827. - Thomas Chatterton Williams

24:39Got it. Yeah, exactly. Old school. Really old school. And kind of amazing. When Twitter first was being a phenomenon in 2009 or whatever, my dad would be like, oh, well, this is amazing for you as a writer because you can just go directly on your Twitter machine and you can reach your own following through your own presses. He didn't really like software. He's not fully thinking about it as software or a website or anything like that. He's like, it's a machine that you use to like disseminate your ideas. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. I mean, it complicates it a little bit, but in the essence of that, he is absolutely correct.

25:20Jason Stewart:His thoughts are pretty much in line with Elon Musk right now. Like what is a machine? You know what I mean? As we move forward. What does it even mean? I mean, I would love to have a standalone Twitter machine personally. to separate that and be only like a bloomberg terminal for twitter where i have to buy it and install it in my office that way i can't look at it all day fucking long you know things of it like a bloomberg terminal i wanted to ask you though because i liked you had that piece that was like after elon bought it like twitter was still it rocks yes thank you i stand by that i stand by that but it's a little bit different now than when you wrote that piece i would say i haven't seen a quality drop-off oh i personally i don't know jason have you seen a quality drop-off i there are some things that i'm a little more annoyed i think that twitter staying cool and good has nothing to do with elon at all i think elon when it first happened everyone was like this this is bad and i think the good part was it removed a lot of just kind of boring guy users the kind of people that would use blue sky left and it made it better it removed the blue skies and then you know if you grew up looking at 4chan and you know message boards and all this other shit you're able to sort of self-filter autonomously in your own mind the good and the bad it sucks getting the ads it sucks getting the the posts that are just like ai slop and all that stuff but i would rather keep scrolling than get pussy and bio yeah well slow down now pussy could be worse he's never seen jason's ever seen anything like that i i find it to be just i just don't i think people want it to be bad because they don't like elon and they weren't actually using it and and experiencing that i think that it was like a knee jerk like well this sucks now like the way that like, oh my, I have to put a bumper sticker on my Tesla saying I bought it before he sucked.

27:19It's the same kind of, it's like, dude, it doesn't, I say this all the time, but like people at that level don't care about anything. That's not, you can't, and there's a person like that at the top of everything that we use on a daily basis. And that's just kind of what it's going to be. Some are more vocal than others. You know, some have more kids, some do more ketamine, but the reality is there's someone like that kind of as the figurehead of every corporation in some varying degree, I think. True, but what do you feel about, I have noticed a market change in my amount of reach. Like, pre-Elon and pre-like what he did to verification and stuff, I used to just have way more engagement.

27:58Hey, bro, that's because they're throttling your ass with your opinions. They're throttling you. I'm just posting funny stuff and some videos of, you know, of pavement playing on David Letterman. Like, I'm good. You're doing shit they don't like.

28:10Jason Stewart:I think that we all get throttled and things happen for tons of reasons that we'll never know or understand or care about. You really just, if you are adopting the quote unquote post and ghost, you shouldn't be reading the comments and you shouldn't be checking the engagement. You shouldn't be seeing who looked at your Instagram story. It's true. It's all pussy boy behavior. So you just have to, that tweet flopped. It could be for myriad reasons. I don't have time to think about it. Look, as a power user, I've had a lot of flops. I don't let me keep it. It doesn't keep me up at night. I just post through it.

28:47I keep going. I trudge through, and I'm a better man for it, I think. I'm a better man for it. I like the attitude. I like the attitude. Posting ghost is a hard thing to adopt, and I learned that from Jason, who I believe adopted it from Joe Rogan, who says that. That's like his whole thing.

29:02Jason Stewart:I learned everything from Joey. Yeah, Jason. You should see Jason do a Turkish getup. It's unbelievable. But I don't know. I just don't know if, I don't know how realistic it is. I think it's good advice when you're at that level and the amount of replies are going to be so sadistic and extreme in number and tone that you can't do it. But I mean, at my small scale, I could look at it all day and it wouldn't really, you know, it's just going to fuck up my mental. It's not going to waste that much time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. it's just gonna like leave you damaged and scarred yeah it's all good it's all good i'm glad i was really wondering that i'm glad you stand by that i mean i like that article and i and i really was into it when it came around i wanted to believe elon was going to improve it but now i just think maybe the best thing that happened was that you're right the best thing that happened was that he broke up that kind of um like echo chamber and it is segregated out to blue sky which has a lot less influence well that's the thing i just don't think there's any competitor that even comes close and and you can keep trying and like i honestly at this point think threads has the best chance because it's just already on people's but you know what i mean they have the eyeballs already and they can integrate it into your feed it's already there it's on your phone it's much easier whereas blue sky is an ugly ass domain that you got you know it's just not it doesn't it's like using spotify i use apple music because it looks good same thing twitter twitter doesn't look good but it looks better than blue sky it's not the same thing spotify is like 20 000 times bigger than apple music so that's it's not the same thing blue sky is a fraction of what twitter does but but when you see when you see the blue sky i mean i know what you're saying i know what you're saying but the blue sky when you see it it's like somebody who still has like jason at spectrum dot sc global dot com email address it just it lets you know that like oh you're just you're doing you're you're existing on a different internet than i am i'm proud to say i've never we might get along but we won't i'm proud to say i've never looked at it because i i know it ain't for me do you have to post do you have do you use it you're talking about blue sky yeah um i have an account there and around the election there was this kind of big growth of users on blue sky and so like that's when the atlantic and places all started posting there and i go on but it's not for me.

31:21That's not my home court at all. Sure, sure. That's a very nice way to put it. But I mean, do you feel like as a... Because how often do you have something come out with The Atlantic? Is there a certain cadence to it or is it just you're under contract as a columnist? That's interesting. I would love you to take that up with my employer. i think technically i'm still supposed to be um having a regular cadence that uh you know i have a contract a certain amount of pieces yeah yeah but but often what being on staff means is that it's just like also you know as as you know news you write takes and so it's really not it's kind of a great place to work because it's really not like they're not counting every word like the new yorker does do that like you can my friends who write at the new yorker it's like you can fall into a word deficit and go into word debt so the next year you're like working out of a hole so you have to write like however many words you write a year plus 10 how have i never heard this before that's crazy crazy that's some jeff bezos shit that yeah it really is that's like that wow that's amazing okay so you're saying the atlantic lets you cook basically yeah it lets all the right like it's a it's a it's a great place to work they just want you writing and wants you in the mix and and they're really supportive of that um but they're not like sticklers um and at the and at other places like at the times magazine it's just you eat what you kill for most people so you you they might not be sticklers but if you don't write that article you're not getting you're not literally getting the check that you were supposed to get but but the atlantic has had a pretty big growth in eyeballs i would say over the last like five years right huge huge they're profitable yeah i mean nick a guy i work with at gq i think was doing newsletter nick catucci was doing newsletters there and i think it it seemed like it really grew you know um yeah do you think there's a reason for that or you just think it's just like a good source and it's like we're talking to him chris no but i think it is like high-minded it makes you look i think people like it partly because it makes you look smart you know if you're if you're reading that the way it is with harper's or the new yorker or anything else yeah so i used to write at harper's and and they never i love harper's but they never embraced uh like online publishing at all like they really they really like didn't believe in you're like you're like my 10 my 10 000 words on puffy might be better on the web you know like i don't know i don't know if i don't know if we need like i'm just saying i think we'd find our audience there a little easier yeah um but the atlantic could embrace like online strategies and i think you know just being a place that it is actually a place that isn't uh able to be completely ideologically pinned down you know they publish a lot of different viewpoints and that has like found its audience i think you know there's just such support by laurene powell jobs she's really invested in it so they've hired like a lot of very good writers and editors so it's yeah it's just like it's got momentum i find that they do a style of and i don't like to use this term but i don't know how else to say it like a clickbait like a story that like the headline like makes you mad so you want to read it you know what i mean oh yeah didn't like but the james bennett in the new york times op-ed section really like was was really mastering that um like 2016-17 i want to say um with the kind of rage bait header and deck where yeah people were sharing it on twitter just to be never reading the article yeah but that's what you need i mean that's kind of unfortunately that's how these places are going to stay afloat well i'm looking at uh the atlantic

34:55Jason Stewart:backslash tcw trump is right about affirmative action that's if that's not grabbing you by the dick i don't know what is yeah that's that's doing that's doing the work that's the click but my only my only response to that is like you know the writer doesn't uh title the piece of course no i think that it's so funny when people don't realize that and i'm like because every once in a while i'll get hit with the bro i'm like you know i don't do that dumbass you work in this industry shut the fuck up you know how it works and it's also like i don't blame right i i think for these things to exist that game has to be played that's just what it is i think it is because yeah if you're in a world where people are are not going to the website for most of the traffic they're actually just getting it through social media you have to get something that catches them and makes them say huh what what that's counterintuitive so yeah it makes sense in the age of sharing articles on twitter yeah for sure you can't i mean i i will say one thing that elon fucked up is i have i have a lot more issues with like the image showing up and all that stuff and you if you post something and the image doesn't work it does not perform as well right it's like and i know that's something that is like it was fine before you know what i mean like it worked it worked historically for years and then one day it was just a lot more difficult to get it to work one day 80 percent of the stuff working there stopped working they were fine but like that doesn't i mean yeah they might have broke some code on the way out the door Yeah, actually, Elon has for you don't you're not in Elon's orbit at all.

36:22Jason Stewart:You're not a crypto guy. You'll never have a Tesla, Chris. But in terms of FAA regulations and Twitter image population, Elon has affected your life greatly. No, that's true. Actually, I always thought Tesla was stupid. I hate NASA. It all goes in those zones. But I do I do think that he has affected my life in more ways than maybe I realize. And maybe that's why people hate him so much, just because he's affected all of our lives in ways that maybe you don't realize. Why do you hate NASA? You need a website. And thank God that Squarespace exists, Jason, because if you're online or you want to show up online, Squarespace is not only your friend, but also your partner.

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37:44No cap. This is a service I use all the time, Jason, because I'm not like you. I'm not super handy. I don't have a toolbox. Thank God there's TaskRabbit. So when I need some of my art hung or something put together, maybe some shelving units or whatever it may be, I always call TaskRabbit. And a nice young person with a backpack stocked with tools and other useful items shows up and takes care of any problem I have. And the best part is I can search for them based on cost, skill set, availability, client reviews. So I know who's showing up. I know they're going to do a good job. And I know I'm not going to have to, you know, kind of run away when they come inside.

38:23Jason Stewart:But Chris, I know how to do stuff. I'm handy. But then, you know, as you get older, time is money. Money is time. Certain projects, you know, the gate needs a new coat of black paint. You know, it's been hot or whatever. I could do it, but it's starting to look pretty nice to go on TaskRabbit, pay a professional to come over and do it. The cleanup is going to be done. The disposal of the shit's going to be done. It's exactly what you want. And quite frankly, it's worth the money. Never hang another TV as long as you live. Just call TaskRabbit. When life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get$15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com on the TaskRabbit app using promo code HOWLONG.

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39:27Jason Stewart:Yeah, Chris, the shipping game, you go to the post office, you go to any of these places, and unless you have a friend on the inside who knows what's going on, They're going to get you. The cost of all this stuff. They don't want it to be cheap and easy for you. They're all trying to make as much money from you as possible. ShipStation is a friend. It's a light in the darkness of the mystery of shipping. It's so tough. And with ShipStation, you can connect with over 200 online marketplaces. And the accounting and CRM tools are there. So there's no mystery. It's all plug and play. No rebuilding.

40:01Jason Stewart:No disruption. We're shipping out those orders as fast as possible for as cheap as possible. And that revenue is coming in without slowing down your team. I like revenue. The sooner you switch, the sooner you start saving time and money. Get started with ShipStation today and get 60 days free at ShipStation.com with code howlong. That's ShipStation.com slash howlong. ShipStation.com. Code howlong. Taxes and fees do apply. I just think Spake's aspiration is stupid. and like point a completely pointless pursuit i have no interest in in any of it i think it's a waste of money and time not for political reasons for strictly like chris chris believes if you have if you have the time to worry about space you're not working hard enough yeah no i'm not even here on earth exactly i just don't i just don't think that i just don't think that there's any it's all ego driven is what it feels like to me because whoever is in charge whether it's the president or it's NASA or whoever, they want to discover something new so they can say they discovered something new.

41:02I don't think it's because they want to, you know, touch grass with a new life form. I think it's literally...

41:09Jason Stewart:I think it's partial ego-driven and partial childlike wonder that you don't seem to have. I mean, having childlike wonder as an adult... No shit. I mean, unless you're an Imagineer, I don't know what the fuck good that's going to do you. I just don't know. I mean, I don't think... I also think NASA whored the brand out too much and it's become, it's like an Urban Outfitters t-shirt that has no meaning. Whereas at one point, I'm sure it was considered this amazing organization that was at the forefront of new, pushing the boundaries or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I tweeted something like that a few years ago, making not quite as strong a case as it's made, but hating on NASA and the amount of, you know, on stands that, I mean, that was really something that enraged people when I said, like, I just don't get.

41:59I just don't get it. But it is that simple.

42:02Jason Stewart:Yeah, well, Thomas, what's your argument against space? Something that Chris just touched on, which is I really do think that Earth is our one place to really live and care about, and everything else out there is a distraction. We have to have this thing completely in order, I think, before we're really putting all of our resources into getting to Mars. I think that's a really measured and smart way to talk about it. My way is a little bit more knee-jerk, let's say. I really agree with what you're saying. I just don't get the childlike wonder. People post these pictures of the cosmos, and I'm like, is it me?

42:45Are you all just pretending to think that that's the illest thing you've ever seen in your life? bro you gotta be playing with me i know that's not the coolest thing you've ever seen we should

42:56Jason Stewart:we should get david show on here for him to make a case for space because he has he's he's looking at the cosmos but i would i would say like you said before thomas let's put on our mask first before we help exactly this person sitting next to us on the plane yeah we're days away from america and the world imploding from the inside out for 20 different reasons. Let's worry about that first. Let's spray our house with water first before we go put out a fire on the other side of the world. But I have to say, I go both ways as far as like, I love taking in some beautiful architecture, of course, but like going to an old building in Rome, I'm like, yeah, it's old.

43:37That's sick. I don't know what to tell you. It's the same way I'm looking at the cosmos. I'm like, yeah, I know that's there and I know that it's unbelievable, but I just can't get excited about it. Oh, you're expanding that to like, you're expanding that to Roman architecture. I just don't care. I know, and it's not, I just don't care. I just don't care. I recognize how important it is and that it's the literal like first society. Like I understand all of that, but I don't need to go look at those buildings. I don't care. You're really a contemporary man. You're really living in this moment, in the presence.

44:11I see. But see, I'm not, I'm living in like 1996, which maybe is not the best. But I just mean I think that we're taught that those things are so fascinating. But once you see it once and kind of understand what it is, I leave it there. I don't continue that fascination.

44:27Jason Stewart:I've had the same thoughts with old buildings and tour. You know, I don't need to go walk in. Oh, cool. Is this a new building? It's old. But when I went to the Vatican and checked all that shit out, edible or not i was i was taken aback and i feel like maybe at some point chris wish i could say that which i could say the same i went to the pyramids bro and i was like that's interesting before you die they're gonna drop a new planet and you're gonna be like okay i get it now all right fuck it a new cluster you felt that way at the pyramids this is deeper than i mean i'm so it was i love cairo i thought egypt was amazing i would go back tomorrow i think that the problem is with all of that stuff or even in Greece all that stuff is just so touristy it doesn't feel like anything like when you actually go see it it just feels like another line to wade in with a bunch of sunburned Europeans it doesn't feel like anything special and I think that's just where we're at I'm sure if I would have saw the pyramids you know alone in the 70s on drugs I would have been like this is the craziest thing I've ever fucking seen but you go in modern times and there's guys hustling you for photos with a camel there's a KFC yeah Across from the States.

45:40Literally. I think that is really what I mean. And Rome is a similar thing. Rome in the summer is like the most populated place in the world. It's hell on earth. You can't go anywhere. Obviously, it's beautiful. Obviously, it's historic. But the things, viewing them isn't special anymore because of what we've turned it into. I had one experience that I would separate. I understand what you're saying. I'm kind of in between because when I was in Athens or in Egypt, I had this sense that so much of the world we live in was created in these places. And the third place, Rome is in that mix a little bit later, but the third truly ancient place that I had this feeling was Jerusalem.

46:21And I had a very, that was different than Athens or Egypt with the Taurus. I was standing, if I pronounce it correctly, in the Garden of Gethsemane, where essentially they do still know where Jesus was when he was betrayed. Well, if Jesus exists, let's pump the brakes a little bit. Historical Jesus. All right, fine, fine. Where he was like praying to his father. I mean, that's pretty fucking insane. The olive tree is like 2 ,500 years old. So it's crazy. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's insane. It is essentially some of the same plants that were there when he would have been there. And you're standing, and I was completely alone there.

47:08And then you walk up the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha, the site of his crucifixion. And it's all still there and knowable. Like, that was where he, like, faltered with the cross. And I was there in January, the weather sucked, and there was, like, really not many people there. And I felt like that was a profound... I appreciate that. I think that's a reasonable, I mean, I think as a person who was raised going to church, you know, I would maybe even, even though I don't believe in God or care at all, I would maybe even feel the same way because that's like. I don't believe in God either. More hardwired in my brain than like, oh, the Sphinx, you know, it's like a different, it's a different thing.

47:42But being there alone had to help. That had to help. Yeah, it was a trippy experience, actually. And I imagine, yeah, if you were wandering around. I mean, I was standing kind of, there weren't many tourists with me when I was standing in front of King Tut. Did you see that? Sure, yeah. His toes were, this is too old. This is too old. You know what, I got to draw a line, bro. Jesus stuff is fine, but King Tut, he needs a pedicure ASAP.

48:08Jason Stewart:I've seen your little sarcophagus. It was all right. A little old for my liking. You said King Tut needs a pedicure. Okay, so Jerusalem hit different when you're alone. King Tut, foot game is wild. There's a lot of historical discoveries happening on today's episode. This is good stuff. Have you been all these places just because? Like research or just fun or a little bit of both? A little bit of both, but it's often been pleasure mixed with I'll write something about. So I wrote, I got to go on this like ill Nile cruise for travel and leisure magazine. I did a Nile. I did a Nile. I went to a wedding in Cairo and to get to the venue was a Nile cruise.

48:55It's pretty fly, right? That shit was, I loved it. I loved Cairo, like I said, but that was something where I was like, I'm really glad I did this. This is really cool. This is really cool and really special. And I felt like it was worth all of the effort and almost getting my phone stolen trying to get home. Yeah. I went to Jerusalem. A French fashion magazine sent me to Jerusalem to write an article about going to Israel and to write about Jerusalem. And they said, you can write about anything, any way you want to do it, but just don't talk about politics. All right. Well, send me to Iowa next time then because we got some – that's a loaded request.

49:32Go to Italy and don't write about pasta. Yeah, yeah. That's not as tough. Don't write about food. But I managed that. And then I went to Athens a couple of times. And one of the times I wrote about taking my daughter to Plato's Academy, which is really amazing because the academy that Plato founded where he taught like Aristotle, they discovered like 100 years ago, its foundation is still there. And it's just like in this like suburb of Athens next to like a used car repair shop, you know. Like an auto repair job. Damn. So you're saying they resurrected a school in the ashes? Like you can go learn there if you're your daughter?

50:17No, no. It's just the actual thing that Plato taught Aristotle in. And then Aristotle taught. And the stones are still there.

50:27Jason Stewart:It's now a Raising Cane's, but it's still there. Yeah, they've expanded. How old was your daughter at the time? She was seven. And I was just explaining to her that like, you know, my dad grew up under segregation in Texas, like no one had ever gotten an education in his family. And when he was a young boy, he stumbled upon Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. And he saw a picture of Socrates in there. And then he went to the library at some point and got Plato's Dialogues. And that was basically when he was like, I don't understand all of this, but I understand that like whatever is in these books and the way they admire and prioritize knowledge.

51:04That's the thing that's going to get me out of like this, the circumstances. Yeah. So it's so it's like a family. Yeah. I mean, do you think do you think seven is too young to like understand that? Or do you think that maybe she'll get it later? Or do you feel like she got it then? I think she got a lot of it. then I said that basically like this, whatever happened in this room that we're standing in, like over millennia, like it reached out and changed like, like a poor black boys life in Texas. And it basically made the two of us possible here. So I said, we kind of, you broke, you broke that shit down for her.

51:38You gave her some bite size info that she could, she's like, all right, I got you, dad. I got it now. I got it. And then I wrote the article and then that article actually, that ended up getting me hired at Bard, the president of Bard College read it and it was like, oh, you should come teach here. You got a love of humanity. Damn, Bard. I didn't know. Look, you talk about white women. Bard is kind of the ground zero. I see you.

52:02Jason Stewart:I see you. I'm about to stoicism myself into some white pussy up in here. Sorry. Do you still teach or no? I do. I teach every spring semester there. Okay, so do you come? It's not on Zoom. You're doing it IRL. Yeah, I do the more unusual commute between Paris and the Hudson Valley, but I'm mostly there during the spring semesters. Yeah, what's up? Why do you live in Paris? You just love it? I got French kids, man. Okay, you got French kids. All right, so do you find the customs? Because I find France tough. Oh, you do? The people don't really work for me. I mean, obviously, the women are beautiful.

52:43I understand where you're coming from. but I find it it is like people think New York is rude and I find New York actually to be really welcoming and not like that at all and sort of it sort of has this like we're all in it together kind of vibe because you live in a shithole and it's hard and everybody knows that no matter how rich you are and Paris I just don't get I've been countless times and I just don't I can't crack the code

53:08Jason Stewart:they can tell you're a tourist Chris when you're in New York if you're you can tell when New Yorkers can tell when someone's a tourist and they don't give them the same respect and we're all in this together. I don't think they give them the same respect, but I don't think they try to shut them out. I think it's a very different thing. I think it's like they're happy to take your fucking money. The French are snottier about it. Yeah, the French, I'm sure France survives on tourism. I'm sure that's one of the biggest. Oh, yeah. Most visited city in the world is Paris. But, I mean, you're talking to somebody that just got shut down brutally at the French consulate.

53:40You're like, right now is a great time to talk about this. but but um no but paris is interesting and france is interesting because you meet like i'm you know 44 years old and so i've been there for 15 years you meet all these like american dudes who are stranded there uh with french kids like because you have a support group you have a support group there's a bunch of brothers out there like why are you here you know no one has ever like oh i got an amazing job and i moved here you know you never only person that ever is american that got like a good job it's like virgil abloh mark jacob those are the only jobs that an american ever moved virgil's the only guy that's got a job everybody else fell in love with somebody and it's like there yeah yeah i mean we have a friend jeremy and he lives in berlin and he said the same thing he's like i have all these friends and it's like they married a german you know and like we're here and we find each other and like our kids are friends or whatever but so do you feel like After 15 years, though, do you feel localized, or does it still feel like, I'm not, this ain't home?

54:43No, I definitely feel localized, and it's home.

54:45Jason Stewart:Do restaurants still charge you more? But it's good, because you are not ever going to be, there's no 10 years in Paris, and you're Parisian the way there is in New York. You're just not a local. So I actually find it really liberating to just tune, I can tune out to a degree there. Like I have my life. I have I've been in my same neighborhood for like a long time and that's all good. But like I don't have to pay attention to all of the I can kind of tune out and just focus on my writing and be a foreigner in a very liberating way. I based out on the Metro not listen to people's conversations.

55:21But the ideal way for me has been what I've had for the past few years, which is to really like live in Paris and in New York and to go back and forth. it's a little bit complicated but i like being a local and i like stepping out of being native and getting to be a foreigner so that you kind of work in in conjunction but like i wouldn't i think after this i didn't mean to immigrate there and i would have kind of i would be more like what you're talking about if i were only living in france and that was my entire um existence yeah existence for for the indefinite future i mean there are just these times like on a sunday it's really raining It's like Sunday in February and you have to go to like, most things are still closed because they have this old kind of Catholic tradition of like Sundays being, you know, nothing is open.

56:08And you go to like a front priest supermarket to get something is the most depressing place. And you come home and you just like stare at your, your electrical socket and you just, it doesn't look like what an electrical socket look like. And you just say, why, why am I here? You're like, after 50 years, I still look at that socket and get pissed off. That's real. It's not. little things it's just a little thing that's really funny that's a great example of something that i'm sure would bother me as well i i'm sure but but i mean i think it's it is i mean obviously it's a beautiful place and it's like pretty unbelievable on every level i just something about it i feel like i go to places and i know immediately like whether i like this or not and and weirdly paris has never been the paris has been one that's like a teeter-totter we're like sometimes i have a great time sometimes i never want to come back here again are you like a uk london guy bro you already know of course yeah yeah i mean they speak the language and it's easy to get around and like yeah i think also culturally it's as relevant or at least in the same category as new york whereas paris is paris is extremely relevant and like especially obviously fashion but like it's not this it's not center of the world vibes the way that we consider new york to be when you take the eurostar from garden north in paris and you get off the saint pancras in leon you're just like okay i came from like a smaller kind of like provincial continental capital and i arrived in like uh you know they both look they both have bad coffee but you know one at least they understand me when i order it you know that's it but it does i know that Jason you're right they know that I'm a tourist and I don't pretend to be anything else because I'm not like I can't look at me I'm like a big dumb white guy I can't I can't speak French I'm not going to pretend to be that that that feels more disrespectful to me yeah they love New Yorkers what what about you Jason when you when you when you travel um I mean when I when

58:07Jason Stewart:I travel I usually feel good I try to endear myself to the locals and my I speak a little bit of spanish so then i just transferred that into whatever language um i'm in doesn't work so well in france but italy you can get pretty far speaking spanish to them but i mean it's i'm kind of the same way they know i'm really tall i'm six nine so they see me come in and they're like you know this guy i'm gonna charge him more money for whatever i'm about how tall are you six nine are you really real talk whoa you don't that's that's wow really okay they're probably trying to suit you up for the next game wow that's the thing they do have a french league my brother first came to visit me um some years ago you know he just said ola to the to the taxi driver and and like i think taxi driver shot me like a pained expression i was like why did you do that he's like that's the only born language i know

59:09hola that's actually very cool what i'm trying i tried some other shit what do you want me to do

59:15Jason Stewart:not english so i did yeah i mean i i've i've been to spain and i feel like my spanish works better in italy than it does in spain oddly enough but well we're going we're going to europe soon i'm like we're gonna go see oasis this weekend in london and then go to copenhagen which I that's another place where Chris is warmly welcomed because he could until he opens his mouth he looks like he could be from there that's true two places I'm welcome just visually Copenhagen and a Blue Lives Matter gym those are the two those are the two places just visibly that they like me and then they get to know me and they're like never mind this guy's not really part of our tribes you know they're not he's not really down I mean I like Scandinavia a lot though that's probably my i mean obvious for for obvious reasons but i just find that it's um it just works for me you know what because stuff is good yeah like copenhagen whether you like it or not everything is very good and i that's what new york feels like to me like 100 yeah everything is done right and it's like obviously it's cleaner and people are better looking etc but i from like a food coffee like transportation everything is just better you know it's like done right stockholm is mind-blowing.

1:00:26Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, these are extraordinary cities. And you go and see what public housing looks like in Stockholm. It's definitely nicer than my apartment here. It's architecturally nicer than a lot of spots in New York. It's crazy, but big glass windows, the back of the apartment is all glass. No, it's like they just do that. You look in people's, you walk around at night and you look into people's windows and it's just cozy. It's yeah it's well done it's also it's just eye-wateringly expensive though when you do those conversions those cities are just so i mean it's at least the tax goes to something that benefits you yeah places you could eat off the ground you know what i mean like yeah i don't know what's good like i don't know what's going on in new york i feel like i'm melting there's holes in the road it doesn't yeah i don't know what's going on it's not the same and i'm paying an astronomical amount of tax to be in New York City.

1:01:19That's very true. Last time I was in Copenhagen, yeah, you swim in the harbor. You can swim in the actual harbor. It's so clean. Imagine that. Imagine that. If you go Kramer style into the East River, it's not going to be sweet for you.

1:01:33Jason Stewart:I mean, I live in Los Angeles. I grew up in Surf City, USA. And every day on the news, they're like, why wouldn't it be wise to go in the ocean? because there's liquid diarrhea or a toxic spill or oil or ash from the fires or whatever. So we essentially have an ocean that is uninhabitable now. Were you near the fires? No, I was sort of in the middle of in between the two dueling fires and they never really touched me. So I never had to evacuate. I held strong. It messed up the air. Yeah. It messed up even the water. Yeah, it fucked everything up. That shit was very gnarly, but I still don't think people realize how gnarly it was.

1:02:17Like, as far as, like, what was actually... Like, because we were... I mean, Jason and I were at dinner with a friend the night when it really kicked off. And we were in the valley, and it was like nothing was happening. And our house is in West Hollywood. It was like nothing is happening. Like, it wasn't... It's a very... Like, it's very... It felt very segregated to those areas where it completely destroyed them. And, like, California... You know, Pleasantville just continues on, sort of, in some ways. even though the Palisades and Altadena are gone. It's strange. Yeah. Seeing what the damage looked like when you drive down to Mallet, just unbelievable.

1:02:52Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But people don't want to feel sorry for quote-unquote rich people. That was a huge part of it from a culture standpoint. Is that crazy Kanye to Dow Ando house burn? Oh, Kanye is abandoned. Yeah.

1:03:06Jason Stewart:We can't tell. It looks the same before and after the fire. i'd have to go down there and really kick the tires i can't tell from photos yeah they burned it burned down to the foundation but that's all it was he was gonna work on windows and doors but then yeah but i mean like there's been in the last five years there's been a lot of disasters and things affecting the downtown area the inner cities you know all the protests and riots and blm and covid and all this stuff you were able to live in pleasantville in the palisades in malibu and be like you know i'm not i don't really need to wear a mask and i don't really need to do a protest because i walk outside and everything is beautiful and then the fires came and they you know they say bitch you thought and now we're all kind of on the on the level playing ground but also just like how we've recovered from the fires it was six months ago and we don't think about it at all anymore unless Adam Carolla posts a video about something in Malibu or Scott Galloway talks about it or something but you just forget you just move on like we were things yeah it's just it's over it's I mean the same for worse we forget about I forget I was in in a line of a thousand ten thousand cars at Dodger Stadium so a guy could stick his hand in in my car door and give me a shot and i drove home and had del taco you know like it's all just you just forget it that's how you got your vaccine yeah at dodger stadium dodger stadium by the way thomas thomas i haven't seen proof of his vaccination he says that he i don't i don't want to start any rumors but i've never seen the card just to be clear just to be clear go ahead jason i'm sorry it's all good it's all good but yeah we i remember it to this day and i remember I was wearing a shirt.

1:04:53Jason Stewart:I was wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and I had to take my shirt off because I couldn't just roll my sleeve up. So then I was driving in this line with my shirt off at Dodger Stadium. So it had like a party feel to it, but it was more or less like we're going to the gulag kind of style of single file, but you're in your Prius. And then, you know, people are, you know, how many people you got in the back? And, you know, it was, it was like a military state, but also like a fun party. I was probably listening to a podcast at the time. I mean, that sounds kind of ill. That's better than most people's COVID vaccination story.

1:05:25Jason Stewart:We're a drive-through culture here. Not a super walkable city. It's in and out. It's the same shit, bro. This Chick-fil-A, just give me your arm. Give me your arm. Your book, Summer of Discontent, you got a book or something? We're closing in on eight minutes left, so let us know what the book's about. It touches on some of that. Yeah, just, you know, this was a moment. This was, I would say, 2020 lasted about two years. I think 2021 was also absolutely bananas. And there's really a before and after. So, you know, I was trying to, with this book, understand the kind of events and ideas that brought us from this Obama era, where everything seemed like it was really just moving in a more and more harmonious direction.

1:06:17And then the era of Donald Trump and then the kind of the great awokening and this moment of breakthrough when our lives were put on pause and everybody became, you know, stuck at home looking at their screens and thinking about this horrific death that we all saw. and the kind of the marches and the protests against racism that the death of george floyd inspired they were actually the the largest manifestations uh for a single cause uh and for a race and anti-racist cause in the history of humanity you know there were 8 000 manifestations in america but they were in helsinki they were in south korea yeah it was like a global it was nothing like that has really happened before over the death of one global super spreading event as well, which is the other dark side of the coin.

1:07:08So I was trying to make sense of that. And then, you know, the kind of the progressive overplaying of the hand that inspired this extraordinary backlash that we're now living through. And I think that, you know, you can't talk about the redemption and return of Donald Trump in a vacuum. You know, in part, it's a response to things like fiery but mostly peaceful protests, you know the kind of gaslighting that was happening the you know the the the squandering of expertise that happened in the conversation around vaccination around how covid works and about lockdowns this kind of this are you saying that are you saying that some of the people i followed on instagram weren't actually medical experts when they were talking about are you because i really i thought i found some value there but i i think you might be onto something i mean they were medical experts until the invasion of ukraine then they became they became experts on geopolitical international relations but you saw that there's something else i mean it's funny that you i i think it's funny to go deeper on that time because i think most of us have have tried to do nothing but forget it yeah it's been memory holds it's just like i think it's like a place that people don't want to go to but i do think that you have a lot of you're you're making a lot of great points It's like we wouldn't be here now.

1:08:23Everybody's so unhappy without that happening. That's a direct result. It really is. Those things work together. They're inextricably related. And I think you can't really understand how to counter Trump if you never face the fact that when you and your worldview was dominant, you really overplayed your hand in certain ways that inspired an increasingly multi-ethnic plurality of Americans. like not just white Americans, but like more black and Latino Americans than in the past to say whatever Trump offering is more desirable than the way y 'all were doing things. I mean, I think that that is so I'm this book is essentially trying to bear witness to a lot of the things that happen that people are, in fact, trying to memory hold.

1:09:05There's always this kind of response that's like, that never happened. And then when you prove that it happened, it was like, well, it was fine that it happened, you know, so, you know, like, there was never rioting. No, there was rioting. Well, then that was justified. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just trying to make sense of some of these contradictions and ultimately argue for a saner path forward. But, you know, I think basically from the second administration of Barack Obama around when Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were killed and Black Lives Matter started, you have this moment of progressive social justice orthodoxy that increasingly dominated all of the institutions.

1:09:42And you had the kind of cancel culture that worked on social media and Twitter. And, you know, people were really living in a climate of fear. And that great awokening is an annoying word, but whatever you want to call it, that thing that started around then, it ended around October 7th, 2023. when DEI and all of the intersectionality and stuff broke after the Jews at Harvard and other places claimed a kind of victim identity that was not able to be recognized in the intersectional matrix. And so then you have this kind of backlash and this crumbling of the idea of the oppressor, oppressed binary that was always so easy to do in theory, but in practice it's a lot more complicated.

1:10:26so the book goes from the early Obama era all the way to just at the point where Trump is reelected and tries to make sense of that time period oh good luck with making sense of that I'm glad I'm just gonna take a guessing say a couple hundred pages I would guess I'm you know if I'm gonna if I'm gonna it does yeah it's actually like it's a it's a difficult book to elevator pitch because it also I turned it in 18 months late uh and that was actually like a blessing because uh 2020 was not the whole story the end not at all yeah yeah not at all that was the beginning yeah that yeah in a lot of ways that's the beginning i mean yeah i i think that that is um i mean a lot of what you're saying is is definitely true and i think it's a uh it's just so obvious to me in some ways you know that like oh well everything is going to have a reaction you know and that's that's how culture has worked since the beginning of time really whether political or even artistic or music or whatever that's like what happens you know yeah nothing happens in a vacuum is you know everything inspires a response you know and the response here wasn't to move back to normal it was just swing hard hard in the right where you have instead of getting the kind of extra respect for trans communities or something like that you get the the gleeful disrespect of those communities it's not just a return to normal it's it's the kind of vice signaling that now happens where you have to hear one more fat white guy talk about trans athletes i'm gonna fucking put my head through a wall shut the fuck up you are losers like leave these people alone like this is crazy it's insane so we're now living in a kind of you know a hellish reactionary period um and you know the ideal would be to somehow swing it back to to common sense in the middle but do you think that common sense can ever reign again i don't know if it can.

1:12:14I would like to turn that question to you and ask you, do you, because I just assume that everybody felt like 2012 was a moment that we were living in common sense. I would love to you want to go to 96, but I'd be happy like 2012. I want to go to 96 based solely on what was on college radio. It has nothing to do with what you're talking about. Just to be clear. But yeah, I mean, I think that I just don't know. I think that there's just too many information sources and it's too much. It's just too much. I just don't think we can ever get back there. I really don't. I don't think we should all just be always talking to and at each other and knowing what everybody thinks about every issue.

1:12:52I think social media is so instrumental in the breakdown of democracy. It's really not been worth it. I think, you know, it just hasn't. Bro, I've got a lot of followers. Don't say that. We need gatekeeping again. We just need a few people on TV. welcome home welcome home i think that's we'll we'll get there eventually where it's just

1:13:14Jason Stewart:people making but i think i think politics makes too much money and talking about politics makes too much money to ever have a sane president again oh yeah and i feel like we all know that every all politicians lie to us and we're okay with it as long as they're charming like obama or you know at the time we didn't like george w but looking back at him now not so bad in comparison into what we've got going on right now, just in terms of a presidential person who puts the country at ease and says, yes, there's a lot of bad shit going on. Sometimes we got to bomb a country. Sometimes they got to bomb us, whatever it is.

1:13:50Jason Stewart:But if you just have a person who can talk presidentially, we can all just sort of unclench our assholes a little bit more and enjoy life. Like when we were listening to MGMT. That's true. Have you ever gone back and seen old clips of George W. Bush speaking? is he just a killer at the time everybody said he's the most inarticulate president with a red at the time compare him Donald Trump and Joe Biden and it's like George W. Bush looks like a scholar yeah he was he he was amazing actually that's funny and when he was in office he was he was Hitler and uh you know a serial killer combined into one he was the worst person of all time he obviously did a lot of bad shit so it was warranted and we should always be making fun of the president and you know on in in comedy now that's something that's something and people talk about that's the that's the problem nowadays is every comedian stopped making fun of trump because they were all hoping to get him on their podcast so they wouldn't say anything bad about him and then six months later now they because they wanted the epstein files released now they're anti-trump flip-flopping again it's it's i mean it's a whole other pod we can do this i did i did see because i was getting tired of the trump thing even though it's funny but then he cheated playing golf and they caught it on video and i was like this is just this guy is too good that's too funny like what am i supposed to do he had his caddies cheat for him on the golf course he's not a professional golfer there's no anything at stake here it's just it's insane it's too wild individual yeah it's just too wild this is too wild it's it's easy to not take a person like that seriously it's more difficult when they're the leader of the free world of course yeah of course i mean that's the when you remind yourself what he is capable of uh as a fat guy who cheats at golf it's a little bit it's a little yeah those two things are definitely at odds if he really deports rosie o'donald then you know you could be next don't nah my cold dead hands we're not taking rose reason for leaving america uh the president thought i was a fat bitch so i'm out i kind of was i was just asked to go i said i'd go willingly i didn't want to argue with him i didn't want to argue with him how do y 'all feel about uh eric adams i mean he's funny same same thing same thing he's he's awful awful for the city really funny as this as like a social media news construct machine almost touching in a way because he's not evil you know i don't think he's evil i think he's dumb and like wants to have fun Yeah, and he just wants to get that lay-flat seat to Paris, and if he has to fly to Istanbul and transfer, he'll do it.

1:16:34I mean, it's relatable. I'm not above that. I'm not above that at all. If I got to take a little change in the UAE, you know what I mean? Yeah, I guess.

1:16:41Jason Stewart:If the only goal is if I get my lay-flat seat and my snifter of Covasier, I'm a happy man. It's the people who are like, as long as I can get control of this Fortune 500 company and get this person assassinated and blah, blah, blah. I'm okay with Eric having attainable needs. Eric Adams is really funny and really bad in the same way Trump is really funny and really bad. And I think that might be what we want in these people now. I think it's reassuring in some ways. I mean, I guess that it's just like, at least you can laugh at it. You can separate how bad they are from how stupid and funny they are.

1:17:24And those two things can coexist. And you can not like them, but still laugh when their makeup looks bad on Fox News. 100%. Unfortunately, yeah, the culture changed when everybody decided that the most important qualification was if you want to have a beer. Yeah. Sarah Palin was really the John the Baptist figure here. Damn. You gave Sarah Palin a lot of credit, but I see where you're coming from. Yeah, she prefigured Trump.

1:17:54Jason Stewart:Which is why we need to teach our good-willed, mentally healthy people how to have a beer with somebody. I think you're saying education is the key. Education is the key. We've got to get people wanting to have beers with smarter people. Which is why Chris and I will be running for office at some point because we are awesome to get a beer with. And we're not evil. So it's a safe bet. we hit 19 and we're going to stay we're going to break in and you know local school board stuff kind of get started on the ground floor move our way up you know I'm not super great with numbers comptroller might not work for me but some things in that zone before we get to the big leagues before we hit our stride it could be worse alright we appreciate you thank you Thomas for joining us on How Long Gone the book is out now everywhere you want to buy it I'm going to spit oh it's august soon okay so a couple oh just like a week or so okay great book is out august 5th um i'm sure you can follow along at the atlantic for all of your ranting and raving um and uh we'll see you soon hopefully thank you this was fun thank you guys and of course sorry for the technological complications it's okay you'll be paying for that for the rest of your life don't worry about it thanks thomas good talking to you

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