We talk journalistic omertà, bodily capital, tech-bro self-loathing, Trump's lousy Rodney Dangerfield impression, and how the first rule of Epstein Club is not to talk about Epstein Club.
Terrific having Brooke back, thank you! Happy Anniversary! Helping to keep us sane and informed in this ‘environment’ is no small task, not at all. Many, many thanks to you and Stephanie ‘LB’, and Donnie, and all of the fantastic guests you’ve had over the years. I am so happy to have been here all along the way ❤️🙏🏼
Outstanding program. The lead-in of Ms. Harrington's reference to 'The Emperor's New Clothes' set a stage for time well spent listening to an intelligent discussion. Thank you!
IMO the Noem story needs to drop. What if the photos were from a Halloween costume? We've seen Kristie Noem's behavior. Is there anything that shouts "I married a cross dresser" or a gay man, one who struggled with sexual identity, etc? She does not appear to be the forgiving type.
I'm of mixed opinion on that. On the one hand, I feel bad for the guy, because he's a private citizen and should be entitled to privacy, especially when it concerns what floats his boat. Kinkshaming is not cool. Plus, I'd much rather have guys dress up as "bimbos" than do what Epstein and Trump did. On the other hand, his wife is literally Satan and it's hard to muster sympathy for Satan's dutiful spouse.
I don’t feel anything as I do not know him. However I look the story this way - how does it benefit our nation? It doesn’t. It’s a cheap distraction by master manipulators at the expense of others.
Ms. Noem, regardless of her mouth, has the right to a personal life as does Mr. Noem - as long as it falls within legal limits. Cross dressing isn’t illegal and harms no one.
Golden Rule consequence: How Trumpian does this story make the ‘teller’ appear.
Obama’s public behavior taught this nation a lot while in office; my grandmother taught me long before. I find I’m forced to delete a lot of what I’m thinking and often typing when I ‘Golden Rule’ my thoughts…
Thanks so much for having this discussion with Brooke, Greg. I find her focus on offshore banking to have been very prescient, and she is a very sophisticated guest.
I share your bewilderment about how extremely obvious and disturbing lies of the powerful, etc, are not discussed. This reminds me of what happened in the Soviet Union.
I agree that the business leaders, ‘AI’ bosses, and oligarchs would be far better off paying their taxes and supporting a sane democracy. They are bad even at self-interest because of their personality problems.
I think they are clearly proud of being Sauron, btw. They think being evil is cool.
With respect to the ‘AI’ bubble, while these systems are misused and overhyped, there is no question that they have revolutionized computer programming in the hands of experts. There are other cases where they are also extremely useful (e.g., because mathematics can be formalized, the guesses/hallucinations produced by machine learning programs can be checked in detail and used to aid in discovery). This in no way means everything can be automated (experts are required to guide them) or that the bubble is justified. But, to be fair, current ‘AI’ is a breakthrough despite our misgivings and revulsion about the way it is being thoughtlessly pushed.
Great point about them being bad at self-interest.
When we talk about AI, we mean generative AI, the AI that populates chatbots and writes novels and music and all of that slop. There's a lot of really great stuff AI does, in the medical field as one example, that everyone likes and wants. Heck, AI generated the transcript [than I then had to fix]. But that's not what these guys want. They want robot AI slaves so they don't have to adapt to humanity.
'They want robot AI slaves so they don't have to adapt to humanity.'
Eh, not all of them! :)
One thing I see quite a bit from a humanities perspective (not really from you) is that ‘AI’ is all nonsense and that all those associated with it are all clueless, culture-less, fascists. But this is not the case (even for generative AI), and Amodei is not the same as Altman.
For mental hygiene reasons, though, I never use it for everyday tasks, for writing, for making art, etc., and I haven’t yet used it for research or programming, but I would if it made sense.
I'm currently reading Darnton's The Revolutionary Temper--all about the build up to The Big Chopping, and I actually fear that we (United Staters) are no longer capable of that kind of collective action. And maybe that's to be expected and okay insofar as we shouldn't be a WE anymore anyway. If only WE could get enough of US to walk away from this abusive relationship we have been in since 1787, maybe we could have nice things one day. I just worry it's been bred out of us (even US) at this point. It's depressing AF.
I know what you mean, and I share that fear. What is it exactly keeping us together with these MAGA Nazis? What shared values do we even have? At what point does staying together become a sunk cost?
Before empires fall, they fracture. Rome fractured. The Ottomans fractured. Great Britain fractured. There's nothing but inertia that says we have to stay with Texas and Alabama...although I don't want to abandon the great people in those places. It is, yes, depressing AF.
There is a great podcast originating in England called Empire, Spotify has it. Goes back to the first known empire and moves forward. Demonstrates that all have a beginning, middle and end, the ends are dissected and seem to have one common denominator, a madman. Haven't found one where the madman existed at the start and was there at the end. Fingers crossed the imbecile breaks the mold.
After digesting today's dialogue the words "the inevitability of delusion" danced in my head. Sounds like a good title for a book. The entire administration suffers from delusion. Why? These words from Brooke may answer this best,
"If you want to externalize all of your self-hatred, it is crucially important that you never introspect, that you never look inside, because what you’re going to find is ugly. So you just take all that ugliness and you put it out there, and you make it corporate policy, or you make it public policy, and you make it other people’s problem."
Starting a War, blowing up boats sailing the Caribbean the ultimate example of this.
I often wondered why the orange imbecile & co. act as they do. Yes they loathe themselves. Instead of punishing themselves they take it out on the rest of us. Their delusion is that We the People deserve to be punished rather than they themselves, furthermore they want to believe their shit doesn't smell, this especially in trump's case a very obvious lie, figuratively and literally.
Yes, I think Brooke is really on to something there. They are externalizing their self-hatred, like vomiting it up, and making it our problem and our mess to clean up. And boy do we have a real mess to clean up!
What a terrific Prevail today! Brooke is brilliant and fascinating. Thanks for starting our weekend with this enlightening conversation.
I am re-reading a book I bought in London in 1994 called “Introducing Fascism” by British authors Stuart Hood & Litza Jansz. It contains both comic illustrations and writing. Post Reagan, in the Southern US, (which became “red state” America) the seeds of fascism were sprouting within state legislatures. The aggrieved great-grandchildren of the Confederate losers were determined to bring Christo-fascism to America. With the rise of Trump, it appears they are succeeding.
The ending of the book recalls Hitler’s own words in 1933:
“Only one thing could’ve stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.”
The original KKK was a terrorist organization, no different than Hamas or Hezbollah. Hitler looked to us as an example, when devising his Nazi expansionist racist evil.
The problem here is, the good guys are too busy worrying about norms and ruffling feathers to actually be brave and do what's necessary.
"accelerating to the point where we’re going to have a major—potentially, yes, a French Revolution style event."
There's a big difference between the French Revolution and the U.S., Russia, China, and a few others today: the governments have massive military resources to put down any grassroot revolution. The Democrats wouldn't order crowds in the street being bombed, but you can bet Trump would and his GOP ass lickers would support it.
It would have to be a situation so economically fucked that the military desert. It's one thing to recruit obese racist ICE dudes. Ordering the US military to turn on its citizens is something else entirely.
But we'll probably be too collectively lazy to do anything. As long as the wifi works, we'll be good...
And you asked about Barbie. For me, it was less about the film itself than the entire experience. I went with my mom and my godmother...god knows the last time wither of them went to a movie. All of the cultural stuff accompanying it was fun. Even in the movie, there were a lot of fun pop cultural references, like when they played "Closer to Fine" in that transport car. And it was interesting conceptually to see Ken work out how to be a man. His obsession with horses was great.
For a movie like that, I'm not looking for anything other than a bit of cleverness, a creative take, and a good time. Barbie had all of that.
Oppenheimer was two Wikipedia entries dramatized. Meh. Watched it again last year, liked it even less.
The "Barbenheimer" (is that what it was called?) hype was fun, and it was great to see both films do so well at the BO. Yes, "Barbie" was a feminist film, drew a lot of female audience members and it was the young ones who really needed to hear the message, so hopefully it did some good in that way. I just thought it could have been so much better (and I expected it to be with GG and NB the major creative forces). But even my wife thought it was meh. My grown daughter didn't even want to go. It was, more than anything else, a huge marketing campaign for Mattel (? or whoever makes Barbies). I haven't seen "Oppenheimer" since watching it in the theater, but then I haven't watched "Schindler's List" or "Saving Private Ryan" more than the one time in the theater either. Both are great films but also very long and heavy and really no desire to seem them again. Once was enough to earn my respect for their stories, acting, and filmmaking technique.
Re your response about the revolution: I hope you're right, Greg, that our military would never bomb masses of American citizens. But remember during the first coming of Trump how he had troops clear out a group of protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets so he could get a photo op with an upside down Bible in front of a church near the WH? The general later said he regretted it, but he did it, the troops did it., so I'm not too sure our military, whom some have said are mostly MAGA, wouldn't take out any serious rebellion against Trump & Co. I'm still in mild shock that our country has come to this. It was inconceivable 10 years ago. (I mean, once Trump won the Electoral College the first time, we knew it would be bad, but not as bad as it was; then the 2nd election [possibly fair and square, possibly rigged] we knew it would be horrible and yet still couldn't have predicted it would be this horrible.]) But resist we must as best we can so that hopefully democracy, decency, wish I could think of another d-word (English profs are suckers for alliteration) will prevail.
Thank you for having Brooke on again, Greg, and for this brilliant and very insightful conversation. I always learn so much from listening to Brooke and reading her books, and also from your great writing, podcasts...and the Five 8 with Stepanie and Donnie that helps keep us sane and brings us joy each week. Kudos! 💐❤️
Terrific having Brooke back, thank you! Happy Anniversary! Helping to keep us sane and informed in this ‘environment’ is no small task, not at all. Many, many thanks to you and Stephanie ‘LB’, and Donnie, and all of the fantastic guests you’ve had over the years. I am so happy to have been here all along the way ❤️🙏🏼
Thanks, Kim! The Five 8 would not be possible without you, so thanks right back!
Noel Casler is a truth telling national treasure. So are both of you. Fascinating conversation.
Thanks, Dawna.
Outstanding program. The lead-in of Ms. Harrington's reference to 'The Emperor's New Clothes' set a stage for time well spent listening to an intelligent discussion. Thank you!
Thanks, Kat!
IMO the Noem story needs to drop. What if the photos were from a Halloween costume? We've seen Kristie Noem's behavior. Is there anything that shouts "I married a cross dresser" or a gay man, one who struggled with sexual identity, etc? She does not appear to be the forgiving type.
I'm of mixed opinion on that. On the one hand, I feel bad for the guy, because he's a private citizen and should be entitled to privacy, especially when it concerns what floats his boat. Kinkshaming is not cool. Plus, I'd much rather have guys dress up as "bimbos" than do what Epstein and Trump did. On the other hand, his wife is literally Satan and it's hard to muster sympathy for Satan's dutiful spouse.
I don’t feel anything as I do not know him. However I look the story this way - how does it benefit our nation? It doesn’t. It’s a cheap distraction by master manipulators at the expense of others.
Ms. Noem, regardless of her mouth, has the right to a personal life as does Mr. Noem - as long as it falls within legal limits. Cross dressing isn’t illegal and harms no one.
Golden Rule consequence: How Trumpian does this story make the ‘teller’ appear.
Obama’s public behavior taught this nation a lot while in office; my grandmother taught me long before. I find I’m forced to delete a lot of what I’m thinking and often typing when I ‘Golden Rule’ my thoughts…
Difficult road to travel, this higher ground.
Thanks so much for having this discussion with Brooke, Greg. I find her focus on offshore banking to have been very prescient, and she is a very sophisticated guest.
I share your bewilderment about how extremely obvious and disturbing lies of the powerful, etc, are not discussed. This reminds me of what happened in the Soviet Union.
I agree that the business leaders, ‘AI’ bosses, and oligarchs would be far better off paying their taxes and supporting a sane democracy. They are bad even at self-interest because of their personality problems.
I think they are clearly proud of being Sauron, btw. They think being evil is cool.
With respect to the ‘AI’ bubble, while these systems are misused and overhyped, there is no question that they have revolutionized computer programming in the hands of experts. There are other cases where they are also extremely useful (e.g., because mathematics can be formalized, the guesses/hallucinations produced by machine learning programs can be checked in detail and used to aid in discovery). This in no way means everything can be automated (experts are required to guide them) or that the bubble is justified. But, to be fair, current ‘AI’ is a breakthrough despite our misgivings and revulsion about the way it is being thoughtlessly pushed.
Thanks, Susan.
Great point about them being bad at self-interest.
When we talk about AI, we mean generative AI, the AI that populates chatbots and writes novels and music and all of that slop. There's a lot of really great stuff AI does, in the medical field as one example, that everyone likes and wants. Heck, AI generated the transcript [than I then had to fix]. But that's not what these guys want. They want robot AI slaves so they don't have to adapt to humanity.
'They want robot AI slaves so they don't have to adapt to humanity.'
Eh, not all of them! :)
One thing I see quite a bit from a humanities perspective (not really from you) is that ‘AI’ is all nonsense and that all those associated with it are all clueless, culture-less, fascists. But this is not the case (even for generative AI), and Amodei is not the same as Altman.
For mental hygiene reasons, though, I never use it for everyday tasks, for writing, for making art, etc., and I haven’t yet used it for research or programming, but I would if it made sense.
Awesome and enlightening conversation. Thanks Brooke and Greg.
Thanks, Helen!
The short story is:
Trump is a Bibi and Putin Asset.
Epstein was a freelancer con who the Maxwells introduced to Mossad and the KGB. We will never know why Roberts time was up?
Meanwhile, Will there be a next Election?
Bingo.
There will be an election, but Trump will go all-out Putin-Orbàn to make it tilt in his favor.
Yep
I'm currently reading Darnton's The Revolutionary Temper--all about the build up to The Big Chopping, and I actually fear that we (United Staters) are no longer capable of that kind of collective action. And maybe that's to be expected and okay insofar as we shouldn't be a WE anymore anyway. If only WE could get enough of US to walk away from this abusive relationship we have been in since 1787, maybe we could have nice things one day. I just worry it's been bred out of us (even US) at this point. It's depressing AF.
I know what you mean, and I share that fear. What is it exactly keeping us together with these MAGA Nazis? What shared values do we even have? At what point does staying together become a sunk cost?
Before empires fall, they fracture. Rome fractured. The Ottomans fractured. Great Britain fractured. There's nothing but inertia that says we have to stay with Texas and Alabama...although I don't want to abandon the great people in those places. It is, yes, depressing AF.
There is a great podcast originating in England called Empire, Spotify has it. Goes back to the first known empire and moves forward. Demonstrates that all have a beginning, middle and end, the ends are dissected and seem to have one common denominator, a madman. Haven't found one where the madman existed at the start and was there at the end. Fingers crossed the imbecile breaks the mold.
Greg, so good, bravo and brava.
After digesting today's dialogue the words "the inevitability of delusion" danced in my head. Sounds like a good title for a book. The entire administration suffers from delusion. Why? These words from Brooke may answer this best,
"If you want to externalize all of your self-hatred, it is crucially important that you never introspect, that you never look inside, because what you’re going to find is ugly. So you just take all that ugliness and you put it out there, and you make it corporate policy, or you make it public policy, and you make it other people’s problem."
Starting a War, blowing up boats sailing the Caribbean the ultimate example of this.
I often wondered why the orange imbecile & co. act as they do. Yes they loathe themselves. Instead of punishing themselves they take it out on the rest of us. Their delusion is that We the People deserve to be punished rather than they themselves, furthermore they want to believe their shit doesn't smell, this especially in trump's case a very obvious lie, figuratively and literally.
Old Man:
Trump is a Psychopath.
Cal at 85 and 8 months.
For fun read the small book.
The Psychopath Test.
By Jon Ronson
Shall give it a go
Thanks, Old Man.
Yes, instead of TOO UGLY TO DATE it should be TOO UGLY TO GOVERN. Internally ugly, although with these people both meanings often apply...
And: I can smell him from here...
Yes, I think Brooke is really on to something there. They are externalizing their self-hatred, like vomiting it up, and making it our problem and our mess to clean up. And boy do we have a real mess to clean up!
What a terrific Prevail today! Brooke is brilliant and fascinating. Thanks for starting our weekend with this enlightening conversation.
I am re-reading a book I bought in London in 1994 called “Introducing Fascism” by British authors Stuart Hood & Litza Jansz. It contains both comic illustrations and writing. Post Reagan, in the Southern US, (which became “red state” America) the seeds of fascism were sprouting within state legislatures. The aggrieved great-grandchildren of the Confederate losers were determined to bring Christo-fascism to America. With the rise of Trump, it appears they are succeeding.
The ending of the book recalls Hitler’s own words in 1933:
“Only one thing could’ve stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.”
Thanks, CLD. Brooke is the best.
The original KKK was a terrorist organization, no different than Hamas or Hezbollah. Hitler looked to us as an example, when devising his Nazi expansionist racist evil.
The problem here is, the good guys are too busy worrying about norms and ruffling feathers to actually be brave and do what's necessary.
TGIF🎉🎉🎉One week closer to the midterms! And the 25th Amendment!
Yes!!!
What a fascinating conversation.
Only have time for one comment before class:
"accelerating to the point where we’re going to have a major—potentially, yes, a French Revolution style event."
There's a big difference between the French Revolution and the U.S., Russia, China, and a few others today: the governments have massive military resources to put down any grassroot revolution. The Democrats wouldn't order crowds in the street being bombed, but you can bet Trump would and his GOP ass lickers would support it.
So, no: revolution is not possible.
It would have to be a situation so economically fucked that the military desert. It's one thing to recruit obese racist ICE dudes. Ordering the US military to turn on its citizens is something else entirely.
But we'll probably be too collectively lazy to do anything. As long as the wifi works, we'll be good...
And you asked about Barbie. For me, it was less about the film itself than the entire experience. I went with my mom and my godmother...god knows the last time wither of them went to a movie. All of the cultural stuff accompanying it was fun. Even in the movie, there were a lot of fun pop cultural references, like when they played "Closer to Fine" in that transport car. And it was interesting conceptually to see Ken work out how to be a man. His obsession with horses was great.
For a movie like that, I'm not looking for anything other than a bit of cleverness, a creative take, and a good time. Barbie had all of that.
Oppenheimer was two Wikipedia entries dramatized. Meh. Watched it again last year, liked it even less.
The "Barbenheimer" (is that what it was called?) hype was fun, and it was great to see both films do so well at the BO. Yes, "Barbie" was a feminist film, drew a lot of female audience members and it was the young ones who really needed to hear the message, so hopefully it did some good in that way. I just thought it could have been so much better (and I expected it to be with GG and NB the major creative forces). But even my wife thought it was meh. My grown daughter didn't even want to go. It was, more than anything else, a huge marketing campaign for Mattel (? or whoever makes Barbies). I haven't seen "Oppenheimer" since watching it in the theater, but then I haven't watched "Schindler's List" or "Saving Private Ryan" more than the one time in the theater either. Both are great films but also very long and heavy and really no desire to seem them again. Once was enough to earn my respect for their stories, acting, and filmmaking technique.
Re your response about the revolution: I hope you're right, Greg, that our military would never bomb masses of American citizens. But remember during the first coming of Trump how he had troops clear out a group of protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets so he could get a photo op with an upside down Bible in front of a church near the WH? The general later said he regretted it, but he did it, the troops did it., so I'm not too sure our military, whom some have said are mostly MAGA, wouldn't take out any serious rebellion against Trump & Co. I'm still in mild shock that our country has come to this. It was inconceivable 10 years ago. (I mean, once Trump won the Electoral College the first time, we knew it would be bad, but not as bad as it was; then the 2nd election [possibly fair and square, possibly rigged] we knew it would be horrible and yet still couldn't have predicted it would be this horrible.]) But resist we must as best we can so that hopefully democracy, decency, wish I could think of another d-word (English profs are suckers for alliteration) will prevail.
Thank you for having Brooke on again, Greg, and for this brilliant and very insightful conversation. I always learn so much from listening to Brooke and reading her books, and also from your great writing, podcasts...and the Five 8 with Stepanie and Donnie that helps keep us sane and brings us joy each week. Kudos! 💐❤️