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- [00:00]
John Podhoretz
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.
- [00:48]
Abe Greenwald
List starts to overrun your life, you.
- [00:50]
John Podhoretz
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.
- [01:05]
Abe Greenwald
The US from household names to brands. Just getting started.
- [01:11]
John Podhoretz
You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online.
- [01:16]
Abe Greenwald
Store to match your brand style.
- [01:18]
John Podhoretz
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.
- [01:34]
Abe Greenwald
Wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling.
- [01:38]
John Podhoretz
And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything.
- [01:43]
Abe Greenwald
From managing inventory to international shipping to.
- [01:46]
John Podhoretz
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.
- [02:13]
Abe Greenwald
Commentary.
- [02:18]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the Expect the words Some preach.
- [02:25]
Matthew Continetti
And pain Some die of thirst no.
- [02:29]
John Podhoretz
Way of knowing this way it's going Hope for the best, expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, August 6, 2025. I am John Pod Horz, the editor of Commentary and I want to talk to you before we start about St. John's College, my late sister Rachel's alma mater. Because what kind of education does a free society require? At St. John's College, students study the great books of Western Civilization where they learn to think independently, hear others perspectives and understand the foundations of democratic society. It's an education for citizens, thought leaders and those who will carry forward the best of the American tradition. The St. John's BA is equivalent to a double major in philosophy and the history of math and science and a double minor in literature and classical studies. It's demanding. It's not for everyone. It might be just right for your child. Learn more at sjc.edu. joining me to discuss the Western tradition and its discontents for today's panelists, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [03:52]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [03:53]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [03:56]
Unnamed Speaker
Hi, John.
- [03:56]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [04:00]
Unnamed Speaker
Hi, John.
- [04:01]
John Podhoretz
Before we go any further, we are going to do a mailbag episode on Friday. So if you want to ask us questions that we will answer for you in wondrous fashion, please email us@podcastometary.org Pithy is better than extraordinarily lengthy because in order to get another to get enough questions in a little better, if you guys come at us a little shorter. So try to compress, you know, in the sort of like, do you have a question?
- [04:37]
Unnamed Speaker
I like how you're telling the listeners to be pithier. Couldn't we give pithy answers?
- [04:44]
John Podhoretz
We can go pithy and we will try to go pithy. But also, I think the questions are so complicated that it's impossible to be pithy in response.
- [04:52]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, but John, I think the, the listeners are competing. They want to get the they want to get the John Potharts. We got a quite brilliant letter in from so and so. You see, you know what you should do, John?
- [05:06]
Unnamed Speaker
You should if there's a lengthy letter, you should interrupt the letter.
- [05:11]
John Podhoretz
Ah, there we go. Okay. And just break in and just start answering. Maybe I'll have you read the letters. Yes. Right.
- [05:19]
Unnamed Speaker
That's what we should do.
- [05:20]
John Podhoretz
Okay. Yes. Podcastofcommentary.org for your letters for the Mailbag. Now, want to start with an unusual topic today, the big news in culture and business. The business of culture yesterday is something that's been long rumored, which has to do with the future of Howard Stern, whose contract with Sirius xm, the satellite broadcaster, is up at the end of this year. He's in his early 70s and he is either had enough, wants to retire, or they've had enough of him, according to angry and nasty British newspapers and don't think he's worth the money anymore, that kind of thing. And I was reading these stories and I was thinking about how extraordinarily important a cultural figure Howard Stern is and has been for 35 years certainly in his realm, which was which is radio. Even if you consider serious radio, though it is, as I said, sort of does a lot of video now on the serious and YouTube and whatever. A figure who arguably created the template for the person who is now serving as president of the United States, which we can get to. And a person whose own journey through American culture from what we now think of as the manosphere, which he may be kind of created, to a very comfortable showbiz insider, very cautious about saying controversial or difficult things and challenging his celebrity guests in any way, shape or form because he is now part of their number lot to say. Abe Greenwald, I would say, is a Howard Sternologist of extraordinarily long standing and I think has many, many thoughts on this. But the journey from the outside, the Long island boy who was brought on by radio stations, spiked their ratings and would then get fired for being too hot, too edgy. Turning into Johnny Carson was not anything on anybody's playbook. Who first started listening to Howard Stern as I did in 1982, in September 1982 here in New York when I was painting furniture in my first apartment after college, you know, that I bought at some unfinished furniture store to live in my dumpy apartment not that far from where I live now. And he was on WNBC 6:60am And I'd never heard anything like it before. And the subject of his what happened to him at WNBC then became the source material for his really wonderful movie that was literally the only movie he ever made private parts about about which he played himself and, and this moment where he kind of broke through as.
- [09:11]
Unnamed Speaker
A cultural adapted from his best selling.
- [09:14]
John Podhoretz
Memoir, which is another thing to talk about is that memoir and the role that it played in changing the landscape of publishing in a rightward direction. But Abe. Yeah.
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Seth Mandel
I think the, the, if you go back to those very early days, the, the earliest iterations if we're going to call the WNBC earliest. I mean he was in like, you know, Detroit and D.C. before that in.
- [09:43]
Unnamed Speaker
Buffalo at one point or.
- [09:44]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. But he's D.C. he made his first real noise in D.C. and brought secure in the late 70s. Yeah.
- [09:51]
Seth Mandel
But that very earliest iteration I think does didn't age well at all. It's like sort of pure offense shock jock almost sort of zany, out of control. Yeah. You know, sort of subversion. But he honed something from there and became a much more interesting still offensive but I think wonderfully funny and interesting interesting broadcaster. His to me his I mean this is kind of beside the Point, I'll be brief about it. But to me his greatest talent was that he made absolutely everyone around him fascinating. So that everyone on the show you became deeply invested in, including the celebrity guests, including the non celebrity guests, including the staff people. He sort of built this fascinating world through the prism of his mind that became very addictive. He did. And he. To me, the Trump parallels are extraordinary. This hit me earlier this year because in the earliest days he sort of wanted in on the top tier of celebrity. But they found him repulsive and he knew that and he resented them. So he attacked them from just outside their inner circle. And then the moment, the moment he got in a little bit, he loved it. And thus started his sort of embrace of all the sort of showbiz nonsense that he used to lampoon every day beautifully. And his sort of drift woke word. That's not the Trump part. The Trump part is if you go back and listen to Howard, even though today he's very anti Trump and he's, you know, he talks about, you know, he did the most embarrassing interviews with Kamala and Joe Biden during the last election. But if you go back and listen to Howard, I just heard this because I listen to old, old Howard all the time. He says, if I were president, I'll never be president, but if I were president, the first thing I would do is I would fire everyone. We have all these jobs. I don't know what people do I, but you know, I, people I know who have to go to work every day, they don't, they don't think that they're going to, that they're gonna be employed forever. I know these people employed by the federal government.
- [12:37]
John Podhoretz
They think they're gonna work forever.
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Seth Mandel
We got such a waste of time. I would fire everyone at the FCC of course, cuz he was always at war with the fcc. He'd fire everyone. He loves the cops, very pro cop, very pro law and order, talking about kicking out illegal immigrants constantly, all that. And he's a very, he's, he was a proto Trumpian figure also in this. He always spoke a lot about jokingly race, ethnicity, identity. And people would be very shocked and assume that minorities must hate him and be offended by him. They loved him. Howard was very big, big minority audience. He always used to joke that like the R and D station morning shows like envied him because he actually had their listenership. So he had that Trumpy ability to attract the people that onlookers assumed wouldn't, didn't like him. And he also had that sense of war, his radio wars, I think, are. That's almost how you can look at the tariff wars. The way he would go after other stations is like Trump going, you know, for their. For mark after other, for market share is how Trump sort of goes after other countries in the tariff wars. There's a lot.
- [14:08]
John Podhoretz
I mean, this is an important point because if you remember Trump in 2015, during the debates, right, when the Republican Party, where he began, behaved in a way that no one had ever behaved in any such setting ever before, right? Insulting people to their face, going at them, like, calling them weak, you know, like it just, you know, and leaving them with their jaws hanging on the floor. And Stern, there were all these Stern imitators, right, all over the country, and some of them would start to try to syndicate nationally in his time slot, and he would just go at their jugulars. There was a guy named Man Cow. There were others Man Cow, Mueller.
- [14:52]
Seth Mandel
And he would say, John dibella.
- [14:55]
John Podhoretz
Child molesters. They had been arrested for murder. You know, like, he would say anything. He'd hold funerals. And these guys were also shock jocks, would be like, well, really, this is too much. I'm now going to sue him. He is slandering me. They themselves doing all the same kind of stuff where they would insult, they would punch down, you know, they would call up some businessman in their city and insult them for the way they cook their burger or something like that. But he was like, you come at me, I am going to destroy you. And that was kind of new. Like, again, and I just want to.
- [15:32]
Seth Mandel
Add one really important element here in discussing all this. Trump was on his show a lot. I mean, during all this, Trump was a regular guest. They went to each other's weddings. They were. You know, there was. This was so. This was not. It's not like I'm drawn. I'm connecting something that had no connection there.
- [15:51]
Unnamed Speaker
I'd like to make a couple historical comparisons because you're describing Stern at what may well be the end of an extraordinary career. And as you were doing so, John, I was reminded of the late John McLaughlin, because McLaughlin, like Stern, created the template for a type of communication and a new type of program. But it seems to me McLaughlin, like Stern, by the end, had become the template, was so successful that it kind of overwhelmed him and kind of minimized him. I don't. I don't listen to Howard Stern. I haven't listened to Howard stern in, gosh, 30 years. There was when he really became the king of all media in the early 90s. I read the book, I watched the movie, I would listen to the show. I believe at that time they would broadcast the show on the E. Network in the morning, so you could watch it in the mornings. But I find them irrelevant to the conversation, quite frankly. And in the same way that John McLaughlin, who created the McLaughlin Group in 1982, created Political Talk, essentially a new kind of, new kind of political, not.
- [17:09]
John Podhoretz
Kind of boring panel policy discussions. Who's up, who's down, what's now, who's going to, what's going to happen.
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Unnamed Speaker
Yelling at each other.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, sarcasm, right?
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Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, that was, that was the McLaughlin Group. That had not been created before 1982, and yet it's everywhere now and it's, it's turned into other iterations. But by the. When McLaughlin died in 2007.
- [17:36]
John Podhoretz
Or maybe.
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Unnamed Speaker
It wasn't 2007, it was, that was a 25 year anniversary. He died later, I think in 2017 or so, he had basically been forgotten. Which leads me to my other comparison. As I'm thinking through these analogies, there is only one figure who created a new format and was still at the top of his game and as influential as ever when he died, and that was Rush Limbaugh. And I think it's interesting to kind of set Stern and Limbaugh together because they both exploded on the national scene around the same time, given that they were both benefiting from changes in regulation and changes in the actual technology of talk radio. But it is extraordinary to me that when, when Limbaugh died, he was still someone who was a hugely important force on the American right and in the Republican Party in a way that I just don't think Howard Stern is like you say, he's giving these interviews to Kamala and, and Biden and nothing comes of them.
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John Podhoretz
No.
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Seth Mandel
In fact, I think, I think Trump sort of filled the spot that he left vacant, let the old Howard left vacant. And I think, and I think part of Howard's resentment of Trump is that Howard sort of thought that he had to stop being crude and transgressive to become popular. And then he watched Trump stick with the formula and become the most powerful man in the world.
- [19:07]
Unnamed Speaker
You know, the other, the other Stern Trump comparison is, is the king of all media shtick.
- [19:14]
John Podhoretz
Oh, yeah, right.
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Unnamed Speaker
He was. I remember, you know, I remember Trump doing an interview with the old Deborah Solomon interviews in the New York Times Magazine. And you know, she used to do the one pagers, you know, 200 word interview, whatever. And he goes, you should put this on the COVID Because if you put me on the COVID you'll sell more magazines. And it was, you know, it was just like that. That was Trump, you know, like, I'll do a back page interview if you put it on the COVID Stern, that was his thing. I am, I'm the king.
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Seth Mandel
And also like Trump kind of half winking at it, you know, like aware of it and that.
- [19:43]
John Podhoretz
Totally, totally half winking at it. The person who didn't wink at it in this game was Michael Jackson, right. Who decided that his handle was going to be King of Pop. He was the King of Pop and you were supposed to. And he meant it. And the whole point of Stern saying I am the king of all media was media are garbage. Like I am garbage. I am dominating media. I'm gross. I'm something, you know, that would be a shame if your mother heard you listening in your room to my, to my radio show. I'm going on, I'm going on the MTV Movie Awards and I'm going to be so offensive that I'm going to be banned from mtv. He was banned from MTV for making fart jokes. Transgressive mtv. And then he publishes this book, Private Parts, published by my friend Judith regan. Book sells 2 million copies in a week and then is made into a movie. And the thing about him. And then he had a TV show, he had a late night TV show that was near pornographic because he was very careful to husband at that point in the 90s, he was husbanding his image as the guy you could not get to the gross other side of. If you were going to go low, he was going to go lower. You were not going to outflank him. Familiar with MAGA and you were not going to outflank him in the. I will say anything, I will do anything, as long as I am puncturing pompous balloons. Showbiz sentimentality, political archness and you know, and, and hypocrisy with the kind of a nihilist. Was a complete nihilist. But the whole point was they're all full of it. So the, his maybe greatest time as a broadcaster was when Jerry Seinfeld. It became public that Jerry Seinfeld had picked up a 17 year old girl in Central park and had started dating her. And Stern went at him hammer and tongs. He was writing parody songs about, about Seinfeld's relationship with this 17 year old who because of New York State law was not, you know, it's not actually a violation, it's not statutory rape.
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Seth Mandel
He had Janice Ian sing a version.
- [22:32]
John Podhoretz
Of 17 at 17. That's right. And, and, and, and Seinfeld sued for peace. Seinfeld went on the show to see if he could get Stern to leave him alone by being nice to Stern. And they had a nice conversation. And like everybody in America listened to, to the morning when Jerry Seinfeld went on to talk to Howard Stern. And then three days later, he was just at it all over again. Like he was not. You couldn't buy him off, you know, with a smile and a wink.
- [23:05]
Seth Mandel
And there was one, one more element, I think that's important if we're talking about him in terms of a proto Trump, the template that he established.
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John Podhoretz
For.
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Seth Mandel
This fusion between everyman and elitist, right? He was like, you know, he was the construction worker's favorite guy, the cop's favorite guy, wanted to get the potholes fixed. But then he would talk about the specs on his new limo, about his private jet, you know, and whatever else. And I think, you know, that's another.
- [23:38]
Unnamed Speaker
And he got inspirational.
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John Podhoretz
Hey, it's John here. And you know how we believe all these things, it turns out, are myths. You got myths like going out in the cold will give you a cold, that kind of thing. You know what else is a myth? Thread count. You've been hearing about thread count for years, about how the number of threads in an inch or whatever indicates the softness and high quality of sheets. Thread count is a myth. It's silly. If you want great sheets, you need to look at thread quality, not count. And Bolen Branch uses the highest quality organic cotton threads for long lasting sheets that get softer over time. And I can, I can attest to that because I have Bolin Branch sheets and they get softer with every wash. There is no question you can feel the quality immediately, but you know, after a couple of months, you just have no doubt that you are sleeping on the most comfortable sheets you've ever had. And that is a really, really wonderful quality. We've been talking about Bolen Branch for years and I can just tell you it's true what I'm telling you. Okay, so they're made with the finest 100% organic cotton and a soft, breathable, durable weave. Their products have a quality you can feel immediately and become even softer with every wash. Like I say. And that 30 night worry free guarantee. Sleep on them. You don't like them, send them back. Feel the difference an extraordinary night's sleep can make with bowlen branch. Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets@bolandbranch.com commentary that's B O L L and B R A N C H B O L L A N D B R a n c h.com commentary to save 15%.
- [25:36]
Abe Greenwald
And unlock free shipping exclusions apply.
- [25:41]
John Podhoretz
Hey John here talk to you about one of my favorites. You know it.
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Abe Greenwald
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John Podhoretz
Quince has the good stuff.
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Abe Greenwald
High quality fabrics, classic fits and lightweight layers for warm weather.
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John Podhoretz
All at prices that make sense. Everything I've ordered from Quince has been nothing but solid.
- [26:02]
Abe Greenwald
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- [27:06]
Unnamed Speaker
Point out that 90s though? Because I've been thinking about this lately in my continual researches into old magazines and such. The the 90s were so sex drenched, it really is striking in comparison to today. And maybe that's just because we've renormed and we're just. We just assume that sex is in the background of everything. But that's not quite it either because there's definitely a renewed prudishness, I think, in a lot of entertainment, certainly in the way that young people, it's clear, interact. Whereas in the 90s, Howard Stern was part of the landscape. You had the Calvin Klein underwear ads, you had Pamela Anderson, the the Skin of Max. You had that movie Kids Remember, which was basically child porn. I mean, and it all came out at once. There was this just kind of tremendous. Tom Wolf would call it a sex explosion. I think when the boomers reached kind of Middle age or kind of early early adulthood, you know, the 30 something crowd.
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And in comedy you had Andrew Dice Clay.
- [28:16]
Yeah, everything, it was just so over the top.
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John Podhoretz
No, but like, you went to Blockbuster and every week there was a new R rated movie on the model of Basic Instinct that was notable because it featured women in states of des A B. Right? Now you don't need that because you can stream porn on your phone. But that was how people could see such things. And there was stuff on late night cable that supported, you know, famously. HBO was kind of supporting documentaries and serious films and all of that. And it was the HBO show Real Sex that actually was the reason that people subscribed month after month. And then of course, there was a certain person who occupied the Oval Office, 1993 to 2001, who was molesting women in the Oval Office. And like Jerry Seinfeld, rather younger, rather younger than he, even if consensual. And that was also part of the sex drenched culture. And so Howard Stern was sort of like, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. You got Bill Clinton in the White House. I'm at least here admitting that if I have a talk show on at 1:00 clock in the morning, I'm gonna have porn stars on. That's who my guests are going to be. Porn stars aren't going to be like, you know, a soap opera actress or someone on Knots Landing. I'm going to have somebody who's in the box, who's on the box in the part of the video store where there's the curtain so no one sees you. You can watch her, right, talking to me and maybe I can get her to strip on it. I'll get her to strip on air and then they'll, you know, and then they'll. He famously did the first lesbian makeout session on radio like that. The idea was he was pushing the envelope, but the envelope, there was no envelope anymore. That was kind of the point of his hijinks, right?
- [30:22]
Unnamed Speaker
He was pushing the envelope that everything was breaking down in the 90s. But I think from the perspective of today, one of the great arguments your, your mother made is very relevant, which is when you push through all these rules, the end result is not liberation, but it's in fact a kind of a new chastity and a new androgyny. And that's what we, that's what we live in the 2020s. Right where you're right, it's, it's instantly accessible, but it's, it's also kind of submerged. And people. You look at these parts polling that we see young people aren't dating, they're not partying, they're either too afraid of kind of trying to ask people out or. Or whatever.
- [31:08]
John Podhoretz
And.
- [31:09]
Unnamed Speaker
Or they just don't like each other because of politics. And that's kind of sad. It's very sad, actually.
- [31:17]
I think it's.
- [31:18]
John Podhoretz
It's.
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Unnamed Speaker
There's a similar trend here with. Which is that life sort of moved inside, right? Which is, you know, when you talk about the video store, you had to go rent the movie in person. Whatever you. Whatever you were picking up, you walked out with. I mean, that was the whole thing about Joe. Was it Joe Biden who encouraged people to. To find Robert Bork's video rental history during his confirmation hearings because they were sure they were going to find, you know, some dirty stuff in the VHS cassettes that he rented from his local ippies or Blockbuster or whatever it was. But that was. It's all. All part of this, which is that, like the whole social scene just sort of went inside your head in your computer. You can find whatever you want on your computer, including dating apps, and sit there and swipe all night and pretend you're dating when really you're just swiping a picture on a phone. These are all like, you have to go to the store, you know, talk to people, interact. And that's how you.
- [32:11]
It's the good old days when Woody Allen had to hide his copy of Comic Commentary behind Penthouse magazine.
- [32:17]
John Podhoretz
That's right. Now, here's the other point about this, which is you don't look back on Howard's. The moment at which Howard Stern became a major cultural figure and say things were just so much more innocent. Oh, for the past, when we had the innocent Howard Stern, you could say, you know, it's interesting because this was this weird amalgam of completely transgressive. And yet nothing could transgress anything any longer. So it could move right into the mainstream. You could buy 2 million copies of Private Parts, make a movie out of Private Parts. Even though the FCC was constantly going at Stern, finding him. Finding him guilty of violations of community standards of appropriate conduct and all that. And this was one of the reasons to make the other transition here to what he has meant culturally, that first he went from AM to fm, and then he had had enough of the constant efforts to go at him using government regulators. One of the reasons that he was very cast very much in a libertarian mold in the 90s and the early 2000s. So much so that he almost ran for governor of New York on the Libertarian line. And he took it. This is another proto Trump thing. He took it very seriously for a couple of months. And then it became clear that he was going to have to, under New York State law, reveal his tax returns and his private business connections. And he did not want to do that. He was not willing to do that because that would, of course, have exploded the image that he was presenting, which is that he was a guy from central Long island who had grown up in a lower middle class Jewish household, and he was married to his wife, Allison, who was kind of whiny and complainy, and he had his daughters, and they were all in the. He was like this harried Alan King, you know, schleppy, actually, when the radio was off. He was just a suburban dad living the same kind of crappy life, coming in on the Long Island Expressway and, you know, having to deal with the same crap that you dealt with at the minute that his people found out, even though Abe says he started transitioning to the here's the plane I was flying on stuff that was going to bust his image open, that he was just you. He was you, Long Island. What his.
- [35:05]
Seth Mandel
He had two issues that he was running on for governor, and then he was going to, once he got those accomplished, he was going to hand off the governorship to his lieutenant governor.
- [35:16]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [35:16]
Seth Mandel
Do you remember? I remember both the two issues. And the lieutenant governor's name, please. The two issues.
- [35:22]
John Podhoretz
Yes.
- [35:23]
Seth Mandel
Where he wanted. Yeah, he wanted. He wanted. He wanted all repairs on the LIE to be done overnight so he didn't have to deal with construction problems on his way into and from work.
- [35:38]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [35:39]
Seth Mandel
And the, and the other one is that he wanted the death penalty in New York.
- [35:42]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [35:43]
Seth Mandel
Okay. And when he got those accomplished, he would hand the governorship over to Stan Dworkin. That was his lieutenant governor name.
- [35:54]
John Podhoretz
But this wasn't seriously like. And it's an interesting question because of course, you could even use that as the prototype for what happened a couple years later, which is when Jesse Ventura the wrestler came out of nowhere and won the governorship of Minnesota, which was really the proto Trump moment in American politics, was the Jesse Ventura campaign in Minnesota leveraging.
- [36:17]
Unnamed Speaker
And although. Although he is viewed much more seriously and much more with much more sentimentality today. At the time, Schwarzenegger's run for governor was also viewed through that lens in a way.
- [36:29]
John Podhoretz
Although that was 10. That was actually 10 years. That was 10 years later. Ventura, I think, was 96.
- [36:35]
Unnamed Speaker
Ventura was 98.
- [36:37]
John Podhoretz
98.
- [36:37]
Unnamed Speaker
Okay, so three is Schwarzenegger. So five years.
- [36:40]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. So. But what we had here was this. So he was this kind of common. He was like, what you. If you were a guy who went to a bar in Massapequa, Long island, and was sitting there ranting about your life, he was the apotheosis of you. He was you. He was like, man, look at that. You know, look at that. You know, Yasmeen Bleeth on Baywatch, like, you know, I wish I could get some of that. And he. And he. Then he would, like, get Yasmin Bleeth on the show and make a passeter like that. He was fulfilling the id. He was the American ID and the American male id. And that was a. That's where the Trump stuff really connects and resonates. That Trump spent all of these years on Howard Stern, on Alex Jones, on the WWF and WWE shows all around, building this constituency of people who. Who were like, you know, I go out with beautiful women, I fly on, you know, gilded planes. I have a big hit TV show. But when it comes down to it, if you want to come, if you're going to be Billy Bush and come talk to me, we're going to talk about the P word, because that's who I am. That's who I am. Really. I'm not going to. I'm not. I'm not higher or mightier or, you know, I'm not collecting art in my spare. I'm not Steve Martin collecting, you know, Kazimir Malevich. I'm Howard Stern. I am you. Right? And then this is the big transition. He tires of the constant fighting with the FCC and all that, and this upstart company called Sirius, which has this idea for doing commercial free subscription radio, which almost seemed demented, like, sir, cable television for radio, because how would you listen? You mostly listen to radio in your car. How are you going to do this? How is it going to work? And he's a mass medium person getting millions of people to listen to him across the country in syndication. Suddenly, he's going to go behind a paywall. 1295amonth or something like that. And he's going to. He's going to die. He'll die without the oxygen of his populist following. But Sirius offered him $100 million, I think over five years or something. But it was like a contract the likes of which no one had ever seen in show business for anything ever. And he took the. He made the leap. And according to them, and According to the world of this, that made Sirius xm. It made. It gave them an anchor, a sticky anchor. And you don't have Netflix without Sirius XM. You don't have streaming services without SiriusXM establishing that. You can make people pay for something over the Internet in that way for entertainment purposes that seem like something that you can get for free otherwise, like television. Like, if you're Netflix, you are television over a computer. Why would anybody pay you for that? Well, turned out they would break show business wide open. And Stern kind of did that first. And that's where the political journey gets interesting, because suddenly he no longer need what he. He's. He is assured. He gets divorced, marries a different woman, much happier, gets a lot of therapy. You know, he became a.
- [40:49]
Seth Mandel
Became a very different guy. I mean, he became. He became a sensitive older guy. He really did. I mean, yeah, he did take up painting and.
- [40:57]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [40:58]
Seth Mandel
Photography.
- [40:59]
John Podhoretz
Very concerned about his pets.
- [41:01]
Seth Mandel
Pets. Pets. Pet causes.
- [41:02]
Unnamed Speaker
Was it all around the same time was that move to serious.
- [41:07]
Seth Mandel
It came after that, but I mean, that was the beginning. Yeah. You know, and then I think his second wife has a lot to do with it. I mean, I think, you know, she was a different person. And he was happier, as you say, and he had all this therapy, and he really. He softened in ways that I'm sure make him a much happier person. But. But, but definitely made the show a lot less interesting. And as he became ingratiated among the.
- [41:36]
John Podhoretz
A List set and they wanted to go on a show, like, suddenly it was like the last thing on her. Oh, but here's the thing. He got so big in the 90s that, you know, the way movies open Fridays and Thursday night. One of the reasons that the NBC Thursday night lineup of Cheers and Seinfeld and all this was so important and to NBC was that all the movie studios would run the commercials on the movies that were opening Friday on Thursday nights at wildly premium rates, because people were watching it then, and they would get in their heads and they would go to the theater the next morning. And Stern got so big that getting the Thursday booking or the Friday morning booking on the Howard Stern show to promote your movies. And then suddenly Schwarzenegger is going, biggest star on the planet is going on his show, and Stallone is going on his show, and Mel Gibson is going on his show. But, you know, who never wanted a show? Women didn't go on a show. He had, as Abe said, you know, he had minority followers and he had, you know, he had loved by, you know, the common man, no matter where he was. But the word man is key here.
- [43:04]
Seth Mandel
Well, women eventually went on. They eventually went on. I mean, he.
- [43:09]
John Podhoretz
Much later. Yeah, yeah.
- [43:11]
Seth Mandel
Like Madonna eventually went on, you know. Yeah, I mean, eventually. But this is.
- [43:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, they had similar interests, Madonna.
- [43:19]
John Podhoretz
That's true. But my point is. My point is that the. The jet. He was also an expression. And we have to say this of. If we're talking now about. There's all this, you know, New York Times articles about men. What's wrong with men? And they won't date you, and they won't do anything with you, and they. They're so awful. And so. They're so. They're so withdrawn. And as you say, Matt, though, no one's dating. And they're not this and they're not that. And Stern was a reaction to feminism. I mean, ultimately, you've got to say Stern was a reaction to the idea that it's not okay, you're not supposed. It's gross to go out and want to look at naked breasts and. How dare you. And you're, you know, it's the Sydney Sweeney ad 40 years ago. As the culture. As the sort of high culture is like tut, tutting at the pleasures of male. Of the male gaze. And Stern is like, I am the male gaze. I body the male gaze. I. What I'm interested in is beer and breasts and wrestling and, you know, monster trucks and people like that. And that's why the greatest moment, aside from the Jerry Seinfeld moment on the Stern show that I remember was one morning, the phone rings at the Howard Stern studio. And on the phone for Howard Stern is Joey Buttafuoco. Does anybody remember Joey Buttafuko? Joey Buttafuko, yes, Was the guy whose girlfriend, Amy Fisher came to his house and shot his wife in the head. Be out of love for Joey Buttafuoco, who looked exactly.
- [45:05]
Unnamed Speaker
And she lived. So they.
- [45:07]
John Podhoretz
It lived Paralyzed.
- [45:10]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, she was paralyzed, but she was.
- [45:12]
John Podhoretz
Wounded, but she stayed in the media.
- [45:14]
Unnamed Speaker
So it became a triangle of epic, like, tabloid proportions.
- [45:19]
John Podhoretz
So Joey Buttafuoco calls him to the Howard Stern show and he says, howard, this is Joey Buttafuoco. And Stern pauses for a long time. And he said, I just knew you were a listener.
- [45:36]
Seth Mandel
He became embroiled in the Buttafuoco stuff. I mean, what a moment.
- [45:41]
Unnamed Speaker
Because you had Joey Buttafuoco, you had Tonya Harding, you had Lorena Bobbitt. All these things just kind of show up all at once again.
- [45:50]
Seth Mandel
It's part of it on.
- [45:52]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, it's part of Total Shock Sex.
- [45:56]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [45:57]
Unnamed Speaker
I will recommend Chuck Klosterman's recent book, the 90s, as a great kind of first pass at what an unusual decade the 1990s were. But even, even Klosterman, you know, he has his own particular interests in music and sports. So he does. He touches on this, but doesn't quite delve into it. Just the tabloid grossness of the 1990s still resonates. And it's. That was Howard Stern.
- [46:26]
John Podhoretz
That was.
- [46:26]
Unnamed Speaker
That he was part of that moment, a moment that has passed. And I think this is why he's also, you know, he's, he's getting older. He. He wants. I just looked up that his sidekick Robin Quivers, because I had forgotten her last name. And, you know, she's 72 years old.
- [46:41]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And so she. Yeah. By the way, important point when you make about Klosterman and sports, because that was the other thing about the 90s was it was a decade, on the one hand, of incredible prosperity. Prosperity. We had won the Cold War. We had the peace dividend, you know, the budget deficit goes in surplus and all of that. And on the other hand, the country went bananas. It was like a kind of. We had been loosed from the bonds of having to take life as seriously as we were sort of compelled to by the threat of the Soviet Union or something. And not only did you have, as you say, Bobbitt and Buttafuoco and Tonya Harding and all of that, you had the steroid scandal in baseball and, of course, O.J. right, O.J. and it was sort of like it was already the. Everything is somehow broken. Somehow. We just sort of like we let ourselves loose and things just went bonkers. And baseball players are hitting 73 home runs, only it turns out they're all cheating in, you know, the game where in theory, you could almost not really cheat because it was too hard to cheat. And I don't know, there was. And then you had this guy in the Oval Office, you know, doing what he was doing in the Oval Office and all of this. It took a generation, maybe it took a generation for all of that softening of the American turf to make Trump possible in the sense that Trump emerges at any time before 2015, in the middle of the financial crisis, in the middle of Iraq, in the middle of the response to 9 11, you know, in the middle of all of that. And it's like, go away, man. Like, this is. You're ridiculous. Like, we have not now, Donald.
- [48:49]
Seth Mandel
This.
- [48:49]
John Podhoretz
We're. We're what's, what's, what's, what's going on this earth is way too serious for you to be futzing around with this. But everything that would, would, would have made him impossible culturally had been, all the structures had been, the termites had gotten to them and they were still standing. But all he had to do was kind of like tap on them with a hammer and they collapsed. And when he had this moment where it was sort of like none of you knows what you're doing, everybody had a chance. Republicans had a chance to do 9, 11 and Iraq. Obama had a chance to do Obamacare and deal with the financial meltdown. The Republicans, the Democrats in Congress, Republicans, you all stink. And I'm a disreputable person who does gross things and is kind of like somebody you wouldn't want to bring home to your mother. And I can be president now.
- [49:48]
Unnamed Speaker
And I think that the record backs you up on that because he won in 2016. He lost in the mid Covid election because it got serious then he won. After the dust had cleared on the COVID era, we brought him back. It was like, all right, now we can have, we can have Trump again. But it's like not right now while we're in middle of a pandemic. By the way, Matt, you know, mentioned Chuck Klosserman and just to mention one other thing about that is that he also wrote a book called I Wear the Black Hat and it's about, you know, villains and who is a villain and whatever. And one of the things that comes out of that book is he has a great chapter on Andrew Dice Clay, who I mentioned before. But one of the things that comes out of that book is that was also a period where the anti hero became a kind of self conscious thing where people took it upon themselves to be a villain that they knew everybody really secretly loved. And that was a decade of like people who were kind of, who were only really villains to the suits, you know, but there, but being a villain was actually their whole, their whole act. And it totally, you know, by the end of the decade, you know, you, you just had, you had the Sopranos, you had like all of a sudden the anti hero had emerged as the hero. But it was like that was the decade where you went from, you know, anti villain to hero through the anti hero transition.
- [51:15]
Matthew Continetti
Hi everyone, I'm Matt Ebert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take crash champions from a single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you. Watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [52:09]
Matt Ebert
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [52:10]
John Passantino
And I'm John Passantino.
- [52:11]
Matt Ebert
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter, Status.
- [52:20]
John Passantino
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [52:25]
Matt Ebert
Every Friday we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [52:34]
John Passantino
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis that isn't afraid to call it like it is. We also pull back the curtain via our exclusive reporting to take you behind behind the scenes.
- [52:43]
Matt Ebert
My understanding having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
- [53:00]
John Passantino
Oh my God. That's Power Lines presented by Status. Follow Power Lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast app.
- [53:14]
John Podhoretz
Dice Clay is an interesting comparison point because Andrew Silverstein, Andrew Dice Clay was an actor and a very good actor and he made his first real impression on a Michael Mann show called Crime Story with Dennis Farina, which was about the mob in Chicago in the 1960s in which he played a Jewish mob accountant, Andrew Silverstein, though he would have also been a comic around la, but he wasn't really a successful comic and he was really had incredible presence. And then he built this character, right, the Dice man who was Howard Stern on a stand up podium and also got banned from things for being gross and all of that and doing and having. But he filled Madison Square Garden, he filled stadiums. He was an enormous figure. People refused to go on snl. You know, people boycotted the SNL show when the cast members, when he was the host and all of that. And then he just died because it was all an act. And Stern, whatever Stern was first of all Stern's like, as I said, like, you can't compare him to anybody. When you have like a major figure who transforms an entire medium the way he did, you know, that's a, that's a very big thing and that comes along once in a generation or something and you can't compare them. But only in the last, like 10 years has Clay had this recovery of a career. And that's because he's now a dramatic actor. Like he played Lady Gaga's father in A Star Is Born. He was fantastic. He was in this Woody Allen movie, Blue Jasmine, as Woody Allen's brother in law, as, as Cate Blanchett's brother in. And he was fantastic because it was all a bit. And their authenticity is important. Stern's. Stern's Sternism, though, he decided he wanted to be a different person and therapized himself into becoming a different person. That was real. Trump is real. We all understand that. There's something real about Trump. That's why it was so amazing yesterday that he was walking on the roof of the White House screaming down at reporters like there's nothing. I mean, it's not that he doesn't have airs or something like that. It's just, he is just entirely himself.
- [55:41]
Unnamed Speaker
One of a kind.
- [55:42]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, one of a kind.
- [55:43]
Unnamed Speaker
And obviously serving McDonald's through the drive thru window.
- [55:48]
Seth Mandel
But the realness is that, I mean, it's also why it never really benefits his detractors to talk about him as a liar, because there's something true about him. Ugly, not ugly, whatever it is, but there's an honesty about him in his person that is there at all times, no matter what's coming out of his mouth.
- [56:13]
John Podhoretz
Okay. Can I. Go ahead.
- [56:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Sorry, no, I was just gonna say that somebody. The best tweet response to the roof was Sonny Wright on Twitter. His, his five word response was unfortunately effing hilarious. Once again. And I, and I, and I. That to me is like, that's the title of the Trump years, right? Unfortunately effing hilarious. Like whatever else you think of the danger that he poses and the stuff that, you know, every, the systems that he knocks down, it's very hard sometimes because he is unfortunately effing hilarious.
- [56:49]
Just wait for the round of stories in tomorrow's New York Times by Peter Baker about how Trump violates norms of presidents not walking on the White House roof. Or. Yeah, experts, experts worried that president might trip.
- [57:02]
John Podhoretz
You know, extra story that the, you know, he, I mean, it is amazing.
- [57:09]
Unnamed Speaker
That there's still stories about the ballroom.
- [57:11]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. That's why he was on the roof. I know.
- [57:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Also to look at his flags.
- [57:17]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. That he put up. Yeah. But, you know, I was thinking about this. So just conclude on something here about authenticity. Inauthenticity. We believe in inauthenticity to some extent. I mean, civilization is an effort to impose a certain level of inauthenticity on evil and disruptive and sinful human nature. Right. It's a. We're putting a. Putting a gloss on ourselves, trying to behave better. Trying to behave, you know, be the part of our better angels and not our worst angels. But falsity is not an answer to, you know, falsity is not civilizational. So yesterday, fascinating moment on. On X, there is a hilarious tweeter. You know, Sariatom are these guys who pop up and they're just like, hilarious, particularly on the right. I mean, the original one who wasn't even a Twitter person because he had a blog was Iowa Hawk. Our friend. My friend Iowa Hawk. And then there was Comfortably Smug, who then went kind of Howard Stern serious and kind of lost his comic force. And there's a guy now named Jarvis. Twitter handle is Jarvis Best. And he is hilariously funny. And he. And he said, I got a hold of Kamala's memoir of an advanced copy of Kamala's memoir. And he, you know, took a photograph of a page, obviously something that he himself had typed up to look like a book. And it's this. Kamala's as the hundred and day days pass and how the day when she picked Tim Waltz to be her vp. And it's all about how first Tim did this. And I said, that was great. He's a coach, and it's wonderful. Then he did that, and I said, that's good too. But then he started wanting to braid my hair. And. And that's sort of like the bottom of the page. It is a hilariously funny satire of a, you know, camp post campaign book. Tens of thousands of people took it seriously. And they were like, I want to know who the ghostwriter is. I mean, are we going to do an investigation into how she chose Tim Walls? What is going on?
- [59:41]
Unnamed Speaker
It's like people like the Gorilla Channel.
- [59:44]
John Podhoretz
Well, I don't. What's the Grill Channel?
- [59:46]
Unnamed Speaker
The. One of the. One of the. One of the hubris Twitter feeds in the first time put out a story about. That was supposed to be like a memoir or whatever Trump with. I think was when he was with the porn star. But, you know, it was a tale of them. You know, he didn't want to do anything with her. He just wanted to sit and watch the gorilla channel all afternoon.
- [60:10]
Right.
- [60:10]
And it became, it became. People were like, where do you find the gorilla Channel? That's so Trump. That really makes sense.
- [60:15]
Abe Greenwald
Right?
- [60:16]
John Podhoretz
But anyway, the whole reason I bring this up is only that what, what Jarvis captures in this hilarious page of the non existent memoir, his parody of the memoir, is the thing that made it impossible for her to actually survive Brat Summer and all of that, which is just that she has no authenticity to her whatsoever. There's nothing real about her. There was nothing real about that campaign. There was nothing to connect to or to attach to. You had to bring it to the rodeo because she wasn't supplying it. Nothing to nothing to hook on. And then when I look at forward to 2028 and I see all these people who are doing all this kind of stuff, and I see Cory Booker, who was once a very interesting and weird and heterodox political figure, trying to do this from the outside, become the angry Democrat who is going to tell people to have courage and to fight and all of that. And it's so false and it's so fake. And I don't like Trump. I mean, I admire so much of what Trump has done this year, particularly in relation to Iran and all that, but I don't like Trump. I didn't really like Howard Stern, all of that, but like, I see what it is that makes people connect to him so readily, and I look at the universe of people and who do I see that may be able to connect to people like that? Maybe Mamdani. It's possible that Mamdani has this weird ability to connect to people because being a terrorist, sympathizer, communist, and not running away from it might be his secret sauce. In a world in which what matters is your authenticity, I. I don't know and I'm not sure. But if Stern taught us anything in the 40 years of his 45 years of his career, it is that in. In a world in which people have lost faith in institutions and in cultural norms and all of that.
- [62:32]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, you know, Mamdani still hasn't been elected mayor, even likely to. But I think that another example would be Bernie Sanders, who on a poll that came out yesterday of most admired people, amazingly was at the top of. Wasn't at the top of the list, but I think was number three.
- [62:50]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [62:50]
Unnamed Speaker
After Pope Leo Zelinsky. And then Sanders showed up. And of course, that's. Bernie Sanders does have that quality. You can't, you might not like him. You may disagree with him, but you can't deny that he's a true believer.
- [63:05]
You know, he's the real his and.
- [63:06]
His, he's a real commie, and his.
- [63:08]
Colleagues like him for that.
- [63:09]
And he doesn't, I don't think his.
- [63:11]
Colleagues like him, but there's a lot of stories about, like, senators who, who hate his ideology, but who feel like when you talk to Bernie, you get Bernie. When Bernie tells you he's going to do something, Bernie does it. You know, it's like this reliability thing, like my interaction with his ideology.
- [63:26]
He's a very unpleasant person, but at the same time, I don't deny that he is who he is.
- [63:31]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [63:31]
Unnamed Speaker
So I think he has, of course, he's too old to run for president. And his protege, aoc, she has some of it, I think, I think people do respond to her Instagrams and everything. The issue with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, which Donald Trump has raised, I think quite accurately. She doesn't give interviews. She's not very good on her feet for whatever, whatever Bernie's problems are, and there are many. He, he gives interviews, he will tell you what he thinks. And I think that's what people respond to in your frame of authenticity, John.
- [64:04]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [64:04]
John Podhoretz
And I do think that this matters going forward because it is the thing when you say people don't care about issues or you can't get people to vote on issues and all that, or, you know, you can't take Trump and create an ideology around him. Though. Matt, you're doing an excellent job of seeing if there are ways to knit this into some kind of a clear tapestry. I, I, I, I, I welcome, I welcome the effort. I'm not sure you're gonna, you're gonna quite get there. It's not your fault, but it is a very interesting intellectual effort. But in, you can't be a manufactured product anymore. If you're going to end up being president, you're, it's not going to work, which is maybe a problem. I mean, maybe, I don't know how you get around it. I mean, and maybe that's a problem for J.D. vance, who is sort of, his authenticity is in question only because he has just slipped, you know, he slipped around, you know, ideologies, characters, religions, all of that. And he's only 40 and he's been taking off and putting on different sets of clothing to see what would work best.
- [65:32]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, here's the other half of the Lionel Trilling collection, sincerity. And I do think that in you're.
- [65:40]
John Podhoretz
Referring to his book Sincerity and Authenticity. Yes. Yeah.
- [65:45]
Unnamed Speaker
This is commentary. So we have to drop Lionel Trilling's name in every other episode. But I think the people who watched that debate between J.D. vance and Tim Walls got some sense of.
- [65:57]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, who was the more authentic.
- [65:59]
Unnamed Speaker
Who was the more authentic figure.
- [66:01]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [66:01]
Unnamed Speaker
Who was. Who seemed more sincere in what he was trying to communicate. And I think that was when a lot of people, including me, saw the potential of JD Vance in 2028 and beyond.
- [66:14]
John Podhoretz
Waltz is also a good example of this because she chose Walls because being a totally inauthentic person and therefore unable to recognize genuine authenticity, she thought he was authentic. She thought he was the high school coach who was no nonsense and, you know, was able to appeal to the common guy while being a progressive and all of that. And she didn't know that he was a pathological liar who had made up stuff about his military service and had gone to weird, had spent a lot of time in China in odd circumstances and who, you know, like, claimed things that weren't true and looked weird and was very uncomfortable because she had no ability. She had no capacity.
- [67:04]
Unnamed Speaker
And also, authenticity can only. Inauthenticity can't survive the national stage, but it can survive. He can be the character Waltz and rise to be governor and, you know, at some point, a fairly popular governor and all that stuff, and enough of a national figure to be seen as a possible VP choice. It's that national stage where you really find out and you really can't fake that part.
- [67:32]
John Podhoretz
Right. But I do think it's important to note if we're going to go to this point and not even to return to Howard Stern, that it's, you know, the middle of 2025. We had no idea Trump was coming. We had no idea Biden was coming. We had no idea Obama was coming at any of these stages before their respective elections. We did know that George W. Bush was coming, I would say in 1997, was pretty clear that he was. That he was on his way. Not that he was necessarily going to win, but. And this weirdness about authenticity, this weirdness about what these people represent to people, the ones who win, are they authentic? Bush an authentic Christian, Obama, an authentic post racial American. Trump, an authentic sort of destroyer of worlds, you know, I am doom, destroyer of worlds. And then Biden, an authentic old guy, the guy from the past who had the values that we seem to have lost. Those were all things that connected to people. And whoever comes next time is going to have to have some version of that. And we have no reason to think that that person, we even. That person is even on our radar screen. And again, not to over Mamdani things, but nobody knew Mamdani was on the radar screen in February and the primary was in June. Like you know, no one knew. Like I barely even knew he was. I live here. So. Anyway, we should. We shouldn't. We should leave it there. We do have a recommendation from Matt mid show which is Chuck Klosterman's the 90s.
- [69:24]
Unnamed Speaker
Great book.
- [69:24]
John Podhoretz
It is a great book. And we will be back tomorrow. So for Seth, Matt and Abe, I'm John Pot Hordes keep the candle.