Not Even Mad: Joe Nocera & Jonah Goldberg

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist — Not Even Mad: Joe Nocera & Jonah Goldberg

Date: February 12, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca (Peach Fish Productions)
Guests: Joe Nocera (The Free Press), Jonah Goldberg (The Dispatch)

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Overview

This episode of Not Even Mad sees Mike Pesca joined by Joe Nocera and Jonah Goldberg for a lively and unsparing discussion on three major topics:

1. The contrasting impact of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in the US and UK,
2. The state and strategy of the Democratic Party ahead of future elections,
3. The decline of the Washington Post and the challenges facing legacy media.

Throughout, the conversation moves fluidly from sharp cultural observations and political theory to humor and the panelists’ personal anecdotes. The show keeps a tone that is “surprising, reasonable, and willing to critique the left, the right, either party, or any idea.”

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1. The Jeffrey Epstein Files: British vs. American Fallout

[10:25–34:54]

Key Discussion Points

• UK Political Turmoil

  • The UK is experiencing government instability due to fallout over the "Epstein files," leading to forced resignations from senior politicians and public outcry.
  • “The Epstein files… revelations that have been much worse for American politicians but haven’t seen that spate or really any resignations in the upper reaches of the American government like say, Howard Lutnick.” — Mike Pesca [12:11]

• US Resilience & Polarization

  • In contrast, the US political system seems oddly unmoved, even though some American political and business elites are deeply implicated.
  • Hypocrisy Fatigue: Americans, especially within the Republican Party, seem to have become numb to charges of hypocrisy due to years of political polarization and public scandals.
  • “The moral depravity of a lot of people is sort of priced in… When shamelessness is the superpower of the President of the United States, it shouldn’t shock us…” — Jonah Goldberg [13:34]

• Casey Wasserman and Shifting Social Norms

  • The panel unpacks the bewildering case of Casey Wasserman, who is losing clients over 20-year-old flirtatious emails with Ghislaine Maxwell—before her or Epstein’s criminal convictions.
  • “It all depends on who your constituency and the constituency or perceived constituency… are maybe sensitive to this… the Republican constituency is completely insensitive.” — Pesca [19:07]

• Social Media Justice & "Knowing What You Know"

  • There’s discussion about the haziness of moral reasoning in contemporary “accountability” culture, as exemplified by Instagram posts and self-help influencer logic.
  • “This conversation was impenetrable to me. It was all knowing what you know and feeling your feelings and trusting your instincts. But what are your instincts?” — Pesca [03:08]

• Release of Raw Files & Consequences

  • Consensus emerges that releasing unredacted, unevaluated files is damaging, leading to misinformation, defamation, and guilt by association.
  • “Throwing out raw tip line garbage into the public sphere doesn’t help anybody. I agree that… I don’t think Lutnick slept with any underage girls either, but his lying about it... was pretty bad.” — Goldberg [20:42]

• The Epstein Modus Operandi

  • The group agrees that Epstein’s social engineering included both blackmail and simply offering access and perks to elites, often blurring illegality and the unsavory.
  • “He was selling the perception of access and inside information, and that helped him. Then you throw in the inducements with the sex and the parties…” — Goldberg [31:20]

Notable Quotes

• Joe Nocera dissects social circles and punishment:

  • “If you’re in one circle you’re off the hook. If you’re in another circle you’re doomed.” [19:39]

• On the damaging vagueness of association:

  • “Any association with the Epstein files… can be weaponized.” — Pesca [24:04]

• Jonah Goldberg, on American moral fatigue:

  • “It doesn’t speak well of America that Howard Lutnick still has a job. But… our ability to be shocked by it was a little less.” [13:34]

• Joe Nocera, on Epstein’s victims’ advocate:

  • “Everything that’s happened with the Epstein files and with Epstein and with Ghislaine Maxwell is because of Virginia Giuffre.” [33:10]

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2. Are the Democrats “Up To The Task”?

[35:46–45:15]

Key Discussion Points

• The Atlantic Article:

  • The title “The Democrats Aren’t Built For This” (Mark Leibovich) serves as a springboard for analyzing whether Democrats can defeat growing autocracy and outmaneuver a possible Trump return.

• Party Weakening & Primary Culture

  • Weak parties and candidate selection by primaries have led both Dems and GOP to be beholden to their respective ideological extremes.
  • “Weak parties create strong partisanship… Now… primaries, not general elections, threaten incumbency.” — Goldberg [39:14]

• Messaging Problems & The Swing Voter

  • Democrats’ use of language—land acknowledgments, activist speech, “Latinx”—distracts from winning swing voters and often actively repels them.
  • “They’ve been taken over by campus progressives. It’s this very effete, ‘do your land acknowledgment’ kind of garbage that turns off voters.” — Goldberg [41:31]

• Short-term vs. Long-term Strategy

  • Joe Nocera thinks the upcoming 2026 midterms will go “all right” for Democrats, as more moderates are running, but worries that by 2028, the far left might again be used as a “boogeyman” for Republicans.
  • “Democrats have to win elections. That’s all they can do… and Trump has done so many awful things… it’s almost like the Democrats’ job is being done for them.” — Nocera [36:39]

• Policy vs. Presentation

  • The group discusses whether the Democrats’ indulgence in ideological “frippery” (land acknowledgements, alphabet soup of sexual identities) is mere side noise or risks overwhelming their electoral prospects.

Notable Quotes

• Sarah Longwell (quoted):

  • “Republicans are over here being straight up mercenaries. Democrats give everybody Fridays off and talk about work–life balance… Democrats are not built for when the fascists come.” [39:14, quoting Longwell]

• Jonah Goldberg:

  • “The problem with the Democratic Party is they don’t have enough Rahm Emanuels… those guys… really liked winning elections.” [41:34]

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3. The Washington Post: A Necropsy

[45:15–54:49]

Key Discussion Points

• Post-Bezos Decline

  • Why has Jeff Bezos kept the paper? Panelists suggest avoidance of failure, but mostly blame a failed strategy and lack of vision.
  • “Bezos came in, bought the newspaper, thinking that he, the great Internet genius, could figure out some innovative ways… and then he finds out, oh, he really doesn’t have any new ideas.” — Nocera [48:06]

• Comparison to NYT & The Power of Diversification

  • The New York Times thrived by becoming indispensably broad (cooking, games, etc.), making itself an international leader; the Post focused regional and withered.
  • “The New York Times, because it competes on an international level, figured out that it still needed to compete. The Washington Post didn’t.” — Goldberg [53:13]

• Media Monopoly and Calcification

  • Regional monopolies once protected papers from competition, but sapped their ability to adapt and innovate.
  • “Monopolies breed calcification... the Washington Post was a monopoly.” — Goldberg [53:14]

• Financial Reality for Billionaire Owners

  • Even for Bezos, burning $100M a year is intolerable, not for lack of means, but mindset.
  • “Billionaires are billionaires because they don’t like to lose $100 million a year.” — Nocera [50:41]

• Niche Success vs. Mass Appeal

  • Both Goldberg and Nocera argue their non-woke, niche approaches can be successful for their outlets but can’t easily translate to a mass-market daily paper.

Notable Quotes

• Goldberg:
  • “What drives me crazy is people talk about Wordle like it’s a deviation from what newspapers are supposed to be… but newspapers were about satisfying different consumer needs.” [51:51]

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4. Goat Grinders (Pet Peeves)

[55:40–62:18] Short, tongue-in-cheek segment where each panelist shares a personal annoyance.

Highlights

• Jonah Goldberg:

  • Bemused by the “dear leader” style pro-Trump government ads narrated by AI versions of Trump, which appear during political TV shows.
  • “My real goat grind here is that nobody else is fascinated by the amount of money the government or Trump-aligned super PACs are spending on Riefenstahl-esque weird propaganda stuff.” [57:28]

• Mike Pesca:

  • Frustrated by the requirement that television viewers must love, not merely like, prestige shows—even when reviews are “North Korean propaganda material.”
  • Points out The Pit’s increasingly predictable and politically correct writing.

• Joe Nocera:

  • Annoyed by tennis players’ ball rituals, though his son corrects him, explaining there’s a technical purpose.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• “Throwing out raw tip line garbage into the public sphere doesn’t help anybody.” — Jonah Goldberg [20:42]
• “This conversation was impenetrable to me. It was all knowing what you know and feeling your feelings and trusting your instincts. But what are your instincts?” — Mike Pesca [03:08]
• “You have people who did really bad things that the Justice Department has no interest in examining… then you have these other people who did virtually nothing who are being ravaged and having their lives torn apart. So just yuck is all I can say.” — Joe Nocera [26:55]

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

The episode’s tone is probing, irreverent, and skeptical across the ideological spectrum. There’s a consistent willingness to puncture pieties (left or right), resist facile conclusions, and diagnose the incentives shaping public life—be it in politics or media.

Listeners are left with a sense that scandals, media strategy, and political messaging are shaped as much by social “consistencies” and tribal dynamics as by the facts of any particular case; and that some problems are simply, as Nocera puts it, “yuck.”

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Epstein Files & UK/US Differences: 10:25–34:54
• State of the Democratic Party: 35:46–45:15
• Washington Post Discussion: 45:15–54:49
• Goat Grinders/Pet Peeves: 55:40–62:18

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This summary was crafted for listeners who want the substance of “Not Even Mad” without the ads, digressions, or repetition—and who appreciate the show’s mix of insight, skepticism, and dry wit.

Transcript

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[A]

It's Thursday, February 12, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. This is a not even mad day and as you will hear, our first topic is going to include Jeffrey Epstein. Because I'm genuinely confused about some aspects of the Epstein files. And in the case of the show, it's why there was such a scandal in the UK over the Epstein files. Well, nothing seems to have happened in the United States, but I could have also talked about the Norwegian fallout to the Epstein files. He cozied up to Norway royalty, literally. And foreign ministers. Yes, Thor Bjorn Yoglund has been caught up in this Epstein file scandal, as has Burger Brenda, former Norwegian Foreign Minister. You don't think it to reach all the way up to Bjorka Brenda, but it does. And then there's another aspect of the Epstein files that I just don't understand. I understand the bad stuff about the pedophile and associations with him being embarrassing, but I don't understand the Casey Wasserman part of it. You know, this guy is a big agent. He's leading Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games. He's been losing clients because he's in the Epstein files. Okay, that makes sense. But he's in the Epstein files for having texted or emailed with Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003. Now, in 2003, that was 18 years before she was convicted of doing anything with Epstein. Though maybe you could say years before that, a decade before that she was known to have been associate. But Epstein himself wasn't convicted until 2008. And it wasn't widely known or even sparsely known that he was anything other than a rich guy who provided planes for people to take flights as part of the Clinton Global Initiative, which seems like a good thing, you know. Then again, again, so does Derriere Larson and everything he did with the Oslo Accords also caught up in the Epstein files. But I really, this is genuine. I don't understand why clients are dropping this guy. Chapel Roan, huge star, walked away from Casey Wasserman.

[C]

But why?

[A]

Because. Yeah, the correspondent said that Wasserman wanted to see Maxwell in a tight leather outfit and she told him she could give him a massage that would blow his mind. All right? But this was 23 years ago and she was just some lady who maybe you think would look good in a tight leather outfit or maybe you don't. And then there was Abby Wambach, the US soccer player, and she left the Wasserman agency. And I was saying, why? Why? And then I found the Instagram post where she explained her thinking. I guess I've left the Wasserman agency. I read Casey Wasserman's correspondences and in the Epstein files. I know what I know and I am following my gut and values. Casey should resign. He should leave some more. People like me don't have to. I am unclear of the next steps. That's okay with me. I just know where I can't be. So that was her explanation. She knows what she knows. But what does she know? I don't know. I don't know that she knows. And then the number one comment on this was from her wife and podcast co host, Glennon Doyle, that we could do hard things. Person, let's fucking go. Is taking on a whole new meaning. We know what we know. So now let's fucking go and build something better. I love you so much and I'm so proud to be your wife. Let's fucking go and let's keep going. Okay. I understand you're going away from Casey Wasserman. I don't understand why. I understand, you know what you know, I was trying to crack the code on all this. So I listened to a recent episode. Oh my God, we're going to bring in Monica Lewinsky. So Monica Lewinsky interviewed Glennon Doyle and maybe I get some insights. I just can't believe the nature of conversation that's going on. I like Monica Lewinsky. She definitely got a horribly rough deal from the Clintonistas who smeared her and the Justice Department who that was weaponized against her, all of that. And she comes across as a quite likable person, but not a coherent person. This conversation was impenetrable to me. It was all knowing what you know and feeling your fears, feelings and trusting your instincts. But what are your instincts? This obviously resonates with a very wide audience. They just didn't explain anything to me as a sort of non cult member, as someone who wasn't read in on knowing what you know and being true to yourself and finding your truth. Yes, and I understand certain pretty to very wealthy women who live in California and host podcasts and are maybe in their late 40s and have done TED talks. They're going to talk a certain way, believe a certain way, certain thing, not be forced to spell out and articulate an audience. They're perhaps, if they're lucky enough, going to resonate with other people who cite traits like relatability, which means vulnerability. So these are all hard to pin down words. And I couldn't find any, you know, theses or action items. And then Monica Lewinsky said this.

[B]

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[A]

So now I'm beginning maybe to understand why, you know, this isn't my world and knowing what you know might just mean something like I don't have a real reason. I just felt kind of icky. And when your wife cheers you on and you're sitting atop a self help empire and you make the news, let's face it, for this sort of thing, it makes more sense than I can make of it. Or maybe even that I can make. Anyway, that has been a little digression. Here's the real thing. An episode of Not Even Mad. And I will say this, we get to talking about wordle and I have a special offer if you're a fan or just curious about wordle, but it's not going to be here in this episode unless you're a Pascal subscriber. I'm trying to induce you to listen to the Not Even Mad in its own proper feed. And there I'll give everyone who listens to that in my feed. At some point in the show, I'm going to tell you about my special wordle related offer again, an inducement. We always have extra content in the Not Even Mad specific feed and I couldn't rob it from you, my Pesca plus subscribers. And to subscribe to Pesca plus go to subscribe.mike pesca.com or do nothing, know nothing about Wordle. Just know what you know. And know that Not Even Mad with Jonah Goldberg and Joe Nacera is coming up next.

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[A]

Hello, and welcome back to the show. That is to reason discourse what Kid Rock is to lip sync virtuosity. It's not even mad. Today we speak of the Epstein British Isles. We ask, are the Democrats up to the task? And other leading questions. And we do. If not an obit, then a partial necropsy for the Washington Post. And as we do so, we promise to uphold our reputation for refutation. We'll have to say, same time, vowing to be not even mad. So who are we today? We are Joe Nocera, senior editor and writer at the Free Press. You might know him from his columns at the New York Times, Bloomberg, Esquire, gq. He was the editorial director of Fortune. Joe, the question is, why couldn't you hold down a job?

[D]

Yes, I've often wondered that myself.

[A]

And not to be confused with Joe. No, Sara, which is Joe. Pause, pause. No, Sarah, we have Jonah Goldberg, who is the editor in chief of the Dispatch and an L A Times columnist. And not a big newspaper background, but you're more of a magazine man. Or did you have a stint in newspapers? I don't know about Jonah.

[C]

I mean, I've been a columnist for the times for almost 20 years. And my dad was a storied newspaper man, ran news syndicates and all the rest. I grew up by osmosis in the newspaper industry listening to my dad. And his argument was that he'd been in the business since the 1950s and every year he was managing decline of the industry. So I have some receipts, but anyway, decline forever.

[A]

Yes. So let us turn to England because I have questions and I'll just set the scene. There is a lot of scandal in the upper reaches of the UK government and it is based on something that is causing a scandal, but not as much of an acute scandal as here in the United States. The Epstein files. So the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has been under intense pressure to resign. It doesn't look like he will. His cabinet has all backed him, but he did fire a number of appointees, including Peter Mandelson, Britain's ambassador in Washington and a couple of others. Couple other resignations. His chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney and the communications director, Tim Allen. Not the Tool Time guy, the British guy. And this is all because of revelations, as I said in the Epstein files, revelations that have been much worse for American politicians but haven't seen that spate or really any resignations in the upper reaches of the American government like say, Howard Lutnick. And I just don't understand A couple of theories are maybe there's something about England that's more sensitive to this than us. Maybe the United States system as just such a callus. Or we're so polarized that a resignation among Republicans would give a win to Democrats somehow. Help me understand, Jonah, I go to you first.

[C]

So I have a big thumb sucky theory about this. I think very 30,000 foot Europe is becoming increasingly Americanized and America is becoming Europeanized. One of the things that Alexis de Tocqueville talked about in Democracy in America was how in the old world rank and privilege could absorb a whole lot of moral failure. Right? Oh, that's just what the kings do, they diddle the serfs. But in America, hypocrisy was seen as sort of a violation of the social compact about equality because everybody was deemed to be equal. I think Europe has moved a long way towards that kind of thing in its rhetoric and its understanding. They got rid of the House of Lords the way it was for a gazillion years. In America you've got this transformation in the last decade or so of basically elite scumbags rejecting the sort of premise of America in a lot of ways. And so it comes as less of a shock than it would have, I think 15, 20 years ago. This would have been devastating for any administration, to be sure. But now the moral depravity of a lot of people is sort of priced in. We've been having this conversation for a long time. We knew this stuff was in the Epstein files, so our ability to be shocked by it was a little less. And so it doesn't speak well of America that Howard Lutnick still has a job. But when shamelessness is the superpower of the President of the United States, it shouldn't shock us that much that his administration is sort of immune to shame, except in the fact that the poll numbers are pretty disastrous for him.

[A]

Yeah. Before I turn to you, Joe, I will agree not along with Cosine, that part about hypocrisy still having an acute effect in British politics. If you think of the last few scandals that felled or almost felt prime ministers, there was the sex dossier and Tony Blair, there was Boris Johnson and the COVID parties. And in those cases it was the core was hypocrisy, not what they did, but saying one thing and doing another. Whereas that in the United States doesn't seem even remotely close as a political vulnerability to Donald Trump. Saying one thing and doing the other, that is his, that is his modus operandi, if not anything, anything close to an Achilles heel. But Joe, you, I want you to analyze the British part of it, but also get into the Epstein files because you've written extensively about this, including a couple of months ago, what the, I mean files reveal. You are in them, I'm in the.

[D]

Epstein files, my friend.

[A]

Tell me how and what was that hot tub like? How was that?

[D]

In a really, really strange way. You remember Edward J. Epstein, the conspiracy guy, the writer. So I wrote a column when Dominique Strauss Kahn was in trouble for allegedly raping a hotel maid in New York. He was this French politician, he was quite possibly going to be the next president of France. His career was destroyed. And I wrote a column about it and Edward J. Epstein sent that column. The title of it was Sex, Power and Hypocrisy. Edward J. Epstein sent that column to Jeffrey Epstein. And then the last, right at the end, he wrote something like, you know, I'll keep you posted.

[A]

Do we know if those Epstein's were related in anything other than cautionary?

[D]

Both Epstein's are dead, so we can't ask them. But you know, you talk about somebody who must have known it was happening. I find the obsession with politicians on this. A little overbearing from my point of view. The politician who most likely was doing things to young girls is dead. Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico who went to the ranch, the Epstein's ranch all the time and was very close to him. Leon Black, billionaire. His career has been destroyed with good reason. Larry Summers he's finished. The Trump administration, they never say they're sorry about anything. This is not a surprise that no one, there's so many things people should have resigned over. This is just one of many. I don't really think Howard Ludnick slept with 16 year old girls personally but I don't really know. Here's the thing. There's a flip side to this gentlemen. Casey Wasserman is about to lose his company and he's lost most of his Hollywood clients because his 23 years ago he had a flirtatious relationship with Giselle Ghislaine Maxwell in six emails. And he once flew on Epstein's plane as part of a Clinton foundation trip to Africa. And his career and life is being destroyed. I think distinction need to be made that are not being made his, his client.

[A]

So to interrupt his client, Chapel Roan, she was the most high profile person to defect. But what this really gets to is there's no, there's, there's no just blatant black and white interpretation. It all depends on who your constituency and the constituency or perceived constituency of the UK Prime Minister are maybe sensitive to this and the constituency of Wasserman is maybe oversensitive and the Republican constituency is totally insensitive. But sorry Joe, I agree 100%.

[D]

My wife who represented a bunch of Epstein victims says it just depends on what circle you're in. If you're in one circle you're off the hook. If you're in another circle you're doomed. And that's what we're finding out. Howard Ludnick's real failing here is not that he had lunch with Epstein on the island with his kids or whatever, it's that he lied about it.

[A]

Yeah, it's hypocrisy. It's that he called him disgusting and said I would never do it and then has revealed to which as we've established is not a that serious a flaw in the eyes of the American public or the Republican constituency.

[D]

And we're saying the same thing about Trump. I'm not saying he was his best friend or anything but it's obvious that he had some relationship with Epstein well after he said he didn't. But it's Trump. So it doesn't matter. It totally doesn't matter. It will not affect him one way or the other.

[C]

So I agree with Joe entirely about this. I think releasing grand jury testimony, raw stuff, is terrible practice. I understand the politics of it, but the reason why you don't normally do that is people look into my daughter the other day said, did you hear about the stuff in the Eptine Files about eating babies? I was like, no, sweetie, I didn't hear about it, but I'm sure it's not true. Throwing out raw tip line garbage into the public sphere doesn't help anybody. I agree that. I don't think Lutnick slept with any underage girls either, but his lying about it and his smug lying about it was pretty bad. I should also just since we're doing full disclosures, I am in the Epstein files as well, because this is one of the things. It's like all of his spam from like 20 years of email is in there. And so the like three of the four mentions of me are in some digest of what stupid right wingers are saying from the New Republic or something. And I had written a piece making a sort of counterintuitive case about how the Crusades were a defense of war and they're misunderstood and that was proof that I'm a monster. So there you go, I'm in there too.

[A]

This is one of those braggy disclosures, I think, because I got to say I looked to see if I was in the Epstein files and there was one. And why would I be? I didn't have an L A Times column for 20 years, but there was one reference to Pesca, but it was, I think, a seafood restaurant that he had an appointment in. And we should also say that Peter Mandelson, who was really at the center of the UK scandal, almost definitely didn't sleep with young girls because he is gay. But he did have many interactions with Epstein over the years. Like substantial interactions, friendly and at times kind of disgusting interactions. And also if you read the nature of these interactions, he definitely seems to have leaked to Epstein insider information when certain treaties, the exact timing accurate of certain treaties being signed and other things that maybe were actionable or tradable. In fact, I don't know why Mandelson could, who was let go or fired twice before being hired by Starmer in disgrace, kept getting disgrace, kept getting brought back and then I don't know why Starmer hired him. He knows how to ingratiate himself with powerful people. That might be it, but they Also, I do think it also gives us a little bit of an insight as to what Epstein might have been doing. No one really knows how he got his money, and a lot of people assume it was because he essentially had kompromat on powerful people and used it to maybe get Les Wexner's fortune to manage. But we see that with all these connections to the powerful, he is getting what we could call some sort of insider information. And so that was. It's. There's so much.

[C]

There's another aspect to it. I mean, just because it's important, like, the lying stuff, I think is damning. But also, I have no huge problem with being associated with Jeffrey Epstein before you found out that he had pled guilty to trafficking in underage girls. Like, there should be, like, the fact that all these people say they cut off contact with the guy once they found out he was doing disreputable things and pleaded guilty to disreputable things and then stayed in touch with him. Like, at that point, the guilt by association charge, politically, not legally, I think has merit to it.

[A]

And I'll also say that a piggyback on what you said about grand jury testimony and files that normally wouldn't be public becoming public, there is some regrettable and I feel somewhat sorry for some of these people. So, first of all, yes, if it was all before Epstein was adjudicated to be a sex offender, I don't know if I'd give you a pass if you maybe knew about that, but I don't see how we could come down on you so hard. And then even afterwards, there have been a number of people who, quote, had communication with Jeffrey Epstein, but if you look into it, they were responding to an outgoing email from him, let's say, and they responded professionally. Or in the case of your colleague Nellie Bowles at the Free Press, she was a reporter who did an interview with Epstein. And so any association with the Epstein files, I guess, Joe and Jonah notwithstanding, is, if you want it, can be weaponized even. I even think that the Bill Gates association, where it's reported that there was a. Well, what Epstein did was he wrote an email in the. In the voice of a former Gates employee that, if true, would indicate that Melinda Gates was given some drugs to cure some venereal diseases or what we might now call sdis. But we don't know if that's true. We don't know if this person actually thought it was true. We don't know if Epstein was just doing some sort of psyops to Put that in the voice of someone who would be close to Bill Gates and be in a position to know. So there's a lot of this that I find regrettable in terms of injecting into the public things that just might not be true and are, you know, some somewhat character assassinations, even though the world's third richest man can withstand it. But Joe, you were going to say no.

[D]

I just think it's worth remembering that most people never heard of Jeffrey Epstein until Julie Brown wrote her stories in 2018. And, you know, the 2008 prosecution, that wasn't national news. Nobody knew who he was. And it was obviously he was doing these terrible things, but he, he got, he got the lightest possible sentence. He was, was. It was, it was a prostitution offense. Well, you know, movie stars have prostitution offenses. It doesn't, it doesn't end their lives. It doesn't end their careers. And he could say to people, and he often did say to people, yeah, you know, I had a prostitution offense. I spent my year in prison. It's all over. You know, everything's fine now. I do think I know he did say that a bunch of times. And people got to do due diligence on this guy. Most people did not or would not.

[A]

And there is an ethic and a laudable ethic of forgiveness. So this is not to excuse anything about Jeffrey Epstein, but I worry a lot about mob mentality and red meat and just these pylons that when you kind of pull the bodies off the pile of. There's a little less there or a lot to worry about.

[D]

Mike, you have the worst of both worlds. You have the worst of both worlds. You have people who did really bad things that the Justice Department has no interest in examining, whether they be politicians or whether they be billionaires or whatever. And then you have these other people who did virtually nothing who are being ravaged and having their lives torn apart. So just yuck is all I can say. Somewhat low, some not, not as high brow as Jonah, but yuck is kind.

[A]

Of what yuck works.

[C]

Yuck covers a lot of ground.

[A]

So do you think we have Ro Khanna, we have Thomas Massie. They got together in a bipartisan basis. They spearheaded the effort to get these files public. Is that there's politics involved in that. Should they be criticized for that? There was a lot of foot dragging and there was much less clarity on important elements that I think the public did have a right to know, but I don't think they had a right to know everything. What do we think of Massie and.

[D]

I don't really think they should have divulged it. I'm sorry, Jonah. Jonah and Joe. Joe and Jonah. You know, I would often call people and say this is Joe Nocera. And they say Jonah who?

[C]

So.

[D]

It happens on the one hand, you know, in your heart of hearts that the Justice Department redacted a lot of people because they wanted to protect them. On the other hand, it really, the Congress, these congressmen should be putting pressure on the Justice Department to un redact them and not just go in there and say here are a whole bunch of new names without any context, which we don't have any context.

[C]

I generally agree with that. I think this is a perfect storm kind of thing. It's got, you know, it's one of the few things that is such a gift that keeps on giving for the sort of fever swamp conspiratorial right that they were willing to break with Trump on it. And so, you know, and they're not going to let go of it. Democrats have no political incentive to let go of it because it's just so embarrassing and it's clickbait and catnip for their fans and every new revelation, it's like the way all conspiracy theories work every time you have a, the lack of evidence is further evidence of the conspiracy. So I think this thing is going to have a half life of another decade where people are just going to say, oh, here's another thing that was in there. And I don't like moral panics, I don't like Thomas Massie. You know, it's sort of like I cannot stand the strange new respect liberals have for Marjorie Taylor Greenery. These are, you know, these are opportunist, populist types and this is just such an easy call for them to, to exploit it that it's just going to go on forever.

[A]

And do you each think the Occam's razor on this is that Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile because of his personal predilections. Put that over to the side. He also was a person, a financier who collected other rich people for economic reasons and also surrounded himself 19 year old blondes because a lot of times rich men like that. But the two, the pedophilia and the rich men who were perhaps in Source sold by 19 year old or 23 year old blondes are two different things. Do you think that's what was going on?

[C]

Absolutely not.

[D]

As I said, as I said before, my wife has represented a bunch of survivors. I actually spent a weekend with Virginia Giuffre when she was in really good shape. I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that many of these women were shared with wealthy men. There's no doubt in my mind. I don't think it was blackmail per se, but it was much more like, hey, give me $30 million to do your. To give you some tax advice and then come on over for dinner and we'll have some fun afterwards. That's, to me, more like how it happened, or in the case of saying.

[A]

And some of the women were younger than the age of consent without question.

[D]

And then, hey, let's go to the ranch in New Mexico this weekend. Or let's go to the island this weekend. We'll have a lot of fun. I'll have some girls there, you know, no one will be the wiser. Except now they are the wiser.

[C]

Yeah, I also think, I mean, the sex stuff, not with, you know, to one side. As gross as some of it and evil as some of it is, you spend enough time in Washington, there are a lot of people who cultivate the sense that they're in the know of everything and they have access to all sorts of information. And people assume that you should be in touch with this guy because he has the real dope. And I think he professionalized that at scale in a way that few people can, where, like, everybody thought they were getting. He was selling the perception of access and inside information, and that helped him. And then you throw in the inducements with the sex and the parties and all of that kind of stuff. And I mean, like, Noam Chomsky had to be attracted to something going on in this thing, you know, And I think people like the idea that they are part of the, you know, they're behind the red rope of the global elite kind of thing. And he traded on that kind of Persona pretty expertly.

[A]

And I would be remiss not to just follow up because I didn't know this. Joe, just Virginia Dufrey is the. She is now deceased. She was the one person who attested to the use of underage girls, herself included. With some of Epstein's high profile clients, like former Prince Andrew, there were some inconsistencies. I know that Michael Tracy has spent a lot of time trying to poke holes in her story, and there is an element of mental illness Michael Tracy and others will always cite. But just give me your impressions of her when you knew her and her believability, reliability, and if you have to disclose if she was a paying client or something like that.

[D]

No, no, no, she wasn't paying client. My wife was being paid by David Boies who was representing a lot of these women when I knew her. First of all, let's just say this, everything that's happened with the Epstein files and with Epstein and with Ghislaine Maxwell is because of Virginia Giuffre. She sued. She, first of all, she ratted out Prince Andrew. That caused a lawsuit that obviously still reverberates in England. But basically, you know, she wound up in litigation with Ghislaine. And much of the documentation that first came out came out because of that lawsuit and that litigation. And when I knew her, she was really together. She did not have mental illness, but if you read her autobiography, she had a life of, of being abused. She had a life of being abused sexually from the time she was like 6 or 7 years old with various people. And what basically happened is she went back to Australia. According to her, she wound up, her husband wound up being abusive. She kind of fell apart. And then once her kids were taken away from her by her ex husband, she couldn't, she couldn't deal with, she just couldn't deal with it anymore. And she did have mental problems at the end, there's no question about that. But she did not have a life of mental illness. It's something that resulted, was the result of what she had been through in her life.

[A]

All right, we're gonna take a break now. We'll come back after the break and we're going to talk a little bit about a big article in the Atlantic asking are the Democrats up to the task? And then we'll talk about the Washington Post because Ink Stain Wretches and Sons of Ink Stain Wretches are here with me today. We'll back in a minute with more of Not Even Mad.

[B]

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[A]

We're back with Not Even Mad, joined by Joe Nocera and Jonah Goldberg. Two different first names that sound alike in the People are very confused. The comments are coming in. Wait, do they have the same first name? No. And there is no last name. Ngo Goldberg. There is no Joe Nugget Goldberg. That said there is an article in the Atlantic and I know it's going to become one of these articles that everyone points to and ask the question that the headline is implying. The Democrats aren't built for this. It's by Mark Leibovich subhead. They say they want to save democracy first they'll need to get out of their own way. That is in keeping with a lot of our conception of the Democrats. Now Joe, I'm not sure if you're a political affiliation but you're kind of the free presses in House avowed liberal. What's your assessment of the actual creepiness of creeping autocracy and that question are the Democrats up to it?

[D]

It's hard if you're a lib. I'm not a progressive and I don't believe that the Democrats when they get back into power should spend every waking moment trying to get revenge on the Republicans and Trump. I think that, you know, we just don't need to descend any further. I think that to me the problem for the Democrats is they don't know how to throw overboard the progressives so that moderates can run and win. But you know, the Republicans have a bit of the same problem because these MAGA types keep winning in primaries also. So I don't even. What does it even mean that the Democrats up to the task. Democrats have to win elections. That's what they have to do. That's all they can do. They don't have any. They don't have the House, they don't have the Senate, they don't have. They got nothing. They got nothing. And so all they can do is tear their hair out, yell and scream and run for election. And thankfully or not, Trump has done so many awful things. I'm thinking particularly of Minneapolis. I mean I do think it's a creeping autocracy. I think he doesn't believe in the Constitution, he doesn't believe in democracy, he doesn't believe in Congress. He just believes in himself as the king. And when he does, you know, crazy things like I want to take take over Greenland and I want 2500 mass troopers to drag Americans out of their homes and put them in detention, you know, it's almost like the Democrats job is being done for them that. But again I'm a libs. I know a lot of people on the right think what he's doing is great.

[A]

So Jonah, the article, part of what Part of what Libovich does is he follows around a bunch of candidates and they're not all Moderates. In fact, some of the more colorful ones are guys like Graham Platner. And there's an exchange where Leibovich asked him, oh, you said lgbtq, what about the ia? And Platner doesn't really. I think he gets the A wrong. He said it was androgynous and it wasn't asexual. So the implication there, and Libovich says it would be great if the Democrats had a hope who didn't have a Nazi tattoo. But you play the hand, you're doubtful. But the implication with this whole thing is embodied in a quote by Sarah Longwell. Republicans are over here being straight up mercenaries. Democrats give everybody, everybody Fridays off and talk about work, life, balance. She apologized for yelling into the phone. Democrats, quote, are not built for when the fascists come. Two questions. Are they? And is that the criteria?

[C]

Look, I am sort of obsessive about this basic point about why we can't have nice things and why our politics are so broken, is that I think it was a huge mistake to switch to primaries and to decide on candidates in 1972. That decision, combined with some bad campaign finance decisions, have made the parties incredibly weak. Weak parties create strong partisanship. And Trump's superpower is that he can intervene in a primary and keep a candidate from getting the nomination in an otherwise red district or state. Right? And that's the threat to incumbency in election. Now is the primary, not the general election. When we were kids, candidates would run, you know, Republicans would run a little bit to the right in the primary, get enough of the base vote, and then run to the center once they got the nomination. Democrats would run a little bit to the left, then run to the center once they got the nomination, because that's where the test point for getting elected was. And so our politics were geared towards the median voter, the swing voter, the independent voter, whatever. Now, because of the structural design and the institutional understanding of how parties work, these parties don't even think about being majority parties. They don't even think about trying to be a 60% majority party, which is the norm for most of American history, is that you try to, you know, you give your base what you can. But base used to be defined as the people who are going to vote for you no matter what. Now it's the people who decide the policy and the direction of the parties. And so you have this situation where on the right, the sort of MAGA types have taken over the infrastructure of the primary system. They own the messaging of Fox News and all of these kinds of places. And on the left, they've basically been taken over by campus progressives. And it's this very effete, do your land acknowledgement kind of garbage that turns off voters. I mean, the greatest example of this was that Latinx thing where there was all these progressive polling firms spent years screaming at them, saying, you don't understand. Every time a politician uses Latinx, you repel four Hispanics for every one you might attract. Right? And it's like the salesman building a wall not to step on border patrol.

[A]

Could repel as many Hispanics, we wouldn't have a problem.

[C]

It's not to step on Joe's business beat, but it's like the salesman who says, sure, we're losing money on every sale, but we'll make up for it in volume, right? The way the Democrats talked repelled swing voters. And the culmination of that was Kamala Harris saying that she stood by her answer on this ACLU questionnaire saying that she was in favor of government funded sex change operations for illegal immigrants and federal prisoners, which is just madness. And so I think the problem with the Democratic Party today is that they don't have enough Rahm Emanuels. They don't have enough James Carpenter. Like those guys, they had progressive values and all that kind of stuff. But you know what they really like doing? Winning elections. And one of the things Donald Trump has proven is that once you win, all of those ideological interest groups will bend the knee, right? They will defer to power. So many of the right wing groups that told me everything was about virtue and character and limited government, free markets, Trump gets in and they all sort of either went quiet or they changed what they believed. The Democrats need to figure out a way to win over swing voters, median voters in places, and then if they want to stay in power rather than get kicked out, which is what happens is each party gets elected and they're convinced that if they don't get elected, the world will end. And so then once they get in, they're so scared of losing power, they swing for the fences, they turn off the marginal, the median voters that they attracted to win in the first place get thrown out, and then the other party comes in and does the exact same friggin thing. So, like, the sociology of the Democrats is much different than the sociology of the Republicans, but the structural dynamics are the same, right?

[A]

So the thesis of the article is that if Democrats were really serious, we would see it show up in a jettisoning and a shooing of the indulgences of talking about land acknowledgments or the crazy Alphabet of progressive speech when it comes to sexual identities. And we're not seeing that. So that leads some within the party who know how important it is to beat Donald Trump to despair. But I also think it's excellent service journalism for the average Atlantic reader. Fret, fret, porn. Thinking that the Democrats aren't up to the task when in fact, like you say, Joe, there is an election. Two people will be running. Will one of the people. Will the Democrat just have answered so many surveys that get him or her in trouble? I don't know. I think when it comes time to have an election, there'll be all this stuff in the background or to the side, all this nonsense that you and me and Jonah and most of the Democrats like Sarah Longwell, not a Democrat, but someone who wants the Republicans to win. Most of these people, Gavin Newsom, most of the Fretters don't like. But it won't be that important. Or do you think it could still overwhelm, if not in 26 and 28, the chances of the Democrats to show they're taking this seriously?

[D]

I think 26 would be all right just because you're going to have more moderates than progressives running in various districts. 28. I worry about a little more because I can sort of see Mamdani becoming a Republican poster child nationally as they try to show that his brand of socialism is what the Democrats want. I don't have. Yeah, I don't really. It's. It's 28, man. We're in. We're. What year are we in? We're in 26. I don't think that far ahead.

[A]

That's good. That's probably smart.

[D]

That's why I'm not Lebo. That's why I'm not leaving.

[A]

That's what we want out of our Pulitzer Prize finalists. Business columnist. I will say this, that there, you know, as a critique. I'll also say that there seems to be a conflation of not being serious or being indulgent with linguistic or even maybe ideological frippery. Right. A conflation of that and not doing what it takes to oppose Republican candidates or put forward the best message to voters. And so I do generally think this was a fun piece to read if you want to give yourself something to worry about. But I'm not too worried that that's going to be the overwhelming dynamic that plays. Plays out. Let's go to the Washington Post or as many readers have said, in the last few years, let's not. 300 journalists were axed from the Washington Post after credible reports surfaced years ago that each year Jeff Bezos was setting $100 million on fire in service of running that newspaper. Couple of questions. Question one, why does Jeff Bezos still own the Post? What do you think, Jonah?

[C]

I'm actually willing to give him some benefit of the doubt because I think they could have gotten together some buyers. There's been talk about various people who were willing to try and buy it. I actually think he doesn't want to admit failure. The problem is that he needs a new audience because the existing audience was insufficient to make it a live proposition. And that takes time. The Washington Post, like Hemingway's thing about bankruptcy, its decline was gradual and then suddenly. And I think that the easier thing for him to do would be to say, ah, I gave it a shot and go sell it to Bloomberg or Consortium11 by Kara Swisher or something like that. But I think there has to be a reason why he's holding onto it and he's trying to do something. Whether it'll work remains to be seen.

[A]

Yeah, well, if part of the reasons, part of his motivation is not to get crosswise with the Trump administration, which is my theory that the guy didn't want to lose money but would take the losses of 100 million doll, he has over $100 billion. But when you're doing that and you're also imperiling all the rest of your business because the administration is very eager to weigh in and punish you, then it becomes a different calculation. So the whole long winded way of saying, I don't think selling to Kara Swisher will not or will avoid getting cross wise with the Trump administration.

[C]

I just want to. I'm not saying he doesn't want to get in good with Donald Trump. I think that was obviously part of his calculation. But if that was all he was concerned about, he would not have taken the editorial stance with the redesign, with the revamp of the editorial section. Because their commitment to free trade and saying tariffs are stupid is not the position you would take if it was all about simply currying favor.

[D]

Guys, there's one word that explains all of this. Wordle.

[C]

Wordle.

[D]

How long ago was it one five letter word pre Trump? Before Trump won, the New York Times and the Washington Post both made decisions about their future. One newspaper decided to be an international newspaper that was everything that would provide everything for everybody, including writing about sex, including a hugely successful cooking app, games like wordle and became a demonstrably liberal newspaper, whether not just on the editorial page, but on the front page. And so if you were a liberal, not only just in America, but in Europe and in much of the world, you wanted to have the New York Times, and that's why it has 12.2 million subscribers today. The Washington Post made the opposite decision and made a decision to become a regional newspaper. Regional newspapers all across the country, whether it's the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago sunti, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, they're all gotten their asses kicked because readers don't really read regional newspapers anymore. They don't care about them anymore. And it was a terrible miscalculation. It took a while to catch up because during Trump won, democracy dies in the dark, blah, blah, blah. That helped. But the minute Trump won was over, they were dead. They were just dead. They had nothing to offer. And so Bezos. My view is that Bezos came in, bought the newspaper, thinking that he, the great Internet genius, could figure out some innovative ways to change the tenant, not so much to make the paper viable online in ways other people had not yet thought about. And then he gets in there and he finds out, oh, he really doesn't have any new ideas. And none of the people around him, most of whom are stupid, like Will Lewis, don't have any ideas either. And so it's just been this decline. I think he just decided enough is enough. You know, screw the sports section, screw the book review. I'm tired. Oh, that's the other thing I have to say. I have very little patience for the people who say, oh, he should just keep throwing $100 million at every year because it means nothing to him. It does mean nothing to him, physically, psychologically, it means a lot to him. Billionaires are billionaires because they don't like to lose $100 million a year. That's why they're billionaires. And so the idea that he was going to do this forever was nuts. Was just completely nuts.

[A]

Right? And to frame that somewhat more even affirmatively to Bezos, it's not just because he's tight pennied. When you have a certain mindset, like let's say you're an ultra marathoner and you are a raw diet freak, you can't say to yourself, except every other Tuesday, I'm going to eat the loaded nachos, it doesn't work like that. So I think for someone, I think for someone like Bezos, having this one cost loser goes against who he is. And he might even Say, you know, it threatens to degrade my very regimented, disciplined mindset of how I got here and how to how I run business. I want to ask you, Jonah, and you, Joe, you both work at publications that are successful, financially successful, and have tacked against the trend of, let's say, wokeism, right, to different degrees. Do you think that that's scalable for a daily newspaper or do you run successful and growing niche publications that you can't really apply that to a centrist, a centrist aspiration like Bezos has articulated.

[C]

I think, look, I think you can. I think it takes time to build that kind of audience. I think that the sociology I was talking about, what's screwing up the Democratic Party, is one of the things that screwed up the Washington Post. The New York Times has a similar sociology as Joe pointed out. But the difference is you talk about wordle. I think wordle is great. Smarter than the New York Times to pick it up. The cooking app is great, all that kind of stuff. What drives me crazy about the way people talk about the Washington Post is they make it sound like those are real deviations from what newspapers are supposed to be, when in fact newspapers, you know, again, when I was a kid, some people got the newspaper for the sports session, some just got it for the classifieds, some got it, you know, my dad sold comic strips. He's the guy who discovered, you know, Dilbert and worked with Charles Schultz and Peanuts and did. Had Garfield for a long time. Some people got it for the funniest, other people got it for international news, all that kind of stuff. The newspapers were about satisfying different consumer needs. What got the Washington Post in trouble is they got high on their own Woodward and Bernstein self conception and thought all of those other things that newspapers are supposed to do were kind of beneath them and they could pull it off for a while because the Washington Post was a monopoly.

[D]

That's right.

[C]

In its region.

[D]

That's right.

[C]

And monopolies. Monopolies breed calcification. And. And this was a problem for a lot of newspapers. A lot of new people forget the thing that started to spell the doom of. You know, when my dad was in the newspaper business, he talked about what the things that really destroyed the syndication business was the decline of the two newspaper town because it used to have competitive pressure so people would pay more, compete over buying features. What happened was after all those second newspapers in most markets died, the remaining newspaper became a monopoly and started throwing off huge cash dividends that shareholders did not want reinvested. Even after classifieds were stolen from them by Craigslist. Right. Even after you no longer needed the stock prices, which people used to look up in newspapers, even after you didn't need it for the movie times. And they didn't adapt and change because for a while there were enough newspaper subscribers to sustain these regional monopolies. The New York Times, because it competes on an international level, figured out that it still needed to compete. The Washington Post didn't. And then it got kind of, kind of flat footed for the reasons Joe is talking about, because it could monetize the democracy dies in darkness resistance stuff for a while and then that kind of burnt out and they had nothing else in their portfolio to rely on.

[D]

To answer your question, Mike, you know, the free press from day one said, you know, we're going to position ourselves as, you know, anti woke, anti crazy.

[A]

Right?

[D]

And there's a lot of people in the center who want that. But every story we wrote, we only were running in the beginning two or three stories. Now we're running eight or nine. And we have an identity. The identity is set. If the Washington Post were to say to themselves, well, we want that audience, how did they position themselves? How do they go about doing it? They still have to run straight news. It's hard to create that kind of identity when you have an institution that is 100 plus years old.

[C]

You're monetizing existing customers, right? I mean, sort of like one of the things that Fox is doing is their viewership are going to be the last people to cut cords. And so they're monetizing the crap out of a lot of these old people. And they're not replacing them. And that's why they look so much healthier than everybody else. But cable news is going away.

[A]

Well, if the demise of once great newspapers weren't enough to get your goat, we're going to talk about a couple more. These are the goat grinders. The things that, you know, do get your goat or grind your gears. Little annoyances. Maybe not so little. Jonah, would you like to start us off with. You're in the Goat Grinder hall of Fame. Because when you revealed to me the age of Archie Bunker or Carroll o'.

[C]

Connor, I've never forgot that. Yeah, because it stings so hard.

[A]

It does.

[C]

I got a weird 23 years old.

[A]

When he played Archie Bunker. No, sorry.

[C]

I got a weird one. So I'm weirdly, I'm one of the last people who's really interested in TV commercials. And I watch like the commercials on Morning Joe on Special Report. Bear on cnn where I'm a contributor. Full disclosure. And so mostly pharmaceuticals, a lot of pharmaceuticals.

[A]

People who are allergic to Plantix shouldn't take Plantx is.

[C]

Well, the thing is it's not just, it's pharmaceuticals. Like if you watch the Office on Comedy Central, they have a lot of pharmaceutical ads too, but they're all for like AIDS prevention pills. And if you watch it for on Morning Joe, it's all about type 2 diabetes and all sorts of old age things. And so I have two points. One is a general point. I don't think anyone in the rest of the country can appreciate it. It's a very inside the beltway one. I don't think people understand how many ads are geared at solely at the fact that the president of the United States obsessively watches cable news. And it's all of this dear Mr. President or let's celebrate the president for being so courageous. And it's a really weird, creepy way to do public policy. But then there's these other ads that are pro Trump that I think are fascinating. And my real goat grind here is that nobody else is sort of fascinated by the amount of money that the government or Trump aligned super PACs are spending on Riefenstahl esque weird propaganda stuff. And the weirdest one, the one I'm most fascinated with, there's a Fannie Mae ad put out by Fannie Mae about what a heroic champion of affordability Donald Trump is. And it sounds really weird when you listen to it because first of all it sounds like a campaign ad, but then it's narrated in parts by Donald Trump. And you're like, what? And then you look closely in the small tiny print, it says voice generated with permission by AI Because Trump sounds so much more lucid and erudite in the ad than he could ever do in a read. And I just find the thing fascinating. And whenever I talk to people about it, about it's weird that the government is spending money on this sort of strong, you know, dear leader stuff. And it's weird that it's being done by AI and everyone says, why are you even paying attention to the ads? So that's my weird thing.

[A]

I had a similar thing where people couldn't believe that one third of all the ads on the serious Fox network was Trump trying to sell you a watch before Christmas. That was actually Trump. He was very distracted in his read. So maybe that's why they got the AI he was doing a little bit of a weave back then. But it is crazy. I totally Agree with you. All right, I'll give you my Go Grinder. It's TV based too, so there needs to be some ground between totally over the top love, Something below beloved when it comes to shows that people like. I recently, I don't know, I stopped watching Severance. Then I got back into it. It was sort of an obligation thing. And to catch up, I. I tried to read some recaps and. Oh, my God, you're reading essentially North Korean propaganda material. This shows the brilliance of every past episode of Severance. I mean, we get it. It takes place in winter. It's a muted scheme. There might be something going on with bodies in a computer. I have no idea. I don't want to even admit this that much. I like severe. Is it okay to like Severance? It is not. You have to love it. Which brings me to the Pit. Can someone say it's going to be me? But it's got maybe a little preachy.

[D]

A little.

[A]

Just saying.

[D]

Just a little.

[A]

That every fourth patient who comes into the Pit has to inspire an explication about the deficiencies of the American medical system. Or this observation that I hate to make. I hate to be this guy, but you know, a lot of assholes come into the hospital, right? Someone who punches a nurse or is just mean, it doesn't know it. They're all white. There is only ever white assholes on the Pit. There is a lot of abusers. Only white guys. So I'm just saying this. This could change. We're in episode five or six of this season. It was true a couple of years ago that you could never write a non white villain. And that seems to have been eschewed. But I have noticed, and I really, I do. I hate to be this guy, but the Pit has gotten love. Most of it, love. The character is very exciting, got a little preachy and a little predictable about who the bad guys are. Fine, Joe, what do you got? What's your Go Grinder?

[D]

Oh, my goodness. Yikes. You guys. You guys. By the way, if you. If you listen. If you listen to MSNBC Ms. Now on SiriusXM, all you get is ads for California psychics, Right? No, I know, I know. So my gripe and my son tells me I'm completely wrong about this. But I'll tell you what it is. I'm sitting right now at a tennis academy. He's about to go on the court for his three hours or four hours of practice. And I said to him, you know what I really hate? I hate it when all these professionals they're about to serve, and they want four balls in their hand. They have to have four balls in their hand. And then they have to. Then they nonchalantly, and I think somewhat obnoxiously kick two of the balls back to the ball boys without looking at them. So they have to do all this extra work, the poor, poor boys. And then they take two balls. You're only gonna hit with two balls. You put one in your pocket, you put one in the air, and you hit it. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And then my son said. I said. I said, to me, this is the most stupid ritual. All you're doing is making the ball boys work twice as hard, and you look like an asshole. And my son said, dad, you don't know what you're talking about. The reason they do it is because the first ball that they're going to serve, they want it to have as least fluff and least fuzz as possible so it can go as fast as possible. And then the second ball they want for the second serve, if they have to have a second serve, is they want it to be as fluffy as possible so that the. So that the kick serve will rot. Will kick really high. So it turns out my goat grind is a complete failure.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So not so much a goat grind as a call to fuzz uniformity in the world of tennis balls. Well, I want to thank each of you. Joe Nocera of the Free Press, thank you so much.

[D]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

And Jonah Goldberg of the Dispatch. Thank you, sir.

[C]

Thank you. Great to be here.

[A]

And until next time, we're not saying we're right, right? We're not saying you're right. We are saying we're not even mad. And that's it for today's show. Cory War produces the Gist. Jeff Craig does video stuff somewhere out there. Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist list. That Sadie interview we ran today, there's video of it, there's the written form. I mean, we basically have everything except the dance interpret. Wait, I'm told. Substack Mike pesca.substack.com the dance interpretation is up there as well. Ben Astaire is now doing our booking, and Michelle Pesca oversees it all benevolently with only fair questions. Tough, pointed, but fair questions. And yes, thanks to that question, I will, in fact, apologize. Crew. And thanks for listening.