, like, for as much as I be talking about and feeling and thinking that I hate women, our all female group chat, I really am like, women are. Every day. I'm like, women are amazing.

[Anna]

Yeah. Well, I like our female friends. Yeah.

[Dasha]

But there's so many people in that chat. I'm like, this is, you know, it's a real long. It's a real long house.

[Anna]

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. That truth.

[Dasha]

But it's the people I admire most in my life, I think are women. By.

[Anna]

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. When people hit me with the, like, Anna, you, like, hate women or just coping or whatever, it's like, all my best friends are women.

[Dasha]

Exactly.

[Anna]

Like, I don't really have. I have a lot of friends, period. But like, casual friends. I mean, that's.

[Dasha]

Yeah. No, you're stupid. I know you're friendly.

[Anna]

But like, my close friends, generally speaking, are overwhelmingly women.

[Dasha]

Of course. It just makes sense.

[Anna]

Yeah, yeah. Like, I'm not like a guy's girl.

[Dasha]

Or whatever you call it. Definitely not. And like, yeah, I. I'm de centering men. Except for my husband, who's the center of my life, but besides that. But also all girls all the time.

[Anna]

I like men. I find them like. Yeah, of course. I find them like. And frustrating, of course. But like, I don't hate. Like, I can't bring myself to hate now. I'm a boy mom now.

[Dasha]

Oh, of course not. No. Men are like, they mean well. So do women.

[Anna]

Yeah.

[Dasha]

Everyone's just so damaged, like, confused and it's Tough out there.

[Anna]

But obviously you're like, you're never going to have, like, a close, intimate, platonic relation. As close of an intimate, platonic relationship with a man as you will with a woman. Because, like, if any man is trying to be your friend, he's also trying to fudge, like, 11 times out of 10.

[Dasha]

And any man who is worth being.

[Anna]

With won't want to be your friend. No.

[Dasha]

Won't want you to have, like, some male bestie that you're confiding in. That's unusual.

[Anna]

He's gay.

[Dasha]

Unless he's gay.

[Anna]

Yeah, he's not. But even.

[Dasha]

Even then they'll be like a scheming and try and get you in the K hole and murder you and tell.

[Anna]

You to cheat and stuff.

[Dasha]

Like, gay men are not good.

[Anna]

They're like, you deserve to cheat. Yeah.

[Dasha]

They're like, y. Girl, you're, like, blacked out.

[Anna]

Women are like, you need to leave him. He's no good for you.

[Dasha]

Gay guys are like, you should black out.

[Anna]

You need to cheat. You need to go in the K hole and cheat.

[Dasha]

You can't have it all, but you can take pictures of all your clothes, every single article of clothing that you own every day. Day, every day. It's not even gonna take that long, babe.

[Anna]

Trust me.

[Dasha]

You think you gotta break it up into categories, and then once you do that.

[Anna]

Who knows?

[Dasha]

Who knows what's gonna open up for you? Once you can see all your clothes.

[Anna]

On your phone, you ain't even gonna need a man. You're gonna need a man. You got all your clothes on your damn phone.

[Dasha]

Ari should make a movie about that.

[Anna]

Yeah. You're gonna die under a pile of your clothes. New Ari Aster film dropping next summer. It's called Ulta.

[Dasha]

It's about the dark side of shopping addiction and hoarding. Anyway, we've done a long one.

[Anna]

Oh, no.

[Dasha]

You gotta go.

[Anna]

Okay, I still.

[Dasha]

I have to pee. Okay.

[Anna]

See you. We'll see you.