1103: Is JD Vance the Republican Front-Runner?

24:34But this cycle, we've got a big governor's race and a great candidate. And Rob Sand, a lot of it was just joking about how much I like Rob Sand, which I do. There's an open Senate seat. there's at least three highly contested house races then there's like some possible down ballot flips like secretary of state but also it doesn't cost as much as like texas you know what i mean you can compete like rob can run a a great race for like 30 million it's not gonna be like half a billion like the georgia senate primary uh before before ann selzer um kind of distinct disintegrated across des moines she expected because her poll was uh so bad trump tried to make it illegal.

25:11Like she had inside of that poll made some predictions about some surprising turns towards Democrats that we have actually also seen, right? Yeah, they've done they've overperformed in a bunch of special elections. Yeah. Yeah, I feel bullish on Iowa as well. I think long term, it is incredibly important to compete in Texas despite the cost, because like if you're looking at larger trends, like we need Texas and Texas is probably moving more slowly towards us. And then Iowa's just - Now it's moving. It was. It's moving back in the direction. It's hard with like, you have a very older population and rural population in Iowa, right?

25:48And so I think it's, that that's tougher. But I think this, I think with combination of Trump being president and the tariffs and everything that's happening, I think it's like the year for Iowa. That's what the farmers are getting killed. Like all the soybean farmers are in Iowa and Illinois and their crops are getting decimated. Their entire businesses are going away. Like, people are pissed. Gen Z Boomer asks... That's a good name. Huh. Good name. I've heard Favreau say on other podcasts that no one in the current DEM field gets him super excited. When did Obama start to get serious national attention as a potential 2008 candidate?

26:23The minute his 2004 DNC speech ended? Yeah. Think about it this way in terms of the cycle that we're in now. So this would be if at the 2024 convention in Chicago, a speaker, someone spoke there, gave the keynote address, who just like lit the place on fire and got national attention for that speech back in July. And then Kamala loses, this person wins a Senate seat and is now giving speeches all over the country and generating a whole bunch of buzz by now, for sure. And so is that happening? Can I dispute that? Sure. Here comes Evan Bysguy. Here comes Dashiell was right. I was going to ask Lovett at what point in Hillary Clinton HQ, they were like, holy fuck, where'd this Obama guy come from?

27:14Well, I do remember there was a lot of weight hanging on this flimsy wire hanger that said he promised not to run. That was still in the window where that was happening. And so it was like he wasn't running. That part of it, like, that was like he was able to kind of be free of that while he was in those first two years in the Senate. I don't remember when it started becoming real that not only was he running, but he was like a real threat. But I assure you it was later than it should have been. So watching this from having worked for Evan Bayh, who was thinking of running for president, and talking to a lot of people who worked for Obama, like Pete Rouse and Robert Gibbs at this time, and Steve Hildebrand, who were heckling me for working for Evan Bayh instead of Barack Obama.

28:03it really was the fall of 20 2006 when he was out campaigning for everyone getting massive crowds going to tennessee going to montana going all these places that no democrat rather go getting these massive crowds and audacity of hope came out and he was getting out in october of 26 yeah these huge i mean october of six yeah it was six and then he went on meet the press right after that right after the election and changed his mind and said he was reconsidering it but it was like Like everyone loved Obama Hughes-Genders have attention, but it was the fall of 2006. We're like, oh, there's a true phenomenon happening here and maybe now's the moment.

28:40And Evan Bayh went to New Hampshire the same time that Barack Obama did and he dropped out of the race two days later. Tough. Anyway, that's the timeline. 2028 White Knuckler asks, if you were in a lab and could design the worst 2028 primary candidate possible, what would they sound like? what policies would they prioritize? The worst? Can I be mean? On the Republican side, I think it would be the Romney-Ryan ticket. Oh, I didn't even think... You just thought of only Democrats. I was thinking of only Democrats. Yeah, so was I. Yeah. Well, there we go. I'll fill this space. You guys are up. Well, I mean, this is sort of an obvious question, which is like the worst Republican primary candidate would sound like AOC and the worst Democratic primary candidate would sound like...

29:22I think it's got to be a feasible version. I think it would be like corporate, you know, anti-populist Republicans in the mold of what the Republican Party used to be. Yeah, and I think for a Democrat, it would be a corporate centrist, Christian cinema-like establishment politician. Okay. Yes, corporate centrist economic positions mixed with the remnants of overly woke language. You know, like someone who's like, I just - Remember, we're in the primary here. but I I want I want public private partnerships to to leverage you know more jobs and also I'm going to start with the land acknowledgement yeah I think that would go over pretty poorly that's that to me is the the worst combo anyway love it yeah it's a funny question because it's like sort of sort of like what's the worst movie of the year well it's a movie so bad you never saw it the I do think like we need There's a kind of tie for worst right now, and it is a kind of certain old school corporate political speak.

30:36I don't mean corporate in the policies, but just in the language and the rhetoric that we've got to move past. And one thing I talked to Pritzker about as well was just why does it feel like, why do so many people feel so Democrats don't have a vision? And his point was only, well, Democrats never have a vision. They have a primary and they pick one person and that vision becomes the vision of the party. and Biden kind of holding that space and not using it. And then Kamala having to step in with a very limited time. And also, to be honest, just not being someone who I think we just doesn't have a particularly well-known worldview or ideology that kind of guides what we think she would do as president.

31:14So she becomes a kind of consensus that of the democratic politics we already had, there's just this big open space for someone to come along and just sound different. When I was president of Goldman Sachs, My deputy was Latinx. That's the, that's the, that's all. That's the first John Corazon. That's very, you. That's horrible. This is your nightmare candidate right here. Oh, I'm just, that is, go test them out. Erickson Kiva asks, how do you think Trump would eulogize you on Truth Social? What do you got, guys? God, fun to think about. I hope he does. I hope he does. Although I actually, I take that back.

31:51I hope he does. I'd like to outlive Trump. That's how I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. It's how I'm a bingo card. I actually reached out to a friend in the administration. And Mr. Trump actually did it for me. So let's roll that tape, please. Is this gonna be Ryan's voice again? Promise you no. Some guy named Tommy died today. Tommy Veeder, sloppy Tommy. What a loser, what a nobody. He worked for Barack Hussein Obama. That's when he peaked. I heard Obama had little Tommy carry the pallets of cash to Iran. Oh, that's good. I heard sloppy Tommy gave Ukraine blankets when I delivered the javelins.

32:32That's true. Toothless two-bit Tommy blamed Benghazi on a YouTube video. That's not fair. YouTube can't kill you, Tommy. Your career has been dead for years. That's true. Now he has a podcast. Wow. How original. A 40-something white guy with a podcast. Stop the presses. Talky-talky, Tommy. Tommy, the problem is no one is listening. He probably died of Trump derangement syndrome. They call it TDS, but we'll never know because no one cares that you're gone, Tommy. Wow, that was really good. That was amazing. Tough ending there. That was really good. Thank you, Seb Gorka for lining that up. That was really good.

33:10Sloppy Tommy. Seb Gorka is who you got to do that, huh? He's my guy. That was fantastic. I think that's it. I don't think anyone else needs to go. No, that was really good. Perfect. Wow. Oh, thank you, AI. really like that and we all love ai really good really good play that at your funeral hey tommy why don't you take that cup of water and just pour it on the ground oh my god back to the worst primary candy there's another one that old water thing is like just made up not true not true electricity costs very true it's not totally not true but it's like everything we do has like a cost or in terms of there's water consumption like you buy a pair of jeans that's like a year's worth of AI services.

33:51Well, it just matters where you're putting the servers, where the water comes from. There's limited water and different water in water tables. But yes, it's for the most part. Just for the facts. Niles. No, let's get into the AI thing. No, keep going. Niles asks, this is an interesting one. You have the opportunity to replace one Trump cabinet member, but you have to do the job for the rest of the Trump term and be loyal to Trump. Who do you choose to replace? The tricky thing of this is like, what does being loyal to Trump mean in this role? Like you just - Do what he says. You have to just do what you think he'd want you to do, or do you have to like, like if he gives you an order, you have to do it?

34:33I assume the latter. It's a question a lot of people have asked themselves and then failed, right? Well, because it's sort of like, can you do a version? Another way of asking that question is, is there a version of doing this job where you feel you could do good for the country without pissing him off so thoroughly that you're ejected. Right, right, right. Which is, I think, what the question is asking. Yeah, that's sort of where I took it to. I kind of think the easy answer is RFK Jr. Yes, that was mine. Right, because you could just like, Trump thinks RFK is kind of crazy and he just thinks it's like politically beneficial and you could walk back a ton of shit and Trump would never even read the memo about it.

35:03Hey, I just looked under the microscope and aspirin doesn't cause autism anymore. There we go. Mr. Trump, good news. You fixed the vaccines. They all work now. You did that. You did that. We did it. We checked them out. We took some of your DNA from your blood sample. We put them in the vaccines and now everyone's living to 100. And everybody's you. You're everybody. And maybe if you, so in a way you should care about them. Good job, Mr. Trove. Because they're you. You're them. Yeah, he hates his kids too. Who would you be, Dan? I think that's the right choice. You're not a Brooke Rollins guy?

35:32No, not Brooke Rollins. I guess maybe you could be Scott Bessett. Mm. I mean, you want to punch people? Yeah, you should beat up everybody. You can't do, like, taking Pete Hicks off the board would be very good. But you're going to have to do, we learn Trump as a possible. You're blowing up boats. Same with Pan Bondi. Obviously, same with Kristi Noem. I don't think you can convince that. Those are the worst. So I'm trying to think of the most impactful. You're working closely with Corey Lewandowski. Closely. In every way. Dan, I think you could pull out Marco Rubio, because he is also kind of, like, executing on his own plan for regime change in Venezuela, because he thinks it will help topple the Cuban government.

36:10And I think if you stop doing that, Trump would be like, all right, cool. Yeah, he doesn't really. Marco Rubio is an option. Yeah, I thought about that too. Although a little high profile, it's going to be harder to do things without him. Yeah. Well, like if you care passionately about, I mean, you don't want it to be education because you've already just eliminated the Department of Education. So that seems like not a great place to go. You know what? Also weak is cabinet. Weak is cabinet. The answer is Sean Duffy. Sean Duffy. You think the answer is Sean Duffy? I think that you could go a long way to just bring a small measure of competence to air travel in the United States and I don't think Trump cares about a lot of the stuff that he's doing.

36:43Yeah, it's true actually. That's just making, literally making the trains run on time. Yeah, this, yeah. Okay. That's a good one. I think it's RFK. I think it's RFK. RFK's a bit first choice for sure, for sure. I don't dispute that. We'll get to lots more of your questions after the break but a quick reminder before we get to that, we're headed to New Zealand and Australia in February if you've ever wondered how grumpy Dan gets after a trans-Pacific flight, this is your chance. Pod Save America, the Pod Save America hopefully just visiting tour, lands in Auckland, New Zealand on the 11th, and then three cities in Australia after that, Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th.

37:18If you're a listener in New Zealand or Australia, we'd really love to see you at these shows. Head to crooked.com slash events to get your tickets. When we come back, more questions. It's always so jarring to see Dan in his travel Juicy Couture velour tracksuit. Yeah. He looks good, though. Yeah. It's always so, it's like, oh, that's his look. That's his flight look.

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39:33will monster ramara asks how granular is your audience demo information curious who else in canada is listening just you you're the one will i know where you live what you're doing right now you look great wait no we have uh podcast data shit youtube data is interesting get like demographics and stuff but we know how many people in canada yeah yeah we have like you We basically know like the IP address where you're kind of located like a city or town or whatever. About 3 % of the audience is Canada. I took a look. But that's about all we know. But 3 % of an enormous audience. It's a small piece of a giant fucking pie, I'll tell you that.

40:12That's right. Around 3 % is UK too, and then it gets... Yeah, it's like the English speaking. I wonder if it was bigger before our country started threatening to annex their country. That would be a good... Yeah, let's get someone to... It should be higher since then. they're just mad like they're genuinely really pissed what do we do we're on the right side we're on the pro we live here when i went to on your podcast when i went to the montreal comedy festival when i was going through uh uh customs there was a french uh speaking person at the game spoke with a french accent and she said where are you coming from and i said uh the u.s and she said how long are you staying and i said don't worry not long and i'm sorry and she laughed and he's like, we know it is not you.

40:53We know, we know. Hope Australian New Zealand said that to us. I know, me too. Dr. Michael A. Urban and a whole lot of other Blue Sky users ask, why are the pod boys stewing their brains in the Nazi cesspool that is Twitter? What is the actual point? You call it stewing a brain, I call it building up a resistance.

41:16Building up my immune system. I'm literally just getting like articles. That's all I'm doing. And honestly, like no offense, Dr. Urban, I will never go to Blue Sky. I have no interest. If I wanted to have horrific intra-democratic party left fights all day long, I close our office door. Teleport back to 2016 and live in that fucking hellscape. I just, I never will do it. No offense. Our job is analyzing politics and the news and what's happening in politics. And that is happening still. All the journalists and politicians are on Twitter. And if they weren't, I wouldn't be there. It is also like, I'm sure it is a Nazi cesspool.

42:02My experience on Twitter is not just like scrolling and seeing Nazi shit all the time. Yeah, I click away from that. I just don't see it. I guess I'm following who I follow. You get a lot of Fuentes clips. Well, yeah, there's the Fuentes. But that's part of our job also, like knowing what that fucker is saying. and so it's like I got my I got my news column I got my pundit column I got my clips column of what's so it's just like I'm there for for that kind of shit every once in a while I post John's got the matrix you post something once in a while I do once in a while and a while can be any length of time in a sense but yeah I think the bigger problem is not that blue sky is a better place and Twitter is a worse place because there's more Nazis than there are it's that But collectively, it's the stewing in the kind of anger and different kind of negativities that I do think is genuinely bad for me.

42:54And I go through bouts of I post much less than I ever did. And it's actually rare that I post. And I am trying to use it less. But it is useful. It just is. And it's less useful than it was. And that sucks because it must. But it's still useful. I know a lot of the focus on when the discussion is Blue Sky is like the tenor of the conversation there. And it's mostly liberal on that. But I tried Blue Sky for a little while. And my biggest problem is because the user base is so small, they have this chart the other a couple of weeks ago. And it showed that like at the bottom of the chart of all social media apps is like Blue Sky and Truth Social.

43:28The user base is like just tiny, tiny, tiny. And if you're looking for news there, it just doesn't update as fast because it's just not there's not as many people on it. And so it's just not it's not as reliable for late breaking news happening every second. Yeah, there's this, the change to how Twitter operates for the average person, not the people who are premium users who have the equivalent of what used to be TweetDeck where you can curate your own feed, has become a terrible way to follow news because even now your following tab is algorithmically based and no longer chronological. You can adjust that.

44:04There's a very complicated way to fix it. But that being the default now, that's annoying for politics. That's terrible, by the way. It's horrible for sports. like if you're scrolling because you're just you'll just get stuff from like five hours before or the first quarter of a game it's annoying it's made it much harder to follow news but you can if you have a premium account which we have without being paid for because of follower size um just for people wondering if we're giving you a lot of money you can set up a feed that feels much more like old twitter where you're only seeing the people that you want to see in the order in which they tweet which it makes is a much better experience for following news and politics.

44:41Yes. Josephine with two Canadian flag emojis asks, would John Lovett consider being on any other reality TV shows, perhaps The Amazing Race? Yes. I would like to. Okay. Which one? Well, I'd like to, I'd like to be on one for more than a couple, you know, a couple hours is my goal. Amazing Race. Uh, it seems like it's a, it's a, it's a, a lot of international travel and economy for me. But I also slept on a floor in the beach, so I can do that. Yeah, you rough it all the time. But I liked my short turn on Survivor. It didn't go the way I wanted. But I would like... It's a fun... I don't know what it is, but there's something about the participating in that kind of charged environment where you're not in charge.

45:32There's something really... I don't know. I really find it interesting. I like the competitive ones. So Amazing Race, something like that. Traders. You have to go on Traders. Like that is the most likely place for you. You would be great at it. It would be so much fun for all of us. I don't know who's in charge of Traders, but we have to make this happen. Yeah, we got to get that peacock on the phone. I got a couple of pitches for you. Okay. What about Milf Manor? It's a show where middle-aged women dated each other's sons. Sure. I mean, I guess I could hand out towels or something. Yeah. What about The Swan from 2004?

46:03Where I get a full makeover, where I get a facial surgery from Dr. Terry Dubrow. Contestants underwent multiple plastic surgeries and weren't allowed to see mirrors. Yep. I watched that when it aired. I actually interviewed Dr. Terry Dubrow about that very program and the ways in which it was seen as a horror and the downfall of civilization. But yeah, I'd do that too. Why not? Celebrity boxing. You know. You know what? Boxing has never made sense to me because as a workout, it's asymmetrical. You're always facing one way. And I never liked that. I never liked that. They never turn the other side.

46:33not for me no thank you last one flavor of love uh sure okay yeah so there's gotta be a producer love island love island yeah another show i'm going first on i suppose can they can they somehow send me home before they've clicked they're like oh welcome to love island you're already not here that's so weird it actually you know that love island i believe is down the beach from the ponderosa so when i was in the ponderosa hiding from you guys pretending I was still competing. I remember we were driving by and I think we drove by where Love Island was actually being taped, I believe, at the same time.

47:11Oof, oof. Bemore Seymour asks, love it. Eight little Hanukkah presents or one big one? You must choose. I would say one big Hanukkah present. One big Hanukkah present. I think that's great. You know, like as a kid, the other thing too is, I think for most kids that get eight presents, the first seven or six are just little tiny gelt or like coins or socks or something really small and then you get the one big one you know you're like come on be something that you have to plug in you know come in something with a controller it is i was on the way to school this morning charlie asked me he was like so because they had a hanukkah celebration they're doing christmas celebration today and he's like so what uh what's the deal with hanukkah like what happens there and i'm like well you know eight nights eight presents one each night and all of a sudden he's like it's a good pitch he's like and you were just telling me that christmas is eight nights away and i was complaining that i have to wait that long and he was like i could see him like and he's like oh can i do both and mom's jewish i guess

48:18jill h asks for the parents do you do timeouts why or why not not yet there's two young just a just a belt for now

48:32yeah i think i take his car keys away take the car keys away from my 18 month old dan uh no we don't do timeouts we do uh consequences that we try to make be associated with whatever the punishment fits the crime yeah whatever the infraction is right which when they're little or it's easier where it's like you throw the toy and the toy goes away. Smoke the whole carton.

49:03No, no timeouts with us. Hey, where's parenting culture right now on discipline? Are we still in the gentle parenting age or are people back to saying that? There's a backlash to gentle parenting happening. Yeah, I think so too. I don't know. I just try to talk it out. So far. So far it's working. We'll see. wait till teddy's teddy's two now so who knows um all right what lauren js1 asks what's the best book you read this year does anyone have an answer that's not abundance i was yeah i was waiting for you to say that i didn't yeah yeah you know what i just i just read randomly so i was like going to bed and i i read like 1929 which was excellent great book but it's like it's not it's not not anxiety inducing to imagine like he draws a lot of great parallels between this stock market crash in 1929, the economy today.

49:53So it's not like, it's not the most relaxing kind of narrative. And I sort of, it occurred to me, I mean, Hannah pointed out to me, she was like, you're constantly reading like horrible, like depressing things. So I was like, okay, I Googled like best book about sports and I got a few options. And one was open, which is Andre Agassi's biography, which is like super well regarded. So I'd never like read it or heard of it. So I just did the thing where you can download the first chapter and read it. it is fantastic it is so good it's so interesting he's such a thoughtful guy he's super honest about like taking crystal meth and like playing tennis with a hairpiece and marriage falling apart and hating he fucking hated tennis hated it really from as a small child one of those dads who literally chose their house in las vegas based on where he had the space to build a tennis court and then force his kid to hit balls all day long and he made him a star like the you know one of the best ever but fucking miserable and it's an unbelievable book the hairpiece story is so interesting because as a kid i remember i played tennis as a kid uh and uh and i was terrible but uh andre agassi was so cool so cool because of the hair yeah and it turns out that the hair was fucking fake he was terrified at all the time it made him a worse player because he was worried that his hairpiece would fall off while he was playing like a wimbledon like a shocking thing to learn he also would play in jean shorts you remember so cool oh yeah so cool he was treated as like a punk he was just like i don't know i want to wear what i want to wear all right great book highly recommended uh so we started uh a book club at crooked this year and i wanted to do this and our my only sort of a rule for what not book we chose was that it'd be fiction and it would be not of this era whatever that means and our first and so if our only book we've done One is East of Eden, which I'd never read and I know is a classic, but was riveting.

51:46And I absolutely loved it. And then I've been reading the Eric Larson books and I read, I think I talked about this last year. I read the demon of unrest, but the civil, the rise of the coming of the civil war, which is incredible. I'm reading dead wake, which is about the sinking of the Lusitania. It's a great book. Fucking awesome. It is riveting, riveting. I just read devil in the white city too, which I also recommend, but I'm going to read, listen, I know I'm done talking about Kazuo Ishiguro, That's last year's business. Now it's all about Eric Larson. We did one pod today. Yeah, I did talk about Ishiguro in a different pod I did with John.

52:18Poor John. Have you read In the Garden of the Beast? No, that's next. That is great, too. So good. That's next. I wanted a Nazi break. Yeah, yeah. I'm on a Nazi break. Understood. Am I reading? Understood. You're in the wrong business. Don't we all? Yeah. No kidding. In my life. Dan, you're a reader. I think my favorite book this year is probably What We Can Know by Ian McEwen, which is very much not a book I would normally like other than I like Ian McEwen, which is a story about, like said in the future, like in a post-nuclear accident climate disaster, where there's a guy who's researching about a dinner party.

52:53He's an academic who's trying to find out, who's researching about a dinner party that happened in our current time right now, where a very famous poet who wrote a poem that then got lost to history. And it's about how he sort of it takes place in this time and that time. And it's how he finds, wants to find out the secret why that poem was lost history. It's a great book. Ian McEwen, who wrote Atonement, is a great writer. And it was bizarre. I almost didn't read it because the description seemed so unlike something I would normally like, but it was excellent. There's a, I saw, I'm going to read it as well, in part because, Dan, one thing that people were saying was interesting about it is that, in part, it is about how much information we create right now.

53:35and what it will be like for future historians to try to understand the past, not because things are hard to know, but because everything is knowable. Right, so as he's doing this, he has access to all of their texts and location data from their phone about who walked where, what day, what they were texting each other, all the emails they sent. And so it's too much information. It's almost alarming to think, not that people are going to be doing history on us per se, but what someone could know years from now about like in sort of first person information from a time period. It's very interesting.

54:08Wow. As you know, I don't read. How many times did you read about this? I was on a tear. I can't remember a single like fiction book that I read this year actually because it was all books for offline. Want a fun one? Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I think it's the guy who was a part of it. Oh, that's a great one too. Project Hail Mary. And you should read it before the movie comes out. Yeah, okay. It's a blast. Hail Mary? Project Hail Mary. Project Hail Mary. It's really fun. I won't even tell you what it's about. Don't tell you. You just gotta read it. Great. I need a book. So good. What's the most?

54:38Okay. Amphistaff asks, what's been your favorite new TV series or season of an existing show this year? I just have not watched anything. Pluribus. Pluribus. I'm so into Pluribus. I'm loving Pluribus. I haven't seen it yet. Oh. Watch it, guys. Everybody's watching Pluribus. I would say... It's hard to describe, too, because also, like, you don't want to give away even... You just go into it. You just got to go into it. Yes. Yeah, most of our viewing is just like visual Xanax. It's like Great British Baking shows from like six years ago. Yeah. Put you right to bed. I know. I think my favorite show this year was Task.

55:16I heard that was good. It was so good. I mean, it is like so – I would say it's not a good – it does not serve the same purposes, Great British Baking show. It is not relaxing, but it is like very emotional, very exciting. it's like truly truly a great show like it's one of the it's been a long time since there was a show that I like thought about so much afterwards like this one and then I watched a bunch of like kind of Hunting Wives like a lot of the Hunting Wives it was very entertaining yeah there's been a bunch of shows that are like super entertaining and like kind of good and like The Beast in Me we just watched All Her Fault which is which we were just talking to you and Emily about the other night that's about the 2020 election Yeah, yeah, yeah.

56:00The 2016 election. Oh, 2016. Oh, but it jumps back and forth. That's kind of 2016 time. Yeah, see what you know when season two is about. 2024, you're thinking. Yeah, oh, what'd I say? You said 2020. Oh, fuck. No, oh, you know what I meant. The joke worked. All right. It did. I'm watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which got turned onto, and it is very entertaining. Very, it's ridiculous, but what a blast. Death by Lightning was great. I'm excited to watch that. It's really good. I gotta watch some stuff. I am one episode into the Ken Burns American Revolution. Catch you in 2020. Don't spoil it.

56:36Well, I was so surprised that I'm like, all right, let's get into this. And I see how many episodes. And I started the first episode. I'm like, just each episode is quite long. I remember my cousin growing up had the Civil War VHS collection. And it was like 12 tapes. I feel like this is the same thing. I just struggle with documentaries about a time before audio and video because I'm just like, okay, why don't you guys type this up and then I'll fucking read it.

57:08I'm sorry. Ken Burns does a good job. I'm sure he does. This is not fair, what I'm saying. No, it's fair. All right. Lovett added some hypotheticals. Yeah. Okay. These are, I guess this is just like, do you agree or disagree? there's sort of just sort of thought originally i was going to have more kind of classic like you could only you have the fins of a fish but the head of a lion and i couldn't come up with anything that was good and so i just did did other pitches so this the first one is everyone should wear a name tag all the time with their first name on it yes like it should be seen as rude and standoffish to not have a name tag on yes yes yes i will pound the table for this one because i end up uh people say names and they go and then i feel awkward talking to them and so you feel more standoffish you engage with people less because you feel like a bad person because you don't remember their name and if you could just look down i'll go one further i'll go one fucking further tattoo it to your forehead everyone should have a little name tag in the world both for what tommy's talking about people that you named you've forgotten but also just in the world remembering that every person has a first name every car while you're driving it should have the first name of the driver just kind of in front so that you see the person in the other car not as an enemy who's in your way but jeff or donna and then it's like it's hard to hold your horn down at donna has it hasn't worked for social media good point

58:31docks are in chief though the worst people are anonymous but yeah but there's except for the people with their names yeah which are even worse so yeah i take your point you know no bad ideas Is it a brainstorm? I think it's a good idea. I'm with you, Tommy. I just can't. And it's also people that you... It's always a kid things. But you can make it a little jewelry. You can make it your own. It's special. It's the same way that now not having a phone is seen as obtuse and strange when before you didn't have to have one. It would just be like a cultural thing. No law or anything, but just like, oh, you don't wear a name tag?

58:58I guess you don't want people to talk to you. Weird, you bad person. Get that name tag on. And then the people on the internet being like, actually, neurodivergence, they don't want to wear it. I'm not saying you have to wear a name tag. Now I'm in a fight about ableism. What did I do? Yeah. It's just an idea. I'm sorry. I take it back. Your comment about tags made me think of the best movie of 2025, which is Corner to the Stars. Oh, wow. Which was about toe tags. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the former L.A. County Chief Medical Coroner. Fantastic documentary. Highly recommended. Wow. Ben Hethcote. Check it out.

59:29Okay. Every four-year college degree should be divided into three years and one floating year that is only available after age 40. Oh. Love it. i'm in this is great these are great ideas yes i want i want this to happen and i want you to know and i'm going next year because i did seriously i will say because i this this i can go to a new school you can yeah well just try it out i actually was gaming it out because what i was thinking and i was like getting into the actual policy mechanics of it and because you'd say like well how are you going to pay for it well you were already going to pay for a four-year degree and if you pay for your fourth year of college and then go into the workforce it's no worse economically than having just been in college for that year.

1:00:10And so ostensibly you would pay for the year in advance. And then that money is in some kind of endowment growing to help you afford the year you get when you're over 40. Like I was actually, I think there's an actual way to do it. It's almost like everybody gets a kind of sabbatical. And then, yeah, I have a pay, I have a fucking pay for. And so better, that's better than Republicans in Congress, you know, on the OBB. And then when you turn 40, it's like, it's customary. At some point you get your sabbatical and then maybe people skip a midlife crisis and their midlife crisis is they go and learn cooking back at the school or somewhere and you're there you know you have to go to the same college i think you should have to go to the same college i think that makes it a more interesting thought experiment okay yeah but so now so now people with families got to go back to holy cross yeah okay well no you leave your family oh you leave your family for a year so you want so this is now a kind of a rumspringer kind of people get to escape their lives for a year in my mind it was just you get to go am i going to spring break again yeah spring break it's uh Cause in my mind, it's like, I do feel like, Oh, like I, there were so many things I didn't learn or didn't think I cared about.

1:01:08Now I was thinking about this purely in social fun terms. Yeah. I can see the wheels turning in John's eyes. He's just like back at the bar at the frat house or whatever. And love. It's like, what theoretical math class could I take? I was 100 % focused on like, like, like maybe I would do physics. That's real. I did not think about socializing for a second. This time I'm going to Florida or Arizona. Yeah. It was like, now you have a little more money. So you can go on a better spring break. Like you're not like nine people to a hotel room. Yeah, no, that was at South Padre Island. Back to Negril.

1:01:37Like I would like to maybe do like kind of update my statistics, you know, get back into it. I do think about all the books I didn't read and think, I wish I'd just read those. There you go. Every year we do a nationwide ranked choice vote on the top apps with chat functions, WhatsApp, email, Slack, et cetera. And one is eliminated. Oh, yes. That's all just one ghost. Great idea. One ghost. Yes, because we just keep stacking them up and they have to check them all. It's unbelievable. And once you're eliminated, you're out for good. Yeah, you're out for fucking good. The app is deleted. I mean, a lot of their success is kind of a network effect of having been picked up and taken up by others, right?

1:02:15The only reason Slack managed to get in is because they figured out that they could take over a business at a time. Otherwise, they would have faced the hurdle that the fact that we don't need another way to fucking communicate. One more, I'm going to throw in one more just for fun, which is double the number of people in Congress. Okay. Not only that, double the number in the house. To shrink the districts? Because the districts are now kind of in this in-between. We have the same, we've had the same number of members for a country of much fewer people. And it now defeats the purpose of having a local representative.

1:02:48And all this talk about gerrymandering, in part, it's like, well, what should a district be? Well, all districts are kind of pretty varied now because they take in so many different people. They're much bigger than they used to be. So much smaller districts would mean you'd have, You know your congressperson. There'd just be, it's just more democracy. And I actually think Democrats could like make that part of a platform. We want more democracy. Well, members of Congress to have fewer people they report to in the house. And they'd get so much more done with all that more people. Double the Randy fines.

1:03:16There's some merit to this. I like this idea. Think about that. I'm going to look into that. Think about that. I had a thought about it. There's also like probably a really good argument for paying them way more. Like I think Singapore, you make like a million dollars a year if you're a elected official. You just couldn't get it. you know, higher quality person.

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1:04:52Okay, let's go to our resolutions. Reminder, we're going to play each of our 2025 resolutions first. and then we'll give each of us a chance to explain ourselves and then we can all offer up our resolutions for 2026. Who wants to go first? Dan, you go first. Sure, why not? What do you got, Dan? All right, let's play dance. One, I am going to make another run at my attention span and the thing I've started doing since election, which has caused me to miss many of John's best Twitter fights, is to put my phone away before I put my kids to bed and not look at it for the rest of the night. I want to take up yoga in 2025.

1:05:24I started doing it this year. How'd that go? Well, I was one for two. Yeah. How's your asanas? How's our downward dog? I would say the yoga went much better than my attention span. Really? Oh, wow. Yeah. That is a shock. I thought it would have been the other way around. So you really are doing yoga? No, the attention span, I've been wrestling with this for a year now. I'm very concerned about the impact of short-form video on my brain. I feel that. But I really used to, as I said there, would put my phone away when we put the kids to bed and not look at it again until right before bed just to make sure that nothing was on fire or anything.

1:05:58That has failed. The phone is back. But I have done yoga not every week, but maybe on average every two weeks for the last year. So I feel pretty good about that. Dan, will you do a tree pose with me right now? No, no, I will not. That's for the premier subscribers. Yeah, may well. You can see. I want everyone in this room to know I would have done it. Kriket.com slash friends. I only dance. Kriket.com slash friends. You can see only Dan's. No tree pose? I don't believe this resolution until I see a fucking tree pose. Sorry.

1:06:31I'll go next. Oh, no, yeah. Wait, sorry. All of ours. Then we're going to do, are we doing, no, we do one at a time. So I do my New Year's resolution for next year. Let's hear it. Okay. So I will continue for the third year in a row to work on my attention span. So I have three this year because I figure if the more I have, the better chance I have succeeding at least once. the second which runs completely dimensionally opposed the other one is one i'm stealing from my friend john favre from 2024 which is i'm gonna post more okay yeah you're all liking it unbelievable i think like i really have like love said like i have like i still use twitter way too much i look at it too much but i i do see that i have stopped posting i've stopped like promoting our stuff promoting my stuff like like putting our point of view in the world and it is like a tool in which we can even in the smallest way possible, like influence things.

1:07:22And I sort of come to hate it. I've hate the responses to it. I hate the criticism from our side, the other side. I hate the feeling of it, but I think I have to like suck that up and just like do it. Cause it's part of what, like we do content. Like this is what we do. So you kind of have to do it. So I have to toughen up there. Post and mute. I just feel like that's kind of weak. Like you got, you got to swim in there. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. If you're going to put it out there, you got to, you got to live with the consequences, I think. Yeah. If you don't, yeah, it's like, don't cook if you're not willing to do the dishes.

1:07:52That's still in valor. And so the third one is, is one that is harder to hold me accountable for, um, which is both probably a feature and a bug, but I've been thinking a lot about how, like in my life and in this true of all of us that like for a long time in our careers, we were always like in positions where we were like had jobs that were like harder than maybe we should have at the time or above our station in life and like sort of live with the discomfort of pushing ourselves all the time. And I feel now that we like, we've done this podcast for a long time. I've done message box for five years now.

1:08:30And like, I kind of like know what I'm good at. I know what I'm not good at. And I feel like I've become very good at avoiding the things I'm not good at. Um, and so like, I do like heading into 2026, like want to push myself to be a little less comfortable in what I do, like to like sort of lean into things that I know are not my favorite things to do or I'm not as good at and try to do more of them and like challenge myself more than just like keep doing the thing that like I know how to do, if that makes sense. Because that was like for my whole life before basically left the White House was always in a position of like, not that I want to live like this again, but where it's like, we're always like one step away from like absolute fucking disaster in any of our careers and like living with that.

1:09:10I don't live with that stress, but I'm going to find something from the, from like between there and like pure comfort, if that makes sense. Yeah. It's funny. There's like a, um, I think it like, there's like a natural trajectory, which is like when you're younger, if you feel comfortable, you don't necessarily feel safe because you want to be onto the next thing. Right. And so you would, you achieve some level of understanding of what you're doing and then there must be something wrong. You have to go find the next thing. That's what I was like anyway, where like, oh, I like had written a comedy.

1:09:37Now I got to write a drama. I'd been a speech writer. Now and not based in what, like, it wasn't a well-made decision. It was more about feeling like if I'm, I don't wanna be part of any club that would have me as a member. And what's funny is I do think then you go through a phase of then thinking, oh no, the goal is to be comfortable in what you're doing. And then you get older and it's like, no, that's actually a recipe for allowing yourself to be incurious and to be stuck in your ways and to kind of lose the plasticity of your brain. Very well said. I feel the same way. Cobra pose? Low cobra?

1:10:10Low Cobra. Right on. Low Cobra. I want to, my one small resolution is I want to try to figure out if I can do a, if I'm too old to do a dragon squat. That's right. You all heard it. Put me on record. Googling that. Careful. Fuck. I only look at dragon squats in my incognito window.

1:10:32Love it. You want to go next? I can go next. Let's see what I said last year. We are coming to the end of the year where we made a lot of shows and did a ton of content and there's a lot happening. And I want to try next year to do a little bit less, a little bit better. Nope.

1:10:52Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's funny. A little bit less, a little bit. Oh, okay. Quality over quantity. Yeah. I feel like I did a little bit more the same. I don't think I did anything worse. You added like an entire series. Yeah, I think we did. You did more. I did more. And a ton of YouTube shit. I did more. We did a lot more. I don't, I do think, well, I will say one way I do think I upheld this is we really have tried to make the love it or leave it monologue something we focus on and not just have it be a run of jokes but try to figure out what we're saying about the week. So I think there's been a little, I brought a little bit, being a little bit more deliberate to some of what we've been doing, which I think, and by the way, even thinking about how we do interviews, I think we've all like kind of stepped back and tried to think about like how to make, how to be, I guess really what I want to be is more deliberate.

1:11:36it. And I think I'm trying. I think that in fairness. So my resolutions. So I don't want to post more, but I do want to write more. And I have not been using Twitter that much, but especially in really kind of tense moments, maybe for myself, maybe because I think it has some value. I'm not sure. I've been writing against the type of the medium. So like Twitter is for just thrown off takes. And I've been writing these long Bill Ackman, Bill Ackman length things at times, Bill Ackman length things, but I, and people make fun of them. I don't really care, but like, I just like as a place to be thoughtful and do what is not natural for the medium, which is kind of lay out fully what I'm thinking, why somebody, what somebody said without attacking them bothered me.

1:12:19I still do the dunking when I get on there sometimes, whatever, but I've been actually enjoying that kind of writing. And so I, what I want to do is find a place, maybe it's our, find a way to write that way, maybe on Substack, and then post some of it on social media. But I want to be a little bit more deliberate of laying things out, especially because I find, I forget until I do it, oh, when you actually sit down and really write down something, you actually clarify your own thinking in a way that carries through. And it's just a muscle that I used to work more, and I think it makes me better, and I want to get back to doing it.

1:12:52That's one. And then two, I have really gotten into cooking and baking. And I want to be more deliberate and methodical about it. And I want to learn more and actually not and like really kind of learn technique and be able to cook without recipes. I want to host more dinner parties where I'm cooking things. I want to like really build up my skills because I like it. It's actually really, you can't be on your phone. And that is my second resolution. Great. good one am I up okay I'll listen to this pain I hate my voice I want to talk to more people off air experts I want to get good at using AI tools I tried to use chat GPT to write me a list of resolutions and I failed finally I've been reading a book about mindfulness meditation but I haven't been doing it I think it would be good to do it it's good for you I did the experts thing yeah AI tools I don't know you just did it you just proved it I did earlier in this podcast I did it 345 today.

1:13:51Sign up for a new AI service. Pay them a bunch of money to make one thing that I'll probably... I need Rocket around you to unsubscribe me. Mindfulness? No, not even close. Not even a little bit. Not even once, I don't think. Those hats, by the way, those were our... Survivor hats. Oh, that's why we wore hats. The tribe has spoken hats. What a year. So my resolution is this is going to be a year of saying yes. Not to work shit. To things that are fun. so it's like I think I very our work schedules are very regimented for me it's Monday Tuesday intense prep record prep record and it makes you like feel hard to do shit and it makes me not travel I want to travel more and say yes to trips and get out of the office and do things and go places love that for you that's great yeah it's fine I mean my friend invited me to go on a trip to London for like a weekend basically and normally I would say no but I'm gonna go because I'm like no we're gonna do this the Australia thing we said I always said yes to.

1:14:46It's like. I was genuinely shocked when we got a yes to that. Being away from my kids for that long is like. Tommy's always the hardest yes to get. You know, I have a three-year-old and a 18-month-old and, you know, came out of a pandemic. Like, sort of an anxiety-inducing thing to go to a new continent and be away from your kids for that long. I was like, you know what? Just do it. So I'm excited for Tom reading between the lines. He's going to try Ketamine and open his marriage. Things sound pretty exciting. It's a big year for Tommy. Tommy is saying yes. So many jokes I want to make get me in more trouble.

1:15:15All right. All right. Let's go. My resolution this year, this one I'm going to nail. We know this one. I cannot fucking wait. I know this one. More posting. Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm going, I'm more posting, more Twitter fights. Yeah. Yeah, you nailed it. You did it. You nailed it. Honestly, I've never seen, I will tell you something. I will admit something. I thought that resolution was so stupid. I know. And so bad for you. And it's still, by the way, it might have been bad for you, but it wasn't stupid. you really were onto something. I will say though, for next year, very similar to you. And it's not just writing more, but I was doing a few of these essays for offline at the beginning and I found it, I used to hate writing until it was done.

1:16:01You write and then you go through this horrible process and then it's done and you're like, oh great, it's done. But for some reason, the offline essays I've enjoyed because it really does help me just put down on paper, on a screen what I'm thinking. It helps me clarify my thinking. And I stopped caring about it. I'm like, do they do well? Do they have two people like them? I don't care. I'm just going to do it and it's going to make me feel good. And it's helping me spend less time doing the takes on Twitter by getting everything down. It's almost like you get it out of your system. So I like that.

1:16:29You always get a thoughtful, charitable response from the internet and also friends. Yeah, well, the internet, I don't really care about Twitter. I don't see the replies there. once in a while I dip into the discord love you discord but yeah no I think that's it that's fun and I'm also going to try one night a week like just no news just go home and if I'm going to use the phone it's like we'll carry the burden Sundays and Wednesdays who will take the watch who will guard the wall on Wednesdays Brian Stelter alone? Are you reading the news every single night in the evening? Yeah. He's never not reading the news.

1:17:17He's never not reading the news. I'm never not reading. I'm scrolling here and there. It's not like I'm sitting for a full news, you know. I'm opening tabs. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. But it's too often. It's just like just at least, this is like a baby step thing. Just one night. It's not good for you. It's not good. I think you should do that. Can I weigh in on your posting? Sure. your posting resolution last year because i think it is as love has said ridiculous and you but you did it well but i think the truth of it is is not the volume of the posting like what you're what you really resolved to do was that you were going to say what you believed you're not going to care what anyone else said yeah which i think is very admirable and you really you know it's funny dan because my my final resolution for next year because i thought i thought about well you already did this one yeah oh no you're gonna start caring again no no no i I was like, we are heading into a midterm season.

1:18:09There's going to be Democratic primaries. And then we're going to, you know, then it's going to be talking about the Democratic presidential primary in 2028. And I feel like I want to be not like I, but like very open and honest about both criticism of Democratic candidates, but in a way that is constructive. I want to like think about the criticism so that it's not just like you suck and you can't do anything about it. But like, OK, what would I do? Right. And so it would be constructive that way. And if I really like something someone did, say it and be honest about it and not feel like if I say everyone's gonna be like, oh, you're in the tank for so-and-so, you know?

1:18:45Because it's like, I just want to be as honest as I can be about all the Democrats running for office. Because I think that sometimes I feel like in the past, you're like, I don't want to be too tough because then they'll be mad at me or I want to be too nice because then people's, you know? Well, it was brutal last time. It sucked last time in 2019. I was thinking about that. Everyone was mad at us all the time for being too, like everyone thought we were in the tank for this candidate like at the same time there were people were like the pod bros are all for bernie and then it would be all the bernie people would be like the pod bros suck and i like this goes to mind about being more uncomfortable is one of it is is being willing being less reticent about taking on criticism for the things i say right or right or like being willing it's just sort of like like taking people along with my like stream of consciousness thoughts about candidates that can sometimes change too you know and it's like i I liked that speech, I didn't really like that.

1:19:35I thought that was good, I didn't think that was that great, here's why, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's funny, because for me, part of what I wanna do, part of the reason I wanna write a little bit more and step back a little bit more is, I actually think, sometimes I lose sight of why, like, what is my value and what is it that I offer? And I actually think, you know, I'm, my actual political analysis, I'd much rather step back and think about something in a way that maybe is a little off-kilter, maybe it's not turns out to be wrong but like i just would like to bring a little bit of more weirdness which means really a little bit more of like things that are not currently kind of necessarily exactly what people are saying or talking about you know because i just want to like step outside of the scrum because i think i do a little better outside of the scrum that's part of what i'm trying i'm trying to do jgb pritzker can you do a dragon squat yeah did you look up what a dragon squat is i did it looks really hard it's really hard difficult dan do Pilates with me next year.

1:20:31Should we do it at SolidCore? Make that your resolution. Do Pilates? Yeah. Film it behind the paywall. That was almost my timeline today was the SolidCore feud. Oh, yeah. I'm up to date. Alright, guys. That's our show for today. Happy New Year to everyone. Don't forget to take your Z-Biotics. On Friday, we'll be dropping a special episode of our subscriber-only show, Inside 2025, into this feed. It's Lovett's conversation with legendary and reclusive Democratic strategists Philippe Rhinus. I love that description. Love it, what did you guys talk about? So Philippe played Donald Trump both in the Hillary Clinton debate prep and the Kamala Harris debate prep.

1:21:10Didn't get called on by Joe Biden because Joe Biden said, don't worry, I got this. But it was really, he really went full method and he's just an insightful person about how you deal with someone like Trump. That's I think partly why he had the kind of, kind of skill set to be Trump. So it was, and it was a great conversation, genuinely, one of my favorite conversations in a while. Awesome. Check it out. And then we'll be back with a new show on Tuesday, January 6th. Bye, everyone. We'll be wild.

1:21:41If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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