Patrick Radden Keefe (investigative journalist)

22:41That's the way it works. I'm badged in. One of the mixers just go like, you know what? I'm shot. Guys, your ticker's off here. What's going on? Well, I just sent you something. Did you get it? On Instagram. I don't know if they just got announced or something, or maybe it was misinformation, but it was like the new Peabody people and like Kimmel. Is a part of it. Is nominated, I guess. Is it nominated or has won? I don't know. I don't know what just happened. Something happened. The nominations definitely come before you win. Okay, so I think that and heated rivalry. Yeah, I'm not even sure how one wins one.

23:13I think that's why I want one so bad. I don't really understand what the criteria is. I don't either, honestly. We had a great night. Is it a nice statue? Yeah, you get this little kind of bronze-looking guy. Is it directly under the rejection article? They can see each other. Okay, now this is where I become aware of you. In 2020, I presume during COVID, you do Winds of Change. It was an eight-part podcast. Did you know about it? Yeah, really good. Yeah, and it starts exploring this rumor that the CIA had actually written the song, The Winds of Change by the Scorpions. How on earth do you get onto that as a story to tell?

23:48I have this friend, Michael, who ended up being kind of my opposite number in the podcast. He's unlike anyone I've ever known. He's one of my closest friends. He just seems to sort of spin a little bit faster than everyone else. He's got a million ideas. He knows everyone. He's had a whole bunch of different careers. He would tell you, and he's not completely wrong, that a bunch of my best ideas are ideas that he's given. He started a kind of a private intelligence company and then sold that. And he worked for Madeleine Albright for many years. and he knows a lot of spooky people. And he had this kind of weird thing where he became sort of a totally informal thing where you would have these spies who had had cover identities and fake jobs.

24:28It's a real dilemma. Like if you work at an oil company for years, but in fact you work for the CIA, with the understanding of the CEO of the oil company that you have this kind of cover job. And then you need to leave the CIA and you want to get another job, but you're not able to tell people, you can't put on your resume, oh, actually I didn't work at an oil company. I mean, I sort of did, but secretly I was working for the CIA. Somebody like Michael, who can kind of see both sides, becomes helpful in helping you find a situation after the fact. Oh, wow. To suit your skills. Yes. Okay, right.

24:58And so he basically called me years and years ago and said, you know that song, Wind of Change? For those who don't know, it's a power ballad by the West German hair metal band, the Scorpions, came out just after the Berlin Wall fell and became kind of the soundtrack to the collapse of the Soviet Union. You think you don't know it, but you would recognize it. That's the person that everyone knows is. Michael called me and he said, I just talked to this guy from the agency who said that that song wasn't written by the Scorpions, this slightly ridiculous German metal band. It was secretly written by the CIA.

25:30So crazy. Yeah. And I spent years and years and years trying to get to the bottom of it with Michael. Really quick, on prima facie, did you think that was possible at all? Well, when he first told me, I said, no, it's completely bananas. I don't doubt that the CIA would want to do that, But what I doubt is that anyone there could write a huge hit song. That seems impossible. Well, yes. When you sort of squint your eyes and you think about like the Hollywood version, the fantasy version, you want there to be some frustrated musician who actually always wanted to be in a metal band. But like me, they were worried about being the rent.

26:02Didn't never crawl. And so they end up going and working at the agency. I don't think it was that. I mean, often what happens is it's a little like the Argo situation where what they do is they find people who are outside who really do have skills and then they enlist them. I will say when he first told me, I said, no way, that's crazy. And then I started looking into it. And when you look at the history of the CIA, they were doing all kinds of stuff in culture. The really crazy thing is that actually because the CIA in the 50s, 60s, 70s was all these guys who went to Yale and were named Prescott.

26:28What they were doing was promoting abstract expressionism and jazz. I mean, it was sort of pretty high-minded stuff. Some of them had done acid, certainly. There you go. I also would imagine, too, it's an incredible hub for you to tell all kinds of crazy other CIA stories. This is very often the case for me. I'm always thinking about sort of digression. And I think indulgent digression is bad. But I love to come right up to the line. Where you start going, like, oh, what's this book about? And then you're back. Yeah. And I will say there's always some people who feel like my stuff is too digressive.

27:02They're like, oh, could I just get the executive summary? Not me. All the stuff that you're kind of hanging on the line, that's the fun of it. Okay, so that's great. And people should listen to that. Winds of Chains, it's wonderful. And then, of course, Empire of Pain in 21. And that brings us to London falling, which I love. Again, I love the digression. For me, the story of Zach is great and it's intriguing and I must get the answers. But what I'm learning about London, what I'm learning about the Thames, what I'm learning about the influx of all the money that's happened, this is the meat for me.

27:34So I know it starts as a New Yorker article. And how does it come across your desk? Why do you get interested in it? It's one of these funny things where when I go looking for ideas, I almost never find them. But I do try to be out in the world and talk to people and stay curious. I have a pretty firm conviction, more so now than ever, that you're not going to find the good stories on the internet. So in this case, I was living in London. After Say Nothing came out, we turned it into this limited series. And I was a producer on the series. I was very involved. And it's a nine-month shoot. and for much of that I was kind of flying back and forth between New York where I live and primarily the UK where we were shooting.

28:09But during the summer when my kids got out of school, my wife and I just moved to London and the production got us an apartment and so we were living in London that summer and I was on set one day and I met a guy. It was a fascinating conversation. This guy, Andrew, he was visiting the set for the day. He was a guest of the director. I could have just played Wordle on my phone but I do have this tendency to want to... See what's going on with this guy. Yeah, my poor children, anytime we get in the back of an Uber, I have to know the whole life story of the Uber driver. Our children would have a lot to bond over.

28:39Their shared humiliation. So I start chatting with this guy. He's Jewish. He started talking about how the Jewish community in London is different from the Jewish community in New York. This was kind of a funny moment because I'm not Jewish, but I grew up in Boston. I went to prep school in Massachusetts. I went to Columbia. I've lived in New York on and off since the 90s. There was just a part of me that was sort of like, my dude, I've been to more bar mitzvahs than you have. Don't patronize me. And so I sort of name dropped and I said, oh, well, you know, there's this woman in London who's a rabbi who's an old friend of my family.

29:07Her name is Julia Neuberger. And that was the moment that the whole conversation took a different direction because he knows Julia Neuberger. And Julia Neuberger was the rabbi to Zach Brettler, this kid. He suddenly made this connection and he said, I think I might have a story for you. Oh, he was that upfront. Absolutely. He knew at that point that I wrote for The New Yorker. and he said, I might have a story for you. And I should say, like most of the time when people say to me, I might have a story for you. Yeah, yikes. It's like someone saying they got a movie idea. And it's hard because it's just like you have a story.

29:38It's just not for me. You have to kind of listen to them and hear them out. His whole pitch was he said, there's a family here in London. I'm very close with them. They had a terrible tragedy in 2019. This is 2023 when we're having this conversation. They had a 19-year-old son, Zach. He died in mysterious circumstances. He went off the balcony of this luxury building overlooking the Thames River. And after he died, his parents were trying to figure out what had happened and they made this discovery, which is that unbeknownst to them, he had been leading a secret life. And as a teenager, he'd been moving around London pretending that he was the billionaire son of a Russian oligarch.

30:16And he basically had said that much and I knew, I'm in. Yeah, I need to know a lot more is probably the next thought. Whoa. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking your phone's battery before heading out. That'll get you every time. Of course, your phone dies on the way to meet someone, leaving you wandering around quietly panicking about being in the wrong spot. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate.

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31:43Yes, so Zach is the son of Matthew and Rochelle, who they themselves are both the children of Holocaust survivors. And her father was a rabbi, right? Yeah, her father, Hugo Graham. And they have two boys. They have Joe and Zach. They're a couple years apart. Exactly. And initially, it's pretty honky-dory till 13, right? They're mildly competitive. I think one of the pivotal things just is that at first, of course, the older brother is much better at tennis. But Zach really focuses on tennis and he ultimately beats his brother. And then his brother just stops playing tennis. So they had a little bit of competitiveness naturally.

32:23And then Joe starts attending. What's the name of the school? University College School, UCS. And Matthew's also in finance. So they're doing well. They're upper middle class. And he gets into the school. And then when it comes time for Zach to apply for the school, he does not get in. And then he tries again to get in and does not get in. And to me, this is where, who knows where this life story is without this moment. It's like the gorillas. Yes. We just had a gorilla expert on. It's so priming. It's like the exact same story. I brought this up. How so? There's a group in Rwanda and there's a male that's about to make a run at the silverback, the alpha.

32:56And in doing so, he's exerting his strength. So he starts bullying this younger one. Pretty bad, opens up his head. You know, it's gruesome. And then he does overthrow the dominant male. He becomes that. And then the bullied one kind of gets excommunicated. And he just kind of wanders the periphery for a while. And then a new female comes and he sees that she's been accepted. And he's got no place. And then he murders the baby. And then we learn from her, since this doc, this one has killed now four infants. He got deranged from the rejection and the emasculation in a sense. It's crazy how humans are so similar in so many ways.

33:35How it can warp you. I think that's right. I mean, it's interesting. This is a whole other tangent. It's an interesting thing that I've noticed where there are people who— I was just listening to some conversation about this on a podcast. But there are certain people over the last 10 or 15 years whose politics have changed really radically. and you can often trace the change back to some kind of in-group, out-group rejection where they get canceled or they get marginalized in some way or the group that they thought they were a part of kind of casts them out and that it completely reorients them politically.

34:06Yeah, you know the sovereign citizens, they've killed police officers, they won't carry a government ID, they sue municipalities, they're a pretty big group of people. And what they discovered was that without exception, all of the members at some point had really stable trades jobs or manufacturing jobs. And those went away in their town. And so, yeah, they've been rejected by a system. So the system must be broken or flawed if it would reject me. And that makes sense. I'm empathetic to it. I think that's right. I mean, I think with Zach, there was something slightly different going on. It would be familiar to anyone with, do you have siblings?

34:40Yes, older brother. You? Little brother, yeah. Okay. So I think there's this thing and the tennis story kind of speaks to it. I had this with my siblings. I see it with my own kids where there's a kind of sense that in a sort of almost unspoken way, often siblings will kind of pick a lane. If one of them occupies the lane and there's a thing that they're better at or they're going to excel at, it's sort of natural at a certain point for the other one to feel like, okay, well, you're laying claim to that. I'm going to have to find another way. There's going to be another version of life for me.

35:09Yeah, I don't think that's the pivotal thing. I just think it's a moment of embarrassment for Zach and failure. Yeah. And he is a bright kid, but maybe not academically. He ends up going to, is it the Mill? Mill Hill. Explain Mill Hill as a school. So Mill Hill, in some respects, it looks like university college school in the sense that it's a fancy private school. It's expensive. It's a beautiful campus. It's on the outskirts of London. But it's not as hard to get into. And, you know, the way it was explained to me is in the environment that Zach Brettler grew up in, which is a kind of highly educated, bourgeois, fairly sort of elite London milieu.

35:46If you say I go to Mill Hill or if you say my kid goes to Mill Hill, everybody knows without anybody having to say anything, oh, so he clearly got rejected from this school and this school and this school and this school. And that's how you end up at Mill Hill. But you also still have money. Yeah. So he's at Mill Hill. Absolutely. And I think part of what's so intriguing about this story is that Zach, this kid who ends up pretending that he's the son of a Russian oligarch and basically entering into the underworld in London, probably could have done anything. Like he had parents who loved him.

36:13He did have a competitive relationship with his brother, but ultimately like Joe was a good big brother who also loved him. They stayed close. He was part of a kind of larger family network and friends and all the rest of it. And he had, I think, an incredible series of natural gifts that maybe didn't express themselves in being able to get into a certain school at age 13, but he could have gone a long way with them. He ends up at Mill Hill and he's surrounded by these children of oligarchs. And so Mill Hill, like a lot of schools in London, I should say, realized at a certain point that there was a kind of a demographic, which was the offspring of super wealthy foreigners who had kind of made a second home in London.

36:53And so Zach at 13 finds himself surrounded by these kids. He's pretty impressed. And this is a great moment for the history of London, post-Margaret Thatcher deregulating the bank. So talk about the waves in London, because this is kind of now a part of what London is. I mean, it's funny, because I tried in the book, because of that thing we're talking about, digression, all this stuff is in the book, but I should say for people who haven't read it, it's done with a pretty light touch. But there's no point in the book where I give you 30 pages of history. No, there's three pages. Yeah, exactly.

37:23However, the way I thought of it is almost in a movie, the way you occasionally will get the kind of sped up, seeing the Brooklyn Bridge get built. A montage. So there's this, to me, really fascinating thing, which is that if you were to go to London in 1950, say, it looks basically like it did a century before. It's a big industrial city. There's factories lining the Thames, kind of smoke and coal and laborers working, making things. It's a manufacturing town. It's also a huge port city because the Thames was one of the most important ports in the world. And the first thing that really changes, interestingly, it happens in North Carolina.

37:52There's a trucking executive in North Carolina who in the mid-1950s invents the modern stackable shipping container of a sort that we've all seen. Some people might be in a home made of shipping containers right now. Exactly, there you go. So he invents these and it completely revolutionizes global trade because previously a city like London would have had these huge warehouses for the storage of goods that are going onto ships and coming off of ships. And if you go to London today, those beautiful buildings are still there, these big old warehouses. But with the new system, essentially you can have a container on top of a train that arrives at the port and it goes fluidly onto the ship and the ship goes to another port and it comes off and it goes right onto the back of a truck and off it goes and you don't need those warehouses anymore.

38:34Everything's standardized and it means you can make bigger ships which can hold more containers and those ships are too big to navigate the Thames. So in the space of 20 years, this whole industry, basically everywhere kind of east of Tower Bridge, if you know London, had been a shipping town and suddenly it's not in 20 years. Every single dock closes. So it has 30 plus years of kind of stagnation. Yes. I talk in the book about the movie, The Long Good Friday, incredible crime thriller, with Bob Hoskins from 1980. Highly encourage people to watch it. But that's filmed right at the point where the changes are starting to happen.

39:06So basically that's at the maximum blight point. They make this Bob Hoskins crime movie with a young Pierce Brosnan, I think in his first role as an assassin. And the other thing that happens is all the factories close. And so London has to kind of reinvent itself in the 80s, and it decides we're going to be a money town. Yeah, it's hard to pinpoint what the catalyst to Zach's kind of crazy story is, But the thing that to me feels most relevant is I don't want to call it income inequality simply because his family was of means. In the book, The Broken Ladder talks about like these fights that happen between first class and coach.

39:41And what's funny is it's not a story of the haves and the have nots because the people in coach. The have and the have mores. So this is like a very extreme case of this. So he's entering with a little bit of shame of having not got into that. And now he's seen absolutely fabulous wealth. Yeah. Kids with private planes and cars and all this stuff. And then simultaneously, he's starting to consume media. I think some people will read this book and they'll want to point a finger at War Dogs and The Wolf of Wall Street, probably because of my industry. I'm not as inclined to go down that road. I think all adolescents find these movies.

40:11But at any rate, I think that's really a profound experience to feel dead broke among all these people. And actually not that unique. This book started as an article in The New Yorker and after it came out, I heard from all these people. but also Zach's parents heard from all these people who were parents who said, obviously, our kid's situation is different, but I am experiencing this with my own children in New York or LA or Miami or Dublin or, you know, wherever it is that they live, where there's not just a kind of concentration of extreme wealth, but also, I think, particularly by English standards, like when Matthew and Michelle were growing up, there was a sense that there was nothing more unclassy than being super blinged out and showing your wealth.

40:53Yeah. It was a new money thing. It was a bad look. Completely. Now it's all new money and there's no shame about it. And in fact, kind of pride in it. And I hear you on the movies that Zach watched. Interestingly for me, there's a version of the story where you say, oh, look, you kind of blame the Hollywood movies because Zach was obsessed with Wolf of Wall Street and War Dogs watch them again and again and didn't watch them as like cautionary tales. He really thought this is what I want to be. In particular, he wanted to be Jonah Hill, who was like the grotiest of the pair. And he had a kind of a sense of you do anything that you can to just get yours.

41:25I understand Zach's state of mind, which is like, this is bullshit. They have it and I don't. Why wouldn't I have it? Like he's looking at people who aren't more deserving of it. And he's going, well, fuck, if I'm not going to get given it, I'm going to take it. His is an extreme case. But I think that is just in the water now. I think that is a part of our culture. I mean, it's interesting because we're roughly the same age. I was having a conversation with a guy I went to high school with the other day, and we're talking about how in the 90s there was a notion that you didn't want to sell out.

41:54The punk rock ethos. Ethan Hawke and Reality Bites. And occasionally people like that could be obnoxious, but there was a sense of like, if it's corporate, it's bad. You want to preserve your integrity, even if it means living in poverty. Like, at least I've got my pride. And that is totally alien to young people today. There is no concept of that. They have no romantic notion of that. At all. No. No, it's the opposite. It's like, who can I sell myself to? Yeah. In fairness to people, I have teenage kids. I think it's hard for them to imagine what the future is going to look like 10 years from now or five years from now.

42:28Economically, in terms of higher education, what does that look like? In terms of employment, AI, climate change, I mean, you name it. There's any number of ways in which it's kind of anybody's guess what your life is going to look like. I got a very House of Cards feel right now. It does. But I think that as a consequence, it means that some people have this sort of slightly all or nothing at the house. There is no long term, so let's go short term. Totally. And I think Zach had that. He's also a teenage boy. And he doesn't have a girlfriend. That's the conspicuous thing about this book is like what's going on with him romantically.

42:57Is it like kind of Manosphere style? A little bit. I mean, I think some of it with Zach was that he was a really extraordinary kid from a very early age. He was almost like a stand-up comic. He had a kind of zingy way of talking. He was extremely uninhibited and comfortable talking with adults, comfortable talking with anybody. He would sort of make jokes. He would tell stories. But from a really early age, he was also embroidering the truth. I think of it, again, as like a stand-up where you have your lived experience, but then you're always re-scrambling it and telling the story and trying to figure out the math of it.

43:24And you're trying it out on people and seeing what works. And an incredible information retention. Unbelievable memory, which his dad has as well. Very helpful for me in working on the book, that his dad has this incredible memory. Zach had that too. He's charming. Very charming. But I think to the point about girlfriends, he had this thing, which is that he could make friends really quickly because he was entertaining and he could sort of find points of commonality with people. But then he lied. And there's a sort of weird thing in this story, which is that all the young people I talked to could see through him.

43:53The adults completely bought what he was selling, including gangsters and various people who should have known better. But young people would have a thing where he would get to know them and they'd be charmed and they'd be like, God, get a load of this guy. He's got so many great stories and what have you. And then they'd start to get a little uneasy. Just they'd feel like, I don't completely buy it all. Well, at one point, a friend of his called him out and said, you're a pathological liar. And he said, I am. I had this brain trauma. Oh, my God. Another lie. And the guy goes, no. Oh, my God. You're doing it again.

44:20That's literally a joke. Like that's a joke. Yeah, in a movie. Yeah. Oh, my God. Incredible. Wow. There is something obviously quite corrosive about the extreme wealth. Yeah. That's why people hate billionaires. I mean, there's that truth. There's another thing. too. This book is not an op-ed. It's not an argument. No, it's a story about people. And so there will be different interpretations of it. But you're going to, as a reader, why could this happen to this kid? You're going to feel that, obviously. It's so many things. It's 4 % this. That's exactly the point that I'm making is he was on Instagram from an early age.

44:52This is a kid who was born in 2000. Social media absolutely played a role. I don't want this book to sort of be part of the moral panic about social media. Like I am morally panicked about social media, but I don't want this book to function in that way. It's what you're talking about where it's billionaires, the kind of reverence for it. I think about my own younger son, who's now 13. When he was about six, he came home one day and he started talking about Elon Musk. And I was just like, how the fuck do you even know who that is? Exactly. Why do you know about universe should a six year old know the name?

45:19Something is wrong with our society. If he's part of your kind of Marvel universe, Warren Buffett's name until I was like 25. Exactly. But I think that the thing about Instagram or social media in general, Zach wasn't delusional, But I do think that if you grow up on these apps and you're an adolescent, your ability to draw like a really fine dividing line between real life and fantasy life, it's a little blurry. You also have tools now to help with a persona as all kids, and especially him with a fresh start at this hill school. It's an opportunity. It's a reset. Yeah. Okay, so when does he start the child of an oligarch persona?

45:57It happens gradually. I mean, I interviewed a bunch of people he went to high school with. And I should say his parents were aware that he lied and embroidered, but they had no idea that he had kind of gone full bore and invented this persona. He would tell kids he went to high school with that his dad was an arms dealer. He told some of them that his mother was dead. That's a common theme for him. Yeah, the arms dealer thing. Well, and the mother being dead. And the mother being dead, yeah. Or the mother hating him and being in Dubai. But then he also tells the story about his father being dead.

46:25Part of it was Zach, what his parents told me is that from an early age, he was the kid who would claim a migraine. He was always faking injuries of one sort or another. I think when he wanted pity. Kind of Munchausen-ty a little bit. A little bit, but I think most people are compassionate or most people are good. And I think that there is a sort of sense in which if you're him, you realize if I'm the new kid at school and I don't know a soul. And I don't have money. And I don't have money. And I meet a girl and I tell her, oh, my mother recently died. That is a shortcut to a kind of intimacy that might take me forever otherwise.

46:55And he sort of intuits that. So he starts telling these lies. My dad drives two Range Rovers, little things. He would lie about where he lived. He would say, oh, my family bought a mansion. I just got to say, he told his buddy that his dad had two Range Rovers, and then they had to go to tennis practice together. And Matthew, his dad, was going to drive in a Mazda. So he's like, listen, both Range Rovers are in the shop. Don't bring up the Mazda to my dad. He's so sensitive. He's not happy about it. Oh, my God. The gymnastics. But I guess you probably get addicted to that. I'm sure also the like high of figuring out.

47:23This is where the memory comes in though, that he had an amazing memory and an amazing ability to kind of keep it all straight. Yeah, he defied Lincoln's statement. No man's memory is so good that he can afford to be a liar. In this case, he was. I mean, that's the thing. Again and again. But I think I found patient zero. I think I found the first guy that he told the son of an oligarch story to. And the irony is that it's the last person you would want to try it on because it's a guy who actually worked for Chelsea Football Club, which at the time was owned by Roman Abramovich, a real Russian oligarch, kind of the biggest of them all.

47:53What's that guy's name, Mark or Colin? Mark Foley. How did he meet Mark Foley? So randomly, there was an art exhibit at the Chelsea Arts Club. It was an invitation-only thing. To this day, I don't know how Zach got in, but he got in there and we've all been in this situation, but he's there on his own. And there's this guy, Mark Foley, who's also there on his own. He's been invited. And so you can imagine, everybody's kind of milling around. There's a bar and you're sort of sitting there thinking, you know, am I just going to bail? And you're looking at the art. And two of these guys are there on their own and they fall into conversation.

48:24He realizes who Foley is. And the funny thing is, in a way that Foley couldn't have appreciated, when Zach says, oh, what do you do? And Foley says, oh, I work for Chelsea Football Club. For Zach, Roman Abramovich is his god. So he meets this guy who works for his idol. He kind of idolizes Putin at this time, too. He's like super into Putin. He does, he's into Putin. There are family photos from this time where he's kind of doing this thing where he thrusts his chest out and he sticks his shoulders back and he kind of glowers into the camera in this very kind of Putin-esque way. As if on horseback shirtless.

48:55Yeah, exactly, exactly. And Zack, I think, just kind of takes a flyer and says, I'm actually the son of an oligarch myself. I've come from a very wealthy Russian family here. Big swing. You're talking to a guy who works for an oligarch. And he himself is Russian. Is Foley Russian? He's not. He's English. But Foley is exposed to the real thing. And Zack tries it out. And to this day, I think there might have been a universe in which none of this would have happened if Foley didn't buy what Zach was selling in that conversation. But Foley, I interviewed him subsequently, and he said he seemed pretty convincing.

49:27He was sort of talking the talk. He was dressed in a very laid back way, but he said that's exactly the way the kind of offspring of an oligarch, you know, he's like tracksuit, whatever. Yeah. And so Foley suggests that they get coffee and they chat. And then they do. And then Foley says, oh, you know, there are these guys I know who are looking for investors in this real estate project. Maybe I can introduce you to them. Because he's also said, I'm in charge of managing my father's money for investing purposes. I still think that if Foley had just sort of been like, ah, this kid is clearly full of shit and walked away.

49:56I could see Zach retiring the story and feeling like, okay, well, this one doesn't work. Yeah, there's so many Monday quarterbacking you can do. It's like, if he had a girlfriend, in my opinion, if he had a real girlfriend, if he didn't go to that school. Right. If he doesn't meet Foley. But here's the thing, Dax, the parents, Matthew and Rochelle, who I got to know so well working on this book. I spent hundreds of hours talking to these people. The awful thing for them is, especially Rochelle, has spent every day since 2019 thinking about what are the off-ramps that we missed. Did we drive past the exit?

50:26Where could we have gotten off along the way? And it's a kind of torture to think that way. And I got to say, as they're described in the book, I don't know that I've ever related more to parents. I feel like every choice they made was one I would make. I'm so glad you said that. Oh, 100%. So he's becoming obsessed with money and he's telling them, you guys need to buy a fancier car. Mom, you should buy these fancy dresses. You know, it's a little bit repugnant. And they know better than to shut him down entirely because they want to keep him connected in a way that it can still be a voice of reason.

50:56I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I would do. If you shame him out of this scenario, now he's excluded from you. It's just going to get worse. Trying to just walk that line of there might be a better path for you. And also, hey, I love you. And if this is what you want to do. It's so hard. And one of my worries with the book was that there's a certain kind of cynical read, self-flattering, self-comforting read that a person might do where they look at this story and they think, oh, well, this is just a story about bad parents who were checked out and didn't see what was going on. And I think it's self-comforting because it's like that would never happen to me.

51:28Whereas my whole experience of dealing with this family has been what would I do? I think I would be facing exactly the same dilemma. I'll be honest. The one judgmental thing I had is I think this whole private school thing is a fucking joke. And I think the fact that he had to go to someone that was still prestigious even though it was for dropouts That to me is the one thing that I personally am like, what the fuck are we doing? But that's just very you I know, I got a whole war with all these LA private skates I mean, yeah, depending on where you live Here, here it is a huge part of education Yeah, and I'm just like, hold on, timeout, it's a racket Everyone I'm working with who's successful They went to shitty fucking schools in the New Year's Exposing them to this crazy competition with a bunch of rich kids So that is my failing I try not to be judgmental That is one thing I'm a little bit.

52:10But I think anybody would conceive that those environments are. It's funny because my kids go to public school. I went to a fancy private school of this sort. And your parents weren't loaded. No. Well, I'll put it to you this way. They were comfortable enough to send three kids to that private school, but not comfortable enough that all these years later, the nature of my parents' retirement is not what it would be had they not. On some level, they were still paying for it. You didn't come back from spring break with a tan from skiing in Aspen. No. And some of your classmates did. Absolutely. But I also lived in Dorchester.

52:38I mean, the thing for me was that I lived 10 minutes away from Milton Academy, the fancy private school I went. They were very, very different worlds. And so, you know, I may be attuned to these things. I send my kids to public school. You also had a healthy mechanism of tall poppy in Boston that would have probably prevented the kids that were super rich from... Oh, that's interesting. Like, there's also a cultural force there that probably helped dampen... The really rich kids that I went to high school with, it was flannels and jeans and listening to Nirvana. I mean, it was the 90s again, so it was the last thing that they would do.

53:07Would it have been an ass kick if they posted a picture of themselves on a private plane? They would have got the shit kicked out of them. No, absolutely. And it would have just seemed kind of gauche. I remember, I'm thinking, I don't want to be outing anybody here. I briefly dated a girl who was from New York when I was a senior maybe in high school, possibly a junior. Over the winter break, I went and visited her and her family on the Upper East Side. And this was a neighborhood where a lot of kids who I went to high school with. And it was actually a moment where you kind of rack focus. And I realized like, holy fuck, these people are all incredibly rich.

53:38But I hadn't actually caught on to that. In Massachusetts in boarding school, you know, everybody sort of seemed roughly the same level. And then you go and you actually see the apartments where these people live and the lives they live in. My favorite story of that kind is I'm talking to some kids of a friend of mine and it's two girls, they're sisters. I love them. One of them's dating a new guy. She met at school. She was visiting the family in New York. I'm like, what do they do? And she's kind of pussyfooting around it. And then the younger sister goes, they have this screen painting in their apartment.

54:04And I was like, okay. There we go. It tells me everything I need to know. Say no more. But if you value education and you come from people who do, I totally understand why you would send your kids if you had the opportunity to give them the best education, in quotes, whatever that means. But again, Mill Hill wasn't that. I think that the idea was also that you could go to Mill Hill for a period of time. And if you excel there, then maybe you transfer someplace else. The other thing is, to your point, this is a family where both Matthew and Rochelle, their mothers were English, but their fathers were immigrants, refugees, Holocaust survivors, guys who had actually very different histories in terms of their kind of educational backgrounds.

54:45But there was a sense in both families that education really mattered. Yeah. I'm not judgmental of the parents. It's the environment. You can see how toxic it is. I don't like the institutions. They know they're living on the oligarch. And they know these kids aren't good students. When I tried to interview Zach's teachers, people who knew him well, including people who had written nice notes to the Brattlers after his death, nobody would talk to me to a point where it felt to me like a decision had been made. Institutionally. Yep. From above. Which is pretty gross. Yeah. You know, you have a student and he dies.

55:15And the thing for me is I'm not digging for dirt. I just want to talk to teachers who knew him. I want to kind of try and bring him back to life a little bit and sort of see who he was. When you say, no thanks, we have nothing to say, it's a little gross to me. Yeah. Okay, so he's going down this path. Matthew's getting more obsessed with it. And it's important to say that Rochelle and Matthew, although they are seeing this turn in him, they have no clue that he has this persona. No. But some weird things are now happening. He seems to have money. He tells them, I'm moving into Riverwalk, which is this insanely expensive high rise on the Thames.

55:47They're wondering, is he dealing drugs? He has a weird phone. He shows his father this HSBC bank account. And the interface is the same as his father's. and he says he has 850 ,000 pounds. So it's getting really quite confusing for them. And they're getting more scared. And again, they want to keep connected to him. And they're like, okay, this kid's not going to go to school. He's going to try to be an entrepreneur. Maybe it'll work for him. Yeah, people do. Yeah, I can imagine being in a situation being like, if you want to prove to me that you're going to be a billionaire, go with God. I just want to talk to you.

56:21Totally. And also you're 18. It seems that you have money. You could just leave if you wanted to. I don't want you to completely take off. Obviously, the bank statement with£850 ,000 is probably the most extreme example of what kind of parental intervention would you have. But I have to say, in fairness to Matthew, I think part of him wanted to believe. He talked to Zach, what are the different business deals you're doing? How is this? Are you paying taxes? You know, kind of walked him through this whole thing and Zach told these somewhat credible stories. But then there was also a part of him that thought, maybe he's lying, but if he's lying, the reason he's lying to me is that he wants to impress me and he wants me to feel like he's okay.

56:56I was thinking of this dance. What would I tell my child? Like, you want to hear I'm proud of you? I'm proud of you because you are you. But they need you to be proud of them for this thing they've convinced themselves. It's such a possible situation. And what they don't want is for you to confront them and say, We know what you're doing. Bullshit. Yeah. Moreover, I don't even like this. Right. It's not something actually I would be. How do you tell a kid that I wouldn't be proud? Well, that's the thing. And I think in Zach's case, and again, I don't think that this is actually all that unusual.

57:22There's a sense that he's got these false gods. And I think Matthew and Rochelle are pretty sophisticated people, and the thought occurred to them, maybe the reason that he loves Vladimir Putin or Rowan Abramovich is that it's the opposite of who we are. This is what adolescence is, is he's trying to kind of break away from us. So what are you doing? Is it really going to be that fruitful in that situation to say, we hate those people, be more like us? Right. Okay, so through Mark Foley, though, he meets these two characters. They're really important characters. Tell us about Akbar a little bit.

57:50Akbar Shamji. I'll tell you about him as he at first appears to Zach and to Zach's parents eventually. He's in his 40s. He's very well off. He's a very good looking guy. He's charismatic. He's got great kind of manners. He's got a cut glass accent. He went to Cambridge University. He comes from an extremely wealthy family. They're South Asian. I mean, they're ethnically Indian, but from Uganda. So you have this community that came over to build a railroad basically in East Africa. Like 40 ,000 of them. Yeah, but long time ago. And then they stay. And what happens is that the Ugandan economy ends up dominated by essentially the ancestors of these people who had come over to build a river.

58:31To the tune of like 90 % of the total economy. They control, yeah, by this tiny minority. And then Idi Amin comes in and in 1972 says, we're going to expel all the Asians from Uganda. So this family, the Shamjis, gets expelled. Akbar's father, Abdul Shamji, was one of the richest men in Uganda. and arrives in London and has to kind of rebuild. Akbar grows up basically in great comfort, goes to Cambridge University and sort of goes from business to business to business. There's a whole episode actually in LA, funnily enough. And when he meets Zach, he's this kind of middle-aged guy. He lives in Mayfair, which is one of the fanciest neighborhoods in London, but he actually lives on Mount Street, which if you know Mayfair is like the fanciest street in Mayfair.

59:14I told a friend of mine at one point that one of the guys I was writing about lived on Mount Street. he sort of said, nobody lives on Mount Street. You know, it's not a thing. His wife is a designer who makes these kind of elegant gowns and she's dressed Gwyneth Paltrow and Michelle Obama and the royal family. This is what Zach wants his mother to buy. Yeah, he's showing her the dresses. Zach meets him and Akbar is the guy who's got the real estate development in Lisbon that he's looking for investment in. Now, it will later emerge that Zach wasn't the only one pretending that he was something he wasn't.

59:46that actually with Akbar, he's not the guy that he's pretending to be. And in fact, just before he met Zach, he had declared bankruptcy and he was getting chased by creditors. But he's still driving a Benz. And he's a member of all these private clubs in London. There's a whole kind of world around Mayfair, which is private clubs, private casinos, supercars. Everyone's talented Mr. Ripley. Yeah, literally. On the night that Zach dies, he's in that apartment and there's two guys with him, Akbar is one of them, and we'll talk about the other. But it is this interesting thing where it turns out that all three of them are pretending to be something that they're not.

1:00:15It's like the Spider-Man meme. Yeah, yeah. So the other guy is Indian Dave. Yep. What's his last name? Sharma? That's his full name? Yeah. Well, that's his kind of street name. Verinder Sharma, yeah. Street name. Yeah. What does he think Dave is? What happens is that when Zack meets Akbar, he tells Akbar that he is the son of a Russian oligarch, that he has hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, and he's going to invest in Akbar's project. They become fast friends. I think Akbar gives him a kind of access. What Zach needed was to get past the velvet rope, and they're going to fancy clubs and hanging out and spending a lot of time together.

1:00:49The catch is that Zach's never coming up with the money. He never actually wants to sort of sign a term sheet. Just at the point where Akbar might have been wondering, you know, is this kid for real, Zach says, I've got terrible news. My father has died, and my mother, who lives in Dubai, has kind of disowned me, and I'm in a fight over my inheritance. I don't have access to the money. And he had claimed to live in the most expensive real estate development in London, this place, One Hyde Park. and actually when Akbar would meet with him, Zach would always be waiting out in front of the building.

1:01:16Like he never saw him come out. He'd be up there always. They'd be like, oh, come meet me in my place and he'd be standing outside. And so Zach claims essentially to be temporarily homeless. So he's this billionaire kid who's fighting with his mom and his dad is dead and he has no place to live. And Akbar says, I have this friend who has this luxury apartment. His name is Virinder Sharma. And he's this kind of retired guy who lives in this big apartment overlooking the Thames. So he introduces him to Virinder. I don't know to this day how and when Zach learns the real identity of Verinder. The kind of face that Verinder put on for the world is he's this sort of retired businessman in his 50s, just kind of hanging out.

1:01:53He works out a lot. He boxes. He lives in this nice apartment. Drug user. Doing a ton of drugs. Unmarried, I assume. Unmarried. But he has children. Though he has two children. And the truth is Verinder was a gangster, better known as Indian Dave, who had been around for a long time. He was an extortionist. He was like a leg breaker. He was a debt collector, heroin importer. He was involved in a pretty significant murder, implicated in other murders. He was the guy who famously would dangle you off of a building if you weren't paying money. Indian people are so... I mean, this guy, Indian Dave, is really quite a character.

1:02:27So embarrassing. I think he's kind of cool. He gave it kind of an edge.

1:02:33Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. if you dare.

1:02:45He and Zach become roommates, essentially. Zach's living in the same apartment in another room in that building overlooking the Thames. The three of these guys develop this kind of intense friendship. And they're looking to do deals. Everyone's trying to get rich. And I'm sure even Indy and Dave doesn't have nearly the money. It's funny because I saw this when I was writing about the IRA as well, and I've written other stories about criminals. You know, the thing about that line of work is there's no pension. It seems like the party's going to last forever when you're in your 20s and 30s. But when you're in your 50s and your daughter's just had a child, you're a little old to be a leg breaker.

1:03:18Right. Yeah, and you're not profiting from accounts over years you've put it. There's no residual income. It's like you're either committing the crimes or you're not. Yeah, exactly. And they all blow the money. And they blow the money like crazy. It was even more so with Indian Dave in the sense that he sort of made a point of not owning property in his name anyway because that would expose. There were hardly any traces of him on the internet. Like one of the big questions in the story is, and I asked, when these guys met Zach, because Akbar, he wouldn't meet with me or talk to me, but I email with him a lot.

1:03:45I said, so you meet Zach. He says, my name is Zach. I'm the son of a Russian oligarch. Did you Google him? Yeah, exactly. How did you not do any due diligence? And Akbar's response was, oh, you have to understand, like, the really powerful plugged-in people, they're not on the internet. And I'm sure you will have encountered this, but there's a certain kind of celebrity who has an AOL email account, you know, or like a hotmail. Yeah. So they're all now together. Now, I think the night of his death is relevant. And I think we should go to, so the MI6 is directly across the river from this Riverwalk apartment complex that is Indian Dave's where he's staying.

1:04:22And they have an outward-facing camera. And you can see on the balcony of this fifth-floor apartment, a man runs and jumps on his own accord into the Thames. Yeah, he's not pushed. When this happens, it's coinciding with Rochelle and Matthew have kind of lost contact with them. There's an email late at night, like, where are you? At 2 a.m., he says, we're all good, everything's fine. And now they're left to try to figure out, like, what happened in that apartment. The initial story that Indy and Dave tells in response is, he was at my apartment. He had just admitted to us that he was a heroin addict.

1:05:00I went to bed at 1230. I woke up at 8 a.m. and he was gone. My assumption is he went out to get drugs. And he told this to me and my daughter Dominique, who's Indy and Dave's daughter, and Akbar. That is their story. How do we start unfolding? Yeah. The first thing I should say, So, you know, I write nonfiction. Everything has to be true. They're not novels. You can go to the end of my books. Nobody ever does, but there are these end notes. You can sort of check the work. But I am trying to make them read the way a novel would. I want it to be a story with characters and scenes. I want you to feel as though you can see things in your mind's eye.

1:05:36And so you're always trying to kind of reconstruct scenes. And that's hard because a lot of the time you're relying on people's memories and so forth. For you to just figure out what pieces you're going to reel out at what times has got to be the most complicated math of the book. Completely. I always think of it as like, I have the whole deck of cards and I'm not just going to kind of throw them at you and I'm not going to give them to you in order. I want to sort of hand them out to you in a way that both you'll be able to kind of digest it in a fluid way. You won't feel overwhelmed, but also that it'll be pleasurable.

1:06:01And it's funny, I sometimes get these questions about, you know, people don't read the way they used to. And I think certainly the stuff that I do in a long New Yorker article or book, the pleasure of it is actually that it takes longer. I can kind of take you down the path a ways before I get to the switch back. You sort of have to have a bigger canvas to do that kind of thing. So what I was going to say is, a lot of time I'm relying on people's memories. In this case, Rochelle and Matthew, before they even know that Zach is dead, they start having these conversations with people. I didn't even know this at the very beginning, but I subsequently learned.

1:06:34They record all the conversations on their iPhone. At a certain point, Rochelle said, you know, we have the recordings. Do you want them? And if you're a journalist, it's not better. I can't imagine how excited you were in that moment. And so after Zach has gone missing, she connects with Akbar, who she'd never met before. She knew that they were friends, but they'd never met. And he says, I want to meet you guys at this hotel on Piccadilly. They meet there. And Akbar then calls Indian Dave on his phone and puts it on speaker. And I have the audio of this whole long conversation that they have.

1:07:06Right, because if they were to just tell you what was said, what you need to hear is like, what was their tone? How confident were they? It's more than that, because this is what's so fascinating. You know now, certainly in recent decades, it used to be the case, here's the lawyer in me coming out, this is like the one good use for law school. If you're on a jury, and it's a murder trial, or it's a, I don't know what, an assault or something, and there's an eyewitness, there was a sense that nothing is better than eyewitness testimony. You get an eyewitness, they go on the stand, and they say, I saw it, and here's what it was.

1:07:33We now know that actually eyewitness testimony is unbelievably unreliable. Yeah, it's almost useless. To some degree, the more dramatic the thing that has been witnessed, the less reliable you are. And even in the moment, you know, like five minutes later, you're already kind of rewriting your memories. This fascinating thing happened with Rochelle and Matthew where, remember, they don't know much about their son's friends. Zach was very secretive about this. They knew this guy, Vrinder Sharma. They thought he was like a rubber tycoon. They thought he worked for Pirelli Rubber and he had a lot of money and he let Zach stay his place.

1:08:01Akbar seemed like this nice guy who had a whole bunch of different business interests and was kind of mentoring Zach. And then they go and they meet with Akbar and they talk to Vrinder on the phone. And what they told me when I asked them about that conversation was I said, what did you think? and they said, oh, we thought they were really shifty and they seemed unreliable and we thought that they were lying to us. But I subsequently realized that was because their memory of it was colored by what they had subsequently learned. Then I got the recording. And it's the most heartbreaking thing because what Rochelle and Matthew, who are desperate, they don't know their son is dead.

1:08:30And Akbar lies to them and says, Zach just must have gone off to escort drugs. We all have to find him. We're going to get him and bring him back safely to you. I now know, and if you read the book, you'll see why. Akbar knew in that moment that Zach was dead. And Indian Dave gets on. They don't know his name is Indian Dave. They think he's this rubber tycoon. And what they keep saying is, we're so grateful to you guys. Thank you. You've been such incredible mentors to our son. And you're going to help us find him. And it's so poignant to listen to it because when you know the whole thing, you know that these guys are lying.

1:09:00But it's a crazy scenario. Well, you're so desperate. And anyone that presents themselves as an ally that would help you find your child, you're going to be so grateful for. Yes. Of course. But there's another thing, too. You get this wild thing where Rochelle and Matthew have no idea about Zach having pretended that he was the son of a Russian oligarch until they meet these guys who say, oh, we didn't know that his name was Zach Brettler at all. We thought his mom lived in Dubai and his dad was dead. I know. So they are learning a lot about all at once. I mean, you've got the panic of where is he and you have the panic of who is he.

1:09:32Right. There's so much happening. Oh, wow. This is horrible. Unimaginable. It's funny. I think a lot of people in America still think of Scotland Yard as this great police. They watch police procedurals on BritBox or something. And it's about how Scotland Yard really royally fucks up the case. And then the Bratlers essentially have to become detectives themselves and kind of do the investigation. Yeah, suffice to say, you got to read the book. But Indian Dave was not asleep at 1230. No. There's more to the story. Akbar did not leave for the night. There's a lot. This is a show. You're going to make a show?

1:09:59It's already been up to 24. Yeah. It's riveting. It's so sad. It's real. I wish it could be just fiction, you know? Yeah, I mean, I will say part of the reason when I finished the article that I did a book is that I was delving into their lives and I realized that there were these backstories, Akbar's family, Indy and Dave's kind of criminal history, but then also Zach's family. And when I first learned about these two grandfathers who had survived the Holocaust, with my writer brain, what I'm thinking is my whole story is about reinvention. Zach is this kid who reinvents himself and he's doing it in London, this city that has reinvented itself.

1:10:36And then you go back and he has these two grandfathers who virtually their whole families are killed in the Holocaust. They arrive, both of them, solo as middle teens in London in the 40s. And they have to decide, who am I going to be? It's tabula rasa. I have to kind of invent myself now. And when I first encountered that, as a writer, what I thought was, this is perfect. It's a kind of literary echo of Zach's experience. and in my book about reinvention, that's the role that these guys will play. And one of my closest friends, when I sent him the book, as soon as I finished the manuscript, he read it and he said, you know, it's so interesting.

1:11:15The book starts as kind of a thriller and a mystery, but then halfway through, I realized, no, this is actually a book about parenting and it's about grief. I had this amazing dinner with the brettlers and this kind of clued me into how to end the book. I'm not giving anything away here. Where we were talking at one point and I just said to them, if I were in your situation, I think I wouldn't have gotten out of bed since 2019. I don't know how I would do it. But you still have a kind of active social and professional life. They travel. They go to concerts. They love live music. They're great parents to Joe, who they're incredibly close with, the surviving son.

1:11:47And they both said, oh, you know, it's because of our fathers. There was a thing that Rochelle's sister Gabby said to me at one point. She said, when I looked into my father's eyes, I never saw barbed wire. I only saw a loving father. They had these fathers who'd lost more than we can really conceive of losing. Lost everything. and then somehow kind of forged ahead in the future. And you're living with the loss. You're not erasing it. You're not denying it, but that you can live joyously. You can hold both of those things in you. What kind of knocked me out is I'd been thinking of those grandfathers purely in that sense of reinvention.

1:12:17And what I hadn't realized is that the brothers are going to be okay. And part of the reason they're going to be okay, actually, is that they had that lesson, that example. I have had more than one Jewish friend tell me this, that when they've been struggling with something, that feels disrespectful to their grandparents who just made it out and got here to give me this life. Totally. And I'm now going to waste it. I don't think that's a unique experience for folks that are the progeny of survivors of the Holocaust. So yes, it makes sense to me that they could go. It kind of dishonors them for what they went through to give us this opportunity in this life.

1:12:54And we're going to now quit living because we had our first challenge. I mean, they both said, you know, they're not particularly religious, but they both kind of invoke, you know, the biblical choose life. And I will say they've read the book. It's funny to bring it back to Michael Lewis on that flight. He said, unprompted by me, he didn't even know that I was thinking about this, but I had this big question, which is when do I show the brothers the book? Because I've never shown a piece of work to the people it's about until it was published. But I felt like I needed to show it to them before it was published.

1:13:20But also I needed to show it to them after it was done. The cement had to be completely dry at that point. And Michael Lewis on the flight said, you know, there've only been two or three times in my career when I've showed a piece of writing to people it was about before it was published, and I've regretted it every time. And I was like, oh God, what am I going to do? So I showed it to them without getting into the whole thing. There are family secrets in the book. There are things that they probably would have, if they had editorial control. Zach choked his mother at one point during all this.

1:13:45I imagine that's a very hard thing to have known because you love your child so much, and you might go, yeah, go ahead and tell our brother, but you don't need to tell that part. My point is, obviously, I feel enormous compassion for these people, and I became very close to them as I was writing. But nevertheless, when I sit down to write the book, I'm not writing it for them. I have to have that stuff in. You know, we launched the book last week in New York and they came to the launch. Oh, that's lovely. And Joe came as well. They seem like really incredible people. They are. I think they are.

1:14:11And then some part of me just is willing to chalk it up to, I don't know that it was any of those external forces. That might have been the path this brain was on. I don't know that Blaine needs to go to the school or to the parents or to anybody. I think also sometimes this stuff just happens. Somebody asked me the other day, you know, did I get any parenting lessons from this or something? And I pushed back a little and said, if anything, it just teaches me a kind of humility where I think that obviously you want to do everything you can to help your child and support your child. But I also think there's this fantasy that we have that your child is a piece of clay that you can just mold.

1:14:45Couldn't agree more. There is a limit to what you're able to do. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think we're all kind of fumbling our way through as parents trying to figure out the solution. The idea that, I mean, somebody had sort of said, it was just all a little too pat, right? It's like, what parenting lessons do you take from this? There's so many factors. Yeah. Telling them this or that, I reject. Well, it can backfire. Yeah. One of my dear friends back home is a few years older than me, and he's got four kids and a wonderful family life. And I think I was expressing some frustration that the didactic lessons that I give my kids, they just kind of roll their eyes.

1:15:17Yeah. It was in a spirit of kind of, I'm thinking, like, how did you pull it off? His kids are older, and it's all worked out, and they have a really close family. We're in a restaurant and he said, all the lessons you teach your kids aren't going to add up to a hill of beans, but watching the way you deal with a waiter in a restaurant. It's going to be things like those little moments of observation will shape who they are more so than any words that come out of your mouth in a kind of directed, do this, don't do that. Because if you're saying behave this way and then I'm witnessing you not behave that way, guess what?

1:15:44You're also a hypocrite. You've lost all credibility. You've depreciated everything else that you might say. Yeah, I'm like, okay, great. So what I know is like, don't listen to a thing this guy says, because that's not at all what he's doing. Yeah. That's such a good example of the restaurant, because it's not like, what did they accomplish? Those aren't the observations. It's the little ways of being that you just are a sponge to when you're a kid. I just think there's a decency that has gotten lost in recent years. I don't mean to sound like an old fuddy-duddy saying it was better when I was young, but I think most people would agree.

1:16:14I think COVID was part of this. I think everybody interacting on screens is part of it. But I just feel as though there's a kind of fundamental decency in terms of the way you treat other people that has been devalued to some degree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, my anecdotal experience with that is we spent the whole summer in Nashville where we built a house and it's a small town. And I noticed right away, oh, I can't drive like I drive in L.A. because I'm going to see these people at the Tasty Freeze. Yeah. I'm not anonymous. I just started really computing all the different behaviors I have in L.A.

1:16:46that I could not have in this small town. I was seeing the value of that and the danger of anonymity. So the internet is that squared. Completely. And then what percentage of my time am I spending in this totally anonymous way where no one's going to look me in the eyes and go, wait, you just said that to another human being? And so, yeah, normally I would be like, yeah, we're just getting old and we're blah, blah, blah. But no, when you're spending a good chunk of your time in a world where you're completely anonymous, I think that's problematic. Well, here's my question. Here's what I wonder, and you guys can tell me how optimistic I should be.

1:17:15In my moments of optimism, what I tell myself is that we as humans are pretty bad at when a new thing comes along, thinking in a very deliberate way about the role that it should feel in our lives. We tend to allow technological change to just kind of wash over us. We kind of drink it all down without actually asking any sensible questions about it. But that over time, you start to recalibrate and think a little more carefully. My really optimistic case is, you know, whether you date it to the internet, so sort of late 90s, basically, or you date it to the advent of smartphones, so sort of 2010s, these new things come along.

1:17:55They completely rewrite really almost every aspect of how we deal with each other. But that there may come a kind of reset where people say kind of, all right, that was, you know, I mean, it's a little bit honestly like there's probably a drugs and alcohol sobriety kind of thing where it's kind of like, okay, I did that. And I really went sort of whole hog there for a while. But on reflection, it fucked up my life. And I had to rewrite my relationship with this stuff. I think a lot of people right now are having that conversation. They're saying, the internet's bad. Like, I'm just hearing a lot of people say that.

1:18:31The internet is scary. It's a scary place. Whether you're changing your actions based on it, I think more people right now are starting to be like, uh-oh. I guess the thing I wonder is, I feel as though everybody's having that conversation, but then not actually changing their behavior. Not doing anything. I mean, I'm the most guilty of all, right? I agree. But I'm like, God, this is terrible. Where's my phone? But first it comes an understanding. So I think maybe hopefully down the road. The first step. My optimism comes from this pattern that's never broken, which is young people watch old people and do not want to do what they do.

1:19:01Minimally, you've got a whole group of young people that are watching the dumb, embarrassing older people live on the Internet. It'll be not cool in some sense. That's the nature of things. And then to your moral panic thing, because I pushed back on like Jonathan Haidt and a lot of these people. These are also anomalies. Zach is an anomaly. That's not a normal story. It's a spectacular story why it's worthy of a book. And back to the Manosphere doc. It's a terrifying doc. Yeah. That is a tiny percent. There are not boys walking around calling women bitches and all that. I don't think that's an epidemic or a pandemic.

1:19:35I think this is a small group of people that you could make a doc about. The one thing I would say on that, and I admit I haven't watched the doc, though I did have a whole conversation. I feel like an idiot because I did Louis Theroux's podcast and talked to him for like two hours about Zach not having watched his Manosphere doc. I realized I should have done my homework. But what I would say as a father of two teenage boys is that I agree with you. I think that the Manosphere, Luxemaxer, incel, extreme, particularly the guys who like have publicists and are in documentaries and so forth. They're way out there.

1:20:06I do think the downstream of that, it changes the culture. It changes the way that people talk and relate to each other. I think it's changed. So that's my fear, but I'm around Lily's 16-year-old boyfriends. They're lovely boys. When I'm meeting 16-year-old boys, I'm not seeing the dudes in this doc. So I'm just constantly trying to remind myself, like, have I met some dudes recently that were doing push-ups and talking about bitches? I haven't, and I meet a lot of kids. Yes, I can find enough to make a doc about, but I'm not as panicked. If I started seeing it in real life, but I don't see it in real life, and maybe I'm naive.

1:20:42This goes back to the question I raised, is that I have very similar feelings. What it means for me is when I step away from the computer and I step away from my phone and I interact just with regular people, it's like 10 cities, 10 nights. I'm seeing the whole country right now. And it is amazing the way you get out there and you talk to people. And most people fundamentally, even people who I in some cases have really vehement political disagreements with, fundamentally are pretty decent. Yeah, I agree. That's the danger, I think, is that we're letting ourselves believe that the internet world is the real world.

1:21:16Yeah. And it's actually downgrading our assessment of everyone. And I don't think that's true or fair. I guess here I'll dabble in the moral panic stuff. But these technologies are so addictive. And I'm speaking purely for myself here. I feel the twitch. And what's so insane, right, is it's like something could have come in in the last 20 minutes. Nobody has a life less full of emergencies than me. You know, like there's actually nothing very significant or dire that I need to be checking my phone every 20 minutes for. So I've got it. But I just hope that we are able to overcome. I think we're in that phase now where we all know this is bad for us.

1:21:49But it's still really hard. It's chemical at this point. So it's going to take some real effort. For me, it is this physiological thing where I feel myself just kind of reaching. I had to get a new screen put on my phone. But also, if he would have asked me prior to drop my phone off how much I'm on my phone or how addicted, I'd be like, you know, I got it, but I think I'm a low grade. And they were changing my screen. I had two hours to kill at the mall while they changed my screen. I'm in the store. I'm like, oh, I see something I think my wife would like. I go forward to take a picture to send to her.

1:22:14Even if it's not like me checking things, I was like, holy fuck, hon. I probably grabbed for my phone like 20 times in two hours. In part because it's now like the Swiss army knife of life. I use it to pay for things. I use it to take pictures. I use it to listen to music, et cetera, et cetera. I was a little troubled by how much muscle memory was grabbing for an empty pocket. Well, I love the book. And I know you're a little nervous about the digressions, but I don't think you should be. One of my favorite books is The Devil in the White City. Like, what a book. I get a fucking serial killer.

1:22:41I get the whole history of the World Fairs. I get the architectural history of Chicago. Let's go. I mean, yeah, what you did with the Purdue family was so great. You get to learn so much. That's making it feel more fiction-wise. Like, you're learning about the characters. I mean, that's my hope. I think done right, certainly what I'm trying to do is give you all those little asides in a way where it never feels as though you're kind of stuck in quicksand. It's more that I've just dropped a little something in your pocket and you didn't even notice you got it. Those are the stories. Those are the books I love to read.

1:23:09I think we're also pretty all interested in London as a place. It's fast. Yeah, it is. It is. It's a great city. I'm going there in a few weeks. We'll see how it goes. Well, Patrick, London falling, a mysterious death in a gilded city and a family search for truth is terrific. I hope everyone checks it out. It's been a delight to meet you. You're very much in that Lewis Charming. I know, so fun. He was a model. He modeled. Wow. Yeah, he's got that. Catalog model. Yeah. Catalog. That's great. But it was a prestigious brand. What was it? Come on. J.Crew. J.Crew. J.Crew. Very, very handsome. I'm talking with J.Crew.

1:23:44That's right. Come on. It's a delight to meet you, and I do hope you'll come back with your other books. I will. This was so fun. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, of course. Of course.

1:23:54Hi there. This is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're going to love the fact check with Miss Monica. We got to discuss something. Yeah. We just did an Armchair Anonymous. We just did an Armchair Anonymous, and there was a guest. A man. Who was a man. Yeah. Who popped on, and he was so attractive. Yeah. It was shocking. It was shocking. Like Paul Newman level attractive. From the second I saw him, and this plays out in real time, I knew he was in Georgia. You did. Within four words, you said, are you in Georgia? Well, I said, where are you? Are you in the South? Right. But I knew it was Georgia.

1:24:39Yeah. But you were trying to play it a little safe. Yeah. That's why I said go for it, you know? I know. You're right. Because he was wearing a shirt that I feel like all my friends in the South wear. It's interesting how there are regional uniforms. Yes, absolutely. That's why I had to get out of Michigan. I was going to hit a certain age where I was going to have to start wearing golf shirts. No, you were. And I was like, I got to get out of here. I can't wear golf shirts. That's where you drew the line there? I could see it on the wall. Look, you might have to bring them back now that you're in Nashville.

1:25:08You might re-evaluate this. No, I think they think it's charming. At least I tell myself that they think it's charming that I dress like a scumbag. Oh, all right. And then I have tattoos, but I'm friendly. Yeah. I think they find that charming. that I'm a heathen, I'm godless, but I'm still friendly and offer my services. The celebrity helps. It probably doesn't hurt. Okay, back to Will. Yes. So he was very, very, very hot. Startling. He also, what we noticed, and this isn't why I didn't notice this at first, but then he had UGA paraphernalia in the background. And then it was like, oh, my God.

1:25:45He went to Georgia. Dream husband. God. It then came out that— What years you both graduated. Yes. And there was an 11-year gap. 12? 12-year gap. I graduated in 2009 and he graduated in 2021. 12-year gap. Yeah. You were taken aback by that. I was really— Rattled. Rattled, yeah. And a lot happened in my brain. Did you think he's so young or I'm so old or a combo? Exactly. Okay. So normally when this happens, I think, oh, my God, he's so young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this time I was like, I'm so embarrassed. Like, I'm so embarrassed by my age. Oh, wow. I'm so embarrassed that, like, I think he's cute and I'm, like, an old lady.

1:26:37No. And I was like, I'm a cougar. No, there would be something really wrong with you if you didn't find Will attractive. You had like PQs. Yeah, of course you did. And I was like. He was very horny. To be fair, he was married. And you were being very forward up to that point. You were like, well, it's a shame I didn't meet you before you got married. I think because. You were basically saying I want to fuck. It was the most aggressive I've ever seen you in the collar and I loved it. I felt myself in that whole conversation like being a cougar. Like being like a old lady with a cigarette who's like hitting on young boys.

1:27:15Show me your abs. Yeah. What kind of abs do you got? I felt like her. Yeah, good. No, I don't want to be her. I know. This is, well, this is what I've been relegated to permanently. If I'm talking to any woman under 40, I'm like, watch your P's and Q's. Well, yeah. You're going to seem like a gross old lecherous man. I know. I'm glad you had that experience. I am not glad. I feel very, I feel weird right now. Like, I feel old. I feel cougary, as we said. I mean, he's so hot. And the whole time he's talking. Yeah, spoiler, yeah. And that's a hot thing for me to be hearing. And he's talking about my old school.

1:28:06and he's got great hair. Oh, yeah. And I was like— You were certain he's tall, too, which is funny. Yeah, I know he's tall. Yeah. He's seated for the listener. And, like, I just feel very conflicted about what happened. Oh, because also my rule generally is that I would never date anyone younger than my brother. My brother's 30. Uh-huh. He's younger than my brother. 27. Yeah. So I was also like, hmm, like, should I change my rule? Absolutely. If a will comes across your radar. One other thing. Okay. Was happening during this. Oh. He was also triggering some old insecurities. Really? Yes. Because he, Will from UGA, is Will from UGA.

1:28:55Like, there were so many wills around when I went to school there. Yeah, handsome southern gentleman. Handsome. White. White as a. He was very white. Oh, white bread. White as the driven snow. Gorgeous hair. He spoke about his mom. His mom's a Southern belle. Yeah. This is the type of person I could never have. Right. You told yourself you could never have. And I was like, I felt a little bit back there. A little insecure. Yeah. I was like, oh my God, I'm so ugly, like in front of Will. Like I shouldn't. Is it a fun feeling though? No. It's not like you enjoy the reminiscent feeling of youth. Like no part of it is like.

1:29:36Of feeling bad about myself? No. I know what you're saying, but I think anytime I can touch my feelings from 20 years ago, I also appreciate it. Does that make sense? Yeah, but no. Yeah, but no. No. I like not feeling like that. You don't miss that. I like feeling confident and feeling like good. Try and secure. I'm good around people. but Will Will excuse me Will Will triggered some old stuff like oh my gosh like this is you'd never like me yeah so I'm feeling a little insecure about my looks and my body and my age and um pretty much the whole package oh wow I think if he wasn't married he would applaud you I don't think you needed any of those feelings I think so because he is well from UGA.

1:30:31Was I being so embarrassing? No, not at all. You weren't embarrassing at all. I really feel like I was. Your flirty, aggressive self is very appealing. It's why I urge you to use it more. But I think it was too much. It was like cougar. No, it was very confident. And confidence is attractive. I know, but. But not for you. But I wasn't that. You're so unique. No. This is for everyone else. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I actually wasn't confident. And so I think I was overcompensating. Well, Brett is confident. This is why men nag women. It's like they can tap into this. While they're insecure, they can tap into their.

1:31:02I wonder if Will will hear this. No, he didn't listen to the show. His sister. His sister, Claire, my sister-in-law. Your new sister-in-law. Yeah. She'll relay this. She's been down this path for 20. Let's say she's two years younger than Will. For 25 years, she's seen Will's effect on women. And she understands this entirely. Yeah. I thought it was a joyous experience It did something Yeah, yeah, yeah Thank you, Will Thanks, Will I enjoyed it We appreciate you Yeah, you're coming hard at him Dak, stop saying that Stop saying that That is making me feel so weird It does Yeah Oh, I was so proud of you Why?

1:31:43What did I say? This is what I'm begging I think I blacked out This is what I'm always begging for What did I say? It's like, get in the driver's seat You think someone's hot? Fucking get at them In the South, they don't like that Are they like demure? No, yeah. No. What did I say that was the most aggressive? Because I think I blacked out. There's just a moment that you were like, if you hadn't met your wife. I don't know. The way you rolled it out, basically. I think you said it. It made it very clear that you would have fucked. No, no. You said. I did. Yeah, but you've never said. You're so respectful.

1:32:17And you weren't in that moment. This is what men are like. Yeah. Welcome to the show. It feels weird. It's a lot to handle. Yeah. I mean, you shouldn't have compassion for us, but also you should understand. These are southern gentlemen. You got to clean his butt cheeks. Okay. That adds a new layer to the cougar element. It's like your mom. Yeah, you got like more of a mommy fetish. Yeah, that's not. Will, what have you been? You're messy again, Will. What have you been into? I told you, Will. Will. Will. What did you get? Pull your pants down, Will. Will, did you make a doody again? Have you done?

1:32:57You are naughty, Will. You know you have to use a toilet, big boy. Ew. Guys, we're talking about a full-grown adult in case you're triggered. Yeah, we are. This is not a teen. There's a 27-year-old man in the South. He had his own office decorated with memorabilia. That's right. He has a degree. Yeah. He probably has a child on the way. It's just fun to watch a new paradigm emerge, which is like, yeah, You have a new age class now. If the dude looks like Will and he's 27, play ball. It is interesting. Yeah. Don't rule anything out. Maybe he changed my life. On this topic, a commenter pointed out, and I think it's a brilliant comp.

1:33:37Someone said, Monica trying to convince you to wear loafers was identical to you trying to convince her to shave her head. So now you know what it feels like. And now you know what it feels like. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, that's a great observation, and it's spot on. Yeah, because it's like, this is just not me. Yeah, I'm not a loafers dude. And it's great. It's great. I could wear them. Uh-huh. And maybe even people wouldn't point at me and laugh, but it's not for me. Exactly. Yeah, so I thought that was. Thank you, listener. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I thought that was a solid point.

1:34:15And I guess I'm sorry for trying to convince you to wear a loafer. I'd almost rather make a different truce, which is like I still want to keep begging you to shave your sides and you're free to keep begging me to wear loafers. No, because you know what? I – when you said it, I was like, that's true. Yeah. It's not you. I don't want you to be anyone who's not you. You like – and it's great. It's fine. You do like preppy, like as an aesthetic. You like a man who's preppy. Oh, a man. Yes. And to me, all of my class warfare baggage, preppy was the last thing I ever wanted to love. I think you have good style.

1:34:52Okay. I don't think you have. I wouldn't. I'm not like. I don't look you and think like, God, we got to do something about Dax's style. Make some effort. You are very. You know you. Uh-huh. You know your style. You have style. Yeah. Right or wrong. I have a specific lane I'm in. You have a perspective. Exactly. You have a perspective. I have a point of view. Yeah. That's what style is. Yeah. And so I'm not ever going to try to change that. I'll have you know, though, that I'm regularly going, how consistent is this style? Because even today and yesterday, I ordered some pants because they look comfortable.

1:35:27But I was in, like, drawstring, kind of clam diggery, East Coast, on a beat. But I decided for whatever reason that those pants are fine if I wear a Converse and they're not that thing. And I recognize how arbitrary it is. Whatever. You liked them. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is, I like it. And then I just stick with it. But it could vary from jumpsuits to Red Wings work boots and cuffed Levi's. Yeah, because you've also at one point you're wearing some seersucker. And that's very northeast. I think that's south. That's southern. The seersuckers. I think it's also like. Clambakes? No, it's like Ivy League.

1:36:10Oh, okay. I really associate it with that. It's like Rhode Island, Maine. Probably like Tom Wolfe, that writer. That's who I want to look like next Easter. I've already proclaimed. Yeah. Okay. Full thing. Yeah. Maybe like a flower in my lapel. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:36:40Who do I like that's preppy? JFK Jr. Yeah. Apex preppy. Hot as fuck. But he's like the standard of preppiness. That look, JFK Jr. look. You love it. I think it's great. Yeah. It's the look, right? That would be number one. Well, I don't think so. I think, again, it's someone who just clearly has a point of view, knows what they like, and it's thought out. Like, you know, Jess used to only wear gym shorts, you know. And that had to change. And guess what? I changed it. Right. Yeah, because he's your boyfriend. He's my husband. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now. He's addicted. Yeah, now he likes shopping.

1:37:25And now everyone always comments on his outfit. Oh, and he loves it. And he loves it and I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like it feels good. And he feels good. He feels put together. It does something outside in. Okay, I want to ask a question about style. I had this thought the other day. Okay. Because I know someone who like by all accounts probably has good style. They're definitely always on trend. Okay. But I have the thought. Man or woman? Man. Okay. The style changes so frequently that I actually don't know what his style is. Right. And so I wondered like for me that's an issue. Is that an issue for you?

1:38:04I am not attracted to trends. Okay. Personally. I like classic style. Timeless. Timeless, classic. JFK. RFK. Nope. Every now and then, I'll get a piece every now and then that's trendy because it's like fun. I mean, you're wearing enormous pants. That's part of the trend. No. You have taken on enormous pants in the last two years. Yeah. I wouldn't say. Okay. I don't think that's because it's a trend. And I really just like the way that looks. Skinny jeans are kind of making a comeback. I'm not going there. Okay. I'm not wearing them. You're like me. Also, I'm much older than you and Will. And there is a point where you go, I can't play the game anymore.

1:38:52And so, I don't know if you're like me at least. I'm like, no, no, we're sticking with what our style has been. Yeah, it's more that I'm like, I don't like that. So, sure, it might come back as a trend. but I'm going to skip that trend because I don't like it. Okay. And plus, oh my God, I'm so old. Oh, yeah, you're out. And then, but there are still, there are classic jeans and classic looks, Levi's, all kinds, that work forever and will never go away. Yeah. So I'll always rely on that. But I'm with you. When someone is just dressing for the trend, I don't really think that's stylish. Well, I just go like, I don't know what their real style is.

1:39:34Yeah. They don't have a perspective. Yeah, I don't know what they want to be in most. Like they might look great, but they don't really have a perspective. But also, okay, here's the thing. I prefer that to looking like a slob. Right, right, right. Yeah. Even if they're like, my style is slob. That's not for me. Yeah, that's fair. Like, and some people have made an art form out of it, right? Like Sandler's in on the joke, right? And he's like, I dress like a fucking, I wear sweatpants and hockey jerseys no matter where I'm at. Yeah. He wears basketball shorts. He wears Jess's old jacket. Yeah, yeah.

1:40:09I think a lot of guys are like, thank God Sandler's doing this so I can just wear all this athletic gear all the time. Yeah. Yeah, that's never been, for whatever reason, never called to me. I know. I'm glad. I'll get a jersey every now and then. Really? I think it looks cool. But I can't. I've never seen you wear a jersey. Minimal. Like, would you wear this sweater? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I have a lot of cardigans. I think this would look nice on you. Yeah. I'll buy it off you. How much? This is a large women's. I think it would fit me. Yeah. Based on how much it doesn't pay. It is.

1:40:41It is oversized. It is oversized. That's a look. Yeah. That's a popular look. It's a look that I like. Although I did want to take it off when I was talking to Will. Because I wanted him to. See your boobs. Well. Be honest. Don't be crass. Be honest. Don't be crass. He's a southern gentleman. Why else would you take your sweatshirt off? I just wanted to take it off. See your shoulders? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My decalatage. What if I wanted to get in short shorts when we had an attractive guest on? I was like, I always thought about getting down into my trunk. You're married. I'm not. That's true.

1:41:13I get to do whatever I want. That's a big difference. It's a big distinction. I also think I'm male. Yeah, that's also a huge distinction. Here's the thing you're not going to want to hear and is the truth. I think you'll understand part of this. Most women, not all. Okay. I think most men want to see a pair of boobs. Uh-huh. Not all women want to see a men's bulge. Yeah. I would love to know the percentage. Me too. Yeah. I mean. I agree with you on prima facie, my favorite thing to say. Yeah. I do agree with you. Yeah. But I also, I'm prepared to be shocked by how many women, if in a very safe situation, could view it safely.

1:41:51Right. Without feeling threatened. Yeah. How many would like to. Yes. I think it's way lower than the men in the boobs, but I think it's higher than we think. I think what's true is that it really depends on the person attached to the bulge. Women might be interested in the bulge. If they like the guy. If they already are interested in the guy and like the top. And we could hate a woman and we still want to see her too. Exactly. You might not care about anything else, but you want to see the boobs. It's just different. Yeah, it's different. Yeah. And that's okay. And that's how we were all built.

1:42:23That's the way it is. Yeah, we were just built this way. I don't know. I guess we can do some fact. Unless we have more to say about Will or about Cougars or— Actually, I don't know if we're even allowed to say Cougars anymore. But I think I can since now I am one. There's a coalition of allies protecting Cougars? No, maybe Cougars don't like— Maybe older women like myself now don't like to be called that. And now, as I'm saying it, I don't want to be called that. It has a negative connotation. Well, we're calling men who like younger women perverts. So if you guys got to have to fucking shoulder whatever the word is, not coyotes, cougars.

1:43:02Tough, right? That's not even close to as bad. Well, there is, as you said, there's a difference. There is a difference. I can't go attack Will. Sure, you can attack Will. But if we're just saying older people liking younger people and we're calling one class of people perverts and then the other one's bitching about being called cougars, I think that's a little unfair. Yeah, but you say all the time, you're always on flip-flopping. Like, that there's a difference between women and men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when women do something that's different than women do something. And that's the truth.

1:43:31But it doesn't mean that you guys can't shoulder cougar. It's not even that bad. Pervert's like an illegal. Then I'm just going to, like, die. Like, what's the point? Why don't you own being a cougar? No. Rob, can you look up how old, like, you have to be to be qualified as a cougar? I think 38 to 27 Stop 40s or older Oh my god I'm getting so close You're good then So you don't even Pick up this campaign against To end Cougars It's a cute name No I don't like it Because it sounds like It might include women Starting at age 35 Okay And depending on how young Probably the will is Yeah it's the age gap 10 year age gap or more Okay 10 I think 11 really Cougars are majestic.

1:44:21They're very powerful. They're a beautiful animal. They're the prettiest predator we have in the Americas. No, tigers. In the Americas. Did you hear me? Oh, my God. We didn't call you a vulture. You've been given a very regal. Don't say you. I don't want to be one. The class of cougars. Fuck. This is bad. This is great. My time is like, I'm like. Uh-oh. This is getting real. Yeah, I feel really, I feel like. Oh, boy. What you should be feeling is gratitude, that you are a cougar of the caliber that could ensnare one of these cubs just fine. So you should just be thanking your lucky stars that that's still an option for you.

1:45:08There are some cougars that are hungry and they're starving and they can't get any pups. Okay? No. And you should feel bad for those cougars. How did this happen to me? You're one of the lucky cougars, okay? Well, look, again, I'm just a pervert. So on my side of the street. You're not a pervert. You're married with children. I know, I know, I know. That's not. How did this happen to me? How did you turn 38? Yeah. One day at a time. It's okay. This is like an actual disaster. We got to get you. I think once you start indulging your cougar appetite, you'll blow right through this little awkward phase.

1:45:50I'm like, oh, this is perfect. They're so young and dumb, I don't want to date them. All they want to do is come over and show me their buns. No, that's even worse. I got my husband I love who dresses nice. Who is he? Where is he? Jess, Jess. Oh. And then you have this stable of young dudes that you don't even have to fucking worry about talking to on their birthday. I can't even have sex with him. They're going to break my bones because of bone density perimenopause. This is your osteoporosis. Yes. Oh, my God. Maybe I'll break his bones. Yeah, I bet you will. Here you go. There's the cougar. Let her out of the cage.

1:46:26I can't even control her. I'm going to announce to the LA Times that although P22 is gone, we do have a new cougar sighting. Ah, I feel conflicted. I got to take a nap. All right. Let's do some facts. All right. Okay, I have little to no facts. Okay. One thing, so if you, okay, you're going to be mad at me because you don't like when this happens. Worldwide box office versus domestic? Yeah, basically. There's one teeny, teeny, tiny difference between the audio version of this one and the video. Why? Because there's something that worked in the video that doesn't work audio, I think, in my opinion.

1:47:06So I said, hey, Emma, will you cut this out of the audio? But I left it in for video. I'm so intrigued. It's nothing. I mean, it's a two-second thing that happens. I leave in the middle. Okay. And I come back. Okay. Because I had a cough attack. Oh, you sure did, yeah. And. Attack. Yes. You cough, what, twice outside? Stop. Be honest. How many times do you cough when you go outside? Listen to me. Okay. What happens is, like, I feel the tickle and the cough, you know? And I like to be like, like I do that, you know? Yeah. And then it's still there. Like that did nothing. And I'm trying to drink some water.

1:47:39That's doing nothing. And really quick. Isn't it great when you're in that state, you're so preoccupied with this disaster. Like you, you, we could have been on fire probably at that moment. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what you guys were talking about. Exactly. I was so panicked and like trying to do teeny tiny cops, but new. And it was like, you know, it's like building and building. You feel like you're going to suffocate if you don't. Oh my God. And then I would – then I coughed a couple times. Yeah, a couple coughs. It was still in there. It's still there. And at some point I leaned over and said, I got to get a cough drop.

1:48:16And then I walked over and then I left actually to get my cough out. How many coughs do you think he did once you got outside? Like six or seven? But by then it's like they like – you sound like you're going to throw up. Okay. Because it's so intense because you've been holding it in and then it looks gross. I'm not just the king of conveyance. I'm also the king of coughs. So you know I know about coughing. I know, but this is a different kind. You cough so much that, like, yours is different. You cough so much. You're not stifling them. You just cough. You feel fine coughing. It's part of who you are.

1:48:50And it is what it is, you know. And it's not an identity. It's, in fact, an identity marker for me that I don't cough. Right. Don't fart, don't cough, don't pee. Yeah. A lot of don'ts. So I went out there and I was like, you know, and I like had this huge cough. How far did you step away from this? Far. Oh, really? Yeah. I did not want you guys to hear it. I love the idea of you running up the street and the neighbors looking out and you're just out there.

1:49:18I just like my biggest fear throughout that whole thing was you guys stopping and like, are you okay? Or like, do you want some water? Calling attention to it. Yeah. I was getting, but then also I knew you noticed, but like you, then you were trying to not notice it. Oh my God. It was horrible. So anyway, I left and then I came back. It's shocking how much I noticed, by the way, considering I'm looking at the guests always. Yeah. But I am catching 100 % of what's happening over here. I am catching all the time, everything that's going on. And it's like, like, I know that sometimes, like, I know some of your tells, I won't say on here, but I'm like, okay.

1:49:55So he's annoyed because he just did that. So there's a lot going on in the head. Anyway, I in the video come back in and then there's a little conversation about, did you go to CVS? Because you claim you're just getting a cough drop. And I'm like, bitch, I know they're in your bag right there. You're like, why'd you leave? And I was like, to cough. And then there was a little conversation about that. That's not in the audio. Real-time disaster. So I just wanted, that's like I left a cough. Oh, great. Okay. That's the one fact. That's one. I have three facts. Oh, okay. It was a fact. It was a cough.

1:50:38That is why I left. It wasn't for anything else because I think then you were like, oh, you farted. I didn't. It wasn't one of those. You might have done both. No, it wasn't. Listen, when you're coughing with all your might, you're not clenching your fingers. Things happen when you cough that hard. I understand that I was at high risk. Okay, but it didn't in this situation happen. Okay. And then it happened, you know, it happened again when we were at the movie theater. Me, you, and Rob went to a screening. Rob, did you hear my coughs? I did. And I knew you did. Did you say you did or didn't? I did, and I chuckled a little bit.

1:51:16And I knew you were getting nervous for me, and then you were getting nervous for me, and I was getting so nervous. I handed you the water. I was excited. Anytime I can help a friend, I like it. But it was that same thing. And I just kept throwing mints in my mouth. I thought that would help. It didn't really help. It takes on a life of its own once you're panicked about it. It does. Yeah, it amplifies all your sensations down there. And now you're convinced. I know. Yeah. Okay. Now, the Peabody's. The awards, okay? Winners were chosen. What, like since we interviewed him? Well, remember? No, I said like something about the Peabody's.

1:51:51And I was like, there was nominations or winners. I don't know what's what, but it was winners. It was the winners. And we didn't get one? Nope. Still didn't get one. What is it going to take, Peabody? Okay, I'm going to tell you who, well, one, okay, for entertainment. Adolescents. Great. Worthy of a Peabody. Very. And or. I love the show. I don't know why it's worthy of a Peabody, but I love the show. Never seen it. Common side effects. That's on Adult Swim. Okay. So, I don't know. So here's what I can no longer tell myself. They are digging deep. I mean, they're taking in all media if they found a winner on Cartoon Network.

1:52:29Adult Swim. Adult Swim. Yeah. Is that not on Cartoon Network? I don't know, actually. I think it is. It might be. Dying for Sex. Okay. Liz Merriweather. Yeah, and Michelle Williams. Michelle Williams. Episode of ours, Go Back in the Archives. Forever, that's a Netflix show. Okay, so a lot of people. Heated Rivalry. Sure. Jimmy Kimmel Live. Okay. Mussolini's Son of the Century. Okay, so almost everyone in show business got nominated, it sounds like. And The Pit. Oh, and Pluribus and The Rehearsal. Holy smokies. I know. Okay. And that's only in entertainment. Well, I guess I'm relieved that there's no podcast.

1:53:08There's documentaries. Oh, you're right. They should make a podcast. Oh, God, here it is. Fuck. There is a podcast? Yes. Oh, my. Peabody? Oh, this actually hurts. Oh, boy. I don't even know if I want to hear the list. Podcast and radio. Divine Intervention. Great show. Scam Inc. Really good. When We All Go to Heaven. Love it. So just three. Yeah. All right. Y 'all can throw in. You did 15 TV shows. Okay. I know. Well. I'm pretty upset. I'm sorry. Now that I knew there was a specific section. Okay. All right. Next year. I think sometimes you have to submit. for these things too. Well, we certainly haven't done that.

1:53:53Yeah. So we just didn't even try. Okay. That's why. That's a nice way to. You're one of those. You guys are those types. Like, we didn't even try, so we didn't lose. Well, I'm just saying we should do it. Can't lose if you didn't try. We can do it next year. You don't miss 100 % of the shots that you don't take. Exactly. Oh, was The Long Good Friday Pierce Brosnan's first role? No. He was in a TV movie called Murphy's Stroke. And then the long goodbye is listed as number two. Same year, though. I think he was famously a street performer in Ireland. In Dublin, maybe. Okay. Maybe even one of these living in the car stitches.

1:54:29Oh, really? Yeah, he paid his dues. Oh, my God. Also, his wife died. That's really sad. Sorry, it's just in the trivia that I'm looking at. They shouldn't call that trivia. No. What they mostly shouldn't call it is trivial. They didn't. Okay, good. So don't worry. All right. He's a handsome man. Very handsome. And that's all I have to say. All right. Well, I love Patrick. I really had to resist. I have that inclination. I get, you know, one in ten guests where it's like, I get his phone number and hang out with him and talk about things when I'm in New York. You get people's phone numbers all the time.

1:55:05I know. And I wanted to get his. And you didn't? No. Maybe because he's a journalist. Oh. I don't know. But I did. I wanted it. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. That's kind of telling. Like, you do this all the time. You did it earlier with our guests that you danced in front of. Yeah. And maybe you think you're able to do that because they're in entertainment. Right. We're all in entertainment. Right. We also might be at things together. Right. But you might be at something with Patrick. Yeah. Maybe Patrick would like to be friends. But I just like, oh, I'm a showbiz guy. He doesn't live here, I guess.

1:55:36So that makes sense. No, but I go to where he lives quite often. So it could be a friendship. All right. Well, I think we could still get his number. Okay. I love you. Love you. Love you. Thank you.