3556 - Justifying Democracy and Making it Materially Important w/ Osita Nwanevu & Marc Maron

Summary

The Majority Report with Sam Seder Episode 3556: Justifying Democracy and Making it Materially Important Guests: Osita Nwanevu & Marc Maron Release Date: August 8, 2025

In Episode 3556 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder engages in a deep and insightful conversation with two distinguished guests: Osita Nwanevu, contributing editor to the New Republic and columnist at The Guardian, and Marc Maron, acclaimed comedian and podcaster. The episode delves into the intricacies of democracy, its current challenges, and the role of political structures in shaping societal outcomes.

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1. Introduction and Current Political Climate

Sam Seder opens the episode by highlighting pressing political issues:

• Osita Nwanevu is set to discuss his forthcoming book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, emphasizing the necessity to justify and reform democratic systems.

• Marc Maron joins as a special guest to discuss the conclusion of his podcast, the WTF Podcast, and his new special, offering a reflective take on political comedy and personal struggles.

Seder outlines the political tensions surrounding:

• Donald Trump’s Administration: Concerns over potential stagflation, where economic stagnation meets rising inflation, prompting fears of a prolonged economic downturn.

• Gerrymandering Attempts: Republicans, alarmed by Democrats' rising poll numbers, are pushing for aggressive redistricting strategies in states like Texas, New York, and California to maintain political advantages.

Notable Quote:

"Stagflation is when the economy is stagnant, not growing, or in a recession, and inflation goes up." – Sam Seder [06:51]

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2. Osita Nwanevu on Democracy and His Book

Osita Nwanevu provides an in-depth analysis of modern democracy, exploring why its value is no longer taken for granted and how systemic reforms can rejuvenate democratic institutions.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Pillars of Democracy:
  • Agency: The power of the governed to identify and solve their own problems without reliance on external entities.
  • Dynamism: Democracy’s inherent ability to adapt and evolve through public feedback and policy reassessment.
  • Procedure: Peaceful and stable methods for collective decision-making, avoiding the need for violent overthrows.

Notable Quote:

"Democracy proceeds from the principle that we are all entitled to a basic level of control and agency over the conditions that shape our lives." – Osita Nwanevu [28:24]

• Critique of Current Democratic Structures:

  • Representation Inequities: Highlights how states like Wyoming have disproportionate power in the Senate compared to populous states like California, undermining the principle of equal representation.

• Economic Democracy:

  • Workplace Reforms: Advocates for structures that grant workers more control and say in corporate governance, referencing Bernie Sanders' proposals for employee-owned shares in large corporations.

Notable Quote:

"If we believe in democracy, that means we're not just entitled to the vote, but it matters that workers in places like Amazon or Walmart have a say in how these corporations are run." – Osita Nwanevu [52:25]

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3. Addressing Economic Challenges and Republican Strategies

The discussion shifts to the economic policies of the Trump administration and the emerging fears of stagflation:

• Stagflation Risks: Rising concerns over economic stagnation coupled with inflation, driven by factors like tariffs on computer chips and supply chain disruptions.

• Republican Redistricting Efforts:

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott: Vows multiple special sessions to push through aggressive redistricting, aiming to create more Republican-leaning districts despite potential constitutional limits.

• Heritage Foundation’s Data Claims:

  • Questioning Data Integrity: Sam Seder expresses skepticism towards the Heritage Foundation’s late-breaking, unverifiable economic data presented by Stephen Moore, criticizing the credibility of their claims.

Notable Quote:

"The Heritage Foundation does not have the ability to find what's going on in the country better than the states or the federal government." – Sam Seder [13:07]

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4. Marc Maron on Political Comedy and Personal Reflections

Marc Maron transitions the conversation towards the intersection of comedy and politics, sharing his experiences as he concludes his podcast.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Ending the WTF Podcast:
  • Personal Growth: Maron reflects on his journey, expressing a desire to move away from the demanding nature of podcasting and focus on personal well-being.
  • New Special: Discusses his HBO special, Panicked, detailing his struggles with anxiety and the creative process behind his latest work.

Notable Quote:

"I've become more comfortable with my place in the world and less driven by resentment." – Marc Maron [75:01]

• Challenges in Political Comedy:

  • Audience Perception: Addresses the difficulties comedians face when engaging deeply with political topics, emphasizing the need for authentic and meaningful discourse over surface-level jokes.

• Future Endeavors:

  • Creative Pursuits: Maron hints at potential future projects, including acting roles, while expressing uncertainty about restarting any form of podcast.

Notable Quote:

"If you're going to talk about it, you are going to feel a target on you, whether it's from within or outside yourself." – Marc Maron [92:35]

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5. Redistricting and Electoral Strategies

The episode further explores the implications of redistricting on future elections:

• Texas’ Special Sessions: Governor Abbott’s repeated calls for special sessions aim to reshape congressional districts in favor of Republicans, despite legal and logistical challenges.

• Democratic Responses:

  • Potential Tit-for-Tat: Democrats in states like New York and California may mirror Republican redistricting efforts, though with concerns about fairness and representation.

Notable Quote:

"The Democrats have failed to articulate any type of vision for what the country would look like under Democratic rule." – Sam Seder [59:50]

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6. Clips and Additional Discussions

The latter part of the episode features various clips and discussions, including:

• Israeli Hostage Negotiator’s Statement:

  • Highlights the complexities and ongoing tensions in the Israel-Gaza conflict, critiquing media representations and political motivations behind military actions.

• Nancy Mace’s Campaign Remarks:

  • Examines Republican strategies in gubernatorial campaigns, focusing on the use of misogynistic rhetoric to challenge female candidates.

Notable Quote:

"Nancy Mace is running for governor and engages in misogynistic rhetoric to undermine her opponents." – Sam Seder [140:57]

• Charlie Kirk’s Commentary:
  • Discusses the rise of authoritarian sentiments among young men and the backlash against perceived cultural and societal shifts.

Notable Quote:

"Donald Trump has been a middle finger to the feminist establishment." – Sam Seder [145:04]

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7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Sam Seder wraps up the episode by reiterating the critical need for democratic reforms and the importance of addressing both political and economic inequities. The conversations with Osita Nwanevu and Marc Maron underscore the multifaceted challenges facing modern democracies and the imperative to revitalize democratic institutions to ensure equitable representation and agency for all citizens.

Final Quote:

"We believe in not just saving democracy, but creating a new American democracy that empowers ordinary people in both political and economic spheres." – Osita Nwanevu [52:09]

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Summary: Episode 3556 of The Majority Report provides a comprehensive exploration of the current state of democracy, the looming economic challenges, and the evolving landscape of political comedy. Through thoughtful dialogue with Osita Nwanevu and Marc Maron, Sam Seder underscores the urgent need for structural reforms to restore and strengthen democratic principles, ensuring that governance remains by and for the people. The episode also critically examines Republican strategies in redistricting and the cultural shifts influencing political discourse, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of the forces shaping American politics today.

Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

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[Brian]

Take it easy on us.

[Sam Cedar]

We got a lot to get to today. Osita's book, I am about really almost three quarters, seven eighths through it. It is a fantastic, really, really important book. Very timely in terms of really examining what, when we talk about democracy, what are we talking about and why and how can we reform it if we get the chance. So we will get to that. In the meantime, Donald Trump is in a bit of a panic. New generic Democratic numbers coming out, or I should say generic polling showing that Democrats are Starting to pick up some steam. We're still over a year out from the midterms. But that is worrying some Republicans, obviously, to the point where they're trying to gerrymander and really in many respects break the gerrymander truce that had existed. I mean, it was obviously one sided, as most of these political truces tend to be. But Democrats seem to be determined to carry through with their threat of doing their own gerrymandering in states like New York and California. But the thing that's making the Trump regime panic the most are increasing signs that we are headed into stagflation. What is stagflation? It is when the economy is stagnant, not growing, or in a recession. We have seen a lot of evidence of that, both in terms of last quarter's GDP numbers and the, well, the supposed jobless claims that are increasing exponentially. We're also seeing the St. Louis Fed chair comes out today, says there are troubling signs of potential for stagflation. That is again, when the economy is stalled but inflation goes up. Remember, the Fed has a two pronged essentially mission, that is to keep inflation in check and to increase employment. And that's usually a balancing act, at least according to them. I have some skepticism in some respects, but both things are not supposed to happen simultaneously. Job losses and inflation are a rare occurrence and a bad one because it really limits the number of tools that you can use to deal with this. There's a private survey of purchasing managers which are now showing indications of inflation working its way through the system as the, the stores of stuff that people bought and imported in the run up to tariffs with the hopes that maybe the tariffs would just go away, that it would all be tacoed. They're starting to run out of those reserves, as it were. And here is Donald Trump's answer to dealing with the potential of stagflation. And that is to bring in Stephen Moore from the Heritage Foundation. I think he's still there. If you're my age, you know that this guy is a total joke. And they don't even bring him out on TV anymore because he's a laughingstock. But he still has one of those, you know, Heritage foundation sinecures. And this is what he does. He comes up with charts with secret numbers. Nobody that look really good, no one has seen these numbers, only at the Heritage Foundation. Here is Trump's impromptu press conference yesterday in the White House. And so I called the president because.

[Mark Maron]

I had some very good news from some new data that we've been able.

[Brian]

To put together that no one has ever seen before.

[Mark Maron]

And I'll just very quickly go through these. So I was telling the president that he did the right thing in.

[Sam Cedar]

When someone from the Heritage foundation says we have new data from numbers that nobody's ever seen before, and he's talking about labor statistics across the country, you should be very, very suspect.

[Brian]

Why?

[Sam Cedar]

Or just laughing. The Heritage foundation does not have the ability to find what's going on in the country better than the states or the federal government. But alas, there's charts. But there's charts. Go ahead.

[Mark Maron]

And I'll just very quickly go through these. So I was telling the president that he did the right thing in calling for a new head of the Bureau.

[Sam Cedar]

Of Labor Statistics because this shows that.

[Brian]

Over the last two years of the.

[Sam Cedar]

Biden administration, the BLS overestimated job creation.

[Mark Maron]

By 1.5 million jobs.

[Brian]

That's a. Mr. President, that's a gigantic error.

[Mark Maron]

And I don't know if she's. I'm not. Might have been an error.

[Sam Cedar]

That's the bad part. It was an error. It would be one thing.

[Mark Maron]

I don't think it's an error.

[Sam Cedar]

I think they did it purposely.

[Mark Maron]

Whether that. You may well be right. But even if it wasn't purposefully, it's incompetence.

[Brian]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. Keep the picture up there. Just to let you know, there were the. They did overestimate. That happens all the time. That's why they issue revisions, which they also did. That is the way it works. Very often the first numbers that come in for that first month are under or over estimates. And then within the following months, they provide revisions. You've seen this. If you've ever followed any of this, you know this is exactly how it always works, regardless of who's president. Go ahead.

[Mark Maron]

So 1.5 million jobs overestimated. We have access to the. We have access to the. Some data that no one else does on what has happened month by month with median household income. This is based on unpublished Census Bureau data. It will be released sometime in the next six months. But we get an advanced look at it.

[Sam Cedar]

And so I was telling the president.

[Mark Maron]

In his first five months in office.

[Brian]

The average median household income, adjusted for inflation for the average family in America is already up $1,174.

[Sam Cedar]

That's an incredible number. Just came out. Really unbelievable.

[Mark Maron]

So that's straight up.

[Sam Cedar]

If I would have said this, nobody would have believed. Thank God that someone like Steve. Even more credibility.

[Mark Maron]

So the next one compares. We finally have the 2024 data on what happened with real family income in the United States. And so what I did was I.

[Brian]

Compared the record and Donald Trump's first term with the Joe Biden first term.

[Mark Maron]

And you can see that, by the way, this, these dotted lines here, Mr. President, that's Covid. So if it had not been for Covid, these numbers would have been substantially better. But even taking account President Trump's Last year, in 2020, we saw a $6,400 real inflation gain and income for the.

[Brian]

Average family and that Joe Biden, which was measly $551.

[Mark Maron]

So, Mr. President, you get. You gain 10 times more income for.

[Brian]

The average family than Joe Biden. That's because of your.

[Sam Cedar]

I can't believe how great I'm doing. And that's taken into consideration, Covid, which.

[Mark Maron]

A lot of times you don't have.

[Sam Cedar]

To do that because we were. I'm very glad you did over almost 8,000 until. Look at that number. Okay, look at that. Look at that bulge.

[Mark Maron]

So then we looked at, you know, which families did the best.

[Brian]

We have data from the Census Bureau.

[Mark Maron]

That shows by income percentage. So the 25th percentile is the lowest income. 75th percentile is the highest income. What I find Fascinating about this, Mr.

[Brian]

President, is every income group did better.

[Mark Maron]

The red is President Trump. The blue is President Biden. Every single income group did better under President Trump. But what's really amazing is look what happened under Biden. The lowest income lost income under Biden.

[Sam Cedar]

They were poor.

[Mark Maron]

Four years after President Biden's presidency, no gain virtually whatsoever for the middle class.

[Brian]

And the rich was the only group.

[Mark Maron]

That did better under Biden, which is ironic because Biden keeps saying he was trying to get rid of income inequality. He made income inequality worse, not better. It was President Trump that reduced income inequality.

[Sam Cedar]

These numbers just came out, by the way. Yeah, they're brand new. We made them up. Just freshly made up numbers.

[Mark Maron]

I just showed you in percentage terms, Mr. President, these are the numbers in dollar terms. So even the lowest income, 25th percent, gained about $4,000.

[Sam Cedar]

Income.

[Mark Maron]

That's a lot for.

[Brian]

For a lower income family, $6,400 for the middle class and almost $10,000 for the richest.

[Mark Maron]

So you can see every income group.

[Brian]

Did better under Trump than Biden by a wide margin.

[Mark Maron]

That's the story.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, that is a story. That's a great story. Wait, show me the. Show me the graph where it just goes up. I don't even need to know what the numbers are. Just show me the graph. Put up number 15. This is moments later where Trump is very, very excited. Of this graph that shows things are getting. Look at. They're going straight up. You got it. This one chart really says it better than anything. If you look at this, this is great. But this chart, this is all great. Pretty amazing right here. Look at that chart. Forget about the numbers. All new numbers. We made them up. Okay, there you go. Well, there's the proof, ladies and gentlemen. Don't believe your lying eyes. They're new data that the Heritage foundation has received. Nobody else has access to it. They have a Harry Emden, the secret tunnel into the Census Bureau and. Unbelievable. We'll see if that works. In the meantime, in a moment, we're going to be talking to Osita Wanevu. He is contributing editor at the New Republic and more importantly, he's just come out with its first book. It's actually coming out in four days, but you can pre order it right now. The Right of the People, Democracy and the Case for a New America. A New American Founding. We'll be talking to him in just a moment. First, couple words from our sponsors. I've been using this product for a couple of years. You know, I'm getting a little bit older. One of my few attributes is that I still have a full head of hair. But I noticed a couple years ago it was thinning a little bit, did not want to take drugs and I started to take Nutrafol. We had it in the office. They had wanted to sponsor the show years ago, but there was nobody interested. And I started to take it a couple years later. And it turns out it's not just hype, it's physician formulated, it's clinically tested and it's even recommended by dermatologists. Takes about six to 12 months before you see noticeable improvement, but I've been there. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand. It's trusted by over one and a half million people. You can feel great about what you're putting into your body. Since Nutrafol hair growth supplements are backed by peer reviewed studies and NSF Content Certified, which is the gold standard in third party certification for supplements. A lot of supplements rely only on ingredient studies. Nutrafol takes their final formulation clinically tests those to assure their efficacy. They use a variety of hair measurement tools like hair counts, pull tests to assess growth, quality, shedding and texture. For me, I just look in the towel, how much hair is in the towel after I dry my hair and it's gone down. I could see it. Adding neutral fall to your daily routine is also super simple. You can see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months with Nutrafol for a limited time Nutrafol offering you $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. When you go to Nutrafol.com enter the promo code TMR10. That's the letters TMR. The number one zero no spaces. Find out why Nutrafol is the best selling hair growth supplement [e-mail] spelled n u t r a f o l.com promo code tmr10 that's nutrafol.com promo code tmr10 also sponsoring the program today. Move down to a different part of the body. It is time to rethink how we're caring for our swampiest body parts. That's why Emma's out today. She doesn't like when I do these reads.

[Brian]

Hates it.

[Sam Cedar]

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[Brian]

Yeah. So, I mean, I've been working on this book since 2021. I've been covering American politics for about nine, ten years now. And as I was sort of gathering ideas for, it occurred to me that in my time writing about politics, democracy was kind of a central concept. Obviously, Trump wins in 2016 with an electoral college victory rather than a popular vote victory. Second time in 25 years that's happened. I remember being in second grade when Bush won the same way and sort of internalizing that basic sense of unfairness and carrying it with me. But even beyond that and beyond the things that followed the 2016 election, the effort to overturn the 2020 election, the attempted coup, you know, as I was covering a Democratic primary in 2020, I found myself having to write over and over and over again, well, you know, even if Democrats win, probably not going to pass Medicare for all, probably not going to pass a green New Deal probably not going to pass immigration reform for like structural reasons, that there are these structural obstacles to getting a lot of that agenda passed that had to be dealt with. And I got tired of writing that without interrogating the system behind it. Like, why is it the case we have a citizen that's set up this way? When Republicans say, in response to some of these arguments, well, you know, we're not supposed to be democracy in the first place, we're a republic, what's the kind of philosophical response you can make to that? How do you maybe persuade people who are persuaded by that argument that that's actually wrong? So all of this was kind of in the air as I thought about, you know, what would be worth writing about. And I think that the results of November kind of vindicate that choice. I mean, Democrats ran pretty hard on a pro democracy message. I don't think you could have escaped that unless you were living under a rock. I think voters heard that message and they were like, actually, you know, as much as we might like democracy, conceptually, we actually think that Donald Trump's gonna be better on the price of groceries, on rent, on my basic material needs. And so there's this fundamental challenge here where, as you say, people aren't taking the centrality of democracy for granted. People don't take it for granted that we have a democracy in the first place that's worth saving and so on. So this is, I think, an ideal time to sort of go back to first principles. What does this word actually mean? What does it commit us to? Is the system we have now democratic? And if it's not, what actually gets us there and what actually brings most of the American people along with us on a project of democratic reform.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the need. Again, I remember Ben Rhodes writing an op ed of all people in the wake of the election saying, you're going around talking about saving democracy and what a lot of people are hearing is the system that has been screwing us. And so there's sort of like a, there's a two part challenge which you address in the book, which is one, arguing why democracy is, I guess, the least worst of our options, essentially, as you quote Churchill, and two, how we can make our democracy actually work. Let's go through, I just wanna go through like the, the three elements that you talk about that are pillars of democracy, agency, dynamism and procedure. Walk us through those briefly.

[Brian]

Sure. So these are like three brass, tax reasons why we should prefer democracy to some kind of rule by the Few, whether that's a king or an oligarch, whatever. So agency is the principle that we have the power, ourselves as the governed, to determine what our problems are and how to solve them. We're not waiting for some external entity to say, this is wrong, this is messed up. I feel like fixing it. We ourselves, the people who are subject to governance, have the ability to do that on our own. That's important and powerful. The second thing is dynamism. Democracy has all of these kind of inbuilt features that allow for change to happen. There are in the times where you canvass the public, you evaluate how policies are doing, you evaluate how particular policymakers are doing, and you have systems by which you can replace those people. You don't really get that as a structural feature of rule by the few or ruled by a single person. And the last thing is procedure. Democracy offers us ways to change things stably and peacefully. In an ideal world, in the abstract, you're not having to overthrow somebody every time you want something get done. You're not having to go out and fight people in the streets. You have a system, a process through which people can collectively make change together in stable and predictable kinds of ways. These are, I think, core practical reasons why democracy, I think, succeeds as a system of governance beyond the alternatives. But I also talk too about this kind of background ideal, which I find in some ways even more compelling than the kind of nuts and bolts technical arguments, which is democracy proceeds from the principle that we are all entitled to a basic level of control and agency over the conditions that shape our lives. We're not just helplessly victims of circumstance and the things that happen to happen to us. We're not enthralled, the people who happen to be richer or more powerful, or some other part of the hierarchy that we're born into. We ourselves, each and every one of us, has some capacity to exercise a level of agency over what's going on in our lives and the ability to direct our lives. That is, I think, a very, very powerful, compelling intuition. And I think it's one that radicalizes or at least broadens our conception of what democracy ought to be, as I also talk about in this book. So if you take that principle seriously, it becomes very easy to say then, well, obviously we're entitled to more than just a ballot every couple of years in Washington. We're also governed in many important ways. At work, we're governed in the economy. The decisions that are made at the top of corporations that we work for often affect us more intimately immediately and directly than decisions being made by politicians. And so there's also a level of democratic agency that I think we're entitled to in the economy. Yeah, these are sort of the broad strokes reasons why democracy is compelling. And the other thing I should say here too is that the basic, most simple definition of democracy, the only reasons why it's good, the definition I think I find most compelling is a system in which the governed themselves govern. Or as Lincoln put government of, by and for the people. You can read a lot of dusty abstract books with a lot of formulas to get you through working through what democracy is all about. But I think that's the core kernel of the idea.

[Sam Cedar]

And it seems to me too, I mean that it defines goals, democracy when it's working. And we put an asterisk on all this because you address the failures of our democracy. And we'll get into that in a moment. But when it's working, it defines the goals and thereby sort of like.

[Brian]

And.

[Sam Cedar]

If the democracy is working, it increases the competency to reach those goals. I mean, I guess the biggest illustration of this that I've used over the years is the Gates foundation and their work in education. A billionaire has the ability to come in, dump several billion dollars into a system, completely reshape the way that we do education, and then 10 years later they hire the RAND Corporation to do a report on it. And the report says, yeah, we screwed up, we should just listen to educators. Meanwhile, we have a multi decade sort of experiment that has fundamentally changed our education system and we've got to recover from it. All this value added teaching and high stakes testing and the lack of competency in that project is a function of the procedure in which the goals were set. Because they were wrong in their entire estimation and because they didn't have educators, essentially all the stakeholders involved in setting what the attempt to so called reform education is. And our government works in a similar fashion.

[Brian]

Yeah, no, I think that's right. And sometimes, and I have a whole chapter where I talk about critics of democracy, criticisms democracy I think are worth addressing. In a lot of that rhetoric you'll often get the idea that, well, people are stupid. And so what we should do instead is have a system where we get the smartest people in the world to make all decisions for us because they know better. I think that's kind of what wealthy people especially would prefer. They're obviously in their own estimation the smartest people. So they should be part of the process. But, you know, so there was a test that I referenced in the book where Philip Tetlock, this researcher in the 2000s, gathered a bunch of experts and had them try to make predictions about certain outcomes in the future, gathered dozens or hundreds of these predictions and found that they were actually no better at guessing than if they'd chosen randomly. That's not a knock on the concept of expertise or that expertise is important. But there's something, I think, delusional about saying that by restricting the number of people who party to a process, restricting access to a process that intrinsically gives you more sensible, more just more logical governance, whether that's talking about a nonprofit or whether talking about government, some researchers that I've mentioned in the book, there's actually something special about large groups of people coming together and the collective intelligence of that process coming through. Rather than restricting choices to a few people, you have different perspectives come into play that wouldn't otherwise be in the room. People can contribute different bits of knowledge to the process. But I think that people who advocate for democracy are always running up against that fundamental distrust in the public and fundamental distress and distributed decision making. And I think that that's one of the things that we have to fight now, not just from the right, but from a lot of, I think, technocratic centrists.

[Sam Cedar]

And let's talk about you tackle how democracy works when it works. There were three major characteristics you outlined. Equality, responsiveness and majoritarianism. I mean, we start to, it starts to. It brings in stark relief where our deficits are in terms of a democracy. Talk briefly about those three elements. And I think for a lot of people it's somewhat self evident where we're lacking in those.

[Brian]

Yeah, so I mean, these are three principles, I think, end up being commonsensical when you describe them to people. Equality. In a democratic system, every party to a collective choice has to be an equal kind of standing. If you leave the door open to some other kind of arrangement, some people have more rights than others, some people whose votes count more than others. That leaves open the possibility. While there's some smaller class of people that's governing, it's not the collective as a whole. It's some subset that has more privileges, more rights. So we need equality, responsiveness. Democracy is not a suggestion box. When the people come together to make a decision, to make a choice that means something, they act with some kind of authority and the system is obligated to respond in some kind of way. The last thing, majoritarianism. Of all the different ways in which people can make a choice collectively from unanimous agreement, all the Way through some form of minority rule. Majority rule is the only principle that's consistent with equality. So if two people want something, three people want some other thing, there's no way that the two get their way over the three unless there's some kind of inequality involved in the process. You need majoritarianism, I think, for any of this to really make sense. Again, they all sound common school principles. But immediately you start analyzing the system we have and it's obvious that we flout that in some fundamental ways. So I've done a number of these talks already in D.C. and always make a point of saying, look, we are sitting right now in a city of about 700,000 people that does not have a full and equal say in governance in the federal government, the government, they have a non voting delegate, El Holmes Norton, who cannot vote in the final passage of legislation. There are 4 million Americans for whom that is true. So under not only that schema that I outlined, but I think any reasonable conception of democracy, those people are not living in a democratic society. They're governed by a federal government. They don't have a full and equal voice in beyond that. Even for those of us who do have representation, that representation is very unequally. Apportioned. Resident of Wyoming, on the basis of population has about 67 times representation. As somebody who lives in California. California would be if it were its own country. One of the 40 largest countries in the world, one of the largest economies in the world, has the same number of seats in the Senate as Wyoming, a city with fewer people, in fact than Washington D.C. does. That doesn't make any sense, democratically speaking. You learn in grade school that the House balances this out. It's not true in any meaningful way. The Senate alone decides on judicial appointments. It decides on the executive appointments. Obviously you need both houses to pass any kind of ordinary legislation. So those inequities really, really matter and I think have contributed to so much of the dysfunction that we see in our system and in our politics.

[Sam Cedar]

Those, I mean, those are by design. I mean we're just at the by design sort of, I guess, silo of failures of how a democracy is supposed to work. Before we even get into how much of these things have also been corrupted by money or the, the machinations within those structures.

[Brian]

Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, I do spend some time talking about money and politics. I do think we should do something about Citizens United and campaign finance, lobbying and all these things we talk about all the time. But below that and beyond that, we have A lot of deep structural inequities in the system. They're actually only going to get worse. Population dynamics are going to make the inequities in the Senate worse, worse over time. And given all the problems we face as a country, whether it's climate change or immigration, whatever it is that we want to collectively solve in a reasonable way, the design of the system has been a real barrier to getting things done. And it's time for us to confront that, especially given, I think it's fair to say, the fact that Donald Trump is sitting here as president today largely is a function of the system's inequities. Now, he won the popular vote in 2024. I don't deny that or dismiss that. But he came into the 2024 election as a former president, which is a pretty nifty thing to be as a presidential candidate. And he's a former president because he won the 2016 election by electoral College victory. He sustained in office during two impeachment attempts in which senators representing majorities of the country, I think over 50% the first time, over 60% the second time, voting to remove him from office, the threshold was so high it didn't matter. So Donald Trump has been sustained by these features of the system, and the fact that he seems like he's been invulnerable to them, I think is part of what's attracted so many people to his candidacy and to him as a political figure. This is a guy who you can't tame, who can't be touched and has this kind of power. And that's one more reason that I should consider voting for him, because he's going to use that power to my advantage. These are impressions that were created by the framework that we've been handed down. And if we are against authoritarianism, we should be taking a look at not just Donald Trump's own personal conduct, not even just the Republican Party's insanity, but the ways in which the system has allowed him to come to power and has continued pulling the party from our perspective, to the right.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't want to go back too much here, but that, that's what I find so important about your book, is that, you know, we have. It's not hard. You don't have to do too much digging to find J.D. vance. I mean, you know, Donald Trump, I don't know that is. Has done much thinking about this, but you don't have to dig too far to find JD Vance. And a lot of the people who are involved in the Trump administration And ideology that says democracy is not, is is not the least worst of bad options. But that a some, you know, I'm thinking, you know, but is in fact inferior to a benevolent leader, whether it's sort of like Peter Thiel or Curtis Yarvin or J.D. vance and all of the minions are Andreessen. I mean, those are just the people who have said it more publicly because they're I guess maybe less concerned about being tagged in this way. But this argument that authoritarianism is actually good, we could get a benevolent leader, I guess, presumably. And this minoritarianism has sort of ushered that era in, which is also why it's important to talk about these critiques. But let's also talk about what you deal with in the second half of the book, which is a new founding. You know, we've talked on this program many, many times about the Reconstruction as really the found, you know, the founding of the America we live in Today and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments in particular as to how they reshaped our society and you know, continue. I think like, you know, the vast majority of Supreme Court cases, constitutional cases, deal with the 14th amendment in some fashion or another. Talk about what we need to do politically to fix our democracy in the timeline. Because what, you know, and undergirding this, of course, we have to fight the authoritarianism now without any sort of like powers or I should say levers of power within the system as opposed to sort of fighting authoritarianism with just people power and et cetera. But what do you see as the sort of like timeline for political power? Because there have been movements to amend the Constitution, but sequentially you don't want to do that too early because you need to be ready.

[Brian]

Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a really good question. It's one that I wrestle with especially towards the end of the book. I mean, I think that there are shorter term goals and longer term goals. There are things that we can do in the next couple of years if Democrats take Washington again to democratize the system and bring things further in line with our aspirations here. So the for the People act, the John Lewis Voting Rights act that came up early in the Biden administration, those things should be revived. So they would have made it easier to vote. They would have protected voting rights in all kinds of ways, dealt with gerrymandering, which is now obviously a conversation again as it is reliably after every census. So those kinds of legislative fixes I think are well within reach, more ambitious things that Democrats didn't consider like adding new state, provided the states and the territories, rather territories in question want to become states should be on the table. Adding justices to the Supreme Court to bring that in balance with political outcomes and maybe leading towards some kind of nonpartisan reform later on that should be pursued. So there are things like that that ought to be done and could be done as a matter of political will in the next few years. But the longer term horizon, where I'm talking about things like dealing with the Senate, getting rid of the Senate or fundamentally changing it someday, that's going to take a bit of time. And I think that takes really the cultivation, building of a political movement for democracy that doesn't really exist yet. People feel anxious about Donald Trump, they feel anxious about democracy, maybe in the abstract. But when it comes to these kind of structural reforms, I think it's mostly an academic conversation, mostly conversation that liberal law professors have been driving. I think there needs to be a built need amongst the American public or felt need amongst American publics that if we don't resolve these structural inequities, we're actually going to be far from improving the policy making process and improving their lives in the way that we'd expect a democratic system to. There needs to be fundamental changes in order to make Washington work better in the long run. And I think the way to do that, my ideas here are very kind of loose, but convincing people that this is more than just an abstract struggle and these are more than abstract challenges, that when the Senate functions as it does, the way the electoral college functions the way that it does, that means that it's harder for us to deliver more rights to workers, deliver people healthcare, it's harder for us to deliver childcare. All these policy items that we want to accomplish, we don't get them. In a world where the system is inequitably set up in the way that it's been, that has to be kind of the leading edge of the argument. It can't just be a bunch of professors came here and said is malapportioned by this number. It has to be really, really felt. And I think the way you get people to feel that too is again, appealing to this background idea. Do we ourselves have a measure of agency over a society or are we in a society that's run by Elon Musk and billionaires? Do we as the ordinary American people have some capacity to create the country that we want? Or is that going to be left to people who are already wealthy and already powerful? That's the fundamental question. And I think that broadens our sense of crisis. Even when Donald Trump goes, and even if Democrats come in to government next time around, we will still be living in a society that is deeply economically unequal in a way that's going to undermine and threaten democracy. Elon Musk is a perfect example of this. Wealthiest man in the world donates 250, $260 million to a campaign, is awarded with the post in government where he does whatever he wants and reworks the executive branch. We're on the way to having our first trillionaires in this country. We can leave this point of immediate crisis and find ourselves in a world where democracy or the democratic ideal is still fundamentally threatened. And people need to feel that in order to believe in the need for deep reform.

[Sam Cedar]

Where are we in the course of. Or where should we be? Or what do you perceive where we should be in the sort of, I guess, rhetorical sequencing? Because, I mean, to say the, you know, obviously to say we need to save democracy, insufficient. And I know you believe that we need to pair this with sort of the material deprivations or benefits that we could get, depending on how you look at it, with a functioning democracy and where down the line, I guess, on the sort of, like, hierarchy of how broad those questions are. I mean, I don't know. I can't remember if you identify as a democratic socialist or not, but where we should be as a rhetorically at this point, both from like a, you know, sort of just an electoral standpoint and where what kind of candidates we should be having. Is it enough, I guess, to sort of say, like, we're going to get rid of the authoritarian without talking about the reasons why and how sort of material those reasons are?

[Brian]

Yeah, I mean, what I always say is that I'm for. I'm for democracy in the broadest meaning and sense of that word. And so if we believe in democracy, again, that means that we're not just entitled to the vote and need to protect the vote, but it matters to us that an Amazon worker or a Walmart worker or a McDonald's worker can, on the one hand, vote. And I think this is right on the basis of what they think our foreign policy should be with respect to Russia or Iran, but has no place in their life where they can say, this is how I think Amazon should be run. This is how I think Walmart should be run. This is how I think McDonald's should be run. That's a fundamental inequity and a democratic problem. How can it be that in the places where we are governed more intimately, immediately and directly, often than decisions that are made in Washington, D.C. how can it be the places where we spend a third of our lives and drive our livelihoods? We have no agency and no say over our working lives. That is a democratic challenge. And so I think what we say is, look, we believe in not just saving democracy, protecting democracy. The project here is to create for the first time, American democracy. This is a constructive project, a founding in which we will not only have a democratic political system, but we'll also move towards a democratic economy. And in that way really instantiate and create a society that is truly governed by ordinary people. That's the message, that's the vision. It's a way of talking about democracy. That's not just the defense of institutions at this time, when so many Americans distrust institutions, it's saying, there is a place we want to go to society. There is a vision driving and animating us of what a more democratic society looks like, of what a more just society would look like. And we are going to go there instituting both political and economic reforms to empower us and to wrest power back from the millionaires and the billionaires and the executives and the investors on Wall street who don't have the rights, by virtue of their wealth, by virtue of the position in the economy, to lord over us, both in the economy and in politics.

[Sam Cedar]

And you talked specifically about Sanders proposal to develop structures that are more democratic within the workplace. Just briefly, just outline that for folks, because I don't think it gets much attention.

[Brian]

No, it doesn't. And I think it's wild because this was one of, I think, the most ambitious policy proposals any presidential candidate has made in the history of this country, got very little attention in 2020. So Sanders idea, derived from the Labour Party, was that companies of a certain size, more than $100 million in revenue or in the balance sheet, or if they're just publicly traded at all, would be required over time to contribute about 20% of their shares to a fund that would be owned and controlled by their own workers. If you were worker at Amazon, there'd be a fund at Amazon where 20% of Amazon's shares go that would pay you as a worker a dividend and also give you voting rights over decisions at Amazon. So it's 20%, it's not the majority. But this would still be a remarkable amount of power relative to now given to the workers and major corporations in this country. It would be a way to embed democracy within these corporate structures and There are all kinds of reforms I talk about in this vein towards the end of the book because, again, I don't think that we can cleave apart the political and the economic sphere here, both as a matter of principle and as a practical reality. If inequality persists in the economy in the way that it's been, that corrodes and corrupts and prevents Washington from functioning the way that it ought to, prevents our cities and communities and states from functioning the way that they ought to because they're dominated by the wealth the people are extracting from the economy. There has to be some kind of interwovenness here. And I think that one of the reasons why our democratic reform efforts on the political side have not succeeded is because we haven't taken the economic components seriously. You cannot do campaign finance reform. You cannot do lobbying reform, or at least it's going to be very, very hard if the economy is dominated by people who then use their wealth to influence a political process and prevent you from enacting those reforms. The other way that I think they're connected is, and this ought to be, you know, attractive to people who are very, very concerned about tribalism, polarization, all these kinds of things. If democracy is something that we practice not just every couple years in an election, but on a regular basis at work, we're learning how to engage with other people who might disagree with us, to compromise, to work together, to present your ideas, speak publicly, all of these skills that we don't really use or practice or develop outside elections. If work becomes a venue for those things that might actually lead to better politics in some way, it's worth trying, at least developing these skills on a more regular basis in the places where we spend so much of our time. So anyway, I think that there are all kinds of reasons why the economic sphere, the concept of economic democracy, which used to be talked about by the Roosevelts and other folks, why that needs to make a resurgence here at this moment now, because I don't know that the project of political reform succeeds without that.

[Sam Cedar]

This seems to be the biggest sort of the biggest challenge, it seems to me, is how do you intervene in a system now that is self perpetuating? Like we're having this fight in the Democratic Party, obviously, you know, shorthand Bernie on his oligarchy tour, and then, I don't know, allowing crypto to buy essentially a Wild west market which is sure to catch up with us at one point. But where, how do you break the cycle? Like where the party is now sort of captured by the we've hit some type of critical mass where the party in the system is captured by these things that have corrupted democracy to the extent that we could even have a functioning one with the structure that we had. The loss of faith in institutions, the increase money in our politics, the exploitation of the weaknesses of the structure of our democracy. What is the method in which we intervene?

[Brian]

Yeah, I mean, I think that you have to build a public for this, you have to build a movement around these ideas. And you know, I think that one of the central vehicles for that ought to be the labor movement in particular. I talk about that in the book. I think that unions are an instantiation of economic democracy to give workers more power agency at work through a collectively decided upon vehicle. When unions were active in this country, they contributed to the well being of even non union members by, you know, contributing to the political efforts behind the Great Society and New Deal. But I think that can also be the vehicles for transforming democratic politics in particular, if we empower them. Again, these are again organizational venues, places where people can come together and participate in politics in new ways to be newly empowered as workers. So that's why people have been on the case about unions for a long time. I think we should see that and frame that as a democratic struggle so that even people who necessarily consider themselves on the left but they're worried about authoritarianism, we say, well, this is also a reason why you should be invested in things like the pro act empowering unions, again, because these are vehicles, mechanisms for democracy too. So uniting democrats who are again angry about Donald Trump, angry about authoritarianism, with people with an economic agenda on the left on democratic grounds, bringing those two sides of the party together, I think would be one way of electorally making some changes in primaries and within contests. But I think that those constituencies are very cleaved apart. You have people who are very incensed about Trump but don't have an economic agenda. And I think that it's possible to bring those people over closer to our side on the basis of democratic principles. You don't have to call yourself a leftist or a socialist necessarily, but if you believe in democracy, well, that implies certain things about the economy you should also join in with. That's what I would try. As far as the question of how we exert our influence within the Democratic Party is concerned, I think that there is an electoral message that pulls those sides of the party together in ways that left candidates might be able to utilize in primaries moving forward.

[Sam Cedar]

I have to say that today one of the more Hopeful things I saw, oddly, came from James Carville. I don't know how much power he has in the context of the Democratic establishment these days, but he's calling for more aggressively adding states when Democrats get back into power, the hopes that they do, and expanding the Supreme Court, which I think that some of these procedural things, structural things, will also give momentum and more ability to those people who want to push these more material economic reforms.

[Brian]

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if you pass a piece of pro labor legislation now and you haven't put more liberal justices on, the Supreme Court maybe gets torn apart by this conservative majority. Right. So you need to deal with the court for that reason first. I think that there's like a logical priority here where statehood and packing court and Democratic reforms of the kind that were in the for the People act, those happen first and then enable the passage of other parts of the substantive agenda later on. But I think it's important for people to understand or be told, at least by Democrats, because I think it's true that the reason why these things ought to happen is not just this kind of naked partisan power grab for its own sake, but this is the way to make the system more democratic. And this is the way constructively or substantively. Rather, we make it easier for us to pass the policies the American people want and need. If people wake up one day and they see on CNN that Democrats have adjusted Supreme Court or they've, they've granted statehood to a bunch of territories and they don't know why that's happened, there's no context for it, and they don't have any kind of background reason to support it, I think that they'll fall for a lot of propaganda and a lot of critical arguments from the right and maybe from the center about why this is bad, there needs to be a real compelling message animating support for these policies. So it's good that Carville is saying that this needs to happen, but I think there needs to be a rhetoric and argument about democracy, what it means, why we don't have one, why we need one that the public is hearing and the public believes to move these things forward. Right now, what the public is getting is the Constitution is great, the institutions are great, and Donald Trump's breaking them. And so to switch over and say we're going to do all kinds of new post institutional or non institutional stuff, it's going to hit, I think, the American voter, weirdly, unless we've actually built up this argument that, no, actually the Constitution is not perfect. It was not this thing that was signed and came down on tablets from some mountain. It was a political compromise and so on. If we're not talking about the need for institutional reform and then we go on and expect our ability to do it. When Democrats come to power, I think we're not going to succeed in the way that we ought to.

[Sam Cedar]

It's interesting because I feel like the fight that we're seeing in terms of redistricting is a model. You know, starting to read stories now. You know, the Democrats have reversed themselves in this instance and it doesn't seem to be sticking too hard. And Republicans trying to argue the hypocrisy is always sort of a fun, a fun look for them. But this is sort of like a blueprint for that. Right. Where it's sort of like we're not going to be bound by norms for the sake of. Without recognizing that it adds to inequities.

[Brian]

Yeah, it could be a model. I think that Democrats who are saying we're just going to do this in kind, I mean, obviously, I think that makes some substantive sense. I don't think I'm hearing enough about why for an ordinary person who's not plugged into politics, this is a good thing for Democrats to do in response. I think that they need to be told a story here. There needs to be a kind of narrative that gets them to understand, okay, we have this messed up process for redistricting, which we should change, by the way, but we have this messed up process for redistricting. Republicans invested a lot in doing it before it contributed to the erosion, the destruction of the democratic process. It allowed for people who supported Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election to be elected. And so Democrats now have grounds to redistrict in this particular way now, not just because we like winning for the sake of winning, but because we're going to use these new seats to deliver us a more just democratic system in the future. That I feel like is not. I feel like that idea is not in the mix right now as much as just.

[Sam Cedar]

It's just kind of bravado. Exactly. And there needs to be a more material foundation for any of this stuff. And I think some of the Democrats have an allergy to that, but hopefully they'll lose it. Osita Waenevu the book is the Right of the Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding. Really important, very timely book. I certainly feel like I need to brush up on why some of these sort of foundational claims that I have made over the course of 20 years of doing this, I things I never thought I'd have to justify and need to be justified now. Really appreciate your coming on and talking about it.

[Brian]

Thanks as always.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break and of course, we're going to put a link to Osita's book at Majority FM and in the podcast and YouTube description. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, apparently Marc Maron has showed up to talk about the ending of his podcast and how it appears that those podcasts that came out of Air America, this one may end up lasting longer. We'll be right back after this. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority part. Emma Vigland is out today. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure to welcome back to the program Mark Maron of the WTF pod. And of course, you have a new special out, too.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, new special Panicked on hbo. It's kind of, it's the best one, I think.

[Sam Cedar]

You seem really happy to be here, Mark.

[Mark Maron]

I'm thrilled, Sam. I'm always thrilled to wonder what I'm going to have to take. What am I going to have to put up with now? I was just going to texting.

[Sam Cedar]

I was explaining to Brian, who's new on the show. It's like, it's just so obvious that Mark is really, this is the level of reluctance that is just coming across. You can't see it in the text per se, but the subtext of the texts that brought this about.

[Mark Maron]

You and I go back and, you know, there's always sort of the question of like, this is going to start off nice and then I'm probably going to take a couple of hits, but I don't mind that. And then, you know, and then you're going to feel better about yourself. And I'm going to say, why did I do that?

[Sam Cedar]

Right. I mean, that's, and that's why I was actually contemplating coming in very quick with the attacks and then trying to finish in a more friendly fashion. You've been all over the place these days. You've done so much media. Go ahead.

[Mark Maron]

No, you go.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I mean, you're wrapping up. Wtf. And you, you know, you, I mean, you've been on a, a huge media junk and I've seen you every.

[Mark Maron]

What's, it's crazy because everything was happening at once. You know, Brendan and I announced that we were stopping it with, you know, with enough time for everybody to adjust and for there to be some sort of kind of a tension for it. Because when you choose to stop something and decide that this is no longer a desperate need to, you know, provide content and that the way we did it sort of is a body of work. So when you stop it and you have this legacy of this body of work and. And it did have whatever impact it had culturally, it gets attention. And along with that, then I had, you know, the stick thing with Owen Wilson and then the bad guys movie and the doc and then the special. So it's been fucking nuts.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, you know, I haven't seen the doc. Am I in it? I was interviewed. I did.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, you are in it. Yeah, it just got. It got a distribution deal, and I think it should be in some theaters in October, I guess we're hoping.

[Sam Cedar]

And you financed this documentary?

[Mark Maron]

No, I didn't have anything to do with it.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm joking.

[Mark Maron]

No, I mean, you know, I. It was interesting, though, you know, with Steven Fine Arts, and in terms of, you know, like, who I am and what I do, like, you know, people always wonder about, you know, how much control do you have over Doc? And I just. I told him to do whatever he's gonna do. I mean, it, you know, how much am I really hiding? You know, so it's not like. I mean, I don't look great in some of it.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that. I mean, that comes across just when you. When that comes across just when. I mean, even in this interview, I think there's a lot of things that people are probably already saying.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, well, that was. The thing is that I find that the funny thing about the doc is Steven Fine Arts, who directed my. This new special and my last one, and he directed the doc. And, you know, I find him annoying. And so he was following me around for three years. So the tone of the doc, a lot of it, unfortunately, is me going, like, when is this gonna end? How long do we. So. So I kind of. I seem more cranky than I really am.

[Sam Cedar]

Really?

[Mark Maron]

I think so.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, do you not, like. Does that. You don't feel like that crankiness is just there? You think it was. It was a function of the documentarian being there. I mean, maybe it's like one of those things. Like, what is it? The. The. What is it? I can never remember what that. What that principle is. Like, something observed doesn't. What is it? The height? Somebody. I don't know.

[Mark Maron]

Don't you have a producer sitting there? He's trying to figure out how to look that up.

[Sam Cedar]

He's playing Tetris on His phone. Oh, that's record score.

[Mark Maron]

The. Well, I mean, okay, so. But you know me and, you know, like, I think what's happened is if I am cranky, that was the hardest thing about the doc is watching me at home and living my life from an outside point of view. I was like, Jesus Christ, this guy's, you know, a little peculiar. And then they also had clips of me doing comedy in the 80s, and that was the cringiest part. All the emotional stuff I had no problem with. But seeing me at stitches in 1988, I gave him that. I gave him a bunch of stuff I have in boxes. And that was the hardest thing to watch. But, yeah, I get that I'm cranky, but I don't think I'm angry cranky like I used to be. I think that, like, there's a, you know, it's a little softer.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I was going to say that. I mean, the show, my observation of you over the course of the past, like, whatever. It's been 15, 16 years since we worked together at.

[Mark Maron]

We had a very successful Break Room Live.

[Sam Cedar]

That Break Room Live.

[Mark Maron]

Get those clips on YouTube.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think I actually have. Still have control of that account, but.

[Mark Maron]

Nevertheless, get it out there. This is great.

[Sam Cedar]

Believe me, believe me, this is, this is, this is the time to cash in on that. There's a lot of recipes.

[Mark Maron]

We were ahead of the curve doing streaming before people could stream. I don't think people really give us credit for that. We were, we were doing the streaming thing before anyone even knew how to do it.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I mean, to be fair, you were doing it even ten years before that with that. What was it? That, that, that.

[Mark Maron]

Oh, yeah, the Microsoft. The. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

What was that called?

[Mark Maron]

That called.

[Sam Cedar]

This is. I can't remember now that.

[Mark Maron]

But yeah, it only streamed within the Microsoft campus, I think.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, you could. I mean, it was all. And it was literally. I think it was literally mostly dial up streaming. It's.

[Mark Maron]

I think so. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Because all the animation frames a minute.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, it was all clunky. It was produced by Broadway Video, Jim Biederman.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Mark Maron]

And Nick McKinney was the head writer and we interviewed a lot of people that were, you know, available through snl. That in Nobody. I don't even think it exists anywhere.

[Sam Cedar]

No. I don't even know if there's tapes. I did a couple of stringer things for you, I think, but it was literally. I think it was in the next room. But nevertheless, my observation is that over the course of the past 16 years, and you've, you know, you've had a tremendous amount of success, first with the show and then with your acting and with your new glasses and all of it. And you also. I mean, you suffered some. Some tragedy with your girlfriend passing and. But it definitely sort of took some of the rough edges off. I think some of the resent that you carried around about, you know, your career and other people's success, which I think is, you know, well documented, faded. The real question is, well, yeah, definitely. And that's. That's what my. That's what my next question is. How quickly do you think you're gonna revert after the show is canceled? Like, it's. The last show is gonna be in September. Do you think this is gonna be something like, you're gonna make it to Thanksgiving, or will it take longer for you to revert back to that?

[Mark Maron]

I don't know, because I'm. I have, like. I'm very aware of it, of my own insecurities and jealousies, and I have been able to frame it in a different way than I used to. Like, at some point, I had the realization that I'm jealous of people that are doing something I don't even want to do. On top of that, I couldn't do it. So I've become more comfortable with my place in the world. And I think some of the resentment, it's not. I think most of what I could have been, it could have been resentment at a different time. I think most of the stuff that I'm angry about in terms of the community that I exist in and work in is fairly justified. So I've become better at separating my own personal issues that come from insecurity, whatever, and just principle. So that's gotten a little better. And certainly the world of comedy right now, there is a way I want.

[Sam Cedar]

To get to that. Some of that stuff.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah. To discuss that. And I think an honest way that isn't based in pettiness, but I am concerned about the amount of time I'm going to have, and sadly, the resentment, because it can't fuel me like it used to because I'm onto myself. I'm more concerned about just general sadness and anxiety. That seems to be the bigger fear, is that I have this space. I'm not going to run around hating on people or starting shit, but the weight of the world will get me into a place of despair that I don't have an outlet for. So I have to find out a way to get personal support and also figure out what to do. With my work from this point on.

[Sam Cedar]

You know, I mean, this is. There's a couple of things, I think that you have an option, I would say a therapist, like, just. Yeah, you.

[Mark Maron]

With.

[Sam Cedar]

You know, I'm saying, like, maybe 15 hours here at the house, a day.

[Mark Maron]

In the guest room.

[Sam Cedar]

I. I think, like, your Twitter feed, or. Could end up being very problematic for you at one point.

[Mark Maron]

I do any of it now.

[Sam Cedar]

You don't. I'm talking about after the show is done. Oh, yeah.

[Mark Maron]

No, no, no. Here's what will happen. You know, Twitter is out. You know, I just. I promote the show. You know, I post the show up, and that's it. And I. I don't engage with anymore because the algorithm. Algorithm is as such words. Like what? I don't even read that many. I don't read.

[Sam Cedar]

Maybe it's Instagram or something. Whatever. It's gonna.

[Mark Maron]

I'll get on Instagram live, probably, and.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, that's gonna be a problem.

[Mark Maron]

It might be. My big fear is, like, I've had Brendan McDonald, you know, kind of, you know, watching my back for 20 years, and he's the guy like, you know, I put stuff in the opening monologues of the podcast where I know, like, Brendan's not gonna put this in there. So, like, he's actually protected me from myself for a long time. But even in this round of press, I do have an inner Brendan. So even during this round of press, I was fairly calculating about, you know, whatever beefs I had and whether they were justified or not. So, like, I'm not. I do have a propensity to sort of impulsively say things, but I do have a little don't hit send thing in my head about what comes out of my mouth.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm. I know that you have that now. I'm just saying that when the show is like, you know, because, listen, there's been. There's a lot of, like, comedians out there who you see at the clubs who, you know, are going to be careful not to. Over the past couple years, 10 years plus, I can't get on the wrong side of Marin because I want to go do his show. And then now they're just going to be like, fuck that guy.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, well, that's been my whole life. I mean, I don't know, like. I mean, like, there's, you know, the fuck that guy contingent has always been out there, but I don't know that there's. I think, the people that didn't get. I think most people have gotten on the show I mean, if they're younger. And it was sort of their aspiration, you know, what can I tell you? We're ending it. But, I mean, who hasn't done the show that really wanted to do the show that, you know, I could jive with? There's not many.

[Sam Cedar]

Was there? I mean, have you been asked a bunch? I haven't seen all the stuff that you've done, although, you know, people. People have been sending me stuff. Like, people I know. You were on Smart List. Somebody sent me a clip of that, and my name came up. You were. You didn't seem very happy about that. Actually, in that moment, it came. Really? Yeah. You seemed upset.

[Mark Maron]

I don't know if I was upset. I think, like, the. I think it's middle of. I think it's endearing upset. Like, when your name comes up, I'm like, yeah, yeah. Well, Sam. So it's that tone, right?

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, yeah, it was that guy, but it was also. No, it was not. Fuck that. It was more like, hey, I only got an hour. Okay.

[Mark Maron]

I'm sure that if you.

[Sam Cedar]

We just spent four seconds on that. That's enough. We only got. I only have an hour to talk. That's it.

[Mark Maron]

But didn't. Didn't we plug your show or something? I mean.

[Sam Cedar]

No, no. I mean, you moved on very quickly. I think it was. It was. It seemed uncomfortable, actually, because, you know, they were like, you know, Will, I used to be pretty good friends with. And Bateman would. Would come on the show with Janine, and I think the. Your tone, I think. I mean, you know, you can't see anybody because it's just audio, but the tone, I think was like, oh, okay, this is a sensitive subject and people moved on. But that's not. That's not. That's not the point. So let's. I don't know what the point was, but the. So let's talk about.

[Mark Maron]

In terms of me getting in trouble, you seem to be kind of like. I feel that the. The kind of structure of this interview is. Is kind of exploring and half hoping for. For my meltdown publicly.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Mark Maron]

After wtf?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's. That's the. I mean, to the extent that there's a structure. I wouldn't call it a structure. It's more like the agenda. But, yeah, I mean, I didn't structure it.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, yeah, but you're just sort of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

[Sam Cedar]

But. All right, let's talk. But so we've gotten there. It's. It's clear you're not going to. Although you're going for the, for the nicotine gum. So that's good. Is that what it is? Is that gum or is that the. That's the big thing now, everybody. Right. It's just straight nicotine.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah. I mean it's as straight as like the gum or anything else, but it's got flavor and it, you know, it sits in your mouth and I'm sure we'll find out just how bad they are for everybody in about five years.

[Brian]

Right.

[Mark Maron]

I'm always on nicotine of some kind. I kind of like these. I feel bad because everyone else does. But the gum is okay. Yeah, it's nicotine.

[Sam Cedar]

So what about you?

[Mark Maron]

Smoking?

[Sam Cedar]

No, I mean, I, you know, I have a. When I go to my one vice in Las Vegas. Well, I go on a tour conference and occasionally I'll, you know.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, because he's smoking doors.

[Sam Cedar]

Fun.

[Mark Maron]

Right?

[Sam Cedar]

One time. But so the, the, the thing that I've noticed that you're, you know, we played a clip of you talking about if Theo Vaughn had an opportunity to Hitler. That was very funny. And we have a clip, I don't think we'll play it right now of you on the Howie Mandel show, you know, talking, which has been traveled a little bit about talking about the sort of anti woke contingency of comedy.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And I want to get into that, but it's what I find fascinating. And it was really, I feel like Howie Mandel was not prepared for that conversation.

[Mark Maron]

Well, he's like a classic late boomer who, you know, they lock into just the surface ideas, which is shallow and they don't have any conversation deeper than that. And it's not uncommon. He's not living in the world of discourse or even politics. You know, he's a rich guy that's sort of like, you know, I just want to stay busy. And then, you know, they all get this kind of like, well, you know, people should be able to say whatever. It's like it's not even about that anymore.

[Sam Cedar]

Was it ever though? I mean, it's not like you're going to get taken off. This is not like Lenny Bruce getting arrested. Audience is saying, hey man, I don't like what you're doing.

[Mark Maron]

Well, it's, well, it's about, it's, it's just straight up about representation and marginalized communities, vulnerable people. And it's like they, I. We don't have to break it all down. But you know, and I know it was never just about the words, but ultimately These guys were marks for the right wing propaganda machine and absorbed by their agenda and spearheaded, you know, what was on their. In their eyes. I talk about in the special, this ability to say words they wanted to say, but they used anti woke to dismantle all progressive policy for everybody. Yeah, so it's, it's partially on them and I can't, I can't separate it, you know, whether they were willing collaborators or just, you know, grifting for themselves, I mean, it's like, fuck them, you know.

[Sam Cedar]

It was interesting when he said that he doesn't think comedians have that kind of power. Literally the day before, stories come out about the White House wanting to ask Joe Rogan to please stop talking about Epstein. And I mean, let's talk about. Because the thing that I find fascinating about this era, aside from the sort of the right wing influence with these comedians, is when we were on Air America, when we first joined in 04, there was a complete, not total, but a pretty complete lack of comedians being political. Like literally all of the people who were political in comedy probably worked at Air America as a writer. Crimmins was there at that time. And it's completely different now. I mean, it changed over the course of. I don't know if it was from social media or the nature of, of the world, but I just remember in 04,05, the intense pressure from Jeanine's management. My management at that time was like, what do you, what are you doing now? Are we done with this? Or, you know, and other comedians going like, what, what are you doing?

[Mark Maron]

I think that, I really think that political comedy in general was always a niche thing. And, and the guys that did it, I mean, historically there's only a handful at any one time and most of the politics going on, most of the political comics of that time who were strictly political, who do that. I mean, just to say political comic, it's kind of boring. And I don't know that I was ever a political comic, but it has been my responsibility to myself to address it for at least a portion of the show, to show where I stand and offer my perspective on that. Whether you agree with it or not or whether it's, you know, well informed or not. But I never considered myself a political comic. And in the last three specials, they're almost structured like that, that there's going to be this section where I'm going to deal with that. And then we do the other stuff, personal dark stuff, stuff that's a little lighter. But, but political comedy, I mean, even back in the 80s, dude. I mean, remember, it was like Will Durst, Jimmy Tingle, Barry Crimmins, and, you know, that was it.

[Sam Cedar]

But I'm not talking about political comedians. I'm talking about comedians actually even engaging. Engaging in politics.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, but people do, like, it's too. It's. It requires an engagement with the narrative. And then, you know, once you sort of parse that, you know, how do you make that funny? Comedians in general, I'm not saying all of them, but they're there. And most people now, they don't have a big picture. They have a reactive engagement with bits and pieces of shit that, you know, people pop their endorphins and then they repeat clickbait. And yet the depth of it is not understood. And now you have comics. The other shift, too, with the right wing political comics is that there's a blurring of the line of comic and commentator or influencer. All of a sudden, within the last 10 years, you have comedians who are like, you know, talking about China relations, and it's like, okay, I. I guess that's part of the job. I. I don't know when that happened.

[Sam Cedar]

But I mean, the.

[Mark Maron]

I. What.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, Air America was.

[Mark Maron]

Certainly another thing. It's our fault.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, well, I mean, I don't think there's necessarily something wrong with it. Obviously, I. That's what I do. I don't know that I'm a comedian. I feel like I'm more of, like a political commentator who's mildly amusing.

[Mark Maron]

You're very funny.

[Sam Cedar]

But I think. But what interests me more is that we started in a time where showbiz people, including comedians, were almost actively disinterested. And over the course of that time, it's very, very different. Yeah, but.

[Mark Maron]

But it was always a divisive thing. I mean, the idea was that, you know, if you're going to be an entertainer, you know, why alienate this group of people? I mean, it was always calculated. It wasn't, you know, it's not some mystery. And also to speak in depth about politics, I'm usually over my head and it's. It's taken me a long time to just be broad enough from however much I'm informed to make statements that I think are based in my beliefs. I mean, when I was on Air America or even on our show, you know, I was out of my depth in a lot of ways, just with, you know, keeping on top of the narrative and being able to sort of critically understand it. So I don't claim to do that, but I think a Lot of people now because of the advent of never ending bullshit information, they claim that they can do that. And the right wing has opened up this sort of expanded the minds of fairly shallow people into believing that they can debate, that they have a point of view and that it's based in this very slippery slope of evolving bullshit that gets them worked up. So in terms of the left.

[Sam Cedar]

I.

[Mark Maron]

Don'T know, I think in the special I did a pretty good job of trying to sort of balance and take a few shots at myself and vis a vis the people in the audience who are mostly, you know, leftists or, you know, lefty people. And I think it sort of worked. But I don't know, we're not known to be hilarious, you know.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, what do you mean we?

[Mark Maron]

No, no, no, I'm just saying that when you have like the idea of like a political comic. When we were doing Air America without naming names, there were like two or three people that were doing, you know, lefty political comedy. And it is so niche and almost impossible to make entertaining or to make mainstream. You know, the only thing I can say about what I've been doing over the last decade or two in terms of the comedy is that I know that this special has a point of view politically, does not provide, you know, I'm not being self righteous or trying to answer questions, but I do though that it is a mainstream special, that I believe there's something in there for everybody. And whether that'll deliver the message to people that won't hear it, that's not the issue.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I'm not talking about political. Comedians is a different species. I'm talking more about comedians.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, yeah. And now they, they totally are. But now we got a problem. I mean, you know, we, you know, until people realize and adjust to the fact that we're living in an authoritarian country, you know, which I don't think a lot of people, again, big picture, don't frame it that way. No, but then it becomes, there's a self censorship that happens. And the thing I was saying right after he was elected is like, dude, it was, you know, 75 million against 77.5 billion. It's not, it's not like, you know, you have to censor yourself. You're going to be talking to a room that at worst is going to be 50, 50. So why are you going to lose your balls now?

[Sam Cedar]

You mean in terms of like people who are arguing again? Well, I mean, we are living in an authoritarian era and I think that casts a pall on A lot of people, in ways that they prob. Even necessarily conscious about me.

[Mark Maron]

Well, they're not just a fear.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, that's what I mean.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, the self centering, they shut up. It is self censoring and it's hard to get over. But if you're playing in like, well, I have an audience now, fine. But if I'm at the Comedy Store and again, I'm not running around doing clubs, I am sometimes, but now after a certain point, most people know who you are and what you do, but I think in a general way, you know, especially in Los Angeles, to kind of keep working those muscles of pushing the envelope a little bit politically, you'll sort of see in the opening of the special, it's very clear that when I do the ironic take on how great America is now, most people know it is not right. Most rational people, and I'm talking about, you know, the other 150 million people that didn't vote, they know that it's scary and bad and they're afraid to sort of, I think, acknowledge it to themselves. So when you release a little bit through laughter, I can hear that they're like, yeah, it's fucked up now. And I will continue to say that the people that think this is exactly how America should be going is they're bad people, even if they're single issue Republican voters. It's like, well, look what you did.

[Brian]

Yep.

[Mark Maron]

And, and so, and I think that's funny to most of the other people, but the, the power of the propaganda on all levels, just because it feeds itself now is really, you know, you know, breaking people's brains. And they're probably on some level kind of legitimately afraid. I mean, it's not getting any less scary in terms of being a public person, you know, like, I mean, it's, it's a lot. And if you're going to talk about it, you are going to feel a target on you, whether it's from within or outside yourself. But they're both equally as detrimental.

[Sam Cedar]

I know you do some touring, but can you, I imagine on some level now your audience is sort of self selected, so it's a little bit tougher for you to sense like, has there been a marked change in people's perspective on that question of whatever it is, authoritarianism or what they're sensitive to, or have you noticed that over the years?

[Mark Maron]

Well, I think what happened for me and what kind of led me to the decision I made to, you know, instead of be general about my political insights or what's Happening culturally, you know, in a way where, you know, the jokes are detached that over, you know, and just sort of me saying them in a provocative way. Over the course of touring after this, this Trump election, I realized that, you know, I would be going to some red states, but I would be selling, you know, 800 to 1100 tickets. And the people that came were like me, they were scared. They're isolated, a lot of them, they're surrounded, you know, by people that you don't, you no longer know what your neighbor thinks or what's, what's dangerous for you to say. Just in a community level, some of them are just on their phones in despair with whoever they're living with. And the feeling of the, of the crowds was that, holy shit, I'm providing a community service here. These people would not all to get together in this area for any reason. You know, maybe some of them are motivated to go to a town hall or, or whatever, but they're all here and they're all like minded and that, you know, this is, you know, I'm going, this is a safe space because you're talking about people that are at work and they don't know if they can talk, you know, they don't know if they can talk, you know, to the teachers at the school. So, so once I started to feel that, I realized that in this special, in the opening 15 minutes, that I am going to be part of that community and speak to them directly about their flaws and about where we're at to relieve some fear and to have some self reflection and get some laughs. So I was specifically talking to them because I thought that was important.

[Sam Cedar]

So how long do you think it's going to be until you start another podcast or restart WTF after, after that?

[Mark Maron]

Well, I would never start restart wtf? You know, I won't do anything like the WTF without Brendan involved because, you know, he's half of it for real, you know, our relationship as, you know.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, really half. I mean, do you think like maybe 55%?

[Mark Maron]

I would say, sure, I'll give him 70. I don't, I don't care, you know. You know, Yeah, I mean it doesn't work without him. And you know, it seems to what, what I've learned over the course of it is that a lot of people, you know, you know, for a while there you're like, well, they're just here for the interviews. But a lot of people were there. It's really a show about me mostly and why are invested.

[Sam Cedar]

Is that true?

[Mark Maron]

Kinda. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So people have been kind of invested in how I talk and how I think and what's gone on in my life. So I think that there is that part of me that's about 20% of like, you know, I kind of have a responsibility to those people because, you know, they're not unlike me. It's not easy getting through the day because of your brain and stuff. So if I do anything, I don't believe it would be an interview show, but if there was a way for me to show up maybe on, you know, Instagram Live, or if I jumped into one of these existing podcast networks to do like a video thing, it would probably be, you know, just me, but I'd have to sort of take the ego hit of starting from that point and figure out what that is. But I'm not in a hurry to do that.

[Sam Cedar]

That's the. The narrow group of people who listen to the upfront monologue.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, that's not. It's a lot, though.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, yeah, I know. I'm talking about.

[Mark Maron]

Sure. But even. Even that small amount of people is probably. It probably dwarfs how many people listen to your show.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, my favorite of when I came out to do your TV show, the. We did that episode on the podcast, the Patent. The Patent Troll, when we were getting sued by the guy who supposedly patented podcast. My favorite part of doing your show was adding a line about skipping over your monologue in your podcast. I think it was became.

[Brian]

It could be.

[Mark Maron]

It sort of became less and less in a weird way because I used to get a lot of emails. No, I used to get a lot of emails from people who were like. I used to skip it, but now, like, it's like, I kind of look forward to it. So I think that.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't know, I can really measure that. I gotta tell you, you could barely.

[Mark Maron]

Listen to me when I was sitting next to you when we were doing a show. You can barely listen to me now.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm not talking about me. I'm just saying that I know that when I directed Gary Busey, we would send him fake emails to essentially influence what he would do in the show.

[Mark Maron]

And you're saying Brendan has been running this fake email?

[Sam Cedar]

No, he wouldn't. But there were times where he would ask me, like, do you know anybody who's looking for a gig to just.

[Mark Maron]

Write wouldn't require anything. He did. You just have to make a Gmail.

[Sam Cedar]

Account, a couple of emails, and I'll.

[Mark Maron]

Send them the copy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe I don't know. You know, I don't know. All I know is that there is part of me that is ready to stop, which is good.

[Sam Cedar]

That is good. But you've been acting so much.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, but I don't, you know, feel.

[Sam Cedar]

Your acting skills have gotten better.

[Mark Maron]

A bit. I think they have a bit. They would have to, or. I don't know why I would do it because I don't have to do it. And I generally, when I'm offered things, I don't want to do it because I don't know if I have figured out how to fully find how acting is, like, satisfying creatively. And I'm trying to do that by taking chances and trying to deepen whatever craft I'm putting together for that gig. But there's still so much waiting around, and I don't like being away from home, and so much of that is required.

[Sam Cedar]

And how many times during a production are you in your. Your dressing room or in your trailer and do you, like, throw your script down and go, why the F am I doing this? What the f is going on here? This is so effing stupid.

[Mark Maron]

Well, no, I don't get the stupid thing or why am I doing this? For those reasons. What I get, no matter what, is, you know, once you're in the trailer and then they're like, yeah, they're just doing the scene before you, so it shouldn't be that long. Three hours later, I'm still in the trailer and I'm going, what could they be doing? I mean, we can shoot this on my phone. You know, it's not. It's not like, this is stupid, but it's like, how is this taking so long? How many times do they got to do? You know, so that.

[Sam Cedar]

That's difficult, but that's how that seems healthy because you've. You've externalized it. You're not turning on yourself. You're not saying. I mean, that's. You're not saying, like, I made a stupid decision to do this.

[Mark Maron]

Well, that. That happens.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Mark Maron]

That happens. But it's mostly because there's just so much time. I mean, like, you know, I'm a guy that's entire creative life is based on somewhat immediate gratification. So the process of putting together something or being part of something, even a small part of something much bigger, and sort of accepting that and waiting to do these, like, little two to three minute bits that you repeat over and over again, and then you go, wait four hours. It's very hard for me to See the part of it that's gratifying creatively. But I did play a lead in an indie that maybe you'll find its way out eventually. But it was kind of a crazy, great script and movie. And I did have a meltdown in the trailer that was pretty phenomenal.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Maron]

Because I'd chosen. I felt that I was ready to do this Rob Burnett. You know, Rob, he wrote this amazing script that was a great role for me, but it was a lot. And it was definitely a risk for me, but I'm like, well, fuck it, you know, you gotta, you know, if you're not willing to fail, just, you know, you know, toss in the towel. But there's a scene I did with Sharon Stone, you know, and, dude, we. You know, we shot. It's one scene. We shot two masters before lunch, and she was just eating me for fucking lunch, dude. I couldn't. Couldn't hold the character. Couldn't. Like, it was just like. It was. I was kind of falling into myself, and I thought that, you know, the entire crew after each take was like, woof. This is gonna be a rough one. So. So I. I went back to the trailer, and this is midway into this movie that I'm the star of, and I got David Martin sitting there. I'm like, get me out of this. What the fuck were we even thinking? That Sharon Stone. We have my fucking nuts, and I'm playing an actor in the fucking movie, and I don't think I'm a good actor. I'm like, this is fucked. We got to end this right now. How the fuck am I going to do. It was crazy. And he just sat there and took it. And then.

[Sam Cedar]

That's what I wanted to hear.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah. And once I got through that, I was sort of like, dude, you better. You better step up here because there's no way out. You better figure this out. And fortunately, I just talked to Al Pacino, you know, and, you know, he gave me some inspiration. And, you know, after talking to all these actors and, you know, there does come to a point with this stuff with comedy and with anything where if I know and I can know it, that I'm really doing the best I can, then that's all you can do, you know, like, if it doesn't. If it's not good enough. Well, you tried. You know, if people don't like it, okay. But that's really the best. I could not do it any other way. And Sharon helped me a great deal. And I've told the story a couple times. It was a life changing, powerful thing because a lot of the people that came onto this movie did it because of me. She likes me. So she did this little movie. Lily Gladstone wanted to do comedy, and I talked to her and she came on board. Alan Ruck is in it. Michael McKean plays my manager. And I don't think I had anything to do with that, but, you know, these are pretty heavy hitters. But when I went back to do the scene with Sharon and talk to her about what I was feeling and what I was concerned about, she. She just kind of broke me, dude. Like, do you know the story?

[Sam Cedar]

I don't know the story.

[Mark Maron]

Well, in this scene, do you know what the movie's about?

[Sam Cedar]

No.

[Mark Maron]

Oh, it's called In Memoriam and it's about an. It's about an act.

[Sam Cedar]

I did as much research for this as you do for your. I guess you started to do more research.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, no, I do research, but if I know the guy, I do less. So the picture of the movie, and I think you'll like it. It's about an actor who's, you know, me, my age. He was. He was. He was a kind of like up and coming great actor when he was in his 20s and he did a bunch of big movies. You know, he was. He was happening. You know, he had a co star in these three or four movies. He ended up taking her from her husband and the fourth movie tanked and she left him. And he was kind of wandering around doing bit parts and some movies and, you know, you know, things on television. It opens with me in a scene on a procedural, but since, you know, he was younger, he took a sitcom that made him a star for like five years, this kind of crappy sitcom. And that's how everyone knows him. But he sees himself as a great actor. So at the beginning of the movie, he's diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. And he becomes obsessed with the need to be in the In Memoriam montage at the Oscars. It's gonna. It's gonna be the only thing that gives his life meaning, but he doesn't really have the resume for it, so he's gotta figure out a way, you know, to get into the In Memoriam montage. It's pretty funny premise, right?

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Mark Maron]

So I forego chemo to try to die on time, and then I've got to figure out how to elevate my, My, My. My public, my profile to get into the montage. And I've burned a lot of bridges and I'm A selfish fuck. I've got this daughter that.

[Sam Cedar]

Who.

[Mark Maron]

Who's estranged, who I don't know. Well, anyways, so the scene with Sharon is. She plays the woman who was in those movies with me, you know, back in the day, an ex wife. And, you know, she's gone on to win Several Oscars, do 70 films. And right as I'm about to get into the montage, it's. It's released in the news that she also has cancer. So I think she's gonna bump me out of the montage. I haven't talked to her in years, but I gotta go over there and try to work it like, you know, it's. It's a. It's a kind of a three tiered scene where first I'm trying to feel her out for when she's gonna die to see if she'll make the cut. Second, I try to get her, you know, to make an announcement that she wants me in the montage. And then third, you know, I just break down crying in a real way that, you know, you know, she was my one true love and all this other stuff. So I gotta cry. It's a complicated scene emotionally. And I go back after lunch, after I've melted down, and I tell Sharon, I'm like, look, you know, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pull off the question. Crying, you know, I'm self conscious about it. And she goes, don't worry about that. You know, my son's an actor. Sometimes he uses that stuff. You make you cry. I'm like, okay. I just, you know, I want to get there, but I don't know if I can get there. I'm trying. And then she says, well, I think, I think you can cry, you know, I mean, what makes you cry? I'm like, well, I'm middle aged man, you know, commercials and stuff. You know, I cry. She goes, but I think we know what makes you cry. And I'm like, all right. And I go, are you talking about Lynn? You know, my, my girlfriend who passed away? She goes, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, but I've been kind of thinking about that, but I don't know, I. And then she looks at me and she goes, look, you play the scene to Lynn and I'll make sure she's here. And then I'm like, I'm already crying, you know, And I don't know, in that moment that I quite, you know, figured I could do it to Lynn. But what I did know, because you kind of when you want to cry as an actor, there's this idea like, well, think about a dog dying or your friend. But I think that's a trick. But what I did put in place was that I knew that Lynn, because she was so supportive of me as an actor and was really my biggest champion, would be thrilled about what I was doing. So I really just put her in place as watching me do it right. And, and, and kept her with me whether Sharon brought her there or not. You know, we were definitely crying at the end of that scene.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, that's good. Well, when is that movie coming out? Do you know?

[Mark Maron]

Well, they missed the, the window to get it into, into Toronto. I saw a final cut of it and it's pretty much moving because the relationship with my daughter is really the emotional, you know, heart of the movie. And I did pretty well with that actress that. Her name's Ryder. Oh, come on, dude.

[Sam Cedar]

We'Ll fix it in post.

[Mark Maron]

No, I want to. Talia. Talia Ryder. She's great. Did you see that movie Sometimes? Always. Never. You know, the abortion movie, the indie. Dude, she's great.

[Sam Cedar]

Every movie I watch is picked by a 12 year old.

[Mark Maron]

Okay. Have you seen Bad Guys too?

[Sam Cedar]

So he probably six times.

[Mark Maron]

Oh, it just came out.

[Sam Cedar]

No, I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it.

[Mark Maron]

So the. I. They're hoping to get it into Sundance and then it'll see if it has a life after that. So that's not till January.

[Brian]

Well.

[Sam Cedar]

Mark, I think we've covered just about all of it. Was it, was there anybody? Now I know there's been a lot of talk about how it's weird that you're not inviting me back on, on the last show. And I just want to dispel the rumors that has been an issue around here. A lot of people.

[Brian]

Oh.

[Mark Maron]

Oh, yeah. Well, I honestly, maybe I, maybe it's going to spam, but I haven't seen any of that coming in.

[Sam Cedar]

But I specifically told people like, don't, don't, don't do what you're planning to do with the emails.

[Mark Maron]

I think what we're doing now is probably as good as it's going to get.

[Sam Cedar]

What this? Yeah, this is like. You know what the camera angle reminds me of that you got here is that Marin v. Cedar we used to do. I just honestly kept expecting like your appliance repairman to walk through, through there.

[Mark Maron]

You know, buddy, I think the last show is probably gonna end up just me. Unless by some weird outside chance Obama.

[Brian]

Wants to come on again.

[Sam Cedar]

It Feels like you have done every iteration. Like, you've had one where Brendan comes on. Like, if you hadn't done that, that would have been the one.

[Mark Maron]

Well, there's one good one that we just recorded yesterday. Judd Apatow, who's been a lifelong fan of the show, came in with, like, 40 clips from shows that, you know, he loved from the podcast. He, like, found 40. He went through all the episodes. And the weird thing was that I don't listen to them. So my only recollection of these conversations, it was when I have the conversation because I don't listen to the podcast. So he's playing me these clips and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I had no idea that, because I don't, I don't know what they sounded like, you know, in the final film. Yeah, the people that I'm talking to. And it was kind of, like, it was kind of moving, and I kind of felt like maybe I was pretty good at it. But, yeah, no, I, I, we don't really have a plan for that last show.

[Sam Cedar]

When is the last show? Mid September?

[Mark Maron]

I don't know. You have to ask Brendan. He's keeping it from me.

[Sam Cedar]

You're completely disengaged. You're kept, you're kept from all of it. He's sort of like Biden at this point.

[Mark Maron]

Well, I think that's a little extreme. No, I just don't, like, it's better that I don't look at numbers or look at comments or. No, you know, like, I know who I'm going to talk to and stuff, and I know when it's going to go up. But the rest of it, I think it's just healthier that, you know, that I don't know.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. And lastly, two questions. One, does this mean the WTF blend is gone from just coffee?

[Mark Maron]

I know you'd have to ask them, but all of a sudden, they've really upped my coffee deliveries. Like, I could open a store right now. You still getting it?

[Sam Cedar]

You know, I haven't gotten deliveries from them in a while.

[Mark Maron]

Weird. Maybe they're sending me yours.

[Sam Cedar]

They sending the majority report blend.

[Mark Maron]

Oh, I don't pay attention. I don't think so. They don't send me the WTF blend anymore because I don't like dark roasts. But they keep sending it.

[Sam Cedar]

Is that a scandal? People talking about that? You don't even endorse your own blend?

[Mark Maron]

I, I haven't really thought about it. You know, we don't do ads for them anymore. This is just Part of.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, is that right?

[Mark Maron]

Some weird promise. Oh, that's sending them to me.

[Sam Cedar]

And lastly, are you concerned at all that this show, probably assuming I stay healthy, is gonna go on longer than WTF? You started in, what, 2009, right?

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Mark Maron]

When did you start?

[Sam Cedar]

2010.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah, well, I, I don't know if I'm really concerned. You know, I don't know why I'd be concerned. Yeah, I just, I, I want you to. To keep, you know, fighting the good fight and doing what you do. I, I, I'm not threatened in any way by your success.

[Sam Cedar]

I find that so disappointing. But I think maybe we got to check in in, like, six, eight months after the show is over, because I have a feeling you'll be a little bit more like, you know, not. Humble's not the. I don't think you'll ever be more humble. I think it's really. Yeah. Yeah. So you're.

[Mark Maron]

So that's the episode where I come on in six months, and you pull up clips from earlier in this interview.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

[Mark Maron]

I think I called it. I think I called it.

[Brian]

Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

That's basically what it is. It's. I did like a Tim Russert. Just getting you on the record. And then we play you back later. Mark Marin, congratulations on the spectacular. I mean, everybody know. We didn't, you know, everybody knows about the cultural significance of your show and really also on the entire 4 format, which spawned a lot of really, actually not great stuff. But I'm not going to hold you responsible for that. You're not responsible for.

[Mark Maron]

You know, I just, I just made it seem like anybody could do it, and they did.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. And now they're ruining the country, so.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

You know.

[Mark Maron]

All right. Well, yeah, I try to, you know, like, look, you, you know, it was.

[Sam Cedar]

Helpful for you, and I think that's the important part. The important part. It was helpful for you, and it really reignited your career. So, you know.

[Brian]

Okay. Okay.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

American democracy. Small price to pay for my mental.

[Mark Maron]

Health and my success. Exactly. Right.

[Brian]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sam Cedar]

And so I'm glad you framed it.

[Mark Maron]

That way because that, you know, just right on the money.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. I mean, there you go. But, Mark Marin, it was always. It's always a pleasure to have you on.

[Mark Maron]

Love you, Sam. Thank you, though.

[Sam Cedar]

Talk to you later. Thanks, buddy.

[Mark Maron]

Okay, man.

[Sam Cedar]

Bye. Bye. All right, folks, I guess we're going to do a freebie. Yeah, roll it into freebie. Somebody's asking for an open invitation to have Marin back on anytime. I mean, he knows he can come on with whatever he wants.

[Brian]

Did you think it was weird that he can't hold a character who's bitter and selfish and feels like he deserves more?

[Sam Cedar]

Well, sometimes people have trouble playing themselves. When I was, you know, when I did Myron show, I was playing me and that was tough. Yeah, you try and make yourself seem a little bit nicer, you know, on, on, on camera. Anyways. All right, let's get into it. Another two hour free half. I know. Actually it's going to be a two and a half one. It's going to be a freebie Friday. Sean from Coca Cali. Please inform everyone to call their representatives. Diddler Don has done an executive order to illegally cancel the contract between the VA and and my union. Afge. Our lawyers will fight for us but cannot see a judge until the end of the month. Our unions being removed entirely on the start of the 12th. Please, please help. If you're taking calls, I can call from a 9 to 5, but it sounds like you're not doing calls today. Please, please get the message out. Left is best. Have you heard about this, Brian?

[Brian]

I have not, but I'm looking it up right now.

[Sam Cedar]

Hack all things. Bring back Tim Heidecker of the HIEI network. You coward. I will, I will. When that guy cancels his show, what do they call it? Office after hours. Office hours.

[Mark Maron]

Office hours.

[Sam Cedar]

Office hours after hours. I don't know what it is. We'll see.

[Mark Maron]

Majority Report.

[Brian]

Nope. You want to do this Harry Anton thing you pulled up last minute.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, yeah. No. Let's go to Stephen Miller on this. Texas redistricting. The Greg Abbott has now said that they're going to do special session after special session. He's going to invoke it so that the Texas Democrats who are planning to be out of state for I think a couple of months even or up to will be forced to provide quorum for the vote to redistrict essentially to create five new Republican districts or five districts that they hope will be Republican. Keep in mind, however, though, there are probably restrictions as to how late in the game districts can be changed. So the idea that Abbott is pushing would not necessarily be in place for the 2026 election. Meanwhile, you have Democrats in California and New York at least who are are saying that they may do a tit for tat. But here's Stephen Miller on Fox and it's interesting that they have to lie about this. The Democrats have gerrymandered this country beyond recognition. Republicans won in the biggest Blue states, about 40% of the vote in the last election. States like California and New York, according to the official tally, but only got 20% of the votes.

[Mark Maron]

I'm talking about the House Republicans here.

[Sam Cedar]

In 2024, House Republicans won a three.

[Mark Maron]

Time larger popular vote margin than 2010. In 2010, they picked up 63 seats. In 2024, four seats. Even though they want to get a.

[Sam Cedar]

Three time larger victory in the popular vote margin. House Republicans at every level of this.

[Mark Maron]

Country, Illinois, Chicago, New York, Massachusetts, Democrats have gerrymandered the vote beyond recognition to.

[Sam Cedar]

Try to maintain their advantage in the House elections. On top of it, let's not forget Democrats rigged the 2020 census by including, including illegal aliens.

[Mark Maron]

Remember, they sued Donald Trump, they sued.

[Sam Cedar]

The administration, they fought tooth and nail to include illegal aliens in the census.

[Mark Maron]

20 to 30 of House Democrat seats.

[Sam Cedar]

Wouldn'T exist but for illegal aliens. Texas is taking just a small corrective step against this ocean of fraud, this ocean of abuse by the corrupt Democrat Party.

[Mark Maron]

Sean?

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, first off, the census constitutionally calls for a count of the people within the United States borders, period. Now, I think a lot of undocumented immigrants do not answer the census for reasons, particularly after Donald Trump's four years in office from 2016 to 2020, because of their own sense of security. So I don't think that there are many who respond to the census. However, the census in the Constitution calls for counting all of the people in the United States if what was what he, and if what Steven Miller was saying was true in terms of the redistricting. And in New York in California, you would see something akin to what we have in Wisconsin, which is, and note, in Wisconsin, they have changed the state Senate. They haven't done it with the congressional districts, but the amount of votes, and this was in the case in Pennsylvania, the amount of votes that Democrats needed to win 51% in the state house was close to 70% of the votes. They needed to win 70% of the votes to get to 51% majority in the state House. So, I mean, he's lying. We have Republican, we have in California and in New York, they did an independent commission. And clearly it was a political mistake. They should maximize their advantage. And what Texas Democrats are doing right now is completely part of the, part of the sort of the rules of the House, which is you need to have a quorum, then you can break quorum, you can deny quorum. So it's interesting that they feel like they have to go and lie about this because I think they feel like it's a losing strategy. And it's quite clear what is motivating Republicans in their redistricting attempt in Texas. They've also, I think they're looking, I think in Indiana maybe to do the same and pick up a seat. Ohio, there's talk of and let's play this Harry Emden clip. Fresh off the heels of having to issue a correction about Donald Trump's assessment of how Republicans are doing and how his approval rating is doing, here is Harry Anton explaining why Republicans might be starting to freak out that they're going to lose the House in a big, big way.

[Mark Maron]

So, you know, we're talking about warning signs for the Republican Party. And I will just say, oh, for.

[Sam Cedar]

Them, that is the phrase of the day.

[Mark Maron]

Oh, Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot. And you can see their lead is expanding. It's becoming bigger. Look at this. In spring CNBC, it was 2, now it's 5. How about Ipsos, it was 1 for the Democrats, now it's 4. How about the Wall Street Journal, it was 1 and now it is 3.

[Sam Cedar]

3.

[Mark Maron]

So now the average lead here is 4, which is up from just about a point. That's about a three point move on average in the Democrats direction. And of course, people, when this is coming amidst the fights over redistricting, I think there are going to be a lot of people wondering, wait a minute, are Republicans wanting to change the lines because they are losing, which they absolutely are on the generic congressional ballot at this point, Democrats are winning, Republicans are losing. And maybe they're trying to change the lines in order to give themselves a little bit bit more wiggle room. Given what we're seeing a clear Democratic momentum on the generic congressional ballot.

[Sam Cedar]

How does it break down when you.

[Mark Maron]

Look at party id? Okay, so this is one metric, right? The generic congressional ballot. How about party identification?

[Sam Cedar]

Right?

[Mark Maron]

Because the idea is if you're a Democrat, you're very likely to vote Democrat. If you're a Republican, you're very likely to vote Republican. Take a look here. The party ID margin, Democrats versus Republicans. Look in quarter one of this year, Quinnipiac Republicans had a lead of a point. Gallup, it was tight.

[Sam Cedar]

Look at where we are.

[Mark Maron]

Are now in the latest measures again, Democratic momentum. This is a five point move to the Democrats according to Quinnipiac. Now they're up by 4 on party ID. How about Gallup, what we see is Democrats ahead, ahead by three points. So again, what you're seeing is clear movement towards the Democratic Party on a very key metric because if you're identifying as Democratic, you're far more likely to vote for the Democrat you're identifying as Republican. You're far more likely to vote Republican. And I will not, Kate, that this is a change from last year, especially among Gallup, when Republicans had held a rare lead going into the 2024 election. And that, of course, foreshadowed Donald Trump winning, foreshadowed Republicans taking the House, taking the Senate. And now, of course, Democrats are ahead here. This is a big oh for Republicans, as we are at the midpoint of 2025.

[Sam Cedar]

But you're also, you see some signs as well, even beyond polling that you've been looking at.

[Brian]

You think indicate.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah. Okay. So this is the polling, right. You're looking at party id, you're looking at the generic congression about. How about the special elections?

[Sam Cedar]

Look at this.

[Mark Maron]

And the median 2025 special election so far, Democrats in these different districts get this. They're doing about 13 points better the median Democrat than Kamala Harris did in those same districts last year.

[Sam Cedar]

That is a huge, huge movement.

[Mark Maron]

And last year, what we saw was, in fact, when you compare the 2024 special election results back to the Joe Biden baseline of 2020, Republicans were actually doing better than they did in 2020 in those. So again, this is clear movement towards the Democrats. And we're seeing on three different metrics to polling and one in actual election results.

[Sam Cedar]

Very interesting. Good to see you.

[Mark Maron]

Thanks for coming back in, Harry. Pleasure, Kate.

[Sam Cedar]

Now, I should say point of caution. The special elections are a tough measure because we know that Democrats have do better with more informed voters. And so those special elections are going to attract voters who are more engaged and they tend to vote Democrat more than Republican. I mean, significantly. So you even see that in the context of primaries, a similar dynamic. That's why you see someone like Zoro on a trouncing Cuomo in New York. At this point in 2017, Democrats average around 7 to 10 points ahead of Republicans. In 2025, however, it is a little bit less. So it's encouraging. It's encouraging that it's moving in the right direction. But part of it is because the Democratic Party has as a party and in terms of like, its establishment, in terms of like, its leaders have yet to articulate any type of vision for what the country would look like under Democratic rule. And this may be, I mean, it may be that people are going to come out and vote against Republicans because they don't like what Republicans are doing. And maybe in the polls they're reluctant to say this because they're finding Democrats being so weak. But the weakness here is with Democratic voters because the Democratic leadership has failed to do really anything. They had one or two leverage points, and Chuck Schumer gave it away. And so that's where we're at at this point. We will see. Megs Trump ended the 2020 census early, which resulted in an undercount of people in California and New York, resulting in fewer congressional seats in both those states. Biden time. Isn't there eventually a danger with gerrymandering when you try to establish a lot of districts where you lead by 5 to 10 points? What happens in an electoral year where there's a nationwide swing, all your leads are inside that swing could be catastrophically bad. Yes. And that's actually the danger with the Texas Republicans terrorizing Latinos. And those are Latino heavy districts. And. And you're shortening the leads of all Republicans or, you know, narrowing the partisan advantage of all the Republicans in that state. And you're doing it at a time where theoretically you're open to potential Democratic waves. I mean, the reason why we're seeing so little movement with seats, you know, Stephen Miller complained about this. The reason why we're seeing so little movement with seats is because of gerrymandering primarily from Republicans, to some extent from Democrats. But understand, too, when Republicans say, okay, we're going to have, we've got 20 seats in this state, hypothetically, there's a 40% Democratic population. You would assume that's gonna be eight Democratic seats, 12 Republican seats. When they make it 17 to three or 16 to four, those four Democratic seats are incredibly safe because all the Democrats have been shoved into those seats. So you don't get a wild swing at one point. There's only so many seats to be picked up. What this aggressive redistricting might do is actually put more seats in play in an electoral season where there is potentially more, more, more of a wave. So we'll see. Let's play this clip. This is an Israeli hostage negotiator named Gershon Baskin. He was on with Piers Morgan and what's her name? Brooke Goldstein. Brooke Goldstein. She is the one who said there is no Palestinian people. And this negotiator, Israeli hostage negotiator, begs to differ.

[Brian]

People, when there are 7 million here. My wife was born here. I am not anti Israel, but my government is committing war crimes in Gaza. And the arguments that were presented by Brooke belong in the garbage bin of history. It's an intellectual insult.

[Sam Cedar]

The kind of things that we heard here that insinuate that there's no such.

[Brian]

Thing as a Palestinian people when there are 7 million Palestinians living between the river and the sea. How can you deny the existence of.

[Sam Cedar]

A people, 7 million people who call themselves.

[Brian]

Excuse me, let me talk.

[Sam Cedar]

What Israel is doing should not be.

[Brian]

Tolerated by the Israeli public, nor by.

[Sam Cedar]

Anyone in the entire world.

[Brian]

This war has to end.

[Sam Cedar]

Mustafa Barbouti was 100% right that Hamas.

[Brian]

Has given in writing in English and in Arabic.

[Sam Cedar]

I received from them in August of.

[Brian]

Last year a commitment to end the war and return all the hostages. And then there was more than 100.

[Sam Cedar]

Hostages that they were holding.

[Brian]

But they demanded end to the war. They demand that Israel withdraw from Gaza. They demand a release of Palestinian prisoners, and they demand that humanitarian aid go into Gaza. They also added in writing, twice I've received from them in Arabic, that Hamas will not govern Gaza. Now, the big.

[Sam Cedar]

This is an Israeli hostage negotiator who I imagine realized, like, what am I negotiating? Israel is not interested in this. That is for all the people who continually say over and over again, this can end if they give up all the hostages. Israel has already turned down that deal. They have turned down the deal that involves Hamas returning the hostages and Hamas not maintaining power in Gaza. We can see. And it has been clear, and this guy's talking about a year ago, he got this in writing twice. In writing twice. It has been clear for some time that the real agenda of the Israeli government is to do exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday on Fox News. The way that it's presented, unfortunately, in.

[Brian]

The New York Times and other New.

[Sam Cedar]

York Times should be sued.

[Brian]

I'm actually looking at whether a country. Sorry, that's the wrong one.

[Sam Cedar]

Play this clip number five. Incidentally, he wants to sue the New York Times for defamation or because New York Times is reporting that the people in Gaza are starving and that they're putting on children. They're taking pictures of children who have preexisting conditions so their starvation doesn't count.

[Brian]

By the way, the New York Times.

[Sam Cedar]

Did as little as possible. There is, could not find a greater propaganda mouthpiece for the Israeli government in the United States of ostensibly an unaffiliated newspaper than the New York Times. But here is Netanyahu on Fox yesterday, articulating what has been quite clear. The only agenda that the Israeli government has had had nothing to do with the hostages. Will Israel take control of all of Gaza?

[Brian]

We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance.

[Sam Cedar]

That is not Hamas and not anyone.

[Brian]

Advocating the destruction of Israel.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, now he said probably a slip. Allow the residents to be free of Gaza, which I think is probably also part of the plan.

[Brian]

Exactly what he meant.

[Sam Cedar]

But again, we just saw a hostage negotiator say in writing Hamas twice put on the table they will not lead Gaza anymore, including returning the hostages. And Israel's not interested. Israel wants to occupy this land. They ultimately want to annex it like they're going to attempt to do with the west bank officially anyways. That's what they want, right? Just go back a little bit and play it again.

[Mark Maron]

Civilian governance.

[Sam Cedar]

That is not Hamas and not anyone.

[Brian]

Advocating the destruction of Israel. That's what we want to do. We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas. And you were in the Gaza Strip to this. You met Palestinians who are fighting Hamas because finally they see that they have a future. They can rid themselves of this awful tyranny that not only holds our hostages, but holds 2 million Palestinians in Gaza hostage.

[Sam Cedar]

That's got to end. Are you saying today that you will take control of the entire 26 mile Gaza Strip as it was 20 years ago to this month in 2005?

[Brian]

Well, we don't want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don't want to govern it. We don't want to be there as a governing body.

[Sam Cedar]

We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly.

[Brian]

Without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.

[Mark Maron]

That's not possible with Hamas.

[Sam Cedar]

The only way that you're going to.

[Brian]

Have a different future is to get.

[Sam Cedar]

Rid of this neo n Nazi armies. The Hamas are monsters. Look at what they're doing to our people. Look at what they're doing to the way they massacred, raped, beheaded our people.

[Brian]

Our men and women, burned our babies.

[Sam Cedar]

And they are really cruel to their own people because they try to take.

[Brian]

Them away from the combat zones. They shoot them. They want people to be civilian casualties.

[Sam Cedar]

They want a starvation policy.

[Brian]

Policy that they themselves are trying to put into being.

[Sam Cedar]

And we're doing everything to reverse that. Okay? Even the New York Times would say that 80% of what he said in that clip was a total lie. And then just about every other news outlet would say 95% was a total lie.

[Brian]

Just switch out Hamas with Israel and he's telling the truth.

[Sam Cedar]

The idea that they're going to get an Arab force in there once they're taking control of the whole place is, is A, a fantasy and B, a cover story. This is what they'll. I mean, this is what they have done time and time again. We're going in there to get the hostages back. They ignore offers to get the hostages. We're going in there to unseat Hamas. Hamas has been seriously disempowered. They do not have the ability to attack Israel. Well, now we're going in there to get rid of Hamas and we're going to have to control the entire country. And then we're going to hand it over. We'll just give it right back. They're never going to hand it back over.

[Brian]

Never.

[Sam Cedar]

Never. All right, let's move on. Try and do a. Let's do a fun one. Oh, well, this is actually interesting. Let's do this. Nancy Mace video. I found this fascinating. Nancy Mace apparently is now running for South Carolina gubernatorial. She's engaged in a gubernatorial campaign. She's at a, in fact, a gubernatorial campaign town hall in South Carolina. She is asked by a reporter, how are you taking credit for a highway project that was federally funded that you voted against? Like, how do you take credit for this? And of course, Nancy Mace answers like any sane person would. That is misogyny.

[Mark Maron]

You. One of the accomplishments things you were touting was the i5, 26, what was.

[Sam Cedar]

The exit at Long Point Road.

[Mark Maron]

Yeah. Not the interchange.

[Sam Cedar]

But that funding came from the inflationary.

[Brian]

Assumptions which you vote against.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Mark Maron]

Is that an accomplishment? Is that something. No, absolutely. I mean, absolutely.

[Sam Cedar]

I can tout that. And you're a raging Democrat, so. Raging leftist with that kind of questioning. And I would say, as a woman, like, you might want to think about how you view other women and how you treat other women the way that you question them, because women are going to lead this country off the brink. And conservative women, the first female president.

[Mark Maron]

Of this country is going to be.

[Sam Cedar]

A conservative woman, not some liberal like you.

[Mark Maron]

Okay, again, just a question about the bill. Whether you.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, can you imagine the look on that reporter's face? Like, are you seriously saying I'm a misogynist? Because I'm asking you how you can take credit for funding provided by a bill passed by all Democrats that you voted against.

[Brian]

Careful.

[Sam Cedar]

You're gonna get a MeToo charge. Just summarizing this. You can't even ask the question. It is fascinating to me how the Republicans will utilize this stuff. Like, how is Nancy Mace, if we are to believe what Republicans say, how could Nancy Mace win anything in the use of like, claiming misogyny or claiming that the country is going to be run by women.

[Brian]

It's not really a right wing talking point.

[Sam Cedar]

How is that possible? But here she is lying. She's. I mean, I, I think there's reason to suspect that she is a slightly disturbed person. And it is just amazing that she thinks she can get away with that. Maybe she can in South Carolina, but that's impressive. The. But just the idea. I don't know, maybe it's a way of just trying to intimidate reporters and making sure she doesn't get a question like that. I don't think that's gonna work. I find it hard to believe it would. But here is. Here is Charlie Kirk. In light of the fact that Nancy May says that women are going to take this country from the brink, conservative women, and that we're going to have a conservative woman be the first female president, and that it's misogynistic to ask a question about your voting record.

[Brian]

Are.

[Sam Cedar]

We to believe after this Charlie Kirk video that Nancy Mace does not consider herself a feminine woman? See, now I'm getting confused. But let's play this Charlie Click, because we just saw Nancy Mace make all these proclamations about women as she was asked at this gubernatorial campaign, how can you take credit for funding on a highway project that you voted against? And then we have this Charlie Kirk thing.

[Mark Maron]

The cultural paradigm right now is a rebellion of the men of the West. It's happening in every major country where.

[Sam Cedar]

Young men are finding podcasts like ours.

[Mark Maron]

They'Re finding other information conduits that believe.

[Sam Cedar]

In nature, believe in God's design, believe.

[Mark Maron]

That men should have to stand up.

[Sam Cedar]

For the vulnerable, create a family, provide.

[Mark Maron]

For the family, have to protect the.

[Sam Cedar]

Weak, to fight the battles of society.

[Mark Maron]

To go on an adventure. This is very appealing to young men when they hear it.

[Sam Cedar]

There's a lot that you can call Donald Trump.

[Mark Maron]

No one has ever called him feminine.

[Sam Cedar]

In a toxically feminine world again.

[Mark Maron]

All the media missed this and almost every cultural critic missed it. We didn't.

[Sam Cedar]

In a toxically feminine world, you have.

[Mark Maron]

The absolute inverse of that, which is like ultra masculine.

[Sam Cedar]

Never apologize. Red tie, big, plain, super rich, supermodel wife. Right. It's going to be big and Mexico.

[Mark Maron]

Is going to pay for it and get more tariffs.

[Sam Cedar]

And it's like as bravado, strong men as you can get. And young men didn't care that.

[Mark Maron]

You know, I don't.

[Sam Cedar]

It wasn't even about policy.

[Mark Maron]

That's what people don't understand is that it was partially.

[Sam Cedar]

Policy was like, no, he is the.

[Mark Maron]

Middle Finger to all of the screeching hall monitors that have told me I have to use certain pronouns that have.

[Sam Cedar]

Told me that, like I'm bad for existing, that have penalized me for my existence.

[Mark Maron]

And Trump is the big fu to the feminist establishment that has not been challenged my entire life.

[Sam Cedar]

There's a lot to unpack here, aside from the fact that he's implying that women who get involved in politics are not feminine. Are not feminine, I guess, or they're toxic. But aside from the low hanging fruit of Donald Trump's red tie, put up a couple examples of Donald Trump's red tie that is so masculine. And you know what? You don't even have to put the filter on this. Let's just pop this up. Just Google it and see what we got. Got it? Yeah. Let's see. Yes, pull it up. Oh, that red tie seems very, very pink. Keep going back up. I mean, the guy has been wearing pink ties now. That's fine. I have no problem with pink ties. I think that Trump's style is a little gaudy, frankly. But the fascinating thing is you heard Charlie Kirk sit there and go, it wasn't even about policy. And then he realizes, like I meant it was a little bit about policy. So much of what has happened over the past 20 or 30 years, and certainly I think like Obama triggered it by existing and being president and being black. Data shows that up until 2008, 50% of non college educated men thought the Republican Party was still to the left of the Democratic Party on race. That was a vestige, a literally a 40 year old year vestige, a 40 year shadow from when the Republican Party had been, you know, and maybe it was really longer than that, but associated with being to the left of civil rights because of the Civil War and the Democrats at that time, the Dixiecrats, who all abandoned the party party following the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights Act. It took a while for a lot of people to catch up to the reality that the Democratic Party is to the left on race of the Republican Party and what that did. And this was a big argument we had in the 2016, 2017, 2018. You had a situation over the course of 30 years where men lost social status. They lost status across the board. Not they still had more than white men, I should say still had more than women. Black men, black women, brown men, brown women, they still had more, but it was diminished within our culture. White men were no longer always centered. Sometimes you'd see a black guy in a Cialis commercial, sometimes you would see a sitcom with a female lead. Sometimes you would see multiple sitcoms with a female lead. And they weren't playing somebody's mom, they weren't playing somebody's wife. They were just a person.

[Brian]

I could feel myself disappearing as you say this.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I mean, look, there is some truth to the fact that there was a loss of social capital that white men suffered. When you are at the top of the totem pole, as it were, and no one occupies section two, three or four of that totem pole, and then you have a series of different people who are lower than you on that totem pole. Because in lower, in various different sort of like silos of society, when you get dropped down a notch or two because everybody else moves up one closer, not at parity, but closer to parity, it feels like a loss because it is a loss, but it is still more than equitable of a loss. It is still a system that is still rigged in its favor. However, as a Christian fundamentalist, and I don't know if Kirk himself is actually a Christian fundamentalist, although now he seems to be a lot more out about it. If he is, he is the everything that derives from that. The, the religious hierarchy. Once it extends from God to man, and I do mean man, then it extends to everyone else on the planet. And that's what we call the patriarchy. If you're talking about gender, or it's called white supremacy, if we're talking about race. These are all the same sort of inclination. When Hillary Clinton came up, was running against Donald Trump, there was a percentage of people, the people, maybe some who voted for Obama, who were like, not, hey, I was willing not to be a racist, but I'm a misogynist. It was more like from their perspective, we already had one non normal president. We're not going to have two non normal presidents in a row. We need to get back to a normal president. Donald Trump wins and who defeats Donald Trump? Another normal president, not one of these other types of presidents. That's what we're seeing. And we're seeing in many respects, I think probably the tail end. I mean, this is the white knuckled version of it. And the question is, will that white knuckle have held on tight enough to provide Donald Trump or the Republican Party the leverage to maintain this control that they used in this one moment, this white knuckled moment for white male privilege to maintain a minoritarian control over the country? And it's no mistake that we're talking about, you know, people who are like in their early 20s, mid-20s, late teens. Because their parents and their fathers were all from my generation during a Reagan era where there was like a, where we came of age at that time and where we just. Those men were just on the cusp of seeing this dramatic change. You know, when Kavanaugh was at his hearings, the. He had license in his mind to lie about what he did as a kid. Because the rules at that time were boys will be boys. And when you grow into an adult, you don't. You're not responsible for that stuff. That's just part of like being a prep school guy. It happens. That's just like a row, you know, it's a ritual. And people of that generation got caught on either side of essentially emancipation, equality for a whole host of people. And they felt the loss because, you know, for people who are really old, people are in their 70s, 80s, they, they say they still have the same sort of like, sense, but they're not, they don't have to deal with it on a day to day basis because they're competing against people who are in their 70s or the 80s. That's what's going on there, actually.

[Brian]

To. Donald Trump is not a very masculine man.

[Sam Cedar]

Donald Trump is not a masculine man. No, I'm sorry, a guy who gets up and he's dancing to. Or let me put it this way, he is not. He does not fit the definition, what they mean, of a traditional masking man who's up there dancing to a gay icon, a gay cruising, essentially. Anthem.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

This has got. Not a guy who's particularly athletic. This is not a guy who cares. Has shown a lot of care for his family. He divorced three times and cheated on all his wives and turned the White House into Liberace's house. I mean, exactly. But it is the story they tell themselves and the story they tell about Donald Trump because it's really more that Donald Trump is the guy who's willing to say, I am proud of my misogyny, I am proud of my racism, and you have a home here.

[Brian]

I'm also so sick of talking about young men. Like young women aren't alienated in this.

[Sam Cedar]

Economy and completely lonely.

[Brian]

That's just a function of policy and society in general. I think that the whole age range has been left behind, without a doubt.

[Sam Cedar]

But I mean, this country did not do any wholesale studies of women's health until I was almost 30.

[Brian]

And that's been canceled.

[Sam Cedar]

And it's been canceled. All right, I'm going to read oh, five IMs. And we're getting out of here. Sorry. We went long with with Marin. Really cool. Can we go live to the DSA convention pretty please? We did not have that kind of streaming ability. Matthew from Atlanta talking about Trump's tie. I didn't know ties came in high letter yellow. I think he calls that gold. Probably. It's been very difficult to make a gold thread. Nobody's done it. That's a billion dollar idea. There you go. Party with ag. It should be important to note that if the cap on the House represents on House represents was lifted, made more appropriate. It would be the actual check and balance of the Senate was meant to be. It would also make the electoral more representative. This is not to say reform of the Senate representation wouldn't also be good, but its power has been buoyed by how small the cap on House of Representatives is. Yes, it has not grown since I think it was like the early 1900s. But also you could say the same thing about the Supreme Court. Supposed to be 13th Circuit. It's supposed to be the same number of circuit courts. Globalize the enchilada. Hey, Mr. Crew. Been a daily viewer since 2020. I want to thank you for everything you do. This is my first IIM as an Mr. Member. I joined DSA today. We beat fascism by standing united. I'm going to give you one of these. Thank you for the support. Thank you for joining DSA and getting involved. Very important Congressional baseball fan. Sam, where are the tapes of you doing sets at the Kowloon in 1989? I did those in nineteen 1992. I don't know if I recorded there. I had to get. I had to make a beeline to get out of that place. And the final I am of the week old Chomsky. What the hell is Kirk talking about? Trump listens to the cat's soundtrack when he gets out of bed. He's more feminine than my girlfriend. Matt. Emma in Chicago for the dsa. Good job. In absentia this week. Brian Yeoman's work solo today.

[Brian]

We did it.

[Sam Cedar]

You haven't even been on the job for two months yet, have you? No. Sheesh. Good job. Good job this week, folks. We'll see you on Monday. It might take a strength like I to get to where I want But I know somehow I'm gonna get there I wasn't looking when I just got caught between the truth and the light fall the finding out won't make me feel any better yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the meds are gonna kick in and my pilot light shines I get somewhere the choice was made for the option where you don't get paid for the road that bends before it finally breaks you.

[Mark Maron]

I guess.

[Sam Cedar]

You might have lost my drive between the 101 and the 5 do you know how far the teacher takes you? Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the man's not gonna kick in and my pilot light shining bright while I shifted in and out of here waiting for my moment to happen.

[Brian]

I.

[Sam Cedar]

Still know how much longer I can stay in how much more I know.