Jihad Me At Hello

Welcome to the new GLoP -- the one where Rob is back in school. Yes, we talk a lot about that, took some questions from GLoP fans on X, ruminated on The Munsters, Hamilton, bad dreams, appropriate uses for the National Cathedral, Taxi Driver, Robert Downey Jr.'s career, the most overrated novel, and other assorted topics having nothing to do with each other. In other words, a typical GLoP.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's gold.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Showtime. Folks. Well, we're coming to the end of September
and it's another edition of block culture. That interesting new development,
which is that our own Rob Long is now in Princeton,

(00:33):
New Jersey, and sadly I have to report, since we
do not do this on video, that Rob has no vestments.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
He just is looking like I won't have been here
three weeks. That there's a Okay, you're altar.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Boy, but if you're an altar boy, don't you get
some kind of an outfit?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, but you don't hang out You don't hang out
in any outfit.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
You don't you know?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Okay, you you were the big beard in the hat
all day. No, yes, well, if.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
You are a big beard in the hat guy, you
wear the big beard in the.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Hat all day. So we're starting, we're starting.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
We're starting to anti Semitism and anti Christianism. We're going
everywhere except anti Muslimism because we do not want to
we don't want to sell so in Washington as he
usually is, Jonah Goldberg, Hi, Jonah, Hey, John, and I am,
of course John pot Horns and I'm in New York
and we are here to amuse you with feats of

(01:37):
press to digitation the likes of which you have never seen.
We have no topics, we have nothing to talk about.
We're not going to talk about Trump and and Harris apparently, Okay,
I got nothing to say. I talked five hours a
week about them, so I got nothing left to say.
Uh So we did put out a call on Twitter
for questions from the gloparati. The the glopatariat. I mean,

(02:06):
I like that you are going low. I'm going high.
I'm going with the gloss.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
You are concern you said the GLASI.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Now right in the middle glo.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, the glop. What I like is that you put
that you tweeted that thing, like, you know, forty five
minutes ago, and we have a million billion tweets suggesting
that the people who listen to glop are not busy
in the middle of the day.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Is anybody is anybody in America? Is that the people
who are who are actually doing things that are valuable.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
I'm busy in the middle of the day. I'm in
between classes. You know that. I came back and I'm
sitting here. I'm in between classes, in between Biblical Greek,
and then I have to go back and I have
to study for my Old Testament quiz.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Okay, well, you know, as a as a master of
biblical Greek, I guess that means you're not a master
of like literary Greek. I have an interest. I'm in
an interesting place. Not to get incredibly pretentious, but I
am my son is about to start reading the Odyssey
in high school, and I decided that it had been many,
many decades since i'd read the Iliad in the Odyssey.

(03:22):
So I started to read the Iliad and I really
didn't know what to do because I didn't know whether
to read the Fagels translation or the new Emily Wilson
translation Robert Fitzgerald translation. Okay, so I ended up downloading
to audible the Fagels translation, which is amazing, which is

(03:46):
an amazing I actually don't know who's reading it. I
should look it up and tell it, but I mean,
it's a British actor who is declaiming it, and it
is it is thrilling to listen to it.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
And he was like, you know, he taught right here.
He taught it, Prince did and his his Odyssey, I
have to say, is actually I mean I tried to
read the Elia of the year few years ago, and I
just thought, I hate I hate this so much. Uh.
And then then I thought I was going to read
the Alien on the Odyssey, and I threw the Ilia
way and I picked up the Oys. And what you
discover when you read the Odyssey is it's really good.

(04:19):
I mean, it's good stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
So I think the Iliod is really good stuff. And
I had forgotten again because it had been decades and
decades that the Iliad, which is essentially it's one of
the two foundational works of non religious Western culture, right,
I mean, it is these sort of foundational.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
And Valley of the Dolls, and you know.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
It begins smack dab in the middle, like there's no
there's no lead up, there's no there's no introductory, there's
no prologue.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
There's no previously on the Iliad.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
We're right there in year ten of the Trojan War,
right there. And it begins with the argument between Achilles
and Agamemnon over who gets the greater honor and whether
Acabemnon is going to take Achilles's honor away from Achilles
is doing all the fighting in the war. Agabemnon is

(05:18):
just a big blow hard jerk, and and and this
opening is just two men screaming at each other on
a beach, and it is fantastic and you're like, you know,
we always think about these literary works as they're sort
of high bound and you know, and I mean, this
is this is like woof.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
I also remember that it wasn't it helps Remember it
was not written right, it was so it was spoken
after dinner. It's an after dinner piece. So like people
had already had a little bit of wine, a little
bit of food, you know, and you had to keep
them occupied, and you had to tell them the fun stuff.
You had to jump right in the middle. I mean storytelling.
When I want to like start in the middle, don't

(06:03):
start at the once upon a time. It's like people
aren't gonna they'll just turn it off. It's kind of
good stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Okay, So I'm gonna bring one thing up and then
we can go to the question. So I just watched
what I think this is your business?

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Rob.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
So that's why, aside, of course from saving souls and interpreting,
I got a lot of Yeah. But so there is
a new version of Mattlock right the Andy Griffith Lawyer
show there. It is starring Kathy Bates, and the situation

(06:44):
is Kathy Bates is a seventy five year old woman.
She walks into a law firm in New York City saying,
I'm been a lawyer in thirty years, but I can
really help you, and she immediately threw various ways gets
on a case. It's a case of police corruption thirty
years earlier. Blah blah blah. So two things about it.

(07:06):
This to me, having watched another pilot of a police
procedural earlier this week called The High Potential. Also a
very good female lead performance by Caitlin Nelson from It's
Always Sending in Philadelphia, that very contrived. This was maybe
the best pilot I have seen in decades. Establishes characters,

(07:29):
establishes this law firm.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Starts with two guys arguing on a beach.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Practically where you find this?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
What network is? It's on It's on CBS. I just
watched it on.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Paramount Plus, so you want my take on that.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
But what I'm saying is, here's the thing. So you
have to establish this. It's a it's a it's ad
a question. I'm about to ask the question, But unlike
in Medius race, I must set up the question with
a prologue, a lengthy prolog so that you know where
I'm So you got to set up Kathy Bates is

(08:05):
an old woman, a Southern coming into this New York
law firm. Figures out how to walk into walk into
the partner's office, cutesy corn pony, gets herself in, gets
yourself on a trial, establishes herself as a character, establishes
they established four other lawyers in the firm as characters.

(08:27):
And then there's a case that needs to be solved,
and then there is a reveal at the end that
I won't go through. And it was picture perfect as
a setup for a long form series, not a sitcom though,
like drama obviously. And I'm looking at and I'm thinking,

(08:50):
why is this so? Why is it that most pilots
are so labored that you watch them and you never
want to watch another episode again. Is it that they
figure out how to live in it and then they
make the pilot, or is it that they go into
making a pilot with some external idea that they don't

(09:12):
really buy, and then as they're doing it, they kind
of make up reasons why these characters are together or
what they're doing and therefore it never feels lived in.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure. Every
pilot's different, right, everybody doing one's different. And sometimes they're
just deal memos that just became shows, and sometimes they're
you know, they were started something else and then got
moved into something else. I don't know the answer. I
would just say this is that the surprising thing is
that if you take all of the TV production entities

(09:45):
and all the networks and you find the one found
found the one that's the most hide bound and probably
the most cost conscious, it's CBS. And that those those
restraints and restrictions made the pilot better, I guarantee you.
And the fact that the people watching that pilot don't
have to be is this a you know, like if

(10:07):
you're a free market conservative, it's like, once you pay
for something, you're just you're done, You're in. Right, the
customer in broadcast television and add support a TV, they
have to keep that customer watching. If if you turn
away from it, it's all over. Whereas if you're watching
Netflix and you decide you don't want to watch episodes
ninety through ten thousand, or six through nine or whatever,

(10:29):
it is there to get your money. It's all you
can eat, and they thought for years that the all
you can eat model was going to be better, and
it actually turns out of bankrupting the whole business and
they may end up having to go back to the
people who know how to put on a pilot that
gets John but Oritz to watch the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Now. Of course, I'm sixty three, which is why I
like Matlock. Right, It's like it's now built into your
DNA as you age, as entropy overtakes. It's a it's Mattlock, Matlock, Okay.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
But it's a law show. It's a court show. Plucky lawyer,
she does the thing. Hey, I got it. Like it's
like you're calling them out lock just to get you
to watch it. But it's like a it's a courtroom
show they have there's a courtroom show on all the time, right,
and they're the best, the easiest to write. It's one
person stands up and gives a speech and the others
are forced to listen. It's sort of like the commentary

(11:20):
podcast and then that person eventually sits down. But that's
what that's what it's the easiest thing. You're out of order.
Counselor approach the bench. I got it, I'll allow it.
I got it.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
I'll allow it, which is my favorite, as you know,
and then go through life like that, right, and.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Then you write this somewhere. The drama part is the
best part is then you have to like this, but
I need to know about these people. Then you have
the lawyers at home and they're you know, they're in bed,
and then one of them says you're the other says
that's out of order, counselor because they talk that way.
And then when you the lady, the ladies who are tough,
I'll always call you out your last name. It's done.
And then people like it. It's like, what's why? Why

(12:03):
think about it so hard? Make it good? And they
made a good version of it.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Is that I want John from now on to introduce
every the other people on the Contrary podcast is jour
number one, number two?

Speaker 1 (12:18):
You're out of order?

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Know when they try to say something, I'll say, I'll
allow it. How about that? Yeah? Yeah, watch it. I'm
going to give you a short lead. We're gonna take
this to thin I counseling. All right, Okay, so I'm

(12:42):
gonna I'm going to offer the first question. I'm we're
going culture nerd here, okay with the first question from
our from our followers. I okay, this is from someone
called novel Drive. So it's not even a name novel Drive.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
That Gary, you just respect the great family of the
novel Drives.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
They changed him and they had Ellis Island.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Okay. Why do you think Hamilton completely vanished from the
cultural zeitgeist? Did it just get old? Or do you
think it's message? So this sweek became problematic in the
wake of the Trump presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement.
This is a very interesting question has out viewed in
twenty fifteen. Just too right. It is still running on

(13:37):
Broadway and it still has multiple editions of it in
different cities. It's in London, it's still selling out on Broadway.
But it was a gigantic cultural phenomenon. It seems to
be no and a debut on Disney Plus during the pandemic.
Not a huge audience. But yes, so he do you

(14:00):
accept the do you accept the basis of this question
that it's vanished from the cultures like geist or is
it just simply that it's nine years old and things
have passed it, or is there something about the way
the culture moved that made it that dated it in
some fashions.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
I think, yeah, sorry, John, I'll so.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
I think it's carefully Jonah's a great question and perfectly
timed to the recent debut of America's foremost intellectual Schmendrick
U tany Heasy Coats because uh, who has a cover
on the New York Magazine cover profile New York Magazine.
I think Coats and Black Lives Matter came in an

(14:44):
exact moment where it became unfashionable to think that we
were that we had made any racial progress. It was
unfashionable to be you know, I don't want to say
everyone was became unpatriotic, but to sort of conventional expressions

(15:05):
of patriotism became even less cool for a while. Yeah,
I agree, and I think, I mean, you guys would
know this stuff better than I do. But you know,
we've talked about like before, how like Moby Dick wasn't
popular when it came out, and all these kinds of things.
There are some things that are very popular when they
come out, and then they go into a long hiatus,

(15:25):
They go into sort of a quiescent phase, and then
when the mom's right, they become popular again. And I
could definitely see Hamilton sort of having a second wave
at some point down the road, probably like even under
a Harris administration. But I do think that like it
became ghost to celebrate the sort of I mean, I

(15:51):
remember Rob, you know, we were talking about how it
was like a modern day schoolhouse rock, you know, and
it was such a wonderfully pro Erican thing and such
a great sort of syncretic thing to use in all
black casts and use basically in rap and all that.
And and then that just got welched by the Black
Lives Matter movement and the anti Trump stuff and all

(16:12):
that kind of thing. But I think the fact that
it's still going strong in the real world suggests that
it could get a new found appreciation. I could see
someone writing an essay it's time to watch Hamilton again,
you know, and coming.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Back, I would just say this, the premise of Hamilton
is that the founders were great men, engaged in a
great experiment.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Great flawed men.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, and and and the they should be celebrated for that.
And that is anathema to the left, and it's anathema
to the Trump right the question mentioned tripe, you know Trump,
I mean, Americas, is this where a failing country or disaster? Everything,
Everything's horrible. We're on the precipice of room in a disaster.

(17:01):
I mean, if you're if you believe in the if
you believe that the founders were correct and they created
a government and a subsequent society that is fantastic and
you know, the probably the greatest single achievement of mankind.
You know, you're just at a step where I don't

(17:23):
know what party you're in because you're not in neither one.
So yeah, I think it needs to take a break.
Which is the irony of it is that it does.
It came right at the right at a time when
it could have been celebrated, and instead it just feels irrelevant,
which is tragic because it's a it's probably the most
patriarchic piece of art that's ever been created.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
I mean, and it's patriotic in a in a new way,
and that there was there were objections to it on
the part of a kind of phide bound you know. Yes, Uh,
it's a multicultural cast. You know, Linn Bahn Miranda is
himself Puerto Rican. Uh, Daved Diggs who played Jefferson and

(18:04):
Lafayette is half Jewish, half Black, Lamar Odom Junior who
played Leslie Odom Junior, who played Burr Black, you know,
the Scholar Sisters Black, all of that rap music. But
the idea was that they were going to enact, they
enact a pageant version of the Founding of the United States,

(18:29):
with Alexander Hamilton as the central figure. And it is.
I happened to listen to it with one of my
kids on a long car drive a couple of weeks ago,
and it is a masterpiece. It may well be the
single best work of American art of the twentieth twenty
first century. And I'm not I can't take.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
That's aim right.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
And the expansion the idea that the found talk about
an important message for now that was made possible maybe
by the Obama presidency, but now that the Founding is
for everyone, Yeah, the American Founding is for that's everyone.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
That's what's yeah. Because it was amazing was that for
years in college and before in the culture, Uh, it
was considered normal. This is this is now very the
tinkertoy version of the craziness that exists now. But on
college campus is the dead white European man. At least
people have nothing to say to me that, the people
who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration and the founders,

(19:39):
they have nothing to say to me if I am
not also a white European male. And the response to
that was, no, no, you don't understand. George Washington belongs
to all of us, and so does Thomas Jefferson, and
so does Alexanda Hamilton, and the story of the founding
of America belongs to all Americans, irrespective of their race.
And lin Manuel simply took that on its face. He said, okay,

(20:02):
how about this. And it was a magnificent piece of art.
It's incredibly riveting, it's a great piece of theater. It's
it's a Le'll give it the highest possible accolade. It's
the highest piece of show business I've ever seen. Right,
it's great show business. And it just simply, you know,
it took us, that took those people saying that at
their word, and what came out of that was something terrific.

(20:23):
He didn't say, you're a liar. No, I have to
come up with my own, you know, the quansa version. No,
it's he took the version that exists and he said, okay,
it's mine too, and that's pretty amazing. It's been amazing.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, just before you do it more amazing. Okay, just
to close the circle here. So I think it has
thirty four numbers. Hamilton's three hours long. I think it
has thirty four separate numbers. The lyrical invention, the wordsmith
ory that this guy who I think was thirty three

(20:57):
or something when he did it all in spaired by
the fact that he brought Ron Schrenhau's biography of Hamilton
with him on his honeymoon. I don't know that it's
ever been matched. And you know, this is one of
these works, rare works that the book music and lyrics
pretty much written by the same person. There four or

(21:17):
five of these in Broadway history. But you know, simply
as a matter of as a piece of writing, word
by word, lyric by lyric, rhyme by rhyme, internal rhyme
by internal rhyme, it is jaw droppingly clever and incredibly touching.

(21:37):
And if it has gone out of fashion, that's because
Trump is right, and we stink he's just raw. He's
right the wrong way, like we stink because everybody is
now viewing everything through every possible filter, except what is
this thing in front of me that I can experience

(21:59):
fresh without putting on my ideological filter and saying, oh,
I don't like what it says about immigration, or or
it doesn't say enough about how many America and the
founders were to people. There's a joke in it about
Sally Hemmings.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
There's a joke, big, big laugh in the show, big
laugh in the show.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Okay, anyway, I'm just going to.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Say that he was.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Also, you would never have predicted it from the guy
who worked on the J. Peterman catalog in Seinfeld, Right,
this is glop. I have to point that out.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
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Speaker 2 (24:24):
Can I just ask you, now that you are back
in school, are you going to get Kurt Vonnegut to
write your paper?

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Well, he's he's deceased.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
So you could, yes, But could you get you know,
I don't know, Matthew, Mark Lucer John to come and
write your write your paper.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
And well, I mean they didn't write the Gospels, so yeah, No.
What we do is we look at primary sources. So
I don't need any of those people since I have
you know, Athanasius and Origin and blah blah blah, and
other people whose names are complicated to to the one
thing I've enjoyed was that I'm with a lot of
young people, right, so like a lot of young people,
and and I I am me so like we're reading

(25:02):
about the Christian martyrs, and I'm like, man, that's some
that's all over the top. I think I think that
that stuff really happened. That seems you know, I mean
we've all seen Saw Saw too, right. I raised my hand,
and you know, these are very earnest young people, like well,
I don't know, I don't know. It reminds me of Saw,
Like well, it does reminds me of Saw. So anyway,

(25:23):
that's that's my my my take on it is that
college camp, this college campus anyway, seems filled with very purposeful, thoughtful,
very smart, very well read young people who who who
I'm Well, I'm I'm Rodney Dangerfield, That's what I am
in this respect. And this yeah, this firsture, that's the question.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
The next question for us is where to build a factory?

Speaker 2 (25:48):
How about fantasy land? That's right, That's what I'm saying.
And so you would, yes you should, Okay, all right,
so here we have.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
The school.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, it's very dangerous because you know, no one should
do that dive.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Because it's it's it's one of those famous famous college
swim diving rivalries that the whole college turns out to see. Yeah,
are you going to go to the big swim diving
meet against State? Well, yes, of course it's it's not
a made up thing at all.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Speaking of it, you know, you remember that Robert Downey
Junior plays Not That Not the Sun, like you must
have auditioned for the Sun, didn't get the Sun. Keith
Gordon got the Sun, so he gets the best friend
of the Sun. As this happens to these movies.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
I do think he was miscast as doctor Doom. Someone's
got to hold up. They're part of the traditional glop
here who had a lot of Iliad and Philip I apologize.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Okay, so doctor Doom, so you should explain what you're
talking about here, because I barely even know who doctor
Doom is. So I do know he's getting paid two
hundred million dollars to be doctor Doom or something.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
So so, Doctor Doom is one of the great villains
in Marvel comics. He's the primary foe the Fantastic Four,
which they've tried to make good movies out of and
failed and and they cast uh Robert Downing Jr. As
Doctor Doom. Doctor Doom is a from a fictional East
European country. He's a dictator there. There's actually a Grada

(27:28):
Latvia is what it's called. No, no, no, no Latveria.
I apologize and sorry all my friend.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Captive nation by Doctor Doom. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Well, there's a great episode where the Fantastic Four go
to Laveria the issue with the comic where they go
to Laveria to capture doctor Doom and bring the fight
to him, and out from behind the corner comes Henry
Kissinger who says, you can't. We've just signed a treaty
because they're holding off the communist heer. Anyway, they shouldn't

(28:04):
have picked him. You know, he's the guy who played
iron Man so well blah blah blah blah blah. But
I don't blame him for taking the because was it
eighty million dollars or something to do it.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
I believe it is thought that if those he's signed
two movies, two movie deal, he can't play iron Man anymore.
They have a problem because the because everything that's happened
since the end of the Marvel cinematic, the first phase
of the Marvels that has like been a dud except
for Spider Man movies. So they shot the wad. They

(28:33):
were like, Okay, what we got to do is bring
back the magic. We'll cast him in a different way.
He'll play a villain in the Fantastic four reboot that
we're about to do. And he's like, you know, Brinks trucks,
back up twelve of them again, I'm not doing this.
And apparently it is going to be the single biggest

(28:55):
payday that any anyone has ever had from any work
of popular entertainment ever. Could be as much as two
hundred or three hundred million dollars, depending on how it does.
He supposedly made a hundred million dollars off of Endgame,
the last I believe that Bengers movie. And know, yeah,
speaking but he's bad casting. You're saying it's bad cast.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
I think it's a bad idea. That should have had
that what's his name, the guy from Oppenheimer and Peaky Blinders,
Uh Killian Murphy. Yeah, that's who the fans really wanted
to play him.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
He would have been great, But when he played Sandman, right,
doesn't he play in the Batman? Okay? All right, okay,
I got so.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Rob, can I just talk here a minute? Just I
don't know whether this you mentioned this or not that
Matt Locke airing on CBS overnights. Overnights got a seven
point seven million viewers overnight, so it's live plus the
same day. Oh no, sorry, that's those the Fast Nationals.
So that's actually that's a lot and it won't go up
that much after the Fast Nationals, but it might. He

(29:57):
hit eight eight halfs. It's a lot of people, now, yeah,
people like him at yeah, okay, it.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
So there are some questions. I'm just gonna I'm just
gonna go through them very quickly. You don't have to
answer any of them. And if you don't get what,
I'm going to make a reference something here, we're just
going to go past it, and no one is allowed
to answer it. What glass cleaner did Danny Thomas endorse.
We're just going to move past that to go.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
To to go to.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yes, okay, okay, did Game of Thrones poison long form
show plots so that few, if any, likable characters are included.
So this is an interesting question. So we have these shows, uh,
and they're very anti hero based, and this guy, uh,

(30:49):
just another Bob is his name? I want to know
if they ruined it, and I would say that it's
it's not Game of Thrones, which did the opposite I
would say, which is that it introduced a lovable character
and then murdered him so that you knew that the
show could go anywhere in any way. Had your set
up a hero and then killed him off, and then

(31:10):
it had to build from a bunch of very seemingly
unattractive people, people that you nonetheless came to admire. But
wouldn't you say that this is really this is the
Sopranos effect. I mean that if you have long form
shows that are based on characters who aren't that attractive

(31:31):
or likable or something like that, that's that attractive.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
What is attractive means likable?

Speaker 2 (31:38):
He says likable, likable.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
It's Tony.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
You know, you had to remind yourself of a psychopath
because he was still appealing.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Okay, Well, you wouldn't have said that about Vic Mackey
of the Shield, right, because he wasn't really likable. Right,
that was his biggest show, right, Although that was that
is considered in the annals of the sort of academic
studies of the anti hero introduct the shield. What was
that a snore? It was this?

Speaker 3 (32:07):
It was a snore turned into a snort.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
I think, yeah, the sound of one makes during Okay.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
So maybe that's not a good question.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
I think a quick stid of uh, because uh, I've
actually written a lot about these byronic and basically bad
people as heroes for a long time. I think you
can make the case. It starts with Hannibal Lecter and
Hannah Lecker was incredibly compelling character. But I remember taking
a girl on a date. I'd seen the movie in

(32:41):
Prague when I lived in Prague, and I brought her
to the movie and she spent most of her time
hiding behind her coat and terrified. And at one point
she turns to me and she says, he thinks it's
good to eat people. Yes, And it's like, yes, he
thinks it's good to eat people.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
It wasn't.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
But anyway, the thing is is like, remember they made
a show out of Annibal Lecter. It was three or
four seasons on I think NBC, and then you had
more and more characters. Mel Gibson in payback, Right, you
had and then you had NYPD Blue, where you're supposed
to root for the guys who beat up cops, beat
up suspects and that kind of stuff. And then you

(33:27):
go into overdrive with the Shield. And then you have
the Sopranos. You have Breaking Bad right, where you root
for the villain. You have the wire where you're like
rooting for murderers and drug dealers who are slightly more compelling,
and you're off to the races. And I think this
has just been one of these things that has been
supposed to be smart writing is supposed to make evil

(33:47):
people compelling for like the last quarter century. And I
think the Godfather is the Godfather. Yeah, the Godfather probably
right to really do the bigats.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
You can go back to the Godfather. Yeah, but right, okay,
so okay. Nick Newfield asks the following.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Wait when you wait, wait Jonah, when you say to
the guests, do you mean follow the toldo for?

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yes? Sorry? Are we are we in the visit? Are
we in the Are we in the Arian creed or
the Athenasian creed? Here?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
No, No, I'm in the ot my friend?

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, whoa easy?

Speaker 1 (34:27):
You heard me?

Speaker 3 (34:28):
The bait pob like that.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
You know what I said, You're in the apocrypha. I
referred to you. I refer to your book your way.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
You're indeed, thank you, I said, Arian Creed. I deserve
I deserve a couple of Brownie points for that. Could
Rob write a pilot I like comedy about the page
or operation? What wag?

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Operation?

Speaker 2 (34:54):
What would be in the running for the show title?
And I and then we are answered, by the way
by somebody who says, shouldn't Why isn't anybody referring to
that operation as Stuck's nuts? So I really get that's
pretty good. So I think.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Necessarily it already has.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
We have the title from another tweeter. So, but Rob,
how do you write a like comedy?

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Well, it's perfect? What do you mean, it's a great, delicious,
I mean horific. The bad guys get it. You know,
you make it. You make it. It's an out landish idea, right,
it is an outlandish idea that I and I one

(35:46):
hundred thousand percent guarantee you that. When they first talked
about it, someone said, this is the stupidest thing I've
ever heard of my life. There's some old guys, some
network executive at the you know room whatever that is
in the most saw the tech the tech room, what
they called room something. What they called room.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Something was a young woman.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, first pitched.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
This thing and again, and some old guys said, you know,
you know, honey, I and I sent it there no
bad ideas, that's a bad idea.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Okay, get me for coffee.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
I thought this was a safe space for brainstorming, like yeah,
but not for stupid stuff. Okay, so give me the
thing that I can use. And then she went off
and she did the thing. I uh, you know that happened.
Untilally happened. I've been actually working for the past six months,
nine months with a friend of mine on the project
project he brought to me. We were working together and
he to partners on this and the premise of it

(36:38):
is very very close to this, and we have spent
you have no idea how much time we spend saying
this is just the thing. When you say this that nobody
believes it. It's just like it just sounds so dumb.
And then this happened, and it was like, you know,
I when I when I saw this happen. The minute
I saw it, my phone was ringing with what do

(37:01):
we do.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Now, that's amazing. I need I need to see that.
I need to see your treatment. I got to see
your treatment because I want to know if you got hacked.
Are you the author of stucks Nuts, the real Thing
and the pilot?

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Well great if you. If you're gonna call it stuck nuts,
it's got to be called s T S T U
X and U T Z and and and it's the nerdy,
the nerdy young you know, kind of unattractive because she
wears glasses uh you know, uh huts. Her name is
me Nuts, doctor nuts, and she's been you know, it's

(37:42):
teasing her all the time, and she's, God, what what
kind of what are you working on? Come on, doctor Nuts?

Speaker 2 (37:46):
One, don't we just go out.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Let's go outside. It's come on, I buy your come on.
And she's like, no, I have Tom in the lab.
I have to do the thing. And you and the
lab and you have plots and your plants.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Come on out.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
We're all gonna go dance sink to the thing, and
we're gonna have a smart.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
You know, you could also do it, you know, borrowing
loosely from Mean Girls, where the girl who comes up
with this at first wants to be part of the
cool kids, but she's really a nerd, right right. She
gets all sort of caught up, and then at the end,
you know, she realizes, I've lost my way. I got
to go blow up some terrorists. And then she gets
the boy, you know, and that's how it's you know,

(38:22):
not supposed to end.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Okay, I want I want her, and she's you know,
and she's got to have this. And it's like this young,
super super hot Mosad agent, you know, and he's just
like you know, Benyamine or something. Uh, and he's just
like he does can't care for the time of day.
So she's so madly in love with him. And then

(38:43):
one day he's in the lab and he reaches to
pick up the pager and she reaches over to stop
him in her hands touch and he looks at her
and he says, what you don't don't touch the pager
and then uh, and then they kind of lock eyes
and you're like, oh, wait a minute, something happened. And
then you know, in like third act, he's he says,
can I can I can I just do something? Can

(39:05):
you just look at me for one minute? Nihal? And
she looks at him and he just takes her glasses
off her face and says, you know, you know, you're
beautiful Dutch and she says, stop it. We let's just
keep up. Let's focus on blowing up plo.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
And then you know it could be called jahad me
at hello.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Okay, now that's good, all right, okay, so uh let
me see if I got okay, got something to read here.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Let's talk at at least first about it. When you
move to the new places I have, you ended up
having to buy a lot of stuff, and you ended
up buying a lot of stuff on the internets. And
one of the ways that you do that is that
you discover a lot of vendors to Shopify. I bought
a lot of stuff, and I bought a lot of books,
and a lot of them, like use bookstores, use Shopify
and shopfi is really simple and it's mobile, and it's

(40:00):
incredibly great product to use both as a customer and
as somebody who is a If you're a retailer, even
a small retailer, Shopify makes all those things much much easier.
So if you have a business, if you sell some stuff,
you're using obviously using the web to do that. Upgrade
your business, get the same checkout that everybody uses with Shopify.

(40:21):
So sign up for your one dollar per month trial period.
It's Shopify dot com slash glop. That's all lowercase Shopify
dot com slash clop, Shopify s h O P I
f y dot com slash glop upgrade. You are selling
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you get the same checkout that all these great internet
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(40:44):
I know you'll stay with it because if you if
you have a small business, I've just used it now
ninety thousand times, and it is It connects you to
your customers. I always know when my package is arriving.
It's incredibly great innovation for small business.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Okay, here's an interesting one that is.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
But you know that's true.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Actually, that is very true. That is very true. Okay,
here is something that is so out of phase that
it's just sort of an interesting thing. Should the final
scenes in Taxi Driver be understood to be real or
a fantasy? That is all in the mind of Travis Spickel.

(41:31):
So I now must point out The Taxi Driver is
a film from nineteen seventy six, directed by Martin Scorsese,
written by Paul Schrader, starring Robert de Niro, about a
Vietnam veteran taxi driver who is plotting a possible assassination
of a presidential candidate while getting obsessed with saving a

(41:54):
teenage prostitute from her pimp. In Times Square, you're talking
to me, talking to me, But who the hell are
you talking talking to me?

Speaker 4 (42:12):
Well, I'm the only one.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
And in the course of this whole thing, he has
a brief flirtation with Sybil Shepherd, who is a campaign
worker at the staff of the presidential candidate whom he
is considering assassinating. As we discovered in the course of
the plot, he ends up saving the teenage prostitute from

(42:36):
her pimp and an incredibly bloody one of the bloodiest
scenes in film history in a tenement shootout. And then
the last scene is him driving his cab and Sybil
Shepherd gets into the cab and having ditched him because

(42:57):
he had taken her to a hardcore porn movie. In
Times Square, rather like Jonah taking the nice young girl
in Prague to see Silence of the Lambs on the date,
Darnk tutened she flirts with him, and he kind of
flirts with her back, and then she gets out of
the cab, and then you see his eyes in the

(43:17):
rearview mirror. And there's always been a debate about whether
or not either the scene in which he survives the
shooting of the pimp that maybe he dies and that
the final scene is his fantasy life, or that the

(43:37):
entire murder of the pimp is a fantasy, as is
Sybil Shepherd's appearance in his cab, and that he remains
the same psychopath that he was all along. So this
has been a debate since the movie came out, and
I don't know if either of you has a theory
or whether this was.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
I'd have to rewatch it. It's been a long time since,
so watch that. The only thing I will say about
Taxi Driver is last year were to comment about it,
you guys talked about on Commentary Pod, there was that
poll that came out that said the huge numbers of
Americans think life was better fifty years ago in America.
Go watch Taxi Driver. Yeah, yeah, tell me that, Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yeah. So I will say for the for the record
that I believe that the final scene with Sybil Shepherd
in the Cab is Travis Bickle's fantasy, and that and
that yes, he he believes that he has become this
great hero and that his only goal really is to

(44:40):
be thought of as a hero, but that this doesn't
doesn't really happen. I what's interesting is in a couple
of weeks, this a billion dollar movie is about to
open the sequel to Joker, right the Joaquin Phoenix Joker.
You when the Oscar for a Joker made a billion dollars,
and this is the sequel, Joker Folio Do, which he

(45:02):
co stars with Lady Gaga. So what was striking to
me about Joker when it came out in twenty nineteen
is that it was an homage, which is to say,
a complete ripoff of Taxi Driver, and not only a
ripoff of Taxi Driver, but then stitched together with Taxi

(45:24):
Driver was Martin Squersese's movie made three movies later, King
of Comedy, which is also the plot of Joker, which
is Taxi Driver meets King of Comedy. And it is
astounding to me that you can sort of do that,
that there was something shocking about the degree to which

(45:46):
the entire all the emotional beats everything. Basically Jaquin Phoenix
is playing Travis Bickel, and that's fine. So he won
an Oscar for it. Congratulations. But this is the weird
part about Joker folio do as a comes out. That's
a ripoff as far as I can tell from the
trailer of another movie from the same period, which is

(46:07):
Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, because it's a musical and
it's a musical that takes place in the head of
the Joker apparently and is all about killing and murder
or suicide or whatever, which is what All That Jazz is,
which is fantastic, one of my favorite movies of all
time actually, but nonetheless very interesting that we are now

(46:27):
mining the seventies so deeply and with such that or
Hollywood is now this guy Todd Phillips who made it,
is like, I'm just going to remake All That Jazz,
but I'm not going to pay Bob Fossey's estate. I'm
just gonna make the Joker into the Roy Scheider Bob
Fosse character, and that'll be fine, and I can make

(46:49):
a billion dollars. Now we're getting into the weeds. You
want weeds, I got weeds. For you. On a recent flight,
Jeff Dana writes, I watched an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Let's start ed Winn. Ed Win, what a great actor
in Personal Win.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
By the way, Ed Winn is Noted Winn.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Any favorite memories or roles of ed I need to
rewatch the Diary of Ann Frank, which Edwin was it?

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Now?

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Ed Winn was a great vodvillian and Broadway star of
the twenties, thirties and forties. Does anyone remember?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
I feel like we're being true. I feel I feel
like that he didn't. He doesn't care about ed Winn.
He just wants to get Grandpa going. He's like, hey,
what do you say about ed Winn? And there's a
bunch of people listening to this right now and say,
there's no way to let me tell you. Come on, no,
I think I thy're gonna And there's like a drinking
game that happened right this minute about whether any whether

(47:48):
we're talking about ed Win or not. So I don't know.
I really have no feelings.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Remember Ed Disney was the thing he was. He played
Uncle Albert in Mary Potter.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
I love to love.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Long and clear.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
I love to love.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
That's I would say that's the only thing that I
know Edwin from.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Oh Fred Gwinn, Just to be clear, but I mean Edwin.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Fred Gwynn, not Win. Here's what I remember about Fred
Gwynn is that every time that Fred Winn was interviewed,
of course Herman Munster, and then after Herman Munster, he
had a queer as a character. Actor hated being associated
with Herman Munster, like all TV stars of the old
days when they thought they were more important than their shows,
And Fred Gwinn had to let you know that he

(48:49):
went to Harvard. You never read an interview with Fred
Winn that didn't say went to Harvard. You never heard
anything about Fred Winn that didn't say went to Harvard.
He went to Harvard. I just want you to know that.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
He was No Monster went to Harvard is a kind
of a story.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
That's definitely, But.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
John Aston, who played Gomez Adams, also went to Harvard.
He was intellectually secure enough not to mention it.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Every Like you believe that Goz went to Harvard, you
do not believe that Herman Monster went to Harvard. Herman
Monster at best went to Cornell. I don't know that
the guy from from.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
The the Joe Petty Lawyer movie. Yeah, no, I know
that guy went to Harvard, but it's funny.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
But really to Mississippi State, that would be my guess.
But I am the judge.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
But yeah, I was recently driven through northern Maryland a
couple of a month and a half ago in the
sprinter van and we drove through Teeneytown, Maryland, sure, which
is kind of charming and seemed to be thriving for
a lot of small towns don't seem to be thriving anymore.
And I'm I'm googling tiny town like wanting to know
like the history of it. And it's not related to

(50:04):
the Tainy from the Teiney decision Ary that kind of stuff.
But it is where Fred Gwyn lived and died at
the end of his life, where he retired and died,
this Kingstown found in Maryland.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
He needed a big coffin. Yeah he was one. He
was one tall drink of water.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yeah. Also he was. He was buried with so much
of his Harvard me bill. He went to Harvard, just
said the H bomb the twosan just said I went
to school in Boston with a question mark at the end.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
I did see him once play Big Daddy and Cat
on a Hanson roof on Broadway Elizabeth Ashley, and he
was great. He was a really wonderful actor, particularly given
his Harvard pedigree.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Harvard traink is what I.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Want to say, and by the way, fantastic as Herman Munster.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Yeah, oh no, he was good. I mean that very feels.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Is beyond is beyond criticism. I would say that was
a very original, delightful performance as Herman Munster.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
I have to say no, can I interrupt for one
minute by saying it if there if this was a
drinking game that they were playing to.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
See if we would go over an ed wmin.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
No, they didn't win, but I hope that if they
were going to play that game they were going to
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(51:57):
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(52:19):
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Speaker 2 (53:11):
Joana, listening to Rob continue to mention the fact that
he has to be in class at eight thirty and
all of that, And can I just say that I
am being triggered. I am now going to have school
nightmares every night for the next six months. I'm still
I'm sixty three years old. I've been having school nightmares

(53:33):
since I got to college. Me too, Okay, so now
are you having them while you're at school?

Speaker 1 (53:38):
That's the problem. It's curious to have them. And I
would wake up and I would say, this is hilarious.
I don't know why I had this nightmare. It's not
really because I'm not in school. Now I have them
and it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, this
could be true.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
I love about it is that not only do you
are you going to wake up in a cold, sweat,
stress nightmare, but what you're going to do when you
wake up is rush to read the Bible, which is
like such a great look if you're just watching from
the outside on a camera, like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
He woke up in a panic and he's first Bible.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
All right, let's go hi brow for a second. We
got a question here. I name the most overrated novels
of the last two hundred years. Now, I know there's
a whole world of people on the internet who love
to do things like as I think happened to his

(54:32):
shame Rob's friend. This American Life host Ira Gross? Who
who went to see Glass? Excuse me? Did I say Gross?
I'm sorry? Who went to see king Lear? Terry Grose
went to see king Lear in Central Park and an
admittedly terrible production with John Lithgow and said, I don't
get it. King Lear is boring. When people are willing

(54:56):
to admit that Shakespeare is boring, and the world came
down around it's had and he said, I don't know,
I'm just But by the end of like the three
hour Twitter hysteria, he had already gotten to the I
don't know, I'm just some guy who was a radio show.
Leave me alone. I'm so sorry all of that. So
this is a big thing wanting to say, you know what.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I don't like.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
But you know, everyone says that The Last Supper is
a great painting. You know, I don't agree. It's a
lousy painting. You know, that kind of thing. So that
this this does there is jeopardy here in doing the
most overrated novels of the last turn of years. But
Moby Dick, thank you. Okay, uhb Dick, Moby Dick the
most overrated novel I've ever read. Period. I'm going with that.

(55:38):
I like it. I like the Ahab come conceit, I
like the ab Okay crappy on American stuff. Okay, I
don't go anyway. I'm not a fan of family either,
although which you'd have to pick the book.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Oka say something even even more, or you'll be quiet.
I don't like The Great Gatsby.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
A more common opinion. Then you realize, for some reason,
over the last couple of years, I've discovered that many
people do not really like The Great Gatsby.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
I don't like it. I mean I don't I didn't
enjoy it. I don't think it's I mean, who cares.
I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
And I have a theory about The Great Gatsby and
why it has become the book that has become. First
of all, it can be read in all high school
classes because it is short. It is two hundred pages long.
It is very it doesn't have a lot of plot.
It's really a series of four sequences. It's got a

(56:44):
murder in it, so that's.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Good, right good.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
It's got a big drinking scene, so that's good. I
read it again a couple of years so again one
of my kids was doing it, and I thought it
was both amazing and unbelievably sketchy. Like the thing about
it is, it's almost like the second draft, and he
needed to write two more drafts and thicken it, enrich it,

(57:15):
and solidify it, and he didn't. He got He wrote
down what he could write down, and that turned out
to be a thing of genius, because the book is
suggestive without being kind of like definitive, and you have
to bring a lot to it if you're a reader,
and it's really easy to read, and it's fast and
so for an American kid. That's why it's become the

(57:38):
Great American novel because unlike other great American novels, it's
really short and you can read them three hours. What
do you think of that as my theory?

Speaker 3 (57:47):
I guess I got to play this game too, you do.
You guys read a lot more novels and retain them
than I do. That's one of the things, is like,
if you can get me to read like a great
piece of literature, it's usually if I don't like it,
I don't finish it right. But I will say, you know,

(58:08):
we often say the golden age of science fiction is sixteen, right,
I missed the like Catcher in the Rye did not
grab me by the soul, and I understand that it
does for some people. But I was just like eh
and just never got the palpitations from it. So I'm

(58:34):
not saying that people who do are wrong, because some
books you just need to read at the right age,
and I was maybe too cynical and jaundice or whatever.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
But uh no, I think the Catcher and the Rye.
I don't like Catcher in the Rye. I don't like
what it says. I don't like what it is as
a piece of imaginative literature or sort of if you
want to think of what it proposes or what it
propels about the world, what it has, and what I

(59:03):
think is the reason that it endures, like my son's
about to read it in ninth grade, is it has
an incredibly charming authorial voice that Salinger found for Holden Callfield.
And it's all the voice because it's the radically subjective,
it's all him. It's just through his eyes. And this
weekend of that sort of this disastrous weekend in his life.

(59:28):
Again a book that's easy to read, which is one
of the reasons why it remains read. And I like,
I'm not sure that kids should read it, not just
because John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan because he read it.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
But it does he watched Taxi Driver, Oh my god, wow.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah. Okay, So we got Catcher in the Rye, we
got Moby Dick, we got Gatsby. As the three most
over books of the last two hundred years, I would
ask one other question then yes, okay, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
I mean this is more of an intellectual point than
it is a literary point.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
But like.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards Between the Last two hundred Years
was arguably the one of the most influential books ever
written in the English language or in America. It launched
all sorts of utopian and nationalist movements in the United States.
And it is garbage, but it was wildly influential. It's
largely forgotten now, but like I had to read it

(01:00:34):
for yeah, for two books I wrote, and and it's
like the people who fell for HG. Wells, they fell
for Bellamy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
First I just thought that, well, that that is a right, Well,
that's a whole other interesting topic is the world of
the false prediction and how unbelievably damaging the false predictive
stuff was, and then also how astounding the like yeah

(01:01:05):
and every ones are you know? That really kind of
freak you out.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
It's also set us up though, for this flying car
thing people always talk about, like, oh, where are the
fly was promised flying cars? Like can you imagine how
awful it would be if cars could fly? Who wants
flying cars?

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Well, everybody else had them.

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Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Okay, So Jonah, where where can people find you?

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
In the next couple of weeks, I'll be if all
if my flight home works out, I will be on
the Chris Waller Show this Saturday, and I will be
doing scenn on Monday from New York for the.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Pre would be Monday the thirtieth, something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Okay, the pre vice presidential debate commentary on CNN, and
then I will go home from that and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Can I just say that Tim wall said the best
thing ever in the history of anything in terms of.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Revelations of you're talking about studies are biblical history, and
you're saying, guy, yes, the best things ever in terms
of revelations.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Well, I'm saying that, of course ironically, as I assume
you assume if I'm saying that, Tim wall said a
great thing where giving a speak getting himself wound up.
He's like winding himself up as he's going, he's going
talking about everything. He's like, we can't go on another
four years like this. Yeah, uh, and you know what.

(01:04:03):
I agree. That's why Tim Waltz was a unique choice
for a vice. We can't go on another four years
like this was a was a great moment. So I
hope you I hope someone asks him what he meant
by that during that debate, which of course is a
week from is neck October first.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
I believe.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Okay, Rob, what about you now that you are, aside
from being at a Nassau Hall or wherever the hell
you have your your classes. I thought that was a
pretty good poll.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
That's not bad.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
I haven't been I didn't go to prison.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
You know, it's not the university. We're not the university.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Oh, I'm sorry you're that. You are not you are there?

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
They separated the administrata.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
So are you in the cotton, either building or the.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Yeah, so you can't do a Fred Gwyn I went
to Princeton kind of deal.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
You can, but you know, you'd have to say, I
went to Princeton, but it's not exactly price charter.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
I could be found in chapel. Okay, I can be
found in the library. Okay, can you be found a
Martini shot?

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Martini shot? Still going there because I'm still on the best,
you know, And of course in the pages of commentary
and page see every month I I am. I am
nowhere except on the commentary podcast, and I have discovered
something interesting. No, but I discovered something interesting, which is
like people ask me to go on their podcasts. I'm

(01:05:36):
sure it happens to you. When Jonah came on the
commentary podcast very grace graciously last week and Rob, I
guess you still do the rics podcast the times.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Not all not not all the time Friday.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Okay, But like I realized, you know, I like I'm
on the air an hour day, five days a week.
Like I'm done, Like I don't want to do any more,
Like I don't, you know, unless someone wants to pay
me money. Really, I'm not going on your pot. Basically,
I can't do it, like I'm I'm I'm all in,

(01:06:12):
I'm all out, like I'm spent, like my you know,
my wife wants to talk to me on Saturdays, and
I'm like, I don't even know if I've anything left
to say. And then I think about like Rush Limbough,
people like that talk fifteen hours a week or handy
like three hours a week on the radio and an
hour on TV at night.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Like what you're saying, you're saying, John Pator, it's you're saying.
Let me see if I know what you're saying. You're saying.
You're saying that you that you're you're done. Like yet
you couldn't do fifteen hours twenty hours a week. You
couldn't pay me, and I could do it. I'll pay
you what you can do. I posit, John of Doors,

(01:06:51):
and I posit this with all the Christian love, not
to that I have, because I don't have that much,
but all that's that exists, and that's a lot that
you're studying to get that I'm studying. I posit, sir,
that you could do it without paytent. You are gifted

(01:07:12):
in that respect.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
I'm trying to gin up some money here because unlike Jonah,
I'm not making any money on the road.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
I mean either.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
I was, by the way horrified. I will tell you
what it's like to be a writer and a monster
at the same time being both. On last week, this
terrible thing happened to Rich Lowry. Right, Rich Lowry was
accused falsely and disgustingly used, you know, used a bad
word on the air. People like tried to spin it

(01:07:45):
up at something on Twitter. And he lost two speaking
gigs and it was really shameful. And rich is a
wonderful person. And I've known him for thirty years and
he has never said anything offensive about anybody ever in
my entire experience of him. And I'm sure Jonah, you
got all three of us know him. And no, this
is true.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
I didn't stop you for trying to get those gigs
for yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Right, it was terrible that he lost.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
He's a good friend. I love him the Badger Institute.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
No, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
When I emailed the people who canceled him, I told
him I was available. I also gave them a piece
of my mind. No, no, this is no.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
I was going somewhere else. I was in the Why
didn't I get speaking gigs. That's where I was.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
I was in the Hey, cancel me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
What the hell he had it to magazine? I had
a magazine. I'm a pretty compelling He's out there getting gigs.
What about me? I didn't feel sorry enough for him
that he was punished unjustly for this horrible, you know,
horrible mistreatment. I had a little I had a teeny

(01:08:56):
bit of Shotenfreuda undeserved. He did not not deserve shod
before it from me. I have nothing but kind feeling.
It's about me. It's what is nice, as my as my.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Pastor nice And you realize you're a pharisee g thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Well, you know, regular thing would make this a regular thing.
On glop Is, the last five minutes are ask Father
rob or yeah right, where behavior? And then ask for
contrition and the guidance and healing from yes, yes, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
This is the month of Eld. This is the Jewish
month of Eld, and we are to when we are
to reflect upon our behavior in the in the previous year,
as we approach the high Holy Days which begin next
week and in which we go through the ten days
of Awe, in which we are to reflect on our
own misdeeds, failures, and seek a restitution with with the

(01:09:57):
Lord to have the Lord of Verth the evil to
create let us continue to be inscribed in the Book
of Life for another year. So I guess what I
did here, even though it is not yet the days
of all, was uh, make some kind of a public
amend to Rich Lowry for not being sufficiently upset at
his loss of a speaking gig. Me.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
No, you would never hear that from me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Okay, so Rich, I'm sorry, Joan up. I can't wait
to see you on with with Chris Wallace. Uh and
uh and Rob just say uh. You know the problem
is that you're like high Church and I don't even

(01:10:46):
know what what what it is I'm allowed to say
to you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Yeah, I'm so, I'm so high Church. You could say
anything if it's really you could say now I'm as
stay and it'd be like I think you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
Oh, I know we're running along, but I just I
want to get your take on this real quick. Went
to the CI dinner last week. Great time. They gave
George Willie award. A very charming lady got another award.
It was at the National Cathedral, sure right, and which
is just like an event space, which I'm not sure
I really approve approve of. But and then they do

(01:11:18):
a joking video at the end that was kind of
funny for its painful nerdiness. Fine. Fine, And then they
had these dancers performers that who were the theme of
the night was Prometheus, and literally on the altar at
the National Cathedral they're doing like this modern dance circusolet
thing in homage to Prometheus. And I like.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
This even offends me to a pagan dance literally.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
Just like literally pagan in the National Cathedral.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
And I just if you, if you go, if you'd
look at the uh you go to anything that's at
the cathedral, say, John, the Divine is the cathedral in
the New York, New York. That's where the bishop is.
It's the biggest giant case. I think it's the second
largest largest Gothic style cathedral in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:12:10):
The dog and cat stuff, which is awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Yeah. And usually in the back of the whatever the
program is, they'll have a list of people, you know,
the the staff and the people associated with the cathedral
and the bishop and the bitch of coadjutor, the all
the it's a huge thing. And then they have this other,
this other job that's down there, which is the resident

(01:12:34):
trapeze artist. No, no, sorry it was wrong. No, the
resident tightrope.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
Artiste artist in residence.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
I think I think it's what it is. Actually, I
think it is. Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
At least change the light bulbs.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
I don't know, that's a good question. They have a
little speak of circus lays. So yeah, I mean, obviously
we probablybably should be rethinking. The irony is that we
took this is another glop and I had to run.
But we took all of the mystery and the grandeur
out of the religion, religious experiences, certainly the ones that

(01:13:14):
are sort of foundational American you know, the mainline of
Protestant churches. And then because we say, oh, well, people
don't want that, and then you look at what people do,
and it's like they're going to burning Man and they're
going to yoga, and they're chanting, and they're doing all
sorts of things that suggest that actually people are incredibly,
incredibly in search of mystery. And meanwhile, the mainline American

(01:13:37):
Protestant churches that built the country, you're busy saying things
like it's all a metaphor, don't worry about it. By
the way, we have Starbucks coffee and okay, well, yeah,
we're gonna have a little We're gonna do a Prometheus,
because Prometheus is basically Jesus, you know, like, oh, by
the altar, it's not even an altar. And then you
end up kind of where they are, which they like, Hey,
why isn't anybody ever coming anymore? Well, you know, because

(01:13:58):
you told them to go to Starbucks. So that's where they.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
Are an unexpectedly deep ending.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
Yeah. No, that's why I want. We're here to tell
you about the good news. You see, John, you.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
Can all right later later go with God.

Speaker 4 (01:14:18):
My toe bones connected to my foot bole. My foot
bones connected to my heel bone. My heel bones connected
to my ankle ball. That's how they connected those dry
bone do do do do do do do do do
do shut Charlie shit bones connected to my knee bone.

(01:14:41):
My knee bones, can do month fine bone, My fine
bones connected to month hippo bone. That's how they connected
those ryme bones. Do do do do do do do
do Do Do Do with Dr Frankensteins where my story starts.

(01:15:02):
Everything that have may not be mine, but I'm a
gentleman of parts. Microphones connected to my shoulder bone. My
shoulder bones connected to my neck bone. My neck bone
is boulder tuma, headbone. And that's how Herman was born.
I was assembled, and that's how Hermie baby was bond