Loading summary
Transcript121 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into Kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary hope for the.
- [02:23]
B
Expect a worse Some preacher pain Some die of thirst no way.
- [02:29]
A
Of knowing this way it's going Hope.
- [02:33]
B
For the best expect the worst.
- [02:38]
A
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, September 12, 2025. I am John Pothor. It's the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [02:51]
C
Hi John.
- [02:52]
A
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [02:55]
B
Hi John.
- [02:56]
A
And social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [02:59]
D
Hi John.
- [03:01]
A
Just in and let us pray this is true. Donald Trump told Fox and Friends just now that there's a high degree of certainty that the assassin of Charlie Kirk has been, is in custody, that it appears that he acted alone. Thus ending, if true, the weird speculation that he helped trigger in his speech to the nation or his, whatever that was his statement after, after, after Kirk's assassination that, you know, they would go after networks that might have been involved in this and also that someone close to him, the, the alleged assassin turned him in. So that, that's, that's where we are, you know, as we're talking now at around 8:30 Eastern Time on, on Friday. And let us hope that all of this is the case and that this, at least this period of uncertainty about where the shooter might be and whether he might get away is, is at an end. I wanted to touch on something that came up. I was on Mark Halperin's two way last night and a commentary podcast listener, Mr. Rich, came on and he said, I'm very young guy. He said, I'm very unnerved about the security questions that are raised by what's happened here. Like if Charlie Kirk is a target, what's to keep somebody from barging in on a Republican Party meeting? You know, it's somewhere here where I live in Kentucky and just shooting up the room. And as he said that, I was seized with the thought that once again, as in throughout history, Jews are the canary in the coal mine here. That what this, what, what Mr. Rich saw or feared is exact, exactly the kind of thing that has been happening to Jews and in the Jewish community very much since October 7, but also in the, in the preceding seven or eight years before October 7 here in the United States. Gunman storming the Tree of Life Synagogue, the Poway Chabad house. I was thinking of events like the kosher supermarket in Patterson, New Jersey. And then the incident that really came to mind, which is this home in Muncie, New York, where very Orthodox people live. That was that somebody came into somebody's house with a machete because it was a house full of Jews to try to kill people. And I thought, okay, well, the Jewish community since October 7, a lot of it under the. With the advice and guidance of Commentary contributor my old friend Mitch Silber, who was the head of counterterrorism in the New York City Police Department and now helps with security for the UJA. All these institutions have been hardening themselves since October 7, redesigning synagogue lobbies to make them safe. For example, creating what are called man traps, that is ways in which you can prevent someone from coming in by having a two door system and you can lock the second door and it's kind of invisible to people, but it's, that's there redirecting things, setting up magnetometers, putting up bollards, all that stuff. And you know, you say, oh, this is terrible. Oh, it's awful, you know, that we have to live like this. And on the other hand, of course, it's way better to live like this than it is to suffer terrorist attacks on your synagogue, your jcc, your house. Is this, is this now going to be, it's not just going to be like office buildings in New York after October, after September 11th, or office buildings all over the country after September 11th. This notion that, that we've triggered or entering a period in which people need to worry about security in places that they, that they, it wouldn't ever even have occurred to them that they needed to worry about security.
- [07:54]
C
Well, I mean, to me it's about, it's about what it says about a society that starts to turn on its shoes and why that means problems ahead for everyone else in that society, why that sets a society on course to ruin. Because when people turn on their Jews, it means that they have become paranoid, they're looking for scapegoats for failure, and they have gotten used to the idea of dehumanizing others.
- [08:36]
A
And that.
- [08:37]
C
So it's, in that sense, it's the antisemitism and the violent antisemitism is a symptom of this larger malady that now is manifesting in all these other florid ways.
- [08:53]
D
The dehumanization point is crucial to understand because it doesn't just express itself in these horrific death threats and as you say, these actual attacks, physical attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. I think what's also been really disturbing, particularly since October 7, that this was building before that as well, is the kind of low level harassment of anyone who is visibly Jewish, wearing a kippah or any other visible signs of their faith or of Jewish institutions that aren't religious, say like a kosher market or any place where it's assumed the owners of a Jewish restaurant or Jewish owners of a restaurant that isn't a Jewish restaurant, just people find out. And I was really disturbed this week to see in London this isn't just happening here, but all over the supposedly civilized Western world. There's been this spate of someone smearing feces all over various Jewish institutions. And they know who the person is. They have caught them on camera because of all of these security measures that they've taken before. And there's really not much happening to that person. There's not any sort of justice being meted out. And I think we saw this on campus post October 7, where Jewish students were being even low level harassed. They would go to the authorities and say, look, this is bad. You have to do something. And there was sort of a shrug. It's like, well, maybe just don't wear the keeper. Or maybe it's you who brought this on yourselves by like, you know, going to this group activity on the Sabbath. That attitude is new, that, that, I mean, it's not a new attitude, but the acceptance of that as a response to this sort of low level and actively violent harassment is unacceptable, should be unacceptable in a free society. And I think younger generations are going to have to be taught this lesson again by those of us who, who have perhaps taken for granted that it was a lesson learned. We see that in the, in the polls that show a huge generational divide among those who think violence is an acceptable form of expression of their beliefs. That is really worrisome.
- [10:50]
B
You know, it makes me think of after the shooting outside the Jewish Museum, the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington. There was a lot of media focus in the area. I live not far from there. I live, you know, in Montgomery county. And so in Maryland. And so it's not far. And a lot of, you know, a lot of Jews live, you know, over the border, not in D.C. itself. A lot of the shuls are just over the border, not in D.C. itself, etc. So a lot of the attention ends up sort of coming back on Maryland when something happens in D.C. and somebody saw somebody across the street from a synagogue that I used to attend with a tripod camera and, you know, looking through it and taking pictures and stuff like that. And they alerted people. Somebody called the cops. You know, they alerted on WhatsApp groups. You know, there was all this, that was very. Considered very suspicious behavior. It turned out to be a cameraman getting B roll for their broadcast. You know, here's a few seconds of the front of a shul in Maryland or whatever, or when they, you know, I'm sure they said something about the shul and so there. But in the Jewish community, somebody standing across the street from a shul with a tripod taking pictures or video of the shul, when nothing's going on at the shul especially, is highly suspect. And so I feel like there's a. That's one of the things that's catching on, which is this idea that, you know, we used to joke about, if you see something, say something. But for Jews There's a lot, there's a lot of behavior that can be suspicious seeming or off putting or whatever simply because it's directed at a Jewish institution that is not interpreted that way when it's not directed a Jewish institution. And I think the general public is starting to put on, starting to have that kind of spidey sense, like wait a second, why is that guy, you know, on the second floor, the third floor of a building over there when the speech is happening on the, on the field here? Should I call a cop? Because I see someone in a classroom up there alone, that sort of thing.
- [13:08]
A
Right. Well, that, that I think is, goes to Abe's point point about what happens when you depersonalize the Jews in your community. The depersonalization will not end there. The issue is the depersonalization, not the Jew. It's not the existence of Jews in your area. It's the famous question of why it was that polling in the 1990s and 2000s in Poland showed a high degree of anti Semitism in a place where there were no Jews left. Country was 3% Jewish, it had been 15% Jewish or something like that before the Holocaust. And yet, and yet there, there was. The presence or non presence of Jews does not itself indicate the degree of anti Semitism that a country is going to express. Obviously there are no Jews left in, in Arab countries anywhere practically. And there they are fundaments of anti Semitism. So why is this?
- [14:16]
C
And I just want to say, and that's a perfect example of how much it's held them back, right? Like because you're so stuck in blaming people for your predicament, you never get anywhere near fixing your, yourself. I mean that's, that's, this used to.
- [14:33]
B
Be what we, what we said and it was true about the Arab countries. Arab, you know, especially secular Arab police states in the Middle east we would say, you know, that Egypt, you know, had this upcoming generation of overwhelmingly young, male, underemployed people and it was a tinderbox. And rather than doing some sort of economic reform, Egypt spent, you know, 60 years saying the Jews, the Jews, you know, whatever. And most Arab countries did that. And we talked about it as a distraction from their domestic issues in order to, you know, turn the attention on the Jews. And what we're seeing now is European states exhibiting the same behavior. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, excuse me, France has a domestic problem and he is distracting from it by pointing to Israel, calling conferences on Israel like not, not just saying, not just saying in reaction to something Israel does. But starting fights, picking fights. Right. We saw it with, you know, Keir Starmer is obviously, he's, you know, in Britain, nobody asked Canada for its input, you know, on this, you know, state, on the Palestinian state stuff. Australia jumped on the bandwagon, you know, Germany is considering it, but trying to balance. And of course, as we say in Judaism, Ahron. Ahron Khabiv last and because it is most significant, Malta. We can't forget Malta joining the. But this is what we're seeing. We're seeing European states. You know, Spain, the other day, Spain's Prime Minister gave a crazy press conference. I think we're starting to see Western countries behave like Arab police states did 75 or 100 years.
- [16:23]
A
Look, that's a very deep point and I think Abe's point, which is, which is even more salient here and important for Americans to think about when they are tempted, including very right wing elements. I think people who don't listen to us because they've already gone down the rabbit hole in another way. But there's no safety in this. There is no safety for them. Forced armour for Macron, for the British and French political systems in saying, you know, get the Jew, go get the Jew. Because that impulse, Abe's point is a. Is a cancer on the society. It will kill them as well. It would. May kill it may. This may be like, you know, the scorpion and the frog. What? You know, it's like I just have to. Not the scorpion and frog, but the, you know, like the two people running away from the tiger. And it's like, I just have to be, you know, I have to be the one who's. If the tiger catches you, I can get away. But then the tiger finishes eating the first person, then he goes after the second person. Maybe they get another 20 years. This was part of the lesson that Europe learned in the wake of the Holocaust, which people don't quite understand, which is that the signal that Adolf Hitler was going to work to destroy Europe and cause this massive war and lead to one of the most horrible destruction of European civilization was the Beer Hall Putsch. That, that was. You go from 1929, 12 years, you know, excuse me, 10 years later, you're invading Poland. You have to stop it at the source. That wasn't just an attack on Jews. He was. That was the first step in this effort to remake and take over Western civilization. So it wasn't even Munich, you know, Munich. That the general thing that people do is they say, well, you know, if Europe, if the European government had stopped Hitler at Munich. And they really, you know, then that's the Munich moment. But it's Munich is already maybe too late is the point. And so when, when we're looking at this here, one of the points I think that we made after October 7, as we were watching in horror at this rise in a kind of public anti Semitism masquerading as, you know, anti Zionism was don't you understand? It doesn't stop here. It won't stop here. You know, you think that you're going to outrun us and we're going to get eaten by the tiger. The tiger doesn't stop with us. And that's the, that's this moment at which that poll that I mentioned the other day from the foundation for Equal Rights and Fire, Equal Rights and Expression that says that 34% of college students believe that violence is an acceptable way to deal with somebody with whom you disagree. You have to do things two years ago to prevent that result. In the poll.
- [20:08]
D
There is, you know, your scorpion and frog analogy isn't wrong in another context because I was thinking there's another element to this that especially in the United States, because we're also tolerant, nobody wants to talk about it, and that's Muslim immigration and actually the radicalization of home, you know, American born Muslim populations in certain parts of the country represented by people like Ilan, Omar, Rashida Talib, people who actually come from a community that is quite isolated in their particular districts but very powerful and where local ordinances are now having to be passed in some places that say, actually you are allowed to have a dog on a public sidewalk and pork is allowed to be sold here or there. So in a tolerant society, we tend to just say, well, everyone's going to get along. And you know, everybody has their own thing. We have religious freedom. So but there are social norms and there are actually, you know, legal prohibitions within a faith like the Muslim faith that can have huge implications for individual rights and individual freedom in this country. And those clashes have been going on for a very long time, but they have become politicized and powerful on the Democratic side of the aisle in terms of the makeup of the Democratic Party and in Western Europe because of the clashes over immigration. And I think that that continues to be a cauldron in Western Europe. But we have our own version of it here that I think what October 7th showed us on college campuses is that we were importing a lot of this radicalism, but there was plenty of it that was homegrown as well, okay.
- [21:41]
A
I'm going to tell you my story about Brooklyn Betting. Brooklyn Betting, one of our advertisers, advertisers often want to send you some of their products so you can sample it so you can talk about honestly about it to your listeners. And Brooklyn Bedding said they wanted to send me a mattress. Well, I have a mattress my wife and I are happy with, but our kids had three other mattresses and weren't crazy about them. So I got one. I got one for my kids twin. Brooklyn Bedding mattress comes in a box. Amazing situation. One of these things where you open the box and you cut off, open the plastic and the mattress pops open, lay it down on the bed, let it sit for 24 hours and then it is ready to go. And my son said it was the best night of sleep of his life. And then I laid down on it and took a nap on it that next day. And boy, was it good. Boy was it comfortable. Boy, did it make a difference. And so I turned around and with my own money, I bought two more mattresses for my daughters for their beds. That's how much I admired Brooklyn Bedding and the product that it sent me that I am now a Brooklyn Bedding customer. They handcraft every mattress in their Arizona factory. No middlemen, no gimmicks, just top tier quality, honest pricing and real American craftsmanship for a better night's sleep. If you sleep hot, you can have what I have. Glaciotex covers and Copperflex foam to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. It's one of the few mattress brands endorsed by the American Chiropractic association for spinal alignment and back health. Plus they're 100% fiberglass free for peace of mind. And Brooklyn Bedding also offers 120 night comfort trial. Love it or they'll help you return it or swap it hassle free. Look, if you can't take my word for it, just know that Brooklyn Bedding has been awarded the best mattress by CNET and best hybrid mattress by Wirecutter. So you know it's the real deal. Go to BrooklynBedding.com and use my promo code commentary at checkout to get 30% off site wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. That's Brooklyn embedding.com and promo code commentary for 30% off site wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you Brooklyn betting.com promo code commentary. John here to talk to you about my beloved Quint. You know, cooler temps are rolling in and as always, Quint is where I'm turning for fall staples that actually last from cashmere to denim to boots. The quality holds up and the price still blows me away. You know Those super soft 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just 60 bucks, I got a drawer full of them. Their denim is durable, fits right and their real leather jackets bring that clean, classic edge without the elevated price tag. So what makes Quint's different? They partner directly with ethical factories and skip the middlemen. So you get top tier fabrics and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands. I'm going to be putting on those sweaters as soon as it gets cool enough to need them. I, I spent the summer wearing Quint's polos. I am a Quint man through and through. It's a go to across the board. You know, they got accessories of all kinds. Just go to quint.com to see what I'm talking about. You keep it classic and cool this fall with long lasting staples from quints. Go to quint.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com/complyarma free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com commentary you make such a vital point because for those of us who were sanguine about some of this, let's say 20, 25 years ago, the idea was America has had more experience with immigration than any country on earth. And that immigration had, there was an acculturating, not necessarily an assimilatory, but an acculturating effect. People came from, you know, Jews came from shtetls where they had never participated in any political activity ever. Right? There was, they were not participants in a political system, knew nothing about other people. All of that, Italians, Irish, this massive immigration in the 19th century and that the American idea or what it was to be an American or how America conducted itself changed them. And that, and that it was they, they landed in this, you know, melting pot and, or this soup, let's say. And they were, they were, they came to become Americans. And that was, and I say acculturation because it was not necessary to give up your birth identity to become an American. You simply had to participate in the American experiment, the Muslim immigration that you were talking about here. That is Ilhan Omar, who came with this cohort of Somalis who were allowed into the United States as a way of, as a refugee issue because of the horrors of the Somali civil war. They arrived Here when multiculturalism had already sunk all of its roots into progressive opinion, not only on campuses, but in, you know, in the further, the more progressive reaches of the Democratic Party and that sort of thing. And they were not acculturated. We have Somali people who have been elected from that cohort, not just Ilhan Omar, but there's a state representative in Maine and stuff like that. And they say things like, I am here to serve my country, Somalia. Now you become a US Citizen, you swear your oath and fidelity and allegiance to the government of the United States. But that is no longer saying I serve Somalia would once have been enough not only to, you know, make sure that you weren't elected to the state senate in Maine, but might get you deported.
- [28:18]
D
Well, and their children might get you.
- [28:20]
A
Deported because you had announced that you, that your allegiance was no longer to the. Was never to the United States.
- [28:27]
D
And there's a, this is a multigenerational thing. Elon Omar's daughter at Barnard was one of the most vigorous, anti Semitic, outspoken, outspoken post October 7th protesters on that campus. And her mother was very proud of her. I mean, this is, these are, these are. It's several generations now.
- [28:41]
A
It's not just right, but then the, not the crime. I don't know what describe it. But the, but the, but the disease is America's disease or America. This thing that happened in America where elite public opinion decided that, that, that the, the idea of Americanness was problematic and that if you were, if you grew up in a Spanish speaking home, you had every right to want to have an education in the public school system, largely in Spanish, for example, which was both deranged and cruel, since what you want for somebody growing up in America is to fully participate in American life. And by refusing to allow them to be educated not only in American civics and stuff like that, but in the fundaments of the English language in which we conduct all of our business and in which we purvey all of our common understandings was to serve this idea rather than serve the interests of, of the people who were supposed to be helped by it. And then you had this in migration, not very large, I don't know, half a million people Overall in the 1990s, legal immigration, refugee immigration. And they were left to their own cultural devices and their own cultural prejudices. And a lot of that, as we now know, was the importation of Muslim anti Semitism into the, into the United States. And that's why Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and others are purveyors. Of the worst of the sort of ideas that, like I say, they could have been kicked out of the country for having these thoughts and notions. At a different point.
- [30:53]
B
We also make you think of the, you know, the point in American history where German Jews were. Had already come in one wave and then incoming were the Eastern European Jews. And the German Jews were horrified at the thought of these Eastern European Jews, these, like, uncultured, you know, you know, ruffian Jews coming and being like, you know, they were like, look, we worked really hard to show everybody that Jews are civilized and, you know, we're really cultured and civilized and whatever. Like, we don't want the Russian Jews. We don't want, you know, the Lithuanian Jews, whatever. And it's. It's funny that, that I've seen that at, like. I've literally seen that at, you know, like, mahjong games, like, women sitting. Jewish women sitting around playing mahjong on Chavez and, you know, somebody making a move and, you know, and somebody, oh, here come the Lithuanians. You know, it's like that. That sort of, you know, inside joke. But it was real, that it was. It was not Jewish. It was not like, we don't want Jews. We don't want our fellow Jews from Eastern Europe because they. They're not acculturated to the type of society they're coming to. We're going to have to start over in, like, showing people that we're, you know, civilized and all that other stuff.
- [32:08]
D
This is such the American story, though, because there's a version I have on one side of my family tree, Dutch and British. I can claim DAR membership through that line. We have a Revolutionary War soldier there, but on the other side, it's southern and Eastern Europeans who came over in the late 19th, early 20th century poor, and that those sort of immigrant conflicts. That is the beauty of the American story of. Of acculturation and quasi assimilation, but that each. Each immigrant group comes, stakes its territory and then is horrified by what comes over next. So that tension is actually very useful when the public can have open conversations about immigration. It has been very difficult, though, when it comes to the radicalized minority whose claim to this country isn't that they want to be part of it, but that they want to take over aspects of it to conform to their own faith. And the Jews did not do that. That is the distinction I would draw. It wasn't, we're going to come here and make this a Jewish country. There are Muslim spokesperson, Muslim American spokespeople in this country. Who say that's what they want and that is not American.
- [33:11]
A
Right.
- [33:12]
C
The, the fascinating thing to me though, as you're talking about this is how much of this stuff is now used as a political organizing tool by non Muslim Americans. Right. This is, this is the, like the political uses of anti Semitism. That's the real signal of a problem that we see on the left and right. So the, it's in the manosphere and it's on the, it's on the campus left. The Jews are blamed for getting us into wars, blamed for our immigration problems. Epstein, all the woes of the middle class because, you know, we're sending, we're spending money on foreign causes. It's that, it's that pointed finger that Ruth Weiss talks about. And that is a sign that society is becoming sort of losers in mass.
- [34:16]
A
Well, the loser point is very interesting. We'll see. Assuming that the, this person who Trump says in custody is in fact the assassin, although more details coming out say that he confessed to his father and his father called the authorities and held him in place, did something to ensure that he stayed until the authorities came to pick him up. But we don't know who he is, what, where he comes from and all of that. But we do know that this kid in Colorado who shot up Evergreen High.
- [34:55]
C
School.
- [34:58]
A
Seems to be another example of the shooter, of the motivations of the shooter at the Annunciation School in Minneapolis. This bizarre thing that we're hearing about, about the online grooming and seduction of people, we're not quite clear who they are. You know, it's group that has a number, not a name, 467. I can't quite remember what it is, but that they find them in chat groups. They find them, they, they see if they might be X, Y or Z. And then if they could be part of, you know, if they could sort of go do evil acts, they are sort of taught how to do it. And if they can't, they're. They're urged to commit suicide. This is so demonic. And we could start talking about demonic. I mean, this is so that it almost does seem to have a weird, almost supernatural quality to it, like out of a heart, you know, out of a horror movie that, you know, there's some online force that is either getting kids to kill themselves or shoot other people. It seems to be real. Doesn't seem to be some, you know, FBI, you know, profile or fantasy or something like that. And, and, but that is a loser society that is like, that is we literally are raising a generation of people for whom this, even though it's a, obviously a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people and you don't want to, you know, like extrapolate to the whole, but that this is even in existence or thinkable or possible is, you know, like cancer only starts as a few cells in a billion cell body, you know, and one cancer cell can kill you, but that if you're not careful.
- [37:00]
D
That's the through line, I think, to, you know, we joke about our crushing morosity, but this is nihilism. And there is a through line to the idea that the way to deal with conflict or disagreement is violence. The way to deal with feeling like a loser in society is to lash out and kill others or yourself because there's no hope. It's hopelessness. And I think that's, that is the concern, particularly among a younger generation. And it's. A lot of it is. The online world is implicated in much of that, but a lot of the people who end up in that toxic brew online sought it out because they weren't getting what they needed in the real world. And I think that's part of the way our politics, to the earlier point Abe was making about it being the anti. Semitism being a useful political tool. There's a way in which politicians on both sides of the aisle use that as a tool for, for their own benefit, but to the detriment of our culture.
- [37:56]
A
You know, you said hopelessness, and for some reason then I heard it as you were speaking as helplessness.
- [38:02]
D
A little bit of hope.
- [38:03]
A
No, but that reminded me of the revolution in psychological thinking in the United states in the 1980s and 1990s led by Martin Seligman, the psychologist who wrote a landmark book called Learned Helplessness. And his idea was that depression, anxiety, certain types of individual responses to real world pressures and, and, and, and difficulties was what he called learned helplessness, which is the idea that you don't have agency, that you can't fix what's wrong with you, that you can't.
- [38:39]
D
That's why men don't load dishwashers. Well, but anyway, go on.
- [38:41]
A
Okay. Yes, well, I'm kidding. We will, I will, I will dispute that. I am superb at loading the dishwasher. I will not be defeated.
- [38:54]
B
There is, there is, by the way, there is the classic episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that deals with learned helplessness in the home this way. And that is he gets something wrong on an invitation, on a wedding invitation or whatever, they're renewing their vows, whatever it is, the fancy invitation. And so he has Taken off the picture project. And they discover that it's a. It was a strategic move so that, you know, he's not trusted with doing things like making. And then the whole, the whole. Hold on the whole episode, the whole episode goes on that way with like the things that men do. And then it turns out when they want to watch the video of their first wedding that it was taped, use the VCR tape. Tape taped over a very important game for Ray, who is a sports writer. And it turns out that his wife had had badly messed up recording something for Ray so that she would not be trusted to record sporting events again in the future.
- [39:56]
A
Okay, so that is a. That is learned helpfulness in the guise of learned helplessness. Right. But the point, point about learned helplessness is that it's a result of events over time in a person's life or a kid's life where they are denied agency or they don't think that they're not allowed to do things on their own or something like that. And then they think they don't have the capacity to. And this is what gave rise really to what we call cognitive behavioral therapy, which is basically, rather than investigate the causes of the anxieties and neuroses through deep self examination, do things even if you don't want to program it. If you have thoughts that are deny you agency, reframe them. To say, I can go on this walk, I can go to the gym as it was. I just can't like that this is all something that is inside a person's body, inside a person. It's a distorted view of what you are capable of doing and learned. But here's the flip side of learned helplessness and cognitive behavioral therapy. What if the answer isn't improve yourself through these actions, but you don't have agency, maybe you should go shoot Charlie Kirk. I mean, I'm not saying that the cognitive behavioral therapy model leads people to psychopathy.
- [41:40]
C
No, no, but you're right. It's like the flip side of Snowflake ism is, is to go out and kill the person who is saying the thing you just can't take. If, you know, if. I mean, I saw there's so many of these floating around social media and in some sense I feel bad, but I assume that the teenage girl recorded it herself. That's what it looks like. There's a clip of a girl talking to her father about Charlie Kirk's assassination. And he. And she just says, what do you think? And she says, well, he said harm things. So yeah, I Don't care. He deserves to die. You know, and she's got the nose ring and she's this ring and that thing. And. And he's saying, well, that's. That's terrible. People don't deserve to die for their thoughts.
- [42:29]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:29]
C
I'm sorry. If you go around, you know, if you.
- [42:31]
A
If you.
- [42:32]
C
If he doesn't believe that his. His daughter should. Has a right to an abortion, he should die. And that's exactly what you're talking about. That's. That's the snowflake who's totally indifferent to the murder of the person who is disturbing their reality.
- [42:53]
A
Well, okay, let's talk about, for example, the moment that may have proved to have been a hinge point in American, the history of American media, which was the Tom Cotton op ed in the New York Times, commissioned and edited by Adam Rubenstein and overseen by Barry Weiss. Right. That led to this revolt inside the New York Times. Tom Cotton said we need to deploy, Right. The National Guard to Lafayette park to deal with this. To deal with these riots that are going on. Or. Okay, you know, after. I think it was George Floyd. Okay, so. And what did the people at the New York Times say, Mara Gay and others? They said that publishing this op ed made me feel unsafe.
- [43:42]
D
No, they said it actually, it was a threat to them.
- [43:44]
A
It was a threat to them.
- [43:45]
D
Yeah, it was an actual palpable threat.
- [43:47]
C
So.
- [43:50]
A
In the world of this kind of progressive opinion, if you take it seriously, that she thought that they thought it was a threat, which I don't really, but it will follow the logic. And this was true throughout the teens when people talked about debates on campus and what was triggering and safe spaces and how to have converse, difficult conversations and what you could and could not say and being hauled into star chambers when you were accused of having said something in a class that made somebody feel unsafe, that words were violence. Right? Words were violence. Words were threats. But then there's a riot in Ferguson, Missouri. That's actual violence. Or there are riots after George Floyd that involve burning down dollar stores and destroying, you know, whole blocks of the city and other things. The guy driving into the crowd in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and those are excused and explained away. That's actual violence. That's. That is acceptable and talk is not. So Charlie Kirk is the ultimate victim of this idea. Right? Charlie Kirk's going around talking and he needs to be shot in the head and killed.
- [45:14]
D
But this, I think, I do think that this is a. Unfortunately, I would call it a devolution, but that argument has evolved into something far more dangerous as. And violent. And it's fueled by what totally, you're totally correct to point out what fueled a lot of this. The snowflake culture of oh, I feel threatened, which was about power dynamics, right? This was a bid to seize power within institutions where people who otherwise wouldn't be able to exercise it, like young recent college graduates filled with identity politics could say, oh, yeah, New York Times, you have to. You have to listen to us because we feel threatened. What's happened now is that that sense of powerlessness in a society that doesn't give anyone any hope for one day seizing, making a life for themselves where they have some control can lead to these night. It's a nihilism. And so they. The powerless used to organize around often really suspect ideologies, but sometimes good ones too. You could organize, you could do something. You had a sense of purpose and meaning. And that's what I feel in a couple of these last terrible violent acts, including Charlie Kirk death, that that's missing the randomness is what is so terrifying, but it's also what is really indicative of a moment we're in that has moved beyond just the kind of identity politics power play stuff we saw recently.
- [46:30]
A
So this morning I put up a thread on. On. On X that seems to be going a little viral. I'm only mentioning this going a little viral because I've never actually said that anything that I've written has gone a little viral. But it occurred to me last night I was trying to figure out how I felt about the fact that people on the right are aggressively searching around social media, surfacing people who express glee or joy or pleasure or happiness at Charlie Kirk's death, finding them on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, surfacing them, showing their faces, naming them, and then saying to the institutions that employ them, is it okay? Do you really think it's okay for you to employ this person or to something like that? This follows along two years in which groups like Twitter threads like Stop Antisemitism or Canary Mission or others were finding and locating people who were involved in the encampment demonstrations, all of that, or were worked at places and had anti and seemed to be involved in anti Semitic incidents, and then saying to their employers on social media, do you really want to employ this person? And then, then they would say so and so is no longer employed at, you know, Northwell Hospital or whatever, because they surface this thing and I'm disturbed by this. And saying that I'm disturbed by this will immediately Trigger others to say, you don't understand, this is the way the world works now. If we don't go after these people, there are no consequences for them, no consequences for what they say and no consequences for what they do. And they've spent 20 years going after conservatives for their ideas. And if we, you know, it's a unilateral disarmament, we need to go after them. And they are actually, after all, cheering an assassination. And therefore, in their cheering and trying to create an atmosphere of support for this sort of action may be stimulating future assassins or assassination attempts. And therefore it's good and righteous and, and, and noble. And so. But I look at it and I'm like, this is just some person saying something and that shouldn't be the end of their lives. And then I had this, I think, deeper thought, which is social media was invented in 2007, right? There were two. Or 2005, there were two forces that really started what we think of as social media. Creation of Facebook, the first social network and the iPhone. Right?
- [49:29]
D
Well, you're dissing on MySpace, but yeah, Facebook was the first one that was widely adopted.
- [49:33]
A
I mean, there were chat rooms and there was stuff for the last, the previous 10 years, but that was really a very tiny. Was not a mass event, right? So it's been almost 20 years that we've been living in this, like one generation we've been living in this world. And obviously people have been writing about the possible consequences of it. Gene Twenge and Jonathan Haidt and all of this. And a lot of what Christina's writing about, her book, the Extinction of Experience, which is about what this does to the human brain and the human soul, but a different thought, which is that. Which is that people spend their lives wrestling with ugly thoughts inside their head. They get really mad at a family member and as you know, not to go Dostoevsky and again on you, like Ivan Karamazov says, who doesn't want their father dead? Who at some point in their life didn't want their father dead, right? I mean, you wrestle with ugly thoughts, anger, you know, irrational anger, somebody, you know, pushes into you on the. On a subway platform. And then, you know, you, you're like. You have a moment where it's like, I wish that person would fall in the tracks. It's just a random thought. We are human beings, we're tormented by our own. And then people often get. Feel very guilty about it and they feel bad. And let's say somebody goes to a therapist and a therapist says people Also often have, have this about sexual urges and things like that. And a therapist says, those are thoughts. They are thoughts. Did you act on them? Did you do anything? Did you manifest them in the world? And the person says, no. And the therapist says, those are thoughts. You need to be able to distinguish between the thought that you have, the random experience that you have of your thought and reality. And if you don't act on them, you need to be able to forgive yourself because that is what it means to be human. Full of aggression. We're full of rage, we're full of this, we're full of that. And we're also full of love and understanding and positive thing and stuff like that. And so we judge people by their actions. Right now, religions don't like depending on your faith. Like if you, you were not supposed to have certain types of thoughts. And so you go to confession if you're a Catholic and you, you say what thoughts and urges you might have. And a priest might say, you need to say 10 Hail Marys or, I'm not caricaturing because I've of course never been to confession and I don't, I only know what I've seen in the movies and that sort of thing. But thoughts are not actions. So what if you have this weird middle ground that has been created by social media in which your thoughts, which have all been, is, are inside your head, silent. You now type out and you put out into the world, there's still thoughts. You didn't kill Charlie Kirk. You're never going to kill anybody. You're a gentle person. You're just like, you just hate Charlie Kirk because of what he stands for. And you have this thought like, boy, I really enjoyed seeing that image of him shot. And then you tweet it.
- [52:59]
D
I, I'd say you've taken action on your thought when you, when you do the tweet. And the reason that's important, even if you regret it, if you regret it, take it down and apologize. If you believe it and you keep it up there, you're creating a culture where lots of other people will say, you know, it's actually acceptable to, to think this way and to put it out there for everyone to see and look at all the attention. We live in a time where that's the big, the attention they get. Maybe if I actually act on, on that thought, I will be even more exactly. Only Murders in The Building Season 5.
- [53:29]
A
The hit Hulu original is back.
- [53:31]
B
The night Lester died, he was talking with this mobster.
- [53:34]
A
Was he killed in a Hit. We need to go face to face with the mob.
- [53:37]
C
Get ready for a season.
- [53:40]
B
This is how I die.
- [53:41]
A
You can't refuse.
- [53:43]
D
You're going to save the day like you always do by being smart, sharp.
- [53:47]
A
And almost always by mistake.
- [53:49]
B
The Hulu Original Series only Murders in The Building premieres September 9th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers Term supply New episodes Tuesdays.
- [53:58]
A
Imagine fast hydration combined with balanced energy. Perfectly flavored with zero artificial sweeteners. Introducing Liquid Ivy's new energy multiplier, sugar free. Unlike other energy drinks. You know, the ones that make you feel like you're glitching, it's made with natural caffeine and electrolytes, so you get the boost without the burnout. Liquid IV's new energy multiplier, sugar free hydrating energy. Tap the banner to learn more. But that's why this is new. Like, I hate the idea that things. It is new because nothing ever seems to be new in life. And you can always say no. You know, there would. There were, you know, the. There were the. There was the crazy dancing girls of the 15th century. You know, like, you know, you say, oh, the Salem witch trials or, you know, whatever. You know, girls being mean in circles. And then you, like, you go back in history and there's. Something has always happened before. But there was no way for this to happen until this weird amalgam.
- [55:03]
D
Not at this scale.
- [55:04]
A
Websites.
- [55:05]
D
Not at this scale.
- [55:06]
A
Not at this scale. So how would I know, as I saw last night, that there's this guy who works in a lab at MIT who was like, boy, watching Charlie Kirk die is like, better than my taking bupropion, which is Wellbutrin, which is a. Which is a antidepressant. And that was a very telling way to describe it because obviously he's saying, I'm depressed or I'm anxious and I take an antidepressant. And so. But this. This was better for me. I wouldn't know who that guy was 25 years ago. I never would have seen him. I never would have heard. Whatever was going through his head would have had no effect on me. Right. It would have meant nothing to me. There are people walking by me on the street who knows what's going through their head. It could be terrifying. But it's in their heads and it's not externalized. Now those ideas are weirdly externalized. Can be externalized. Some weird middle ground between thoughts that are in your head and action that is taken by an assassin.
- [56:16]
C
Yeah.
- [56:16]
A
And that's new. And I don't know that we can survive this. I'm serious. Like, I don't know how this unmediated thing that can trigger, as you just said, Christine, can trigger a world in which people go, yeah, I'm going to get a lot of praise from guys, people who work in labs at mit, if I just shoot somebody that we all don't like.
- [56:42]
C
So, you know, there's a lot of talk about how after years of denouncing left wing cancel culture, the right is now adopted cancel culture. And, and that's bad. And I agree with much of that criticism, it is bad. But I think there's a very important distinction. I think it's bad to cancel someone, to ruin someone's life because they give voice to something you disagree with or they give voice to something that's kind of. This is what was happening during this woke revolution. You give voice to what everyone accepts as a common understanding of something, but in the last five minutes became a racist pronouncement. Right. I don't think it's cancel culture. When you say, hey, this guy is applauding supporting murder. This woman is applauding and supporting bigotry and anti Semitism. That's not cancel culture. That's like doing the after the fact cleanup job on Internet community. That doesn't happen the way it does in the real world community where some. So if someone said that, they wouldn't make it into your community, but on the Internet, you could say whatever you want. So now you have to go and find the people who got in and point them out.
- [58:27]
D
Or if they said it at a staff meeting around face to face with all their peers and superiors, they would immediately be hauled into HR and likely fired. I mean, that's.
- [58:35]
A
Yeah, but they would.
- [58:37]
B
The other thing that this does in the social media thing is that because of the way it affects the algorithm, it affects your perception of the world around you. Right? And so it's very easy to. Right. You see that statement and you see somebody pointing out the statement. You then interact with both those people, whether it's to say you shouldn't cancel this person, or whether it's to say, wow, this person is evil, or whatever. More of it then gets shoveled at you because you've interacted with it and your interaction because it's an interaction. And the way the algorithm does goes farther. Right. It spurs people to talk to each other about the most controversial things. And this is what happens. And it's very easy after an hour of that to say, wow, this is a Sick world. And it may, it may be, it may not be. But that's where we get into, you know, how much of this is, you know, how much of the population is really like this and how much is my algorithm like this and how to tell the difference between the two. Like, I made a comment the other day after, after Kirk was, was shot and all these statements came out later that evening, I made, I tweeted that I thought the general tenor of the public handling of this was pretty decent. And what I meant by that was immediately Barack Obama came out with an unequivocal statement, immediately George W. Bush, immediately Bill Clinton, every living president immediately after, you know, this happened, came out with an unequivocal statement that creates an environment in which the New York Yankees see that there's not going to be political or part partisan backlash if they do something nice. And so they had a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk.
- [60:29]
A
What?
- [60:29]
B
Much easier to do that if Barack Obama has come out and said there's never. This is horrible and there's never.
- [60:36]
D
There's one other, one other strand to that though, that we haven't discussed yet. But that is the future of these platforms, especially the people who spend a lot of time on them and as you say correctly, Seth, get fed exactly what they want to hear and see. And that's that for foreign countries that do not have our best interests in part at heart, have weaponized the use of these tools through bots to actually flood the zone with lies, propaganda, with all kinds of manipulative things that aren't true but are impossible to verify from accounts that are sponsored by, you know, shills for foreign governments. That whole shadowy world is a. Is becoming an increasing amount of the content online that most people consume. And that is also there is a.
- [61:15]
B
Of lot literal, massively important point.
- [61:17]
A
The governor of Utah using information given him by the FBI last night said much of my day yesterday was taken up in the Twitter timeline with people reacting to a particular tweet by, from an account run by someone named Ian Carroll, apparently about how the Jews Israel killing Charlie Kirk and people raging and saying this is how can you do this? And all this, and then others retweeting it and Alex Jones interacting with it and all of that. And last night the governor, whose name, I'm sorry, I can't recall, it's embarrassing, said from the information that we have, there is foreign involvement in the Ian Carroll and Jackson Hinkle tweet storms either amplification, participation, something like that. In other words, what Christine is saying Literally is true in this case, that foreign actors are seeking to inflame and divide the United States by amplifying this anti Semitic opinion. Where are these server farms that are doing this or these, these, you know, intelligence operations that are doing it? We know Russia in 2016, Russia, China, Gutter, Iran. Right, okay. So you would think, oh, come on, this is ridiculous. Like, they have bigger fish to fry, you know, they're at war. But it's low cost, high return, or even if it's low cost, it's low cost, medium return or not, not much return, but certainly it's low cost. And so why not? And that's a very big deal that we know this because it means that everything that was going on yesterday, phone calls I was fielding from people saying, oh, my God, you know, it's all true. The anti Semitism, like, we are in enormous trouble. America's gone totally anti Semitic. Look at what's going on here. That is Plato's cave. That is, the shadow might have been of a stick. And we're looking at it like it's a lion because we're strapped. We're strapped inside the cave can only turn our head in a certain way. And we don't, we don't see where the shot, what the shadow actually is. And the shadow is again, like an Iranian intelligence op and not ordinary Americans expressing a view that is, you know, that is sort of now going to be unbelievably poisonous. Of course it could develop in that direction. It could, it could hasten that. That's why, why it's being done. But I, I get back to the fact that. So human nature is, we have not progressed in human nature in this sense. Right. Like Homer lived, you know, what was it like, you know, 2500 years ago or longer ago than that, you know, still the greatest writer who ever lived. You know, Shakespeare, 400 years ago, Plato, you know, the Bible, all of this. Like, we're, we're, we're, we're no better than they were. America, you know, people haven't, Human nature hasn't progressed and we have. And as we know from the Bible, like the urges, evil sins, crimes that people commit are the same ones that they were committing back in the days of the accounts of the earliest people. And so human nature is immutable, which is why I mentioned this thing that people have terrible barbaric thoughts in their head and we all do and that we live with them. You know, Hamlet says, use every man after his dessert and who should escape whipping? If you knew what Somebody was thinking as they're walking down the street, you would think they should be arrested and thrown in jail because they're so terrible, but they're not, because it's all just in their heads. And now it's not just in their heads.
- [65:32]
D
And it's. But, but. So culture and civilization have long been attempts to tame the worst impulses and to remind us of our tendency towards hubris. That's the Tower of Babel story. What's just. What's interesting about the direction the culture, at least in the west, is headed now is that you have these competing camps, you have this kind of utopian, progressive idea that they can overcome human nature, perfect human nature. And that's been. There's a long strand of historical thought about that, but there's this elevation of the idea that we should just wallow in the worst impulses. And that's the part that I think a lot of the social media, that weird middle universe of social media encourages as well, because that's about attention for that, for the platforms. But for people, there is a strange desire to just accept that we're terrible and to just, you know, wallow in it and to indulge that. And I think that's where our culture is failing, particularly young people today, by saying the system is broken. Everything, nothing works. And that's the nihilism. I know I keep using that word, but it really.
- [66:37]
A
So it's like, you know, in reverse. Talk about sort of not Nietzschean agency or whatever. So you have the kind of the popularization of like vulgar Nietzscheism in the work of Ayn Rand. Right. And so the genius of Ayn Rand's work, or, you know, in Atlas Shrugged, is the theme of Atlas Shrugged is that guy who was sweeping the, you know, the train station that you're in, he is actually the world's foremost physicist, but he has decided that he will no longer participate in this corrupt and barbaric and evil and unjust society that is crushing him and not allowing him to be heralded as the genius he is. So he's withdrawn. And until you build him a city behind a cloud where he and all the other geniuses can live together in utopian, bizarre, Utopian harmony, you know, our society is going to degrade and collapse. One of the reasons that book is so incredibly tempting and thrilling to teenage boys and has been for 70 years, is that it's like, are you a weird 15 year old who has trouble making friends? You know what, somewhere there's going to be a city behind a cloud? Where you and your cohort, where you're not a loser, you're actually a winner. Winner you are. And so that's the secret is to be a loser is to be a winner. To be, to be on the outs is to be in the vanguard. And it's, it's very tempting and it's a very. And as I say now, we have this weird world in which, yeah, loserdom or nihilism, you know, more philosophically understood is, has this outlet that has this corrosive, contagious, cancerous effect, positive feedback loop.
- [68:38]
D
If you're in it.
- [68:39]
A
Yeah. So. And you know, well, it's what you would.
- [68:44]
B
If Twitter didn't exist, we would be seeing episodes of Black Mirror with Twitter. Right. That's the thing that the, the sort of, you know, dystopian way of having people's minds just flow out into the universe where everybody can see it is a, that is a, an almost creepy idea. But I spend a lot of my day on, you know, like, it's, it's, it's so normalized and it's so. It's also, you know, how you use it and all the other stuff, blah, blah, blah. But, but Twitter is what of those things that would be featured in science fiction if it didn't yet exist? And now that it exists, the things we see in science fiction are just like more advanced versions of those. Right. Different types of mind reading or something like that. But it is the type of thing that we fear coming along. And then it becomes, well, that's normal. We have the, that the thing we really fear is, you know, that. And seven years later, that arrives on the scene. And it's hard to know where you, how to even, how to draw lines if you even want.
- [69:56]
C
Twenty years ago, no normal person had an alias for any part of their life. Right? You weren't, you weren't Abe here and then, you know, XPO killer over there.
- [70:12]
A
You know, let's say 30 years. Yeah. Because like blogging started. Interestingly enough, blogging started almost like 19th century novel writing started where everybody had a, had a handle or, or, or, or a pseudonym. But yeah, 23, 30 years.
- [70:26]
C
Fine.
- [70:26]
A
Yeah.
- [70:27]
C
And now there are, I don't know, so many people who spend most of their day as their alias right behind these fake names, pictures that I, when I ever. I'm sorry, this is going to offend a lot of people. I look at each one of those, especially when they bother me, and I. Every time I think that's sad. That's a, that's. That's a loser. I mean, that's a sign of a loser.
- [70:57]
A
You can. You.
- [70:58]
C
If you can't be you in the world, you have to hide behind a nea. A different name. That's sad. You've.
- [71:07]
A
You've.
- [71:08]
C
You've come to a bad place.
- [71:10]
D
But this is okay. So Robert Jay Lifton recently died. He said this idea of the protean self was something he coined in the late 20th century, which I think has a lot of application to what you're saying, Abe. But I would. I would posit something kind of radical, which is that every person should, at some moment in their lives, feel like no one else on earth understands them truly deep down. And that's a healthy thing because that forces you to grapple with who you are. Your sense of self develops when you have that feeling. And nowadays no one has to have that feeling because they can go online and say, here's my worst self under my crazy avatar. And people are like, I feel that way too. And it can be positive in some ways, but I think it has had more of a downstream negative effect for the formation of a sense of self, particularly in people who start that process very young.
- [71:55]
A
You know, that's. That's an interesting observation, because I would have thought we all have kids. I mean, those of us who have kids have had the experience of having a conversation with a kid in some deep distress, and they say to you, you don't understand. You know, somebody broke their heart. They were deeply offended. You know, friend ghosts, them, something like that. And then you say, I know, I've been there. You know, really, everybody goes through that. And that can be very enraging to the. To the teenager you're interacting with, because it seems like you're belittling or downgrading or saying, I did it. Yeah, you won't even remember. The hell with it. You don't really feel pain, you know, well, we all feel the same pain. Now, you think that's like, human right to echo it. But maybe if you're doing it face to face or, you know, like you're trying to provide empathy when somebody is actually. What they're really looking for is, you're right. Everything is terrible. Life is awful. And you don't say that they don't get what they want in the feedback loop, but they can find that in the feedback loop online. Because everybody you're interacting with isn't really real. I mean, they're real. They're obviously real, but they're not people that you're dealing with.
- [73:26]
D
They're not accountable for what they're putting out there when they can hide behind a screen.
- [73:30]
A
Yeah.
- [73:31]
B
Anyway, that's also a point about the, about the costuming that Abe's making too. I think, you know, it's like I. We had, you know, we had dinner guests a couple weeks ago and when they came in, three of my children were wearing capes and masks because they had gotten PJ masks costumes. It's a cartoon about six year old heroes. And so, you know, they were running around saying, I'm Catboy, I'm Gekko, you know, I'm Owlette. And not, you know, I'm whatever and saying their names and there's. And I. And I think about that when I hear Abe describe what he's describing because, you know, there was a study a while ago where minority kids did better when they were in a superhero costume in school. They actually did the study because it had to do with their confidence. Right. Their confidence and their place in the world and whatever. They actually were higher achieving during the study when they wore a Batman costume, let's say, when they didn't. And I think what I think of when Abe says that is that you reach a point at which that's not the way to feel better. Right. I mean, what we're dealing with is adults doing that. Right. And we sometimes do that for kids who are developing. We want them to develop self esteem, we want them to develop confidence and we want them to develop, you know, the ability to do things, you know, without asking for help and stuff like that. And, and somehow we've gotten to a point where a large segment of society needs, you know, a mask and a cape in order to feel like they are capable. And that is something that used to be confined to childhood. And we've just, you know, there's a perpetual childhood angle to this too, I guess, is what I'm saying. Some something, you know, an arrested development. That's a great society wide arrested development.
- [75:37]
C
That's a great way to put it. And I also just want to say in thinking about it now, I was a little too harsh. There are certain sticky circumstances where you don't want to give your name because it might do someone else harm or something like that. So.
- [75:51]
A
Yeah, well, one of the reasons that, as I said, the original bloggers in the world, you know, from Instapundit to all kinds of people, did not use their own names was that they often had careers elsewhere and they were writing personal things and they didn't want the people that they worked with not instapundit, but was a law professor. But they wouldn't want people to know what was going on with them. But they were doing confessional blogs or something like that. And there are still people who. Bloggers around that we don't. Whose identities we don't know. You know, I knew all of pundit for 15 years and I had no idea who he was. Now we know because he works for the Dispatch that he's Nick Katojio. But like he literally would not tell anybody who he was because he had other work and he didn't want to get in trouble at work. So I have no problem with that.
- [76:49]
B
And also because he's a Jets fan.
- [76:51]
A
Well, that. You know what we should.
- [76:52]
B
Yes, as a fellow. As a fellow. I say that as a fellow jets fan, just to be clear.
- [76:56]
A
That's right.
- [76:57]
B
As a fellow jets fan.
- [76:58]
A
Yes, I understand. Right. Okay. I want to make a recommendation. I thought about this because of what we're talking about here. In line with Christine's extinction of experience. This is a really remarkable near future dystopian detective sci fi. Not sci fi, but it is a novel set in San Francisco in the near future and it's called the Night Market and its author is Jonathan Moore, published in 2017. And it's about this guy who wakes up and he doesn't quite know who he is or what is going on. And basically it turns out that he is living in a world in which what he doesn't know, what everybody else doesn't know, is that. That the tech world has figured out a way which will strike Christina as particularly interesting to stimulate the dopamine receptors so profoundly that it sends you into a kind of blissful. You see an ad for something on your phone or whatever, and you are. You buy whatever the thing is that is in the ad and you can't help yourself and you get this huge rush of pleasure and then you know, and then something else happens and then the next ad comes up and you do this and it turns out there's a whole conspiracy around it. It's really a very brilliant book and chilling and incredibly cleverly written. This guy, Jonathan Moore, years ago I recommended novel that he wrote under his own name, which is James Kestrel, called 5 Decembers, which is a genuinely remarkable work of contemporary fiction about somebody who ends up an American who ends up trapped in Japan in the middle of the Second World War and has to be hidden in a house in. I think in Kyoto, but it might be Tokyo by a high ranking government official and his daughter for complicated reasons and he does not know Japanese and doesn't know. And it's about him living and surviving and learning and coping. And a lot of people told me when I recommended this three years ago or something that that reading, it was like was one of those books that didn't change their life but that, you know, they were so thrilled to have had surfaced for them to read. And this is and Jonathan, under the name Jonathan Moore, Jonathan Kessel wright or this Mr. Kestrel, writes these other detective novels and horror novels and things like that. And the Night Market is the one that deals with this topic of what, what the phone can do to you. And, and so it seems, I think, particularly opposite at this moment, even though it's very anti capitalist, that I'm not thrilled with that. But nonetheless, as a kind of exploration of these ideas, it's pretty stunning. So that's the Night Market by Jonathan Moore, available on your Kindle or whatever. We'll be back on Monday. Seth I apologize in advance for the fact that the jets will get they'll almost win, but then they won't. Just like last week.
- [80:31]
B
The question is, will somebody get stuck on a giant American flag before the game?
- [80:36]
A
Yes. I just want to say that my son has now decided that he wants to be a Jets fan. And I don't know what I did in the course of my life to deserve having to watch the jets every week, but here, here, here it goes.
- [80:50]
B
It builds, it builds character. That's the answer that I give everybody I know.
- [80:53]
A
I'm too old.
- [80:53]
B
See how much character built? Look at all this.
- [80:56]
A
I'm too old for this. Like, my son needs to build character. But I, I should, I should get a break is all I'm saying. Anyway, so for Seth, Christine and Abam, John Pod Hor Keep the candle.
- [81:20]
B
And Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music.
- [81:28]
A
Limu Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save we.
- [81:39]
B
That may have been too much feeling.
- [81:40]
C
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty.
- [81:43]
D
Liberty.
- [81:44]
C
Liberty Savings Fairy Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts.