Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com make this.
- [00:31]
Katie Herzog
Holiday season one to remember with Gold Belly your one stop shop for America's most iconic foods shipped nationwide from the original Turducken to the viral pie cake in with decadent layers of cake and pie, Goldbelly has everything to wow your guests with the click of a button. And with Black Friday around the corner, it's the perfect time to pre order unique gifts that ship right to their door. Use promo code gift for 20% off your first order on Goldbelly.com the holidays have never been easier.
- [01:04]
Mike Pesca
It's Friday, November 14, 2025. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. You know who won all those races the other Tuesday and you know how they won them, right? It was one word. It was one magic word. Let's check in with the Philadelphia Daily News covering Mikey Sherrill, who's running for governor of New Jersey, Bill Murphy to discuss the transition, emphasizing her commitment to addressing affordability issues that resonated deeply with voters during her campaign. All right, you got the word right. Well, if not, here's the bulwark doing some analysis of Zoran Mamdani over a month ago after the first debate. He's winning the campaign. He's the only candidate with a coherent.
- [01:45]
Katie Herzog
Vision that addresses New Yorkers concerns about affordability.
- [01:48]
Mike Pesca
There is the magic word. All the candidates focused on this one thing. Affordability agenda, affordability and affordability crisis. Affordability. That from a single interview on Pod Save America with the three campaign managers of the Mom, Donnie, Sheryl and Spamberger campaigns. It was affordability. And were they just gently glancing at affordability? Were they casually mentioning it? Or was there a common way to describe the candidates interest, nay, obsession with affordability? Laser focused. Laser focused. Laser focused. Laser focused. Laser focused. Laser focus. Laser focused. A laser focused. Laser focused laser. It was a laser. Now I want to ask, don't you think the Republicans know this? Don't you think? I'm not saying they listen to the Bulwark or Pod Save America, but this was kind of everywhere. The magic word. When the other side has a magic word, what you have to do is one of two things. Denigrate the magic word. Trump tried that. He called affordability a scam. What was a scam? That things really are affordable or that they're going to bring down affordability anyway within a day or two. Trump instinctually calls everything he does. He doesn't like a scam or a witch hunt. He was getting in on the affordability train. He was doing a little of this beforehand. GLP1s. They're going to be affordable. Then a guy faints in the White House, okay, stepped on that message. But now he's talking about all these things, all these initiatives to make things more affordable. And I was on a substack live with Matt Robinson the other day and Matt said, no, I don't think the Trump administration will actually be committed to more affordability because they have that maniac Stephen Miller there and they got all these ideologues running the economics. No, no, no, no, no. Of course he will. Well, all he has to do is talk about affordability, but he'll also throw some affordability at us, just like he threw affordability and subsidies at the soybean fathers. He's not above. In fact, why he got into office is about bribes. He wants to take the bribes, but he'll give the bribes. And once he gives the bribes to voters, then the magic word of affordability will have a bit less magic. The laser will be diffused. On the show today is spiel about I can't give him up. Michael Wolff. Michael Wolff and his crazy, crazy definition of ethics white lies and is even crazier podcast throws. But first, Katie Herzog is the co host of Blocked and reported. She is out with a new book called drink your way sober the science based method to break free from alcohol. She's a very interesting personal story and is just about the best person to listen to in a podcast context. And so proof of that comes now. Katie Herzog up next. Life's a little crazy lately and members of my family definitely need to unwind. This is not the throwing under the bus. This is about relieving aches and discomfort and CBD gummies, which as I say, there are many people around here who avail themselves of the Cornbread hemp gummy. They're formulated to work with your body, not against it. Cornbread Hemp CBD gummies are made to make you feel better, stress, discomfort, if you need a little relaxation. They use the best part of the hemp plant, the flower for the purest and most potent CBD. All products are third party lab tested and USDA organic to ensure safety and purity. Right now the Gist listeners can get 30% off their first order. Just head to kornbread hemp.com thegist and use code the gist at checkout. That's kornbread.com the gist and use code the gist True Work. I'm wearing it right now. Fall weather changes fast, so I'm dressed in layers. I've got this hoodie that's a lovely shade of green, but on top of that I've got a true work zip up jacket and if I wanted to, I could pivot to a truer coat. A true true work coat. They're made by trade professionals who are tired of wet heavy gear weighing them down. And every piece is tested on job sites with trade pros. The trade could be podcaster or it could be, you know, actual construction worker or lager. I wear True work. I don't know, maybe a little too much given how often I'm clearing brush, which is not much. But it's just a testament to the fact that this stuff really and truly does work. And it also looks damn good. Upgrade your day with workwear built like it matters and get 15 off your first order@truework.com with the code the gist. That's spelling's important on this one. T R U E w e r k.com and use the code the gist. Katie Herzog had a drinking problem. So how did she solve it? Did she white knuckle it? Did she cold turkey it? Did she 12 step it? No, she did not. She solved the problem like a lot of people today. Solve a lot of actual chemical problems with drugs that worked that society doesn't want you to know about. And they don't have phrases like cold turkey or 12 steps. They have phrases like naltrexone. That's a phrase. There is something called the Sinclair method. We're going to get to it with the host of the popular plot podcast. It's a plotting podcast. It used to be more nimble on its feet. Now it's. Now it's just doing the stations of the cross. Her name is Katie Herz. She is the. The, the podcast I speak of is blocked and reported and she is the author of drink your way sober the science based method to break free from alcohol. Hello, Katie. Welcome back to the gist.
- [07:53]
Katie Herzog
Hi Mike, good to see you. Thanks for having me.
- [07:54]
Mike Pesca
Okay, so what do you think about the idea of rock bottom? Did you have one? Do you think it's true? A lot A lot of times in the book, you will acknowledge perhaps this is true for other people, portions of the 12 step ethos. It just didn't work for me. So what about the concept of rock bottom?
- [08:11]
Katie Herzog
You know, I had so many rock bottoms that they stopped becoming rock bottoms. I think the only true rock bottom for me would have been death. And even that, even that I might have. I might have continued to drink. It depends on which afterlife I went to.
- [08:28]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, your wake would have definitely been. Yes, filled with.
- [08:32]
Katie Herzog
That would have been very busy. So I find it. I don't find the. A rock bottom very helpful because so many people that I know, both people I know in my real life and people I interviewed for the book had a rock bottom and then another week had another rock bottom. Some people get a DUI or go to prison or end up on a transplant list and that's it. Or they hit their kid one time, or they cross some invisible line for themselves and they are able to say, okay, that was it. I did the thing that I said I'd never do. Now I'm. I'm changing my behavior. But I think for a lot of us who have these really intractable drinking problems, there's always some way to go lower.
- [09:13]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And I. I know that people hearing this who are in the program or at least very familiar with it, will write into me and say, you're not getting it. This is what. It's not as if we've never heard of this idea of hitting a rock bottom in another. And then they'd tell me the concept that the 12 step programs have to deal with it. But here is, as an outsider and you as someone with some familia, there. There are many aspects to AA and the 12 step programs that are a little like horoscopes. They are so vague that they can apply to any situation. And horoscopes are popular, but I find as a diagnostic tool, I'm not totally dismissing them. They just seem less solid and less prescriptive and more will work with wherever you are towards the eventual goal of convincing you to get in this program. And maybe that's a feature bug, you know, But I think for someone like you and me, that vagueness, that lack of real rigor is at least suspicion inducing, isn't it?
- [10:17]
Katie Herzog
I agree. But you have to consider that A was founded in the 1930s. The Big Book that the, you know, The Bible of AA was written in the 1930s. I think that book is pretty amazing, and I think the program is pretty incredible for what it is. You know, it has helped millions of people, it has saved millions of lives and it has done all of this on a volunteer basis for free. Every town in America almost has an AA program that people can go to and get, have the social experience, can just. There's something powerful about being in a room with other people who understand your, your problems. That said, it didn't work for me and I think part of it does come from my sort of natural skepticism. Right. So I'm the kind of person who I'm going to be in an AA meeting and I'm on my phone googling recidivism rates. You know, is this evidence based? It is. AA is evidence based in fact. But yeah, I think for those of us who are sort of not joiners and maybe natural contrary contrarians, AA was not a good fit for me. But you know, the founder of the program, Bill Wilson himself was very open minded and I think AA sort of culturally and in meetings has in some ways gotten away, drifted from his original message. So Bill Wilson wrote and the, the, the, I think it was in the forward to the second edition of the big book. We don't have a monopoly on, on therapy. We don't have a monopoly on solutions. He also said that he knew that some people could drink moderately, just not people like him. He was, he did LSD with Timothy Leary in the 1950s. So these, so the meetings themselves in the culture, the meetings I think can be more dogmatic than the found the ethos of the founder himself.
- [12:02]
Mike Pesca
Right. And so did you actually try to get help through AA or is that a nonstarter to begin with?
- [12:09]
Katie Herzog
Yeah, I went to meetings. I went to my first meetings when I was in my early 20s, I was 24 and I went to meetings off and on for the next almost 20 years or 15 years. I went during COVID That's sort of when my drinking problem accelerated. And I did, you know, zoom meetings and I sort of enjoy meetings because you tend to have a lot of good storytellers in the meetings. But I never invested in a home group, I never got a sponsor. I didn't really like when people would talk to me, you know, in the beginning of the meetings you go through and everybody says their name and you know, I'm Katie and I'm an alcoholic. I hated that. I absolutely hated sort of that identifying as an alcoholic. It didn't seem helpful for me. I didn't like the, the 12 steps themselves. You know, this idea that you admit that you're powerless over alcohol. I didn't Want to feel powerless. I wanted to feel in control. I wasn't, but that's how I wanted to feel. So I would say that I half ass my way through AA at various.
- [13:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And so a real adherent would say, oh, not surprising it didn't work. Yeah, it all becomes self fulfilling.
- [13:11]
Katie Herzog
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the same thing. It's, you know, it's true with weight loss or worth working out or any sort of self improvement plan. It doesn't work if you don't do it.
- [13:19]
Mike Pesca
But also with weight loss, it also doesn't work if you really try to do it. And it might not work if you do it for a little while and then you relapse. And these are things that we're understanding more and more about how actual human, not just psychology, but physiology works. And as your book shows, there is as a granted, all the great intentions and the genius foresight of someone from the 1930s putting this together. Also all the people they helped stipulated, that's all chronicled, that's not gainsaid. But there is this gap between this mindset, this kind of premedicinal mindset and the world we live in now. So take me up, take me to the method and the drug that did save your life in the way the 12 steps couldn't.
- [14:10]
Katie Herzog
Yeah. So the backstory is that there's a drug called naltrexone that was developed in the 1960s, I believe, 1962, by a company called Indo Laboratories. That company was later acquired by dupont, the big chemical manufacturer. And naltrexone was initially developed as an opioid, a treatment for opioid use disorder, which at the time would have been heroin and morphine, not fentanyl and Oxycontin. And. And so it went on the market and it never really took off in addiction medicine as a preventative or a treatment for opioid use disorder. This was around the same time that that methadone had just sort of cornered the market and there wasn't that much interest and it wasn't marketed very well. And then later, so basically dupont had tons of this drug sitting around like half million tabs they couldn't get rid of. And so they started giving it to researchers. And so researchers started looking into it for other things. And one of those was alcoholism, whereas they now call it alcohol use disorder. And so it was, they started doing clinical trials. It was approved for the treatment of alcohol use disorder by the FDA in 1991. This was in the US and at around the same time, there was a clinician in Finland. He was an American research. Not a clinician, excuse me, a researcher. An American researcher living in Finland. And he was working for the state, basically Finland. They had. They. The state controlled the supply of alcohol as well as the. As well as they also paid for research into alcoholism. So in the same building you had people manufacturing probably vodka on some floors, and then other floors you had scientists working to lessen the harms from that. From that substance.
- [15:57]
Mike Pesca
Maybe the same people, after like 10 years developing Finlandia, they go to the department next door, the anti Finlandia department.
- [16:04]
Katie Herzog
Yeah, exactly. So. So John. John David Sinclair. So he. He moved to Finland in 1972 and he started working to find a treatment and effective treatment for alcoholism. And one of the things that he had realized in his research, so when he was an undergrad at. In Cincinnati, he had done a study on. On lab rats. And what he found, he and his advisor found was that something surprising, they found that if you get. If you had lab rats who had been bred to develop a taste for alcohol, which lab rats don't. Naturally, they don't. They're not big drinkers, but you can, you can, you know, take a couple who are particularly boozy, then make them fucking. You get generations of boozy lab rats. And so if they had these lab rats that were. That were predisposed to developing an alcohol addiction and you, you gave them alcohol and then you took away their access to alcohol, you might think that after a period of abstinence, they would no longer want to drink. Right? They would have lost the taste for it. And what they found was actually the opposite, was that after a period of enforced sobriety, of abstinence, when given. When given access to alcohol, again, they would binge. And the same was true of humans. And, and Dr. Sinclair called this the alcohol deprivation effect. And this explains why for. For people who meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder, for people who have drinking problems, you do something like dry January or sober October, and by the end of the month, you are ready to jump out of your skin. You celebrate with a bender. Right? This is a really common experience. Periods of sobriety do not necessarily make you want to drink less. And so he was trying to find a way to interrupt this process to basically make people want to drink less. And so he was testing various different drugs on his lab rats. And one of those was this drug naltrexone. And he found that if he gave. Gave rats this drug and then let them drink, so was not enforcing sobriety or abstinence, gave him the drug Waited for it to metabolize and then gave them, you know, opened up the bar, the rats would drink less. And then he started doing lab tests on humans, and he found the same thing. And the drug is. So it's an opioid blocker. And the brain's natural opioid systems are. Is called endorphins. And so it basically blocks an endorphin rush that some people get. Not everyone gets this, but some people get an endorphin rush when they drink it. It makes them high, peppy, energized, and it blocks that effect. So when you drink on naltrexone, you don't get that pleasurable effect from the alcohol. And if you do that over time for weeks or months or years even, in some cases, eventually the idea is that you lose the desire to drink, not just the cravings for it, not just you lose it. You just don't want to do it anymore. And I did this, and that's what happened to me.
- [18:51]
Mike Pesca
Right? So this raises so many interesting questions, but also a terrible pun. And I'll ask you, where do you. Where do mice and rats do their drinking?
- [19:02]
Katie Herzog
Where, Mike?
- [19:03]
Mike Pesca
Squeakeasies. So did they not know. Did they not know that this would happen? They. When they invented an opioid drug, they thought there was one pathway to efficacy. Did they not realize the application with alcohol? I mean, obviously this researcher suspected it, but not knowing, as I don't know the chemical composition of both the opioid receptors and the alcohol receptors. But it does seem to me that the guys at dupont might have thought that they were sitting on more of a gold mine if they had just, I don't know, thought it out a little more.
- [19:42]
Katie Herzog
Well, dupont is a. Is a chemical company, and so they were not well positioned to. To market this drug in the first place. So had some other company bought the patent for Naltrex or bought indolaboratories, it's possible. Had Pfizer. Pfizer bought it or whatever some other big pharma company had they bought this, it's possible it would have caught on. It just. It didn't. And.
- [20:06]
Mike Pesca
Oh, because you're saying a pharmaceutical company understands how to market, whereas a chemical company, they're not in there convincing consumers, right?
- [20:15]
Katie Herzog
It was a little bit. It wasn't even consumers they needed to convince. It was doctors. They were just a little bit outside of their lane. But also. So I talked to a rep, a guy who had been a rep for dupont, and he. He was and remains absolutely convinced that this is A life saving treatment for people. And he told me that he would go to doctor's offices and they just were not interested because in the first place, because methadone had had cornered the market, they thought they had the gold standard when it came to opioid addiction. So that was the first thing. And then later when he was trying to market this for alcohol use, he said that the big barrier there was rehabs. Rehabs were not interested in medication assisted treatment because naltrexone goes against the ethos of 12 step programs in AA, which is, you know, this idea that alcoholism is a spiritual condition condition. It's a malady of the soul. And you can't, you can't cure a malady of the soul with a pill. Yeah, I think you can, but you can.
- [21:12]
Mike Pesca
Well, you probably can't cure a malady of the soul. It's just that there's no such thing as a malady of the soul. Right. Or I don't think that is anything.
- [21:21]
Katie Herzog
Or the soul.
- [21:22]
Mike Pesca
Right, right. Whatever. Whatever they teach in a church or, you know, if not taking communion and the trans substantiation of the Eucharist could be some malady of the soul, they.
- [21:33]
Katie Herzog
Could put naltrexone granddad in the wine.
- [21:35]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, that'd be interesting. Does methadone not work for alcohol?
- [21:42]
Katie Herzog
I don't know. That's a good question. Methadone comes with side effects though. So the really remarkable thing about, about naltrexone is that it's not psychoactive. So you can take naltrexone and go about your day, go do your job. They found in the early studies this, this guy who had been a drug rep, his name's Percy Menzies, he told me that in the early studies they found that it worked really well for highly motivated populations who had stable employment, specifically doctors, nurses, pilots, people who, who could stay in employment, but you can't, you can't take methadone and go fly a plane. Right?
- [22:17]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [22:17]
Katie Herzog
And naltrexone doesn't have any of those effects.
- [22:19]
Mike Pesca
There's another big part of this which is not just the invention of the drug. Lest anyone here doesn't say, oh, pop the drug, it wasn't getting out there enough. But once you did, people would pop the drug and they'd be cured. That's not quite true. Paired with this drug, maybe this miracle drug is the method that you discovered that is still a sansad type passed around, not entirely endorsed as part of the bottle. When you get subscribed prescribed naltrexone so tell me about the Sinclair method. That's a fascinating part of this.
- [22:55]
Katie Herzog
Yeah. So in general, if a person goes to a doctor, not a specialist, but just like their family gp, and says, I'm, I've heard of this drug naltrexone, I'm interested in, or just says, I have a drinking problem. What. What do you have for me, Doctor? Naltrexone is increasingly seen as a frontline treatment for alcohol use disorder, but it is generally prescribed to be taken every day. Like in the morning, you get up and you take your pill the same way that you do any other sort of medication. The problem with this, and this, and I should say this, this works for some people, it cuts cravings. The problem with this, there's a couple problems. For one, naltrexone lasts like five or six hours in the body, and if you take it in the morning, it's going to have worn off by the time most people get to drinking hour, unless you're drinking in the morning or in the early afternoon. So that's the first problem. The second thing is that because naltrexone is an endorphin blocker, it also limits the pleasure that you get from other parts of life. So food, sex, conversation, exercise, it makes life feel dull. That, for me would have been, I don't like. I don't like the way naltrexone makes me feel. And so taking it every day, I would have just quit after a while because it would have made every day, like, a little bit depressing, a little bit less bright. So that can be a barrier. Yeah, but so what?
- [24:10]
Mike Pesca
By the way, that's one of the reasons people drink, to make the world seem a little brighter, at least for the first few drinks. Yeah. Right. So the exact population that might be most put off by the depressing effects of naltrexone is exactly the wrong population. They're more inclined to drink.
- [24:24]
Katie Herzog
Yeah, Right. So John David Sinclair, this researcher in Finland, the protocol that he developed is the targeted use of naltrexone. So you only take it in anticipation of drinking. You take it one hour before you're drinking, every time that you drink. And so it targets that specific behavior so your brain starts to dissociate pleasure from alcohol. So that's what's so revolutionary about this treatment, is that it doesn't require abstinence. And the reason that's so revolutionary is because the idea of abstinence is a barrier to people who have drinking problems, because many, many of us cannot Literally cannot conceptualize a life without alcohol. It seems like a life of wanting, a life of craving, a life of unfulfilled desire. And so it takes that barrier off of the table.
- [25:13]
Mike Pesca
Is the idea of abstinence an inducement for at least some of the people in the 12 step programs? Like they're not just saying, hey, we're gonna just do what works. There is an attraction to the abstemious nature of the program itself.
- [25:30]
Katie Herzog
I'm sure it is for some people, just not me.
- [25:33]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, well, this is my point, that the 12 step programs are very much infused with religion. They come from the 1930s. There was much more religion. And I know that there is some wiggle room. It doesn't have to be a religion. It has to be some higher power, which seems to be a stand in for religion. I've heard some debate about what the higher power could be. Fine. But it's very much, I mean, you tell me 12 step programs in AA are quasi religious experiences in a way that naltrexone plus the Sinclair method very much is not.
- [26:08]
Katie Herzog
Yeah, that's true. I will say there are AA groups for atheists and agnostics. I've been to them. I sort of like those meetings. They're extremely self righteous. I like that. But it does. I mean, that's one of the criticisms that I get.
- [26:23]
Mike Pesca
They all have science in this house. We believe in science. Signs on their yards. That's the kind of meetings they are. Yes, exactly.
- [26:30]
Katie Herzog
You know, I get when I talk about this, when I do interviews on the book, when people read the book or maybe just read the description book, I will get emails from people saying, you know, AA is a. You've got it wrong. AA is a spiritual program. It cures the, it cures what ails you. I, I acknowledge that. I just think not all of us have a spiritual deficit or trauma or something at the root of our drinking. And I think that's a, that's a myth that, you know, everybody who develops an alcohol addiction or maybe a drug addiction has something inside of them, some hole that needs to be filled. I just don't think that's true. I don't think it's true in my case. It is true in some people's cases, but I don't think that's true in my case.
- [27:07]
Mike Pesca
Or how about this? Maybe it is true, but it's much more difficult to dig down to the root cause. What if you could just get at the epiphenomenon of the cause. And you're right. There are probably other aspects of your personality. Cause of this root cause, if you want to conceive, see that. That aren't doing well. But damn it, if you could cure how the cause shows up in its most effective and destructive way, let's do that. No.
- [27:34]
Katie Herzog
Yes. It is a lot easier to figure out your other problems when you don't have the monkey of addiction on your back. And another thing, I just realized this recently. You know, this, this assumption that every. All alcoholics, we all have something wrong with us, something else that is the root of the addiction. Nobody says that about smoking, right? We know that. We know that nicotine is highly addictive. We know that if you smoke enough, you're probably going to get addicted. And nobody assumes and we're going to.
- [28:01]
Mike Pesca
Fade out because there's more of Katie Herzog. And if you want to hear more of Katie Herzog on this show talking about alcoholism and you know her story, but also the history of the disease, does she even believe in the disease model? You can get access to this and help the gist by becoming a member of the Pesca plus Community. Yes, I said Community. It's just a feed. And you could get the show without ads and with bonus episodes. And we do fun things like have a fantasy football pool, which I think Katie's going to join next year. She's really into that. Go to subscribe.mikepeska.com for all the details on how to hear more, but also when it comes to ads, less and you'll be helping the show. I've been using Cove Pure water purification and it's great. There's no installation. It tastes good and I'm thinking about giving it to my parents because they're always drinking bottled water, which can be fine, but it's inconvenient and not good for the environment. And you've got, of course, recycle it. Not with. With COVID Pure. You just fill it up right from the tap and you put it into the unit. And what you can get is purer than say boiling water. And you could get hot water, you could get cold water. I like the cold water. But you know, my mom, she enjoys a cup of tea. And my dad, he enjoys a decaf coffee. And they have a tea kettle that. And this is more about the tea kettle than co Pure. It's metallic on the top. So when you try to open the latch on the tea kettle, you're engaging with a piece of metal that was just on a stove and burns ensue. Not with COVID Pure. Cove Pure also has this, my dad's gonna like this because he's very empirically has the number right there on the front. So TDS is the total dissolved solids and there's I don't know, 500 in the water that we have. And after going through Cove Pure it's down to nine, sometimes five. This is what makes the water of COVID Pure taste so good, so pure. But it's not just the taste. You know what's in your water could be here in New York. We have pretty good drinking water, but I've been to places where you just don't drink the water. And cove pure removes 99.9% of contaminants. We're talking PFAS and pharmaceuticals, fluoride, lead, arsenic. It is the purest water you could get. So if you're looking for a gift that's good for your loved ones and one that they will actually use, I highly recommend Cove Pure. And because I partner with them, they're giving you a special 250 holiday discount with my link covpure.com the gist that c o v e p u r e.com the gist to get 250 off covpure.com the gist hurry before the sale ends. AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R I K and now the spiel among Wolf, Cohen, Flynn and Avenatti, the Trump associated Michaels all suck. They all suck. Pence. Could Pence be the winning Michael from all that? Well, back to Wolf as I'm sure he loves. We all go back to Wolf. Michael Wolf. The Epstein emails in which Michael Wolf positions himself as a consulary to the disgraced financier. Gotta call Epstein a financier. So unspecific finance and then a Frenchie type suffix. He was into capitalism. Sequoia Wolf gave Epstein advice. The sheep's clothing thing right out there that I'm not going to touch. Great advice which clearly served both well. Epstein now has a stellar reputation thanks to Wolf's guidance. And Wolf actually never got a book deal out of any of it it. But Wolf is getting attention which suits him as he is not so much a journalist as an attention ear. And I found out Wolf also has a Podcast put out by the Daily Beast, which fills the vacuum, the niche that only all of the other Daily Beast podcasts fill of criticizing Donald Trump. It's not like Donald Trump doesn't deserve criticism. And the Daily Beast podcast arm is there. In the latest podcast, Wolf and co host Joanna Coles take you inside Trump's Head. That is the title of the podcast, by the way, Inside Trump's Head. And on this episode, Wolf is put on the lukewarm spot. Why take the side of a pedophile only to hurt the president? Wolf answers, because Trump's the president. And more is at stake when you're dealing with the president. See the title of the podcast. It's Inside Trump's Head, not Inside Epstein's massage Room. Here's a taste of some of the discussion. I am not a pedophile. I am a writer. So, you know, and I guess, I guess what you might be saying is does the, does the means justify the ends? And, and I would point out that the, that the, that the means in this instance are, are kind of set of white lies. They harm no one and they, they produce the end. I got this story. He got the story right. But let's recap the book project Wolf was working on. Apparently, according to Wolf, who you could trust, got a lot of attention, a lot of interest and was not bought and never went to press. Wolf did write a few stories about this. These stories added to a lot of other stories written by trustworthy journalist, stories that, of course, showed that Trump and Epstein were connected. Also, it's not the means justify the ends, it's the ends justify the means, and they shouldn't. But that's the idiom that Wolf and Cole were grasping for. It does matter, I guess, all ends that. Well, ends. Also. Let me explain why lying to a source is not a white lie, especially if you're a journalist and you want to be an ethical journalist, which Wolf does not. Why do ethics exist in the world of journalism? You want journalists, when they go to sources or anyone or the public, not to be seen as liars. You don't want to lie to get the story. Because a journalist is not just a freelancer working for himself. A journalist is in a community of other journalists who don't want to be thought of as Michael Wolf esque in their methods. There is a code of ethics. It would be in general a good thing for journalists to be able to say, no, we don't do that. We don't lie to get our stories. And for that statement to be true, I'm sure Michael Wolfe does say that we don't lie to get his stories. But since he does lie, there's no compunction on him not to claim he doesn't lie. Truth in the methods and the product of journalism should be a very important part of the profession. But of course it's not. The rules are all exploitable. And the Daily Beast and New York Mag and all the places that have hired Wolf and continue to employ Wolf define their other journalists by extension as something a little less than ideal. Ethical journalists. Of course. And here's the silver lining. None of this matters because we are teaching the next generation of journalists in journalism school to have an anti objectivity agenda. So that's going well too. It's all over. But the most shocking moment in these podcasts as we go inside Trump's head and Wolf's self justification chamber, the most shocking moment comes actually a couple of times. It is not a conscious choice of Wolf. I do not blame Wolf in the moment he was recording for what we, the listener hears afterwards. Here it is. That directly connect Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein in a way that is, you know, that I think is completely revealing of Donald Trump's character and makes the point he is, he was, is and continues to be unfit to be the President of the United States. To say the very least. And a word from our sponsor. It's third down. Did you see the game last night? Of course you did. Because you used Instacart to do your grocery restock.
- [37:01]
Katie Herzog
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
- [37:02]
Mike Pesca
Who I understand. Here's how it works. The pre records to drop in before the commercial inserts and what you want to do. A big goal if you're doing these prerecords is not to make the prerecorded part sound totally different from the regular talking part when you go from host voice to host voice. But that's a problem, isn't it? It sounds like Wolf is just riffing on pedophilia in the Republic and means justifying ends. A little bit of journalism ethics, the unfitness of the commander and chief and also now Instacart. By the way, I did see the game last night. The jets lost. They always lose. Instacart had no role in that. I give no credit. Maybe Instacart made my watching this horrible mess possible. The jets have no pass rush. Will McDonald is great when healthy is not healthy. Brady McGregor is hurt. Right. And Jermaine Johnson. Three sacks all year. They are terrible. Am I being cruel? Am I giving them the means? Well, the ends justify the means when it comes to the Jets. And now this. And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Michelle Pesca. I'll list her next. First in my heart, she is the COO of Peach Fish Productions. And then there's Jeff Craig. He oversees all of our socials. And Kathleen Sykes very much helps me with the Gist list. And Peru. G. Peru. Do Peru. Thanks for listening.