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- [00:00]
A
Coming up, we steel man the Iran war, then we Tin man the Iran war. We talk a lot about the big meta ruling that happened while we were on spring break. And then Camille says a bunch of anti Semitic stuff. It's super weird. Great episode coming up. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Suspension of the rules podcast. Gentlemen, quiet. Quitting is out. Leaking the fact that you're both fired is going to be how I let you go from tangle straight. I'm going to tell Fox News first, then Politico, then Axios.
- [00:45]
B
Even though we just talked about this, I had no idea where you were going.
- [00:53]
C
Direct to the White House for comment.
- [00:55]
B
Welcome back.
- [00:55]
A
Yeah, we're joining. We're joining here just as news broke at basically every news network on the planet, in cascading fashion, that Pam Bondi was being fired by Donald Trump and I think replaced with Lee Zeldin, who currently runs the epa. So I'm not totally sure how he's gonna be Attorney General, but, yeah, really? I mean, it is kind of funny that the Department of Justice denied that she was being fired to Fox News, and they're like, yeah, we're being told she's already been fired. And then, like, in which case, she's not being fired. Yeah, yeah. Then like, CNN picked it up. New York Times, whatever. It was a funny little sequence on our slack channels. But next time I have to let somebody go, that's definitely how I'm gonna do it. It's been a while. It's been a couple weeks since I've seen you guys, man. How's everybody doing?
- [01:49]
C
Indeed.
- [01:50]
A
Yeah, we had the Epstein mega episode special, which I didn't involve either of you in, so you didn't have to face any of the criticism for that. And then. And then we had spring break, which was nice. So are you guys doing all right? Is everybody. How is your limited time off? I guess doing good.
- [02:08]
C
Doing very good. Feeling good. I've been way too busy to listen to the new Kanye album, as I was telling producer John a little earlier. And I would listen, but if it got at all anti Semitic, I would stop it immediately. I want to be very clear about that. But I didn't.
- [02:22]
A
I'm back in on. You don't have to tell me. Everybody knows. Look, I put my stake in the ground. I'm in on Kanye again. Yeah. Open arms, embrace. Apology accepted.
- [02:31]
C
I haven't want this to be authentic.
- [02:33]
A
Yeah. But I will. Yeah, totally. Ari, you actually had some time off. Did you use it to do anything interesting in the week that we had away from tangle.
- [02:42]
B
Yeah, my time is my end and I don't have to answer that question. Yes, I like. We went down to Savannah. We did some ghost tours. We looked at old Civil War forts and enjoyed the Southeast for a bit. And it was really nice, the weather right until the Frisbee tournament. And I expected that the forecast would hold 60s through high 80s all weekend. And of course got there and it was low 40s and raining, and I didn't come prepared with a jacket at all. So got to do the fun improvised thing on the sidelines and fight for my life until I was able to get a parent to help me out with a spare jacket. But other than that, it's nice to be in a region of the country that has actual spring in April. We still have a little bit of snow here in Vermont.
- [03:27]
A
Did you see any ghosts while you're in Savannah?
- [03:31]
B
Such is my burden, Isaac, that I really, really want in my life to see proof and experience it, but I fear that my innate skepticism will prevent me from being able to. But we'll see. This is something, a story, an arc in my life that I tend to continue to follow up on. So far, not that I know of. But who knows? Maybe Camille's not real.
- [03:59]
A
Well, yeah, I love to talk about one of my. I have a very good friend, Harper, who's, you know, who you actually know, Ari, who's got. He's got long blonde hair and bright blue eyes and a disposition to really hate people who believe in ghosts. And so I love just talking about how he's actually a ghost. And that's why he hates when people talk about our ghosts are real.
- [04:21]
B
Because he's very, very pale.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah. He's extremely fair skinned. Yeah, it's. Yeah. So I always give him a lot of shit for that. All right, well, there's a lot of serious things going on in the world and we have limited time here with you all, so we should probably jump into them. I think primary story is still the one it was when we left, which is part of the story, which is that we are engaged in a military operation, a war in Iran, and over break. And in the last few days, the three of us have kind of been talking about what we wanted the next step in our coverage to look like. And something I kind of broached with you guys was. I don't know how I would. I don't want to be the one to classify or qualify your views on this engagement, but I would say the three of us, broadly speaking, have actually been fairly critical. I know I've been very critical of the war in Iran. And I think to varying degrees, you two have kind of followed me. Not that you're following me, but you've also gone down that same path with me on the show. And, yeah, it just occurred to me that we maybe haven't represented the best arguments in favor of the war among ourselves talking because the three of us seem skeptical as a group. And so I put the challenge out to you guys that I'd like to spend a little bit of time. Steel manning, the war, since we've done, I think, a good job articulating a lot of the criticisms of it. And then conveniently, at least in my view, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spent a lot of time in front of the cameras, I think, doing a very good job. Steel Manning the war and President Trump addressed the nation last night on Wednesday evening. We're recording this podcast Thursday afternoon, so things might change. But Trump addressed the country last night, basically laying out the case for the continued military engagement in Iran and defending a bit of what's happened and calling on our allies as well to sort of step up. We were talking a little bit in the green room before we hopped on here, and Camille expressed his organic view that he thought it was a pretty good speech for the things Trump was intending to do. I think that's ridiculous, but I'm curious to hear more. So I think maybe we could start a little bit there.
- [06:40]
B
I mean, sanewash this for us, buddy.
- [06:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. Come on. I think here's what I thought about the speech and then I'll pass it to you, Camille, first. Cause I'm curious to hear about your view. And I am going to do this through the lens of Steel Manning, because I think I've made my own personal view here pretty clear. I think that Trump said all the important things to get anybody who is on the fence about this on his side of the fence. And the important things are Iran is a major sponsor of state terrorism. They were close to a nuclear bomb or to the capabilities to get a nuke. He said that they were close to being able to fire missiles into the United States, which was a lie. That's not true. There's no intelligence that suggests that. But I think that is the kind of thing that would push Americans to be very fearful about the situation we're in. And that many American presidents. And this is true. This actually isn't me. STEEL Manning. This is true. Have talked about this option and doing something, and none of them have ever done this. And Trump is the first president, for better or for worse, we'll find out 6 months, 12 months, 5 years down the road to take this step and to actually confront them militarily, kinetically, as the lingo is these days, and really attack them and try and destroy their capabilities as a military power. So I thought that was the right approach. I think setting a timeline was a ballsy move. I don't know if that's gonna pan out well for him to say to everybody this is two or three weeks away from being wrapped up, but I guess he has to do that cuz he recognizes the country's getting impatient. And I think he had a really good point about the other major conflicts the United States has engaged in and how long they've lasted. And putting this in context, I thought that was really smart. You know, it was performative for sure. But he went through the Vietnam war, Iraq war, eight years, and we've been at this for 32 days and everybody's pretending this is the next major quagmire when it could be over in two or three weeks and we're talking about a two month conflict. So I thought those things were all pretty strong and I thought that was a pretty good way to sell the public on this, even with higher gas prices and the deaths of 13American soldiers so far. So, Camille, tell me a little bit about what you saw and maybe if there are places you'd agree or add on to that assessment.
- [09:30]
C
I think I agree with pretty much every one of the points you made, especially if we're giving this the most generous read and really trying to steel, man, the position the President is taking here. And I'm going to resist the overwhelming urge to try and qualify any of this with things that you ought to know that I think here and I might not be able to resist completely. So if I spontaneously say something along the lines of it's really important that the American people actually support the wars that we're getting into and we should abide by the Constitution. That being said, you know, forgive me if I indulge just a little bit, but in general Isaac, I think you hit all of the major points. The President opens with a pretty tight, concise explanation of the things that have been achieved here. Decimated their military, the terrorist leaders are dead, the Navy is gone, the Air Force has been obliterated, as he says over and over again routinely for him. No one has ever seen anything like this before. It was a tight speech, 20 odd minutes. It felt pretty controlled. Whoever Wrote this was smart to get what you highlighted as well, the contrasting with prior conflicts. He didn't apologize for the fact that he's gotten Americans into another war. He didn't use that word. He did mention, I think warfare once. He didn't call it an excursion in this context, but it felt like again, a deliberate choice to try and evade that. So again, rhetorically, a pretty strong presentation. And the bit that I did think was perhaps the most important was to put this into context. Iran has killed many Americans. Iran has been an advocated, an avowed enemy of the United States for a very, very long time. I think the president said 49 years. For the most part, the president has a proclivity to overstate things. According again, be generous and steel man. And I think at one point he said that Iran had killed like 40,000 of their own people, which that is the high end of any estimate that I've heard for their misdeeds in recent weeks. I think the number could be closer to 2,000, but still bad, not 40,000. So perhaps a bit of a miss there, but still more than directionally correct. They have been a bad actor. And for 49 years, according to what the President said last night, no one else has done anything about it and he's done something about it. And if I'm going to again, be my most generous, the President is doing all of this knowing that it is deeply unpopular with the American people, knowing that it has divided the people who even supported him the most. MAGA people are still die hard for it, whatever that means. But this has been a choice of his. And I think he did a pretty capable job of explaining and defending that choice last night, again in a controlled way. And for a president who can give you a two hour speech when he's ready to, that is anything but controlled. This was the President at his most disciplined.
- [12:37]
B
I mean, do you want me to steel man this? I could steel man a different aspect of the war here, but I feel compelled to kind of probe right now.
- [12:46]
A
No, I mean, I'd like to add actually, I mean, I think another element of this too, Camille, that Trump sort of nodded to in the speech that is really important and that we have not properly represented here is the day after, like the world after. You know, he said when we're done here, our Middle east partners will be safer from attacks by Iran and the United States won't have to worry about a nuclear Iran for years or decades to come. And I think that's a potentially realistic outcome that is hard to see right now, because the Middle east is in turmoil, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Oman and all these countries that have been living in relative peace are watching missiles drop. Israel is being bombarded in a way it really hasn't been because Iran is throwing everything they have at them. Our US Bases are being bombarded. It's dangerous now. And I think because it's dangerous now, it's easy to say, look how much worse things are now than they were a month ago. We have a tangle. Regular reader whose first name is Ere, as I'll say, who's a, you know, I'd consider a friend now. I've met him in person. He's come to some tango events, so we keep in touch. And he was sort of coming at me on Twitter because he was like, look, you. You haven't really represented the perspective of whether things are going to be worse in six months or a year than they were a month ago. You're comparing today to a month ago, which is fine, but you have to at least acknowledge that, like, on the other side of this, things could be a lot better than they were, you know, and they could also be worse. Yeah, of course, my position is that I think we are heading towards a situation where they're going to be worse, but I think it is plausible. And I don't think I've given enough credence to the idea that things could be better in six months. You know, if. If Iran really does tuck its tail and it really is seriously diminished from, you know, a naval air Force perspective, if we do find ways to, you know, take the money that is flowing to its proxy groups and make it harder we, you know, destroy those proxy groups as well, that would provide more stability in the Middle East. There is a world where the Gulf countries who are being, you know, thrown into crisis right now by Iran's retaliation at them for something we did with Israel, that those Gulf states move closer to us and Israel, and that we see these Middle east alliances form that bring stability and free trade and commerce to the region, that. That just, like, engenders this more unified, you know, force, I guess, throughout the Middle East. I do think that's possible. And I think it's easy to not look for or see that possibility. And I don't think I've been looking forward to seeing that possibility because I've been just sort of distraught about the mixed messaging and the things that I view as really, like, misleading and contradictory. And there's a lot of pain right now in the current present day. So I Thought it was smart of Trump. And I think it's reasonable for Trump to say we're going to come out of this better, even though things are tough right now. And I don't personally think that's going to happen, but. But it's not like it's impossible. I think there's a reasonable chance that we do land there in the end, and that's probably an important perspective to represent more clearly in some of our discussions about it. Go ahead, Ari. Now you can do your probing.
- [16:24]
B
Yeah, I'll probe here. So, on the aspects of the speech that you. You guys were listing as being strong, before I get into what I think is a strong case for the war, just focusing here on the speech, I think Trump was describing or declaring victory in a lot of aspects of ongoing actions that felt kind of hard to qualify. Like, I don't know how you could square the fact that we have completely destroyed them, but we're still fighting how. We could say we've destroyed their nuclear program, but we need to continue so we can destroy it. We could say we have naval dominance, but they still control the Strait of Hormuz. Thus, we have to consider taking Carg Island. Even though we have the oil, but we have to take it. There's an amount of wanting to have, I guess, having your oil and drink it, too. It doesn't really make sense the way that it's being explained. And in that way, it's just been more of the same, that we are crushing them. We're bombing Iran and we have incredible field superiority. We know that. But also, what are the goals, what are we accomplishing and when do we declare success and how do we determine it? If you came into the speech looking to get any clarity on that and you got instead a list of wars that have lasted longer, I don't really see that as being something that is convincing to most people. I also think qualifying this as, hey, World War II and World War I took longer for us. Completely different reasons. And to compare your, like, your current war to Vietnam is maybe never a great idea.
- [18:08]
C
Not great.
- [18:08]
A
Yeah, those are my.
- [18:11]
C
I think you're missing the point of the exercise, Hari.
- [18:13]
B
But, yes, yes, I get it, but I.
- [18:16]
A
We fully moved out.
- [18:17]
B
Every steel man needs to be. Needs its Lex Luthor.
- [18:20]
A
Yeah, no, I. I mean, to give a direct flavor, I posted my immediate reaction to the speech on X was like, if it's so easy to take the straight, why don't we take it? If we have so much more oil, more than we ever need, why are Gas prices so high. If our goals are essentially achieved, why do we need another two to three weeks of bombing saying nothing of the fact that he threatened war crimes on national tv, saying he'd bomb their electrical generation plants? It's just nonsensical, I agree, I guess, to sort of, again, pivot back to the steel manning. You know, he didn't say, our objectives are achieved. He didn't go, mission accomplished. He said, we're close. We need a little bit more time. Here is how long all these other conflicts took. It's been 32 days. We need a little bit of patience. Like, we're there. We've achieved a tremendous amount of things, and we're getting close. And to be fair to them, again, they have done things like, he said, we've destroyed their navy, but he did not say we destroyed their Air Force. He said, we're close to accomplishing the goal of destroying the Air Force. So, like, in their view, they. They are trying to give, I think, some sort of honest assessment where it's not like he's saying, we've checked all these things off the list. He even in just comparing two goals like that that are relatively related, he's willing to go out on a limb and say one is done and the other is not done, but it's close. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the last week has, funnily enough, been saying, our objectives have always been clear. It's these four things. None of those four things included permanently destroying their nuclear capabilities, which today he added. The top line four thing. Yeah, yeah, it's like the top line item. Also, I'm like, wait, that one wasn't there yesterday. Which, like, is just emblematic of the things that have been frustrating me. But, like, you know, they are saying, here are our goals that we've been saying the whole time that we invented a week ago. But, like, we are accomplishing one and maybe not the other. And I think that feels reasonable and fair and is clear and direct and is something the American people. People can gauge them on. So I don't begrudge them for that. Though I do agree there's definitely some inconsistency in terms of the success and failure.
- [20:54]
C
Briefly. I mean, I think, yes. Ari, of course, also think about the audience he is most addressing here. It's like persuadable conservatives who. He needs to get back onside. And those people have been hearing all of this stuff about boots on the ground, about an engagement that's going to potentially go on for months, about a steady drumbeat of bad news and commentary insisting this is going so badly, nothing is working here. They needed to change the temperature a little bit to have a different narrative coming from the president, something that's confident and optimistic and casting things in the best light. And I also think it is fair to draw a serious distinction between Iran's ability to launch sophisticated munitions that can travel much further than anyone anticipated and do huge damage, versus their ability to persistently build these kind of smaller, annoying, and potentially deadly but far less cataclysmic things like these drones that they've been crashing into their neighbors. And one thing we haven't mentioned specifically is him calling attention to the fact that they have proven themselves throughout this conflict, that to be exactly the sort of bad actor that you don't want to have nuclear weapons lashing out at all of their partners, the people who are on side with them doing the engagement with the United States, trying to bring this conflict to a close. They're attacking civilian centers, hotels, tourist destinations. There's something about it that is uniquely obscene that the critics of this conflict are less than likely to highlight. And again, if they're going to make a case and if we're going to score it for kind of political rhetoric and deafness, yes, you try to cast the best version of the story you can. You say things that, upon further scrutiny, seem utterly ridiculous. You don't want to mention Vietnam in this context and say, hey, at least it's not Vietnam. But. But if you're gonna do it, this is how you do it. And with this particular administration, and again, with the just unbelievably bad messaging strategies, this is about the best you can expect. This is the administration that has spent months, not so long ago promoting a campaign to take Greenland. The thought experiment I ran earlier today talking to a collaborator was imagine if they'd spent all that time talking about Greenland, trying to get Western allies and other partners on board with a program to do something meaningful about the threat posed by Iran. I think we'd be having a very different conversation right now. And I think rather than obliterating Western alliances and having everyone wonder if next week the United States is perhaps going to withdraw from NATO, we'd be in a situation where he doesn't have to try to shame people to do something about opening the straits. They might already be engaged. So it's a rather difficult situation to actually steel man. Things could go very badly. But, you know, this is the difficult task that was assigned to me, so I'm gonna try to do it.
- [24:19]
B
Let Me pivot a little bit from that. Cause I've been probing, but I haven't been strengthening. So I think we focused a lot on the speech here, and the speech is one thing and the situation on the ground is another. And I think it was hard to kind of see the reasons in the beginning for this war, especially because the messaging was pretty bad in the beginning, and it has been inconsistent, as we've talked about. But if I were to kind of spin the question a little bit, I would say, okay, well, we're here now, the war is happening, so what would you want to do? Does it make sense for the US to just say, we're done now? This. That would be kind of awkward timing. So isn't the best case for the US in terms of its current engagements in Iran to be pushed forward to the point where you do have complete supremacy? You can be able to go in and ensure that the nuclear program is completely dismantled, and you have a partner in Israel that can help ensure regime change, and you want to try to support the battlefield until there's. Until they're in that situation where they're able to do it. That kind of makes sense to me. And I think if you try to do that in a way where you can avoid having some permanent peacekeeping force on the ground, any kind of boots on the ground, that's a huge win. I don't know if that's going to happen, but the best argument to me at this point is there's a better case for continuing as of today, where we are today, than there is to stop at this moment.
- [25:46]
A
Yeah, that's a good and unconsidered point for me, too. I mean, the sort of pulling out and leaving things as they are and saying to England and France and Germany, like, all right, go get the straight of Hormoz.
- [26:01]
B
Yeah, we helped.
- [26:02]
A
Yeah. Did anybody. The Hormose thing, did you guys get that? Oh, man. Well, I don't want to. Yeah, yeah. It's just. Yeah. The Brooklyn Island Foreign. We'll be right back after this. Quick break. All right. All right. Well, related to the Iran war, we wanted to introduce one of the new segments that I think we're going to start playing with a little bit on the show, which is conveniently drawn from the namesake of we're going to suspend the rules for a minute. This is a place where I think we try and have some reasonable balance attached to reality, debate and discourse about politics and, you know, respectfully disagree with each other when the time is right. And we thought it'd Be fun to kind of suspend the rules every now and then and not do that. So, Ari, do you want to introduce the segment and what we're going to do briefly for this exercise?
- [27:06]
B
It would be my pleasure. So we're suspending the rules, which means nothing that you say can or will be used against you in the court of public opinion. And that's a pinky promise from our audience. I'm gonna pose to you guys a series of questions or series of prompts under the heading of Tin manning the war. So we were just steel manning what we thought were the best reasons or the best reads on the situation. Now we're gonna put on our tinfoil hats. I'm gonna read you six tinfoil hatted conspiracy theories for 10 men, and you're gonna rate them from one to 10, one being not plausible at all and 10 being. I think that's actually maybe true and I could agree with it, or I do believe it even. Maybe we could turn the scale up to 11 and you can tell me under the suspended rules section. I believe that. I think that is true.
- [27:57]
C
Let's remember that threshold, everyone at home. Ten does not mean I agree.
- [28:01]
B
It means
- [28:03]
A
sure, yeah, maybe, but 11.
- [28:05]
C
11 is. I'm.
- [28:06]
A
I'm a lunatic.
- [28:06]
C
Yeah, I've actually.
- [28:08]
B
11.
- [28:09]
C
Yeah.
- [28:09]
B
So we're suspending the rules. Here's your first 10, man.
- [28:12]
C
Okay.
- [28:13]
B
Real reasons. The real reasons, they don't want you to know why the US Is at war with Iran.
- [28:22]
C
John needs to drop in some Alex Jones clips right here. Okay.
- [28:26]
A
Yeah.
- [28:27]
B
Oh, man. Yeah, I. Resisting the urge to do an impression. I'm good at resisting urges. For now. So the real reason is that Israel is calling the shots and they are pressuring Trump into it. Netanyahu has been in Trump's ear the whole time. Israel very clearly wanted this war. They have more stakes. They're a neighbor. They could be under direct threat if Iran gets a nuclear deterrent. And they know it. And they have the relationship, they're pulling the strings with aipac. They have the whole apparatus in Congress to keep them silent on the sidelines. And they're sending the drumbeat and Trump's marching to it. What do you think?
- [29:08]
A
I'll go first here. I give this like a four. And the simple reason is well built theory, because a lot of the things you just said are true about Israel wanting this and about Israel, you, you know, having it out to fight this war for a long time. I think this is the war that they've been wanting to fight. But like the theory is they couldn't get Obama to do this, but they got Trump to roll over. They couldn't magically direct Obama, but they're getting Trump to do whatever they want. Seems absurd to me. Also, it just ignores the fact that the US Is benefiting greatly from Iran, from Israel, excuse me, being involved in the war. And if anything, I think we're kind of leading. But yeah, I'd give that maybe a 4 or 5.
- [29:58]
C
And again, just going back to this very unusual 1 to 11 scale, well built theory. I get exactly what you mean by that, Isaac. And I think the history of Jewish conspiracy theories is something that makes this particularly robust and gives it unique legs in this moment. So I might even rate it higher on that point. And I would give it some additional points as well because you didn't mention Epstein and a number of other things that could also be included in this version of the plot. If you want to include those things, I will adjust accordingly. But the more moderate version of the Jews really did make him do it just based on that infrastructure. Okay, I'll give you a six or a seven. Sure. But it's also possible that there are aligned interests which you didn't exclude. You didn't say he was fooled or duped. He just said they are the power that is motivating him to do this, which presumes that. But for that they probably wouldn't have, but doesn't presume that, that there aren't aligned interests. So again, sure, a seven.
- [31:12]
A
Wow. You're disgusting. You disgust me.
- [31:15]
B
I heard the capital E in the bay there.
- [31:17]
C
I hate this game. I wanted to give it a one, but I'm trying to play along.
- [31:21]
A
All right, all right, next up, Ari, next up.
- [31:23]
B
Yeah, next up. Trump is not Israel's puppet, he's Raytheon's puppet. He's just being pressured into this by big defense and all the war hawks secretly in the government.
- [31:36]
C
Do I go first here or you?
- [31:39]
A
I. Dude, I'm. I'm like eight Trumpies. Like, there's a motivation here that a bunch of American businessmen who surround Trump are going to make money off the war. I think that's. I'm not an 11, but I'm an 8 on that. Way more plausible to me than the Israel stuff. Sorry, just definitely, like if, yeah, yes, I would, I would rate that one fairly high. As, as far as my tinfoil hat conspiracy mind goes.
- [32:09]
C
Hmm. I'm going to go lower. I'm going to go around a three or a four. And part of the reason is precisely what we were talking about before. Of course, the military industrial process is a whole thing or complex, excuse me, is a whole thing. And they've been at this and we have to be very careful. Has there ever been a Pentagon that has done more to disrupt the procurement processes and to introduce new startups into the ecosystem of defense contracting than the Trump administration? I'm not sure. The reality is that it benefits Raytheon and some of the incumbents, but it also benefits a lot of the smaller players like Enduro. They've been trying to innovate and, and trying, I think, in a lot of respects, unsuccessfully, to save money and cut costs and be more efficient and build a more dynamic military that can do things. They put pressure on the suppliers to do things as well. Are they making a lot of money? Are they benefiting them? Undoubtedly, yes, that's right. So I'm not gonna score this a zero. But again, relative to the well worn, time honored tradition of blaming the Jews for things like blaming corporate stuff.
- [33:21]
B
Just take that exit ramp. Nice. Okay, so this one's not plausible because there are military startups that are also profiting. Never mind what's your number comes down
- [33:29]
C
and it's taking their money away. Taking their money away. So my number is going to be like a, I don't know, like a soft four.
- [33:35]
B
Soft, soft four. All right, soft four.
- [33:38]
C
And just saying.
- [33:38]
B
Well, here's the next pitch. The next pitch is that this is Trump's doing and it's all Obama derangement syndrome in his head. He hated the Iran deal. Obama couldn't get it done. He's going to go and eat his lunch for him. Show him what a real president does. Hmm.
- [33:54]
A
Man, I kind of like that one too. I mean, I think the Obama derangement syndrome is honestly very much behind tearing up the jcpoa. I think Trump never would have accepted a deal that Barack Obama negotiated because he will just organically view that as a bad deal. Launching a war in Iran. I think less connected. But I like the invocation of Trump's burning hatred that I think is less discussed than it should be for Obama. And just the general framework of like, anything Obama did is bad and I'm going to undo it. So I'll give it like a six on our scale, I think.
- [34:40]
C
I mean, is this the last one, Ari?
- [34:43]
B
No, I have two more for you.
- [34:46]
C
Well, I don't wanna preempt anything that you might get ready to say, but I think given how much President Trump is obsessed with his legacy, and I mean, you've saw the Announcement with respect to the presidential library, which looks like something out of Star Trek, and how
- [35:03]
B
we pivot every news conference to the ballroom.
- [35:06]
C
Yes, the ballroom, his various prizes. He's renaming everything. He wants to put his name on the money. He is thinking about his legacy, and he is thinking about how he were ranked and remembered relative to Barack Obama and others. But certainly Barack Obama, one of the most celebrated presidents of his lifetime. I think that's actually pretty strong. And at a minimum, that as a motivator for. Yeah, let's do something ambitious and potentially risky in the Middle East. Obama wouldn't do it. I will. Eight. Eight. I'll go higher. Nine. No, I'll go higher.
- [35:45]
A
Wow.
- [35:47]
B
Ten.
- [35:49]
C
That's pretty strong.
- [35:50]
B
That's pretty strong.
- [35:51]
A
All right. I love it. Nice. I wasn't sure if we'd get.
- [35:55]
B
So that's not as high as possible, but. Wow.
- [35:56]
C
I'm not giving it an 11. Possible.
- [35:59]
A
Okay.
- [36:00]
B
Okay. Second to last one. The penultimate one here. Oh, this is all just a distraction from the Epstein files, period. Exclamation point.
- [36:12]
A
Yeah. One, two. I hate that theory. I'm so tired of that theory. I hate it. Just like I don't think Trump thinks about the Epstein files more than once a week, is my belief. I think he maybe did, like, three months ago when it was dominating the news, but I just. Yeah, I don't think it is at all involved. Even as a conspiracy theory. I think it's weak, so I rate that low.
- [36:44]
C
I know I've been attacked on Reddit and in other contexts for being deeply skeptical of the Epstein thing, but I couldn't be more exhausted with the whole thing. I would give it a zero, but I want to stay within the confines of the rules. So one as well.
- [36:57]
B
Okay. I just want to note I've been sort of keeping a running tally, and you two are pretty even in your sum. So I think you are debt tied right now at how much you're willing to believe these theories, which is interesting
- [37:10]
A
how conspiratorial we are.
- [37:12]
C
Yeah, I did get to a 10. I'm just saying.
- [37:14]
B
But, yeah, maybe it's true, I think. Yeah, that actually did bump you up. So, yeah, you're still in the lead then. So. Last one. This is our last conspiracy theory.
- [37:22]
C
Okay.
- [37:23]
B
We're starting a war in Iran so that Trump has an excuse to cancel the midterm election.
- [37:29]
C
Ooh,
- [37:32]
B
you two just made the same face.
- [37:34]
A
Wow.
- [37:34]
C
It's my conspiracy.
- [37:36]
B
There's a tangent.
- [37:38]
A
Yeah, I'd like also a one or a two, but I really Like a tangential conspiracy theory, which is this is tied to the midterms in the sense that maybe Trump thought this huge show of force would actually improve his approval ratings because sometimes war is really good for the popularity of presidents. So I don't think he's angling this war for some sort of martial law. Shut down the midterms. I think if he wants to do that, he'll find other means, like deploying National Guard troops. So I rate it low, which is unfortunate because it's close to being a good conspiracy that I maybe would give like an 8, 9 or 10, which is this was all a ploy for him to get a better approval rating because he thought the show of force would be good for his president or unify the country somehow, which obviously has not happened.
- [38:32]
C
I refer back to my legacy remarks. I don't think he's thinking about the election at all in the context of this conflict, but if he is, I think you're right. He imagined another quick win, but he's also willing to take the risk here and knows that it's not about how well he's remembered in the short run, it's about how well he's remembered afterwards.
- [38:52]
A
So.
- [38:53]
C
So I'm gonna rate that one pretty low and go back to like a maybe a two or a three. I just don't think that's credible even after January 6th.
- [39:01]
B
Okay. All right, well, thank you, boys. We're gonna put the rules back in session now.
- [39:06]
A
Great segment.
- [39:07]
B
All right, get out of this segment. Thanks for playing along.
- [39:10]
A
Well, yeah, well done. That was a good. That was a good exercise and good examples, too. I think those are like, pretty tied to the real world, foreign. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, we're going to jump into, I think, our second big story that we decided we want to talk about as a group today, which was another big thing that happened while we were on break that I actually think the media has not really paid nearly enough attention to or spoken about enough. And so when Camille suggested this in our pre production call where we talk about what we're going to chat about on the show, I think Ari and I both kind of jumped out of our seats at the possibility to dig in. And that is the meta YouTube court rulings that we got over the spring break over tangle spring break that I think really sort of should have been a bigger deal in terms of how they might have shaken up some of the Internet world that we all operate in constantly. So I'm going to set the Table here by just reading the lead of a New York Times article about one of the rulings that I think is the one we should probably focus on the most, which is this. The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and, and that led to her mental health distress. A jury found on Wednesday a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users. Well, being tons of stuff here, I mean, the smartphone theory of everything, the free speech infringement questions, you know, like the idea of screen time of unlimited scroll is kind of an addictive substance. I'm going to maybe defer to you, Camille. To start, I'm interested. What about this story kind of captured your imagination and maybe what are some of the threads here that you want to pull at? Because I like you think that this is a really, really big, important story and it touches kind of all facets of our life that maybe These companies Meta, YouTube, social media companies broadly are going to be held more accountable for some of the things that happen to the users who operate on their platform. And I'm actually still a little unsure about whether it's good or bad or what the sort of unexpected ramifications of it might be. Yeah, I'm wondering maybe I'll start with just like what has sort of captured you about some of these rulings and why you feel they're important enough to chat about here?
- [41:58]
C
Well, I mean, just to go into the dynamics of this story a little bit more, I mean, these are, these are companies that are hugely consequential from an economic standpoint. They have this prominent persistent influence in our everyday lives. We are using them all the time. In fact, you may be using them right now, consuming this content, watching what we're doing on YouTube. So they're ubiquitous in that way, but they also interact with our rights. We can talk about the civil liberties angles here, but most importantly and most profoundly are these questions about the implications for posterity. And I find all of those things super interesting and important and certainly to the extent we're curtailing their ability to engage in commerce and deliver products and services to us on account of our fears about what they're doing, that has huge implications for potential economic growth and innovation, not to mention those free speech implications. So I think all of that is very interesting. And I think what makes me uniquely interested here isn't just the fact that I have a kind of a long established relationship with kind of free rights, free speech advocacy and civil liberties. It's also the Fact that I have personally gone in a lot of different directions on this issue. I began deeply skeptical of a lot of the reporting and the studies that were suggesting that there was this tangible risk related to screen time. And after looking at and talking to Jonathan Haidt and others about this, I became a little bit more concerned about this. And it's possible that that just kind of coincided with me becoming a dad and developing a different kind of a concern. And even at home we barely let our kids watch things or interact with their iPads. But having been a dad for a little while and looking at the studies a bit more, what I really do think I'm seeing more and more of is a really age old habit where we tend to get very concerned about the exotic nature of new technologies and that that fear above all else becomes the thing that kind of creates these expectations that the narratives are definitely true. And one has to remember that even the academic research is actually conducted by humans. And in those contexts there are all sorts of important dynamics that have to be taken into account. There is a publication bias amongst academics where you're looking for a particular kind of result and when you don't get it, that paper doesn't get published. There's P hacking that takes place. And I won't try to explain that now because I don't want this to become a statistics course. But I do have a background in economics so we can talk about that another time. And again, just a plethora of other dynamics that complicate the situation enormously. So I do suspect that we will continue to fight over this and there will be further court wrangling. But I just think, as you mentioned, this has been under discussed, not completely ignored, but under discussed in terms of its profoundness and potential consequence. And there are other elements of it that I think we should also get into. I, for example, did not mention and you didn't mention there because there have been other cases about it, the concerns about AI in particular and say AI psychosis and the fact that there have been these very prominent stories about people killing themselves, having engaged with these products. And even a recent study from MIT that seems to demonstrate a tangible relationship between engaging with these tools, their capacity for sycophancy and what that does to people. I remain open to the possibility that that is a very real tangible concern. But it's also early and the risk to the extent it's there is emerging and the trend is something that we need to be observant of. But I also think we just have to be very cautious about the way we engage here. And I worry a bit about the kind of celebratory we finally got them sentiment.
- [46:06]
A
Yeah.
- [46:06]
C
Because we could be wrong.
- [46:08]
A
Yeah, no, and I would say, like the first of all, to me, the central point of this story is that a Court is saying YouTube and Meta's platform harm this person and we are defining some kind of tangible harm. And other people who are going to obviously start bringing forward these lawsuits are now going to have this jurisprudence to point to and say, this is an established standard and this thing happened to me too, and I want my money. And that's going to have really big implications for the industry. So I actually want to talk here. I mean, the AI stuff is really fascinating to me, but I actually want to talk a little bit about the harm question here and sort of what you were just poking at Camille, observing with your own family and sort of waffling, I would say. I am an early fan and reader of Jonathan Heights. Before it was like, before he was super famous and his book was everywhere. And I subscribe basically wholesale to the smartphone theory of everything. Up until a few months ago when I think I first started really, I don't know, not doubting, but just investigating that viewpoint for myself and thinking like, you know, I make a lot of assumptions and I'm pretty rash about the things that I attribute to being screen addiction and screen time. And one of the things that I found when doing that analysis is the reality is definitely way more complicated than the smartphone theory of everything people want it to be. Even studying this problem seems to be an incredibly fraught issue. Just the relationship between a person's mental well being and their screen time use is. We talk about it almost always in the American context. But Derek Thompson has been really great on this, writing about the fact that all over the world, in places like Europe and South Asia, the smartphone proliferation has been happening, Screen time proliferation has been happening, but suicide rates have been going down, rates of anxiety have been going down, while in the United States they've been skyrocketing. So what's happening here? Like what. What's specific about the American experience paired with the cell phone that's kind of driving people? And there are these very particular things about American culture, like people using their phones and their social media accounts to talk incessantly about their own anxiety and their own, you know, quirks and idiosyncrasities and, you know, all these things that have sort of become part of the kind of the online culture. Like this idea that, you know, we're all neurodivergent in different ways. And what's your tic? What's your anxiety? I'm ADHD diagnosed and all this stuff like these things have really permeated the culture and that it's not just about logging on Instagram and seeing people with better lives than you or you know, having young teenage girls see beautiful women who are thin and, you know, whatever and then like trying to. That's the new standard and they're all super exposed to it. It's like these are these very specific things that exist in American culture that are then being paired with the screen time, the media, the news stuff, how divided our country is, how bad everything is all the time in the news. That is something that is unique in a lot of ways to the American political experience. And when the cell phone gets to throw gas on it, then it becomes this really anxiety inducing thing. And I think that's a pretty interesting nuanced view. That is probably not the view I would have espoused even six months ago. But after investigating this a little bit more and sort of questioning my own priors, I'm starting to land there. And so when this case came down, I have to say when this ruling came down, I viewed it a little more skeptically than I might have before, which was just like, what, what does this mean? Like this is now us saying that anybody who uses these tools, these platforms and can show some sort of harm that's associated with the platform use. Even if like 9 out of 10 people use the platform and get some good out of it, the people who have the harm experience can now tie it directly to the platform, sue them and get compensated. It feels like a big Pandora's box open. I'm sure there's a ton, you know, millions of other examples where we accept that as the norm, but I'm less certain maybe than I was before about whether YouTube, Facebook, Instagram are really the places that are driving the descent into anxiety and self harm and all this stuff. As much as it might just be the culture that we have here in the west and America and the Anglosphere that is the core key ingredient, you know, so I've been thinking about that a lot in the context of this court case.
- [51:16]
B
It just, I didn't really experience an evolution with it as much as I've been experiencing a feeling of sharpening towards clarity about why rulings like this make me uncomfortable. I'm really like skeptical about the benefits on net of a lot of the technology we have. When I have to do something like check into a hotel room with a smartphone. I get frustrated. It annoys me. Like unlocking cars with the phone. I don't like it. Like I'd rather have something physical. That's just my predilection. And I also know that I'm kind of prone to reaching for the phone when I feel like I'm bored. And I don't want to push through those 20 seconds of being unboxing, comfortable and bored, figuring out something that's more enjoyable and better for me. I like a lot of people, I can acknowledge that that's a weakness and the phone is sort of a predator on that weakness. But this ruling and rulings like it that make the phone and specifically features of technologies that are on the phone equatable to things like cigarettes as harms. It's just it, it, it is almost factually incorrect, like borderline. So I think we can look at something and where we see these studies like Camille and Isaac were talking about of these harms that we can observe where people who are, maybe they're already depressed, maybe they're not. But even if so if you're using a phone and you're using infinite scroll features, you're staying locked in and the blue light is on your face from 11 till 3 telling you about how all of your anxieties and self doubts could be real and reaffirmed and you're reading posts that are on an infinite scroll app. That's kind of like there's several levels to that. And most importantly, we're talking about population level statistics that affect some people in some cultures more than others. It is just categorically different than consuming something like a drug where if you smoke cigarettes that has a physical chemical effect on everybody, it like the magnitude will be different, the use rate will change. But it's not as if, you know, you could be one of those people who smokes cigarettes and it's not bad for you maybe like there's no such thing. So in this case, somebody can have a healthy relationship with a smartphone. And how do how they use Instagram, they can have timers for their screen use. I'm on Instagram, I would say three minutes a month. Like it's not that hard if you are already off of it to stay off of it, I think. But there are other things. Twitter. I've been uncomfortable. Sorry.
- [54:09]
A
I have a question. Is that true about this cigarettes comparison though? I mean like somebody could try cigarettes and not get addicted to them and somebody could smoke cigarettes two packs a day and never.
- [54:19]
B
Yeah, but you're still consuming, like, tar and nicotine that's bad for your lungs. These are like carcinogenic chemicals that you're consuming. It's a matter of your ability. But that is where the analogy holds, is for some people you can have a developmental addiction to it, and other people you don't. And the addiction will accentuate those harms. But it's not as if, like that that is the problem. The problem is the addiction. If using a smartphone, every time you touch the button, you got like a burst of some small amount of gamma radiation, there is a baseline harm that is obvious and, like, measurable, and then the addiction makes it worse. But there's no similar component here. And that's something that we need different rules and laws to address it then, like, we can't use the same tool for this job if we want to regulate and address these things. I think I'm actually in favor of that. Maybe not at the federal level. I think school districts appropriately. Camille and I have argued about that state level laws make sense. But to use a similar vehicle, civil lawsuit demonstrating harm it feels, it just seems almost objectively wrong to me.
- [55:31]
C
I think the industry's behavior with respect to the tobacco comparison is important too. I mean, the actual insidious way that the industry tried to suppress certain kinds of research and findings is important to acknowledge. And relatedly, I suppose here the pronounced concern that has exist among the citizenry with respect to how these technologies work and what they might be doing to our children has helped to discipline the behavior of some of these companies in ways that have almost certainly made things better. Like, your YouTube will alert you by default now if in fact you're spending too much time or, you know, some amount of time on the phone and even give you some ability to adjust that. So there are ways in which, and this is not really equivalent to, you know, filters being put onto cigarettes, these are meaningful tools that I think could be leveraged in order to make people's lives better and improve them. And there are things that we should continue to surveil. So I want to be very clear and say I am still concerned about this. I still don't let my daughter just run off with an iPad. But I do think that's the important distinction. I shared that story about the Chromebooks in public schools that the New York Times ran maybe today or yesterday. It was the 29th, actually. And reading it, I think when I shared it with you guys, I said, you barely even need to read this because you know exactly what it says. There isn't a solution that's positive at all. It's just this kind of deep abiding pessimism about the tool being dropped in the classroom and, you know, bad things unfurling. Well, yeah, if you do not police high school kids who now are armed with Chromebooks while sitting in class, the first thing they'll do is open up a Google Doc, share it amongst themselves and start doing all the things that kids are doing when they aren't supervised. Bullying each other, passing notes, you know, flirting with girls, and perhaps finding more pernicious things to do which that they can then kind of weaponize on TikTok. Like that's probably bad. In which case what are you doing in that circumstance to actually be able to create a structure that is meaningfully disciplined, that can actually be overseen in this sober way by the person who is supposed to be in the classroom leading the instruction. And teachers already have a very difficult job and dropping these tools in, in that context can be uniquely challenging. But it is not the same thing as insisting that the screens themselves are inherently dangerous and that we can't find a way to live with them. I think it's a more nuanced kind of optimistic view of things. And unfortunately I don't think most journalism has kind of been up to the task of presenting that nuance with respect to these tools and certainly not in a way that would help a jury kind of be primed to think about this in a slightly more complicated and nuanced way.
- [58:24]
A
Before we get out of here, I want to read this Derek Thompson excerpt and get your guys reaction to it
- [58:30]
C
because I'm an exception to the rule with respect to journalists that responded to these things. Well, I know him. I think he's very good at what he does.
- [58:38]
A
Yeah, and I think this is a really interesting take. So you know, he sort of sets this up by talking about the smartphone theory of everything. You know, I'll loosely define it as smartphones are bad for kids. And the more screen time kids have, the more issues they're going to have with things like anxiety and addiction and you know, depression, et cetera. He says it's possible that in a few years most academics will agree with some version of this thesis statement, which is an alternative thesis. Thesis statement. Compulsive phone use, along with under regulated social media, reliably produce widespread anxiety, attention issues, polarization, populism and institutional distrust in highly individualistic societies with a culture of diagnostic inflation and ads and high levels of negativity in the news ecosystem and post 2010America was simply the first and most dramatic example of all these ingredients coming to together. So rather than just pinning it on the smartphone, he says, we had this culture of diagnostic inflation, that is expanded diagnostic guidelines for anxiety and ADHD and autism. And then we have this kind of negative effect prevalence. People online constantly talk about their anxiety and ADHD and then high levels of negativity in the news ecosystem, which obviously produces anxiety. And when you have those things that exist in your culture and, and then you add compulsive phone use, that's the real thing that creates the problem. And I think that is, it's a thesis statement and I think it's a pretty good one. And I do think it's one that maybe is the way we talk about this in three, five or 10 years versus the way that we talk about it right now. I'm curious what your guys reaction is to hearing that.
- [60:23]
B
I take issue with the verb. Honestly I was kind of against it within the first 12 words until it started expounding more. I think if you just change, produce, like produces anxiety, widespread anxiety, et cetera, to catalyze or accentuates, then I'm with it. But it's still, even in that framing which is trying to broaden out and look at all the other compounding factors that are at play here, he's still giving primary onus to the phone in the way that he's talking about it. He's saying the phone produces, which I think is still a step too far. I think there's like, there's two different sides of the spectrum that we're talking about. The first is how we measure the harm produced by the thing with all the like confounding variables surrounding it and things that you're looking through the portal that are harming you. It's not the portals, the thing coming through the portal. So how do we define that? Like, that's challenging. And the second is like what's the tool that we use for it? So that Derek Thompson quote is talking about how we define the harm. And I think it's immensely helpful keeping in mind all of the other contributing factors in our society in this moment that are going into the phone, that it is then catalyzing to cause a harm. Not producing, but catalyzing. And I think that's important and because that is different than smoking a cigarette or than having access to a weapon and the law and the regulation and the way we sue and enforce these things also has to be different. So I just think it's Very easy, since we do have one of those polarizing cultures to hear this conversation and say we're being permissive towards social media use when I think all three of us are concerned to similar degrees, but the things that we want to see happen are just taking advantage of different tools.
- [62:17]
C
Yeah, I actually, Ari, I think very eloquently put, typical for you. I want to play King Solomon here, though, because I think, if I remember the quote correctly, Isaac, that you're both right, that, yes, what you're describing is more accurate and what I wish people would believe. But if I'm thinking about what they're likely to believe in the next decade, it's probably closer to what Derek described a slightly different way.
- [62:44]
B
I was being parsimonious enough. Okay.
- [62:47]
C
But I think you're right. That's where they ought to land. And it would be a better place because I could totally see that it correlates with this bad outcome for various reasons, actually. And you describe some of them very capable.
- [63:02]
A
Yeah, that's a good point, Camille. I mean, he is. Derek is explaining what he thinks most academics will agree with, not espousing what his particular view on the issue is. But yeah. Cool. Well, I'm glad we spent a little bit of time on this. We've been at it for a little over an hour, which means that it's time to share some of our pent up annoyances and complaints from the last two weeks since we saw each other last. So we're gonna jump into our grievances to end the show. And John, you can play the music. My dear friend,
- [63:33]
C
the airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.
- [63:45]
A
I'll actually go first here, and I'll start with something really nice. Is this morning, as I got on the train to come down to Philadelphia, because I moved from Philly recently, I was thinking to myself, I don't really have a great grievance, which is incredibly unusual for me. Usually I have a laundry list of things to complain about. Yeah. And I was thinking like, wow, you know, my move went pretty smoothly. I'm like, I'm in the burbs. It's been so pretty and nice and I love my house. And all this stuff is just feeling pretty good. It's kind of been a really good couple weeks and. And I've just been really enjoying it. And then, yeah, I got to the office, I got out of the cab that I took from the Amtrak train station to the Philly office, and then I reached into my pockets to grab my AirPods case to put my AirPods away, and my AirPods case was not in my pocket. Oh, no, there it is, baby.
- [64:45]
B
There she is. We are so.
- [64:48]
A
Yeah. And then I looked at my phone and the AirPods case was like, with me in the building, I said, oh, it's here. And I'm like doing the Find my pinging it, like listening in corners and opening bags, trying to figure out where it was. And then seven or eight minutes into that process, the map on Find my just updates. And the AirPods case is just like in the Amtrak train three miles away. And I'm like, Ugh. So, yeah, my AirPods case has gone. Separated from my base. I'm here with these big headphones in my office that's normally very cold, which today, of course is hot, the day that I'm wearing my over the ear headphones. And yeah, my grievance is that I separated my AirPods case. But, you know, Lindsay being Lindsay, I think she wouldn't mind me saying, she's frugal. She's like, she's always finding smart ways to cut corners. She's one of our associate editors. She was like, well, you could just buy a new case for the AirPods. And I was like, what am I, a peasant? I'm just gonna replace the case? Like, stop it, Lindsay. These are AirPods 2. The AirPods 3 exists. So to make myself feel better, I just bought a new pair of AirPods. So I've got the AirPods 3 coming, and now I'm feeling good about that exciting development for tomorrow. But, yeah, my AirPods are gone and I don't know what I'm going to do for the car ride, train ride home because these guys are going to die soon. And that's my grievance for today. I almost had a segment where I was going to say I didn't have one, and then I lost my case, which was nice. Nice.
- [66:18]
B
An absurd ending. Wow, they're going to die soon. Well, you could buy a case and then you'd have AirPods without having to buy a whole replacement. I'm very much with Lindsay, as I am on a lot of issues that don't end up being headline issues and tangle like Team Lindsay. For this one.
- [66:38]
A
I actually, I was looking at my air. My naked AirPods without the case, and I thought, what would Camille do? And I was like, I'll buy the AirPods 3. I'll just get the whole new.
- [66:46]
B
That's just get somebody to task, grab it and bring it to you on your train on the way back.
- [66:50]
C
Yeah, I was literally gonna say, you know, you can right now. It wouldn't be a huge problem. Also not a huge difference between the AirPods 2 and 3, but you did make the right call, Isaac. So congratulations, brother. Congratulations. I do think losing AirPods, as I've done so many times, is the best opportunity to buy new AirPods. So while it aggrieves me, I can pretend to be outraged to my wife, who hopefully won't hear this, although she does listen while actually being delighted that I got a new pair of AirPods. Ari, you should go. Cause I'm still trying to think of something I'm right now,
- [67:29]
B
because this is a take that I have to credit my wife on. This is a classic Katie take, which came from a discussion that we were having with my sister, like several months ago, maybe a year ago, where we were saying, it's really easy for us to talk about in our generation, in the millennial generation, what the flaws of other generations are or have been. Especially the boomers have been under the microscope for us our whole lives. And we've talked to death about things that we're complaining about boomers with, but it's really tougher. And then also, looking down, we could talk about the Zoomers and Gen Z and the things that we roll our eyes at about them and they think that we're out of touch and whatever. They're just dumb kids. What do they know? But the question was posed, what is the biggest problem with our generation, if we think about it? Take a step back. What are millennials really bad at? And we thought about it for a while, and Katie said, I think we have this tendency to want to quantify and optimize all of the things we do. So if you want to run or listen to music, it's not enough that you enjoy being a runner. You have to have the whoop band and the heart rate monitor that tells you how you feel about your run and whether or not it was as effective as you thought it was. And then you can measure that over time. You have to get the best headphones to enjoy the music, and if they're not the best ones, you're not having the most optimal experience. Don't you want to enjoy music optimally? Don't you want to be happy in a way that you can point to and say, I'm as happy as I possibly can be, and I think it's awful, and I think you're awful, Camille? No, not. Not as much. But I think it's pernicious. I think it's a tough trap and it's really easy to fall into it.
- [69:13]
C
You know what? You know what, Art, you're right. And I am trying to do better. I mean it sincerely. And I was not sure what my grievance is, but I actually have a twofer here. And they're both in some respects very Camille because they're both identity politics related. And I've been watching the Thoreau documentary that is premiered on PBS this week and there's three installments. I believe I'm halfway through the third one. And I am hoping to talk to some of the filmmakers at some point in some context, because I have complaints. Episode one, we are told that Thoreau was insufficiently concerned about the, the plight of Native Americans. But throughout episode one, two and three thus far, I am constantly being inundated with contemporary, our contemporary ideas about racial politics. And I find it overwhelming and deeply frustrating, especially in a context with Thoreau, a guy for whom I actually named my son. Like, I find it like really frustrating that this kind of avowed individualist who, when he is giving this impassioned speech condemning Boston and the state for sending a man who is free in Boston back to his home state to be enslaved. He barely mentions race at all. He is, it just seems completely out of phase and I just want to have a conversation about why. And relatedly, I was overjoyed yesterday watching the Artemis launch, seeing four Americans, not just Americans, excuse me, four astronauts headed back to the moon to orbit it. This is a great day. It's wonderful. I felt good. I was reading the remarks of these astronauts talking about why they're doing this, and I wept. I am totally honest. It's amazing. It's remarkable. We're doing this. And then I saw the New York Times and I saw a description of Victor Glover, who will be the first Capital B black person to journey to the moon. And I thought to myself, are you kidding me? This man is going to join the ranks of the few people less than 40 human beings in history have traveled to the moon. Less than 40. And I'm supposed to be overjoyed that the first Capital B black person has made this trip. It seems to me that once you've secured the presidency, to the extent we're going to play this game, you probably could stop doing the thing where someone is the first something of something like, I don't care, I don't care who. The first left handed person who happens to be from California and scales the K2 mountain. I don't care who they are. I don't care who the first person with some sort of weird eye defect and who also happens to win a Super Bowl. I don't care who that person is. I'm just happy they did something unbelievable. And here you have degraded the achievement of this man by codifying him in this way. And I think similarly with Thoreau, this otherwise, like, masterful, wonderful documentary that is giving me all of these new quotes that I didn't even know existed before and made me think to myself, ari, God, Camille, simplify, simplify, simplify. Like you can do better. Why are you corrupting this for me? So, yes, that is my grievance.
- [72:47]
B
Very on brand, I know.
- [72:48]
A
But I'm also right, Camille, I love that you set the new standard of once you get the presidency, you have to stop at any politics because no Jew has ever been elected president. So I'm going to keep talking about the first for Jews in every context. I want the Camille standard. Jack Hughes. I don't know if you guys have heard about him. First Jew to score a golden goal in the Olympics. We've been racking them up recently, so. Yeah, that's good stuff, man. All right,
- [73:19]
B
co host, Suspension of the rules.
- [73:21]
A
Yeah. You've owned all the presidents.
- [73:23]
C
You've owned all the presidents. That's enough.
- [73:25]
A
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And we forced.
- [73:29]
B
People could take that out of context and weaponize it.
- [73:32]
A
Yeah, clip that, John, for Instagram. That's a great one. All right, gentlemen, it's good to be back. Thank you guys for spending an hour with me, and thank you, dear listeners, for being here with us. We'll see you next week around the same time. Have a good one.
- [73:48]
B
See you.
- [73:49]
A
Peace.
- [73:49]
C
Later.
- [73:51]
A
Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Sowell, and our executive producer is John Lee. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman, with Senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Knuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
- [74:21]
C
La.