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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of.
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Matt Eberts
Thirst the way of knowing which way.
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John Podhoretz
It'S going Hope for the best Expect.
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Abe Greenwald
The worst, hope for the best.
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John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. This is one of our special summer episodes where we are not talking about the news. We are going to talk about some other stuff. And I'm going to talk about a little bit of other stuff before we start, namely the commentary roast, October 19th here in New York City. The Roasty is Clifford Asness, one of the most brilliant minds in American finance and banking and hedge funding and the like. And it is going to be a fantastic. What we are putting together. Not gonna tell you much, but what we're putting together is going to be a fantastic, hilarious, zippy, lively, fun evening. We do this once a year. It's. I have to say, even though we have people here from the American Enterprise Institute who throw a hell of a gala, this is a gala unlike any other gala that people sort of talk about for years. And if you've never been, please look, go to commentary.org roast to look at tickets and tables. And if you have been, you are going to want to come back this year, trust me. So that is the Cliff Asness Roast, October 19th here in New York. Commentary.org roast for more information. And if you come, you will meet my fellow panelists, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
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John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
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John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
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Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
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John Podhoretz
And social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
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Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
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John Podhoretz
So we've been doing some cultural stuff I thought maybe we would do. It's not really travel. It's more like history travel Americana and the like. And I thought maybe what we were trying to do here today is for us all to offer suggestions here in the last couple weeks of summer and indeed into the fall of next year, if you need to make plans of places in the United States. I think. I think I specified the United States, but maybe I didn't. In which case we could do the Planet, but places that you maybe haven't seen or haven't been to that we really, really love.
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Matthew Continetti
I have to interrupt you. Okay. This is what you meant by favorite obscure sites. Is that what you meant?
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John Podhoretz
Yes. Oh, you thought I meant sites.
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Matthew Continetti
I thought you meant Internet sites.
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John Podhoretz
Oh, okay. I have a whole list. Oh, well, I spelled it.
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Christine Rosen
I'm not revealing those. I'm sorry.
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Seth Mandel
Matt's gonna go first.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, well, Matt is like, you talk about your travel, and then I'll come in at the end on a totally different subject. Just to make it clear.
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Matthew Continetti
Show you what a digital native I am.
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John Podhoretz
Yes. Sites as an Internet is S I T. Yes. I guess how you spelled it.
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
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John Podhoretz
They're supposed to sell it the same.
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Seth Mandel
You said, you said. I believe you said unknown sites in America.
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Matthew Continetti
In travel, sometimes you say your favorite S I G H T S's. Favorite sites.
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John Podhoretz
Actually, no. No, I'm actually not correct. What do we call, what do we call a camp site? Camp sight.
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Matthew Continetti
But sight seeing. Sightseeing is visual. When you go sightseeing.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, well, you know, now what we.
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Seth Mandel
Need is this is the first episode. Tune in to the next one where we actually talk about this.
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John Podhoretz
Have a solution here and have. And have one of these AIs go psychotic and then tell us that we're supposed to jump off a building.
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Matthew Continetti
What we need is Trump to mediate.
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John Podhoretz
Bring Trump in.
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Matthew Continetti
We'll meet in a neutral site.
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Abe Greenwald
S I T E. I think I say we all go with our favorite physical sites. Except Matt, I want to hear your favorite.
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Matthew Continetti
No, no, no, I agree, I agree. I will come in last.
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John Podhoretz
Okay. All right. Okay. So. Okay. We're going in all kinds of fun directions and maybe we could all mention Internet sites. Okay. So Chris, Christine, you are a person well traveled from the south, you live in the mid north, you spend a lot of time in the upper north of the United States and you've been all over and you know everything. So what, what would you recommend?
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Christine Rosen
Okay, so I'm going to recommend because for more than 20 years, every summer I've gone to Mount Desert island in Maine and I started going as a young adult and I ended up taking my kids there every summer. And it is. Most people go to Bar harbor, which is kind of a honky tonkish sort of, you know, tourist trap town. Maybe they do a few of the hikes in Acadia, like Cadillac Mountain, which is beautiful. You can actually drive up there and watch the sunrise. One of the easternmost parts of the US Beautiful. But you know, there are some tourist destinations people go. So I wanted to recommend a place particularly for people who have kids because you can take your young kids on this trail to this special place and they can hang out and play for a while. It's a nice place to have a picnic. I did this every year with my sons and it is now one of their favorite places. And it's called Little Hunters beach on Mount Desert Island. And it's pretty easy to find on any of the trail maps. It's a pretty easy hike, even for little toddlers. My kids did it on their own, but it has at low tide, cool tidal pools that kids can kind of stay around. It's a very rocky beach, not a lot of shade, but you can find a little bit and sit and read a book, which is. Is what I always do. And then as the kids get older, they can clamber up on the rocks and sort of explore. There are some trails above the rocks. It's just a beautiful, quiet little cove. And it's not an entirely hidden gem because people who go to the island know that it's there. If you're very intrepid as your kids get older, go get an old early 20th century trail map of Acadia. And there you'll find lots of ghost trails, trails that the National Park Service knows exist and don't tend, but are kind of little secret hidden paths. And if you have one of my kids is very good at orienteering and finding way, way finding. So we actually have explored a few of those ghost trails, and they're fascinating. You'll find little off. Off the beaten path places still. In one of the national parks that is one of the most heavily visited on Earth, you can still find these secret places. But for little kids and even just adults who want a beautiful spot on the island, go to Little Hunters beach on Mount Desert island in Maine.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, can I you. You talk about ghost trails? It just reminds me of a story. In 1998, several of us may or may not have done this. There used to be a lot of junkets. There used to be a lot of groups that would take you on trips and stuff for free so you could see places like. So I went the American Swiss Federation. I went on a trip to Switzerland, courtesy of the American Swiss Federation. But most of this trip was excruciatingly boring as we went to reinsurance company after reinsurance company and sat in the boardroom and had them explain how reinsurance worked. And no, I'm not kidding. But one day we took a train up an alp. I wish I could remember which alp, but this train ride was astonishing because it was like you literally went from, like, the base, which was a village or a town or something like that. You went up and then you saw, like, Heidi's farm. And then you saw, you know, I don't know where the. Where the Trapp von Trapp family crossed in from Austria. And then you get. And finally you get to the top, and then you're at the top of this alp. And there I was at the top of this album. They're like, you know, if you want to hike down, you can hike down. So I don't know where we're up 7,000ft or something like that. And I was like, hey, I've done that. Like I've been at, you know, I went to, I've been to Zion and Bryce National Parks. I, I could do this. And then this was 1998 in Switzerland. So by the way, like, as you heard, you go to Europe and there are all these things that we have that they don't have, like ice in the summer, right? Like no one has any ice for their drinks and they don't have air conditioning. So what I didn't know was that if you go hiking and swim, maybe this is no longer true. That's why I mentioned it was 1998. But they say, okay, go down this trail, down this extremely steep mountain and there's nothing there. I mean, it's a trail. You can see this is where people walk down, but there are no guardrails. There's no, no one's made like steps. You're just going down this trail and if you trip, you know, you're like Charlie Brown in the comic book when Lucy, like rolling like a bowling ball down 10,000. So I walk down about 150ft and I was like, no, like, you know what, maybe it's a violation of nature and the rules of hiking to have a well lit, well carved path like we have in the national parks to help us with hiking and that this is much more natural. And we Americans are spoiled and we're like in Wally. We just sit in chairs and everybody does everything for us now in a.
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Christine Rosen
Katie, by the way, they put the Kerns, you know, the stones. People do it with stones.
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John Podhoretz
It's a little. They didn't even have those is what I'm trying to tell you. That was my. So. So that was my hiking. That was my.
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Matthew Continetti
How did you get down from the.
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John Podhoretz
Mountain back on the train? Oh, so you could take the train back or you could go down the mountain on the trail. And so I thought, you know, I've done masada, like I said, I've done it in Bryson's line. But you know what? The Swiss, you know, they make clocks and they make chocolate and they steal holocaust. They still, they steal works of art from Jews and they put them in bank vaults and won't let them go and they continue to hold on to them and they're fonts of international criminal banking and they have terrible trail markers. That's. That's all I'm saying. And everybody has a gun, which is nice. I gather if you're a citizen of Switzerland, you have to have a gun. And they have a very old constitution and they have terrible trails. Okay, Matt, do you want to go? Shall we switch gears and go with Internet?
- [10:41]
Matthew Continetti
Keep going with your travel.
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John Podhoretz
Okay. Okay.
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Abe Greenwald
Excuse me. My site, I don't know that it qualifies as obscure. In fact, I think it's almost the opposite of obscure, given that it's right in Times Square. But it's new and probably not well known. And I happen to have just gone and it was really good. And it is the Museum of Broadway, and I thought they did a great job. It only opened in, like, 2023, I believe. And it's three stories, and you have to get your tickets in advance because it's a sort of timed. They give. Because they can't let everyone just show up once and mob the place. And it tells the entire story of Broadway from before Broadway was, before the theater hub was anywhere near Broadway, when it was downtown, to up to the present moment. And I think that's the only way to tell it is chronologically, because if you approach it terms of genre, that it will get too confusing and to everything else. So they do a really good job of mixing sort of memorabilia and all sorts of show plans and real items that were taken from actual shows. And they don't kill you with reading and information. It's not. You know, that's always a weird sort of decision to make at a museum, like, how much. How much am I going to be reading today? You know, as opposed to sort of like, ingesting in other ways. And. And they make that. They make that pretty. Pretty easy because if you're talking about Broadway, there's so much visual and sonic to go with. So there's. It's a little noisy. There's like, you know, one minute you're hearing, you know, Oklahoma. And then in the next room, you may be hearing, like, Guys and Dolls already a little bit. But there's a lot to take in. And they have certain exhibits or exhibitions devoted just to particular shows, but mostly it's about. And those changes. But mostly it's about decades or eras and what went on in them. Who Were the Giants? And it's sort of. It's curated somehow, all of a piece. It really. It really works. It tells a story. And I have to say, almost uniquely, as a museum experience, in the past 10 years, I didn't get any wokeness thrown at me. And this is, this is an area where you, where they could really, they could go deep. I mean, they discussed. There's a, there's a, there's, there's, there's a bunch on sort of minstrelsy which was, which was real and which was a big part of early theater in this country. And, but there's not, you don't get like the sort of alternate story of Broadway. You get the story of Broadway. And so it was new to me, so I took it as obscure and I recommend it.
- [14:09]
Abe Greenwald (advertisement voice)
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- [15:18]
John Podhoretz
About one of my favorites. You know it, You've heard me talk about it.
- [15:21]
John Podhoretz (advertisement voice)
It's Quints.
- [15:23]
John Podhoretz
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- [15:32]
John Podhoretz
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- [15:37]
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- [15:57]
John Podhoretz
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- [15:59]
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- [16:01]
John Podhoretz
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- [16:41]
John Podhoretz
The museum of Broadway. This is in good contrast to the worst museum that I have been to in the last 10 years which is the Academy Museum in LA. Very notorious. Right? The Academy of Motion Control Arts and Sciences spent years and $500 million developing this former department store into a museum. And then they opened it. And mysteriously the entire history of Hollywood was not being told because in the wake of George Floyd and everything they decided to leave out the inconvenient fact that Hollywood was created by Jews and that all of the original studios were the work of Jewish immigrants. And that Even Cecil B. DeMille, the first great founder of Hollywood was actually the son of a Jewish mother. And instead they focused on, you know, minority representation in Hollywood. I went to it after all that controversy had sort of died down. And it is a dreadful museum. It is badly organized. It's. It's exactly as you would say. It's organized thematically with weird exhibits about strange side light issues, you know, that make no. Don't make any real sense and there's no story to be told and all of this. And like anything, cinema is something that's, you know, 125 years old basically and you would want to tell it chronologically and thematically and explain and do all sorts of offshoots. It's a catastrophe of a museum undone by politics and by this fancy idea based on gender studies and the studies world that you don't treat things as historical matters but as thematic study issue things. And so don't go to the Academy Museum is what I'm saying.
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Seth Mandel
And also in. In common with. With what Abe was talking about is the. That museum John went after, they re built, they redid the early history part so that they could include the Jews. And they basically gave a lot of. Put a lot of emphasis on like the, you know, minstrelsy and blackface and Al Jolson and all that stuff too. Right. It was like there were no Jews and then the Jews who founded Hollywood were just racist white people.
- [19:15]
John Podhoretz
Exactly. Yeah. It's really. I mean that as I say, it's not even the problem. Isn't even that this. Which is a real problem very representative of where the mindset of the museum world since this was the most expensive museum incepted in the United States in the last 10 years. So where fashionable museum thinking was and where thinking was on American jewelry. But it's also just like, as an experience for somebody who just wants to go to an interesting museum, it is designed to repel you and not to invite you in. Okay, so do I go? And then Matt, you want to go? Is that how we want to do this? Okay, Matt's muted.
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Matthew Continetti
He's like, seth hasn't gone.
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John Podhoretz
Seth hasn't gone. Seth.
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Seth Mandel
Yeah, you go. So I'm going to say I don't. When you said unknown in the chat. I don't. You know, we all have different definitions of that, but I think a lot of people have. Don't realize that this is right under their nose. I'm going with the cloisters and Fort Tryon Park. It is.
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John Podhoretz
There's this Washington Heights in Manhattan. Yes, Manhattan. Yeah.
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Seth Mandel
And you are. Everything around you in that part of Manhattan is very Manhattany. There's nothing. You don't feel like you're about to emerge into a secret garden. And then you. But for Tryon park is one of the most beautiful things you could ever see. It is the. The park itself has been really designed to be as as wide ranging as possible with, you know, in terms of.
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John Podhoretz
Of.
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Seth Mandel
Of everything planted there. And the way that it's arranged is like. It's very New York to step into what feels like, you know, this sort of like global garden thing. It's enormous. The garden is enormous. Certainly among the biggest public gardens that you could see in New York, if not at the top. And the cloisters are these. It's a. It's a sort of medieval art museum that is built from, you know, cloisters were like. They're like these walkway atria, you know, type places, parts. Parts of churches where you would be able to sort of sit and reflect or whatever. It was, you know, it was like a very. Supposed to be a sort of spiritual nook, I guess. And so the cloisters is a museum, like a castle, built of cloisters. They took parts of actual cloisters in France. The largest part is made up of French cloisters, but there's also Spanish cloisters. And they put it together and they literally, they shipped it over in stones and they put it back together, these old medieval cloisters, and they built a museum that is entirely built of the one part of, you know, church grounds or whatever that everybody, you know, can really enjoy. This sort of, you know, a place where you walk under trees or you know, in a hallway with art on the ceiling or something. And so the entire higher place is this, like, vacation from. From thinking from. From the world. It's like stepping into, you know, a kind of, you know, another dimension right there in Washington Heights, of all places. And it also has a famously huge dog run, so dog owners absolutely love the. It's like. It's like everything. It's, like, pretty.
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John Podhoretz
It's just.
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Seth Mandel
It's uncommonly beautiful. It's over the Hudson. You walk to the edge of this beautiful park, and you're looking over the Hudson, and so it's just. And there. There. There is. There is a hamster buried there that is near and dear to our family also. But don't tell Bloomberg, because, you know, he. When he became mayor, he made everything in the Cloisters. Like, you had to pay to take photographs of yourself.
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John Podhoretz
And to bury hamsters.
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Seth Mandel
And to bury hamsters.
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John Podhoretz
Yeah.
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Seth Mandel
So I would say Fort Tryon park in general, but, you know, with the cloisters, and so it's sort of a perfect nook in a perfect place.
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John Podhoretz
I mean, we should mention that the cloisters is part of the Metropolitan Museum, and it is the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum. So that is housed there specifically, sort of like an early. I think, 30s early for, like, a concept museum that you would put. You would take this stuff that looks. That's medieval, and you would put it in something that looks like a medieval building. And unlike a modern Romanesque or, you know, art museum. And so what it has famously is this collection of tapestry, you know, gigantic French, and I think mostly French tapestries of the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries hanging on the walls endlessly. So that is a great recommendation. Okay, now, Matt, it comes down to you and me. Are you want to do. Should I do a site and then you're gonna. We're gonna shift?
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Matthew Continetti
Well, yeah, you do a site, and then I'll shift, and then you comment on my sites. Let's do that.
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John Podhoretz
Okay, so I want to mention something that you would never do unless you were in a very specific place. Place, which is always. To me, it's like I keep saying to my kids, don't get a tourist T shirt. Like, don't get a. You know, you won't go someplace you want a T shirt. Only get a tourist T shirt from a place that nobody, anybody, any that you have ever met will ever have the same T shirt of. So, like, you know, a. An ice cream parlor in a town in Minnesota that you drove through and that has really great ice cream and no one, they'll go, what is that that you're wearing? That's a good T shirt, but like a T shirt from the Hard Rock Cafe, not a good T shirt. That's. This is my. So this is the ultimate of these because it's a road. It's a road that I ended up driving totally by happenstance because I was visiting my friend and sometime podcast guest, Daniel Cass, with my daughter. He had a. He has a house in Tennessee. And my daughter, I decided to go to Dollywood for the day. And he said, well, the way you do that is you drive on Route 129. And it turns out Route 129 from which is on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, there is a stretch of 11 miles that is called the Tail of the Dragon. And it is an 11 mile road with 318 curves. So it's a little like Lombard street in San Francisco or something, but it's 11 miles long in the, you know, in the mountains, in the Great Smoky Mountains. And it is one of the damnedest experiences you will ever have because all these motorcyclists from across the country take treks to the Tale of the Dragon to ride up and down the Tail of the Dragon on their motorcycles. So when you're there in this completely, you know, rural, obscure place in the Great Smoky Mountains, basically going from one place to the other, and it's obviously like a 19th century switchback road that they had to make this way for whatever reason of the topography in the Great Smoky Mountains that they just paved over at some point in the 40s or 50s. And like, my daughter basically had to lie down because she got so nauseous. It's like a ride, it's like a, it's, it's literally like. But it's 11 miles long. And as you're doing it, and you want to do it at like 20 miles an hour because it's, it's kind of unnerving. There are all these motorcycles behind you and ahead of you, and then they start getting a little irritated with you because it's a two lane road and they want to go faster. And so sometimes you have to pull over. And I didn't know it existed. I didn't know it existed until I was 63 years old or something like that. And it is like one of those things where you go, you know, this country is so big and they're so like, if you went to, you know, Switzerland, if you went to Luxembourg and they had a road like this in Luxembourg it would be the number two trafficked tourist place in Luxembourg. Like in Maui, there's a road that's sort of like this, though it's three hours long, called the Road to Hana.
- [28:18]
Seth Mandel
The Road to Honey.
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John Podhoretz
Right, But. And that's like millions of people go on the Road to Hana to have the experience of driving on the Road to Hana. And I never even heard of the Tale of the Dragon. It's sort of known to motorcycle enthusiasts and people who live in the region who have to get from one place to another and like are stealing themselves to go on the tail of the dragon. And yes, I have a T shirt. I have several T shirts of the Tale of the Dragon.
- [28:44]
Matthew Continetti
Where do you get the T shirts? At the end, you get.
- [28:46]
John Podhoretz
There's a place in the mid. There's a place at the end. End. And there's also a place.
- [28:49]
Christine Rosen
There's a motorcycle resort along the 11 miles.
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John Podhoretz
Right.
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Christine Rosen
It's like a famous. I have a friend who's a cyclist.
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John Podhoretz
It's in a national park, though, so it's not like they have. It's not like there are hotels or anything.
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Christine Rosen
Right.
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John Podhoretz
It is literally a stretch of road. And then there are some lookouts, you know, there are places where you can sort of pull over and do a lookout into the. So that is my. That is my natural, crazy natural site. And then I want to shout out one of the best museums in America that you would never go to. The Clark in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which is the home of Williams College. And the Clarks were one of these American families. There are families that like this Isabella Stewart Gardner being in Boston, in Boston being one of them. They were, you know, well, to do Americans with a taste for art who went to. Who went and collected art with their money when art was cheap, you know, at the beginning and into the middle of the 20th century. And the Clark is a mostly representational museum of 19th to 20th century. There's a lot of Renoirs, but there's also a lot of American. American art of the late 19th century. A lot. Some. Some of which depicts sort of the areas in Maine that creates. Christine was talking about. And the Clark is unlike the Academy Museum is a genuinely brilliantly curated and run museum which. Whose permanent collection is as efficient and briskly gone through and stunning as any you'll ever see. And they also have fantastic shows. Like they had a show of Munch Edvard Bunch, whom of course we all know from one and only one painting. Not painting at whatever the Scream. And it turned out Monk was really a remarkable and genuinely great artist with hundreds of works to his credit that are just simply not, you know, a postage stamp or, you know, like an image that the simpsons makes fun of. And that was a very revelatory show that I saw at the Clark. It's beautiful. It's in the north western tip of the berkshire mountains. It's about 40 minutes from Albany. And if you're ever in that neck of the woods, it is worth taking several hours to go out of your way to go to williamstown, Massachusetts, to go to the Clark museum of art. Matthew continetti, you have Internet?
- [31:21]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I do, but you're mention of the Clark museum put me in mind of another museum also in massachusetts, which is the Eric carle museum of picture book art, which is in. Where is it in. It's technically, it's near Mount holyoke. So it's. It's in Amherst. Yeah. So if you're ever in amherst, Massachusetts, go to the Eric carle museum, which.
- [31:47]
John Podhoretz
If you like children's picture books, as.
- [31:49]
Matthew Continetti
I do, is a delight. But I was.
- [31:51]
Seth Mandel
All right, stop stalling, Matt.
- [31:54]
Matthew Continetti
Well, I was ruminating over why I so misinterpreted your direction, John. And at first I thought, oh, it was because I'm younger. And so I hear site and I think Internet site. But then over the course of the episode, I realized that it actually makes me old because no one visits Internet sites anymore. They just go like, web traffic is dead. Yeah, everything is on social media. So if you are inclined to actually open up chrome or safari and visit actual Internet sites, I do have a few recommendations. I'm just going to go through them quickly. The first is also a substack. It's called recommendo. R e c o m e n d o dot com com. It's basically a group substack slash website put together by Kevin kelly, the very famous former editor of wired magazine. And on recommendo, they send you each Sunday morning a list of recommendations. Sometimes there are other sites on the Internet, sometimes their products, sometimes their apps. But I found it extremely useful and also very expansive in what they find. So that's recommendo. It occurred to me that especially for some of our younger listeners or viewers, the following site might not be top of mind for them. But, you know, I've been visiting arts and letters daily every day for about 25 years now. Al daily.com also now you can get it partly on substack. Arts and letters daily was founded by a kind of Australian literary critic way back in the early Internet. And it's a Collection of links on intellectual and literary matters. As always, trends left. But the nice thing about Arts and Letters Daily if you go to the website is on the left side column there is a link to basically every single newspaper and magazine that you know, has some type of bearing on intellectual life. So al Daily would be my second one and then let me just see which. Okay, so I think for my third one I'm just going to say a site that I only became aware of in the past year but that I really enjoy. And that's the site piratewires.com and pirate. Pirate Wires is the project of this tech billionaire, Mike Solana, who basically became an anti woke liberal. And he's moved farther to the right than an anti woke liberal. But that's how he started. And it's a, it's a kind of a news site, you might call it. My favorite part though is if you go to Pirate Wires, you can sign up for their daily email, which I find just hilarious. And it comes into your inbox every morning and it gives you three stories and the pirate writers, Pirate Wires writers takes on those stories which are very glib, very pithy, sometimes a little bit risque. So just warning you there, a little trigger warning for sensitive folks, but always enjoyable and on topic. So those would be my three sites recommendo Arts and Letters Daily and Pirate Wires.
- [35:26]
Oliver Darcy
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [35:27]
John Passantino
And I'm John Passantino.
- [35:28]
Oliver Darcy
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter Status.
- [35:37]
John Passantino
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [35:42]
Oliver Darcy
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry. Explaining, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [35:51]
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 the scenes.
- [36:01]
Oliver Darcy
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.
- [36:17]
John Passantino
Oh my God. That's Powerlines. Presented by Status. Follow Powerlines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
- [36:31]
Matt Eberts
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 leaders and game 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, 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.
- [37:26]
Christine Rosen
The Arts and Letters Daily's impact on the early as an early curation site on the Internet was so important for more than 20 years ago when a bunch of us founded the New Atlantis and, and we had this online. We were a print journal, but we had an online presence when, when Arts and Letters, Dennis, Donnie, what was his name?
- [37:43]
Matthew Continetti
Dennis Deno.
- [37:45]
Christine Rosen
Yeah.
- [37:45]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah.
- [37:45]
Christine Rosen
So when Dennis would link to one of our pieces, we would get this massive amount of traffic. We would get new subscribers. It was, it was. You know, nobody understands this now in the era of social media, but pre social media was the only way to drive people to a small, you know, quirky little publication like ours. And it was transformative. And not only that, it was so selective. It really. And earlier on I think it was a little more ecumenical in terms of politics. I think it has trended more left in recent years.
- [38:13]
Matthew Continetti
But he is deceased, I believe.
- [38:15]
Christine Rosen
Yes, he did. He died sort of tragically. Not, not that old an age. But it was just, it was such an important early Internet curation site and many others have modeled themselves on its, on its. The way it did things.
- [38:29]
John Podhoretz
And so yeah, I mean it ruined, we should say that it got ruined because it was purchased by the Chronicle of Higher Education. That is how Art Daily got ruined. So Dennis Dutton, who founded, Excuse me, with a longtime Commentary contributor named David also who died tragically young, named David Myers, DG Myers, they started it together and it was anti woke before anybody knew what Woke was. It was literally a high brow site that was looking for material about Arts and Letters that looked at those matters from a non ideological perspective so that it would, if it connected to Commentary, it would connect to Joseph Epstein. If it connected to the New Criterion, it would connect to Joseph Epstein. For others, you know, if it, if it, if it connected to the New Atlantis or something like that, it would run. That was its, that was its reason for being. And the reason that it got so popular and then Chronicle of Higher Education bought it and Chronicle of Higher Education which is to say that it ruined it. And it's a shadow of its.
- [39:42]
Matthew Continetti
It does still link to Commentary.
- [39:43]
John Podhoretz
We should say it does occasionally but. But, but, but it is. It was daily. I don't even know if it's daily anymore even though it's called Arts and Letters.
- [39:52]
Christine Rosen
Five days a week they put new link every.
- [39:54]
John Podhoretz
But, but it's, it's just not. It was vital.
- [39:59]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [39:59]
John Podhoretz
And, and it was one of those sites that yeah, during the linking days there were these things that like Romanesco, like this guy Jim Romanesco who did a media site where he had links or you know, Drudge was the ultimate linker. Still is sort of like the ultimate linker. But yeah, these sites and Rear Clear Politics those remain like Drudge and Real Clear Politics remain as link ways you can get drive some attention to your material. But the Arts and Letters Daily tragedy is that it had a very well defined place in the intellectual ecosystem of the English speaking world. And the cludge politically inert, stupid self righteous Chronicle of Higher Education just rang all the life out of it as far as most. Now Matt is still recommending it so maybe I'm not being.
- [40:57]
Christine Rosen
I still check.
- [41:00]
Matthew Continetti
This is what I particularly am suggesting for younger, younger audience members because one, they may not visit Internet sites but two, you do get a sense of what the intellectual intellectualoids as they used to be called in the American Spectator are saying and thinking and it's a good way to establish a framework for encountering the life of the mind.
- [41:28]
John Podhoretz
I mean it's funny because the linking people and I should, we should also meant to mention like Instapundit, you know, Glenn Reynolds who was also a linker and all this is that it was a way of editing that which was already edited. In other words, it was like somebody just put up stuff that he thought was interesting and if he had an interesting mind and an interesting perspective that was, you know, far reaching and wasn't limited to just one tiny topic. It was a fantastic way of finding material that you might not otherwise find. So it was sort of form of like. It was like the Reader's Digest effect and, and it was really great for like 15 years. Excuse me.
- [42:18]
Seth Mandel
And then it was also, I mean it was basically a forerunner to social media we should say too. I mean when, when we, when we started, you know, when the blog era started, these were ways where people said oh you know, you like my stuff you might like their stuff. It was, you know, it was a, it really was a social thing and bloggers couldn't really get, you know, traffic much any other way. But it was, it was like the original social media. It was, you know, it was very important to have a list of, you know, of recommended sites on your site, you know, going down the side.
- [42:52]
Christine Rosen
But that was where, like, I missed that era because that was, as John said, someone's really interesting mind would put you in directions that you might not have discovered before. Whereas now everything on social media is surfaced by an algorithm. So it's less, it's actually less creative and more narrowing, I think, in some ways than that early era, which I.
- [43:08]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I mean, you can kind of get it. You can kind of get it from certain Twitter feeds, right, where you have somebody who is, again, sort of has an interesting perspective and will link to stuff that is kind of somewhat unexpected or, you know, ranges a field ideologically so that, so that if you're in the right wing ecosystem, you might find something of interest that somebody on the left has written or said and vice versa, and they're sort of like pioneers, like pioneering blogger Mickey Kaus, who doesn't tweet very much, but. And is now, right now consumed with the Epstein. Epstein story. But, but always find something, you know, that you wouldn't read otherwise. Often Tyler Cowen does that too, not just on, on Twitter, but. So it's a. But that was a thing, and it was like a praiseworthy thing that people understood that you could find things out that you might not have access to otherwise. And then, yeah, then the partisanship just got so severe that it's, it's, it's very uncommon, you know, unless you're, you know, former staffers of Commentary who now like to link to blogging items.
- [44:29]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, you know, Tyler Cowan. Tyler Cowan still does this. Glenn Reynolds still does this. So it does seem anachronistic, but if you're wanting to know kind of what's happening in Tyler Cowen's case, you know, Tyler Cowan, for those who don't know, is this economist at George Mason University who is just a kind of the dictionary definition of a polymath. He knows something about everything. Knows quite a great deal about global food and travel, but also chess, music, and his site Marginal Revolution.com is a. Is very, very much worth visiting. And then, yeah, you just, you can go to Instant.
- [45:14]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, he'll do anything.
- [45:16]
Matthew Continetti
He does anything. And he also has a very good.
- [45:17]
John Podhoretz
Podcast in Omaha, you know, like that, like out of nowhere. Yeah, he reads five books a day.
- [45:23]
Matthew Continetti
He's very good on Mexican art.
- [45:25]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [45:25]
Matthew Continetti
Indigenous Mexican art tips. Yeah, he gets that. And then, yeah, Glenn Reynolds, you can go to Instapundant and still see what.
- [45:33]
John Podhoretz
He has to say.
- [45:34]
Matthew Continetti
Say he's very maga, you know, as many, many are. But he, he'll, he'll serve up the news that he thinks is worth paying attention to.
- [45:43]
John Podhoretz
I also want to endorse your pirate wires choice because pirate wires is really great. It's funny. Like, part of it is that this, the impulse of pirate wires is to write from this anti woke perspective. But everything is with a wry eye and it's, it's not. There's no rage, there's no outrage. There's no, if you don't do that, you're gonna die. And Solana himself, who usually writes one item a day, is a particularly funny, like, close to laugh out loud funny writer who can really pull off a one liner, which is very annoying because he's a, like a really good funny writer and B, a billionaire. And that's not, not fair. Like be one or the other. You can't be both. It's not fair to the rest of us. It's, it's, it's. You know, I understand that things are unequally distributed. That is part of conservatism, the acknowledgment of the unequal distribution of gifts and what it means to be human and how we shouldn't evaluate people according to such things. But come on. I mean, really, like, well, this is.
- [46:53]
Seth Mandel
And this is where Tyler Cowen is the, the great equalizer to go back to him, right? Because he, if you have ever been in an airport lounge and seen a book just lying there, it might have been Tyler Cowan's book. Because he has a famous habit of what he calls liberating books. And what he means by that is, first of all, he can stop reading a book without finishing it. He can, he, he can, he knows, you know, whether he's going to like. But when he, when he's done, really done with a book that he's not going to need, he leaves it where he is sitting at that moment in time. So if he's in an airport and he leaves through the book and he decides, you know, all right, I'm done with this book, the book stays in an airport. He's in a hotel lobby or something. So the world is littered with Tyler Cowen, the things that have contributed to Tyler Cowan's polymathic mind.
- [47:49]
John Podhoretz
So there we have it. So we have the Museum of Broadway right in the middle of Times Square. You got to make an advance reservation to go there. If you want to go about five miles, seven miles north of the Museum of Broadway you can hit the Cloisters. The medieval museum looks like supposed to look like a medieval church in the beautiful Fort Tryon park with a great dog run and a dead hamster from the Mandel family. The beach again, Christina.
- [48:23]
Christine Rosen
Little Hunter's Beach. Little Hunter's beach in Acadia National Park.
- [48:26]
John Podhoretz
In Acadia National Park. Matt we just did the sights and I recommended if you're anywhere between North Carolina and Tennessee trying to find your way to the tale of the dragon that the a remarkable stretch of US 129 and the Clark Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts. So that is our show for today. We will be back. Anon for Christine, Seth, Matt and Abram John Pothor it's keep the candle bur.