The Other Goldberg

Among other things, Jonah really wants you to know he's not Jeff. After clearing that up, he and the rest of the GLoP crew delve into writing with AI, pitch a King Game of Thrones spinoff but in the Burger King extended universe, another look at The Taking of Pelham 123, inflection points and Suits, Wings, and various other pop culture cul-de-sacs.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have not finished severance, but we can do that.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Okay, Well, if you haven't finished it, then we shouldn't
talk about it.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Really, I haven't started it.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Really, what a surprise? Said?

Speaker 3 (00:10):
What's the stummy? In this one? It's like you have
two sides, your head and the thing and the thing,
and here we go.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
You're once again you're expressing contempt for the thing you
haven't watched.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
I I mean, but the the problem with that is
that in order to do that, you have to devote
all of your like, your life to this thing and.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
The only other thing for one hour.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
The other thing I know about it is that it's
like it's a can waste the time this year. It's
a piece of so Actually, guess what it is? I
enjoy my life. This is gold.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
This is the opposite of gold. This is draws. Many many,
many things are gold, but this is not one of them.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
This is it's the dollar. Do you see what I
get there?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I liked it.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I liked it. I liked it.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yes, Yes, it's the Italian era nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
You're getting pegg whoa, this is this?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Better beyond this? Better be in the show.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
One two three to Command Center you read me ready
to take down?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Now I'm listening.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
What do you want? Please infoam the mayor that we
demand one million dollars cash for the release of the
car and all the hostages. Right, that'll be the day.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
You know, we're asking what we're doing here, and here's
what we're doing here. And this is the end of
March and this is blob culture. I'm John Fodd Howitz
in New York with Rob Blom Princeton, New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Hi, Rob, Hi, John, how are you?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I am well at Jonah Goldberg and walk in DC.
Hi Jonah, Hey John, or as I should call you, Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Please don't I wouldn't you Jeffrey.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
The Babylon Bee Uh just put out a headline that
said that Trump brilliantly leaked information to The Atlantic's Jeffrey
Goldberg because he knew that no one would ever see it.
It's not a great joke, and but it it accords

(02:31):
with It accords with the idea that being owned by
somebody who has forty billion dollars in the bank like
Loreene Jobs makes your publication a failing publication that will
soon close, as opposed to a publication that could last
roughly until we all you know, the singularity occurson we
all become robots because she don't wait dollars, I just

(02:55):
would make a great robot rob I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Really, some of the things you don't have to do
now you know you don't have to that does pretend
to be interested in other.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
People you can already not know. But you don't have
to write anymore because of machine learning. You don't have to.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
I don't do it anyway. It's all AI, no matter why.
I've been using chetchy bed for the last three years,
and no one is okay.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
That include like on this party, are you are you yourself?
Machine learning? Is this an actual or.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Is it is talking room of interesting? We're talking about
this because okay, friend of mine, a friend of mine
had invested a little thing called memm mem dot ai. Right,
it's the no taking thing. They add the AI to
it later, and it's a no taking app and it's
a no taking sort of thing. And you can you
create your own, not with knowledge base. You know that

(03:48):
a knowledge base, you create your own. And so I've
been slowly in putting everything I've ever written into it.
Everything I write now I might even the papers I'm
writing at seminary, I'm putting into it, and you know,
I'm creating a knowledge base. I'm creating a me and
at some point I'm gonna be able to say, write
a thing that's like that. I would write that I

(04:10):
haven't written before because you read everything I've written, but
it sounds like it comes from me, and it will
do that. It already will tell me incredible summaries and
remind me of things that I had forgotten i'd written.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Soah, Jonah has been doing this, I have to say,
for decades, right, Like, Jonah, you have some kind of
central file. You once explained this to me, Yeah, dump
of your writing so that you can search to make
sure that you haven't got copying yourself, or you have
some giant.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Or when did I say this before repeating myself? Right, yeah, inevitable,
but yeah, so I have. It doesn't have everything from
the corner and are you know from the old days.
It has a bunch, but not everything by far, maybe
just a fraction of that. But years ago, well in
I did a check the box on every single thing

(05:04):
I could get out of Nexus or any other kind
of database kind of thing, saved it into a PDF, right,
and so I mean it's still missing some random things.
And then I try to have interns do it update
it for like twenty twenty two harder for some reason.
I don't know why, maybe because the beatings did not

(05:24):
take but it's useful, just as like it just to
go so bad.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
You're so bad at the discipline.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
I am, I am, I am. I always throw them
that extra crust of bread.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
But uh, there's that's that you're spoiling it. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
But I haven't given it to an AI so that
I can replace myself. That's what Rob's doing. Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, I can't wait. But you've got a few more years.
I've got a few more years on you. I have had.
I had trouble with all the NRI stuff because I
every now and then I would I would NRO stuff
I would like contribute to it, and then I can
can't find it. And I found one thing I wrote
years and years ago during the Obomba administration that was

(06:07):
like attributed to some other person, not even a person,
just like some other thing. So the taxonomy, as we
say in the business.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Pot and I have done this thing several times now
we talk about it every few years of we'll be
searching for something to understand something, and we'll find something
interesting that's, oh, that explains it, and then that we
wrote it.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
I mean, honestly, if you've written a newspaper, Joe, you've
been writing a new spare column for twenty years. I
have been writing four newspapers, though right now I'm not
writing a column for forty and the number, the sheer
number of things that are bylined under my name is
this is not a humble brag. It's kind of appalling,

(06:50):
like it's in the thousands, oh for sure. And if
I remember, if I remember a hundred of them, that is.
And the corner makes it even worse, because of course
there we were in the corner for like I know,
you were there for like ten eleven years. I was
there for seven or eight years something like that or
even shorter. But I mean, you know, we were writing

(07:11):
two three times a day, sometimes seven days a week.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, there's why I wrote ten twenty thousand words a week.
I mean I wrote a lot.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, And so the sheer perlicity and and uh, you
know it, if you know, I don't assume anyone is
ever going to want to write a biography of me.
But I but I shudder to imagine the task that
is involved in this. I was once going to write

(07:39):
a biography of Damon Runyan. I wanted to write a
biography of Dame So Damon Runyan, the great comic short
story writer. You know Tales of Broadway, So Damon Running,
fascinating character. He died quite young, he was forty six,
but he had been the greatest newspaper columnist. He was.
He wrote for the Hearst Syndicate like Jonah Later, Sorry,

(08:02):
weren't you Hurst, No, you were never Hurst. I'm sorry, okay,
but okay, So he was. He wrote for Hurst and
he wrote he was the greatest court color guy. So
he would go cover murders and trials and he wrote
a column seven days a week for twenty five years.
And that archive, when I was going to write this book,

(08:24):
which was in nineteen ninety one, that archive was where
now all archives are, which is at the University of
Texas in Austin, which is now like is the greatest
archivist archival source for magazine writing, newspaper writing, whatever in
the world. And I realized that if I was going
to write this book, I was going to be there

(08:44):
for six months just reading, just reading through his work
all day and all night. I was going to have
to move to Texas for six months just to do
the research. And I did not get a large enough
advance to make that even remotely practical like I got.

(09:06):
I got a decent offer.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
But you didn't do it. You didn't do that your
life's work because of the money. Well, could you love
money so much more than Damon?

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Right? Money? I love? Well, I do love money more.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Than By the way, that's not a criticism, because I
love money more than anything.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
I understand. So you say, but I believe you love
Jesus more than you love money. That's what I believe.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Well, I mean, I think that's probably true, but Jesus
is so money.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Anyway. But I'm just saying, like anybody who was going
to do this for me at some point, I also
lived a lot longer. I've lived already twenty years longer
than Damon Runyon did. And I'm like, if you were
going to write a biography of me, I was thinking,
you know, people like wrote It took people twenty years
to write biographies of Saul Bellow, who only wrote like
ten books and some letters. Right, yeah, but I mean

(09:57):
I'm just saying it's like, you know, it still took
them twenty years or something like that.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
So the the world of the the world of the
prolific writer, is a world of.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Also, right, Bello was still I mean, Bella had a
lot of friends, and a lot of those friends are
still alive. Right, So they have to deal with all
these old people. You gotta go sit with them, and
you got to listen, and they eat their little cookie
and you have to pretend that you're there also because
you think they're fascinating you.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Vodka, you can bring a vodka. Yeah, vodka and vodka,
vodka and a popka.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
There's your title, all right, Jonah, Let me ask you.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Let me ask you. Let's say you fed this. You
had a knowledge base, You spent three or four years
feeding everything you had into this knowledge base, and then
you said, right, write a column in the Voice of
Joanah Goldberg about the Jeffrey Goldberg signal controversy and the
leak of the fact that he was got all this

(10:56):
high level intelligence and the war plans hit the Hoho
thies and it spat out in thirty seconds. Something that
really really did sound like you, and that was, you know,
something you could just take and send to your editors.
Aside from the moral question, would you go, hey, that's cool,

(11:18):
or would you want to jump out the window? That's
what I That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, so I'm closer to the jump out the window position,
maybe not completely. It kind of feels like and we
talked about this kind of stuff before, but actually there's
nothing we haven't talked about.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Before, but it's in our knowledge base.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
It's like I would feel a little bit like the
painter who likes to do really realistic painting in the
era when the photograph is when photography is invented, it's
like crap, Like I can't do it the way I
think I'm supposed to do it anymore because a machine
can replace me, and that would bum me out. I'm

(11:57):
glad I'm at my age that, you know, like I
had a good run, but uh I, I'm still skeptical
that this stuff can do that. I keep playing with
AI and in the realm of stuff that I use,
I'm very underwhelmed by it. Uh I like all the

(12:21):
protein folding, X ray examining stuff, but uh like when
I ask it, even using deep research, when I ask
it for stuff that I know about, it just just
gets stuff wrong constantly, and it makes up quotes constantly.
I heard, you know, I've been criticizing for obvious reasons

(12:44):
Elon Musk quite a bit of late, but I saw
a little video of him explaining what he calls the
Galileo problem or the Galleo challenge, and it was actually
really well taken.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Right.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
So AI is basically a giant plagiarism machine. You know,
it scoops up everything and then it just tells you
it's very good at sort of inventing the order of
words to look like a certain pattern that you want
to look like. But he said, here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Now.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
I think he gets to the Galleys story a little wrong,
but that's not the point. Galileo says, you were a
heliocentric solar system, not a Earth centric solar system, and
it gets in a lot of trouble for it. He says,
right now, anytime you ask AI that kind of question
where everyone knows the truth, the quote unquote truth, but

(13:35):
the conventional wisdom is wrong, all it does is repeat
back to you the wrongness. It is yet AI is
yet to come up in that kind of context with
a yeah, all the humans are wrong and this is
the truth kind of thing. And until it can do that,
it's kind of like the new Turing test. Right, It's

(13:56):
like until it's that's, until it can it can say yeah,
you all don't have it wrong about what caused World
War one or whatever, right can be correct. Until that comes,
it's not really the intelligence that we're ascribing to it.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Okay, but see I'm I'm offering a slightly different question.
I no, no, right, no, But what I mean is
like you're Leonardo da Vinci, okay, and.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Somebody verison, I gotta tell you, Yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
True da Vinci. Maybe not the best example, but okay,
let let me your Rembrandt. No, this is actually a
better example. So Rembrandt so popular, so successful, and but
so meticulous in his own work that he had people
painting things the school, the School of rembrand right, or

(14:45):
the school of anybody else under his tutelage, making works
that he could credit but that he did not do himself.
So AI has the capacity to be the school of Roblong,
school of John Goldberg, of of John Courts under our
under our tuolage. But imagine but well, okay, but imagine

(15:08):
behind it. Imagine we imagine we die and our names
have some value, sort of like you know V. C.
Andrews's name after Robert Parker's or something like that, and
they the estate, these estates are hiring people to write.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
That is not in fact you're describing all writing in
early antiquity that it almost all was that way. When
somebody died, they kept it right, I mean the Book
of John. I have to get back to the Bible.
But you fellas need the buy the Book of John.
The Gospel of John was probably written by the school
of John, right, people who followed him around, and like
they wrote it later.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
You are really you're going to really turn into Bible guy.
But that's horrible stock.

Speaker 5 (15:47):
But say say that, uh, I died and my kids
and my name had some value, and my kids wanted
to continue to earn an income from me, and they
turned on the AI machine and had a I write
columns in my tone about things that happened after I'm

(16:12):
dead they published under my name.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Is that a form of immortality or is that some
kind of weird zombie devil, you know.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Evil that, yes, could be both right, but no, I'm
just I don't know. I mean, there's no doctor. I
don't know when Doctor Pepper died. But I can still
buy his Dr Pepper, you know what I mean, you.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Can still get some of the colonel's.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
But you know, you know, he died recently, the Burger King,
so we don't have a Burger King anymore, but we
still are, you know, joined the Burger King.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
And that makes a c it twice a week.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
And I think Wendy's is Wendy still alive? I think
Wendy's still alive myself.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
I think it's still alive, Dave Tom his daughter Wendy.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
I tell you I could be down for if done right.
A Game of Thrones style adaptation for Burger King, where
like you have a burger Regent.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
And throne brilliant does that, and the burg the Burger
Regent marries the daughter of of the Hamburglar or of
Mayor mccheese. I mean, I think you can run then,
and then horribly mistreats her, yes, and she has no
recourse because he is, of course the Burger King. And

(17:33):
then his brother takes over and jumps out the tower
window when he realizes the horrors of his existence, or
that he was the son of You can go with
this any way you wanted to go, by the way
a should finish, game, should finish for George R. Martin,
What if said finish, finish, finish my book for me, please,

(17:58):
because I don't know what to do?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well, I'm kind of serious. I have been shocked by
the fact that AI has not replaced the ridiculous little
velvet satchel of dice for dungeons and dragons. Sure, I mean, like,
why can't the dungeon Master the Dungeon Master be an

(18:21):
AI program that you know?

Speaker 3 (18:23):
You know why? Tall you what? Because AI? Well no, actually,
but AI, despite all of its you know, incredible advances,
isn't human and therefore doesn't have a metabolism. Did you
know that when your metabolism is working properly, you will

(18:43):
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Speaker 2 (18:46):
Applauding a brilliant transition.

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(19:10):
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(19:53):
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(20:15):
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Speaker 2 (20:16):
Can I tell a glop recommendation story that I'm very
proud of.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
A glop of mendation.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
It was sort of like what would be a glob
of mendation, though it is I don't think we have
spent that much. I mean, we've done this show now
for thirteen years, and so as Jonah said, nothing there
was nothing new under the sun. There is nothing we
have not discussed in that time. And I'm sure we
have discussed this on the many times. That's why I'm
calling it a glop mendation. But I had a friend

(20:45):
who had her twin nephews in town in New York
for vacation, and she was giving them their teenagers sort
of like a full New York tour, going everywhere, going
to Chinatown, going to the village, going to soho all
of this, and she wanted to give them New York

(21:07):
motion picture experiences, and she was like, should I show
them Taxi Driver? Should I show like old timing New York?
And I said, first, I said Tutsie. Then I said
the Goodbye Girl, which I don't know if I'm sure
that doesn't stand up. But then I said no, no, no,

(21:31):
Taking of Pellam one to three. And they watched the
Taking of Pellam one to three nineteen seventy four Walter
Bathow and I said it was one of the greatest
experiences of their life. And it is indeed one of
my favorite movies. And I do feel like we have
discussed the glories of taking a pellm one to three

(21:51):
or am I O? We have?

Speaker 4 (21:54):
Ok.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
It's funny bring this up, though, because the remake was
on yesterday really with John Travolta, you.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Know, and then Denzel Washington.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, And I was watching it a little bit with
uh my wife and completely, I mean like they're they're
parts of it are a fine movie, but as a
remake of Pellam one two three, it's a hay crime, right.
I Mean it's like if you have to completely suspend
what you think is the essence of taking a Pellam
one two three and say okay, they've they've they've taken

(22:26):
the It's like they've taken the AI script saying okay,
update taking a pelm one two three and make it
a was a Ridley.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Scott, Tony Scott, his brother Oka.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, And it's just it's flashy, it's stylistic, it's it's it.
It tries to capture the essence of New York. But
really what it's doing is it's like capturing you know,
the la, the fantasy la of Knakatomi Tower, like the
nineteen eighties kind of look, and it just it fails
at a really fundamental level. And it might have been

(23:00):
a fine movie if you didn't have Ticken with Pellom
one two three. Yeah, you know, I love it.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Original So the original, you know, which is was made
when New York was at such low ebb that the
subway system was excited to accept a payment of twenty
five thousand dollars to make a movie about how to

(23:30):
hijack a subway train, right, anything, just to get a
little revenue. And it is and after they made the movie,
they stopped allowing that. And the Warriors after those movies.
They stopped allowing people to use the subway system as

(23:50):
a place to film freely, and they and they use
a they use abandoned stations.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
And you don't even need that. I mean, we would
shoot I think I did a show once and we
had two big scenes or half an episode was on
a subway car, and and we kind of rewrote the
scenes at the last minute, and we still had to
call our line producer like it, you know, four in
the afternoon to say, hey, can we get a subway

(24:17):
car on stage tomorrow just because we got to rehearse
this thing and we got to shoot it this week.
And he goes, yeah, hold on, hold on, And then
then he called back and said, listen, you got to
call this guy. This guy's got some questions for you, like,
oh god, this could be a disaster. So we call
this guy and he goes, yeah, what what what line?

(24:41):
I don't know. I think it'd be like I think
it's this well and I said, thought maybe on the
six right?

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Four?

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, agreed? Four?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Five or six? Okay?

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Express and new we're old because the new one's stainless
steals no graffiti. We have graffiti, but you know that's
really it's an anachronism, and I got to talk. It's
ever happenn hour, is it? Yeah, we'll get it. Doesn't matter, four,
five or six, doesn't matter, express not, I don't care
what the new ones with the stainless that has no graffiti,

(25:10):
and then the it and you want multi colored seats, right,
you went to orange yellow, orange yellow seats, like, yeah,
we'll get those two and uh, that exact car was
brought to the stage and it had invisible clips up
in length wise and sidewise, so you could open it

(25:30):
lengthwise to shoot, or you could open it cross section
to shoot. It was and I could have said, no,
I want one from the I Old I R T
Line or the sixth Avenue L I could have he
had them all somewhere in the desert and some guy
just hooked him up to a trailer and just brought
him in a amount.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
But like speak because one of the places we probably
talked about tell them one, two, three is I know
I've told this story before, but my friend who I know,
John knows Vincnado. He wrote this book about the Lindsay
administration in New York and how it was sort of
the high water mark of American liberalism and it kind

(26:08):
of went south. And it turns out that there are
like Lindsay vets all over the place, like you know,
who were passionately defending the Lindsay administration as as just
this glorious, wonderful example of progressive stewardship of a great
American city and all this kind of stuff, and and

(26:30):
Vin had the receipts right. This is basically these PhD
thesis turned into a book. And the one thing they
would always come at him with, you know, at these
Barnes and Nobles book panel on the Upper West Side
and screaming at him was John Lindsay brought Hollywood back
to New York. And it's true, like he created, he

(26:51):
tilered the tax credit thing that allowed the production companies
come back, and vic that is true he did. Now
let's look at the movies that were made, the Taxi Driver,
French Needle Park, you know, Death Wish movies, Midnight.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Cowboy yea, yeah, just showing the city and it's gleaming
beauty and all of its.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
All of those movies with the sound off, would you
would say that city is not a well run, glorious city,
you know?

Speaker 3 (27:20):
So the line but everybody sees me. Everyone seems to
be eating a hot dog at all times. The weird
thing about it was that that seemed to be I mean,
at the time, that idea, which was that there was
just this endless decay, unstoppable decay. It was just that
people just assumed that was true, like it could only

(27:41):
get worse. It was never you never were it was
never to get better, it was never going to go
back to anything. It was never going to be anything
of it a total and or people were arguing, oh,
you just think New York is getting worse. It's actually
always been this chaotic, murder capital and terrifying. And then
suddenly that the opposite happened, and uh, and you could

(28:02):
walk down the street and then there were there was
there were chairs and tables out and people didn't steal them,
and it was amazing.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Well, it was a very weird. So the great line
in the Taking of Pelm one two three, which sounds
funny but was completely was funny at the time, but
was an accurate reflection of the feeling in the city,
was what did the hijackers of the subway train want?
They wanted one million of these secure evil or they

(28:33):
were going to shoot a passenger every five minutes, right,
something like that. And they go to the mayor, who
has a terrible cold, and who was not John Lindsay
was not some glamour boy. But is this like hilarious
Outer Borough schlep In is bit with this terrible cold,
and he's like, this city doesn't have a million dollars. Yeah,

(28:57):
and it was like yeah, in fact, then the next
year the city literally went bankrupt, like the city did
not have a million dollars.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Line, My favorite line is when they say it. I
think it's Walter Matthow or some one of the heartbitten guys.
They say, you're gonna shoot a passenger every hour? Yeah,
and then he goes, well, what do they want for
that allows you thirty five cents to live forever?

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah? That wasn't map out, that was that was the
That was the character actor Kenneth McMillan, who yeah, anyway,
uh but yeah. So the movie has this insanely great
screenplay by this Broadway by this guy who wrote he
won an oscar for the movie Charade or Father He

(29:42):
wrote Charatt He wrote Father Goose, want an oscar for
Father Goose. Mostly he was a Broadway librettist Peter Stone,
and so like it's this, you know, basically it's kind
of a B movie, right, it's a heist. Guys figure
out how a d couple of subway car put it
off on the side. They want to million dollars. Everyone's like,
how how on earth are you going to make this work?

(30:03):
And they've actually figured out how to make it work,
and and yet there's so it's this semi comedy. It's
kind of light. There are these Japanese tourists wandering around
the central part of the subway system learning how the
subway works. While this is going on, Walter math I
was sort of giving them a tour. The whole thing
ends with Martin Landa Martin Balsam sneezing, therefore blowing this

(30:27):
story open. But every every five minutes it's like there's
a funny, great line. But it's also very tense and
it's very hyper realistic.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
That's what being so interestingly. Yeah, speaking of everything being
bad back then, Kenneth McMillan, I just looked him up
because I think I worked with him, or I might have,
but I can't remember. No, I couldn't have died in
ninety eighty nine, died in Santa Monica, California. Do you
know how old he was when he played that hard
bitten guy?

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Forty two? It's one of those, is one of those?

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Forty he was forty fifty six.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Well, it's like the Wilford Brimley thing, Like when you
find out that Wilford Brimley was forty ninety seven. Yeah,
he was forty nine playing a seventy five year old creditably.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, I mean this, We've done a lot. You know,
Max played a seventy five year old dude since he
was like twenty eight, but he.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Was Maximin said was like one of the great actors
of all time, so he deserves The question is whether
now people are like in their sixties. Does anyone play
anybody in their sixties when they're in their sixties, Like
there's George Coodya's sixty four? Will he ever play a
sixty four year old man in a movie? Will he

(31:43):
ever play a grandfather? I say he'll never play a grandfather.
Brad Pitt is sixty one years old. Have you seen
this trailer for his new Formula one movie? Yeah? And
Tom like this weird embalming, this freezing them in time
so that they're sort of like eternally fifty, but like
a good looking fifty, but they're not really fit. Then

(32:05):
you wonder what they look like if they're not on camera,
like Tom Cruise. I think probably looks like a version
of mister Pett, like when you could put like a
or like a chia pet just write something like that,
like but you know, they figured out how to photograph him.

(32:27):
It's just that's that's that's that's the weird. That's the weird.
But getting back to so anyway, I'm just saying that
I did, in fact, finally have the experience of recommending
a movie from the nineteen seventies from on like Our
Sweet Spot that was watched by two fifteen or sixteen

(32:49):
year old boys from Florida, loved every minute of it.
And I can't movie. I can't get my kids. I
don't know if Jonah has this saying I cannot get
my kids to watch old things that I recommend to them.
They'll watch them on their own if they, you know,

(33:10):
do it. But like if I say let's all watch,
you know, I can't remember what They'll watch for twenty
minutes and walk down. Yeah, just because I recommended it.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
He walk you away. We're gonna take a little break here.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Okay, what are we gonna do?

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Well, we didn't have to because we now we're back.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Oh right, that's right. Okay, yeah, okay, here's the part.
Are we still in the break?

Speaker 1 (33:40):
No, we are back?

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Okay, on for days. Here's another thing that annoyed me.
So the Oscars, Right, the Oscars. The lowest growing grossing
movie ever to win the Oscars won the Oscar this year,
though I think deservedly. Anora and the director of Anora,
Sean Baker, got up, have a guy one Oscars on
Oscar Night. The only person ever to win four Oscars,

(34:04):
it was Walt Disney as a producer. He got it
for writing, editing, directing, and producing Anora. And he got
up and he said, we must go to the movie theater.
We have to see movies in the movie theater. This
must be what happens the movies, and movies are made
to be seen in the movie theater, and the movies
and the movie theater, the movie theater. And I'm a

(34:25):
big supporter of going to movies in the movie theater.
But then I thought, you know what, this is all
bull because if you're us, we grew up where did
we see most of the great movies that we saw? Now,
Joan and I we grew up in New York, so
you could go to revival houses. But most people saw
movies on television under vastly worse conditions.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Oh yeah, to watch it.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Not only were their commercials, but you were watching it
on a twelve inch thirteen inch black and white schools.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
So the commercials were for like the mattress guy, because yeah,
were you at.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
J Yeah you were not in Yeah. So so everybody
who loves movies, has loved movies since the nineteen fifties
has had the majority of their movie going experiences with
great films on TV. So I'm kind of like, you're
all full of it. I not that I don't want
you to have a box office experience, not that I

(35:18):
don't want movies to be in box office, but I'm
telling you right now, last year and a half, there
is now almost no reason to go to a movie theater.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
None Black Bag. I think I heard Black Bag is
really good.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
I haven't seen Black Bags.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Steven Soderberg, Yes, kind of a caper. I heard it
was really good. So friends of mine much of the
premiere and they said it was very very good. Okay,
but can you I go say the same thing about
I mean, I'm just trying to do.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
You should see the theater.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
They do movies, okay, but so you can name a
movie that is on an epic scale that you want
to see in the movie theater. But there are there
are five of those a year. By the way, The Brutalist,
which I was a big admirer of, you should see
in a movie theater because because it is a movie
on a grand scale, if you if you could.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
On the other hand, I think that if you're going,
i mean just to go to a different classic, different
set of classics. If you're gonna if you really want
the experience of I'm going to say a Iam of
Genie or a Bewitched or Hogan's Heroes, you really have
to watch it on a small.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah yeah screen in the kitchen with the kitchen And.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
When when you when you have homework to do, when
you have a thing to do that you're not.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
At a ball of Captain crunch, you learn long division
while watching.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
The right Yeah, the Monsters or please Don'tate the Daisies
or one of those weird yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
But I do remember once at home, I don't know what,
I was not that young, and I was like, oh,
you know, there's this old movie on I've always wanted
to see. It's on your channel ninety nine or something.
But there's also the episode of Gilligan's Island where the
Beatles that the Beatles group come and they land on
the island. So I'm going I'm opting. I think it

(37:01):
was like, I'm opting. I'm opting for the I'm not
going to watch the Searchers. I'm opting for Gilligan.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
You know what, you made the right choice. What's more
suitable to the media.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
I don't know, good question, what is it?

Speaker 2 (37:18):
What is a better exploration?

Speaker 3 (37:20):
I heard the story once a friend of mine was
doing a show on the old CBS called then called
the Radford Theater the Rafford Studio in Suis City, but
it's the it's down CBS. Radford's at the headquarter of
CBS now and it wasn't going well and you had
an argument with somebody and he's like just got out.
He's stalked out of the office and walked down out

(37:42):
of you know, he's on the raft a lot and
went down a little ravine because it's like it was
a little ravine area because it's the La River goes
right through it. And uh, and he sits on a
little bench. It's just mag I'm gonna quit this. I
hate this business. I'm going to quit. And then he
start looks around and he realizes that he is literally
on Gilligan's Island. They didn't take any of it down.

(38:04):
It's everything and he's sitting in Gilligan's Island and he's like, well,
it's it's impossible to to hate your life it to
be really mad about everything if you're on Gilligan's Island.
So he went back to the office and finished the job.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
So I haven't I have to be a little careful
about this because I have a very dear friend who
who is involved in this show. But are this franchise?
But you know the how CBS says these FBI shows, right, sure,
sure so. And I'm not a close student of them,
but my understanding is that they treat the FBI quite favorably. Yes,

(38:40):
and sort of like you know, paragons of Virtue, just
you know, Dragnet updated for the modern age.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
These are the good guys.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Doing good things to protect our country, hyper competent, and
I keep meaning to ask my friend who's involved in
all that? So how are you going to write Cash
Betel and Dan Bongino into.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
This?

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Like the whole point is that they're supposed to always,
you know, take the high road straight and narrow, go
by the rules by the book. And uh now you
got the paranoid and the podcast running the place, you know,
my favorite.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
A new addition to that franchise, the FBI franchises that
they're doing now it's coming out. I think they shooting
the pilot. It's going to be next season a TV
show about the FBI agents that are assigned to the.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Ci A Colon c I A. That's it.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah, that's the actual title.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Colon de A, colon colon ice. I mean you could
basically state the franchise FBI ICE, FBI.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Just whatever, just like FBI, C I A. It's like
a CF.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Even still exists. M hm oh yeah, okay, so FBI A,
T F just like whatever.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
It's just well that makes sense because Cash runs both, right,
I hope.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
So we need him on that wall. We need him
on that wall. I So maybe this whole signal scandal
is a good news for America because having made this
unbelievable blunder three months into the administration, maybe this is

(40:33):
like a warning shot and everyone is going to like
watch there is like going to clean up their behavior.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Hence, bless your heart, John silver Lining.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
I'm looking for the silver lining. I know.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
I have a friend who is a journalist or she's
you know, an editor of some kind, and we are
literally on a group chat with her and she said
to all of us, he said, I really feel like
this is an inflection point. And it was like you
could you could hear the silence on the group chat.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know what there is there are no inflection.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
Points now there are will be not there will be
no inflection points.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Well so in fact, on the commentary podcast we're recording
this on a Tuesday afternoon, we did the podcast this
morning talking about this matter, and UH and my colleague
and Jonah Goldberg's colleague, Christine Rosen, who is a very
very fine person of upstanding moral values and a belief
in you know, institutions and tradition and responsibility and the

(41:35):
Western principle that people should take responsibly for their actions,
said heads must someone must be called to account for this,
and somebody must be fired, and this is the only
way to go forward. And then I took a vote
of our panel as to whether or not anyone was
going to be held responsible. There were four of us

(41:58):
on the panel, including Chris see In. The vote was
zero to four on whether or not anyone who was
going to be held responsible. And then in fact, of
course no, no one would be held responsible. And then,
in fact, two hours after we did this, Trump came
out and said, well, Mike Waltz has learned a lesson.
That's that's the end of that.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
I like Mercedes Schlapp coming out and saying the.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Only person that husband should should should be allowed to
do whatever they want to at a bar. Is that
what you said?

Speaker 1 (42:27):
No, that's okay, I'm sorry. It all goes back to
the Bible, that's in the's in theeteronomy. Yeah, but UH
said that the only person who needs to be fired
over this is Jeffrey Goldberg, which is a take. So
I had, speaking of a podcast recorded earlier today, I

(42:47):
had our friend You've all lived in on talk about
a guy who's been the same age for a really
a long time, and Uh, I had you all on
and he you know, he made a point. I thought
it was really interesting. I was revisiting something he said
shortly after the election about how Trump can't be the
center of attention forever and blah blah blah blah blah,

(43:08):
and but it's turned out he's been the center of
attention longer than we would have thought. He said, yeah, no,
that's true. But you know, it's still early yet. And
he said, you know, in early days, he said, I
decided to go back just out of curiosity and see
what people were talking about four years ago at the
same point in the Biden administration. And he said, it

(43:29):
turns out serendipitously. But today is in fact the anniversary,
the four year anniversary of that Axios piece about Biden
meeting with the historians who tell him he can be
new Fdr that he's going to his only real challenge
is grappling with the great transformative greatness of his administration.

(43:53):
So you know, who knows where things are going to
go from from you know, March twenty fifth onward.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Imagine a world. I don't think that you can ascribe,
you know, world turning events to like a single meeting
with a bunch of history if you're a vain ful
like Joe Biden. But imagine a world in which that
meeting hadn't happened, and that Joe Biden was surrounded by
people who were like, you know, we gotta we got

(44:22):
to cut a deal with the Republicans. We gotta do X,
we got to handle this, We got to do that,
we got to do that. As opposed to the you
could be FDR, He's like, yeah, I could be FDR,
and no one actually said you could be FDR. Probably
he would have come to it on his own, although
who knows, because you know, I mean, FDR are three

(44:43):
initials that he can put together in his own brain
without needing Jill to put up a few cards for him.
So maybe that would have happened anyway. But I do
think that that moment was an inflection point.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
That point that was an ruction by Bye by that. Yeah,
and I remember remember it was a little while after
that that who's the the Democratic congresswoman Spamberger from Virginia, right,
who's like a centrist and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,
and she had said, look, nobody voted for Biden to

(45:21):
be FDR, and Michael Tumaski, who I think this is
a tough field, but is the most middle brow, dim
witted public intellectual around.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
He is the editor of The New Republic now, but
has been around for many, many decades.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, so is so is her. And he uh, he
says that's not true. In my Tacoma Park neighborhood, we
voted for Jamie Raskin, and we wanted a new deal
and and this idea. And that's the problem is is

(46:01):
Biden was listening to people like Tamaski, who thought that
the average Democrat or even the median voter wanted something
out of Biden other than like get Covid over us,
leave us alone, you know. And yeah, and I think
we're replaying all of that right now. It's like Trump

(46:22):
is swinging for the fences, thinking that he has this
mandate to do wild things. And now we're talking to
all this rank punitry out there about the tea party.
The left is having a tea party moment. Well, that's
a recipe for this cycle repeating itself, where they're going
to get office and think that like the Bernie bros.
Are the median voter, and we're going to have this
cycle of of nonsense for forever. So it says in

(46:47):
the Bible.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
As as is written in scripture. What I the only
thing I was just goin finish? Right, Just a little
bit about.

Speaker 6 (46:54):
The Bible group the group chat, which is is in
a way, it's also a group chat, uh is the
it's just the the slavish kind of like Trump suck
up language they're all using on it.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Wait, are showing the Europeans I'm sick of they're free loading. Yeah,
me too, I'm sick of it more than you. That
just it just sounded so childish and like like college
Republican maga hat wearing you know what I mean? Is
it sounded?

Speaker 1 (47:27):
But I actually think that's the most significant thing about
this whole thing, right, I mean, the classified information stuff
like it worked. They're perfectly good fodder for hypocrisy charges, right,
what about hell are you all that kind of stuff?
That's all fine, right, And maybe they have learned a
lesson and they won't do this again. But this confirmed

(47:48):
for our allies that the stuff they say in public
isn't just pandering bs. They actually believe it. Yeah, and
so now like Europeans are like, we now know that
we have to plan for the possibility that America will
simply not get our back and honor their alliances. And

(48:09):
that's really significant.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Actually, well, just as a thought experiment, you know, imagine
if Tucker Carlson was on there. We already know what
he says in his private chats, which is Trump's an idiot.
As a disaster, I've never been more like the country
would be better off with secondary defense. Tucker Carlson, Well

(48:30):
that in that respect.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
I thought what was interesting about the chat was.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Not great for Israel. The rob I just want to
point that out.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
That was there were idiological there were well everything. So
so in the in the irony category. The two people
who should be held accountable and probably fired for the
logistical screw up, right, Mike Waltz, who added Jonah gold

(49:00):
Jeffrey Goldberg jesus to the chat sorry, and Pete Hegseath,
who attached the war plan play put the war plan
in the chat.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Right, they were the prayer emoji.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
They were the two most sensible people in the discussion.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Like they both said, someone's got to keep the shipping
lanes open. If we don't do it now, we're gonna
have to do it three months from now. And then
there is this weird thing that is missing because Jeff
Goldberg redacted it, which is clearly that they had intelligence
on where the Houthy leaders were that made this operation

(49:39):
necessary to go soon or faster now because they they
could hit targets that would take out leaders and so
and he he he very responsibly left that out. But
they're saying, like, you know, when Van says, I hate Europeion,
I don't want to save their bacon, and you know what,
we're making goods cheap for them, what is it for us?

(50:01):
And something like that, and then HeiG Seth and Waltz
heg Seth who is somebody who is you know again
not all we know about him is he doesn't like
is the woke military and he was on Fox and
Friends weekend. Is like, no, no, no, we got to
keep the shipping lanes open. And you know, if if
goods get more expensive in Europe, they get more expensive
here too. It's not like this is a closed system,

(50:22):
and we need there to be some form of stability
in the air over the Persian golf in Israel and
who he's have to be stopped from doing this because
it just introduces a note of uncertainty. So I'm like,
you know what, maybe he was a pretty decent choice
for Secretary of Defensive This is always looking at things,

(50:43):
except for the fact that he's attaching war plans to
a signal chat Like, don't do that. Why are you
attaching war plans to a signal chat when in Moscow?

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Is in Moscow at the time.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah, surprised that he didn't just that signal. I have
to check into signal. A signal will actually let you
send a file that big and make you send it
like the drop box link.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
There you go. Maybe they paid extra for that, you
know storage, it's like what one TB of storage. You know,
the federal government paid the extra forty nine ninety nine
a month.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
So no, no, they will done it. But then Doge
cut it?

Speaker 1 (51:29):
So we should just get it out there because like
it's just won't stop. I've been getting It's been a
running joke between me and Jeffrey Goldberg. We're not close,
but like we see each other every now and then
and all that kind of stuff, and on panels and whatever.
We get each other's email. We get like I've been
getting his anti semitic email for years, and sometimes I'll
be like, oh, man, did I send it?

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Did I send it?

Speaker 3 (51:51):
I'm sending you the wrong place.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Man, I'll be like, why am I getting all this
weird email about this right now? And it turns out, oh,
jeff Goldberg had been on C Spanner earlier in the day,
and I in fact once picked up at my doctor's
office one of his prescriptions that they gave. But I
thought nothing, nothing gross. And and so when this thing broke,

(52:18):
like first of all of all the times, I wish
I had been the mistaken party, right, this would have
been very good for the dispatch to break this. But uh,
I can't, like, you know, I have these silly dog tweets.
Every morning, I got people responding to me saying, uh,
your dog hates you because of the hoax you perpetrated
on America, you know, over and over and over again,

(52:40):
like these people think I'm Jeffrey Goldberg and my d
ms blow up with people saying, you know, making the
same three jokes. It's it's very reminiscent of when Donald
Trump said I didn't know how to buy pants, and
everybody thought they were the only one ever to make
a joke about it, it's gotten kind of exhausting. So

(53:01):
I am not Jeffrey Goldberg.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
I have been enjoying trying to riff off the Jeffrey
Goldberg Joanah Goldberg confusion on Twitter and flattering you while
I'm doing it. Like I say, for one thing, John
Golberg is not Jeffrey Goldberg because John Goldberg it's funny.

(53:23):
For example, that's what Williamson he hired exactly. So I
am not a fan of Jeffrey Goldberg's. But again, I
do have to say.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
I think he he's behaved responsibly.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
He has behaved like a patriot, and he did not
do anything that interfered with a major US military action.
And if he had called Mike Waltz and said hey,
I'm on this group chat, they would have had to
postpone the mission. Sure Operational Security. You're so good, Yeah,

(53:58):
you're so good, op sech.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
I was op seck, pretty good, pretty good, FBI opsec,
FBI CSISI group chat.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Have I discussed with you guys the fact now going
totally into a weird that that my my new favorite
show is this twelve year old show suits. Have I
have we talked about did we talk about this last
time my son and I have been watching Suits. The

(54:36):
USA show was on for nine years, had no cultural
footprint whatsoever, Like I knew, I sort of dimly knew
it existed. It then goes on Netflix and becomes a
huge hit because Mega Markle was on it, right, Like,
it had this accelerant which was Megan Markle. But I
think even that wouldn't have explained it. It's this very lively,

(54:59):
fun light drama about a law firm, right right. And
I got to say that it is the first real
experience I've had of watching a show with like one
of my kids where we're both sort of like watching
it in real time, and it's an old timey like

(55:22):
syndicated show. It's like watching Star Trek. Right.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
Ten years after the network, there was an USA Network
and they had a theme programming theme they called Blue Sky, right,
and they were these blue The Blue Sky shows were like,
you know, kind of breezy and funny and in general
kind of light and and and addictive, like a Suit's
white collar was one site burn notice Monk, you know,

(55:48):
and these are like called Blue Sky Shows. And I
remember going talking to one guy who was there was
running it at the time, I think he's running it
and talking about these Blue Sky shows saying, you know,
like like I just love them. These they're great. I mean,
I love Monk very much. I thought it was a
really fun show. And he said, yeah, well when they're
they do really well for you guys, right yeah, And

(56:09):
you knew right then they were going to screw it
up because they had it. They had it, they nailed it.
But there's kind of embarrassed by it. We're not gonna
win any Emmy's. No one's talking about No one's talking
about Monk. No one's like, there are no there are
no Twitter you know, spoiler alerts for that. It just
entertained people and made them a lot of money. And

(56:30):
it's the same thing as someone I was telling a
story of a friend of mine and he said, yeah, because
he did a lot of kids like team programming, family
programming for ABC for a long time. And he said,
remember going and talking to them about the t g
IF that is GGIF franchise was huge for ABC. Thank
God it's Friday. These kids shows, they were the giant
and he was pitching something to them and he said,
this booths would fit into your tgi F lineup. But
go go between these two shows that I know, you're

(56:50):
you're you got a room for one. And their response
was yeah, said well, I mean they're they're they're really
successfu still right. Yeah, And they killed it. They killed
TGIF for no reason. Yeah, they just were kind of
they weren't cool enough, so they threw the money away.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
I was once at the as a TV critic. I
was at this the famous TV critics press tour, uh
and Wings was still on the air. And Wings was
the NBC sitcom that had no big cultural footprint, right.
It wasn't Cheers, it wasn't Seinfeld, wasn't Friends, it wasn't

(57:34):
even Caroline in the City or you know, suddenly Susan
didn't have a star. No, but I mean it didn't
like have a star or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
But Ben Ronberg's sister on it, Ben Rotenberg's sister who.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Was on Suits by the way, who was also is
the grandmother of Patrick Jams, one of the stars of
Suits in the first two seasons of Suits, Rebecca Shawl. Anyway,
So Wings and so the head of NBC is talking
about their schedule and he's like, and then there's the

(58:04):
little show that could Wings and I was like, this
show has made you a squillion dollars for eight years,
You've made one hundred and seventy five episodes, it's in syndication,
It's made you a huge amount of profit. What are
you being so condescending for? Well, it didn't really, it didn't,

(58:29):
but it ran for eight years.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
Yeah it.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Yeah, no, it didn't really. I mean that. The thing
about that show was it was not popular. It was
just it needed to be aired contiguous to Cheers. It
had to either air at eight thirty or at nine thirty.
They could not move it. It was owned by the
you know, the Charles brothers and Jimmy and the guys
who created and ended up doing for Frasier. But that

(58:55):
show couldn't it couldn't move it. And so there was
a time when NBC had no nothing. They had nothing.
There were just they were number four network and all
they had was Cheers and Wings. And so their Thursday
lineup was Wings, Cheers, Cheers, Wings or Wings Wings or
no or Wings Cheers, Wings Cheers. Wings had to be
had to be contiguous. That's how they kept Wings alive.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Okay, Okay, all I'm saying is that the the world
of feeling contempt. Yeah, it shows that you have to
show that that don't make noise. Yeah, it's a sort
of interesting. It's like a vanity problem, right, totally.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Well, you can have that attitude when there are four
networks and you're even number four. You're gonna do okay.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Right, So my takeaway from this is that I should
stop responding to people saying, hey, I heard you on GLOP.
Love that podcast.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
I should stop saying yeah, yeah, people love it.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah they do. I mean they do. I
will tell you.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
I mean, I'm serious about this. I've said this the
guys off air, Like, I get more feedback about Glop
than I did than I did for like a decade.
I don't know what. I sort of found. It's the
suits of the post middle age in podcasters.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Yeah, but the podcast, right, we had, particularly the commentary podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
This is the reason that people need to keep their
powder dry in popular culture, because nobody knew that this
weird three season science fiction show in the mid sixties
was going to end up birthing not only a sixty
year franchise in the forum of Star Trek, with twenty

(01:00:36):
seven series and fourteen movies and seventy books and all
of that. It was good, but it was but in
some ways it was going to give birth to the
entire creation of popular culture in the form of the
popularization of science fiction. Similarly, suits, you're sitting there, you're
full of contempt for suits. It doesn't get nominated for

(01:00:58):
anything anything like that. Then it goes on Netflix it
is the number one television show in seventy five countries
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
That's just like what happened with Office, right, I mean,
Office just blew up on Netflix. Hey, so I was, well, Netflix.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Blew up because of Office.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
That was the that was the yeah, yeah, oh that's right. Yeah,
Chicken early kind of thing. So I was on the
set of the six am CNN show, which is a
burden to do at that hour.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Really the view the viewer is very grateful to you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
I appreciate it for being I got to send that
guy a muffin basket and uh one of the nice things.
They have all the hard copy papers out and you're like,
you look at them during the commercial breaks or interviews
with Rocana or whatever. And there was a big spread
I think in USA today about uh Star Trek cruises

(01:01:54):
that it's basically the National Review model, which which again,
if you do the Bigats and in Biblical land. Yeah, yeah,
this podcast was born from National Review Cruises and and
they had like William Franks whatever that guy's name is,
you know, Riker from.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
How do I know that? And you don't on a.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Panel and uh, and I thought it would actually be
kind of awesome if we went and did a live
glop from the From the start, Rob just keeps saying, yeah, no,
I never saw that one. No, No, the vulcans are

(01:02:36):
those are those the green ones?

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
You know? By the way, I should say, if we're
going to do the Bigats, so the National Review Cruise
begat glop. That was you. That was you Rob and
Mark Stein because you had done these an n ro
O cruise After Dark Sessions Midnight Sessions.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
He was sort of the Richie cunning was older brother
of the original of this or maybe he went usked.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Yeah, he went up the stairs into a lawsuit into
the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce lawsuit that just he recently pretty
much won. Mark and congratulations to him on that victory
over over doctor Man. But I believe that the original
Cruise magazine Cruise also gave birth to the career, the

(01:03:27):
second career of pgair Wark because I believe that the
original magazine cruise was a boat trip down the Volga
for the Nation for the Nation in nineteen eighty three
or nineteen eighty one or something like that that PJ
took and wrote about for Harper's and became the core
work of Holidays from Hell, his first breakout book and

(01:03:52):
also his coming out in a way, as he was
the hidden right winger on the cruise, watching all the
Stalinists enjoying their trip on the Volga in the decrepit
and soon to be gone Soviet Union. And then twenty
years later, I don't know who surfaced the idea. I mean,
there's this guy in Georgia who was the inceptor of

(01:04:16):
the cruise notion, the constant of the National Review cruise.
Great guy, but I believe that's actually if you want
to source the National Review cruise in the magazine cruise business,
you got to go to the Nation magazine's entrepreneurial brilliance
in sending a boat down the Vulgan.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
We're gonna have to do some biblical eggs of Jesus
on this, because I am fairly confident that the Nation
got the idea from us, and because it was originally
a play on Buckley's sailing books and the idea of
going yachting with Buckley, and then the Nation mimicked us.

(01:04:59):
And what was there? Do you remember the columnist Rosa
Brooks used to be at the LA Times.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Is that Rosa Brooks who was very as somebody's daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Yes, she's the daughter civil rights leader.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah, not her.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
I'm gonna look it up because this is a good story.
She told me this story. So there was a yeah,
Barbara Aaron Reich's.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Barbara Aaron reis daughter, right, And she's actually a very
good writer, and she was for a while a very
good columnist, but then she went politically batso.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
But but so, but anyway, she told me the story
of years ago because we used to be at the
LA Times together. And so there's a very famous story
about which the New York Times wrote up about a
nation cruise where in the eighties where Barbara Aaron Reike
declined to go because there was like a Steve Adort.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Strike and she wouldn't cross the picket.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Line, and she wouldn't cross the picket line, and so
the Nation cruisers, when they found this out, decided they
would not attend the events that they paid for and
instead fashioned with what they could picket signs and marched
on the Lido deck protesting the cruise line they had

(01:06:26):
bought tickets to ride to do this Nation thing. And
my understanding from Rosebrooks, I hope I'm not speaking too
much out of school on this is that Aaron Rek
just didn't want to go, and she looked and just
trying to find an excuse, and she said, oh, there's
some strike I can say. I can't cross a picket line,
and that's why I'm not going. And instead it became

(01:06:47):
this sort of like and in fairness to the lefties
on the Nation cruise, they could not design a better
vacation for themselves than civil rights cost play activism in
the Caribbean on a cruise ship, and so that's what
they did.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
I I I salute them, I I really do. I
think that is a that is a wonderful. The only thing,
the only thing would be better now would be to
be on a Maha cruise where there's an outbreak of
some kind of communicable disease. And then, of course RFK
tells you you can't take anything. Yes, I hear yourself

(01:07:27):
on the cruise. And then everybody dies on the cruise.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
I don't know them to die. I just want explosive diarrhea.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
If it's what if it's not explosive, does it have
to be? What if it's implosive? Why is it ever
any implosive diarrhea?

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Yeah? Well, by the way, the greatest, the greatest moment
in rfk's young career is that he has jumped on
the bandwagon, the Jonathan Hate sociological bandwagon against cell phones
in school for the right reasons, right, No, he wants
kids not to use cell phone in school, not because
they're learning isolation, for the wrong reasons, right, because because

(01:08:05):
they're they're getting they're going to get cancer from having
cell phones near their heads.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
They're sapping our precious bodily fluids in.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, he is, he is a real.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
I've got a great tweet about this new contributing writer
at the at the Dispatch, just really and higher and
uh it was like, I hope I can't remember what
the examples were. It was like, I hope this is
the beginning of a long trend with with R f
K of doing the right thing for the dumb ass reasons,
you know, like eat fewer carbs because your personal damon

(01:08:40):
will eat your soul. You know that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
All right, Is anybody watching anything you want to recommend
to anybody? Or reading anything, or doing anything or seeing anything.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
We've talked about this offline and on here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
John the Turbo, I believe Rob would like to recommend
John of the Turbo.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
I would I recommend this book of acts. Reacher continues
to entertain. Oh, yeah, I saw the first episode of that.
I liked it. Oh it's good again.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Nineteen twenty three. It's a stupid ass soap opera, but
I really like it. It is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
I feel. Here's my problem in ninety two, like it's
just like a series. You take these characters and it's
like everything that happens to them is bad. They have
to get on a boat and then they're thrown in
the they're thrown in the brig and then they got
on a train and then they're raped in a train station,
and then they have to work in the train and

(01:09:40):
somebody rapes them on a train and then they get
there and they're in jail. They have to have their
skulls drilled into without an anesthetic. I enjoy it, but
I don't know what that says about me or you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
What do you think nineteen twenties were, like John, I
think they.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Were a little they weren't quite as harsh as this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
But but I finally watched at the end, I you know,
I was. I didn't start watching Yellowstone until like two
years ago, and I finally watched the finale, and I
gotta say, Kevin Costner is batguano crazy for killing that
show to make that other stupid thing that no one

(01:10:19):
even remembers the name of Horizon, Yeah, American Horizon or something.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
No, it's Horizon an American saga one, and there is
apparently a part two Horizon. Yeah, Horizon an American Phone.
Yeah exactly. But but uh yeah, Taylor Sheridan is a

(01:10:45):
is a phenomenon. But he does like to event characters
and then torture them. That's yeah, that's it's an interesting
Uh you know, it's not like it's he's the opposite
of Dickens. Like he's not crying over his characters in
their fate. He's like, oh, you think you're so smart,
cut your arm off.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
They feel like that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
You know, her poor character didn't have anything to you know,
not his fault. Rob. Are you really except for the
Book of Acts or are you just too are you
just too scholarly at this moment?

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Well, I don't have that much time. I mean, I
really don't. I mean, I have to mean an enormous
amount of reading. I gotta read, So this is not
I am. I see little snippets of things. I saw
a little bit of Reacher just was I was having
my pizza and I thought, I better watch Reacher and
then that's better, which I enjoyed. And then I saw

(01:11:39):
a clip from the Gilded Age show the Gilded.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
Age, I've seen both seasons.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
Yeah, on the TikTok. I saw it on the TikTok device.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
That's the best way to see it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
And and I thought, should I watch that note because
that's I got it right?

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Yeah? No, literally, I forbid you from watching the Oldest time.
The thing I love the most inane show. Well, the
thing I love about Reacher is the dialogue.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Is is is so terrible that actually I think AI
would be improvement. The one the first episode I saw
in this season, the guy goes to richer goes to
the rich guy, and the rich guy he's does don
a favor for the rich guy, and the guy says,
how would you like a drink? How about a McCadden
it's fifty years old. I only serve it to my

(01:12:26):
most respected business associates, Like what what is this? Which
is just it's like an eight year old, you know,
like my business. Here, here's a mccaddaan Scotch whiskey that's
fifty years fifty. Really only for my most trusted business associates. Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
The thing about this season of Reacher is there is
a fantastic female sidekick on it, a British actress named
Sonia Cassidy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
Who is he the one with the where the world's worst,
world's worst New England accent.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
I don't think it's the world's worst in England accent
at all. She sounds like everybody I ever met from Maine,
and she's supposed to be from Maine, and she's a
brit and it's she is great. I think she's great,
and uh.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
I think she's good too, But that accent's got to go.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
It is not Dick van Dyke. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):
I think she went to the Dick Van school of accent.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
I'm not, it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
She studied under Martin Sheen.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
So rob, but I just want to like, people can't
view this podcast right even though like most podcasts are
now on like YouTube. At some point though, people need
to see you in your cassock because you're you're you're
pulling up.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Yeah, yeah he is, thank you, And yeah he's got
a cassock and he's in the apps. He's actually doing this.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
It's just I'm just wearing a caf can. This was
my home, my home outfit. Yeah. Yeah, it's not allowed
to do any of that. I'm not, sir police. Yeah,
I'm not allowed to do any of that until I'm ordained.
But then when I'm more dained, it is so over
for you bitches.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
And with that we will reconvene in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Pater