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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
Hi, it's Mike with a major announcement. It is not about the gist. It is about something called the Gist List. So let me tell you, every day I construct the show by reading and listening and imbibing a tremendous amount of information. A lot of it doesn't make it onto the show, of course. So what do we do with that? What do we do with the effluvia, the jetsam, the sods, but also the odds. Enter the Gist list. Every day on Substack, I will be compiling the most interesting, important, maybe unfairly ignored stories that I look at and say, there's something there. You know, we must nurture that which is interesting in this world. Some of these stories do end up as segments. They all start off as ideas. We need ideas. The Gist list is designed to interest you definitely. Not to waste your time to make you smarter. To see where I'm heading every day on the gist, so head over to Mike pesca.substack.com today and every day to sign up for the Gist list. It's Thursday, April 24, 202025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. There is a Chinese saying that says one generation plants the tree, the other sits in the shade. Now, Americans are not the wait for shade people. We're not patient. We're also not the precision on time people. Those are the Germans. We're not the never be swayed by setback or emotion. That's England. We're not the fear of politeness more than value stardom. Those are the Canadians. We're not the consider the collective people. Those are the Scandinavians. We are the innovation, creativity and freedom with all its costs and benefit people. Now, I mentioned this because China and the United States are in a trade war. Although Donald Trump says they're negotiating. Although President Xi says we are not negotiating. Headline in the Hill, China says no. Tariff negotiations underway, contradicting Trump. I'll give you another headline and this was mentioned on the Gist list today. Here comes the plug. Go to Mike Pasca that substack.com for this and other interesting stories and insights. Always with the insights. If you'd like your insights spoken at you, I'm about to give them. Based on the story, Xi is ratcheting up China's pain threshold for a long fight with Trump. A quote in there from a Chinese expert. Chinese society has an incredibly high capacity for pain. I do not think United States. We're not the shade people, the precision people, the stiff upper lip people, the collective people. We're not really the pain people, not the long term enduring pain people. We could meet out pain and we're certainly or have been in our history good at wars. We just don't like suffering. Yishan Wong, the former CEO of Reddit, had a big thread on Twitter. X says every kid in China grows up knowing that they're part of a 5,000 year old civilization. Civilization is part of the fate of your people, almost the natural default state of things. Even when it's fallen, it always comes back because that's how your people do things. This, by the way, seems to be a bit of a contradiction to America, where for most of my lifetime one or other of the political parties, or at least strong factions thereof, have been arguing we're on the precipice of disaster. Think about the idea the next generation might not be as rich or wealthy as the last. That is just taken as a given and the state of things in China. Quite often when you have a 5,000 year timeframe to draw your conclusions from, that happens a lot. Wong goes on, the Chinese people are not submissive fools being kept down by authoritarian dictators like the west thinks. There are people who know that that's how it always goes and what it takes and what the ultimate rewards are for their children. And that's why the country is going the way it is. They'll do whatever it takes for days, for years, or as the old Chinese saying goes, for centuries. So I ask you, who is favored in a showdown, given that these are the rules of the game? One culture has persevered through thousands of years of pain, suffering, invasion, dynasties and famine. The other culture is addicted to the aforementioned society's TikTok app, which isn't even allowed in the first society. So as I say, such insights. Rosier insights. Though I do have a little bit of an Anne Frank riff Today on Mike pesca.substack.com that's called the Gist list. Now I also want to announce not on Mike Pesca that substack.com just mikepaska.com go there and you will find that the Gist is hiring. The position is called a system producer. There is no cutting of tape, you'll be exposed to audio. But really what I need is an organizational mastermind. Someone to book guests, someone to think about and strategize our marketing, someone to work with everyone who works with the show, the cbso, our new social media team, Kathleen, who's spearheading the Just List initiative and this person will be young in spirit, perhaps experienced in organization. This person might be out there among my listeners, among someone that my listeners know. Go to mike pesca.com and there'll be a link to what we want out of the new assistant producer position. Mike pesca.com on the show today. I love this guy's writing. I love the audio that he does with his substack. His name is Jeff Maurer. He's been on before. He's a political comedy writer. He's a veteran of the John Oliver show, which we talk a lot about in the second half of this interview, which will be a full show interview and we'll go far afield. Jeff's also a former employee of the epa, a political speechwriter. He's got it all. We get along. I love listening to him. And thankfully in this interaction, I get to do some of the talking to Jeff maurer. Up next, PayPal lets you pay all your pals like your graduation gifters.
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Jeff Maurer
Who's paying for the mattress topper? You mean the beanbag chair? Aren't we getting a mini fridge? Can we create a pool on PayPal?
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Lisa Camp
It lets us collect the money before we buy.
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Mike Pesca
Oh yes, that's smart.
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Jeff Maurer
Glad we can agree on something easily. Pool split and Send money with PayPal.
- [06:27]
Mike Pesca
Get started. In the PayPal app, a PayPal account is required to send and receive money. A balance account is required to create a pool. What does it mean to live the good life? What are the habits and practices that help facilitate human flourishing? On the Signal award winning podcast no Small Endeavor host Lisa Camp examines these big questions and brings you conversations with those who are taking the questions seriously. Produced by Great Feeling Studios and prx, no Small Endeavor features three thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors, artists and philosophers like Pushkin Industries co founder Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks about what it means to find true happiness and flourish in our day to day life. If you're looking for somewhere to start, I suggest their recent episode with Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedantum about why we're not as autonomous as we think we are and the profound implications for the ways we act, think and live. It's a very compelling listen, so go ahead, follow no Small Endeavor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you are listening now. Jeff Maurer is many things. He's a former EPA speechwriter, is a former writer for such shows as the John Oliver show, which probably has a real name like Late Night Tonight or something.
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Jeff Maurer
It does, but I forget what it is. Yeah, John Oliver it doesn't matter.
- [07:48]
Mike Pesca
It's just the John Oliver Show. That's what everyone calls it. He also has a substack that I never miss. He Might be Wrong. I mean, it's called I Might be Wrong, but I don't want to cop to that. I Might be Wrong, the name of a substack. And from that, there is a podcast also called I Might be Wrong. And we're going to talk to him about all this. He's one of these people I think I can throw anything at. We were just talking about the hand cranks on cars, and he had a take. He had a good day. He relied on his experience, both at the comedy writing trenches in the epa. Jeff, welcome back to the Gist.
- [08:21]
Jeff Maurer
Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, Comedy writing and early automobiles, those are really my two areas of expertise. So thanks for tossing me a softball there, Mike.
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Mike Pesca
Both of. And in both cases, the Victrola is playing in the background as you contemplate them. I know that. That a lot of people write to, like, EDM music, but you just put on old Victrola music. And the big bands, or were they even big bands in the 1920s?
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Jeff Maurer
They were getting big. Yeah. What Mike's referring to is, yes, I saw they were just getting big. I start my podcast with copyright expired music, which started with me just being a cheap bastard. You know, I didn't want to buy music for my podcast. I was the copyright expired stuff, which became kind of fun because it's all stuff that's 100 years old. And to answer your question, yeah, it was like getting big because that was like the first era where you could record a record one time and then sell it nationally and play it on the radio nationally and get national exposure. And it really was in the 1920s that people were figuring out, oh, my God, so I don't have to gig around the country and play, you know, Pumpkin Hump, Arkansas and, you know, East Sister Fist, Missouri. I can just record it one time in New York and send it out to the whole country. Can I say East Sister Fist?
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Mike Pesca
You can. And we could also talk about the East Sister Fist Fighting Sisters.
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Jeff Maurer
I don't mean to. I don't.
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Mike Pesca
Volleyball team.
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Jeff Maurer
I don't want to alienate your viewers in East Sister Fist. It's a lovely town, but I'm just saying.
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Mike Pesca
Well, a lot of them are actually in Sister Fist Gardens, which is technically its own zip code.
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Jeff Maurer
Oh, that's. That's. I mean, that's like upscale. That's like upscale. But the point is, they didn't have to gig around the country. They could record once and make money that way. So, yeah, a couple artists are figuring that out in the 20s and getting rich that way. So it is kind of a revolution in music.
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Mike Pesca
Were there recording acts that were huge that we've totally forgotten in this day?
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Jeff Maurer
Paul Whiteman's orchestra recorded every song that existed in 1925, as far as I can tell. It is very funny that I've learned. I mean, I've completely accidentally learned quite a bit about this era. Paul Whiteman, which is hilarious because his name is white man and he is a white man recording jazz, which back then obviously was. It's like 80% black back then. But there. There is this one guy who, for what it's worth, history remembers him like kind of. He was like a legit guy. He wasn't the top guy, but he was like. He was not like, oh, I'll cash in on this. He was like a legit jazz fan and jazz musician. Musician. He was white. That probably helped and he still is.
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Mike Pesca
Backing band. I mean, they billed it as Paul Whiteman and the Acceptable Respectable. Just tell you where they were coming from.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah, Paul Whiteman in the safe for your daughter Orchestra. I think that was implied. That wasn't the name of the band, but it could have been. And yeah, and he was huge. And as he just had a recording contract and he's just in the studio cranking them out one after another. It's not only white guys playing jazz, though. Fletcher Henderson Orchestra is another one that's getting big. Louis Armstrong was in that for a time. Louis Armstrong also played with this band called the Creole Kings. And there are a lot of these bands out there. And yes, some of them, the ones with recording contracts especially, are getting huge in the 1920s.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. Because it's so funny to me that there were. Every era has household name recording artists, pop stars, bestselling authors, who are so much bigger than the people who last. Louis Armstrong was big and getting bigger, but he wasn't as big as. What's he with the Creole Orchestra or Fletcher Henderson? It wasn't a big.
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Jeff Maurer
Well, he's there sort of the bands, as they get bigger, they're poaching the guys. So, yeah, he was with the Creole Kings and then briefly with Fletcher Henderson.
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Mike Pesca
Yes. Like college football today. There was a transfer portal. That's exactly what it is, guys. You know, there was a saxophonist here and a clarinetist here at the Licorice Stick, as I call it. Okay, so this is. This is all fascinating as the show is, when you selected the music, when you said, I'm going to go pre copyright or music that's copyright has expired, was it a bit. Or did you really, I mean, it is funny to say this is how cheap I am. Or did you really think that there was some exposure if you played non cleared music?
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Jeff Maurer
It was a bit. Well, there is exposure if you play non cleared music. I mean, because I've worked on get.
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Mike Pesca
To a certain point for that to happen. I mean, I was just listening to the one where you ripped off the Saturday Night Live theme song. Hope we don't get sued.
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Jeff Maurer
Well, yeah. Okay, first of all, I have reached a certain point on the podcast and I. The Saturday Live thing I might get away with is because I was doing the Voice, I was doing the Don Pardo, it's Saturday Night Live, that's me. So I've maybe got a case. You transformed it in the world. Exactly. Now it's mine. So I think that. And also I worked for NBC. So maybe their lawyers will just be cool. But in the early days, it's also.
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Mike Pesca
Very recognizing copyright law. Maybe the lawyers will just be cool if I go to Formative act direct parody. And maybe the lawyers be cool if I go to.
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Jeff Maurer
If I go to my lawyer with that argument. Dude, I thought they would just be cool. They're going to go, I'm not going to represent you. You are too dumb for me to represent. It started as a bit and you know, you say like, they're not going to get on you. I had an episode of my podcast pulled in Japan because I learned at first it was 90 year old songs because I'm like, that's the copyright law in the US is 90 years. I learned it's 100 years in Japan. So I got Japan canceled because I played. I forget, you know, I played Horsey, keep your tail up or something like that. And Columbia Records or whoever it was was like, we're not going to let that sweet horsey keep your tail up revenue pass us by. We're going to play hardball on this. You're yanked in Japan. So after that I went to 100 years so that I can be on the air globally and keep my gigantic Japanese audience. Because there's nothing Japanese people love more than somebody speaking in English about American politics. Politics.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. Well, I guess when you're dealing with a kingdom that goes back thousands of years, yeah, they're going to extend copyright another decade versus ours.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah. They have a longer perspective on, on what constitutes a long time ago. Right.
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Mike Pesca
Fascinatingly, with the 1920s. You also read the news from the 1920s and fascism comes up a lot. And this is the first real area I wanted to get into.
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Jeff Maurer
Mm.
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Mike Pesca
You're learning a lot about. You could read in history books. What was going on with the rise of fascism. What was going on with Neville Chamberlain's half brother to facilitate the rise of fascism. That came up recently.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah.
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Mike Pesca
But I think it's fascinating to learn what the contemporary not knowing the future, not having that glimpse into the future and knowing how it all soured, having that being ensconced in that mindset. So what have you learned about what they were thinking about fascism at the time, before fascism, back when fascism was just something that parties would name themselves and not feel that there was any pejorative associated with it. Yeah.
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Jeff Maurer
And if you said to somebody you're a fascist, they might say, that's correct. I'm Dave the fascist. Good to meet you. Yeah. They wouldn't deny it back then. It's interesting. I have learned that the New York Times is my starting point. That's what I'm doing. I'm reading these old issues of the New York Times, which you can get@timesmachine.com. i learned that they were 100% aware of the threat that the German far right specifically posed. It is interesting. There are a lot of headlines about Mussolini and about Hitler. Though the era that I'm reading, it's 1925. Hitler's in jail at the moment in 1925 because of the Beer hall push in 1923. So whereas a year and more ago you were getting headlines about Hitler specifically. Specifically now you're kind of getting headlines about the German right. Because they kind of consider Hitler to be off the board. He's in jail. What we in the future know is that Hitler will get out of jail in 19, later in 1925, pardoned by the right wing German government. But at the moment the New York Times is like, okay, Hitler is off the board, but the German right is still a problem. So it is interesting that they are very aware that there's some weird stuff going on, not just in Germany, in Europe generally. French politics are in chaos at this moment. In the 1920s, Mussolini has basically taken power. There's still a king in Italy who says, I still matter or whatever the Italian for that is. And Mussolini's saying, ah, fanable. Hey, I still. Can I get really offensive with that accent? Hey, I still a matter over here. And I can only do a Mario Brother when I go for Italian it's me, the king.
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Mike Pesca
The king.
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Jeff Maurer
Hey, imagine I said luigi Mussolini. Not Luigi says, no, you don't. He has basically taken power and that's all in the paper. The New York Times is covering this and saying this seems bad as they are also covering goings on with various far left radical groups, groups supported by the Soviets. Though it's interesting, the stuff that's coming out of the New York Times Moscow bureau is going through Walter Durante, who we now know.
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Mike Pesca
Pulitzer Prize winner. The most shameful Pulitzer Prize in history. That still stands.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah, Pulitzer Prize for denying the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s. And is that what he. Wait, is that what he. I don't want to be wrong. Did he win the Pulitzer Prize?
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Mike Pesca
He did deny the famine. I'm not sure exactly. Right, we can look that up.
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Jeff Maurer
He denied the famine and won the Pulitzer Prize. I don't know if he won the Pulitzer Prize for denying the famine. But yes, history now knows that he was basically a communist sympathizer and was putting his spin on every story that came out of that Moscow bureau. And we've already had some pretty ripe ones coming from him. In the papers I'm reading was the tone.
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Mike Pesca
It's written in hundred year old style and there's no op ed page. So I'm just trying to contrast or get your sense of. If the tone was overwrought, underwrought, very straightforward. Even though we know that there, there is a lot of downside to this rise of fascism. Do you think a reader then might, even if they were against fascism, might roll their eyes and say, enough of this New York Times, we get it.
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Jeff Maurer
Good question. They might. The New York Times definitely has its perspective on various issues. For example, every time they write about Prohibition, this is a big city paper, a lot of Catholics running for the paper. I learned that the Catholic Protestant split, I mean, we know that that was gigantic back then. It is really difficult for us to remember just what a big split in American society that was. And it's also hard for us to remember. I mean, I didn't even realize that the Prohibition issue was kind of a Catholic Protestant issue. If you were Protestant, you were likely to be for prohibition. If you are Catholic, you are likely to be against prohibition. And the New York Times does not like Prohibition. Every time it comes up, you're like, Jesus Christ, we're sending people to jail for this. We're devoting police resources to this. That perspective is plain as day in my opinion. And I would say also their wariness of the German Right. The Italian right is plain as day. Did that grade on some people. Quite possibly. I mean, it would probably be a fair hit on the New York Times back then, given what I just said about Walter Durante and what we know he was up to, that someone might say, look, you're given all these column inches to the German right and the Italian right, and then I don't hear anything about, you know, anything similar or on the similar scale about the French left or the English left, even though there are parts of the French left and the English left that have legitimate ties to Moscow and Moscow is also exporting terrorism. One that's on the podcast this week, there's a bombing in Bulgaria that was funded by the Soviets. So yeah, that'd probably be a fair hit on the New York Times back then. You're very worried about the right wing in Europe and also in the US but you say a lot less about the left wing. That'd probably be a fair hit. I think you can glean that you're right, that the op ed page is not. They run editorials, but it's just like every now and then there's not.
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Mike Pesca
They didn't invent op eds until the 70s. I don't think this is literally an invention of the times.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah, there are opinion columns, but there is no op ed page. Yes.
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Mike Pesca
So let's take what you just told me and the impression you got and let's think about the present where the Democratic Party and a great hobby of yours and mine is to criticize the missteps of the Democratic Party.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah.
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Mike Pesca
Went big on warning America about fascism in the twenties. The establishment there was a bit different about who was a Democrat and who's a Republican. But let's just take the New York Times as a stand in for something like the, the establishment, maybe the left leaning establishment did this too. But they were right. And also they could be aptly criticized for having blinders on and maybe someone could say, hurting their credibility. Very similar set of circumstances occurred in the last election with the Democrats prattling on about a thing that I think was probably right, that they're not wrong about. Creeping autocracy and fascism.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah.
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Mike Pesca
Knowing what you know about then, how much criticism do you give of what the Democrats did in the last few years?
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Jeff Maurer
Great question. How much? Well, certainly some. And also we'd have to define who's the Democrats. One thing, one thing that I've definitely noticed is, you know, some left wing nut on Twitter will do something and then that kind of becomes in some people's minds. It's like the Democrats said this. It's like, no, that is true. That's kind of, you know, free sense. Maybe we'll get to that.
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Mike Pesca
The cherry picking or the nut picking that, you know, John Oliver just did in a commentary. But I'm talking about Biden gives a big speech. It's probably the best speech of the last two years of his presidency. Major talking point. The reason we're running against Trump, especially Biden, is fascism or autocracy. So just the stuff that came out of Biden, the top people with a D next to their name.
- [23:05]
Jeff Maurer
Yeah. Well, definitely. One thing I think we did, we. They. I never know. I'm a guy who votes Democrat. I don't have any loyalty to the Democratic Party, nor do I work for them. I just end up voting for them. And I don't think Trump is good at president. So I don't. I don't know if it's a we or a they. But one thing I think we did wrong. They did wrong, is that there were kind of two things going on at the same time during the election. There's more than two, but let's focus on these two. Number one, you're right. The warnings about fascism. Fascism, I think is an overwrought word, but I'll cop to authoritarianism, I think is the right word. Or if you don't want to play semantic games, just, you know, bad stuff, bad thing. Trump, I think, is, again, bad at president. I will stand by that. And he's also clearly not following the law, and that's a problem. So whatever you call that suite of stuff, I think Democrats were very right to say, hey, this ain't great. But that message was undercut by the second thing that was going on, which was these repeated ideological purity tests that were coming mostly from what I think is best called the progressive wing of the party. Nate Silver uses the term the Indigo Blob. Kind of, you know, the lefty fringe, including the people who are kind of playing this fan dance with their vote, where they're like, well, I'll vote for you if you do everything that I want you to do. Especially on, you know, Gaza was a big issue for a lot of those people. I think you can't have the second thing. If the first thing is true, the second thing undercuts the first thing. If you're saying we're facing this big threat and this is a big problem and this is bad stuff for America, which is the part that I think is very true. You can't also say, but I'm only going to try to stop that big thing. If you do things 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And actually to more accurately capture it, I would go to and thing 190 and thing 191 and thing 192. And by the way, I don't want you to do 191 of the things that I want. It has to be all 192 or I'm not going to vote for you. That's the posture that some people had and I think Democrats in general spent too much time pandering to that. I definitely wrote a lot about this at the time on my blog. I might be wrong.org, saying you're gonna have to tell people at some point. This is as far as I'm going. Vote for me or vote for Trump. That's your choice. But this is as far as I'm going. You need to realize that that point is going to arrive. You might as well have it arrive sooner than later. And I think Democrats were really slow to realize that that cost him.
- [25:48]
Mike Pesca
Let's pause it for a second, take a quick break and we'll be back with more in a minute. We're joined once more by Jeff Maurer is a veteran of the John Oliver Show. I actually have never watched your former show live because it's one of those things you never have to seek out. You just get served it in full chunks on YouTube. I don't know if this is a great strategy for hbo. It probably is. But the I saw a couple weeks ago or maybe when this airs, maybe when this airs. A couple of weeks ago he did a another large piece about transgender kids in sports. And this was something that we don't talk. I mean we sometimes text each other. But I had done a post, a blog post, as it's sometimes called a substack post where my only orientation was I played a clip of Jen Psaki, I play a a clip of John Oliver and they were just being inaccurate. They were citing inaccurate statistics. And my real orientation with this whole issue is somewhat political, but mostly I don't like when Democrats lie especially and then try to be the party that has the mantle of truth. And there was a lot of inaccuracy of there's no advantage in general for someone who went through puberty as a male. Fine. Then maybe a couple of weeks ago as we're talking or as this heirs, he did a follow up piece where he doubled down.
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Lisa Camp
We expect a certain amount of difference in athletics, taller, basketball Players are expected to compete against shorter ones. Faster soccer players compete against slower ones. Michael Phelps was allowed to compete with other swimmers despite being part dolphin. And crucially, none of the studies I've mentioned so far bear much relevance to what these new laws target, which is youth sports, usually of all ages. And the research there is even more scant. We have no research about how being trans or undergoing gender affirming treatment impacts athletic performance in teens.
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Mike Pesca
I noticed in your posting you picked up something that I said and I think we found the text of some of these inaccuracies.
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Jeff Maurer
Yeah.
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Mike Pesca
So just as you did on I Might Be Wrong, analyze what he was doing in that segment, what he thought he was doing and what it actually.
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Jeff Maurer
Achieved in this most recent segment.
- [28:13]
Mike Pesca
Yes.
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Jeff Maurer
Okay, so I'm glad you brought up the segment he did a couple months ago because that is a good place to start. And you're right that you and I basically wrote a piece just riffing off of what Mike had already found, because it's right that John and Jen Psaki said almost identical things on tv. And I'm going to try to remember the quote from memory. So I will probably get it slightly wrong, but it's something very close to There is no evidence that trans women in sports threaten safety or fairness.
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Lisa Camp
As we've discussed before, there are vanishingly few trans girls competing in high schools anywhere. Even if there were more trans kids, like all kids vary in athletic ability and there is no evidence they pose any threat to safety or fairness.
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Jeff Maurer
Because you and I know how media work, we can deduce that there is probably an activist group somewhere pushing this line. On John Oliver's show, it's going to be a researcher. I'm sure on Jen Psaki's show it's going to be the same thing. They feed it to the researcher, the researcher feeds it to the host and it goes on television. We think we may have found that, as you put it, ur text from the University of Kansas. I wrote a piece riffing on it because when you dig into that publication from the University of Kansas, it's a real low quality publication. So if that was in fact the source, that kind of goes to show.
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Mike Pesca
Like a pamphlet or something or like a chart to hang it's laminated chart.
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Jeff Maurer
It'S a pamphlet in which the author almost certainly cites herself as an expert. So it's a, it's a researcher citing herself as evidence for a thing. It's. It's pretty unbelievable. My piece on that is called Activists Continue to Murder Left Wing Thought very In line with what we were just talking about with the groups.
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Mike Pesca
But so yes, yes, I'm glad you said that as I'm glad you put that as a headline and said that. Now that's my interest in this really. But go ahead.
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Jeff Maurer
Agreed. Yeah, mine too. People should believe true things. Right. And we should be able to have conversations that help us find the truth. Right? So that's what happened a couple months ago. And last week John did, yes, I will say jumbo sized piece, 42 minutes, which is a 30 minute show. So I know that to get, to get the extra time you have to call HBO and say, can we have extra time? When I was there, they would have said, no, look after you. We're doing behind the scenes of the making of the Game of Thrones extra footage clips. So absolutely fucking not. Now I.
- [30:51]
Mike Pesca
We got a dragon to get to.
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Jeff Maurer
Exactly. Now what else do they have? So I get. So they're like, sure, go, go nuts. But it was a 42 minute episode, by the way.
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Mike Pesca
How, how Jean Smart puts her makeup on on hacks. Not as compelling to the HBO audience.
- [31:05]
Jeff Maurer
In the eyes of some. In the eyes of some, yes. But yes, a jumbo sized episode that by the way, crunched the top of show news roundup, which is normally 10 to 15 minutes that got greatly compressed in the week that the global economy was melting down. So that's interesting. But the 42 minute piece was about trans women in sports and it was largely an elaboration, I think it's fair to say, on John's position that he said when he said trans women in sports do not threaten safety or fairness. I think it's fair to say that because he referenced those remarks in this newer piece. He referenced them and said, I stand behind what he said. I wrote about it this morning and it took me about a week to kind of collect my thoughts and figure whether I wanted to write about this and what I wanted to say. But the piece really was an excellent demonstration of a thing that I felt going wrong while I was there and that I regret not having done more to arrest or when I realized that I wasn't having any or enough success arresting it. I probably should have walked away because the piece is just 42 minutes of straw men. It's just 42 minutes of strawman. He responds to the absolute dumbest arguments that could possibly be made against trans women in sports. And I think this is, I think there's a lot to talk about with this issue in my piece. I actually, because I thought my readers deserved it linked to what I felt was a very good discussion of the trans women in sports issue. It's on a substack called the Disagreement. I encourage people to seek it out. But John's discussion, like I said it was just straw men, like. He plays a clip of Mike Johnson House Speaker Mike Johnson.
- [32:44]
Lisa Camp
It is not just about denying trans women the right to play. It's about denying that the right to exist. Mike Johnson basically said as much after the House passed its ban on trans athletes when he said this.
- [32:56]
Jeff Maurer
We know from scripture and from nature that men are men and women are women and men cannot become women. He plays a clip of Trump being an asshole.
- [33:07]
Lisa Camp
It is not the case that any man is going to be stronger or more athletic than every woman, which is sometimes what gets implied here, including by Donald Trump, who brought Riley Gaines, the former college swimmer who's become one of the most prominent voices on this issue, on stage. To say this just to show you.
- [33:24]
Mike Pesca
How ridiculous it is, look at me. I'm much bigger and much stronger than her.
- [33:32]
Jeff Maurer
There's no way she could beat me in swimming.
- [33:35]
Mike Pesca
Do we all agree?
- [33:39]
Jeff Maurer
Thank you.
- [33:40]
Lisa Camp
Thank you. I don't agree, but I would like to see it.
- [33:45]
Jeff Maurer
My feeling is I don't need to learn that Mike Johnson is a bit of a religious nut. I don't need to learn that Donald Trump is an asshole. I already know those things. That's not really where this debate is at. Nor is the debate at other places John addressed, which is, you know, it's. People are saying this is going to completely eliminate women's sports. Like, okay, well, the people who are saying that are idiots, because that's not really the argument. People are saying that people transition just to gain an advantage. Okay, if anyone says that they're an idiot, that's not where the discussion is at. The large profile, high profile cases that we know, you know, like Leah Thomas and others are women who are authentically living as trans. Like, that's not disputed. It's not the way I put it in the piece, it's not a Joanna man situation. If you remember that well loved movie from the early 2000s, where also Oscar winner, I believe. Oscar, yes, multiple swept the Oscars that year. White chicks, it was. They're the, they're the. There will be blood and no country from old men of that era. They're just forever linked. But yeah, that in that movie, a definitely male basketball player plays women's basketball, like as a scam. That's not real. No one says that's what's going on. But that's the type of strawman that was addressed in the piece. And what I hope I got to in this, the article that I wrote is that the omission of the actual, the real arguments, the omission of the good arguments on what you consider the other side, whether you find them compelling or not, maybe you're not persuaded by them, but you should at least hear the best arguments. Just leaving those out does a ton to create distortions and bias. People think when we, when we talk about dishonest media, we think about, you know, lies, things that can be fact checked. Sure, it's that, but that's not all of it. A lot of it is just shading the argument enough, omitting the good arguments so that somebody watching your piece, if they're a bit credulous, will think, God, the only reason anyone would hold the other position is because they're an idiot or a bigot. That's what you can do if you simply leave the good arguments out.
- [35:52]
Mike Pesca
Can you wrest enough quality comedy from the version of the argument that they had on the disagreement or that you or I would like to see in a non comedic context?
- [36:05]
Jeff Maurer
That's a good question. God, I hope so, because it's what I'm trying to do on my blog. You're right that the disagreement is. That's not a comedy podcast. That. So they were not going for comedy.
- [36:16]
Mike Pesca
Sadly it is and it's a gigantic failure.
- [36:20]
Jeff Maurer
Oh, no.
- [36:21]
Mike Pesca
I don't know if you knew that there was a rubber. There's a rubber chick.
- [36:25]
Jeff Maurer
I wasn't laughing at all.
- [36:27]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I know.
- [36:30]
Jeff Maurer
Thankfully you are making a joke there. I mean, you're right. If they were going for comedy, it's the most dismal failure I've seen since George Clooney's the Midnight Sky. Boom. Like to get that in there. The premise of Last Week Tonight, at least when I was there, the premise was that we could have these honest conversations or these honest discussions because it's one way and, and still have it be funny. And I'll, I swear to God, the whole time that's what I thought I was doing. In my later years there I started to question, am I actually doing that? I don't know. But if, if, if that's not possible, then why then everyone should admit, okay, this is propaganda and we're adding jokes. Say that out loud if that's what you're doing.
- [37:16]
Mike Pesca
I've, I've watched episodes where I don't feel that the railroad industry point of view is necessarily Being assiduously conveyed. And that's okay, because what it's trying to do with using Sir Topham Hatt and the other Thomas the Tank Engine trains to show abuses of railroads is.
- [37:35]
D
Fine, but Henry was told he was much more efficient now, which is another way of saying profitable and nine miles long. He carried all sorts of things people needed, like medical bandages, corn, vinyl clothes chloride, fireworks, a mysterious red substance, question mark, question mark, hand grenades, question mark plugged in space heaters and all sorts of zoo animals. What's liquefied natural gas. And why am I pulling 22 cars full of it? Henry asked. Never you mind, said Sir Topham Hatt. I mapped this whole route out at home. That's a weird thing to do, and I don't really know how to respond to it, said Henry. Just mind your business like a good little rolling death machine. Sir Topham Hatt said. Sorry, I'm a what? Asked Henry.
- [38:34]
Mike Pesca
There's a usefulness for. You're telling me mostly stuff to get me outrage, and maybe you're not giving me at all, but you're also educating me, and it's very funny. Can you think of a piece, though? I'm sure you can. Where you did Steel Man. If this is strawman, where you Steel man the argument and got jokes out of the Steel Manning part of it.
- [38:51]
Jeff Maurer
Yes. And it is the very second episode of the show, it was on the death penalty. And we had one writer in particular who was insistent that we talk about the death penalty and say if you oppose the death penalty, you are opposing the execution of, let's face it, some people who have done some truly, truly horrible things. And we did reference a guy who is set to get the death penalty and he was guilty and it was an awful crime.
- [39:23]
Lisa Camp
Executing the innocent is not really the tough question here. It's whether we should be executing the guilty. And let me acknowledge right up front that I come to this as a bit of an outsider. Britain does not have capital punishment. So in a way, I really don't know what I'm talking about. But in another way, I really do know what I'm talking about, because before 1965, we didn't just have capital punishment.
- [39:48]
Jeff Maurer
Which is the true discussion of the death penalty. Right. You're obviously not advocating for the release of that person if you oppose the death penalty, but you are advocating that he not be executed. And you have to own that the writer was insistent on that. And I think that was a learning moment for me. I remember thinking, oh, that that's the right Way to do it. That's the right way to go. So episode two, that ethic did make it through. And I guess I'll go ahead and call that a successful episode because the show stayed on the air and stuff.
- [40:20]
Mike Pesca
And, you know, there was an episode three.
- [40:22]
Jeff Maurer
There was an episode three. Exactly. And, you know, people maybe don't realize when you start a show, even if you've got a, you know, Daily show spinoff guy who had a bit of heat at the time, there's no guarantee the show is going to stay on the air.
- [40:34]
Mike Pesca
You could.
- [40:34]
Jeff Maurer
It's really easy to flop. It's actually what happens most of the time. So, yeah, we started doing that stuff and it kind of worked. And so, yes, as of that moment in time, that is where we were coming from. That was May of 2014.
- [40:51]
Mike Pesca
What do you make of what I regard as the transformation and then retransformation of Jon Stewart? I don't know how much insight you have into that, but when he was doing his HBO show, I kind of shook my head and said, all right, I guess Jon Stewart is. Has changed very much from the guy from the Daily show who would skewer excesses on both sides. All sides had more of a through line of calling out bullshit than calling out only the bullshit of one side or excusing or even engaging bullshit. Now that he's back on the Daily show just one day a week, to me, it's still. It's become appointment television again. And he's really fair and he's really funny, and he also hits the shibboleths of the left. So that is my question. Did he change? Do you think he realized something about what he was doing with the HBO show? What do you. What do you think?
- [41:44]
Jeff Maurer
I don't know Jon Stewart personally, so I wouldn't even attempt, you know, an armchair psychology thing. I don't know the guy. Your reaction to his Apple show was also my reaction to his Apple show and also from what I can tell, from what we know about ratings, from these streamers, which are often opaque, but sometimes we get a glimpse that seems to be what everyone thought of his Apple Show. Show did not go over well, if I was to completely speculate. And again, I don't know the guy. Look, that Apple show really did not go over well. And I will speak to my own experience watching it, which sounds like it's identical to yours. I just. What happened, John? I was such a huge fan of his in the 2000s and 2010s. I mean, it really huge. Maybe doesn't even capture it. I mean he was enormously formative on my, you know, comedy perspective and you know what I think of political comedy and the stuff I think is good. And that Apple show, in my opinion really was not good and made some real. It was just a bad watch in like every conceivable way. It was not funny. Real shoddy arguments. It's, it's, you know, it's bad when it's a topic on which you know. And I'm a left leaning guy on which we broadly agree. And yet I'm watching it and going, come on. And I'm like, don't, don't make me take the NRA's side here. But you're gonna force me to do that if you won't up the quality of your arguments a little bit. He also did this horrible thing I was just talking about Strawman. When he would do an interview sometimes he would pick like the dumbest state senator he could find and then dunk on that state senator for 15 minutes for too long. It was just a real bad watch. It was painful every episode. He maybe gleaned that and he maybe would like to restore his reputation a little bit and be seen more as a guy who, you know, is observing the world and calling them as he sees them and not as. I'll just go ahead and throw this phrase out there. A progressive hack.
- [43:51]
Mike Pesca
Jeff Maurer is the proprietor of the substack. I might be wrong. There is an audio component of it. There is, you know, soon to be finger paint component. It's really the one of my.
- [44:03]
Jeff Maurer
It's going to be a breakfast cereal.
- [44:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Yeah. Do you want a line of reboot is being crowdsourced within.
- [44:09]
Jeff Maurer
Yes. Line of auto parts. I might be wrong branded auto parts. Look for those.
- [44:14]
Mike Pesca
Jeff, thanks so much.
- [44:16]
Jeff Maurer
Thanks for having me, Mike.
- [44:22]
Mike Pesca
That's it for today's show. Just is produced by Cory Wara and CBSO Michelle Pasco Oomparu G Peru du Peru and thanks for listening.