Offline with Jon Favreau

Kyla Scanlon, author and economic commentator, joins Offline to explain why our economy feels so weird. She and Jon talk about the ways AI — and Labubus — have taken over the markets, whether big tech has become overly reliant on the attention economy, and why Gen Z is feeling so down about their longterm economic prospects. But first! Jon sits down with The New Yorker's Kyle Chayka to talk about internet age verification laws, whe...

As the Trump administration manufactures conspiracies to distract from the president’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, some on the right are blaming the deep state while others are finally calling foul. The Bulwark’s Will Sommer has been covering the far right conspiracy beat for years, and he joins the show to break down the Epstein drama, run through the kooks in charge of federal law enforcement, and compare the unhinged agenda...

Why are non-white voters moving towards Trump? Yale professor and author Daniel Martinez HoSang sits down with Jon to examine how Democrats’ multiracial coalition fell apart during and after Obama’s presidency, what minorities see in Trump (and why they have no remorse about voting for him) and what the left can do to win them back. But first! Max is back to hash out the news of the week: Trump has announced his AI Action Plan and ...

Living through a deadly plague as we watched the country descend into political violence on our screens might've left us with some...unresolved issues. Director Ari Aster sits down with Jon to break down his new dark comedy, “Eddington,” which depicts the violent unraveling of a small town as it faces pandemic, polarization, and AI proliferation. But first! MSNBC’s Brandy Zadrozny joins Offline to unpack the latest in MAGA’s cannib...

Boys today are being told to man up by the right and sit down by the left. Coming of age in the shadow of #MeToo and wading through algorithms rife with manosphere content, many young men are accepting the far right’s simple answers and leaning into traditional masculinity…without realizing it’s stunting their emotional development. Others are letting technology isolate and depress them. What is it about boys' psychology that makes...

Religion in the US has been on the decline for many years, but does atheism make us unhappier? Ross Douthat, New York Times Opinion columnist and author of Believe, joins Offline to explain why he thinks believing in God is a rational choice, why secular humanism feels worse in the age of Trump, and what he makes of Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance’s recent misanthropic comments on his "Interesting Times" podcast.

For a closed-captioned v...

We don't really know how AIs like ChatGPT work...which makes it all the more chilling that they're now leading people down rabbit holes of delusion, actively spreading misinformation, and becoming sycophantic romantic partners. Harvard computer science professor Jonathan Zittrain joins Offline to explain why these large language models lie to us, what we lose by anthropomorphizing them, and how they exploit the dissonance between w...

Why are young men — of all races — moving toward Trump? Are high prices to blame? Their media diets? The Democrats? John Della Volpe, the nation’s leading youth pollster, joins Offline to discuss “Speaking to American Men,” a new $20 million effort to bring young men back into the Democratic coalition. John and his colleagues surveyed more than 1,000 men under 30 and conducted dozens of focus groups to understand what these men thi...

Jesse Armstrong, the Emmy Award-winning creator of HBO's "Succession," joins Offline to chat about how he made a mockery of Silicon Valley tycoons in his new movie, “Mountainhead.” He and Jon discuss why the men who run social media companies are so anti social, how hard it is to satirize people who are already parodies of themselves, and compare notes on their writing process. Then, Offline welcomes an old friend back to the show ...

Are we surveilling our children too much? Do we need fancy gadgets to track their sleep? Should we be taking so many pictures of them? Longtime New York Times culture critic Amanda Hess joins Offline to discuss why the optimization of childhood may just be another empty promise of the information age. Amanda's new book, Second Life, follows her digital identity crisis as she grapples with her newborn baby's rare genetic disorder, t...

To celebrate his final appearance on the pod, Max takes Jon on a trip down memory lane, sharing his favorite Offline clips from the past two years—including lessons he learned while trying to take control of his screen time, insights about loneliness in the digital age, and a touching reflection on what it means to pay attention to what you pay attention to. But first! Your favorite millennials discuss a terrifying AI model that’s ...

The tech elite believe AI is just a few years away from displacing most computer-based jobs, and they seem…excited about it? Atlantic staff writer Matteo Wong joins Offline to discuss why Silicon Valley thinks AI is more important than anything happening in politics or the economy, and why it’s all eerily similar to their optimism around social media in the 2010s. But first! Max shares a personal update that we all hate, and then i...

Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror and staff writer at the New Yorker, joins Offline to discuss how it’s becoming harder and harder to make sense of reality, especially with AI taking over our feeds. She and Jon talk about how online distrust bleeds into life offline, parenting in this moment of endless horrors, and the inspiration (or lack thereof) behind her latest essay, "My Brain Finally Broke." But first! Jon’s X account ma...

Lauren Greenfield, director of the acclaimed FX docuseries “Social Studies,” sits down with Jon to talk about the year she spent shadowing a group of LA teens as they navigated their very online lives. The kids gave Lauren permission to screen record their phones for the duration of filming, and the result is an intimate, frenetic and often horrifying account of what it's like to be underage on the internet. But first! Mark Zuckerb...

Pete Hegseth isn’t the only one who loves a group chat—turns out Silicon Valley's descent into Trumpism was powered by a constellation of Signal and WhatsApp chats between America’s tech overlords. Max and Jon walk through the Marc Andreessen-powered phenomenon, then discuss how Jeff Bezos was forced to kiss Trump’s ring this week by walking back Amazon's response to his tariffs. Next up: how will Gen Z's lifestyle subsidy (cheap A...

This Terminally Online preview breaks down the liberal media’s response to the back-and-forth between Larry David and Bill Maher, right-wing transvestigations, and TikTok’s “broken bone theory.” For the full episode and more Terminally Online, subscribe by April 30th to enjoy 30 days of Friends of the Pod for free! Support Crooked’s mission while unlocking ad-free episodes for Offline with Jon Favreau, exclusive content, a great Di...

Google’s antitrust trial is all gas no breaks this week, with the Justice Department asking a federal judge to break up the $1.81 trillion dollar company. Jon and Max discuss all the possible outcomes, and why Google’s products have stagnated the more they’ve come to dominate the internet. Then, new research finds that people who deactivated Facebook or Instagram before the 2020 presidential election became significantly happier an...

Free speech warrior Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand this week to defend Meta in a big antitrust case that, if successful, could break up the social media giant. Max and Jon run through the trial thus far, and discuss how Silicon Valley tycoons skewered themselves by supporting Trump. Then, the guys delve into the ever-improving state of AI, with help from Offline AI correspondent Jon Lovett. To round it all out, Dr. Leor Zmi...

Ryan Broderick, host of Offline’s most-cited newsletter “Garbage Day,” joins Jon to talk tariff turmoil—how it will affect the TikTok deal, whether Trump has lost the faith of bro voters, and why the online right thinks a collapse of the global economy could solve America’s masculinity crisis. Then, is Elon Musk getting Ramaswamied? Was his nerd king persona ever more than a PR stunt? And what did we learn from Facebook whistleblow...