After Party with Emily Jashinsky - "Happy Hour": Emily Remembers 9/11, Tucker’s “Wacky” Conversations, and Building a Life Offline: Emily Answers YOUR Questions

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

On this week’s edition of “Happy Hour,” Emily Jashinsky responds to the strong reaction to her recent Hasan Piker segment and explains why she’s willing to push back against “definition inflation,” even when that means disagreeing with people on her own side. She reflects on how Charlie Kirk’s approach to argument and persuasion changed over the years and considers how short-form media makes nuance increasingly difficult. Emily also shares some behind-the-scenes thoughts on her interview with Kathie Lee Gifford and dives into the relationship between materialism and identity politics. She explains why she believes Tucker Carlson is deliberately trying to cut out the noise and influence of traditional media, even when that results in some wacky conversations. Emily tackles voter ID and the potential for abuse with absentee ballots and discusses President Trump’s tendency to negotiate in public, including the real-world consequences of his rhetoric. She also shares her memories of 9/11 as a young girl in Wisconsin and reflects on the profound generational divide between those who remember the fear of that day and younger Americans who know it only through screens. Emily rounds out the show by making the case for intentionally building a life around church, neighbors, friends, community, and real human interaction rather than digital substitutes, and more… Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, everyone, welcome back to Happy Hour. It is the version of After Party we do every Friday here on the podcast feed. I love doing it. You all know how much I love doing it. It's where I answer the questions you all sent in to Emily at Devil MayCare Media over the course of the week. Live to tape, that is. The podcast isn't airing live, but I'm going through the emails live after having flagged them in my inbox over the course of the week. Please do subscribe on YouTube.

If you haven't yet, so appreciate you subscribing here on the podcast feed, it really does help a lot. Your likes, reviews. And even just sharing the podcast with a friend, it's all so enormously helpful. Let's go ahead and get into the questions from the week. This one is from Guy who says, I don't understand why people aren't talking about the 1984 movie called Countdown to Looking Class, starring amongst others, Scott Glenn, who plays a reporter who's on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the straight horror movies. And although it's not about Iran, it's about the ultimate use of nuclear weapons. Really, nobody's mentioned it in any discussion I've seen. It's currently on YouTube.

I have not seen that film. I've actually, I don't believe I've actually even heard of the film. So great recommendation, perhaps, from guys, something to check out. This is from Abe. Passes along a substack link, the headline here. Oh, it's from Dr. Malone, Dr. Robert Malone. Well-being, Mental Illness in Women. I'm actually going to add that to my reading list right now.

Looks like a good recommendation, Abe. Eddie says, I chuckled at your description of Downton Abbey, having just finished binging shameless, which couldn't be more different. Not cozy. Have you seen that? It's very harsh, even brutal in terms of social issues, but manages to treat them quite fairly addiction, abortion theft, social security net, sex, etc., or social safety net, sex, etc. It stopped filming in late 2020, and I was struck by how courageous they were on the bizarre COVID protocols right in the middle of them. And at its core, a quite sweet story of family love, which I did not see coming. Oh, and the Americans is quite, is quite spectacular. Yes, I agree. I love the Americans. I've not watched Shameless. I may watch Shameless because my boyfriend I love to do a good prestige TV binge where it's like not being

able to put a book down. You know, we're both, we both work in media. So I'm always looking for the next prestige binge. And Shameless hadn't really been on my list for whatever reason. my X algorithm keeps delivering me shameless clips. And admittedly, it looks like an excellent show, but it's not one that I've gotten to yet. One that I probably will get to at some point, but not one that I've gotten to yet. So, yeah, post-Sopranos, we have a lot to catch up on that's been airing like slow horses, just came back. Scrubs is coming back, which I'm very excited about. Also, St. Dennis Medical, I think, is coming back soon.

excited for that one. Man, I literally made a list. Oh, it's the first time that I've not watched The It's Always Sunny premiere as it was happening, literally since I think like the second season of that show when I was way too young to be watching it. So I have a big backlog right now,

and that might be one to add to higher up on the list. Oh, this is so funny. This one is from Natalie, who I've been going back and forth with, and Natalie mentioned, you know, kind of frustration with black pilling in the podcast world and not always putting everything in context of some of the good news

in addition to the bad news. And I think I mentioned, we have Tucker scheduled to come on next week. I think I mentioned I might read it to him on the show. So you get his response as somebody who, in my experience, is a pretty actually genuinely happy person, despite covering constantly a lot of deeply unhappy topics that make people miserable and Natalie passes along a picture of mug she has. One is Tucker flipping off the camera on one is a Christmas mug that says joy and the O is Tucker's face laughing in a Santa hat. Okay, this is from Katie, who we have lots of fun disagreements, fun disagreements on tough subjects, but I think so appreciate Katie writing in. Let's see, this is, oh, I think, I want to say that I, let me just make sure. Okay, yeah. So Katie says, Emily, I promise this the last time I'll

write in about this. Please know I'm not trying to change your position. I just feel like I'm not explaining myself well. You keep citing atheist Christopher Hitchens making the argument that an embryo is a human life because it has human DNA and is scientifically alive. That is the semantic argument I am disagreeing with. The idea that something that is scientifically alive is, quote, life in any meaningful way. An embryo on a petri dish is not a human being. A couple wishing for a baby may create dozens of embryos, implant some, destroy all others, and feel no moral dilemma. Those that do are confusing scientific terminology for literal meaning. If a pregnancy results in a baby is born, they've created life.

Every month, women who shed their uterine linings may unknowingly shed fertilized embryos. No human being has died. An embryo is not the same as a baby. This is so glaringly obvious, it feels like I shouldn't have to say it. The religious idea of souls is a totally separate idea, and not one I'm addressing. I think issues of faith aren't arguable, but it seems like Hitchens has gotten caught in a linguistic trap. Life is more than a technical designation. You said autonomy can't be prioritized overtaking a human life. I agree. But living human cells are not the same as life.

So I think Katie and I've been going back and forth on this question for almost a year now, if I'm remembering correctly when we started doing happy hour not long after, Katie wrote in with some questions about this exact issue. And I think Katie's last line in this email does really get to the heart of what the debate is. Living human cells are not the same as life. So I agree that this is about semantics. I think when your sentence respectfully says living human cells are not the same as life, you've, that's sort of a self-defeating sentence because it says living human cells are not the same as life. Because my argument is that you have to draw the line, whether you're religious or not, at life. So let me, I actually did

respond to Katie on this one. I said, I totally see what you're saying about semantics, but my response would be that's actually the only proper universal definition of life. And now I'll just add, I think we see that in Katie's last sentence being living human cells are not the same as life. What we are describing is something that's alive. So if that is separate from life, then we're not operating on, I think, a consistent definition of life. We're one that actually makes a lot of sense. What does it mean to be alive? If the human cells, and I would say it's a fertilized embryo, that is alive, how is it not the same as life? If it's alive. So I added weaker life, lifeless lived, et cetera. I don't disagree that it's different. I insist it's worth protecting

universally because of those differences, which is why the one thing we all have in common is meaning that broad Hitchin's definition of life. So that was my response to Katie. That is, I think I'll stand by that, emailed that when Katie's message came in because her not really sparked my attention. And so, yeah, I think that, I think that stands. Always happy to hear disagreement, though. Emily DoMakehaer Media is where dot com is where you can reach me. But I do, like many of you, really enjoy kind of going back and forth on some of these deep philosophical questions. And I haven't always had that particular position. But the more that I thought about this issue, And the more deeply I dug into actually the science, the more I became totally convinced that life at its earliest and latest stage, whether you're, you know, in a Terry Shivo circumstance or you're implanted in your mother's womb, that is where we draw the line at right to life, constitutionally protected right to life.

right to life, it doesn't mean, for example, that we don't still save the mother if the mother's life is in danger, right? That is an admission that this life is different, right? But it's not an admission that we should not protect all life. And I think that is hard to wrap your head around for all of us, especially all of us moderns. So I don't, um, I don't begrudge Katie for having this disagreement whatsoever. But I think we finally landed on what the real heart of the disagreement is. And it's the definition of life itself. And my rebuttal would be, Katie, my suggestion is that if you say living human cells,

you've conceded life, you just, I suppose, would say there are more valuable types of life. I would say that even if, like I would, let's say hypothetically, I were even if to cede that point, I don't think that gives us an excuse not to protect all alive human beings. And we're talking about human life, by the way, not life in general, like an individual, you know, skin cell, for example. All right. Jesse says, based on some of the comments I've read, I might be one of your few viewers

who agrees with you about Hassan Piker. It's completely annoying to watch media person. now these engage in Piker bashing performance art. I don't agree with a lot of what Piker says, but he seems like the kind of guy I could have a good faith conversation with. I've come to realize that a lot of people don't get the difference between decency politics and operating good faith. There's nothing good faith about that performative stunt Scott Jennings pulled. And Jesse, I remember when this email came in. I read the headline. I flagged in the inbox for after party. And I was like, oh, I should go look at the comments on the Piker video for a Monday show. And I looked at the comments.

I was like, damn, even more opposition than I expected. I expected that to be perhaps, like, the video that made my audience most angry. But it was actually more than I expected, which, listen, Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com, you can always reach me there. I was actually even arguing with some people in the comments because I totally, totally understand and respect, disagreement with me on this issue. I will say to Jesse's point. One, I don't know that I could have a good faith conversation with Asan Piker, and I don't know that the problem would be me. But I don't know. I mean, he sat down with, you know, my friend Sagar and Jedi totally disagrees with

Hassan Piker on a range of things. And they had a pretty good faith exchange on breaking points about, particularly about whether or not it's fair for the media and Republicans to be treating Hassan Piker like a campaign issue. And Sagar is like, well, it seems like it is perfectly fair because you yourself have gone out and campaigned. And I thought that exchange was good faith. So maybe I'm wrong on that.

but he is he is I don't know him personally so I guess it's just hard to judge from a distance but I also think YouTube comments again people are more than welcome to disagree with me on this so many of the YouTube comments I was seeing were saying things like you didn't address this or you didn't address that well I think maybe you didn't watch the full video because I did and actually in a way that probably agreed with some of those commenters I did address the framed behind him on his set now from September 12th of the World Trade Center's burning, for example. And I was just before recording this, talking to a sort of trusted Gen Z conservative I know here in Washington. And this person had some of the same concerns that I had, which is that like, if we treat

everything that comes out of Hassan Piker's mouth as socialism, communism, or Maoism, And again, this is a person who has said he thought Mao was a great leader. Not a good thing to say. And I'm not even just talking about the kind of literal question of whether Mao was great in some definition of the word great. If you're saying great in terms of like world historic leader, yes, Mao was a world historic leader. But I don't, I mean, Piker's gone beyond that and has expressed genuine admiration for Maoism. You know, when someone talks as much as he does, it's hard to pin down exactly what's kind of bullshitting and just this sort of casual conversation and what is reflective of somebody's genuine ideology. But all that is to say, that makes this kind of slippery to begin with, but all that is to say, this person I was talking to you was saying, if we treat everything as an example of socialism or communism or communism or communism.

Maoism when it actually comes along, then it's going to be much more difficult for conservatives to make the case that this is real, full-blown socialism. And so what I was trying to do in that segment, I suppose, is distinguish between what I see, and that applies across the board, what I see as real evidence of bad moral character or something. support for violence or enabling a violence or, you know, anything that is like genuinely objectionable. I think it's important to separate that because I don't want to numb people to overt Jew hatred. I don't want to, I don't want people to get numb to that. And especially because I buy, as I've said here before, my friend Roger Dreher's thesis that, that

we could be rapidly approaching a Weimar period, that we could be a depression away from a Yimar period where people's economic precarity combined with cultural decadence does nudge them to scapegoat via real bigotry. So I'm like part of the reason that I think it's a valuable thing to do is for for that purpose, right, to help us be. clear-eyed because people who aren't in the trenches and politics constantly get a bit of a different message from some of this than people who are. Like if you're if you're emailing into the show, if you're listening to the show, you're probably pretty politically savvy and you're probably pretty read into politics and culture. But that's not the, you know, median American voter

who has, you know, is perhaps not even that interested and has, you know, has a lot of, you know, is perhaps not even that interested. and has a lot going on. And if politics isn't that interesting to you, you're probably not engaging with a ton of political content. So anyway, all that is to say, part of the reason I did that segment was to sort of precisely, to try to precisely nail down an accurate picture so that we're not arguing against a phantom.

And particularly because, as Jesse, references here what Scott Jennings did with racism. I think sometimes people get frustrated when I punch right, but the one thing that I do kind of have no qualms about punching right on, other than like corruption and grift and that sort of thing. But the one thing I do have no qualms about punching right on is definition inflation, because I saw how deeply corrosive it was to the culture. It's maybe the time that I was coming of age. You know, I've, talked before about the book that really helped me see politics and animated my ideology was Charles Murray's coming apart because that helped me put into words what I had kind of sensed my whole life,

which was that people on the coasts were looking down on people between the coasts. We kind of already know that. People who live in superzips. But in a way that was very ignorant. It didn't actually even really understand anymore what they were arguing against. They were also arguing against a phantom. And I thought, like, probably because of the cauldron in which my ideology was formed because I was coming of age in this time period as woke one was really building. And it happened to me in a college campus, the definition inflation, um, on trans issues, for example. Like, I've just seen it up close so often.

And maybe it's letting my personal experience cloud my judgment. You're always welcome to disagree with me on this. But that is the one thing that I have no qualms. Um, not that I ever really have. qualms. I don't think it's a good use of my time. I think a good use of my time, I've explained this before, a good use of conservatives and media in general is to fill holes that aren't being filled by corporate media, which is constantly, as we've seen, punching right more than punching left, even though it's supposed to be punching right and left equally. And so I try to fill gaps that

aren't being filled. And so arguing, making an argument that I don't hear a lot of being made, that's usually something that I'll try to do. And this I just think is important enough to warrant it, given how, again, corrosive, arguing against phantoms can be, because when you're calling someone something that they aren't, it does build a lot of resentment. It builds nihilism or breeds nihilism. So, thank you, Jesse. I really do appreciate that a lot. Matt says, you've mentioned that your love of writing motivated you to become a journalist. Are there any authors who inspired your, whose style you try to emulate? If you could write like any author, who would it be in why? For my part, I stumbled on Orwell's six rules.

ago based almost all my writing on those rules. Although Matt Taibi wrote a great essay and have fun using animal adjectives are. So for now, for instance, if I want to call someone sneaky, then I'll use vulpine or feline. That's a good one. If I could write like anyone, though, it'd probably be Vladimir Navakov. I can remember reading Lolita for the first time and thinking, how is it possible for anyone to write so beautifully? Yeah, it's a good question, Matt. For me, the answer I always go with is Joan Didion, which is a very millennial female response to that question. But I love the cleanliness and the precision in Joan Didion's writing, but it's also not at the same time. Totally, what's the best word for it?

Totally antiseptic. Totally. That might not even be the right word. Totally. It's clean and precise, but it still has so much style and humanity. And that's a really, I think, difficult juxtaposition in writing. and especially, I don't love Diddian's fiction, but I love Diddine's nonfiction and essays. And I think there's a really hard balance to strike, but I think it's actually one that allows you to do kind of

literary nonfiction in a way that is persuasive and clear and emotive. And that's so, like to be that precise and to be that clean in your writing while also being so emotive, it is such a rare combination and it's one that I think is rare for a reason, which is that it's, it's very, very effective and hard to do. So that's my answer to that. Yeah, it could go on. So a lot of it becomes inside baseball with, you know, writers, but that's a really good question. Here's Hank. I'm just a poor benighted boomer who can't possibly understand streamers without an explanation, but let me take a wackier comments about Hassan Piker as regards to Piker changing like Charlie Kirk.

Is there anything in Charlie's career that remotely resembles calling for Rick Scott to be murdered, which is what he essentially did or saying capitalist's blood should run in the streets? Well, to be clear, Hank, I'll stop right there. And I said, if I'm remembering correctly in the segment, I said, I did not, I'm not saying there are apples and apples if I'm remembering that. Because I think it's the same thing with Hassan and Nick Fuentes. I don't think these are apples to apples comparisons. I certainly don't think Hassan and Charlie are apples to apples comparisons. My point there is that when

people are doing an enormous amount of public media and speaking over the course of a career that starts when you're really young, you do often see real substantive, genuine changes. And I think what is very clear in the last year is that Hassan Piker has realized in order to be an effective messenger. And in order to promote his preferred vision for America, he has to change. I think it was more calculated, but I don't know him personally. So that's my read on it, that there's something calculated about it. I would hope it also reflects a personal maturation that, you know, some of this off-the-cuff rhetoric, joking, all of that when you're in a position of increasing influence is not healthy. For Charlie, I watched that play out up close, and I think he had,

a real, what I mean by that is I watched his career evolve up close. And earlier in both of our careers, we had a lot of disagreements. And I handled most of those privately. And what I saw in the last couple of years of his life in particular was absolutely genuine, personal conviction at the best way to argue, communicate, and persuade. So that's, that's, I believe I made it clear in the segment I'd have to go back and look, but that I wasn't saying it's the same thing. Now, Hank goes on to say, and are there any far-right influencers that have found influence in the Republican Party the way Piker has found a home with so many Democrats? You always emphasize that not every person critical of Israel is anti-Semitic. Is it also a possibility that people who take this position are lying? Piker has a habit of saying things he has to apologize for. We deserve 9-11, then he walked it back. He needed to be careful about his trace of words, about murdering Rick Scott. You've even noted that he he was laughing with a picture of 9-11 in the background that some of his apologies were done with a wink with a wink suggesting he wasn't serious. If you have any doubts about his dishonesty, note that right after Charlie Kirk was murdered, he expressed shock. But just a couple weeks ago, he participated

in a sing-along to a song considered by many to be mocking Charlie Kirk and his supporters, with the audience joining in and his co-hosts laughing. Doesn't suggest that he's quite the victim of people misunderstanding a new media? Maybe he's just a lying anti-Semitic, any American, any capitalist bigot who's just trying to cover his tracks. Yeah, I think maybe he is. I mean, I don't know him personally. I'm trying to assess him as honestly and precisely as possible from a distance. And I would say, of course, people who are critical of Israel could be lying and could be anti-Semitic. But until they say something that is overtly anti-Semitic, and everything that he says seems to me to be very anti-Israel,

the possible exception you can make, I brought up this comment, was the inbred. comment that he's made, but he is correct when he says he uses that comment about lots of people. It's one of his preferred insults is to call people inbred. So that complicates the picture. And it's not my job to, you know, say definitively someone is X, Y, or Z. It's my job to kind of lay all of the puzzle pieces out. And this is actually what I think the difference is between a lot of people in new media and old media. I don't believe in holding the audience's hand and telling them you have to think X, Y, or Z.

I believe in putting the pieces out in a way that may complicate or build on the kind of stereotype or caricature or a consensus picture that's developed in media. So, of course, you can leave open the possibility that someone I don't know is lying or going one direction or the other. I definitely think he's anti-capitalist and anti-American. Absolutely. He said he's anti-American. And he certainly said he's anti-capitalist, but in terms of bigotry, you have to take somebody seriously when they're out there saying, as he did, what was it at the Oxford Union, with, I thought, pretty good reasoning that anti-Semitism is a scourge and that anti-Semitism is bad. So, I mean, that just complicates the picture. And I think the audience should have as much information as possible to make that point. Now, with regard to the Charlie sing-along, that was in enormously bad taste.

And it's actually one thing I regret not bringing up in that segment. When Charlie was killed, he was telling his people, like, you can see he's reacting. This is what's compelling about Twitch streamers is that he's reacting in real-time to it happening. The news comes in. You can watch the clip of him seeing it happen, seeing it play out, out. And he's saying, no, no, no, this is not a good thing. This is not a good thing. And he seemed to be framing it personally and saying, I could be next, right?

Like, this could come for me too. And unfortunately, he's correct about that. But, you know, if I were in a conversation with him, I would say then perhaps we shouldn't be even in jest calling for the murder of senators when we have big audiences of people who are, according to polling, more inclined to accept political violence. That would be young people on the left. So I don't know what's in Hassan Piker's heart. mind. You know, he talks a lot. So without knowing him really well personally, I can't make that conclusion. But people are certainly able to hit that conclusion. I just think it's important to have kind of a full picture or the full, all the puzzle pieces that are available to us. Let's see.

This is Donald, who says, hey, Emily, I wanted to get your thoughts in a matter. I've been thinking about a lot. And that's whether personal political labels mean anything anymore. For example, if you're conservative, then you must be right leaning. And if you're right leaning, then you must be a maga hat wearing Trump supporting Republican, and the same goes for the opposite direction. If you're liberal, then you must be a Democrat. And if you're a Democrat, then you must be a progressive. And if you're progressive, then you must be a leftist when in reality, all some or none of that could be true or not true. Personally, at most, I'll say in the middle politically, even though most of the opinions I have would be considered, quote unquote, conservative, because there's so many

assumptions that people automatically make in their mind once they hear that word before they they ever strike up a conversation with me. And that's what I don't want to happen. What do you think? Do you think they solve meaning or do you think they've lost all value? Personally, I don't think they have that much value anymore. God bless and have a great weekend. Donald, it's a good question. I would say generally their short hands, like right or left, is a shorthand that still helps us situate to what extent someone, for example, might be interested in a much more robust. And I'm not talking about, like, J.D. Vance debating this policy for stay-at-home moms. I'm talking about a much more robust, Medicare for all, or, what's another good example, Medicare for all, seizing the wealth

of billionaires, banning billionaires, style of federal government intervention. I still think it's a kind of useful shorthand because most people who disagree with that are actually on the right and are generally voting Republican. So in general, I think the labels are still useful orientations for conversation that direct us in one way or the other. But I also think social media, especially in an age of a political realignment, makes us overly reliant on those labels because it truncates, you know, short form video, for example, is huge.

And I started doing shorts on our YouTube channel recently, and you realize, like, I did a short on Dolly Parton and one on Gloria Steinem. And my takes are always about, like, six minutes long, which is still, I think, fairly short. And they have to be two minutes to be a short. So I have to do like a couple takes to get to a point where it's short enough to narrow it down or to window it down to a point where it's short enough.

And you see the challenges of remaining nuanced and deep on any given issue when you're doing that. It's actually crazy. So, you know, restrictions can be great blessings because they can kind of force you to be more concise and more persuasive, but they also bring challenges with them. And I think social media, given that it does prize, brevity. I know you can go over what, 280 characters on X now, but then it hides some of the post. And so it baked into the cake on X is shorter form conversation. It's incentivized. And the same is true in a world of short form video. And so I think we've become overly reliant on those

labels. And because I think social media incentivizes extremism, I know the algorithm incentivizes extremism. One way to make a very extreme point is to be overly reliant on the label. The right, you know, using someone as an example of the right, the right is all racist, homophobic and bigoted, whatever, or the left is all this, that, and the other thing. So, yes, I think it's, I think it's, we're in a time of political realignment where the labels are already less meaningful and social media makes that problem much worse. But generally, they're okay. Marlowe says, very interesting show, touching on three people, I have no time for yet. I took the time for you. Thank you, Marlo.

Never was a fan of Kathy Lee, and that is all I'm going to say about that. Okay, so let me interject here, Marlowe. I had so many questions for Kathy Lee. I watched so much Kathy Lee in college for whatever reason because my roommate and one of my best friends to this day. And I love Kathy Lee and Hoda. You know, they would have their glasses of wine at like 11 a.m. And even when they weren't drinking them, just it was, it was somewhat of, it was somewhat ironic and somewhat not ironic. Like you genuinely liked them. But you also were like, these are your crazy aunt. who are day drinking and covering pop culture, sometimes venturing into the news. And it was just hilarious from a college student's perspective to watch that. So I was really excited. I had a lot of questions about TV, TV history for Kathy Lee. And in true Kathy Lee form, she just wanted to talk about what she wanted to talk about, where her mind was going and that sort of thing.

So it was interesting in its own right. But as somebody who's just fascinated by television, I hope I'll have another chance to at some point get her take on the kind of history. She is really one of the most successful people in the history of the medium. And so, yeah, that was quite an interview. Mala goes on to say, Jennifer Welsh makes me physically ill when I see her pinched face and listen to her grading voice stripping with condescension. Asson Piker, I tried to understand your take but got lost. What I think you're trying to say is the media is painting him as a bigot when he may not be in. It matters because his followers see him differently.

Yeah, I think that's fair, Marla. And I also think it's totally fair that you got lost because I'm trying to be aware of my own faults and shortcomings as a journalist and a broadcaster. You know, it's interesting. I was thinking, again, about the medium today. On the Sirius XM show I do, there are hard stops because there are breaks. On After Party, one thing I love about it is, yes, I have to take a break like three times a show. but there's no hard break like in TV or in radio you have to take a break around the 20 minute mark around the 40 minute mark and then you know another one something like that but it is it can be

kind of disorienting in your own mind to not have to take a break and to just be you right so that it is interesting and I think sometimes that is a shortcoming that I have and a fault that I have that I am working on so I don't think you got lost for any reason that had something to do with an external factor was probably me. And Marla goes on to say, I'm concerned that he is selling his sad, lonely, disconnected followers alive, promising them socialism will be the answer of their problems

while charging them monthly as a capitalist, spewing their hate and streams, validating them, and possibly encouraging them to commit violence, while his hands remain clean, sickening once he stepped at the political fray, didn't he have to face hyperbolic attacks? Doesn't matter if they are true? And that gets back to Hank's point, Marlowe. You're kind of addressing that as like,

when Hassan saw himself in the Charlie Kirk assassination, potentially his future than Charlie Kirk assassination, he was really upset by it. And then he was more willing to treat it as a joke after a year, which is somewhat natural when you have distanced from a shocking, tragic event. But I think that gets to that point. And to him, you know, wishing death on or not wishing, but, you know, saying if you're concerned about this,

go kill Rick Scott speaking flippantly about political assassination. Yeah, I think that might be a kind of mental or psychological disconnect. connect. And Marla says, I just wish the right would focus on the fact. He is honestly the best example of why we need to stop birth tourism. Thank you for trying to explain new media. Sorry, I'm not getting it. No, Marla, please don't apologize. If you're not getting it, it's probably because I have my own shortcomings as a broadcaster. But it's, this is my biggest concern. And I got into this with Ryan on breaking points a bit this week. And it's one of the most interesting places or one of the more fruitful places of debate that I've been to with Ryan is that I'm sorry

I just bumped the mic I have concerns about the materialism that I think are often inherent in socialism and when Ryan would would argue that's that's not true but when I distinguish between materialism and identitarianism I often say you can really argue that materialism necessarily leads to identitarianism I think those categories are good because a lot of materialists don't believe that they do necessarily, like, I think that's actually a genuinely fair debate. Does materialism necessarily lead to identitarianism, to identity politics, to stripping people to their racial categories or their other identity categories, right? Does it lead to intersectionality? Does it lead to treating people kind of as political widgets or

cultural widgets? And I have real fears that it does. I think we saw that happen over the course the last decade and I you know I still think I think you all know I still think that it's a it's still baked into a lot of the left that the kind of woke 2.0 is still there and people are grappling with it and trying to suppress it for political reasons but this is a very fruitful I found debate that I have with people who are more socialist which is kind of what do you fill Does socialism lead down And this is the Sultanese

in Harvard speech, right? Do socialism and capitalism in their purest realizations necessarily lead to Stalin, necessarily lead to you know, raw

exploitation, chattel slavery on the capitalist side? We covered the Jamel Hill debate with Camille Foster. I obviously don't think that's true on the, I don't think it's fair to see that particular issue, but that would be the debate. And this is a huge part of the debate that people like Tom Holland and Richard Dawkins

and Ayan Herciel-L-Lee are grappling with right now, is Christ the engine that fueled classical liberalism and the most moral political order for all of its faults which are many and serious and systemic in some cases but because man has fallen from a Christian perspective but is Christ that engine and when you take that away what are you left with are you left with classical Rome ancient Greece or are you which by the way had religion, of course, pagan religion, but different than what we saw take off after Christ. Again, there are disagreements on the timeline. It's like Richard Carrier. There's some people we've talked about stoicism here before. Disagreements on the timeline, but that's, that is my

position. And so it's, I actually think what Marley you just picked up on is a central concern. All right. Ren says, thought I saw you or Megan have Tucker. coming up on the network sometime soon. I have a bit of constructive criticism for him. I used to be a regular viewer of Tucker on Fox and continue to follow him after he left the network. I know he advertises that he spends a lot of time in his cabin in the woods now and does not go on the internet. Latelyest takes in positions and things have gotten a bit out there and almost sounds like they're coming from a guy who lives in a cabin in the woods and does not go on the internet. I'm sorry, I do not have any specific examples. I don't have time to dig through clips of a show,

but he's either said things or a guest on the show that will give some really outlandish takes that he seems to accept his gospel. I'm a big fan of Megan and support independent journalism. I understand she casts a wide net. One thing I appreciate about her show is that it seems like she has at least a small team of people who do some journalism and confirms some facts before she brings a guest on or makes any assertions about her opinion on issues. To me, it seems like Tucker's just shooting from the hip. And while that would be fine for a normal podcast figure because of his background, his audience expects a little more due diligence. Enjoy your content and just feel compelled to email you on this. Yeah, we do have Tucker coming up next week. You know, I think he sees himself as a man

in the woods who doesn't want what he broadcasts to be polluted by media chatter. I think he has talked about wanting to kind of have an existence that's very different from what he had in northwest Washington for most of his life or even Southern California. So I think he's kind of intentionally trying to cut a lot of that out and, you know, not care about the people he's. feels led him astray about the system he feels led him astray for so many years. And I totally understand that. I do, of course, think people with big platforms should always do their due diligence. And there are things that guests on Tucker's show certainly have said that I think are bananas,

and maybe he thinks they're bananas, but I think he sees his platform as a place to kind of air those things out. And, you know, There are some guests. I'm trying to think of a good example recently. I'm like, oh. But I think he wants it to be an approximation as most as possible to like the wacky conversations that people have that still have more wisdom than all of the highly educated people in the Beltway combined. So I think he sees it as a counterbalance. But maybe that's a good question for him. And that is the lawyer in Megan. And that's what I love about Megan's show is that she's obsessed with having the facts in evidence at her disposal. So, yeah, it's interesting. Alex says,

thanks for all the good work you do. Have you followed your work since you were on NatCon squad and really appreciated your good humor presence there. A quick follow-up from Monday show about the Associated Press and the influence of its style guide. Have you ever read anything about the genesis of Black with a capital B referring to black people culture? Oh, I lived it. I lived it. Alex. Yeah, I was, of course, in the media when that happened. It was a change that I think the AP mainstream back in the early 2020s, but it's difficult finding any reporting analysis on this. What do you think the solution to the politicization of the AP guide is?

Should there be a better style guide, conservative, non-woke journalists could use? Alex, he'll stop right there. I've worked on that myself. And, yeah, I mean, I've worked on federalist style guide. I've been behind the scenes of other style guide conversations. And there is an effort to get information in. newsrooms that have their own modifications of AP style. Usually a newsroom has its own version of AP style.

It generally adheres to AP style, but maybe the editor that really likes the Oxford comma or really hates the Oxford comma, whatever, they'll do their own modifications of it. And so I've put like hours and hours of time into meetings on this question. And I think it's a really, really important one. And the capital B has always been so. racist offensive and ridiculous. That's my perspective on it.

To capitalize B for one race and lowercase the W and white? I mean, on its face, that's pure racism. It's almost idolatry. I'm sure for some people it came from a good place of believing in racial equality and wanting to pursue racial equality,

but that is wrong. It's wrong. and I really object to it and maybe that is a fertile ground for a segment in and of itself it also hits so different after PW peak woke at least this last iteration of it

just reading the dry copy of a major publication following AP style now and seeing the B capitalizing what are you still doing like the fever has broken for some of you and nobody is speaking up on this so this is a great question Alex also asked if I've watched Person of Interest that started Jim Caviesel as a washed-up former CIA agent who's hired by a billionaire who made an AI system to prevent future 9-11-scale tax. But the machine predicts low-level violent crimes, which the government can't be bothered to do anything about.

So they try and save people. It begins as a semi-police procedural but becomes a meditation on AI systems while I have its time. I wrote a review you might like, which you can read here. Oh, it's at Law and Liberty. Law and Liberty is a great publication. So if you're interested in Alex's thoughts, I have not watched Person of Interest, but you can read that at Law and Liberty. Thanks, Alex. I really, really appreciate this. Really appreciate this. Shannon says, I'm a big fan of the show, and I'm wondering if you could help me with a conversation I recently had with a friend who is politically on the left.

We were discussing voter ID laws and other voting safeguards. She asked me for concrete evidence of voter fraud that would justify requiring photo ID and placing tighter limits on absentee voting, other than the questions surrounding the late-ariving ballots in the Spencer. Pratt mayoral race and a recent report I heard about missing thumb drives in Wisconsin election, I realized I had limited tangible examples to offer. What do you think of the strongest evidence-based arguments and documented examples of conservators should put forward in support of photo ID requirements and additional safeguards or restrictions for absentee voting? These measures seem like logical and important safeguards, but want to back up my beliefs with proof. I would especially appreciate any reliable studies, statistics, court findings, or specific cases you think are persuasive. Thank you for your insights Shannon. This is a really, really good question, Shannon. Thank you for it.

Now, I will say, actually, I disagree with probably a lot of folks on the right these days, that there is evidence of widespread systemic abuse of the lack of voter ID and the absentee problem. Certainly there are problems with mail-in harvesting that you could point to. Mali Hemingway's book rigged is great on what happened in Wisconsin in 2020, many other places with the Zuckbucks scheme in 2020. So I would start there 100%. That book is an excellent guide to the real problems. Like basically nobody has debunked my research in that book. And it's been six years. So I would start there for good evidence-based concerns about or patterns about the problems with some of our electoral systems and the integrity of our electoral systems.

My argument on voter ID and absentee balloting is just conceptual, and I think that's strong enough. If you can violate the sanctity of the ballot box, that is unacceptable. If it's not a significant infringement on anybody's rights to correct the problem, it is unacceptable not to correct the problem. worse, we just saw the highest level of net migration into the country, much of it, which was much of it being illegal, about at a minimum, 8 million people, that's the New York Times number, in about three years. And if you want people to have faith in a voting system after something like that happens, which we need to have, then you absolutely, with all of these new non-citizens residing in the country,

some of whom live in cities like Washington, D.C., where non-citizens can be on the voter rolls because they can vote in local elections. It's only logical that you would take steps to prevent something from becoming widespread or systemic. It's the same thing with absentee ballots. It's unacceptable that any one person's husband gets their absentee ballot, fills it out and replaces it. Before that person even knew it had come in the mail, and maybe they weren't going to vote. Maybe they weren't going to vote the way their husband did or their wife did. maybe your absentee ballot goes to an old address and someone feeling froggy fills it out and sends it in on your behalf. That is absolutely easy to do in our current system.

And because of the potential for abuse and because the solutions are simple and common sense, I think that is a very strong and persuasive argument, especially when you consider how fragile our constitutional republic is. specifically with regard to faith in elections. I mean, that is everything. So it's a high reward, low risk, I would say. That's a great question, Shannon. Brandon says, I hope your week is off to a great start. I've got to be honest, the digger I deepen the politics and geopolitics,

unless any of it seems to make. Take today, for instance, President Trump claimed gas prices will drop under $2 after the midterms, while repeating for what feels like the 40th time that Iran is on the verge of collapse and begging to negotiate. As an army veteran who once deployed twice during the Obama administration's Middle East operations, I'm genuinely baffled. Is the administration actually willing to use our sailors or Marines as leverage or friction points

in having a Middle Eastern blockade rather than admit a strategy isn't working and pivot? I hate sounding cynical, but having gone to war twice based on flawed premises, it's hard not to be. What's the actual angle here? If gas stays over $4 a gallon after the midterms, these claims just become another entry on a long list of disappointments. Beyond the official talking points, what's your actual take on this conflict? Is the situation on the ground as volatile as it looks from the outside since they won, best Brandon?

Brandon, God bless you for serving and God bless you for, you know, being willing to share your perspective as someone who did serve. There's two little perspective of people who have actually put their lives on the line for this country in media. So I'm grateful to you for writing in. This is, I think, a perennial problem. an enduring problem with Trump, is that his rhetoric is often sort of casual for strategic purposes, like the way he's riven on Ken Paxton, being dumb and ugly, basically, as I put it to some friends when he was giving his RNC convention speech last night, it's smart because it kind of neutralizes, and I think he's doing it intentionally, by the way, it kind of neutralizes

what, you know, the gut instinct of a lot of people is, they see Ken Paxson and are like, this guy seems kind of weird. And Trump is saying, yeah, I get it. We all think he's weird, but he's the best attorney general in the country. So I think sometimes it's strategic. Other times, I think it's not. I think he's just a television personality who realizes there's a lot of appetite for unvarnished constant commentary. And that's where I see his claims about gas prices. I see them in that kind of bucket of Trumpism. And the same thing with him claiming the war is going to wind down. The same thing with him ever lying about the war, about threatening to take out Iranian civilization, he negotiates in public. It's part of

art of the deal. And it's sometimes strategic. Sometimes it's just riffing. But he negotiates in public. And that, I think, does have consequences. I think it's has real world consequences because there are people putting their lives on the line for the country who trust the president of the United States not to mislead or lie. I think it does abuse to our trust and faith in the system. He is the president of the United States. He is not a businessman on Twitter anymore. And so as much as, you know, I think it's tactically unwise and often just unfair the way the media will treat everything he says as though he won't. He wants, wants the public to believe everything he says, right?

I think he, and I think the public understands that he's often being bombastic and he's negotiating in public and the media still doesn't understand how the public digest Trump. But I don't think it's a good thing to have the president of the United States doing that ever. And so it's also there are a lot of people who trust him. So to make those claims for the purposes of. surviving the midterms with a little bit less damage. Yeah, I think that's bad. I think it's a poor character, even if it is sort of in the same vein as a lot of other politicians, it's definitely more extreme from Trump. And I don't think it's good, whether it's a little lie or a big one.

The conflict in Iran, I think, has been a mistake since the first day. We've covered it here. I don't do a ton of coverage of it, um, constantly on this show, because I feel like since about April, um, I've had the same position on it. And, you know, we cover a lot of breaking news on breaking points. We do less breaking news on after party. But it all to me is like groundhog day. Because as Brandon points out accurately, it's like the 40th, we're on the brink of ending the war. And to me, it feels like he's just trying to get to the midterms. Um, and so, It obviously hasn't gone the way the administration wanted it to go from reporting. We know that the administration, a couple of people in the administration, and the president himself

certainly believed there was a higher likelihood that the government would collapse. And if they supported Israel and taking out the Ayatollah, there was just a good chance that the government collapsed, that the Kurds would be able to come in with reinforcements and that the people of Iran would take back the government. And even with all of that initial bombardment, it didn't happen. And so now, you know, it's in this position where because Iran did pull that lever on the Strait of Hormuz, which everyone who was negotiating this was aware could happen or was making these decisions was aware could happen. Because Iran actually did it. Unless we do significant military action that would almost certainly have to include boots on the ground, Trump can't end the war.

because that's taking a massive L. If Iran is collecting tolls and controlling, as an even bigger point of pride, 20% of global oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. And because Trump is caught in this position of not wanting to escalate to a ground war, well, not wanting to take a serious L on Iran, one that, by the way, would enrich them if they are collecting tolls. We are in a stalemate. And I'm praying every day for the soldiers overseas. civilians overseas, that they don't get caught up, more don't get caught up in these back and forths, these tit for tats, but it's a very dangerous situation. And who knows what happens after the midterms? Who knows what Iran does before the midterms? Who knows what Trump does

after the midterms? But when you don't have the will in the American public or the will in the Trump administration to commit to a ground war, the idea that we could do an aerial war longer than Midnight Hammer that had a more significant goal than Midnight Hammer of actually totally for good or for the indefinite future removing Iran's nuclear capacity or its capacity to create weapons grade nuclear program, then it was always going to go this way. And so, yeah, I think it's, I think it's been a total disaster. Thanks for that question, Brandon. Bob passes along, oh, relatedly, on Wall Street Journal article, headlined, Trump's top advisors confront possibility that Iran war lasts through end of term. And Bob says, it is hard to overstate both how depressing and yet realistic the prospect of this is. And if I'm remembering correctly, Bob is a veteran. Bob also served, go back and forth sometimes. And, that is, I think, probably the scenario that is, or a scenario that will be likely in that, it's kind of a conflict that is, what's the right way to put it?

It's not always hot, not a total cold war, of course, between the United States of Iran, but it is intermittent kinetic conflict, and it just kind of goes on in the background rather than the foreground with very minimal casualties, it's still going to cost us a ton of money. These tip for tat back and forth is depleting our munitions supply that is basically accepted across the board right now. And that's really significant if China is to make a move on Taiwan. It's significant for our allies in the Gulf in Europe who rely on American munitions and munitions manufacturing from American companies, for example, that we're now needing to

rebuild our stock, how problematic is that for allies? It still has a lot of problems, but it's maybe like a low-grade simmering conflict that goes on in the background because nobody can solve this impasse about the straight-of-war moves. So I don't think that's outside of the realm of possibility, as Bob says. Let's see. Hank says, I'd be interested in know how you remember the 9-11 terrorist attacks. I think he said once you were born in the early 90s, so it must be one of the most shocking experiences of your childhood. I was 10 when JFK was murdered. Nothing was ever the same after that. Yank, you know, I hear that from everybody who was your age when JFK was killed and people who were older when JFK was killed. And I totally believe it.

And I hear that about 9-11 from people who were my age. I was in, I think, third grade and I was on the L. School bus going down Highway C in Delafield, Wisconsin, right outside my elementary school for some reason I have a memory in my head of FM106 the local Milwaukee country station that the bus driver always played every morning announcing just in like a news break that I don't think they've been broken to the conversation about it but it was you know the radio stations have the news updates and this one said like there'd been a plane crash in Manhattan something like that I don't even think I knew what Manhattan was. And then my mom picked me up right after school, which was unusual.

She worked long hours typically, and I think she came and got me at like 2.30 p.m. or 3 p.m. when school wrapped. It was still bright outside. We went straight to church. She picked me up from gotten the car out of the cafeteria. We went straight to church and prayed with a lot of emotional, scared people. and then the next morning in third grade, my teacher got us around in a circle and tried to explain a bunch of third graders what had just happened.

Now, I know people whose teachers rolled out the TV carts for them, as you used to have to do, and played the news throughout September 11th itself. That did not happen at my school. They didn't tell us at all during the day what had happened, if I remember correctly. And actually, you know,

My friends on the East Coast just have such different stories, you know, almost as though you were in Hawaii on Pearl Harbor, then a lot of people I know in the Midwest who are a couple of degrees of separation, if not more, from people who are in one of the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon, just for regional purposes. There are less people that had direct connections. And I think it was even more scarring for people who are on the East Coast or, you know, on the West. Coast but did have a one degree of separation or direct connection, uh, those days. So, man, um, I think a lot of the zoomer irony on 9-11 is really jarring to people, even millennials, who were alive during it. You know, at some point, we all have to be able to joke about tragedies, right? Like maybe some people, some of you disagree with me on that, but it was Joan Rivers. is you said, like, you have to be able to make jokes about things just to get through the day.

Everything can be funny if you do it right. And so much of it is just, it feels to me like it's a really, it's not the type of humor that is even acknowledging what a traumatic day it was, because if you only experience it now through pixels, but you weren't somebody who was living and breathing on that day and remembers the terror. You know, I remember going home that night and looking up at an airplane and things. thinking, oh, shoot, is that coming for me? No, I was like eight or nine. And if you weren't living and breathing on that day, you just can't replicate what it was

like and the days afterwards, what it was like. So, yeah, that's a, that is a tough one that I don't think we've fully grappled with or we're prepared for just the generational differences on 9-11, because it makes your blood boil a lot of times if you see jokes that are overly flippant about 9-11 from young people who just, I don't think, totally even understand the level of trauma and the people who were trying to find their loved ones for days and weeks and months and were in utter anguish. The uncertainty that came with not knowing if there was going to be another attack on the homeland the next day, it was really a national terror.

So, yeah, that's my memory of it. Damien says, I wanted to start by saying that I really appreciated your breakdown of Hassan Piker? Oh, thank you, Damien. You'd no reason to be nervous. Your commentary was very very nuanced. I guess I have two main issues with Piker and his ilk, which are linked to the rise and anti-Israel sentiment in general. Firstly, I believe that when people like Piker compare Israel and Nazi Germany or Israelis to the KKK, they do this because they know it is harmful to Jews in general. These references seem to me to be solely designed to cause distress. I've never heard a critic of China compare the CCP to Imperial Japan or the plight of the Uyghurs

to the Nanking massacre. Secondly, this goes back to something you talked about in detail in the afterparty consistency. I've come across some across some I've come across many pro-Palestine activists who will label what is happening in Gaza as a genocide, but not apply their definition of what constitutes a genocide to the atrocities in China, the DRC, and Sudan. I understand that some people may be personally invested in what is happening in certain conflicts. However, I cannot help but think in the absence of this. If someone cannot be consistent, there is a more nefarious reason for their combination solely of Israel. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this as always, and I'm sorry if I'm missing the point in these debates. Best wishes, Damien.

No, Damien, I don't think you're missing the point at all. I think the consistency question is a great one that we addressed a couple of weeks ago on my own perspective. about the definition of genocide. So I totally think. And by the way, this, I think there are probably a couple of points we rolled back the tapes where I referred to the genocide of the Uyghurs. And now I don't, I actually don't do that. I think there's a pretty good case based on the definition of genocide that in that episode, you can go back and listen to my full conversation of this. It was kind of a long one. It was a happy hour episode a couple weeks ago that I just believe is, is, overly broad. And on the other hand, with the Uyghurs, it did look like there was a pretty serious

effort to stop the Uyghurs from reproducing, which goes quite directly to a very narrow point in the definition of genocide. But anyway, horrible, horrible what has been documented in the, that has been documented to the Uyghurs. So I think consistency is a real problem. One thing I will say is, in general, because Israel is the largest beneficiary of foreign aid from the United States since its existence, and continues to be a huge, it continues to be a huge recipient of foreign and military aid from the United States, more so than a lot of these other countries with the conflicts exist. it's just more salient to people, so they think about it more often and they talk about the others less. That's a charitable read on it. I'm sure for some people it is nefarious. I don't think that a lot of the comparisons, or I should say, I don't think that all of the comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany or anything are intended to be attacks on Jewish people because I've heard them from Jewish people.

And so whether you think that comes from self-hating Jews, I think that there are a lot of people who come to those own arguments without personal animus against their own ethnicity. And that's, you know, I'm sure for some people it is really just about Jews. I don't think it necessarily categorically is about everyone. So I'll say that much. You know, with with Hassan, I really don't believe, but I don't know. I don't believe that he is bigoted, but I don't know. I think there's evidence he sees this as the correct argument. And I think that's probably true of a lot of his followers and a lot of his Jewish followers as well. So I'm not disputing that for some people it probably is really about Jews.

I think that is probably true. I just am saying I don't think it categorically is. But I really appreciate that question, Damien. Mary mentions, I think there was an editing error on your latest podcast release. suddenly your conversation with Max Tanny cut out and you started talking about fire um yeah mary okay so this one and samara caught this as well editing error error i did forward both of these to the team right away and it should be good now it should be all set uh right now so i just appreciate you guys pointing that one out to me uh really appreciate you guys pointing that one out to me because it's

very helpful. When, because I, one thing I never do is, um, one thing I never do is go listen to myself back. I hate, hate, hate it. Um, yeah, I've just, there's nothing I hate more than listening to myself back. Not because I don't think I should be conscious and aware of what I say, but because it is just unpleasant. You know if you've ever listened to your voice back. Um, and I think it leads to it. to overthinking when you are constantly scrutinizing everything that you said or did. It's just so in your head the next time that you do it. I try to have a little bit of a little bit of difference or a little bit of distance, I should say. All right.

Last one here from George. Let's bring it up. Who says, where to go? You filled a lot of questions about the importance of reading to our democracy. however, I recently started reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, which argues that joining that joining clubs is an integral part of a healthy politics. I've been trying to wrap my head around how a solitary activity like reading and a communal activity like joining a bowling league, two activities which to my mind have nothing in common can both be so important to our country.

Have you thought about what activities or hobbies, solitary, communal, are especially important to a healthy politics, maybe joining a book club or Bible study, which combines both is the best thing a person can do to save America? Are there certain activities you think we Americans really should take up or completely abandoned for a better functioning democracy? Also, I've heard you talk about your fascination with the Boston accent. If you're ever in the Boston area, you should try Candlepin Bowling. It's a regional style of bowling. Only popular in New England.

It's simultaneously more accessible and much harder than regular 10 pin bowling. Great tip, George. I will be in Boston a couple times this fall, so something to think about. On the other question, I actually, I do get this question a lot about, well, what can we do then? And for me, it's a lifestyle. It's not as simple as just joining a book club, which I think is a good thing, joining a Bible study, which I think is a good thing. and that are indeed steps in the right direction because they combine the sort of healthy cerebral activity of reading with the communal activity of having a fruitful conversation around this

thought you've put into the act of consuming literature. So I agree those are both really good and healthy things to do. I think it's really more about changing the whole rhythm of your life. And so even for me, just thinking about where I live, like I'm much prefer. to live in a house in a neighborhood than live in a high-raise apartment building. And I've lived in many high-rise apartment buildings and keep gravitating towards living in a house because the open space that you have leads to way more neighborly interactions counterintuitively than living in a massive apartment building, especially in the city that doesn't have what really only exists

in New York City as far as I'm concerned, the communal culture of those apartment buildings. You know, and that's just in terms of America, I'm sure, in Europe and Asia and other parts of the world, there are cities with really communal cultures living in apartment buildings because it's more about the people that live in the buildings and the layout of the buildings themselves, which I do think are naturally less conducive to socialization, but also just filling your schedule with events related to your church and your neighbors. And not just making it be, you know, I'm going to do a Bible study this year, but I'm actually great. going to treat my involvement as church, not as an afterthought, but as something that's as important as my work. Or I'm going to treat my job, being in person at a job. I'm going to treat that as important as, you know, whether the job pays well. These are healthy for us. They're

healthy for, or pay, I don't mean to say pays well. I mean to say pays like exorbitantly better, right? Like, should you take a job that pays you, you know, some crazy more amount of money, an amount of money that, you know, you're happy and content with and is fair and lets you live a comfortable life and also have that sort of health of seeing people interacting with people and not just kind of locking yourself in. This is advice that I give to a lot of like 22-year olds who are deciding between, you know, maybe a $45,000 a year entry-level job and a $60,000 a year entry-level job, something in that category because I think you really do need to build your lifestyle around social interaction, not isolation. And so for me,

me it's you know I agree those things are are good and important um but building your life around social interactions with neighbors um I just really believe that it has to be the way that you set up your day to day and more and more we are doing the opposite setting up our day to day so that it's working from home um you know generally maybe consuming church online or or not going to church you know, watching lots of TV, communicating with your friends over text, rather than, you know, I have high school friends. I text with them all the time. I should be organizing trips with my high school friends, you know, instead of just texting them, those sorts of things. And sort of being intentional about organizing your lifestyle around human interactions rather than digital substitutes.

So I'll leave it there for tonight, but I really appreciate all of your questions. Appreciate you listening. I know a lot of you disagreed with some of my takes this week, so I'm especially grateful to you for engaging with me here and continuing to listen to this show. Really try my best to make it valuable for all of you and a place of honesty and transparency. So thank you for tuning in to After Party. We're going to be back. We've got some cool stuff coming in the next couple of weeks that I'm really excited about. I hope to see you back here with more After Party soon in the future.

God bless and have a great weekend.