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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
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- [00:41]
Abe Greenwald
Champion pain some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, Expect the worst for the best welcome to this holiday edition of the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. I am Jon Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary. We are doing a special series of shows in which we answer questions sent to us by you, our listeners and viewers on YouTube. Please go to YouTube and like and subscribe. That would be very helpful if you are somebody who is interested in looking at our faces while you listen to us talk. I myself not that excited to look at my own face while I talk or even to listen to my own voice while I speak. But if you guys want that, we're right there. Search commentary podcast at YouTube like and subscribe. That would be very helpful. And then you can watch us. And by us, I mean Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:43]
John Podhoretz
Hi John.
- [01:44]
Abe Greenwald
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
- [01:47]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
- [01:48]
Abe Greenwald
Media Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [01:51]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:52]
Abe Greenwald
And Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth.
- [01:54]
Seth Mandel
Hi John.
- [01:55]
Abe Greenwald
So answering viewer questions. And we have two today that we are going to address. One from Howard Boxer. And here's what Howard Boxer writes to us. I only started listening to you a few months ago, but I'm completely hooked. So thank you very much for that. Even though I'm Canadian, I'm very close to you guys politically and I want to thank you Canadians for efforts that you seem to be making to alter your political destiny. Kick out Justin Trudeau and bring in the apparently heroic Zionist Peter Polar as your next prime minister. My new next to Javier Milei, my new favorite foreign leader. Not that he's yet a foreign leader, but boy, I love that guy. Thank you very much. It's been very heartening to hear him speak on matters involving the Jewish people and the behavior that Canadian leftists and others are showing toward them. Very, very disheartening and very heartening to hear that the potential new leader of Canada is somebody who is a friend to the Jews. So thank you, Howard Boxer, on behalf of all of Canada. Here is what he asks you guys obviously prepare somewhat for Each podcast there. Because we're about to. He's about to. We're about to deliver the coup de grace here. You may have answered this in previous years, but what is your process for your daily podcasts then? He just wants that as an aside. Many months ago, one of you, maybe Matt, recommended the book Replay by Ken Grimwood. That was Abe. Yes. And a book I also read as not only as a result of a recommendation by, but by a. But also a recommendation by my friend Michael Weber, the screenwriter who wrote the disaster artist and 500 Days of Summer, who 20 years ago gave me a copy of A Replay by Ken Grimwood. And boy, that is we. That is one superb science fiction novel. And Seth recently recommended Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodess or Achner. He loved that, too. So this is very. A big fandom here. Thank you, Hard Boxer. We're glad to recommend things to you. And now we are going to discuss our process in which we do our daily podcast. And I will, I will conclude with the secret of the daily podcast process. But, Matt, I think you, you are probably the, the most a student of all of us when it comes to preparing for the podcast.
- [04:29]
Matthew Continetti
I don't want to take any credit.
- [04:31]
Abe Greenwald
Here, but I, I said a student. I'm not, I'm not praising a student. Okay, good, good. Sometimes you guys are like, you're, you're apple polishers. I had a lot of brown. I had a lot of spitballs thrown.
- [04:43]
Matthew Continetti
At me, you know, during high school.
- [04:45]
Abe Greenwald
For the back of the class.
- [04:46]
Matthew Continetti
So I don't want to be, you know, Matt.
- [04:49]
Seth Mandel
Matt actually is doing podcast from a locker right now.
- [04:53]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, he's been shoved into the locker.
- [04:55]
Matthew Continetti
Locker. Once again, I'm traumatized. I. I wake up in the morning and immediately begin preparing for the podcast. Typically, I read, I don't know, 10 newsletters before we record the podcast. So it starts with Mark Halperin's newsletter. It goes Axios Playbook, Semaphore has all these newsletters. I scan. There's a good newsletter done by a guy named John Schindler who does. It's called sitrep Umbra. That's kind of national security related. And then the, The Dispatch morning newsletter, the free Beacon morning newsletter, Letter, the. The New York Times newsletter. I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple, but that's basically how I prepare by reading all those newsletters. And sometimes I can get through more of them than other days where we record a little bit earlier. But that's my basic. And then my final thing I should say is I do. You know, since I still do subscribe to three daily newspapers, I don't have the time to read the newspapers before we do the podcast in the morning. But I do scan the front pages just to see what was the most important story of yesterday that we can at least be sure that we're covering that, that story and bring it, bringing it to our audience's attention.
- [06:30]
Abe Greenwald
Well, like I say, I think Matt, you know, has, has, has now humiliated the, the remaining four of us with the, the depth of his. I want to know because Christine, I got a. Always. Christine brings up the, the topic du jour.
- [06:46]
Matthew Continetti
She's got the, the tidbit of news that I, I'm very happy when she introduces class clown.
- [06:51]
Christine Rosen
I want to be the class clown. No, I actually. So I also, I'm an early riser and I will. I get the print New York Times and the print Wall Street Journal still every day because I'm old and I still like newspapers. So I will first go through. I start with the Wall Street Journal and, and then I'll skim through the both of those papers and read anything fully that, that catches my eye. I also get newsletters. I actually start. I also start Mark Halperin's newsletter. Amazing. And if you can afford it, everyone should get it. John Ellis has a wonderful. It's basically curation. Yeah, he is fantastic. And he does, he does the stuff that I'm weak on. I can go and see what the day's news. That's foreign policy, economic policy.
- [07:33]
Abe Greenwald
So John Ellis's is called news Items. And he seems to specialize in both science, kind of hard science and a lot of science and China. And so there is a real, it provides a real original take. It's a. Yeah. As these are. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a agglomeration of sources, some of which I can't like I won't pay for the Financial Times. So he quotes a lot from the Financial Times and I can't really click through the Financial Times, but yeah, that is a very unusual, very singular take. John Ellis was political director at Fox News for many years and this is now how he is spending his glorious retirement.
- [08:20]
Seth Mandel
Yes, I will. I'll add my, my to that. The John Ellis is, is, as Christine says, probably the most likely newsletter to. For me to learn something new.
- [08:31]
Abe Greenwald
Very well put.
- [08:32]
Christine Rosen
Yes.
- [08:32]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [08:33]
Christine Rosen
And he. But I also, I also every morning will troll the tabloids. I, I read the Daily Mail online. I read the New York. I mean, I don't the New York Post tabloid ish. Not really, but it's like so I, I, I, I. And a lot of pop culture stuff that comes across the transom. So I'll look at Arts and Letters Daily still, even though that's like one of the original OG curation sites. See what's up there. Some of the more academic sites, Chronicle of Higher Ed, just to see what the headlines are there and see if there's any story with perhaps political or policy implications. The newsletters are great, though I don't always read through all of them, but I'll always skim Politico. Although they become progressively more biased in the way that they frame a lot of stuff, it's still useful to see how they're framing things. Punchbowl Dispatch, the Free Press has a great daily newsletter now that just summarizes some of their top stories. So those are my sort of go tos. If I wake up late though, it's going to be the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail, and then John Ellis and Mark Halpert, if I'm being honest.
- [09:39]
Abe Greenwald
Abe.
- [09:40]
John Podhoretz
Yeah much. A lot of overlap here. I definitely start with Halperin because it's always right there. So I'll fill in some plugs gaps, sure. You guys probably also do. I check the Times of Israel every morning for the for what? What the latest is most reliable story going on in the Middle East. I also check the Post. I also still go to Real Career Politics every day just to see sort of what the agenda is. Click around. Don't always read everything. I do find that there's kind of an anxiety leading up to the podcast that prevents me from reading thoroughly. When every article I open, you know, I sort of digest. I get a sense of it and go, okay, what's that? What else am I missing? And I go on to X and I see who I'm following, what they're what, what the people I'm following are ranting about and how that may relate to things.
- [10:47]
Abe Greenwald
So I do a lot of prep. If I do any prep, which is say I do no prep, I'm gonna just lay this out right now. I of course read again. Number five endorsee of Mark Halpern's Wide World of News newsletter and Punchbowls and the Dispatch and as I said, Ollie Weissman at the Free Press, who is really doing a terrific job with theirs. That's about a month old, but I actually read stuff late at night before I go to bed, sort of get my sense of what's in the New York Times and the Washington Post around 11pm Something like that. Reading through stuff on, on, on my phone or on my iPad and try to and, and follow X, as you say, Twitter, which, which is really the way in which you get a, you can get a glimpse particularly. You're on X. John. No, I'm, I, I, I never noticed that. Yeah. Yeah, no, but I mean, I will say that, that what the, the great virtue of X is that it will tell you when a story is exploding. That is to say you go on and suddenly every second tweet is about a thing that just happened 15 minutes ago and is clearly something very big. Whereas if you go on and everybody is just on their own private obsessions that morning, you know, there's no big news event that has either just happened or is about to happen, that kind of thing. But X is essentially what, when I was growing up the AP Newswire was, if you worked in journalism, it was just a way to get the headlines fast and see what the, you know, what the top line, as we used to say when we were making news budgets and newsrooms was so that you could move on from there.
- [12:48]
John Podhoretz
Can I add one more thing? I just want to actually, I try to make a habit of watching Special Report the, the day before. That kind of orients me, you know.
- [13:00]
Abe Greenwald
Looking right particularly when Madison. Of course, particularly when Madison be very sober. It's very sober. Like on our, on our, on our YouTube, you will see a smiling. Yeah, very, you know, Sunny mat. Yes. When you're, when Matt is on Special Report, he is a very serious.
- [13:23]
Matthew Continetti
Because we can discussing serious matters.
- [13:25]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Unlike unlike here where we discuss nothing serious whatsoever. But I will say that in fact, as I tell people, when they say, oh my God, how do you prepare for the podcast? I say I don't. And that is actually true in the sense that what I am doing in the 15 or 20 minutes for the podcast is I'm walking the dog. I live quite near my office, so I'm often grabbing the dog, walking the dog to my office, getting food for the dog at my office, getting my coffee, sitting down, hoping that I'm not keeping the four of you waiting as the coffee perks in the Keurig machine. And then, you know, we like have to get going because one of you has a dental appointment or you have to get your car, you have to get your oil changed or something like that. So I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm not preparing very much except for the entire 63 years of my life leading up to the moment at which we begin.
- [14:24]
Christine Rosen
But, but people should know, before we hear how Seth prepares, people should know that there is this kind of hilarity to the, even the term preparation, because we have our text chain, our infamous text chain, where we'll all send each other stuff that is on our mind or that we see that's alarming or interesting. And so I often go to bed, you know, I probably go to bed a little early than you do, John, but I'll say, okay, well, so I have a vague sense of what we're going to talk about. Get up, do all my reading. We, we all see each other's nice faces in the morning. And John will say, I don't know if you guys read about this, but I heard about this story. And then we're off. And actually, it's generally something we each have an opinion or can weigh in on. And so the spontaneity, I think, is part of the fun, also part of the slight terror when it involves anything with foreign policy that I'm like, I just.
- [15:07]
John Podhoretz
Also, regarding the texting, you know, this hasn't happened recently, but there have been times where one of us will text something during the day saying something like, we have to talk about this tomorrow. And then 12 things happen between. Yeah, that text. We never get to that.
- [15:24]
Abe Greenwald
We need to do the entire show on this.
- [15:26]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, right.
- [15:27]
Abe Greenwald
It's like, what was that again? I don't even remember. Yes, that's life. And that's life. And also in Trump's America, clearly we are getting that. We are not going to be. We did have this, you know, we are living under this infirm presidency where astonishingly little news was being made, actually by the leader of the free world as time went on and was replaced and supplanted by the horrors of anti Semitism, campus protest, and then sort of this amazing turnaround in the fortunes of Israel and Iran and the war against terror in Israel. But we certainly got very little sucker out of the White House when it came to understanding where the news agenda was going to come from. And that will not be the case beginning on January 21st.
- [16:14]
Seth Mandel
No. I always think of how during the Trump first term, I was on CNN on a weekend show for something. And so for the weekend show, they give you the topic like three days in advance. And under any normal circumstances, that's fine. But three days in advance under Trump was kind of ridiculous. And so you prepare and you. And I remember sitting in the chair literally like 30 seconds before we're going to go live. We had, you know, three days of preparation, and Trump tweeted about undercutting. Trump tweeted, undercutting his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and Rex Tillerson's diplomacy with North Korea. And I literally looked at my phone, I said, well, that's what we're going to end up talking about. And that's what we ended up talking about. So you just sort of have to be. I think Trump prepared us for the daily podcast also, in a way, because you just have to sort of be ready.
- [17:10]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, you just have to improvise.
- [17:11]
Seth Mandel
You have to improvise. My personal process is usually depends on whether the kids want Rice Krispies or Honey Nut Cheerios. Sometimes Bethany has made overnight oats. So my process to get ready for the podcast usually involves feeding baby birds little hungry mouths. And so I appreciate the fact that, you know, and I was thinking about this since we saw the question. I think that the, the daily. And maybe this is kind of cheesy, but the daily repertoire that we have is. The rapport that we have, excuse me, is preparation in itself. And the fact that we do this every day, there's a, there's a sort of gangs all here feeling to waking up, turning on, you know, the computer and checking in with the team, and we have hour or more long conversations about politics and serious things every day together. And I think that that builds its own sort of momentum and, and it. And, and, and the it. The shape comes from that. The shape of the podcast probably comes from that as much as any individual preparation. Just as five people who are, you know, used to have known each other a while and, you know, work together and talk about these things every single day, I think just creates the kind of momentum that we. You can, you can wake up and walk the dog or, or feed Rice Krispies to a toddler and still be ready for the podcast, because it, you know, it sort of has that.
- [18:54]
John Podhoretz
I think that's such a good point. I just want to say, because for me, as people, I'm sure can tell I'm a. I'm a very slow thinker, which is probably frustrating because it accounts for why I don't weigh in as often as you guys. But it's because sometimes I'm not sure what I think about something until I'm listening for about 5, 10 minutes to you guys, and then I sort of get a sharper sense of what my take is on it.
- [19:23]
Abe Greenwald
My wife and I have a disagreement when it comes to gift giving at the holidays. She likes to ask people what they might want and then provide it to them. I kind of prefer the act where you think of something that somebody might not want to think of for themselves and do it that way. It's risky because sometimes you will make a big mistake and someone will not want what you want or they will say, oh my God, look what you've done. For me, this is something I would never have done for myself. I like that feeling. And for quality gifts at an affordable price, that little bit of luxury that people don't know they're missing. My go to is Quince. Quince lets you treat your loved ones and yourself to everyday luxury at an affordable price. Something everyone needs in their closet in my opinion. Quince's iconic Mongolian cashmere sweaters which started $50. I'm wearing one myself. If you watch our podcast on YouTube, you will often see me in a Quince Mongolian cashmere sweater. Or for the ultimate year round gifts, check out their 14 karat gold jewelry, Italian leather handbags and European linen sheet sets. Whatever you're looking for, all Quint Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. How do they do that? By partnering directly with top factories and cutting out the cost of the middleman which passes the savings on to you. Quince is on the nice list. They tell me they only work with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and they use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. Look, got one free piece of Quint clothing when they decided to start advertising with us so that I could sample their wares. Since that happened, I have bought multiple Quint sweaters. I bought a couple of Quint shirts.
- [21:13]
Matthew Continetti
I bought.
- [21:13]
Abe Greenwald
I am a Quint fan. I am a Quint customer and so you should follow me and gift luxury this holiday season without the luxury price tag. Go to quints.com commentary for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U I N C E.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com commentary remember that we know from Daniel Kahneman that thinking fast and slow. It's not that fast thinking is any better than slow thinking. So I'm not gonna, I'm not. I'm gonna make sure that the public.
- [21:54]
Christine Rosen
Well and like, like every good villain pack of villains, we have this wonderful origin story which was that we, we all, when it was Noah and, and John and Abe and myself during the pandemic. This only went daily because we literally needed to speak to other people about what was going on because it was difficult to understand was happening where and to start exchanging stories. And then that just turned out to be a good way for all five of us to now do this on a daily basis.
- [22:22]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, it's. The other interesting point to make is that when we were doing the pod, the first almost five years that we did the Commentary podcast, when it was twice a week before the pandemic hit, though Christine joined remotely because she lived in Washington. It would be Abe and Noah Rothman and Saurabh Omari when Saurabh was on staff, and me sitting in a room together at the Commentary offices, a pretty small room. And we were all together. And then you came in remotely, which was, by the way, just to give you a sense of how weird, how fast the world has changed. That was not easy to set up. Like, that was a. It took us weeks to figure out how even to do that. And because Zoom hadn't come in and we were using a different kind of thing, we had a, we had a. It was like a radio studio almost with, you know, dials and things like that. And I, I don't think that the rapport that we had sitting in the room together was the equal of the rapport we established when we were not in the same room together, in part because we. You're so conscious of being relatively cheek by jowl with somebody that, that a kind of manners, weirdly enough, a kind of social, personal social interaction starts taking over and kind of limits your freedom of movement.
- [24:03]
Christine Rosen
See, we have the online disinhibition effect. We actually know each other. Less inhibited anyway.
- [24:08]
Abe Greenwald
Just sort of interesting that, that, that that's the case. Okay, so let's move on to a less substantive but maybe more, more fun question here from Barry Kelly of Scottsdale, Arizona. Not political, but I feel apropos this time of year. Maybe you can recommend vacation spots. Doesn't have to be specific. Least favorite or most favorite, winter or summer, most overrated, underrated, religious or secular. Many thanks. Barry Kelly Scottsdale, Arizona. So we now have the, of course, divide between the outdoorsy persons and the indoorsy persons, maybe. But Christine, you're a little outdoorsy, I would say. So maybe you want to start and like, make people think in an illusory fashion that we are healthy people out there, you know, traipsing through the underbrush.
- [25:03]
Christine Rosen
So I, I have two recommendations. One is based on the fact that I'm very lucky to have family both in Florida and in Northern California, which both have lovely Natural outdoor spots, and I am able to spend time with them. I love Big Sur. I would go to Big Sur every year for weeks at a time if I could afford it. It's near where my older sister lives, and so I always recommend seeing that part of Northern California, if you can. But I spend most of my leisure time every year, a week or two in. In late July, early August, in Maine, coastal Maine, on Mount Desert island, which is where Acadia national park is. And for more than 20 years, I started going there before I even had kids. And then every year since my kids were born, they have gone. It is a wonderful spot. It's a wonderful vacation spot for families, obviously, because the national park, you can canoe, you can. There's wonderful lakes to swim in. H. There's miles and miles of biking trails on these carriage paths. Beautiful, beautiful place. But even if you don't have kids, if it's just like a trip you want to take, you can camp. There's lots of levels of, you know, you can camp, you can glamp, you can stay in a hotel, you can rent a house for. Lots of people on the island will rent their houses for a week or two. I. Bar harbor is the main town. It's where the cruise ship stock. It's where the big grocery store is and lots of other stuff. I would not recommend staying right near town if you want a more outdoorsy experience. I tend to stay on the other side, the quiet side of the island, which is more Southwest Harbor. But there are places all over the island. There's Northeast harbor, all these different little enclaves, many of them housing some of the world's wealthiest people. It should be added. But it does still remain a mildly affordable vacation spot if you camp or if you, you know, can rent a house that's inexpensive, which is what I do with my kids. It is just a beautiful, beautiful place place. And it's a reminder of the need. And this is neither a conservative or a liberal principle nor, or it shouldn't be, the importance of preserving these national parks and supporting our national parks. I'm a huge fan of our national park system, so I would highly recommend trying to spend some time in the summer, not the winter, in Acadia national park and around there in Maine.
- [27:13]
Abe Greenwald
Okay, Abe?
- [27:16]
John Podhoretz
Well, I very rarely go on vacation, so you're, you know, you're lucky. I don't recommend, you know, Ceylon or, you know, some country that doesn't exist anymore, you know. But I will second Christine's endorsement of Maine, particularly. I loved Deer Isle, which is A tiny little island that you have to drive over this daunting skinny bridge that goes up into the clouds, and then you end up on the other side. And it is exquisite. And last I was there, it was a while ago, but it was already when WI fi was everywhere else. There was very little WI fi there, which it was wonderful. And there's a Craftsman college there that is very beautiful architecturally. And there's wonderful restaurants and seafood. And there's a theater, local theater, that they're very into. And all the usual beautiful main things, the kayaking, the hiking, a lot of ice cream. Big on ice cream. Joe Biden would like it. Internationally, I'll just add, I love Prague. I've had great times in Prague. It's not only very beautiful, very rich in political and Jewish history, but I love Prague because it is so walkable, its entirety is so walkable that you can spend a week there and really cover the entire. Every quarter and go up and down the hills and sort of investigate every era. So I say Prague and Deer Isle, two very different trips.
- [29:13]
Abe Greenwald
Seth, what you got?
- [29:17]
Seth Mandel
So I don't. I don't have necessarily a regular vacation spot, but there's. I really like. I prefer natural beauty on, you know, when I go on vacation. And I prefer also to, like physical history, to feel like you're at a different place or a different time or whatever. So the two places, I would say a warm place in a cold place. The warm place is. I'm not sure there's a place I love more than the port at Old Jaffa in Israel outside Tel Aviv. It's just. If you Google the port at Old Jaffa, you get the same. You get a version, a million versions of the same picture. And that's because it's such a classic look from the water to there. But, you know, you, You. You walk through an old city and you're right on the water and you have the breeze even when it's hot. It's really like the best of, you know, the. The historic Holy Land outside of Jerusalem. Obviously, Jerusalem is Jerusalem, but, you know, the ancient city, but. But the port at Old Jaff, that history without necessarily anything attached to it. You don't get Jerusalem Syndrome in Jaffa, there's no such thing called Jaffa Syndrome, right? Where you think you're the Messiah and whatever. There's nothing spiritual that necessarily overwhelms you. It's just an incredible place and, you know, the people. There's that clock tower that when you look from the famous pictures from this, from the water at the old Jaffa Port, you see the clock tower rising above that's, you know, over 100 years old. And it is, if you walk into town, it is the center of a sort of open pavilion. Ish area. And so when you look at it from afar, you see the clock tower peeking over what looks like a real almost suffocating huddle of old stone buildings. But when you actually walk into town, it's not that way. It's sort of opens up for you in a way that you don't expect. And then for, for, for cold weather, we were, Bethany and I were speakers in residence, or whatever you want to call it, at a Passover program in Deer Valley, Utah, once. And this was by chance because it was the pandemic. And the company that does this normally does it like two hours outside of Vancouver or something. There's. There's a resort out in Vancouver and. And they were concerned that Canada would close borders during COVID This was early, early ish. And so they moved it to America and they had it in Utah. And Deer Valley, Utah is as beautiful as the postcards and the pictures and the movie sets depict it. It is breathtakingly beautiful, especially up there in the mountains and where I was in Deer Valley and they know it. And so when you get into the airport, instead of feeling like walking through the airport of a normal airport, you know, sometimes when you're in an airport, you could be anywhere. Everything's made of windows out there. So you walk into the airport and you look out and you feel almost like you've taken a spaceship to some planet or something. It's just absolutely. It's crazy how beautiful it is. And also funny because as cool as it can get up there, everybody in my family who went swimming at the outdoor heated pool got sunburns. Really bad sunburns. And it was like, probably couldn't have been more than 50 degrees outside, but you were in Utah. The mountains were snow capped and my kids were tobogganing down the snow mountains during the day. And when they sat at the pool, they got a. They got a sunburn, which makes you. It makes you feel like all the elements are there. All the weather's. You're just so close to everything natural. That's beautiful.
- [33:22]
Abe Greenwald
Matt. I would.
- [33:28]
Matthew Continetti
I'm going to go with Disney. I'm a Disney dad. I've been there twice with my kids. And I think it's just a great vacation and I make no apologies for that. And of course, you, John, are my chief Disney consultants. I have many Disney consultants.
- [33:47]
Abe Greenwald
But you are my uncle.
- [33:48]
Christine Rosen
He has helped everyone with children get through Disney. I have to say he's sort of a guru.
- [33:53]
Matthew Continetti
You are a Disney expert.
- [33:54]
Abe Greenwald
If anything has changed my life from my 40s onward, I had never been to Disney World until my wife and I had our first child. Shana was four months old. And Ayala said, we should go to Disney. It's a very easy place to go on vacation with a baby. We can sit in the pool and walk around. And I'm like, I don't want to go to Disney. Like, it's hell on earth. I don't want to go. And she was like, no, let's go. Because really, it'll make life. Life easy. And we went to Disney. And that was 2004, probably around October. And I've been back 14 times. And I've also been to Disneyland several times. It is the most genius example of human ingenuity that I am aware of in this sense. And there's actually a quite brilliant book written about Walt Disney's manufacture of the original Disneyland, which is called Disney's Land, by a guy named Richard Snow, which describes how he incepted this thing entirely in his head. Everything that we know about Disney, the train, the this, the that, like, it was all in Disney. There was no model. The only model was the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. I guess. I mean, this original amusement park from, like, the 1850s or 1860s. But he had this vision in his head and, like, built a train in his house, like in an. Not in Anaheim, but somewhere in California to see if you could make a train. Like, the whole thing would be centered on a train. Of course. Both Disney World and Disneyland and Magic Kingdom have this train. And it's all part of the weird feeling where you're walking into something entirely timeless that's half feels like the turn of the 20th century in half. Like you're in, you know, 20, 20, 2200. And I say it's this masterpiece of human ingenuity because they figured out how to have billions of people in one space without it feeling as though you are going to be trampled, like at a who concert in Cincinnati. And how they figure out crowd control, how they figure out how to move you around, how to. The more you learn about how to be there, the more pleasurable the experience is. Which is kind of a. Has an interestingly, like, drug addict experience because it's like, I learned so much on my eighth visit about how to cut, you know, time online by 10 minutes each ride that I need to go back again to see how well I do. But every level of hotel is good, every form of transportation that they have created for you is good. And if you don't mind rides, and I'm not that wild about the rides, my kids love the rides. It is just. You go there and you just settle in and you're there for two days, three days, four days, however long you're going for. And it is a guaranteed positive experience unless there's some horrible storm or something like that. So I was. I was going to mention Disney, but I wanted to add two things to obsess. So I think of all the places on Earth if you have not been to Israel, when. When the conflicts come to an end, as I think they will pretty soon, if you have not been to Israel, you have to go to Israel. I don't care if you're Jewish or not Jewish or anything like that, as a place to go for seven to 10 days. Because it is a small country and it is topographically, geographically, in terms of its environment, wildly different. In this very small space, you have lush greenery in the north, near the Lebanon border, you have desert in the south. And in the center you have this ancient city of Jerusalem that is being excavated as we speak to show pre, you know, the world of Israel before Christ and the Jewish presence in Israel before, you know, before the Romans and things like that, together with this entirely modern country that came into being in 1948, represented by Tel Aviv and the ancient quality of Jerusalem and Caesarea, which is a Roman city where there's an amphitheater at all, and you can do it in four or five days. And it is an astonishing experience. Whether it turns you into a Zionist or not is up to you. The miracle that it seems to represent is very hard not to feel. I've been there 15 times or something like that, and it's just pretty amazing. And as for Utah, so you're talking about northern Utah in the mountains or Deer Valley is. I've spent a great deal of time in southern southwestern Utah around St. George, where Zion and Bryce national park are, and where you can get to two hours from Las Vegas just driving due west, due east. And that is like going no place else on Earth. That's like going to Mars. It almost feels like you're not really on the planet. First of all, it's low, not high. It's the. The earth is red.
- [39:29]
John Podhoretz
The.
- [39:30]
Abe Greenwald
The rocks are red, the ground is red. The hiking, you are seeing things. And being in a place the Only place that even looks remotely like it is the original Planet of the Apes movie because it was filmed there. And then there is this astounding place in southern Utah called Lake Powell. Lake Powell was created in the late 50s. It was flooded when they built sort of Hoover, various other things. It was kind of a. They had to redirect the Colorado river, and they essentially filled this canyon like the grand canyon. It's like 2,000 miles square. And so it is this pristine body of water that was not a water source. And if you go on a boat around Lake Powell, you are basically in this world entirely still. There are no waves. There's no nothing. And you cannot tell the Earth from the sky. The. The lake is a mirror. So you don't know where the water line is. You don't know where you are. It is an astounding experience to be in. In Lake Powell. Then finally, my favorite place on Earth is London. It's my favorite city, and it's my favorite. It's the. What you can do in London. Theater, art, history, walking, walking around, walking into St. Paul's walking into Westminster Abbey and out of Westminster Abbey. Taking the single greatest public transportation system on the planet, wherever you want to go. Clean, pristine, fast. It's an embarrassment to live in New York and know that London has the underground and we have what we have, given how dirty and filthy. And I love the New York City subways. But so. So we have Disney World, we have Maine.
- [41:27]
Seth Mandel
Well, the Metro, the Wash, I should say, for the Washington Metro is very clean because they don't allow you to eat. But the main way they keep it clean here in Washington is by it never running right.
- [41:37]
Abe Greenwald
That's a very impressive, impressive decision. So we got Maine. We got. We got. We got places in Maine. We got Utah. Two places in Utah. I shout out in Maine to Algonquin and the Algonquin Playhouse, one of the great American institutions. Been there almost 100 years. A summer theater where, like, Bette Davis learned how to act and where I saw an amazing production of A Little Night Music just this late summer. Matt likes Disney. You don't need to have more choices than Disney. I'd also like to shout out Los Angeles. By the way, if you're not from Los Angeles and you don't live in California and stuff like that. Again, the variety of things that you can do in and around Los Angeles, from the beach to the Reagan Library to all kinds of different experiences and this, you know, astounding weather. As long as you can somehow avoid the horrible traffic. They have great museums, they have great restaurants, they have great everything. The problem is the traffic. But so much to do, so much fun to have. And I hope that we have provided you with some sense of places to go that you might not otherwise have thought of. So thanks for listening and for Matt, Christine, Seth and Abram John Pot Hortz. Keep the candle bur.