Schrödinger's Pants

It's late in the month and that means it's time for another run through the zeitgeist with America's most crotchety culture critics. On this outing, they praise (well, mostly) Netflix's 3 Body Problem, DC apartments vs. NYC apartments, marvel at that time when Al Pacino worked at Commentary (and his unique appearance at this year's Oscars), the films of Christopher Nolan, the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, and trigger warning: the Trump Bible and Ronna McDaniel's brief but very strange tenure  at NBC.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Has anybody, has anybody watched ThreeBody Problem? But me? I have
really Rob Oh, Rob show,you're out of order, I know,
and I show you out order.You don't know what out all it is,
mister trash. I'd show you,but I'm too old, I'm too

(00:24):
tired, I'm too blind. IfI were the man I was five years
ago, I take a fame throughto this place. Here we are at
the end of March, and thisis Gloff Culture. I am John Podhortz,
New York. Elsewhere in New York, Rob Long, Hi, Rob,

(00:46):
Hi, John, And in hisbasement redoubt in Washington, Jonah Goldberg,
Hi, Jonah, Hello John.It is a basement with doubt right
like there, you are sort oflike below ground level with the window.
I am, although it's weird.So we're on a hill. I guess
you've never been in my house.So we're on a hill. So in
the front door of everyone is onefloor up, but the backyard I'm at

(01:11):
ground level with the backyard. Soit's Yes, it's like a ground apartment.
What do you call those garden apartment? Garden apartment. Yeah, now's
a nice. It's a nice youknow, people who don't know Washington.
I have one interesting Washington is nota particularly eccentric city, but there is
one eccentricity that I was always amusedby based on where I lived. I
lived in a lot of places whenI lived in Washington over like fourteen years,

(01:34):
and it is that there are abunch of buildings that are essentially built
into the side of Rock Creek Park. Yeah. And so I lived in
a building on which I lived onthe sixth floor, and when I got
into the lobby, I had togo down on the elevator to get to

(01:56):
the sixth floor. At an officewhere I was on the third floor,
again had to go down in thelobby. And so that is aside from
the fact that apartment buildings in Washingtonare often very wide but not very tall
because of the building height restriction thatsaid that you couldn't have a building taller
than the top of the Capitol Dome. They built them out instead of up,

(02:20):
which is what we would normally associatewith large apartment buildings. And so
they all had shining halls, likethe halls in the Shining with the girls,
you know, Danny going down onthe yeah exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
So Jonah, you're being in ahouse of of interesting levels in the
side of a you know, inthe side of a hill. That is

(02:42):
much of mid century Washington apartment buildingconstruction life. Yeah, Souse is actually
kind of interesting in that we puta lot of money into it because we
practiced the real estate advice buy theworst house on the best block you can't
And it was built by an admiralin the Navy during World War Two.

(03:06):
And when we did the first roundof renovation, we would come visit it
and see how the construction was goingor reconstruction, and we would find these
booze bottles, these empty booze bottles, like lots and lots of booze bottles,
and are like, Jesus, arethese construction workers just getting lit every
day? And I would look atone of the bottles and it would it

(03:28):
said it was like some rum company, and it said their headquarters were at
two hundred Madison Avenue. And Iknow where two hundred metis. That's where
Putnam used to be. I don'tknow if it's still there, but that's
a nice building. And I waslike, there's no frigging way this cheap
rum is it out of there?And until we realized the guy who built
it was this crazy alcoholic and hehad been hiding bottles and every floorboards and

(03:51):
nooks and crannies every day to hidehim from his wife apparently, and the
construction workers would just find them everywhere. And I wish we had saved them
because people call them like that stuff, yeah, like ninety year old bottles.
And we didn't. We just didn'tput it together. But like the
label, the label art is alwaysamazing. Yeah, And there were hundreds
of them. I mean at leasta hundred of them. I mean,
it was great. What I lovedabout those build apartment buildings in d C

(04:15):
is that they used to have Theystill have the old fashioned amenities. You
know, the the the zinc linedrawer where you would get your ice delivered
every day. They would connect tothat potato, yes, potato cooler for
vegetables below the window that was opento the air right closed with a hard

(04:35):
metal door there. And then sothe external the outside the hallway closet so
that your your dry cleaning could bereturned to you, but not no one
would enter your home. They wouldjust put it in a closet that had
two doors, one opening the hallone opening to the to the pantry or
whatever, and I love that stuff. Yeah, and before there was air
conditioning, I knew this. Iknow this particularly in Baltimore in the eighties

(04:56):
when I dated a couple of womenwho lived in Baltimore in like, you
know, Midcenter Baltimore Twins and theythey Baltimore, they had they had draft
doors. Do you guys remember beforethere was air conditioning, you would have
two doors and one door was yourfront door that you could lock, and
then you could open your door andhave a door that was steel sometimes yeah,

(05:19):
but that was you know, open, had slats so that air could
come in from the window and youcould get a draft in your apartment and
keep cool when it was incredibly hot. So also the built in the built
in uh what ironing board that was? That was another big feature in the

(05:41):
kitchen. You would have a sortof like flat handle, you'd open the
handle and an ironing board. Yeah, come down, shing. How even
to my old apartment I grew upin, right of course. Yeah,
so that apartment, which is agreat apartment, couldn't afford it on market
prices, but rent stabilization was ourfriend. And uh, it was built

(06:05):
back in the days where you didn'tmind having a tiny kitchen because that's where
the staff you were never there,right, And in the dining room we
had a button on the floor,yeah, for ringing the Yeah, your
kitchen was small. Your kitchen wassmall, but you had a pantry.

(06:26):
There was a butler's pantry, Yes, that always connected the kitchen to the
dining room. So the bedrooms offof the pantry in my yeah, we
have that too. So we grewup in a building. I grew up
in a building very much of thesame era as as yours. Interestingly,
on the site of the Strouss mansion. Strauss owned Macy's. And the Strouses

(06:48):
died on the Titanic. Yeah.Uh, they're actually depicted in the movie
Titanic. They're the couple he refuses, she refuses to go on the lifeboat,
and you see them lie down ontheir bed together in their stateroom,
and that's the last you see ofthem. So the Hornges are going to
get our apartment. So the StressingStresses had a mansion at one hundred and

(07:15):
fifth and Broadway, and they diedon the Titanic, and their mansion was
purchased, and this very grand apartmentbuilding that, like the one you grew
up in, by the time myparents moved in, was rent controlled and
had seen better days, but hadall of these features, had the button
on the floor you could summon maidsfrom any room. Two major rooms and

(07:38):
two interesting features of my building.One there had been a rooftop restaurant,
and by the time I end butthat that sadly did not. But there
was a was a very big physicalplant, and so there was a rooftop
restaurant that had closed, you know, god knows when, and you know
this I'm talking about now in thesixties, early seventies, but it must

(07:59):
have closed in the thirties. Butthere were still poles up that hadn't been
taken down, that had probably hadoverhanging cupolas or you know, like vinylis
and to keep you you know,exposed, you know, not susceptible to
the elements. And it was advertisedas the world's first fireproof department building,

(08:22):
which meant that there was an internalstaircase off the back hall that was the
fire staircase that was lined with asbestosin the walls. Safe asbestos, yes,
what can we just say for aminute, asbestos actually is perfectly fine
as long as long as you don'tleave it, as long as you leave

(08:43):
it alone. Yeah, they announcedthat. You know, when they announced
that you had to mitigate asbestos.If you were in a building with asbestos,
that meant that you were disturbing theasbestos in the walls. You were
spreading it out. And people weregoing to inhale inhale the fire years ago
left it in the wall, itwould be fine. Years ago, I
was looking at a house in Venice, Venice, California. Yeah, and

(09:11):
it was really cheap. It wasa beautiful, old, beautiful building,
a beauti house, old, greatold neighborhood, super cheap. And I
was like, a real why isso cheap? As well? It's covered
in its best as tile. Nowwait a minute, when I basically turned
with no, wait a minute.Yeah, uh, here's what you do.
You can do two things. Youbuy the house and then you gotta

(09:31):
hire hire. The guys come inspacesuits, They tent the whole thing.
It cost one hundred and fifty thousanddollars and it takes six months and then
your neighbors all know and then youget suited anyway, or you just come
into the house and every time youleave the house, you just pull a
tile off the wall, off theside of the house, and at nighttime
you pull like you know, justdo five a day, ten to day.

(09:52):
Nobody notices before you know what thehouse needs to get, you know,
Resha, nobody knows. Just throwit out. Just throw it out,
Just throw it out in the garbage. And I said, that's outrageous.
I'm going to get caught. That'sthe first of all. It's illegal
because I'm not telling you to doit. I'm telling you to embrace the
possibility. I'm telling you to embracethe possibility of embracing the possibility of doing

(10:13):
this. And I didn't do it. And in retrospect, it would have
been this, that would have beenthe smart move. And now that house
is owned by Nicole vice presidential candidateNicole Shanahan. But I'm bummed out by
this because I loved the image ofyou smoking a cigar, coming up with
scripts for cheers or whatever, walkingon the beach like Andy Dufraine in the

(10:37):
Shoshang prison yard, scattering the tilelike like Stalog seventeen or whatever. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, the Great escape. Yeah, that's the Great escape
of dirt. From the tunnel.But it is true that when it's inert
it's fine. It's sort of like, you know, I was a friend
of mine. It tells this greatstory. He grew up in a Long

(11:01):
Island. He's a New York native, and his dad and his family company
and they make Geiger counters and theymake a radiation stuff and he's just a
super brain and they make all sortsof stuff now. And he remembers as
a teenager, in the middle ofthe night, state police come in to
his house, knock on his doorand saying to his father, we need
you. And it was three mileIsland and I said, oh wow,

(11:26):
so you guys, goes yeah,and I in three miles, I was
Basically, we happened. A lotof it happened in our living. He
didn't live up there, he livedin like that's what they talked about all
day. And he said, andjust just for the record, there was
no disaster there. There was noleakage, there was no disaster, nothing

(11:46):
happened. It was all fine.And because of this systeria, crazy overreaction
and I'm Jon, yes, yeah, we don't. We we our left
America. We gave we be givingthe Saudi's a trillion dollars, some of
which they used to support the crackpotal Taia. Yeah, so Jane Fonda,

(12:11):
in many ways is responsible for nineto eleven. I knew it.
I know it. For years.I used to say, uh that,
uh, Ted Kennedy's car killed morepeople than the nuclear power, but then
the Fukushima thing happened. Yeah.My favorite Ted Kennedy one was. It
was the Boston Globe writing in anassessment of his time in the Senate,

(12:35):
this is before he died, sayingthat you know, had she lived,
Mary Joe Capekti would be sixty fivenow, and she would be the beneficiary
of many of the programs that Tedkenn centeror Ted Kennedy spearheaded. That was
if you Will. That was ifyou Will, written by Charles Pearce.
Oh, I remember it very well. It was the winner of the first

(12:58):
annual Favor in Media Worst Sentence inAmerican History. It was a great It
may well have been that Jonah's ownmother, Lucy Ann, was the master
of ceremonies at the banquet at whichCharles Pearce won the War Sentence in History

(13:18):
award. It is a great sentence, great it was an astonishing sentence.
Yes, yes, she would havebeen comforted in her old age by the
social net that Teddy Kennedy constructed forher, had he not killed her and
frowned her. So swim them away. There's a lot of pushback on it

(13:43):
from him, right. He alwaysthought he was being unfair because he did
have his to be sure sentence inthere. Yes, she did die,
but he did write it, andit was the kicker. It was supposed
to be the line that you tookaway from the piece, which you will
say, had she lived, SharonTate might have been able to play Squeaky

(14:07):
from in the TV movie they madeabout the Manson family in the late seventies.
Yes, had she lived, shecould have recorded Charles Manson's song that
he had sent to Terry Melcher thatTerry Melcher had rejected from the Beach Boys,
thus making Charles Manson a successful songwriterand Sharon Tate the original Taylor Swift.

(14:31):
We can do this all day.Yeah, yeah, I was gonna
say, I'm sure someone has donesomething similar with Jews in the Autobahn,
but let's not go there. Yeah. Oh my god, oh my god.
Okay, so we want to favorour producer Scott Immergut with paying him

(14:52):
heed for things he thinks that weshould talk about in the realm of popular
culture. I think there is onethat we can talk about that its current,
which would be nice. So we'renot talking about Wow, real estate
in nineteen sixty or is anybody innineteen seventy two? Is anybody ready for
that? I don't think so.Okay, So last week Netflix premiered three

(15:16):
Body Problem, the first television programproduced by David Benioff and David Weiss,
who had made well Game of ThronesJohn, Yes, brace yourself. Yes,
I watched it. No, Iwatched a lot of it. You're
not going to snore. You're notgoing to snore? Well, I have
some thoughts about that. I havesome thoughts about no spoilers passed, like

(15:39):
the first couple of episodes, okaycase that, Yeah, okay, I
the only way I could I could. I won't spoil it, but I'll
make a generic complaint that I thinkis true. And I also say this
is that the crawl on that show, the above the line names, I

(16:02):
mean, you say it was producedby what's his name and what's his name?
From Game of Thrones, but Imean the credits include Brad Pitt and
people like that, like it's abig, big production. I don't know.
I would love to see there abovethe line budget, meaning that everybody
in the whatever he's getting paid abovethe production line, because it must be
astronomical the amount of money that thatis going out just for names on the

(16:27):
crawl who probably showed up to onemeeting. I mean, right, I
get my guess, and I lovedthe idea of it. I think they
throw away the coolest thing about ittoo soon. I think they fall in
line this. Eventually all these thingsbecome a Star Trek episode. The big

(16:49):
turn in the movie, the inthe show. I just found myself just
almost getting up and turning it off. Was essentially it felt like Captain Kirk,
the Captain Kirk episode. It looksfantastic, I mean just gorgeous.
It's a gorgeous production. I meanit's one of those things where you watch
it and you think, okay,I'll bet you'll A lot of money was
on this. It has a kindof it feels like guys who spent a

(17:14):
whole lot of money on Game ofThrones thinking well, what if we spent
real money. Uh, and andthey it's it's really really visually stunning.
I just I just ultimately find it. It is the interesting things about if
they throw away too quickly, itends up being too quickly. About the
international groups grew working group with thephysicists together in a remote manner, coming

(17:36):
up with ideas like that is likeI'm out. I'm out. This is
so boring. So but the restof it is okay. So there I
saw so well, hold right,I have to say, And it had
not occurred to me because I didn'trealize Brad Pitt was part of this.
So maybe this is his revenge forgetting screwed by the Chinese after seven years

(17:56):
in Tibet. But the depiction ofthe Chinese Communist Party, particularly the Maoist
Chinese comedy in nineteen sixties, asbeing as crappy and evil as it was,
is really welcome and kind of courageous. Agreed. Agreed, yet now
so that fantastic. So so whatyou're saying. The show opens in Red

(18:22):
Square with a humiliation session during theCultural Revolution in like nineteen sixty six of
a physics professor who is accused ofbelieving in physics and an evolution and in
various other matters of science, andholding out the possibility that God could exist.

(18:44):
Right, and then he is beatento death by the Red cadre while
his daughter looks on in the Fromwhat I can tell, is either the
first, the only, or orif it is not the first, the
only, the most compelling portrayal ofthe cultural revolution that has ever been shown,

(19:07):
certainly in this country and probably inChina, and therefore maybe anywhere.
It is a It reaches the levelof the scene of the massacre in Chindler's
List in the Ghetto. I mean, it is that powerful, It is
that precise and almost documentary, Ihave to say fiction. It has a

(19:30):
fantastic, fantastic called a coda tothat scene that's super powerful. That that
was really, really, really great. So the thing is this is not
three Body Problem is based on anovel by a Chinese science fiction writer named

(19:51):
Hinjinlu. And one of the reasonsthat all of those all of those names
are above the title is that thebook, I think, was published in
the United States in two thousand andeight or two thousand and nine. Translated
into English, it became a sensation. Barack Obama said that he had read

(20:12):
it, and he thought it wasthe most imaginative work of science fiction he'd
ever read, and so Hollywood snatchedit up before realizing since whoever bought it,
I'm sure didn't read it, realizingthat it is unfilmable, and therefore
I'm sure it passed from hand tohand and company to company, and options

(20:33):
expired and people still held this partof the rights or something else, and
everybody gets money. By the way, it is three novels in sequence.
This show is takes aspects portrays thefirst, and takes some aspects of the
second and into integrates them into thefirst. And the novels, which are
incredibly brilliant, are very difficult tofollow. So and they're very hard science

(21:02):
Like this is hard science fiction.And when I say hard, I mean
hard. I mean we're talking aboutdimensional folding and how spaceships would fly and
what would happen with this and that, and it's it's very hard to follow.
And the adaptation, this is whatI have to say about it.
You think it's boring and all ofthat. As a work of adaptation,

(21:22):
it is as remarkably concise, precise, and accurate as anything I have ever
original sources that could be that couldbe just better. You either like it
or you don't like it. ButI see, like you know cch Pounders
now the UN Secretary General and theSecretary and the UN comes in. All

(21:44):
of this stuff just reminds me ofit just becomes all these all of these
productions become the same one where itends up being essentially Independence Day, which
is fine. But Independence Day tooktwo hours of my life and it was
fun. I had a big thingat the end. But the ludicrous part
of Independence Day, which is yourecall, was that that I think Will
Smith was going to upload a virusinto the computer of the invaders is not

(22:06):
any more ludicrous than what's going onin this show. I so okay,
I totally disagree in this sense.The whole brilliance of the plot of Three
Body Problem, which again is veryhard to follow, is the idea that
an alien intelligence many light years awayhas determined that its own atmosphere they're going

(22:30):
to die. They have an unstableatmosphere, and Earth is the place they
should go. And what they realizethey need to do is it's going to
take them hundreds of years to getto Earth, and they need to make
sure that Earth doesn't progress technologically sothat by the time they get there,

(22:53):
Earth has the means and the resourcesto stop them from taking over Earth.
And they figure out because they aremore technologically advanced than Earth, but Earth's
technological advancement proceeds so rapidly that theyneed to do something to slow innovation on

(23:15):
Earth down. That's new. Thatis, But that's kind of my point
is that that's really interesting, andit's over in the second episode, and
then it just becomes the un isconvened the thing and they're going to do
a thing to stop the thing.It's just that that the most interesting thing
about it. It's becomes a detectivestory they solve. Okay, I can't.
I can't answer your complaint without spoilingit. And I can't answers your

(23:38):
complaint is incorrect how it works andco host can finish it. Yes,
I think exactly. Okay, Soall I want to say is it's an
amazing job of adaptation of an unbelievablydifficult source material. You know what I

(24:02):
hate about it? Yeah? Cut, Yes, I also hate this part
about it. It's this cliche thingwhere there's a character saying, you know,
the people have failed, the earthhas failed. We can't do we
we we were declining. We can'tpossibly uh our our our society. And
I'm not gonna sput away. Soonce you have that, like and and

(24:23):
and that, that is demonstrably nottrue by any measure of the human experience
on the globe. It isn't eventrue internally. It has no internal logic
in the show, which totally wait, let me finish, let me finish,
as its premise is that human scienceis so rapid and our adventsment is

(24:47):
so quick that will overtake aliens.And then and I just I just to
me, I'm just I'm just sobored of that has taken out his headphones
so that he doesn't hear the spoilers. I was not spoiling. Okay,
anyway, we can talk about thisoffline anyway, back on Jonah, what
do you think of it thus far? Thus far? I like it.

(25:11):
I am not up to where someof the stuff Rob has said, but
I could see some of that coming. But that doesn't necessarily bother me.
But how they do it, Iuh, I figured out the stuff with
the game. I get that.I know where that's going, But what
I've been dreading and don't tell methat it doesn't sound like it's. Think.

(25:33):
One of my biggest peeves in somany of these movies is the sort
of weak tea, you know,popularization of Marxist colonial theory that explains why
aliens would conquer Earth right here forour water, you know, that kind
of stuff. And I'm dreading thatbecause like the idea there, Yeah,

(25:56):
okay, that's that's the idea thataliens, like an independ say, they
raise this. There's that that movie, that one about La being invaded.
Yeah, there are a bunch ofthe movies, and they always talk about
like they're here for our natural resources. It's like, if you can do
faster and light travel, there area lot of planets out there you can
mine without the bother of killing allthese you know, yes it was Abes.
Yeah. Well, first of all, they can't do faster than light

(26:18):
travel, which is one problem forthem. And the other problem is that
they have an uninhabitable They live onit on a planet that they have figured
out how to adapt to, butthat is fundamentally uninhabitable. And the uninhabitability
and yeah, because there are thereare three sons and it turns out that
if you that this is a classicproblem in physics, that you cannot plot

(26:41):
a consistent pattern if three objects aremoving independently of each other, you canlop.
Thank you, Thank you very much. Anyway, I think it's great.
I've been so disappointed by television overthe last I think we even talked
at this the last time, likenothing has excited me. I very much

(27:03):
admired these books, particularly the firstone when I read them like four or
five years ago, and they bythe way, they have this planet where
they have this problem. It wasso uncanny because when we started with COVID,
because the conceit in the book isthat the people who live on this

(27:26):
planet, when it becomes uninhabitable,have the capacity to dehydrate themselves and turn
themselves into sort of human husks andgo into kind of a hibernation state until
things repair themselves cool. And itwas like what we were being asked to
do when COVID happened, that thelockdowns, that this was the perfect literary

(27:48):
analogy to the lockdown culture. It'llbe fine, you just go inside.
You don't see anybody, you don'tsee your parents, your kids don't go
to school, you're not a llLet's go to a playground, can't walk
on a beach, and then we'lllet you know when you can breathe oxygen
outside of your house. I wouldhave just assumed, knowing you and your

(28:10):
prior is that you would have saidthe perfect literary problem for this literary solution
to this was that the Anthiens neededto invent Fred McMurray because he knew how
to handle his three sons just fine, exactly right. He was pretty good.
Now we are going back, Ithought we were. Let me let
me say this, say this television, Let me say this. Are you

(28:32):
gonna talk about Fred McMurray and theplumber? Because I can't. I can't
go raise of three body problem.I will say this, It's not as
stupid as a lot of crap likeit. You know, Rob, you
have praised very any That is thehighest praise I think you will ever given

(28:52):
anything in years in the science ficfantasy realm, in the science fiction fantasy,
not just there practically ever, didyou not like Battlestar Galactica the remix?
You know? Like you know,I was told I never watched it.
I was told to watch it,and I should have. I'm sure.
I'm sure. I First, whenpeople talk about when people acknowledge and

(29:18):
hear me and are and witness tome the things that I don't like about
science fiction, they almost always say, I hear you, you should watch
Battlestark, like I just haven't broughtmyself to do. Okay, I was
thinking about why I like to watchstreaming science fiction when I'm actually not that
big a science fiction fan, andI was thinking about it in these terms,
which is, like these shows,they they're very elaborate, right,

(29:41):
They spend tens of millions, ifnot hundreds of millions of dollars on them,
and you watch them and somehow thestakes are misallocated, and you're watching
something that you know was unbelievably difficultto produce and took all this time and
immense amounts of money, and it'sjust not popping because somehow it do.

(30:03):
You don't get invested in what's goingto happen to any of these people?
Right that? And so science fiction, because every most things in science fiction
end up being of the in theway they're structured, being of the very
highest stakes possible. Right, theEarth is going to blow up, the
universe is going to blow up,You're going to you know, ten billion.

(30:26):
How many people die in Dune sixtybillion people die after Paula Tredes takes
over the universe and Dune Messiah whatever. So the stakes are automatically very high,
and therefore it's kind of easier tosay, well, this is kind
of compelling, like they're playing forall the marbles, as opposed to some

(30:48):
show where someone's grief stricken because theythey kid died drowning and now they're trying
to rebuild their lives. And ordinarilyI would love that in a movie or
in a drama or something like that, but I'm not going to spend twelve
hours watching something like that because itjust doesn't seem to deserve the time invested.

(31:11):
Does that, Jonah? Does thatmake sense to you? Yeah?
I just I if these things canhold my attention past the second episode,
I'm grateful because I'll just walk awayfrom them otherwise at this point. And
so like this clears that bar forme, it clears another bar that it's

(31:32):
maintained my wife's interest, which is, you know, difficult for a lot
of sci fi stuff. So Iam not, I'm not. I'm again,
I'm I am on the fifty yardline between Rob and Pod here and
that I I like it. Ihave not fallen in love with it the
way you have, but I don'thate it the way Rob does. Well,

(31:52):
you've got to get to you gotto get to the fifth You got
to get to the fifth you gotto get to the fifth episode, really,
because that's where that's what it's buildingto, this five hours into your
life. If you don't like it, don't watch it. But if you're
liking it, I'm telling you itactually gets better as it goes on.
That's that's all that would be.That was you know, I think that's

(32:15):
probably my fundamental problems to be Okay, well that's a problem. And uh
and I I I fully acknowledge thatthat's a problem. That's the thing about
I just watched the show on AppleTV called Constellation, and it did it
to me again. It's another oneof these things where it's an astronauts.
She's in space, she comes backand everything is a little different, and

(32:36):
and meanwhile she saw things in spacethat didn't happen. And it's a puzzle
box and it's eight hours and guesswhat, they don't resolve it. You
know what it's like. It's stillwell every everything that was posed in the
first episode is still posed in theeighth episode with no explanation. And that's
one thing about this that I haveto say. It doesn't do that good.

(32:59):
You hang what Reacher? I likeReacher. Yeah, I liked the
first season of Reacher. I didnot like the second season of Reacher because
I don't want Reacher with a gang. I want Richer to come into a
town to kill everybody and then leave. That's what the novels are like.
Yeah, and suddenly he has agang and he has friends and they're they're

(33:20):
they're like trying to joke around withhe's having sex with a former colleague.
Like, I don't need that.He's the lone ranger. He's the lone
ranger. He's not supposed to havea crew. Everybody. Everybody's a title
to relax, John, Okay,you know what you shouldn't relax about,
though, Rob, You should notrelax about life insurance. That's true because

(33:44):
if you're anything like me, Ihave a certain tendency to put things off
until the very last minute. Whilemost of the time that works out,
you can't afford to wait on settingup term coverage term coverage life insurance.
You've probably seen life insurance commercials onTV and thought, yeah, i'll look
into that later. Now this isn'tsomething you can wait on. Choose life
insurance through Ladder today. Ladder isone hundred percent digital, No doctors,

(34:05):
no deeds, no paperwork. Whenyou apply for three million and coverage your
less. Just answer a few questionsabout your health and an application. Ladder's
customers rate them four to eight outof five stars on trust pilot. They
made Forbes Best Life Insurance twenty twentyone list. You just need a few
minutes in a phone or laptop toapply. Ladder Smart algorithms work in real
time, so you'll find out ifyou're instantly approved. No hidden fees,
Cancel any time, get a fullrefund if you change your mind in the

(34:29):
first thirty days. Ladder policies areissued by insurers with long proven histories of
paying claims. They're rated an Aplus by am Best. Finally, since
life insurance costs more as you age, now's the time to cross it off
your list. So go to ladderlifedot com slash glop today to see if
you're instantly approved. That's l AD D er l I f E dot

(34:50):
com slash glop ladderlife dot com slashglop okay. So I mentioned when al
Pacino appeared on the The Oscars andjust sort of announced that Oppenheimer had won
Oppenheimer. He said, my eyes, my eyes see Oppenheimer. I believe
is what he said, My eyesthe Oppenheimer. He was supposed to apparently

(35:15):
have done that as a two asa two hander with Michelle Pfeiffer, but
she had to cancel because of afamily emergency, so they sent him out
alone. They said, don't nameall ten pictures because we've named them through
the show, just you know,say who won. And then he was
having trouble reading the teleprompter and theyjust opened the envelopment and said, my
eyes see Oppenheimer. And I haveto go to the envelope for that and

(35:38):
I will, so I said funon Twitter, I said, and Joe
fun fact. Al Pacino, atthe age of eighteen, was the office
boy at Commentary magazine, and thisis entirely true. In nineteen sixty one,

(36:02):
I think for eighteen months he startedworking at Commentary as the office boy,
a job that no longer exists inbut that every office had and he
was the gopher, you know,the the have an office boy at seatpack.
Oh now, I have a nondisparage clause here for four hundred and

(36:30):
eighty thousand dollars. Jonah. Anyway, I'll give you ten minutes off my
crutch. I want to throw aflame throwing in his place. Anyway,
you're out of order. So hewas sounded like that. He was so

(36:51):
Michael Corleon. Yeah, so hewas eighteen and he you know, he
got the mail from the mail roomand he handed it out and he would
go get sandwiches for lunch. Yeahat a male room. Yeah yeah,
yeah, yeah. Anyway, andso when okay, so when I was

(37:14):
thinking things like a we're all partof the same hypocrisy, Norman, Yeah,
you're out of order. Ye're thatyou win is out of order.
The Congress is out of order.Everybody's out of oid. Okay, what
is this fire? Next time?Crap? He So, I will tell

(37:36):
you two stories that I know fromwhen he suddenly became famous. So he
had become a working actor in themid sixties in New York. He won
a tony but he know hadn't madeit big. He was in start in
one movie called Panic and Needle Park. But so the Godfather comes along in
nineteen seventy two, nineteen seventy three, and of course turns al Pacino into

(37:58):
al Pacino. And around that timeI went to work, like as a
summer job, as like as theoffice boy when I was fourteen, And
there were people then who did thingslike when subscription cards came in, they
had to be put in a youknow, there was a hard database,
like you put them in a filefolder and you stamped them, and you

(38:20):
had to type them into something andsend it off to the fulfillment house which
sent out the magazines. And youhad to answer the phone and do customer
service and all this. And therewere three or four relatively elderly women who
worked in the back and did allthat, and they had been there when
al Pacino was the office boy.And one of them Freda, who said

(38:44):
he was I He was very,very, very a lovely boy. But
his mother, his mother gave himall kinds of trouble. He gave them
all kinds of trouble. And wewould tell him, al you got to
move out, you gotta move outof your ow an apartment because your mother
is nothing but trouble trouble l Sothat was one. It was one one

(39:08):
story. It doesn't sound like somebodynamed Freda. Freda Agalof was her name.
Okay, so there you go.And the other story was that when
he was interviewed, I think bythe New York Times in a preview profile
of him before the Godfather came out, and he was you know, he

(39:30):
said, well, I had alot of jobs. I you know,
waved a lot of tables and uhand I I worked at commentary, and
I played chess with Norman pop Horns. And I can testify to the truth
of this. My father said,I never played chess with him. I

(39:51):
never played chess with anybody. Idon't play chess, and this is absolutely
true. He never He was not. I think he just got confused to
think de Niro played chess with IrvingCrystal and he was the exactly it was
all it was all. It wasall mixed up, that's right. So
anyway, that is the al Pacinoas office boy, I would have it.

(40:15):
I was the office boy a commentary. I got fired as I banged
a chick named Frida in the office. They fired me. There's of course
the great Woody Allen line, right, which is that he went to n
y U and he was thrown outbecause he cheated on his metaphysics final.
He looked within the soul of theboys sitting next to him. Okay,
so I don't take anyway. Hewas remembered fondly, I think, although

(40:37):
maybe no one would ever remembered himat all if he didn't get famous.
That's the one thing you just neverknow. Okay, So the commentary remembered
fondly, he wasn't fond old.It's a different thing. Different now.
Now we're right now and the AmericanConservative Union, and I want to point
out, I want to point outthat it was all a misunderstanding that the

(41:02):
head of sea pack might have beenhandled someone, and on the other end
was also a misunderstanding that he didn't. They both agreed that there was a
misunderstanding in both directions. And thenone person paid another person, or the
insurance company paid another person four hundredand eighty thousand dollars. And it wasn't

(41:24):
Matt Slap who got paid the fourhundred and eighty thousand dollars. It's Shortinger's
pants, it's you know, it'sit's all perspective. So I think what
the misunderstanding was is that he askedthe kid to watch Jerry Falwell's wife with

(41:45):
the Cabana boy with Jerry Fowell Junior. Now we're getting into the Roberts.
That was Roberts. It's a singularity, the singularity, rob Do you have
spots? I do, but youknow you mean do I have adds?
I have plenty of spots I do. As you know, I am a

(42:06):
longtime customer and longtime user of AthleticGreens one AG one they call it.
Back in the day we owe gagyears called it just Athletic Greens, but
now it's a little bit slicker asAG one, and I've been taking it,
drinking it for about I don't know, ten years, maybe eight ten
years at least I started drinking.I think I heard about it on the
Tim Ferriss podcast, and I instantlyfelt a difference in my daily health and

(42:30):
more energy. If I will relax, if I will focused better gut health,
that's for sure. And it wasmuch easier to do, much more
pleasant to do than, frankly thana multi item in which can give you
a stomach cake and the reason ofthis is because AG one is a foundational
nutritional supplement that supports your body's universalneeds like gut optimization, stress management,
and immune support. Since twenty ten, ag one has led the future of

(42:54):
foundational nutrition, continuously refining its formulato create a smarter, better way to
elevate your baseline health. So Isaid, I learned about it from Tim
Ferris. I would drink it.I drink it in the afternoon. They
say drink in the morning, youcan do that. I do it in
the afternoon and it is fantastic andI travel with it, and if you
travel, you know traveling is alsovery difficult on the digestion. It solves

(43:17):
all those problems. It is thesupplement I trust to provide the support my
body needs daily. And that's whythey have been a partner. Not for
loot, but I've been a customerfor so long. If you want to
take ownership of your health, itstarts with AG one. Try a G
one and get a free one yearsupply of Vitamin D three, K two,
and five free H one travel packswith your first purchase. If you're
like me, you'll end up buyingit through. In the travel packs they're

(43:39):
really super easy to use. Goto drink ag one dot com slash glop
that's drink hg one drink ag andthen the number one dot com slash glop
check it out and we thank agone for their support and their terrific product.
So Christopher Nolan wins the oscar forOppenheimer. Both I say, oh,

(44:01):
your eyes say your pants say up. Okay, that's how my pants
are saying. Producer wins. Producerwins for a director capping a twenty year
career a more than twenty year career. But that really began with the release

(44:22):
of his movie Memento, which madehis reputation. The strange thriller about the
man with extraordinary short term memory losswho has to write things on his hands
and his body to remember what wasgoing on, and then is used as
some kind of a I don't knowwhat you would call it, as himself

(44:45):
he's the mcguffin in a murder plotor something like that. Everybody was kind
of blown away by that. Thenhe made a remake of with al Pacino,
the great Swedish movie Insomnia, setin Alaska, a serial killer and
al Pacino is a cop who iscan't get to sleep during the white Nights

(45:07):
in Alaska, which we've all experiencedon various magazine cruises that I guess none
of us is ever going to goon anymore. Then he made a movie
called The Prestige, and then hehit it big right. He made The
Dark Knight, he made The DarkKnight, he made Batman Begins, he
made The Dark Knight, he madeThe Dark Knight Returns. He became one

(45:29):
of the superstar directors. Then hemade Inception, Then he made Interstellar,
Then he made Dunkirk, then hemade Oppenheimer. Scott Immerget is asking us
what we think of his career asa director and as a creator. He
is now a brand. He isone of now the three or four directors
that people whose names people know,who can make a movie that reliably will

(45:52):
make hundreds of millions of dollars atthe box office, and who has a
distinctive style and a distinctive interest inrambling time and re and and trying to
tell stories in a different way.Uh, Jonah, what is your favorite
Christopher Nolan movie? Well, Imean I gotta say, I mean this

(46:14):
is a little difficult. I thinkit is indisputable. He made the single
greatest, uh, the single greatestsuperhero movie. Yeah, comic book movie
with the with the with the DarkKnight, the second one, you know,
and that's got to count for something. So that's the one with Heath

(46:36):
Ledger as the Joker, Right thatHeath Ledger got a posthumous oscar for Which
is the moral which is the moraldrama of the superhero? Right, that's
the point of that movie is there'she is supposed to be order, there's
chaos. Chaos is represented by theJoker, and he is he Batman faces
a series of moral riddles and difficultiesthat are posed to him for no reason

(47:01):
other than the distinction between order andchaos. Yeah, and there are and
the I mean, there are alot of people who, I think,
for legitimate reasons, thought that youknow, the War on Terror deeply informed
those movies about you know, somethere's some lines that were that worked their

(47:21):
way into those debates. You know, some people just want to see the
world burn, you know, livedie a hero, or live long enough
to see yourself become the villain.You know, these were like acknowledgments of
the moral costs of doing the rightthing outside the lines. And I just
think it's they're great. I reallyam a big Phantom Memento. I didn't

(47:46):
like Prestige, I thought. Thething I like about Nolan I really liked
Interstellar. I'm one of the fewpeople I know that really really liked Interstellar.
The thing I like about Nolan isthat he is He's a little bit
like the Coen Brothers in so faras he makes the movies he wants to
make, and so even when Idon't necessarily love it, I like to

(48:08):
see the coherent vision play out,and I give him respect for like not
just thinking what we'll work at thebox office. This is the movie I
want to make and expects the audienceto respect him for it, and I
do. I like that. Youknow, I did not like Insomnia very
much, but that's mostly because Ididn't like al Pacino in it. Stellin'

(48:31):
stars Guard is in the Swedish versionof Insomnia the original. It's the movie
that made Stellen stars Guard's reputation asan actor internationally, and that is a
fantastic movie. So I strongly recommend. I think Insomnia the remake is okay.
Yeah, Pascino is not good init, really, but that's one

(48:52):
recommendation. That's interesting, Like youcan go find it. I'm sure it's
somewhere available on streaming, and it'ssensationally as a serial killer movie. It's
incredibly good. So, uh,do you have an opinion on Christopher Nolan
Rob? Yeah, I do.Actually I like the mento a lot,

(49:15):
and I even like the one What'sthe one that bread that where Leond DiCaprio
was walking was like in your reception, Exception Exception, I look beautiful.
It was really kind of thoughtful andinteresting and stylish, and I have no
idea what happened in it, butI I enjoyed it. I thought it
was different, and I like that. I like the I like, like
Jonah said, I think the singularkind of voice you get from somebody like

(49:39):
that. I think it's almost it'sworth it. Even when they make a
stinko movie that you don't like,it's worth it because it's like, at
least they're swinging for the fence,you know, so you're doing a movie
should do, Like that's what amovie should That's a fact. I think
it is a very good example.What what's a movie now when everything's streaming?
Like that's a very good exam.It's a very strict contract you're making

(50:01):
with the audience. You come in, you you pay your you buy your
ticket, you buy, you know, twenty dollars worth of die coke at
Jujubi's, and you're gonna leave thistheater tonight, you know, the next
couple hours or so, and we'regonna have given you a full story and
it's gonna be interesting, it's gonnabe transporting, and then you're done.
And I think that that is,in fact, the way the movie business

(50:24):
can reclaim itself, I think ifit wants to so. Howard Hawks,
the great producer director who made westernsand comedies and musicals and everything over a
forty year career, you know,the guy who made His Girl Friday and
Rio Bravo and To Have and HaveNot and The Big Sleep and everything good

(50:44):
that was ever made, once said, all a movie really needs is three
good scenes, because all anyone's gonnaremember three good scenes. It's interesting because
he made better movies than that thatweren't just three good scenes, but that
was something that he had in hishead that if he knew that he had
delivered like three good scenes. Onething you can say about Nolan is like

(51:05):
or dislike his movies. In everyone of them, there are three scenes
where he does something that you've neverreally seen before. I agree with that,
and like an inception. It wasthe fight where the walls start curving
and they're fighting insane by ways,and right in the Dark Knight returns,
which I kind of like more thanThe Dark Knight, which I know is

(51:27):
a probably like a heretical opinion andI'm not really right creatively, but the
fact that he goes there with thisidea that Gotham City is actually taken over
by Robespierre and the Jacobins, andwhat would happen if a city in a
contemporary time were taken over by aradical mob, and what would happen to

(51:51):
ordinary Americans living under that kind oftyranny. That was kind of a dazzling
turn, like you didn't know whatwas coming and you had no idea.
Yeah, yeah, and it's goingthere. The football stadium thing was that's
a scene you remember, Yeah,there's a scene even if Batman begins,
which I think is not very good. Yeah, there's Christian Bale figuring out

(52:13):
how to climb out of this prisonin the middle of I don't know where
Afghanistan or something where he's two hundredfeet in the under the ground and there's
no ladder, and how you knowthis is the great task that is actually
going to turn him into the greatcrime fighter that he is. Again unbelievably
meant with all that and everything said, Oppenheimer is probably the best American movie

(52:37):
of the last decade and maybe ofthe last twenty years. And therefore he
made Oppenheimer. And whatever you cansay about everything else, and whether you
like it or not, Oppenheimer,which I have problems with ideologically and problems
with formulaically, there just hasn't beenan American movie to compare with it,
you know, since I don't evenknow when. So you know, that's
that's a statement about a statement thatcannot be proved. It shows to certainty.

(53:00):
And there's a lot of uncertainty nowin the world, John and Jonah,
including market uncertainty. And you askyourself, what do I gotta do.
I'm in an uncertain world and certainmarket. Where would I go?
How about something like a tangible assetlike like moss and silver, which has
historically been considered a safe avan duringtimes of market volatility, when uncertainty rises.
Investors often turn into precious metals likesilver to preserve wealth and hedge against

(53:22):
economic instability. And what about whatabout the idea of coins? Coins hold
both intrinsic and numismatic value. Youstack silver in the form of bars or
rounds and the whole and in theintrinsic value of the metal. Coins,
particularly certified coins, holds the additionalnumismatic value of being a collectible. Right,
so let me introduce you to CSNMint brand see CSN Mint has been

(53:45):
providing certified US MINT collectible coins andpressures meedtals for over twenty years and they
are one of the most trusted namesin numismatics. CSN Mint's extensive catalog of
bullion, bars, coins and numismaticcollectibles you could explore on the website.
Whether you're a seasoned investor or apassionate collector, you'll find a diverse range
of products of super needs and preferencesAt CSN Mint. Trust is the most

(54:07):
important thing. Rest assure that everyproduct you purchase includes the original certificate of
authenticity or is certified and graded bya third party greater to ensure origin and
purity. With CSN Mint, youcan build your collection and your investment with
confidence. You will also experience worldclass customer service support With CSN mint.
Our team of knowledgeable professionals is thereto assist you every step of the way,

(54:30):
from product selection to order fulfillment andbeyond. If you're going to collect
something, it might as well bemoney. So go to csnmint dot com.
That's CSN letter, CSN mintmynt dotcom, slash glop and use promo
code glop at checkout to get afree silver American Eagle over thirty dollars to
value with your purchase of seventy fivedollars or more csnmint dot com. We

(54:53):
thank them for sponsoring the glob podcast. So Sam bankmanfreed was set to twenty
five years in prison for his fraudulenthandling of the money that was invested with
him in cryptocurrency a not tangible asset. Yeah exactly, yes, speaking of

(55:15):
an on tangible asset crypto, Iwanted to share with you guys if I
can find it the quote. Soin the last month or so, members
of his family and friends and allthis have been writing to the judge seeking
a more lenient sentence because the prosecutorshad asked for one hundred and ten years.

(55:37):
His lawyers were arguing for six years. Eventually the judge gave him twenty
five years. And these letters arevery interesting because various people in his ambit.
I mean, it's a hard thingto argue that he since everybody around
him said he did it. Andthen he testified in his own defense,

(55:59):
and when was being cross examined andkept saying he didn't remember things that had
happened three years earlier, you knowwhat I mean, like or four years
earlier, or two six months earlier, that kind right, Okay, So
they said you got to leave himalone. He has two things. He
has autism. One of my favoritesis he has Anne Hodonia, which is

(56:22):
of course the Pleasure, which wasthe original title of Annie Hall. But
I digress. So his mother,his parents famously are professors of law at
Stanford, and his mother, BarbaraFreed, wrote a letter to the judge
asking for leniency, and this ishow the Wall Street Journal puts it.

(56:43):
In her letter to Kaplin, shesaid her son had sought to do good
in the world from a young age. When he was four years old,
she said he tried to help afall in toddler, He was precocious as
well. In high school he counseledclassmates were depressed, despite that battling depression
himself. But this is not justa personal tragedy, she wrote to the
judge. The ease with which weconsign young lives with so much promise to

(57:05):
the trash heap is a societal tragedyas well. So, according to Barbara,
do we want to understand why Sambankuinfreed has no moral sense? His
mother just said that sending somebody convictedof a crime who did very wrong and

(57:28):
had lost eight billion dollars and misused, mishandled and screwed around with eight billion
dollars of his investors' money, we'rejust consigning that person to the trash heap.
And it's a tragedy. It's unfairthat person raised somebody who either knew

(57:49):
right from wrong and decided to dowrong, or didn't know right from wrong
and didn't know that what he wasdoing was wrong, because nothing has any
moral consequences except whether or not societygives you things. Am I over Do
you think I'm overreading this? Oris she just a desperate mother who you
know, was just trying to comeup with any argument to save her son

(58:12):
from purgatory. I don't I don'tknow, but I'm fascinated by this family,
you know, because because they raisethis kid and he, you know,
goes off. He goes off towork on Wall Street, even though
they're like leftists. He's making moneyto be an effective altruist. And then
the whole idea is he's going tospend all his money helping the world.

(58:34):
And then he moves the he movesto the Bahamas. He has a polycule
with his friends. He he targetscelebrities. It's a polycule. You never
had a polycule. No one evergave John It's a polycule, all right,
So am I overreact? That's whereyou have sex with lots of different
people. It's like an orgy household. Yeah, I got you, Okay,

(58:59):
Yeah, I just haven't heard theword polycool. I've been invited to
the wrong parties. Yes, definitely. Anyway, am I reacting because she
just had to say something? Oram I onto something? I think it's
probably both right. It seems tome like she is going to write whatever
if if her lawyers had said orhis lawyers had said, write a letter

(59:21):
explaining on how you know, hehe always loved unicorns. She would write
about unicorns. Right, So they'rethey're trying to make you know, they're
trying to polish a turd here,you know, And and so there's only
so much, you know, there'sonly so much the written written word can
do, you know, to makea plausible case that this you know,

(59:44):
pasty faced, arrogant piece of crapcan be you know, can you can
find sympathy for him? And atthe same time, like it does feel
like the kind of thing that peoplein these weird bubbles who have this sort
of Russoonian view that civilization itself isthe real crime. And you know,

(01:00:07):
he was just being his authentic self, and how can you punish that?
Does seem to be that that's theirlingua franca. And I agree with you,
I have contempt for all of them, and except you know, like
like I would write all sorts ofridiculous things if someone told me that's how
I would keep my daughter out ofprison. But I don't think that's what's
going on here, you know,entirely. Well, I would you say

(01:00:27):
two things about One is that he'sthirty two years old, and you could
just see. Part of the problemis that these parents are like deeply,
deeply they keep referring to him aslike a little boy. It's like a
boy's he's thirty two, he's agrown man. He did grown man things.

(01:00:47):
Second thing is that if you wantedto stay out of prison, what
you do is you say, I'mreally sorry, I broke the law and
I did break it, and Ibroke it for stupid reasons, but I
knew I was breaking it and I'llnever do it again, and I accept
and I admit what I did.And I think that's the one thing that's
really missing in the Sam Banquent freestory. And his parents are saying,

(01:01:09):
yes, he broke the law,Yes he did in bezel money, Yes
he did that, and he knewhe was doing it, and he did
it anyway. Instead there's all thislittle weasel wording and like my poor boy,
poor autistic boy, genius. AndI think that's, you know,
eventually that we're going to do.But you know, he is, he's
a thirty two year old man,and they're treating him like he's just this

(01:01:30):
college kid who just made a coupleof mistakes. And that's kind of creepy.
And weird for somebody who was extremelyprivileged as a little boy. At
some point you got a you know, man up. Look, the judge
sentenced him the way he sentenced him, because he said, if I let
you out, or if I dothis or I do that, I have
absolutely no faith. Then you're notgoing to go out and defraud other people.

(01:01:53):
You haven't admitted wrongdoing, you haven'tsaid that you did anything wrong.
You lied on the stand and andand when you were out on bail,
you were using your computer to threatenpeople, you know, indirectly by saying
you had this about them, andyou knew that about them. You were

(01:02:13):
sending them emails. And we hadto revoke your bail and send you to
jail at the Brooklyn Correctional Facility fora year because we told you you couldn't
use a computer, and you wenthome to your parents' house and used the
computer. And moreover, you weredoing things that you were legally forbidden to
do. So how can I givethe boy a break? We're throwing him

(01:02:37):
on the trash heap. He shouldbe on the trash heap. That's why
we had prisons. This is whatI have prisons, So people like this
can't get out and steal eight billiondollars more money. You know it's weird.
Here's what you probably don't know isthat Sam Bankman Freed was the office

(01:02:59):
boy at National Review for many years. So I just want to say.
I know we have listeners who don'tlike it when we talk about Trump or
not Trump or all this kind ofstuff, But I just want to say,
like, remember that scene in Contactwhere Jodie Foster is like they should

(01:03:20):
have sent a poet. When Isee the sentence this is the only Bible
endorsed by President Trump, I justI lose, like I lose the ability
to construct sentences, to capture theawesomeness of the ability to an ironically say.

(01:03:45):
I mean, take that Council ofNicea on Mandy Thursday, of all
days, endorsed that office boy.But at least he's holding it right side
up in the unlike but he didit in front of the Saint John's in

(01:04:10):
d C during the riots. Youknow this, I will say this that,
uh I I do. The churchI go to is upper Upper east
Side pysical church St called Saint James. Lovely place, lovely people. I've
never been happier, but I dowant to buy ten copies of the Trump

(01:04:32):
Bible and aud slip them in thepews and just you know, some Sunday,
just here's somebody's head explode, becauseit would be it would be a
horrible thing to do, and Iwon't do it. But but it's sort
of like in rock and roll highschool and they play the rock and Roll
in mice and they explode. Everybodywants to get their hands on that Bible.

(01:04:57):
We all want to see that Bible. I do A lot of us
is going to buy that Bible.Am I right? We cannot do it.
We cannot do it. But likeMatt Kottnetti yesterday on my podcast said
something like I need to buy thatBible, and then we were all,
you cannot. Here's the thing.The only other virtuals of the Constitution and

(01:05:17):
the Decrivation God and the and thesheet music to God Bless the USA by
Greenwood. Right, it's the LeeGreenwood Bible. The only thing that compares
to this that I can think ofis that in nineteen whatever, nineteen eighty
nine, when the or when theSoviet Union officially collapsed and there was sort

(01:05:38):
of a power problem, the powervacuum in these in the former Central Asian
republics, that one of the Sovietapparatchicks forms of the Operaticks, took control
of a country, culture Menistan,and he renamed himself. His name is
Sapoov Novs. He renamed himself TurkmanBashi, which means leader of all Turkmen.

(01:05:58):
And he changed some of the namesof the cities to Turkmenbashi. This
turk Mbashi Dad. And he renamedone of the months of the year,
I think, a name in honorof his mother. And he wrote a
sequel to the Quran that was inhad to be in every mosque. You
had the Quran and then you hadthe Turkman Bashi Koran. This is the

(01:06:20):
closest thing to that I've heard,although at least he's give this a Trump.
I'd say two things about Trump.One is, at least he's not
doing that yeah yet. Yeah,he's going to make Christian Yeah exactly,
yeah, Macca. And at leastit isn't this which is happening tonight in

(01:06:42):
New York City, one night onlyan evening, This is literally happening.
Mandy Thirsty, by the way,an evening with President Joe Biden and Presidents
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in conversationwith Stephen Colbert. Wait for it gets
you know, as if that doesn'tdrag you in with special guests Cynthia Arrivo,

(01:07:06):
Queen Latifa, Lizzo, Leah Michelle, and Ben Platt, hosted by
Mindy Kayley. Now you had achoice, you gotta either buy the Bible
or go to that is. Ithink you know I'm voting. I'm buying

(01:07:28):
the Bible. Either way, thoughyou might end up probably having a night
where you might overindulge. And ifyou do, I have to tell you
about this game changing product I usebefore a night out with drinks. It's
called z biotics. Because let's faceit, after night with drinks, I
don't bounce back the next day likeI used to. So I have to
make a choice either gonna go tothat event, or you're gonna buy the

(01:07:50):
Bible, or you're gonna have agreat night or a neck great next day.
You can't have vote, that isuntil I found z biotics. And
let me tell you. If it'sa short fire way to wake up feeling
fresh after a night of drinking,it's with z biotics. Z biotics pre
alcohol probiotic drink is the world's firstgenetically introder your probiotic which is bettered by
PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings afterdrinking. And here's how it works.

(01:08:12):
When you drink, alcohol gets convertedinto a toxic byproduct in the gut,
and it's this byproduct. It's notdehydration like people say that's to blame for
your rough next day. Z Bioticsproduces an enzyme that breaks this byproduct down.
So just remember to make z bioticsyour first drink of the night.
Drink responsibly, of course, andyou'll feel your best tomorrow. Look,
every time I have a z Bioticsfor drinks, I do notice the difference

(01:08:35):
the next day, even after anight out. I can confidently plan on,
you know, working, writing,delivering the next day without worrying.
And you know, I'll tell youwhat I was. I did think it
was, did sound too good tobe true, but I did try it,
and when I tried it, ittotally worked. Now this year,
I want to form a slightly moresustainable and better uh you know, habits.

(01:08:59):
And of course it's not going tobe all or nothing. I am
going to go out and z Bioticsallows me to enjoy nights out in moderation
while working towards that goal. Sogo to z biotics dot com slash blop
and get fifteen percent off your firstorder when you use glop at checkout.
That's z Biotics the letter Z andthen biotics dot com slash clop. It
is backed with a one hundred percentmoney back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied

(01:09:21):
for any reason, they refund allof your money, no questions asked.
Just go over to z biotics dotcom slash blop use the code glop at
checkout for fifteen percent off. Wethank zbiotics for sponsoring this episode and our
good times. Look, I beforewe go, I have to make a
special announcement to glop listeners and indeedto my co panelists, a surprise special

(01:09:44):
announcement. Uh Rna McDaniel will bejoining glop as a commentator. And I
don't know if you uh and uh. In fact, I didn't tell you
about it. And when you getangry at me, I'm then going to
go tell the press that I hadnothing to do with it, which is
what NBC's leadership did. They said, maybe you should come on. She's

(01:10:10):
like, I don't know. Theysaid, hey, you can go on
MSNBC. She said maybe. Theysaid, how about three hundred thousand dollars
a year? She said, okay. They announced that she is on,
that they are hiring her. Theentire staff of NBC News has a cow
and then the head of MSNBC says, I didn't know anything about this,

(01:10:30):
And the head of NBC News,Rebrecca Blumenstein, says, I didn't hire
her. And then somebody close tothe negotiations let it be known that this
was all their idea. So inthe annals of sniveling, lying cowardice,
I, by the way, wouldn'thave hired her if I were NBC News.

(01:10:53):
I think she's an untalented and uninterestingperson who supported an insurrection, So
I wouldn't have hired her. Butfor them to go around saying, somebody
does that guy over there? Ididn't have anything to do with it.
When when? What did they think? Ronal McDaniel wasn't going to tell all
the reporters that they came after andoffered her all these jobs. My brain

(01:11:18):
is exploding. In fact, yes, ronal McDaniel was the intern at New
Criterion. The Poetry in turn yeah, fun, Yeah, exactly. Okay,
So obviously you guys have nothing tosay about this, so I will
be leaving Glop in protest of ourhigher McDaniel, you knew nothing about it.

(01:11:39):
I Am not going to stand hereand let you guys hire Ronal McDaniel.
This is just I just did aforty five minute conversation about this for
the Dispatch podcast because we're all workedup about it. Sarah Isger had her
experience in CNN. Steve was onset when Chuck Todd last Sunday when you
know, started all this, andand we just all had our takes.

(01:12:03):
And the only thing I'll just fromthat long conversation I'll add here is look,
when I left Fox, I didnot know I was going to have
another contract anywhere. I got acontract. You know, both CNN and
MSNBC or NBC were interested. Iended up going to CNN, Steve went

(01:12:24):
to NBC. Steve is not onMSNBC. He does not do MSNBC.
That was part of his contract.But like I'll just tell you, like
the people who were talking to us, they went and called various on air
talent and we're like, what doyou think about bringing Jonah Goldbriot, what
do you think about bringing Steve Hayesand you know that kind of stuff.

(01:12:46):
The idea that they didn't do thatfor Rona McDaniel I find really amazing.
So like, and maybe they didn't, right, because I have a hard
time. I don't think Chuck wouldlie. I kind of trust Chuck on
this. Chuck Wing why And Isay that, by the way, not
I ironically, he's a friend ofmine. I like him. I think
he's being totally earnest. And healso was angry at NBC News because they
ousted him from Meet the Press,so well, I'm not sure, Well

(01:13:09):
we're gonna talk about that off air, but like so he he but he
also doesn't have a show. Butlike, yeah, like Scarborough said,
he didn't, No one asked himabout this. Rigel Maddow said it,
and so like, if that's true. And again I'm not using anybody of
lying, but it's so bizarre tome that they wouldn't say, hey,

(01:13:32):
what do you think about this?Would you use these people? Use this
person? That the failure to sortof just run the traps and think forty
eight hours ahead of the announcement isso spectacularly stupid. And if some of
these people did know and they're pretendingthat they didn't, then shame on them,
you know, for having this tantrum. Yeah, because they're captured by

(01:13:54):
an audies. But it is justit was so unbelievably badly. I think
it was wrong to hire. Ithink it was wrong to fire. But
I gotta say I like Nicole Wallace. She's a nice person. I mean,
I actually don't know where personally,I just I think she comes acrost
as a nice person and all thatwhen she says she when she literally uses

(01:14:15):
the phrase our sacred airwaves that RonaldMcDaniel would sully our sacred airways, airwaves
that are sullied by Al Sharpton everybrigging day, right, you know what
I mean? Like the idea,like the sanctimony of all of it is
just a static to me, youknow. Yeah, I would say.

(01:14:36):
The other takeaway is that if youare in Trump world, you can never
leave Trump World. You can never. You're not going to go to the
airport and convert your currency back todollars. You just gotta You're living in
Trump world now. Whether you livein Trump World, whether you go to
MSNBC as a representative from Trump world. You can't not be Trump world.

(01:15:00):
That's good. Well, I'm notsure I agree. Entyler like McK malvaney,
you know, they do. Hefit at CBS, you know,
and because of mcmonlvaney worked for Trump, they were he fitted CNN under the
other regime about Sarah is ger readnothing to do with January sixth. Malvaney
had nothing to do with January sixright, Kevin Williamson had nothing to do
with anything. And you know,the Atlantic, I guess what I mean

(01:15:20):
there is that that if you're ifyou're I guess what I mean to I
Trump world, I mean the Trumpmessage world. Yeah, if you were
think I think Jonahs got it though, Yeah, I think Jonah's got it
though. I think January sixth isa is a hinge point. And if
you were you were Mick mulvaney,you didn't have anything to do with January
six If you're Mark Meadows, youhad somebody to do with January sixth,

(01:15:42):
you know, if you're I don'tknow who Jeffrey Johnny, Johnny what he's
getting right, Yeah, exactly,like that's a hinge moment. And Sarah
wasn't that person. And they complainedabout Sarah at CNN. And the interesting
thing is, again, uh,there is this idea abroad in the higher
ranks of these places that have tothink about things like stock prices and you

(01:16:06):
know, the board and stuff likethat, where they're like, you need
somebody who can talk about X,Y or Z. And the truth is
that the gut feeling of the peoplewho staff these networks is no, we
don't Trump. No one should speakfor Trump, no one should say anything
good about Trump ever. And ifit happens on our right now, I

(01:16:27):
think there's an argument to be made. You hire Ron McDaniel, you're Joe
Scarborough and you bring her on everyweek and you have a two minute hate
with her. You just say,tell me what the line is on this?
Oh really? Oh you're you're sofull of it, Like just and
torture her for her for her threehundred dollars a year because she can't say
no because she's under contract. SoI don't know that would be my that

(01:16:49):
would be my idea of how tohandle this and actually make good television.
But this is now, you know, guild subscription audience driven stuff, right,
So they are terrified of losing theiraudience to anybody else and so,
and they can't bear to hear it, They cannot stand it to go into
their ears. What they want todo is just yell about it and fine.

(01:17:13):
So that's it's yea, I willsay, but this is a problem
across cable, it's across media.Right, Audience captures a problem for The
New York Times, An NPR audiencecapture is a problem for Fox. I
mean the sanctimony from people at Foxabout how, oh they don't value intellectual
diversity any algy University. Fox paideight hundred million dollars under the thought while

(01:17:34):
that they had to respect the audience. Yeah, right, I mean,
everybody has got mud on their shoesand all of this. But I'll tell
you one other thing, which isthere is this idea, and I think
it's a fair idea somebody in theworld of when when you have the ideological
changes in the country, and youhave things happen that you don't understand,
you want interpreters who are sympathetic orfrom that world to be able to explain

(01:17:55):
it. Right. That's one ofthe reasons that he'll Billy Elergy was such
a hit and if Jdvans hadn't gointo politics and lost his soul, he
might have been such a commentator.But the problem with Trump World is this.
I have read in the last twoweeks three different books that our attempts
to make a synthesis between Trump andold Republicanism and Reaganism and this and that.
Here's a new synthesis, and here'sa book, and it's two hundred

(01:18:17):
and fifty pages long, and theperson has a respectable academic credentials, And
all three of them, I'm notgoing to name them, are garbage.
They are factitious, they're false,they are incredible. They make claims about
Trump and what he believes that aremanifestly not true because they're trying to shoehorn

(01:18:38):
him into a posture that he doesnot fit. And this is a really,
really hard job. Like I'm notsure I wouldn't publish somebody who was
a Trumper, you know, ifthey made a good argument. I just
don't get I get articles every nowand then that are efforts to do just
what I'm talking about, and they'reinsupportable, they're intellectual supportable. So this

(01:19:00):
is a really hard challenge because thisis a personality cult. It is not
about ideas. It is not aboutthe future of America. It is about
one man and this man and whathe wants and what he wants from you
and the fealty that he demands.And there's just no way around the problem.
Yeah, So, like I agreethat this is what I was talking
about today too. But like likein the old days, when we were

(01:19:25):
growing up, we would call peoplelike Rob a squish or a rhino because
he was weak on abortion or defense, or taxes or something like on a
Arle inspector Republican. Right now,the very weekend, the only real definition,
which Trump has asserted time and timeagain, of what defines a rhino

(01:19:48):
is insufficient loyalty to Donald Trump.I mean he calls Chip Roy a freaking
rhino, right, Like Chip Royfrom our definitions of what rhino used to
me is the opposite of a rhino, right. And and so the problem
is you can't bring people on toarticulate and defend the conservative position. If

(01:20:10):
the conservative position in our two partysystem is defined by the cult of personality
that you're talking about, that's thethat's the fundamental problem. And like Roni
McDaniel had to go on and sortof like the poor physicists at the beginning
of three body problem. You know, they wanted her to recan't the January
sixth stuff, that she supported,the hostage stuff, that she supported all

(01:20:32):
of those things because, to Rob'spoint, you can't convert your currency at
the airport. Like, so shesaid, I was lying, taking one
for the team because I was thehead of the RNC. Yeah, well,
like that's really problematic if you're supposedto be an honest, an honest
commentator. You know, Also thisworld at which people say, okay,
you know what, there are toomany the revolving door and it's terrible.

(01:20:54):
And I sort of agree, likethere's something gross about the world in which
people are on the White House podiumone day and then there were and then
they're hosting a show on a newsnetwork the next day, sometimes with the
administration they worked for still in power, which is really sorry, right exactly.
But on the other hand, youhave to say, at the same

(01:21:15):
time, one of the two orthree best columnists of the last fifty years
was a Nixon hack, right,was William Sapphire, who went from being
a Nixon speech writer and strategist andall of that to the New York Times
where he wrote an astonishingly brilliant columnfor many decades and George Stephanopolis, however

(01:21:38):
you feel about George Stephanopolis in yourway. George Stephanopolis left the Clinton white
House and wrote a book called AllTwo Human, which was about his own
ambitions and the failures and mistakes anderrors committed by the Clinton white House during
the first term when he was serving. And that was a moment kind of

(01:22:00):
like the ronom. It wasn't arecantation, but as a moment in which
he said, I am now willingto be honest about what I did and
what happened and what I think wentwrong. And that's something no Trumper can
do, right. That is somethingwe what we've seen is people go anti
Trump and say everything was crazy andit's terrible and I you know, he's
a monster, and that was this. But we haven't had somebody who said,

(01:22:24):
you know, I believed in this. I believed in that, here's
what happened in the White House andthat and that was so crazy or whatever.
And nobody can do that for reasonsthat elude me, or maybe they're
not good enough or they're not talentedenough, but no one has done it.
No one will do it because thecost, the threat. Maybe Bolton

(01:22:46):
you can say, did it.I didn't read Bolton's book, I have
to confess, but the threat ofwhat Trump will do to you is too
terrifying to attempt to play that gamewith him. That's how I look at
it. Therefore, they'll never beable to change their currency at the airport
for that, for that very reason, like they're they're taking a huge risk

(01:23:09):
and the likelihood of the return isvery small. Okay, we got to
go. Anybody have anything to recommendthat isn't three body problem the show that
Rob is wrong about. Hmm yeah, I like slow, oh yeah,
do you I haven't finished it slowOkay, that's it has one ridiculous thing

(01:23:30):
in the end. You want tojust like throw your throw your drink at
the at the screen. Do thealiens want to steal our resources? And
at the end it's actually worse.Yeah, yeah, it's actually it's actually
worse. Okay, Okay, yes, okay. So that's Monsieur Spain on
AMC. I am in the middleof reading a novel that I doesn't need

(01:23:54):
any recommendation for me, because Ijust read in the New York Times that
it's sold, it's sold a millioncopies this year. But that's The Heaven
and Earth Grocery Store by James Bride, which is about a small town in
Pennsylvania and a little world of seventeenJewish families that lives side by side on
a hillside with black families in thenineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, and so

(01:24:17):
far halfway through it is a gloriouspiece of all near folklore, American folklore
about you know, a Jewish immigrantsand up from up from the South African
Americans, you know, for whomslavery is either a living memory or something

(01:24:39):
that they were born into and escapefrom. Anyway, it's a beautiful book
so far. So if anyone islooking for a novel like that, as
I say, what's wildly popular.It's called The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
and it's the best selling novel thisyear. So, like I say,
it's hardly something that I need toyou know, like surface an obscurity for

(01:25:00):
you to enjoy. But but Ireally really do do love it. So
so I guess that's it for us. Yeah, that's it. Uh as
as as Misieur Spade would say,you know adieu. Well, he'd say
see ya, but yeah, he'dsay see you in a fake American accent

(01:25:23):
because he's Clive Owen and he's notan American. But he's got the good
Bogart haircut. All right, I'mgonna try it. See ya next time

(01:26:00):
at comping from