Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Ari Melber

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Neal Brennan interviews Ari Melber ('The Beat' on MSNBC) about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. Subscribe to the Ari Melber on Youtube:  @AriMelber  00:00 Intro 3:25 Speed Reading 9:40 Defending journalism’s credibility 18:20 Truth vs. Fiction in News 22:10 Lawsuits & Freedom of Speech 36:10 Sponsor: BetterHelp 37:41 Sponsor: Ground News 39:21 Career Ambitions 57:22 Breaking Tragic News 1:06:14 Sponsor: Mando 1:08:22 Sponsor: Uncommon Goods 1:10:08 Duty & Obligation in Life & Work 1:13:45 Spirituality 1:16:35 Perfectionism & Time Efficiency 1:25:27 Being Present vs. Time Traveling ---------------------------------------------------------- Follow Neal Brennan: https://www.instagram.com/nealbrennan https://twitter.com/nealbrennan https://www.tiktok.com/@mrnealbrennan Watch Neal Brennan: Crazy Good on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81728557 Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ---------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors: https://www.betterhelp.com/NEAL for 10% off your first month https://www.ground.news/NEAL for 40% off the vantage plan https://www.shopmando.com promo code NEAL - new customers get 20% off sitewide httsp://www.uncommongoods.com/BLOCKS for 15% off your next gift Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is, you know, I have friends in media that I don't, I don't often, I'm now I'm bringing them in, bringing them in from out of the cold, bring them on to the pod. This guy's got a show on MSNBC, if you can believe it. We just turned off the air conditioner, so you may not recognize them. You know MSNBC, it's the one where people talk in a very moralistic way. They do long pauses and you can hear the air conditioner in the background. The thing about authoritarianism. That's how dramatic this is.

And it's 5 o'clock, your show, 6 o'clock? Six Eastern. Six Eastern. It's called The Beat, which is a double entendre. We'll get into it. It's a devil entendre about hip. The guy likes hip-hop. The whole Wu-Tang is behind me.

And this is the beat. Ari Melburgh. Also, he's got a substack, which surprised me. I'm assuming it's at Ari Melburgh. What else? You do playlist? What do you got? I release playlist sometimes.

I have a substack Aram Elro, which discusses both society and news, but also a lot of music and culture. I know you like that. I love, guys, if there's one thing I love, it's when news people show me their colorful side. What are you like when the cameras are off, news person? This is really helping with your credibility when you tell me what, you went salsa dancing this weekend? Give me a little bit of your personality when you toss to the next hour's host. And I see that natural chemistry you guys have that you can't, you can't fake it, guys. It's only, it can only be, oh, it's only competitive if it's real.

And not just 6 p.m. Eastern, we're doing a lot on YouTube. So you can go to MSNBC.com slash Ari, A-R-I, and we have a whole YouTube playlist of our news. Exclusives? We also do exclusives, yeah. On YouTube? Yeah. Is MSNBC doing a paywall? Can you talk about it?

Not that I know of. Okay. It's not a terrible idea because he's direct-to-consumer, but not that I know of. But for example, if I sat down with a little baby... How are you doing? Why? Five minutes of that are on the TV show. The other half an hour is the YouTube exclusive.

That's where you'd see it. The whole thing did not air on TV. Would you have Dubbaby on? Probably not right now. Okay. When? If not right now, when? Are you...

That's a very Maimonides' attitude for interviewing Dubby. Who? Mymonidies? see this is where you this is this is what I want from a news guy say shit use terms I don't understand he was a he was a rabbinical scholar and he famously said if you don't know the name you'll know the quote if I am not for myself who will be for me people feel like that when you're alone or the world to get you been on if you've ever been on Instagram that's pretty much the but if but if I am for myself alone who am I hmm and

And then he says, with regard to standing up for anything, you might have to stand up for. And if not, me, who, and if not now, when? Is that where that phrase is from? Yes. So, my monomoneith? My monadies, yeah. My mononneve. So, but it is from its time, and the Jews were a tiny minority dealing with oppression, as so many people's do.

But it's spread. And so I think there's no better way to apply that than the right media cycle to interview to Baby. Ari Melbur did something, guys, that I, one of the reasons I brought him here is because he taught me how to read. Now, that sounds sort of more heroic than it is. When I say he taught me how to read, he taught me how to read, you taught me how to quickly distill information from a news article. will you please describe the the melbourne system as it's known on your youtube channel you're talking about when we discuss speed reading yes so speed reading is an actual thing

right it's a discipline that has been developed and did you do you do you are you I do I use it okay someone else came up with it I don't remember the name but there's whole guidance yeah you wear a body cam when you it's a whole thing you don't use it often you've I started wearing a body cam because you were using it too, too liberally. Oh, wow. Getting hurt. Go on. I guess regular listeners know how to take your deadpan.

It's not, again, I'm smiling. This is what people don't understand about me. I'm smiling right now. You guys call it deadpan smiling. I gave it a little lilt. It's, yes, it's comedy. Go on. The way we are generally taught to read in the West and in the education system is at one speed.

In fact, many people listen to this would say, well, I didn't know there were other speeds available. But reading for information rather than pleasure, so let's get that up front. You're reading, a letter comes in the mail and it says, you have a long-lost relative, there's an inheritance that will be granted to you. Read this letter to learn how to get it. I would pleasure myself to that. Go on. Speed reading is the idea that you should obviously read that slowly and more comprehensive. carefully and perhaps even more than once that's at the highest level. Yes. Versus an article that

you know you may not finish where you are looking to get certain information. And so you can bounce through reading speeds. So instead of thinking of nonfiction reading as one speed and then when you get bored or tired or busy, you stop, which is really how a lot of people do it. That's a very inefficient way to drive. And you can think of it more as three or five speeds. I don't think There's 20 speeds. People do it different ways. So, for example, if I'm preparing for covering something tonight and Putin and Trump have a press conference and I'm reading through coverage of it, the first paragraph, which is almost always the setup, I can skip right through that. The analyst quote from the New York Times, if you trust the New York Times to pick their analysts, you don't need to read that extra half sentence that says.

Of who they are. University of Oxford and da-da-da, and wrote a book about, you can write that past that. right most of the time well if you jump past a third of the gunk in there you will read a third more stuff that's probably more relevant to you where's the action you i remember you broke down where the good stuff so the first one is like the re like hey in the news it's easy in the news the action is whatever's new so if you've read 80 articles about epstein or gone through 80 posts or however you minimum you know a lot of background you still don't know so when it starts starts talking about the Florida deal they cut the first time and ready was died mysteriously

in prison and you know about that so yeah very quickly it's it's personal to you but you choose as soon as you see something peripheral it's very personal to me go on then you can jump forward or like I said read slower or faster in other words you can whip through that and you're you're half reading up you're whipping through it yeah which is very different than the inheritance letter letter about your actual life. I feel like I'm being disrespectful or flippant or sort of ignorant in that. But you're absolutely right. And I'm used the system many times. Thank you. But it does feel like am I being, I don't know, do you know, it just feels like am I not, do, am I not cleaning thoroughly? Do you know what I mean? Am I just like? Well, what you're talking about is something

that I know you care about. Go on. Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein's Island? The plane? Why was Chris Tucker on it? I don't know why Chris Tucker was on the plane, guys. I can't. I don't know. I know a little bit.

You're talking about the emotional resonance behind the thing you're doing. And so you might feel as someone who does care about being informed or being studious that you need to have some fidelity, some level of attention or process when you're reading something. And I get that. A lot of people don't have that. I mean, book reading is crashing in the West. People aren't reading books on their own anymore. Yeah, women do, but I'm no real man would ever read a book. I think we can all agree on that.

All right, the thing that we also talk about when we have lunch once, and you invited me to dinner, I couldn't go. I couldn't go because I got invited to a Queens at the Stone Age concert, and parking, tickets were free, parking at the forum was $80. 80. $80. That's a ticket right there. Yep.

And I handed the money to the guy, to the parking guy, which, by the way, wasn't near the forum. It was by the football stadium. Handed the guy the 80 bucks. And I said, you're never going to see me again. This is my last concert. And I intend to stand by that. We often talk about news credibility. You and I do, or at least I do.

I don't know if you're listening. news credibility and to the hip-hop references all that stuff that I make fun of you about explain to me what your approach to all of the sort of the credibility crash of the news or people's perceived credibility crash

because I think it's largely unwarranted I think people pick one thing that they ended up a famous one being the Iraq War New York Times all that stuff how do you defend news. Big question. Maybe too hard.

I mean, I get, I've ever, it's, I think it's called journalism. Yeah. I'm sorry, this is not, this is not. Now the teacher becomes a student. This is the Neil Vernon method. It's behind the table. Go on. The way I think about it daily is what evidence am I showing people

and how clear can I be about the evidence and sources we've used to present this information so that they might make up their own mind. So it's both what you do and what you don't do. I know you love and have endorsed everything that Yeh has ever said. I won't call me. I refuse. Would you call Muhammad Ali by his name? I would call Cassius Clay when he changed to Muhammad Ali. I would call Muhammad Ali. If he changed it again, I'm done. That's it. You get one. You get one change. Okay. So I con you I did easy I I did easy what about people who get divorced and remarried repeatedly and their last name keeps changing I still call my sisters by Brennan they big and they can't keep a husband a lot of these money sisters so so as Ye said everything I'm not made me everything I am mm-hmm one of my least favorite hip-hop defenses go on so Jay-Z if I hadn't dealt drugs then I couldn't write songs and about dealing drugs, like, or you could just not deal drugs.

Well, but I think everything I'm not means what you choose not to do when you have a position of influences as important as what you choose to do. If you were alone in a desert, it might not matter what you say. So the question of credibility also goes to what we don't do. I try not to brainwash, over-polarize, over-opinion. There's a place for that. Well, that's what I'm curious about. I think by not doing that, you can build the credibility of the hour because someone goes, wait, even if that information is true, did you pick these four pieces of information? Because you're truly back-end trying to convince me of something. And I would say, no, I get why you're skeptical of that.

Let me work with my team to present this to you nightly. We do it live every night. You can't really fake that. I mean, at a certain point, it's like me talking with this stuff every night live, right? If they catch you slip in, like, you're live. So I'm presenting this to you not because of it. a secret agenda that by minute 37 ha ha I'm gonna convince you it's truly what you think is important yes and it's truly the evidence we have and so I've even had it I'll stay on Epstein because I think

it's of interest in many people and probably it's all I care about your audience no I'm kidding who knows what you we don't know no one no one knows we don't know but it's been a big topic and so I was discussing it with someone because I have interviewed a lot of people around that story and I have covered a bunch of it and someone was saying he Clearly must have been killed in prison. And I said, well, here's what we know. And I went to the breakdown. There was an incentive, a motive to kill him.

He was already supposed to be under special protection. He was the most notorious defendant in the country at the time. Had committed, had attempted once already. With no clear second. And there were multiple protocols broken that night. And then they lost the clear video that would have showed whether, if you had the accurate video, whether he went in. I said, so that's very suspicious,

and you rarely can trust the government to investigate itself. So I went to the end of the end of it, and they said, oh, so you're saying he was killed? And I said, no, that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm giving you an evidence-based view of why there are more questions, that this is more of a concern than some random thing where someone very clearly just died in a certain way, or you have the death on video, or they died in a hospital,

and there were multiple witnesses, and you don't think all the nurses are in the conspiracy. This wasn't that. This has a lot of credibility questions that one would investigate. But it was interesting to me that someone hearing the evidence late out was like, oh, so then X or Y. And what I would tell the viewers is, on this one, we don't have X or Y. Yeah. I have more questions about whether it is Y.

Do you? Door number two, but, yeah. Does it give you pause that something like everything is, is, is, you? open to the shadow of a doubt is never been bigger about kind of everything you can get counterfactuals you can get uh other video other points of view the epstein thing being i think the the what's funny watching republicans sort of get hoisted on their own petards is like they endorsed a paranoid worldview especially in the last five to ten years and now that now they're getting inundated with suspicion because they created a culture of suspicion of

every especially liberal policies does that give you pause like this is not good well it's certainly not good for a cohesive society and well then don't worry about so it just depends what if by good we mean that we can have large scale societal interaction with shared reality and then try to reason through communal decisions, which is the foundation of Western democracy, which may not endure. It was not the dominant government system in the world. It's a new idea. It's a relatively new idea. In terms of the world history? Yes, it's a big problem with that. And so if you look at the scholarship on this, there is a lot of evidence that what we might measure as a certain minimal level of communal trust is essential to these large-scale systems. So Francis Fukuyama has a

book called Trust. Yuval Harari writes about this in terms of which societies tend to reason their way through better. And by better, we mean that we have less random violence. We have less disruption of the social order that we have the time and space to do progress in technology, which often means, for example, that you can beat infant mortality or you don't have the government causing famines, as they did in the leftist Chinese Mao era, that you can get past certain things. There's still going to be problems in life, but there's a bunch of stuff you could clear out when you have that requisite level of trust. And if you lose that, you tend to get autocratic or strong man, strong person leaders, or you have a total breakdown. I mean, you have countries in the world that have completely disintegrated, and you just kind of then go back to what?

I mean, go look at what it looks like. Yeah. It's warlords. It's local violence systems. It's bartering across geography. It looks like more like 500 plus years ago. We go, oh, we don't go over there, and they don't come over here, and that's the best we can do. and then sooner later we have another war yeah it seems like we it's you have to get you have to explain first principles to people now like no no wait if this happens it's going to be really bad but people are so angry about misinformation just stuff that's not that they conflate into serious like serious crimes or issues or whatever that are just not yeah and we can also have understanding or empathy for the level of which someone's considering

that decision. In other words, you and I are talking about it at that altitude, someone who is on a ranch and their neighbor is 30 miles away. And there's no police to protect them. They have their own protection or they're chancing it. And they're not really thinking about everything that's everywhere else, right? And that's okay. I understand that perspective, especially in the short term. They're like, trying to work, trying to go check to check. I'm trying to take care of my family. You're talking about it. Like, fine. That's fine. I think if you're in other situations, and that's why it's funny, this term, globalist, right? It's generally very derogatory.

Sometimes it's a stand-in for hate. But also there are people who are living- All the times, it's the membership program of the Hyatt Hotel brand. Literally, globalist is the high as you can get in the Hyatt Rewards program. It's insane. But there are class and opportunity differences where some people are bopping around at different capitals with their passport and their money and other people, a lot of them. that people are living in most people almost every one place so talking about that day to day isn't

is not as relevant and it doesn't relate i think that's so oftentimes under the information debates is like what do we mean by this what do we mean by better and which groups are we talking about yeah i just don't want to live in mad max call me call me old fashion i just don't want to live i get it well okay well what do you make of so you just try to present the information you have do you have much I don't like fortune telling on networks. I don't like too much opinion and I don't like fortune telling. Do you

have autonomy of your show or a good amount of autonomy where you can say like I don't want to have like what can we expect in the next few days? Are the walls closing in? Well, look there's more than one way to tell a story we have editorial freedom which I greatly value I have certain rules. I mean I when I started the show, the beat.

The beat with R.B. Melbourne. We wrote a handbook. So we have news standards practices for the whole place, right? When we check a source, what's reportable. This is from MSNBC. Yeah, that's from NBC. From a lawyer. Yeah, from NBC standards.

And that's a good thing. And there's, well, I think the internet's great because I'm on it plenty and listen to a lot of stuff. You can tell sometimes when you see a presentation online or a podcast convo. And if it's just a chat, it's a chat. But you realize after listening to half an hour of it, nobody checked anything or at the end someone's like yeah like oh we're gonna google this oh it's a little different than we said oh whatever you're like we try to do that before we ever hit the mic yeah you know but not all podcasts are but and it's also i know i mean that's fun it's again and

that's what makes them popular sure and labeling matters so if you yeah like star wars is already popular i was just rewatching last jedi but if it was put on which one is that um so the mark hamill ones yeah mark hamill's in there a lot but he's like unc oh we're not doing this anymore and they never explain he's not dead no i don't think he's dead no there are other there's a yoda hologram hamill's like i'm over this we're not doing it i gave up who's the star of the movie hayden man i don't know these actors names sold guys rm lvers officially i enjoyed the i enjoyed the fiction is uh natalie portman remember that young lady natalie portman no no it's like i don't you think again I do one name change.

I did the first three Star Wars. I saw revenge of the Sith. And I was like, I don't need to keep dealing this. Yeah, it's not the prequels. It's the later Disney. Even calling the prequels is a disrespect to what I did to the amount of attention. Yeah, I get it. And now it's like, oh, what turns out that wasn't the part of the story.

That the fuck out. Anyhow, and you watch all the Disney Plus, you watch all the series. Why did this come up? Now I forget what I was saying. You were, look, if you don't know, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not, some of a fact check. Oh, I got it. Last Jedi.

Popularity. People don't want that checking. So Last Jedi is. People don't want to think Vaxes work because then they have to get vaccinated. It's an enjoyable film to watch. And you know it's fiction. If you put it on the news and said this is happening tonight and convince some people that it was real, it would be even more intense. Think about the stakes of that happening on earth.

Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. So a lot of it's labeling. No one's saying I practiced First Amendment law. I litigated in the United States court system to defend people's right to say basically anything as long as it did not cause immediate violence or harm. That's the standard under U.S. law.

That's where I come from, okay? Free speech. And I've actually done the work. No one's saying we shouldn't have this speech. It's just you might want to label it fiction or chat or questions rather than what I think is happening today, which is there's a decline of the traditional media for many understandable reasons. But then people are filling it with like cartoons and being like, no, Tom and Jerry are real. I saw it.

Yeah. That's a problem. And that doesn't mean we should ban Tom and Jerry. I'm not so sure. Here's a question that you may not want to answer. Do you occasionally enjoy it when news organizations get sued? enjoy it not okay not enjoy it but you're a lawyer right like star jones you're a lawyer um and do you enjoy not enjoy but but yeah obviously um whatever uh the voting machine people winning the

winning the suit was like sad yeah dominion i i personally from the outside and even when Trump sues people if they did lie I do support Trump in that case I don't like them to vote for them I do support a good lawsuit if it is liable I now the

60 minutes one I know I get what you're saying a working court system should actually be available to anyone who has been wronged and should be a forum where evidence is what

resolves the conflict. So yes, I think anyone, as skeptical as we are, of so much of how it fails, when it works, you look at it and go, oh, wow, like take the Alec Baldwin trial, which some people follow. So Alec Baldwin is back in court for his involuntary manslaughter trial for that fatal rust movie set shooting. It doesn't matter what you think of Alec Baldwin or how he would pass your name test, right? You're talking about Eladia? Hillary, Eladia.

Yes, I am a white girl. That was a situation where we now know by the end of a court process that there was no reliable evidence that he went to the movie set that day and tried to kill some. Dismissal with prejudice is warranted to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and the efficient administration of justice. That's totally absurd. Yeah. That was the only question. The question is what you think about. or whether they could have better safety on set.

They could have better safety at a lot of workplaces. A lot of people are put in danger. But it was a case where it's very clear from the evidence that local authorities had a debacle on their hands and a star. And while stars might get all sorts of special treatment most days, on that day, the authorities decided, we're going to hang this on Alex Baldwin because he's famous. He was the most famous person around.

Puffy is the Puffing. By the way, I'd like to say, Eladia, I'm going to give you five name changes because you showed such bravery and originality going from Hillary to Iradia. Code switching. And if you want to, I have another one for maybe your next one. Hilario. Wow.

Hilario. Think about it. So the question was, do you like sometimes seeing these court cases? And the answer for anyone who cares about truth or even the higher order, justice. Did he sue any news organizations? I'm saying as a news person. No, I'm just using a very clear example.

Because the news ones, you get into what does defamation mean? We could talk about it. I'm just using that as an example where by the end of that case, you said the court system actually worked. Now, we can still look at, well, he had the money to pay the lawyers. He could withstand the thing. Other people would have been forced to settle. That's why the system is so unfair to poor. I've done a lot of work on criminal justice reform.

We could talk about that. But to the question of you look at a court system that works and you say, wow, Unlike everywhere else where people bring their preconceived notions or super polarized or reading whatever, that system work in that case. You apply that to say Fox News was on defense for a bunch of obviously false, demonstrably false claims, both about the election that Biden won, which they were suggesting somehow maybe Trump secretly won. We don't know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don't know. And circulating conspiracy theories about voting machines and other demonstrable to false things. Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve. They failed the journalistic standard.

They paid out one of the largest defamation settlements in American history over $500 million. So you can look at that and say, oh, that worked. The other obvious problem in our system across the courts in general is the incentives are off. There's a lot of frivolous lawsuits. If rich people like Peter Thiel has done this, he just funded a bunch of lawsuits against one of his enemies in the media, Nick Denton and Gawker, and it's a complicated case. But the structural point is, if you have unlimited resources, then you can keep suing someone in different places and you can bankrupt them, whether or not you have a good point or not.

So separate from, again, what you think about that exact topic, there are holes in this system So that when the sitting president of United States, who's reaping billions of dollars in his own conflicted crypto spending, which is a type of virtual currency that he repeatedly said was clearly a scam. But now he's in power. So like other politicians we've seen in countries with lax rules, he's making billions off crypto. And then he wants to use that to sue people indefinitely while he's the sitting president. I do think it raises more questions. Yeah. Yeah. You were a, was your focus in law, was it free speech?

Yeah. I worked at, for Floyd Abrams, who's one of the top First Amendment lawyers in the country, an amazing litigator. He won the Pentagon Papers case for the New York Times against Nixon. He represented Al Franken when there was lawsuits over Bill O'Reilly. And again, one of those issues of, oh, you're criticizing me. Oh, I'm going to sue you. He's representing the New York Times in a case against the Bush administration where they were trying to make a reporter give up their sources. represented judy miller if you remember all the way back to iraq which you mentioned yeah so so he has many lawyers to work for him i was one of them uh but really uh learned you were probably the best one from what i heard you were the only one they gave a tv show to um my other question about free speech is okay so germany says don't don't say shit about nazis

basically is that that's not the official way the law's written but that's basically what they're saying de baby when it would it be okay in Germany to do you know what I mean like like okay that's a thing happens

over six seven year whatever however long the however whatever dates you want to put on the Holocaust you're going to the Holocaust a thing that happened yeah and uh

there's a word for it um the I'm calling it a Instagram story um I understand I obviously understand.

It's the balance between freedom and safety. And where do you fall on this? Is it different every time? Do you have like a sort of mnemonic you use to like clarify it? Free speech is a concept and as you're mentioning where the limits are decided by systems, laws, or people over time. The United States has one of the more robust approaches to this, meaning defending more. speech, which includes harmful or bad speech. Other countries go in a different direction.

Germany responsible for World War II in the Maine and the Holocaust or Japan, which has tried to make a lot of changes since that time, are places where it's not surprising to me, if you look at this as history, that those places err more on the other side. Indeed, it may be a good thing to many people, right? You say, well, you guys, because you don't get in modern history you don't usually get mass support for that kind of killing without a great deal of propaganda information beforehand so the link which scholars and others make between the terrible thing that happened and the years of misinformation lies or hate speech before are relevant so it

doesn't surprise me that it means we've we've picked an outlier and and to flip back to a more relatable example it's like Muhammad Ali you say well you know Muhammad Ali could have habitually beat boxers who were quite a bit heavier than him. And this just goes to show, you know, maybe we don't need such strict weight classes. Okay, we've just tried to make an argument based on an exception on one of the greatest boxers ever. So is that a good argument? Or are we saying, well, Muhammad Ali was so good, he could be foreman even when he was

heavier. But no other boxers could. So if you take that back to free speech jurisprudence, I don't think Germany. use the best example but i can answer the question but i i know in comedy it's like i've made fun of every race i've done holocaust jokes i've done slavery sketches jokes i've done and then there's certain things it's like for some reason like blackface no i've said the n-word whatever i've said the end word but there are things where it's like we should be able to say whatever we should be able to i my inward defense is like it was a joke about the

word, et cetera. But what I'm saying is what is the legal definition? When would the clan marching become hate speech? Right. When does it become fighting words? So there's a famous case from Skokie, Illinois where neo-Nazis marching peacefully, which may sound like a setup for a Chappelle skit, but as long as it truly was peaceful, was protected. It was peaceful, though, right? Yes. These were great guys. So these bad guys were... Didn't need Chappelle for that stupid. Was protected speech under U.S. law.

And another distinction I want to just say to set it up is free speech doesn't mean there's no reaction or accountability for what you say. It just means you're not going to be imprisoned for it or functionally destroyed for it. So if you can bankrupt someone through those civil law or jail them, that's a very different environment. But, you know, I'm on live TV every night. De La Sol is basically hip-hop royalty. We have free speech. If I say something that makes the company decide I'm not going to be on TV tomorrow night,

that's not a violation of the First Amendment. I got to speak. And they exercise their accountability. Right, which is the government. So, and we've seen, so again, I've seen, I think the other thing I'll say since it's a podcast and we're being sort of personal, this is more subjective. I wouldn't get into this as much in the middle of the news program. But it's so funny, Neil, for me, like, having been the nerd studying First Amendment law and then practicing it and then have it, like, explaining it.

Like, being at, like, parties with smart people who are like, wait, which amendment is that and wait what? And then, as you know, like, I don't know when, but in the last five or six years, shit got hot. Like, this became the topic on the right, but then also, like, a counter argument on the left. And then, like, I feel, I don't know about you. I just feel, I went from, like, something more obscure to, like, I'm seeing politicians and billionaires and all kinds of people talk about free speech, which I put in quotes all the time. And so that's just been sort of really funny from my background. Yeah, well, it's their, it's their definition of free. But then a lot of times it's misuse. It's just the government

can't jail you or arrest you. I mean, I guess they're trying to sue now. That you, that you can't be taken to court or have your life destroyed for exercising your free speech rights. Okay, Okay, here's it, but my question is, so the Klan marches in Skokie, what if the repercussions had been they got their ass whooped at the end of the march? The people who whoop their ass would have gone to jail, right? And they would have. Well, yeah, that's a separate infraction of it was their battery, right? The real question for the First Amendment test would be, did they act in a way that imminently

caused a riot or violence, even if it was two-sided? So you can imagine a type of march that you call a march. but you go right up to people's houses and you start doing this and that and it's menacing and that just comes down to like a jury deciding yeah that's over the line right there's no there's a legal test harm is it what is it yeah there's a standard for it in the same so you mentioned fighting words free speech protection does not allow you to go up to somebody and insult their wife and kids in a in a horrific manner and then expect them to just stand around right so basically there's shout out to Ted Cruz there are things that are so obviously

incendiary and that's where here's another classic example free speech doesn't allow you to publish instructions for making contraband weapons yes so grenades are banned you can't have a civilian grenade can't sell it well can you give out all the DIY home printer information no that's also banned because it's not speech you're not expressing anything and so at a certain point doing something that is designed to cause a fight is not expressive. That's the way they define the test, even though I know that's a little, sounds a little abstract. There's got to be a standard, and it's relying on you at parties to explain it. But hate speech is something different, and we've had a lot more emphasis on that.

And again, if you want to take a hateful stance against people who make plastic water bottles because that's part of your worldview, it might be terrible, might be unfair. If you go screaming about it at work, you might not keep that job, right? You don't have carte blanche everywhere you go. But you can say that because it's still related to your environmental agenda versus you getting up in someone's face to cause a fight for that sole purpose. That's not speech. You're trying to cause fight, not trying to express idea.

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You mentioned your currency at parties. It's not how I brought it up, but go, okay. What do you make, how old are you? I'm 45. I feel like you thought your life would be around this good and people resented you for it. You've always been a little confident, a little too confident for people.

Interesting. miss my just whatever i'm i'm getting reading right now um you're always been a little too commoner people uh you pride the more ambitious guy in your law school class and you don't really care and um what do you make of your your feeling of uh forward uh motion that you'd like to get momentum because you were did you just think you were going to be a lawyer you were like but maybe we'll say what happens not bad looking you're not a bad looking guy thank you that's nice you to say i mean jeremiah said you remember jeremiah yeah the singer oh jeremiah the jeremiah was jeremiah jeremiah i h at the end jeremiah i feel like there's an apostrophe which

as a white person terrifies me uh in an italian name like demico i can do it but in a black name You do so much work with, yeah, you do a lot of work with names. I will tell you what, I get very scared. A lot of name, a lot of name comedy, you mean? Name comedy, yeah. Talk to Key and Peel about that. New genre. Two big sketches are black name sketches.

Oh, with the NFL? A.A. Ron. And the NFL draft. Tom Royal Smoochie Wallers. Well, Aeron is classic. They're all, they're great sketches, but I'm saying, I don't think we did any name comedy. They did two.

They did two hit name comedy sketches. Well, Jeremiah said this is more. Jordan Peel. happen where is he no one knows where he is now this is more than life this is paradise and they tell me it gets better it gets better it gets better this is r and b yeah it's great song i hate rnb okay i don't like i don't want to hear about you fucking wow i don't want to hear about well that lyric was not at all about that i know but i don't want to hear about he's on a date in that song song is actually the last track on the something nights you listen to entire rnb albums are you out of

your mind it's called something night one of your blocks is not respect of being worried about time and you're listening to entire rnb albums you fucking maniac go ahead and that song is not i don't think about romance i think it's about a place he's at in his life where he's really uh enjoying and savoring life and then jokingly or almost, you know, sort of maybe flirtatiously say and they tell me it gets better. So that's the lyric that came to mind when you did your... This is... He uses lyrics to dodge, really. Tell me about what you thought was going to happen and what happened. Professionally. Yeah. But what did you grow up? You grew up around here? I grew up in Seattle, Washington. Okay. I admit to the premise of your

question, I got a law degree but was doing a lot of other things and did not plan or envision myself only practicing like commercial law, like for private clients for a, you know, for decades. For a whole career. I got that education. I went to a firm that did free speech and other interesting things, so I enjoyed that. Who did you, if you're, if that's what you're, the direction you're heading in, who do you look to as a, as a sort of, I'd like to be like him or her? I mean, you look to public intellectual lawyers I guess who were famous like I'm literally William Kunstler's coming to mind I don't know why William Kunstler was a big civil rights and civil libertarian advocate yes look at you I mean for lawyers there are lawyers who do private practice

their whole career meaning however good you get at it you're always making someone else's point you're always writing briefs for someone else yeah it's funny therapists are in the position so it's all like you know Freud yeah so it's and that's that practice of law and some people do it in very interesting ways but it's for them there are people who go into government and those are the lawyers we see and that had no appeal to me in other words I never thought I didn't clerk for a judge I never thought oh if this goes well enough I'll get appointed to be a judge which is a very political and elite process but also that just was not so there's that thing or it's like we have on the news we have Neil Kachall he's the best at that Obama said

defend all my ideas at the Supreme Court. We need to win this Obamacare case. He made Neil Cachall acting Solicitor General, like that, right? Yep. That didn't appeal to me, even though I have great respect for that. And I don't think I'm cut out for that. And I'm a little too, and you have to be very by the book. No. So a guy like that just has a... He's brilliant. Encyclopedic. He's brilliant. Probably photographic. Um, probably. Probably. And he's really into it, but like, no lyrics in court. Like, you're not going to win over Amy Coney Barrett with that, with that Jadicus reference. Are you? I mean, I would have you disbarred if you did that.

I would like to have you thrown off television for doing it. So you can only imagine what I would do it in my court. Disbarred for bars. Oh, fuck. I should cancel this whole podcast. Okay, so you, and, and, so you were always looking at that. Would you say you're a ham? Like, what is it?

Because I can say, I acted like I wasn't a ham for the first 30 cup. 30-something years of my life. I was like, hey, he's low. Performing, what a low impulse. And I'd write for people, whatever. And then finally, I was like, you know what, dude,

just admit you're a fucking ham. And go for it. Now, because what you're doing is serious or... But was that for a psychological reason? There was a part of you that said that writing or what... A dodge from what?

Writing was somehow more pure than being a comic on stage with the other comics? It was scared. but scared but scared of what success okay um i get in my own worst anime um scared of admitting it scared of admitting i'm a ham and scared of admitting it and doing it and not being good and that there was a negative to that that for you to either fail at that or want that too badly without getting it was itself suspect there was a negative there was a few negative one of them were was the people

around when I was making this decision were Louis C.K. Dave Chappelle, John Stewart, David Tell, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes. So it was a bit like, ah, yeah, Marin, I mean, a lot of, a lot of incredible Ray Ramon, a lot of critical, incredible comedian, so I couldn't, I was sort of right in thinking, I, this was unlikely, but I've surpassed them all. Um, I, I, I've surpassed them. But I know, please. Did you know? I knew around the year.

Okay. So that's what I'm curious about. I'm doing it extra to needle you. A little extra. Not really. This is actually, you're kind of under what I would have put you at. Okay. And don't take that as a challenge.

So I guess what did you think? Like, so what's that impulse? Like, I want to be a lawyer. Like, because if I looked, when I would look at William Consular or even Dershowitz, Dershowitz, by the way, big three Mike's fan. Don't worry about it. And we've, it's another thing that me and Jeffrey Epstein agree on is Alan Dershowitz. This guy has great taste.

The, what is that in public intellectual? Like what is, or Gorvidal or any of those, like those guys, was he a lawyer, Gorvado? No, just writer, author, yeah. That's what I'm, but very, what is that? Well, Gorvadol, Hitchens, James Baldwin. I mean, you're talking, again, I think, debaters, like guys who. Debabiers. Fuck.

You're talking about when we look at those people, and it's not to make a self-comparison, but does that inspire you or not, or does it intimidate you? And you just gave examples. I mean, yeah, who could live up to a, you know, John Stewart is a good example between our worlds because as much as he's funny and pioneered a style, he spent. a long time and now has returned to being an, whatever denials he gives. You're on CNN, the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. Whatever that is. Yeah. It's just easier. My observation is that he has

a type of influence in public trust that is broader than many politicians, who are very narrow. I don't know that if you're hardcore super right or super left that he satisfies you, but his appeal is broader. I would say, for example, broader than Colbert. I would agree. And so you look at that and you go, well, yeah, you might say you're not funny enough to do it or not influential enough or not creative enough, sure. But that notion always appealed to me to answer your question. As a position, as like a perch in culture.

Yeah, so that, so sort would be more comic world, but to me, before I knew what the medium was, yes, I was freelance writing, while working at a demanding, like, full-time law firm and doing other networking and such. What are you writing? I was writing for Huffington Post and the nation freelance for Politico for a while. I had a little column there. So I'm obviously doing that while working full-time like junior, third-year associate at a New York law firm that's got the top First Amendment practice in the country. It's a lot to juggle. So I'm not doing all that extra on top of the day job because I'm like, oh, I'm just going to hopefully sit around or I'll just, I'm just keeping busy. I was thinking about things I was interested in and ways to step out and do it, which is different than just representing a private client.

And so, yes, to me, it would be more like a Hitchens or a James Baldwin or someone that, in a different era that we grew up on, you'd see these people having intelligent debates on Dick Cavett to influence the world. I mean, that always appealed to me. And I don't, it's funny what you said about that you might have felt conflicted. I felt like reaching a point where you learned and know something about policy and law and then trying to actually push in the right direction. because I did a lot of writing and work on criminal justice and human rights. I worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is a human rights organization that was before I went to law school. To me, that was like, good work.

I find it interesting. I think it's easier to do work you're interested in than not. But I was like, that's not to have the dream you're going to be, you know, in charge of whatever criminal justice reformed for the country. It's not even a job. But I found that to be really exciting and I wanted to work towards that. And so the markers I felt, this was before, you talked about how you land on a TV, but before ever being hired to work in a newsroom on television full time, when I would have moments where I was like, oh, people are taking me seriously, or I'm having influence on that, you know, or I, this was a different era, like compared to now, but in the Bush era, I was writing a lot about the abuse of terrorism and surveillance powers. So I was drawing what I knew in law, but I'd also briefly been in politics, and I was writing these pieces, and then when I would get asked to speak on it, or I remember,

I remember the first time I spoke at like a very nerdy panel in D.C. There's like 40 people in the room, but to your point about whatever you called it, confidence or drive, like, but I was like the youngest speaker at the thing. And then older people were coming up to me. And this is where you're still like, am I a kid, am I, older people coming up? I'm like, well, you made that point. How would you say this, that? And I'm like, look at this person.

And I'm like, you know, 27. And I'm like, I'm explaining it to them, but like, wait, but you get a little in your head. but I was like this is a positive step because this is what I set out to do and did people like that about you I mean I don't know and I don't care

great that's what I that's my favorite what do other people think about other people great some people are very susceptible to it I think I am I mean it's comedian you have to be but like yeah I get way too hung up in who said what well comedy is different because I you are still

trying to make a group of people laugh either in a room or watching blocks on Netflix or where or writing a sketch but like so you have to be really in touch with that nuance that is a craft but I think when that's over-serviced in another field where it's like if I'm trying to shape or provide information about this topic or present something and people are mad about it or politicians are attacking me or some people don't like me that's not only okay sometimes that's like comes with the turf so I feel like those are very different no yeah i get i get that i guess i'm just curious as to the level of ambition that

because i think i was talking about somebody yesterday i was like that guy's ambitious but the issue is he doesn't hide it well enough and and i wonder anyone who's got their own show in msnbc or cnn or own um is ambitious and so i'm wondering do you guys even bother hiding it Or is it like, no, we're all open. This is the Olympics. I'm not getting a bronze. I'm getting a gold. Like, and is it kind of gross?

The way I think about it is it depends what it's in service of. So I do think that people who are seen as only out for themselves or only looking for some acclaim or audience without any other purpose, I think feels to me different than you have a point. You care about this stuff. you have a documented record of working hard and caring about this stuff and then the only questions people go

yeah but but it's still over rewarded or capitalism or there's a million things you can get into but yeah I mean that's why when I mentioned like I don't even it's funny because this is we're having pod talk

I don't talk I don't think I guess I don't know but I don't think most of like viewer like the Beatle do a million and a half live viewers a night and we'll do millions more on YouTube and then across a week it'll be like six to eight

million different people watch some piece of it right we have that data I don't think most of them know maybe even care like what my background is I think I'm guessing they've made a judgment that there's some value that this show provides because they're watching and they're coming back to it in a very competitive environment there's a million things on but I don't think they know do they know that I worked on Capitol Hill and worked a human rights organization and freelance and wrote all these articles and then was doing two jobs like practicing law while I was like ferrying back and forth to the newsroom to do a guest appearance about something I cared about, but I wasn't getting paid for it. Then I was going back and writing these articles. And I remember, did you get, I'm going

to cut you off. Cut his mic. Cut his mic. I'm not going to dress you down anymore. Um, did you I'm saying, I don't think they care or not. I don't, I, okay, which then the next question is, how did you develop as a broadcaster? How, like, did you go, did you take a teleprompter class? Did you, did you do anything that made you like, I, need to get ahead of this no i mean i need to develop a skill set that i that you don't come out like that you don't get no being a lawyer no it's just on the job meaning if you go in as a guest you're around it yeah the first time i was asked to guest host means you're sitting now in the chair of the host yeah and they put the prompter up and yeah i'd never read a prompter before did you

know that it was coming well they mentioned they said we're going to keep the scripts shorter it's live tv yeah uh no no no training not no formal training And were, did you realize how now looking back, are you like, whoof, okay, I'm glad I passed that test. It could have gone any, could have gotten any direction. I think it's bananas that that's how they do it for live TV. I do too. I could understand if it was taped because it'd be like, bring people in and then we'll use the tapes that work. That's why like taped magic is always funny.

Because when you watch taped magic special, a magician. Oh, tape. Oh, got it, got it. A magician doing tricks on tape, you don't have to be really interested in magic to think, well, they're showing us the time it worked. I know. Because you could guess nine other people's card slightly wrong and not show us that clip, right? We all know that, right? So I could see tape doing it, but the fact that they do it live, I think, is so funny.

The fact that they tape, yeah. News. Oh, yeah. Oh, the fact that they just go. Here. You. Yeah. Go.

And three. one remember there's what you plan for the day but anytime you see now look if it's big enough news they'll pull the guest toast they've done i've seen them do that but if there is god forbid a really bad event it could be a school shooting yeah could be something in dc there could be international news you go right to it it takes at least five to eight minutes to ready up there are other people in the in an international news network who are somewhere right ready to host someone the next hour someone for next whatever yeah but it doesn't it's not overnight I mean, overnight, it's not the wrong.

It's not in an instant. So if there's a guest host and a plane crashes, the guest host starts doing breaking news, which if you've never learned how to do that, is quite challenging for at least a few minutes. Plus, Chris Hayes can be around. He's kind of go to make it for an hour just to get to be presentable. Is this, are you making a joke about someone's appearance?

I mean, Lawrence O'Donnell. You're making an appearance. Me of all people. I didn't understand your telling them that I got it later on. I object. I'm making a fucking Chris Hayes. Yeah, fucking read. But I have to object to.

appearance joked out you're making fun of how you think somebody likes i have a huge bit about somebody making fun of my appearance and it does really well it does disappointingly well when i say the things that people say about me online um when it is breaking news we've gotten to zero blocks by the way um we can do a block no we'll do a block uh when it is breaking news what do you have a plan there it's just like literally they're telling me is there have you gotten is there a different approach to that that you've gone through enough of them that you now have a plan as a broadcast i guess you learn over time how to do it but serious breaking news is the most challenging part of the job um because it's often very sad human events which one of your blocks yeah that is one of my

blocks you want to do it that way because they ask for blocks go ahead dealing with bad sad news yes so often the saddest sudden news right is the breaking news so it's not that we sat down and said oh we're going this story about end-of-life issues and we're interviewing people who are dying but you know even those stories which can be quite somber mentally and emotionally you go towards them you decide to do them and there's a humanity in it whereas sad breaking news is just oh here's what we know there's a live shooter in the school mm-hmm like oh here's what we know they've shot some kids but the shooter still alive like these are the type of updates you're getting and I try not to think about it but but I sometimes am like depending on the situation and how long it goes it's like

there could be people in that community watching yeah there can be people parents parents like or they're like have the news on while they're calling or like and you don't want to be modeling and you're just again talk about like I get it everyone shoots at the press and there's a lot of problems in press but like in that moment any honest person doing that work which is yes there's someone on camera there's our team that's that's trying to get the accurate information there's our reporters on the ground. No, I don't think there's some big bias of how do we turn, you know, what people think, oh, you're going to turn this into something. We're going to try to turn it into anything. Yeah. We're doing a body count of like, oh, they killed six, eight-year-olds.

Yeah. Oh, this one, they killed 12. This is going to be, and again, it gets to the gruesome math of American life. This is going to be a quote, big one. Well, obviously, any time an adult walks into a school and murders a child out of the blue, like we're already in the worst thing that could happened by the way thanks for demonetizing this episode all the any profit i was going to make on that i don't even know that is that they they there's certain words you can't say they demon whatever i don't i don't give you what word was it so much money i don't all right please i appreciate you lighten it with some jokes so yeah that's that's hard to do it's hard for our whole team in different ways and you're just trying to get the information back out to the people and then you you know

you don't have the time of the existence it's sort of like you go home afterward and sometimes you know it's like it is that useful was that not being grandiose it's a bit like being a doctor I would think without helping yeah without yeah you're you're watching the you're watching the doctor going like oh it's a bad it's like being in the doctor's observation room yes um yeah my dad's a doctor's a doctor uh neurologist clinical that word like that's him like when he's when he was dealing with that stuff And neurologist, you deal with end-of-life issues and you deal with families and it's heavy. And my dad just completely had a clinical attitude of it, which was he was there to help.

But being around that many families, finding out information sometimes and somebody gets better, somebody doesn't, somebody dies, like that to him was work. Work? He wasn't heavy about it. Was he decent? You know that the correlation between malpractice suits and bedside manner? Oh, no, he's very empathetic, has a good bedside manner. I just mean that he wasn't tortured about it. Got it.

He just knew that that's what it was. Yeah, as far as I saw, and I thought that was a good model. And I think, I'll say it this way. There are times when I feel like, oh, no, we did our role today, which is just whatever that is. And I feel okay about it. And then there are other times where I'm like, we didn't do anything wrong, but like, what's the, what's, okay, hypothetically, what's a good one and a bad, what's a good day? What's a good version of the proper tone and what's a bad version of and what's the improper tone? The shootings are some of the worst.

Can I, uh, uh, Cronkite taking his glasses off. From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. Bronkite taking his glasses off. Did he overdo it? Wow, I never. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, is that, like, what? that it I think that's the right amount I think that's

I think he nailed it right well you're talking about it like but but it's also like he could have been he could have he could have he could I would have given 15% more I mean I can't even you're talking about

you're talking about it like it's a performance or a choice but we're that's what we're talking about we're talking about what's the proper tone to present tragedy in an information network. I don't know. I usually try to keep it as respectful and minimal as possible. Unadorned. Unadorned and not the time to met. We talked earlier about law. We can look at the access to guns

in this country. Now it's not the time. You know, President Trump, with full secret service protection as a candidate was shot in the ear. I mean, so in the part, that's part of the head by an individual who, based on what we know about him, he was killed on site, was very likely unwell and should not have had access to that weapon. So that's what in policy we would call an easy case. You want rules that prevent that guy, the would be, the wannabe, presidential. killer from getting the gun there are harder cases where you say oh this person was a cop so

of course they're going to have a gun that's we give out guns too and some of them they're not all perfect right that's a what that would be from a policy view a harder case that's an easy case now having said that the days of covering that you don't turn it into that immediate like like you cover the new people are still trying to understand like wait what happened what happened yeah how did it happen and like like I said earlier with that Yeag quote that I know moved you and made you really kind of think about putting calls dropout back on when you walk out of here. Not doing that is part of saying to the audience like we're giving you the information. So that would be an example where you're trying to do it that way. And an example where it doesn't go well is that you, I don't know, you think that you didn't meet the mark or the information was fluid and you're reporting what you have.

but at one point you're reporting stuff and then you have to say a correction or here's what we're learning or you go to a source on the ground and they repeat something they heard and so it's the best material you have but it's not reputable and those by the way don't make for like very rarely do people genuinely like sue the press over that people understand it's the first 15 minutes

and the school's on lockdown and you're not going to say nothing so you're trying to go to the local source and a local security guard at the school says something and then it turns to be wrong and then you're thinking about all the people with the stakes and the emotion of that and you're like well so i'd like to say i think walter kronkite nailed it i think regis and kelly blew it on nine eleven did they do you remember what they did it was just they didn't know what was going on and uh how are you i know you're in shock i'm really in shock i've never i i i don't know what to

say i really don't know but they really really had quite a quite a storm last night lightning bolts coming down, you know, and it really was something. I made it just inside, just in time. I was with the kids, and we, oh my gosh, something just exploded. There's a close-up view, I guess. Something just exploded. Maybe that plane had something in it. It's just the worst thing I can imagine.

So. And they were like, oh, it was, I mean, no one knew what's happening. But I remember, I remember watching it being like, that's, they're under their phone in the sand. They just had no idea with it. No one had any idea what was happening. Regis is one of the greats. And Kelly, Kelly's one of the great.

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unforgettable. To get 15% off your next gift, go to Uncomcom slash Blocks, BLOCKS. That's Uncommon Goods.com slash BLOCKS for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon Goods. We're all out of the ordinary. Uncommon goods. It's go on. It's good. Good. It's like it'll, you could probably bite, knock three people out, one trip. Duty and obligation in life and work. Uh, we're going to file this one under Jewish. Um, obligation. I mean, now having said that, Dr. Father, lawyer, son. Sociologist mother. Fucking Jewish. It gets Jew. more Jewish every, every, every credit. Any rabbis? Not in the immediate, sir. I think, I think

there was a great uncle who was a rabbi. Great. What, what, is it just, uh, because you also have existential, am I doing this right? Is, is this the right use of my time? I, they seem related to me. Well, the, the time one is different. What do you have under time? Let's do one one of the time yeah I felt this I felt this way because when I graduated college I went to Capitol Hill was like I'm going to be a part of change and progress and it sounds so naive to me now like I learned very quickly on Capitol Hill that's not what's going on down there but I was what would you say is going on down there it to that point the vast majority of activity of Congress is to to recruit or please

rich donors or perform poorly acted skits for various interest groups. That's the majority of it, not all, but that's most of it. Yeah, the amount of fundraising I have to do was just astounding. And be on the outside, you tend to have a general view like, oh,

and some of it is like you can call BS and some of it's like based on some vague amalgam of things where you're like, yeah, they're all liars, you know, you have a sense of it. Now on the inside, you get a much more specific, precise close-up of it. And there are exceptions, both at the staff and elected level. I mean, I've seen members of Congress. We were just talking about the guns issue.

I mean, I've seen members who care about it and take on the gun lobby and then lose their job over it that they spent like 20 years positioning to get. And you're like, oh, look at that, what they used to call profile and courage. So you see some of that, and you're like, damn. and then you see nine out of ten other members in either party being looking at that person going well i don't want that to happen to me i'd change my whole life to do this yeah so you see that but yeah up close so i very quickly left there and was like that's not where i'm going to make impact or try to do good things and so i have been able repeatedly in my career to like pivot like from there

i shifted and worked on a campaign i went from congress i quit what was considered a fine job working for a senator and moved to Iowa to work for the John Kerry campaign thinking at that moment in time in that era even though no candidate's perfect yeah that going against Bush after Iraq and all the rest that would be a good thing to do and I did that and that he ended up winning the nomination I was on that campaign for 13 months I traveled the country I learned a lot we lost I was unemployed moved to New York but thinking what can I do that has with that part of my life or value like that has some positive impact and I don't I mean I think some people hear that and it sounds to some people grandiose or whatever but I'm more like limited time only and I don't think I'm

going to be if I'm if I'm alive at 70 I don't think I'm going to be leading some charge it's like different life stage so I feel like that's how I've approached it and then the reason why it can be a block can I ask you a question do you have any kind of spirituality and because there are points where I just think like I just want to get it to create as much dopamine and oxytocin for myself as possible like that's if you go why am I doing this moment I mean there's like there are there's a spiritual bent which is like I it's purpose driven and I'm a some sort of connection to God and then the other one is like I'm just a person and the good stuff is dopamine oxytocin and let's just get that pumping you love and rami yosef was doing this with you you guys love to just sprinkle in like three

biochemical words it's it's to like us up the point you're making you guys both like doing that this time this this this that's where we are so we're like oh was it a fun party and you'll be like i well by the way started out high cortisol but then it got to be no he overdoes that i oh only he does it not you i only i did it so it's just something other people i did it to show how stupid it is when he does it um and why but i and why did you do it today but the the but what do you when you think what do you do when you go some people go that's grandiose how do you how do you how do you how do you're saying do i believe there's a spiritual or moral barrier you get 80 years yeah uh what do you think you're supposed to do in the 80 years i was raised to think that if you can make a contribution to the world around you, which could be local, could be like literally right around you

or might be a wider scale. Could be a sub-stack. Go ahead. That's valuable work. You should try to do that. I mean, I didn't know this growing up, but looking back on it, it was a very outward-looking public interest-oriented thing. It was not, it was never, you don't, and if you're getting to the core of, like, are you still trying to impress your parents? Well, you wouldn't impress my parents with like things or dollars or uh yeah possess anything like that um so maybe if you want to go

under the hood maybe there's some of that but yes i if i i believe there's a moral and spiritual dimension to humanity even though that's very hard for me to reconcile with like a giant cold universe where we're ants like yes i think that's hard but i mean i don't do that like day to day and I wouldn't start the newscast with like these things happen but like maybe it's all just synapses like we're just here like I don't you know what that is on a daily basis stick around for Rachel what do you say at the end of your show who's next who's after you Lawrence O'Donnell the the weeknight is next now who's on that Michael Steele and Simone and Alicia oh it's a new show great okay so so the are you in a hurry

do you feel like you're behind? No. Okay, so you're not like, I gotta do this, and I gotta, like, I'm, you're on schedule, you don't even think about it in that way. Through trial and error,

I've come to the view that life's not a race or we'd all be trying to die first. We're not like racing to the end of our lives. It's not a race. So I, at peace with that, the block is when we, like when I, started the beat so much of it with news is what's happening so it's your intake but then you

schedule things you book this guest you plan to do this piece i remember we were doing a piece about uh really egregious racist case of a guy on death row like 10 days left and we're like research a piece we're going to do it and then it got bumped as we say a day for big news which that happens sometimes the news is too big like you would wouldn't be responsible to just do some other thing that's not the national news then we did it then i remember there were a couple other steps washington posted an editorial and then some like republican was like wait i've never spoken out but this is this is too questionable to put this mandate and then the governor intervened and spared the execution and just commuted it to life sentence so at least saying

well the government shouldn't just be killing someone there's this many questions and it was like report other factors i'm not saying we were just part of that impact and then I was feeling like but those stories take more time and they're more local than national and like are we doing enough of them because like it literally was part of a change yeah and like that and I used to feel that more strongly and I think I've made my piece with it but when you ask for blocks like I think about that kind of stuff like when you're doing one more it's like Chandler's look you're doing one more DC politics segment and we have we have small teams and we have a team that works really hard together and like it's not you've limited

resource yeah it's not just like oh yeah and to report it out the right way and actually do it it's a multi-day story but we have a show every night plus we're doing a multi-day story like that's just reality right so like nah we can't but then other times I'm like are these good rationalizations we tell ourselves that's that bothered that stuff bothers me yeah and not because of cortisol or whatever fancy words you're into callback fuck this guy's getting a little too comfortable and what did you say earlier he was like your confidence do people hate that

like is this a barrow wallers podcast i was doing i was doing uh luke perry eyebrows your confidence perfectionism but read what it was said masquerading as what i want you to i it's interesting because it's you're telling on yourself a little which i appreciate i asked my chat GPT and I use it regularly and I have the premium account I said go through talk I said go

$29 a month like that damn I said go through our exchanges and everything that I've been doing with you oh interesting objectively without regard you do the therapy one it's not therapy this was more of a of a coaching I just said the prompt was I just said because I use it most for work. I'm not using it. It's not what I would consider traditional therapy topics, although I'm sure it ranges for people,

but I said, objectively, without regard to my feelings or my preferences of how I do things, can you identify areas where I have blind spots or could better face things from a, I said, from a sort of humanist self-actualization

and growth perspective, and be clear, be unsparing with me, And it gave like grouped responses and some were whatever, but one that definitely felt like a blind spot because I didn't like reading it and I don't self-identify this way was perfectionism masquerading as efficiency and productivity. Give me some. So I really don't like that because I don't think of that. That's pretty faint criticism. No, I'm not saying it's bad criticism, but I, whenever I know people.

There are people in my family. Now, here we go. Who can be perfectionist, which I view is pursuing some level of a perfection or accomplishment for no purpose, like just because things have to be that good. Yeah. Like behavioral OCD or something. Yeah, and I don't fuck with that.

What's the opposite of that? Trying to do work that's good enough for the purpose and then keep it moving and be practical. And I try to be pragmatic. practical about things. So then when it said that the, but I do have a deep time efficiency kink, like it's like a big thing for me and something my friends make fun of and that's fine, but I always say that that helps. You're not wearing, you are wearing a watch. I'm wearing a watch, which explains why he's rock hard right now. I also feel like it helps outrun death issues,

because if I use my time really well, you don't know when your time's up. So I just feel like, if my time's up next year, I'm not like, oh, but I was going to do stuff. I'm like, I've been doing stuff yeah uh i just got back from a camp like a cabin concert trip with my oldest high school friends six guys i've known 29 years okay and we're hanging out and i'm prioritizing that concert i have no idea what concert you went to well we went to a part of washington basically rural washington state near seattle and then there's like a festival the gorge not the gorge a smaller festival I'm not just to say where it was but okay because I don't yeah want people to come find us there but a festival not to be overly mysterious like

on some campgrounds in a place that's like super rural so it's like no big do you pull up you go in you come out and then the other days we were like swimming in a swimming hole and someone it's a someone place and then there yeah there was like local acts and then there was one headline we're getting a little side track I didn't right my side I didn't I thought you saw Morgan Whalen But I'm like, and I saw my parents and I'm living my life and I'm doing work that I hope has meaning. So that's my time efficiently. That's how I tell it.

But chat was saying, and this is blocks, that that's my cover story, that it's still basically perfectionism, which doesn't have to be true, but is certainly a blind spot since I don't think of it that way. So I was like, let me like face that. And then you said, what are your blocks? And I was like, all right. Yeah, I guess it's hard. If you have a schedule that you want to meet and you're meeting it or you have goals, I don't, are you aware of what it means? Do you think you know what Chat Chhabit means by that?

Yeah. Did you explain it to me? I think chat is saying that. Chat, we'll call it chat. The time efficiency is more rooted in. other needs than I am aware of, because I asked for blind spots. Okay. And that, if you want to be technical, that there might be some pathology there, that it's worth

scrutinizing rather than saying, no, no, this is something I'm good at, and this is only the reason, and this is... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess I wonder what the fix would be. I don't know what the fix would be, but you know what Thomas Dewey said. Decimal system guy, that Thomas Dewey? Or is that a different... Different one, but I love that. It's the only one, Dewey, I know.

a problem well stated is a problem half solved. I think this is the exception. Is it? Yeah, because I don't know. I get Chad TBT's criticism, but it's one of those unfalsifiable. You could never please chat TBT. I believe in this category.

Well, chat is just one way to get it. Yeah. No, whoever said, your mom. Whoever said it. It is addressable if, for example, I'm inoculating against that tendency and not just taking it automatically, but the next time it happens going, oh, yeah, I could go that way and save seven minutes. And to me, time is valuable.

Or am I just overdoing this seven-minute thing? Yeah, I get it. If you're just, if it's like a form of like work-holism or over-scheduling or like, or anal retentiveness. This is right at my alley. Being present versus time traveling. And you, then you mentioned Eckartolle. and Ram Dass, two very good friends. Shout out to Ram Dass.

But what has been your arc with it? What's been your process with in terms of understanding? Because it is a bit anti-American, anti-capitalists to enjoy the moment and not worry about the future and not worry about it. Just here. I got into Ram Dass in high school. I got into the mindfulness space in high school.

So that was. That's when it was like pretty obscure. Yeah, I mean, it was, I don't know, mid-1990s, but I'm in Seattle, I worked at a co-op. It's very pretty hippie-dippy space. And Seattle's like now a known city, but like if you go back enough decades, it was like Maine.

Yeah. Portland pre-Portlandia. So there was just different vibes and ways of being, and that was totally the mood. And I was reading Ram Dass, be here now. And it appealed to me then.

and then our world's gotten busier and all that and tech. So I just think about it. I'm very aware of it. You are not your thoughts. Don't listen. Don't believe your thoughts. You're not your thoughts. And what Eckhart-Tol says, which goes all the way back to any, like, classic Eastern text, is the past doesn't exist.

Like, that's a deep thing to understand at either a historical cultural level and a personal level and how much it is in our. psyche in ourselves and it creates realities but it is actually over it is not a real part of today's reality and the future is obviously uncertain and so that's kind of anytime you can get some you can get it through a hike you can get through nature you can get it through a profound experience I think a lot of people have a negative upload of this where because I've you've had it's in art and movies but also I've had friends where they're like oh my god like once I found out like no no my my mom really only has this amount of time like everything cleared away like almost like you're walking through all these things dissipate and it's just like your mom your immediate family

and the reality of that so that makes sense and it's not that you're going to have that level of stakes every day but remembering that like that feeling is not specific to that lifespan man. That's just a feeling that's strong enough that it overwhelms all the distracting information that makes us forget that we have such limited time now. I even think saying that when people say like the past doesn't, I think that make, I think it's bad marketing for what Rob Doss and Eckhart Tolly espoused to me. It's just like, just don't believe your thoughts. Just let it go. Like maybe like you hear it. You're not your thoughts. You're the person. You're the thing that.

hears your thoughts. But you're speaking at an instrumental level. You're speaking in a tactical level, which is very relevant for people. Because I just think that's the part, like just start there. But underneath that, at least the way some people think about it is, what is the validity, what is the proof case of that? Like why don't believe all these distracting thoughts? It's because a lot of them are about, I mean, if you really categorize them, a lot of them are about the past, you're like, oh, am I doing that again and that happened? And I was upset about that. Am I repeating that like and then the future and none of this by the way is relevant to like I was always we our brain creates uh tragic dramas about the past and uh sci-fi horror about the future

right well and so that's a good example I was going to say none of this works for policy no one's saying you're going to make monetary policy by ignoring the last several quarters yeah that's different but uh but when you look at like end times thinking, you can actually look, it's funny to make a point about ignoring the past by looking at the past, but many generations across many different parts

of the world before the world, remember, could communicate with itself. It's only very recently that we could communicate across continents. You had end times thinking in multiple different continents, right? You had statues and texts built about how this was the last generation. And we have that now,

plugged in with some new shit that some of it is like, whoa, what's going to happen? Yeah. You get it. But underneath that, you have to know that we've been talking this way to ourselves forever. Yeah. So maybe it's, you know, 37% more relevant to some of these supercomputers. Maybe. Or maybe we also can unlock like that. So end times thinking, think, think about the past or only living for the future, which I do think has served more. I think capitalism has an incentive to serve you on that. Live on debt, hope you get things get better later, give all your money and time away to these corporations. I think there's reasons that we're serviced with that. But underneath that is, and there's books about the evolutionary

biology of this that like the ones that survive did more future thinking. Yeah, that's the issue. But now we're overserved for that. And I'm not a, you know, doctor. Yeah. And do you draw on it a lot? Do you meditate? Do you do any sort of, or is it just one of these things of like, I can, dude, don't forget. I don't meditate anymore. I had a period of time where I tried meditating, and it was, like, cool, but it didn't do a ton for me. Yep.

But I do think of it with, like, nature and breaks. Like, I grew up backpacking and hiking, and that's a place for me where I enjoy that. And, like, I was just out in Utah. Like, I picture, I'm picturing you in shorts, and I'm going to go on the record as betting that you have hairy legs. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to confirm or deny. You don't need to.

Because I'm patrolling your appearance. You don't, you don't, yeah, I'm a fucking comedian. You are a comedian. So to me being several days, whatever you want to call it, like, but away and in nature always works well for me, and I try to do that regularly. So I don't think of it as like 20 minutes of meditation, but I do think like, two, three days, and with my job, whatever, but like two, three days actually off the phone and no news alerts and none of that and being in a place of nature that's also our lived reality, like, if you can get

there this is also reality yeah there are there are there's too many realities respect the issue i enjoyed i enjoyed this and i also think um people are going to like you more after hearing this i mean it doesn't matter what people like i know you act like it doesn't matter and i and as always i'll end the podcast by saying it's just synapses and and our guest has been arie melbourne and he's on at 6 o'clock every night, Eastern on MSNBC. You know why? Because he speak English.

The beat and Substack and YouTube and probably Twitter. His only fans is better than you think. Ari Mellon. Thanks, Neil. You got it, buddy. But it wants to have it ran, my man. All you have the news is open up your hand, my man.