Podcast Host (3:32)

So. So I just want to play devil's advocate with you. I don't mean to. I don't mean to. I mean, I'm going to push you, but just playing devil's advocate. Sure. Because I think we got to get to a place to where people can actually hear you. So let's. Let me ask you this. Why are, why should I believe you're not just a disgruntled guy who was not a good writer and just couldn't get a job? And so now you're all pissed off about it and you're doing this.

Jacob (3:59)

I mean, I am partly exactly that. But I think part of the thing is, I mean, I mean, I wouldn't have written the article if I was, if I was good for you.

Podcast Host (4:08)

At least you're honest. Yes.

Jacob (4:10)

But I think if you look at the numbers, the number, you know, I went into depth in this article about the sort of broader numbers within all these different industries. Industries. And the year I moved to Hollywood, there were about 48% of the lower level writers were white men, which honestly seems, I think white men, for whatever reason were more likely to go into this field. Partly for, you know, whatever historic reasons, maybe partly because of some residual discrimination. I can't, I don't know. But I think 48% was about the number of white men who were aspirants for this, for these jobs in 2011. By 2024, that was 11% was the number of white men who are getting these jobs, which is, you know, obviously you go from being one and a half times more represented via your population to like one third within the space of a decade. And it's sort of astonishing when you really unpack that, what that means. It was not a slow change. It was not, you know, we're going to have, we're going to hire, you know, 1% less white guys every year. It was. We're just going to stop. And I spoke to a showrunner who reached out after the article was published and he said actually that 11% number is, is not even right because the 11% involves all of the true Nepo hires that the showrunners had to make. So somewhat. An actor son got that job. Someone with some connections got that job. So you're really talking about is that no one was like, let in who didn't, you know, either have like a connection to begin with or some sort of other identity. I suppose

Podcast Host (6:00)

you believe in merit based.

Jacob (6:03)

I do believe in merit, yes. Yes, I do.

Podcast Host (6:06)

So, I mean, it's amazing you have to actually ask that in today's world. But I mean, I really don't care what color you are. Funny is funny. Talent is talent. I mean, whatever, whatever it is you're good at. Hire the. I don't want my surgeon to be a DEI hire. I don't want my surgeon to be a white guy if he's not the best surgeon, you know, And I can't believe that we're at this place where, you know, especially in, you know, someplace like Hollywood, you. I mean, Hollywood deserves everything they're getting. You know, you're just seeing. Yeah, you're just seeing this, this destruction of. Of merit.

Jacob (6:50)

I think, I think a lot of the people who would have come up to create the next generation of shows, and I'm not counting myself there, I don't. I don't consider myself a genius. I think I'm a good writer. But I think there are plenty of people who would have been releasing shows around now and been at that stage in their career who never got off the ground. And I think that is no small part of why Hollywood is struggling so much at the moment, that they just sort of cut off a generation of talent the way that they did. And I don't even consider myself within that. I just wanted a job.

Podcast Host (7:24)

Right. The people that do have a job that are there, do they feel that these are the best people?

Jacob (7:35)

No, I've gotten some pushback from people I know in the industry who work. And some people basically will tell you a TV writer's room was always a political thing. It wasn't about who wrote the best stuff. It was about who got along the best with gelled in the room, didn't cause friction. And there's some truth to that. But yeah. And I've also some. And also I think some people, you know, I think film has been less affected. It's still been very affected, but overall, some movies still get made that are good, I guess, as part of it. And there's a whole. There's only like one writer who you're hiring versus an entire crew. You can kind of. Okay, you can hire. You can get a white guy who wrote the script. But yeah, I think, I think Hollywood is suffering because I think they spent 10 years not both not following their audience. You know, it took, I don't know, Yellowstone was on for a long time before they started making Yellowstone clones. You know, it was like, like, like, you know, it's like, it's like here's the most popular show in the country for half the country, and we're. We're just going to pretend that it doesn't exist. I mean, they stop. They eventually. I think. I actually think Hollywood is, Is in terms of this stuff improving now because I don't think they ever. Because they never believed in anything. You know, I think academia is the one that is like lost forever.

Podcast Host (9:04)

But so before we get into academia. Let me just stay in Hollywood for a second. So do you think. So you don't think that the people that were in these rooms or making these decisions actually believed in any of it? They were just doing it.

Jacob (9:16)

I think.

Podcast Host (9:17)

Why? To stand what.

Jacob (9:20)

I think there are a few people who believed, but I don't think sort of the senior executives ever believed that this was like, good. I don't think that the most showrunners really thought, you know, I really just don't want to hire the best person for this job. I think a lot of people were, were frustrated and I don't. And I think they've pivoted. You know, again, I spoke to the showrunner recently who was basically like, we're back to 2012 rules, which is, you know, don't embarrass us with an all white male writers room. But other than that, you can hire whoever you want. So it.

Podcast Host (9:58)

So it is.

Jacob (9:58)

So they're going back. Yeah, they're. I mean, they're not like going back to sort of. We don't care at all, but they're going back to. You know, we're. I think we can all acknowledge we went too far with this and we just want, you know, to make some money again.

Podcast Host (10:15)

So what, you know, if you were. They were all white writers rooms, that would imply that the people up at the top were white males as well. Why did they just roll over or were they part of this?

Jacob (10:32)

I think both. I think some of them sort of. Some of them really were believers. And, you know, the hypocrisy of fully pulling up the ladder behind you is something, you know, both interesting and, you know, it could be a case study in its own sort of indie movie. But I think a lot of them felt very direct pressure. And I think what was interesting about this whole moment is the pressure came both from the bottom and from the top, where from the bottom, you know, you don't want to get, you know, have some sort of Twitter threat in 2020 go viral about how racist you are because, you know, you're still only having, you know, white men in your writer's room.

Podcast Host (11:14)

Right.

Jacob (11:14)

At the same time, there were literal mandates from the. From the companies where, you know, unless you were maybe the most powerful writer in Hollywood, I'm not even. You, as a showrunner, had to have a room that was 50% diverse. And if you're trying to hire senior writers and the pool for them, you know, is still primarily white men, so you hire a couple senior writers and you're left with. You have to. Everyone else who you hire has to not be a white man. So I think some of them were believers, and I think some of them, you know, people do what they have to do to, you know, make a living and get along. And I don't think it was possible in a lot of these contexts for them to even say no. It was just a total mandate. I mean, you could quit. I think that would have been a more respectable, you know, moral position. But, you know, but you wouldn't have worked. You wouldn't have worked.

Podcast Host (12:07)

Yeah, you know, but, you know, you said, you know, they're pulling up the ladder. Remember in de Tocqueville's book Democracy in America, he says, at some point, the rich or the powerful are going to be in a position and they will kick the door that they walked through. They'll kick it closed behind them. And that. That feels like what a lot of these people did. I mean, we go to the universities, but a lot of these elites, white men at universities, they kick the door that you try to be a white professor, a white male professor, now, you're not going to get that job.

Jacob (12:49)

Yeah, I mean, they certainly did kick the door down after them. And I think, I think the big mistake, that sort of everyone, you know, I don't think what I wrote about was, like, unknown, especially sort of among your audience and among more right wing people. Everyone knew this was happening. But I think that the sort of interesting thing to think about that I don't think had been framed like this was just the cohort, like type effect in terms of who was affected. You know, you could say, I think it's not to say that there were no 50 year old white guys who were affected or there were no 20 year old white guys who were affected, but I think specifically millennials, we graduated college really believing that the world was trying to be a fair place. Not it's never a completely fair place, but I was trying to be a fair place. And people are basically going to be judged on who, you know, on who they were and the quality of their work. And we got disabused of that very quickly. But yeah, I think people just wait,

Podcast Host (13:56)

wait, wait, but by what? Because that was, that was the argument from the left was it's not a fair place, so we're going to make it fair. And it might not have been fair before they started, but it's so obviously unfair now. I mean, whenever you say, you know, Martin Luther King was, was all about reconciliation, you can't, you can't have losers. You have to reconcile all of this. There's no reconciliation with this. It was, we're going to punish you. The only way to be, not be a racist is to be a racist. You anti racism. I mean, which is, is nuts in its, in its practice.

Jacob (14:36)

Yeah, I think, I think the idea that the answer to past discrimination is present discrimination.

Podcast Host (14:42)

Right.

Jacob (14:43)

Is just sort of perpetuating this cycle that like will not end and it does not end well. And I think there was also in some sense a lot of stolen valor among people my generation who were not white men. You know, if you're a white woman who graduated college in 2010, I don't think you ever faced real sexism in the workplace. You did not grow up in the time of your mother. You know, you were not like a woman in an office in the 1980s. And the idea that that somehow is, is still, was still the case in the 2010s was just so, like patently false. But everyone sort of was play acting at living in a different decade than the decade they were actually, actually living in.

Podcast Host (15:35)

How did that happen?

Jacob (15:39)

I think it's, it's tough. I mean, I, part of me wanted to get into sort of the full origins of this, but it's hard to know exactly. My sense is that there was a lot of disappointment after the first Obama term. And you know, race relations, gender relations had not been completely utopianly healed in America. And I think that people went, went crazy. And I think the media drove cycle after cycle about this for almost a decade. And it's hard when you're the CEO of one of these companies to say, you know, we're going to ignore it. You know, think about how many people sort of got canceled in the 2000 and tens for, you know, not real stuff. It was just this hype cycle, I think. I think probably, if you go into it, it was probably a combination of politics, technology, and media that made it take off so intensely without even. Because the interesting thing is there were no government mandates, like mandating people. You know, obviously, in fact, it's actually illegal to do this stuff. But it all kind of swirled around to create this pressure both from the bottom, from sort of like the. The generic Twitter user in 2015 and from the top. You know, where you're like, the top. The people at the top didn't want to be called a racist or a misogynist. So you ended up with converging on these pressures that kind of froze out younger white men.

Podcast Host (17:19)

So what do you think the fields are the worst that were hit by dei?

Jacob (17:25)

So I wrote about, in the article, very specifically and in depth, about media, academia, and Hollywood. I think those. I wrote about those fields not because I think those were the only fields that were affected, but because they were the most relentless about cataloging what they were doing. So, you know, every year there would be reports that told you what, how many new hires were of which gender and race.

Podcast Host (17:52)

Right.

Jacob (17:52)

Which makes it very easy to sort of go. Go back and prove. Prove the case that you were making. Now, I. I think it happened. It obviously happened in almost every liberal field. It happened in foundations, it happened in advertising. It happened in corporate America. I think it happened in tech. It happened in a lot of those to a lesser extent than it happened in media, academia, and Hollywood. But I think it happened in any sort of liberal. And when I say liberal, I don't mean, you know, it could be in the heart of Texas, but if it's like a Fortune 500 company, they're still going to, you know, face those pressures. It happened to anyone who sort of worked within liberal America, I think. Is.

Podcast Host (18:42)

Are we done with it? Has it peaked?

Jacob (18:47)

It's. I think it's peaked. I think there's still. There's still. I. I don't think we're done with it. Every. Every once in a while, you know, there's an article, and I think the New York Times has gotten a lot better than it was four or five years ago, but every once in a while, there's still an article that pretends it's 2019 again and you wonder if they're just sort of biding their time. I think like for example, like a month ago I saw an article about how there aren't enough cardiothoracic surgeons who are women. And you read the article and basically this is a specialty that requires people to be on call 70, 80 hours a week. And most, you know, it also requires a high level of competence. Most highly competent female doctors I think quite reasonably probably want a family and don't want to work 80 hours a week. The idea that that could be the explanation for what, for this gender gap just never came up in the article. And I think that's sort of part, you know, my wife is a costume designer. No one is ever like we need to make this, this industry more male. You know, it only ever goes, it only ever goes the other way. I do think that academia, I get sent tips all the time. Academia is still doing this in hiring. They're doing it at a sort of lesser grade. I think media has, is in the process of self correcting a little bit, you know, because it is like a sort of free market and eventually it catches up with you. But I think academia is the one that like I'm not sure that they ever stop.

Podcast Host (20:42)

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Jacob (23:05)

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Podcast Host (23:19)

So let me talk to you about. People, let's say my age or look like me. I will hear them say, you know, when I was a kid, we just pull ourselves up. It's different than, than it is now. I mean, I believe in merit based. I mean, I, I know, I mean, my success was not given to me by any stretch of the imagination. I have. I mean, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and everything else. And I worked hard as well. But I don't know, is that, can you accomplish that? You know, I mean, we're looking at, you know, kind of the Jim Crow laws, except not as bad and in reverse. But when you, when you cap people and say, we're not going to hire these kinds of people, you can't break through on merit. And so I, I look at people of your generation and say, you were sold absolute lies, absolute lies, then you go out and you find out that that's a lie and you can't, you can't break out. Do you find that to be True. Or, or can you break out? Is there any other way to get around this?

Jacob (24:39)

I think there, I mean, obviously there are ways to get around it. I'm not the only, I'm not, there's not a single, there are white men my age who've made it in Hollywood or media or even academia. I think that what happened, I mean, I think that what happened and what people, the illusion people are under is that actually they just. The top 5% of white guys will still get through. I don't think that's true. Maybe 5% of white guys total will get through, but a lot of that, again, is luck and where you are at a point. And you know, I, I, I, I think that the issue as I see it is a lot of the more talented white men my age saw that, you know, if you were smarter than I was in 2016, you saw the writing on the wall and you didn't even try. You just got into crypto or podcasting or something else. And, and you know, I'm, you're living a, probably a pretty good life and life is okay. I think the issue, and I think you can, and you should pull yourself up, you know, and you shouldn't wallow in your own self complaint.

Podcast Host (25:45)

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

Jacob (25:47)

I think that what happened very specifically was that no one told us what that it would have been easier if there had been a quota, if they had just announced in 2014, from now on it's 7% and the rest of you, like are out of luck.

Podcast Host (26:04)

Right.

Jacob (26:04)

We proceeded through this decade of our careers as if we had a chance. And I think that that is the, the sort of true tragedy because you could have, you could have, you know, I could have gone into tech, I could have gone into some other thing that provided a life for me and my family. And I, you know, in the end of the article, I blame myself for not doing that because I think it was, you know, I, I knew what was happening and I didn't want to accept it. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. I think there are ways around it, and I think you've seen a lot of ways around it that people who are smart and inventive have made. It doesn't mean that it's good that it happened, if that makes sense.

Podcast Host (26:48)

Yeah, no, I, I understand. The world I'm, I'm, I'm driving at is there's only two places to go from a point like this, and a lot of people will say, you know, it's rigged against me. I'M never going to make it. Basically what we're hearing on the left, you know, for the last 15 years, it's rigged against me. I'm never going to make it. Everybody's going to hold me back. I have no chance. So you either then just go into depression land and you just become zero, or you go dark and you start going towards, you know, I don't even know. There's. It doesn't seem to be any real middle ground here. I guess you go into like white power and, you know, I fight for the white man. And it's like, no, wait, neither of those are, Neither of those are good. How do you solve this?

Jacob (27:45)

I think.

Podcast Host (27:46)

I'm not saying solve it for. I'm not saying solve it for the institutions. I'm saying for you, for the person that is your age that feels like I'm being massively screwed. How do you deal in that world?

Jacob (28:03)

I think, you know, I think it is a personal thing for sort of everyone. Personally, the way I look at it is, you know, I have two young sons who I love dearly and I think if I had made it in Hollywood in 2016, I'm not sure they would exist. And I think my life would be in a lot of ways worse had, you know.

Podcast Host (28:23)

Yeah.

Jacob (28:23)

So I think you have the life that you. Where you are right now is where you are right now. And you. And I think you can be angry about it, but I think, I think you need to. I think the perspective of being able to say that this happened and I'm going to do my best to live my life like as a good person without being consumed by rage and to, and to, you know, and you can fight against it and you can create alternate institutions. You know, one of the critiques of the article that I read from the right that, you know, I find interesting but I think is not quite right is, you know, who cares about these institutions anyway? They're all just filled with, you know, rabid leftists. We need to just create our own. And I think that that's a valid reaction. The issue is that it takes 20 years to, you know, even start to create new instit. By then I know your, Your past, your career.

Podcast Host (29:24)

I know.

Jacob (29:25)

So I think, I don't know, it's hard to. I think that going forward, my hope, and I don't, I can't tell people how to feel individually, but my hope is that we just moved past this in a way that feels fair. You know, I think part of it is no one in this country at this point, not, not the left, not the right, no one thinks anything is fair anymore anymore. You know, the, and sort of dividing people up like this for the last 15 years has clearly not led to sort of good feeling towards our fellow citizens. Right. And I just, my hope is that, you know, we just start treating people as people and hiring them as such and acknowledging difference, while not, you know, sort of harping on it in a way that, that is poisonous in the end. But, you know, part of me is also pessimistic. I'm not sure that that will happen. Like, I don't, you know, that's my hope. But I sort of think this could just be going like a merry go round of this until, you know, I'm an old man, which I hope doesn't happen. I hope my, I hope my kids grow up in a, in a world that is, you know.

Podcast Host (30:45)

Well, usually, I mean, the world seems to, the world seems to be on a pendulum. I mean, it always, it swings too far one way and then it comes back and it's, then it swings too far the other way. I mean, you know, I just wish the swings weren't as rapid and we had more time in the middle, but I, I, Unless someone grabs that pendulum by force and says, nope, this is the way we are, you know, and we become fascistic or authoritarian. That's the, I think that's the real danger. When you get out to these extremes, then you have people willing to say, it's not going anywhere, it's staying just like this. And that's, that's extremely frightening. But if, if man is, is able to play out his worst instincts, as always happens, it'll, we will be, in 40 years from now, we will be back at, you know, the absolute zenith of the individual. Nobody else matters except the individual. And forget the collective. I mean, we just keep going back and forth like this. I just, I'm worried about the swing because I'm worried that too many people are being left behind and being sold a load of goods that you can't make it, you never will make it. The system is so rigged against you. Well then if you believe that stuff, the only answer is to burn the system down because you're angry and resentful.

Jacob (32:18)

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that that's a real danger. And I don't, I don't quite know how to address it other than to say, you know, there are joys in life that like, have nothing to do with your career or, you know, and you should try to find Community however you can. But again, it's a small consolation for people who really, you know, do feel, in many cases, legitimately iced out of, you know, what their capabilities are.

Podcast Host (32:55)

Well, speak to more of what you said a little while ago. I mean, I. I could spend my life bitching, you know, if I wasn't a conservative, maybe a little smarter, but if I wasn't a conservative. I mean, I had contracts with Paramount Studios for movies and everything else until it became popular to start, you know, saying no to people like me. And. And so a huge swath of the country was just ignored. And so I had to go out and build my own thing. And while that's not what I wanted to do, it's been a good life, and it's been, you know, I've hopefully paved the road for others to be able to have access to. I mean, when I first started doing stuff online, Netflix was still doing movies. And I built a net. I'm doing movies online in the mail. You know what I mean? And I built a network. Now everybody's doing that. When I started, everybody said that couldn't be done. I didn't want to do that, but I did. And so expand a little bit more on. On, you know, the fact that where you are, you are. And it's not necessarily bad. You don't always get what you want, but you get what you need.

Jacob (34:14)

Yeah. I mean, look, I think life. I think life is filled with disappointments. Like, even if we lived in a perfect, meritocratic world, you know, you'd still be disappointed in many ways with a lot of the way that your career goes or your life. And I think, you know, again, for me personally, you know, I. I do. I do not like scalping tickets on the Internet. It is soulless. It is boring. But it provides a life for my family that, you know, is a good enough life that makes us happy most of the time. And there's like, you know, there's an honor to that. And the truth is, you know, it's not miserable. And, you know, take joy in the

Podcast Host (35:03)

things like, are you exploring other ways to write? I mean, you know, this article that I wrote, I mean, I think it would have been picked up a lot more if it wasn't calling out the power so much. But, I mean, let me read this. JD Vance said a lot of people think DEI's lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at NFL games. In reality, it's a deliberate program of discrimination, primarily against white men. This is an incredible piece that describes the evil of dei and its consequences. I mean, I don't know how you feel about J.D. vance, but I mean it was read by a lot of people. Your article, you ought to be a writer. You were a very successful writer on this article.

Jacob (35:43)

The response has been very gratifying and it's great. And you know, it's, it's what you want out of a piece of writing is for people to hear you and to grapple with it. I, I have been exploring, you know, more writing pathways, but I'll say is that no, I've been contacted by a bunch of people, not no one in Hollywood has been like, maybe we should see what his scripts were all about.

Podcast Host (36:08)

Right.

Jacob (36:08)

But what kind of, what did you,

Podcast Host (36:11)

what do you write? What kind of scripts do you write?

Jacob (36:14)

I wrote, I wrote a bunch of hour long drop TV pilots dramas, a couple that were very good. I did, I wrote a couple movies. One I thought was bad, one I thought was very good. There were, there were a bunch of, you know, I love your artists. You write scripts, you know, you write some clunkers, you write some, some stuff that you think is actually really good. Yeah, I think what I'll say, and one of, part of the issue, and this is what my critics from the left will say is that this is a structural problem and it's a sinking ship in all these industries. And you're, you know, sure, women and people of color got more of these jobs, but it was just because it was. The white men had fled because they knew it was a sinking ship. And what I'll say to that is I do think there are structural problems in media and Hollywood and academia, but part of those structural problems are because they didn't a follow the market to what people wanted to watch and read and hire the best people. And you know, I don't know what the world, I don't think that it would have solved say a Hollywood streaming problem or you know, the, the decline of all newspapers that aren't the New York Times. But it certainly would have if they had given more, you know, talent and different voices, you know, different political voices that were not all identical. I think, you know, like take the free press like that. Within free four years that company went from nothing, you know, and it was just because there was a market need for that and no one was paying attention to it.

Podcast Host (38:12)

So were you a cons? Were you conservative? Are you. I mean, I don't want to get into politics, but where were you when this started? And have you moved? You don't even tell me where?

Jacob (38:22)

Sure, no, when they started, I was definitely. I was definitely a liberal. I am not a liberal anymore. My politics are honestly all over the place. Like, there's some things that I'm super conservative about, some that I'm super liberal about, and.

Podcast Host (38:38)

So in other words, you're human.

Jacob (38:41)

Yeah. No, I think. I think people. I think part of, you know, this is not part of the article, but part of the thing that I felt within my social milieu for the last decade is, you know, everyone pretended that they had to, that every political question had been agreed upon and that you were not allowed, that no one could disagree with sort of the. The New York Times's stance on anything. And, you know, I think that that among a lot. I would say that combined with this DEI stuff in my own career, just broke me politically and just made me question everything from the. From. From the get go.

Podcast Host (39:27)

There more of. There are more of you every day.

Jacob (39:30)

There are a lot there. I think people. People ought. People swing back and forth. I think what I did sense is, even among my old friends who sort of were liberal true believers and still sort of are, is that they're not into it anymore in the way that they were a decade ago. There's an icing out that happened even for people who held their noses and decided to vote for Kamala Harris. I think there's no enthusiasm left among white men my age for the mainstream democratic establishment. How is it.

Podcast Host (40:12)

How does that work? I mean, because you. You must know people like you that are not married. How is that working? Because women have become much more progressive and men are going the opposite direction. And how. How are. Now you get into a world where you're disgruntled, you don't have a job, you feel like every world's against you, and you don't have a woman that you wants to spend their life with you.

Jacob (40:42)

Most of my friends at this point are married and have kids. And I think there's nothing that makes you more like both. There's something that makes you both care less about politics and be less sort of dogmatic than just having to deal with your kids every day like you're tired. No, it's like. It's like. It's like. It's like. It's like, you know, I don't. I think. Sorry, I lost my train of thought on the question. But I think people sort of have come around to the fact that not everyone agrees with them about everything. And I think the more that that happens, the better for everyone.

Podcast Host (41:36)

I would agree with you. You said you had two sons, right?

Jacob (41:40)

Yeah. How old are they? Stopped. Three and a half and one and a half. And they stopped sleeping a month ago. So if I'm not quite articulate enough, it's because of that.

Podcast Host (41:50)

Well, that's okay. When they stop sleeping, you stop sleeping. And I guarantee you you're not going to stop sleeping until they're both 20 and out of the house. But enjoy every second of it. Every second of it. Do you think the culture is going to change or how do you prepare them to live in the world that you're seeing today?

Jacob (42:20)

I think the culture is changing. I don't think that you're seeing the sort of. Most out there, like. Like a. Like a friend of mine who's a black woman was on a TV writer on a show, and she told me that this other writer, this white woman, came up to her and told her that she wanted her. You know, she was trying to make sure her toddler sons, like, didn't grow up to be toxic white men. And this woman was like, that is the craziest thing I ever heard.

VRBO Announcer (42:48)

They're.

Jacob (42:49)

They're like innocent little children. But I think you're seeing less of that. I think you're seeing less of this sort of, you know, But I, you know, I. I just want them to grow up in a world in which, you know, they can. I'm more concerned about AI and all this other stuff for them and for the future than I am about this identity stuff. I hope it will work itself out decently, but. And I'm more concerned about the fact that kids all have, you know, Chromebooks in California and kindergarten than I am with the. Maybe with what they're teaching. I think that I can teach them, you know, what they need to know, but not if they're on their Chromebook all day.

Podcast Host (43:39)

Amen. Go ahead.

Jacob (43:43)

Oh, So I just. I don't know. My hope is that it works itself out, at least that there's more room for, like, actual political difference and less identitarian issues as they. As they grow up. Because, like, the truth is, we live in, you know, whether you like it or not, whether you think, you know, you know, immigration should have been stopped in 1965 or 1925 or 1880. Like, we're all here, and it has to work. And the only way to make it work is to, you know, is to. Is to work together as a. As a political entity to. To make it work.

Podcast Host (44:32)

Right. Find value in each other. I want to end with this. Give advice to somebody that may be you at your lowest moment, whatever that moment was, where you were like, I can't. Whatever it was, describe that. And then what would you say to yourself or somebody who's living in that moment right now?

Jacob (45:02)

What was my lowest moment? I think there was a moment I was at a party and I was told that, you know, there were a couple of women who had gotten these TV jobs sort of purely by virtue of canceling this. I'm not going to say names of canceling this. This other guy. And it just made me. And I had been banging my head against the wall to try to get a job for, you know, five or six years at that point. And I was. I was just super upset. I think what I would tell myself is to pivot. I would tell myself to stop. You know, if you're banging your head against the wall that much, if it makes you that upset, like, find something that doesn't. You can still be upset about the sort of general sociopolitical environment, but stop banging your. There's no rest. Stopping your head against the wall and find some other path that lets you either be creative or financially successful. Think outside the box of what you, you know, think your. Your. Your path should. Should be. I guess. I guess that would be my advice.

Podcast Host (46:33)

Great advice, Jacob. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Jacob (46:36)

All right. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Podcast Host (46:38)

You bet.

Jacob (46:39)

You too.

Podcast Host (46:39)

You bet. Thank you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

VRBO Announcer (47:10)

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