Central Air - Jay Powell's Emergency Podcast

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

This week: the bombshell at the Federal Reserve — the bank was served with subpoenas related to a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony about renovation cost overruns, and Powell's direct-to-camera video pledging to resist this use of a pretextual criminal investigation to pressure him and the bank to lower interest rates. We also discuss the Minnesota ICE shooting.Plus: Steve Morris of The Long Run joins us to discuss the groveling apology that gay liberal comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers had to offer for showing insufficient respect to our lord and savior Jasmine Crockett, and we discuss at the problems facing straight people — who these days seem to talk a lot about how awful the opposite sex is while having very little sex with the opposite sex. This is sad!Leave a comment on this episode at centralairpodcast.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe

Welcome to Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. This is Josh Barrow. I'm here with Megan McArdle, columnist for the Washington Post. Megan, I hear you're the new resident Venezuela oil industry expert at the Washington Post. Well, in Washington Post opinions, perhaps. Yeah, I somewhat hilariously, I wrote a nice column the day before New Year's, on disconnecting from the news cycle, and, you know, not letting it get to you. And then I filed it on Friday. I was going to have a lovely relaxing weekend.

And then I woke up at 3 a.m. on Friday morning. And I was like, oh, no. That's, oh, no, they arrested Maduro. Yeah, that was the oh, no, we invaded Venezuela. Really, you were the primary victim here. Yeah, I think that's what I'm trying to say. Regime change for your vacation. Exactly.

I actually, I used to follow the Venezuelan oil industry reasonably closely. and I sort of got out of the habit over the last five, ten years. And then so I spent the day refreshing myself on everything that had happened since then. And then I ended up writing an editorial, a column, and doing a special emergency podcast where I somehow talked my producers into just letting me look at a camera and talk about Venezuela and oil for 30 minutes. So Ben, one of my rules, one of my and Sarah Fais's roles is there's no such thing as an emergency podcast. There's no emergency where the tool that you need to reach for is a podcast. That's a Ben Dreyfus is here. He writes the sub-sec newsletter, calm down.

Have you ever done an emergency podcast? I have, but I always felt a little dirty, you know. It's clearly just trying to lure people into it. The second thing said that, I was like, one of the things I know about Josh is that isn't a term he likes. That is true. And so, of course, we, you know, we had the Venezuela coverage last week. I'm sure that we will be back on that story from time to time because of our, you know, the resident expert that we have here for that. I want to open this week, though, with the Fed. Jay Powell, apparently the latest figure under revenge investigation by the Donald Trump DOJ. There were subpoenas served last Friday at the Federal Reserve looking for documents related to the, the renovation of the Federal Reserve's headquarters buildings, which, you know, surprise, surprise has been way over budget like any. big-ass government project in Washington, D.C. And there's been this effort to spin this up as a

scandal in which Jay Powell may have committed crimes. They're saying that he lied to Congress about, I don't know, the marble on the buildings or other things about the scope of that renovation. And so Janine Piro, the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., former TV judge personality, has been looking into that, sent these subpoenas. And then on Sunday night, Jay Powell released a video, I guess the Fed chair version of an emergency podcast in which he made a statement talking about how this is a pretext and the Trump administration is trying to control the making of monetary policy. And that's why they're taking these actions because they want them to lower interest rates more than they have. And that sometimes, you know, you have to stand up and defend yourself in your institutions against these sort of attacks. And one interesting thing about Jay Powell, who's the first Fed chair in decades, who is not an academic economist,

He's a really effective political operator who has spent years, going back to when he was a member of the board, before he was the chair, cultivating very deep relationships on both sides of the aisle in Congress. The Fed is a creation of Congress, is accountable to Congress. And there was a lot of outrage about these subpoenas from both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. And one very key Republican, Tom Tillis, who's a senator from North Carolina who's going to retire at the end of this year, he announced that he won't support the confirmation of any Trump Fed nominees so long as this pretextual investigation. is still ongoing. Powell is done, will be done being Fed chair in May, but his seat on the board he has until 2028 if he wants to keep it. Now, typically chairs, when their chairmanship ends, they leave the Fed board. But we're in an unusual situation where it's clear that the White House is trying to assert direct control over the Federal Reserve in order to inappropriately

loosen monetary policy in a way that could be very inflationary. So one thing this may lead to is Jay Powell staying on the board longer than he might like to than he might have been expected to. basically trying to prevent the administration from getting control of the board, which, you know, they'll be helped by if Congress won't do any new confirmations. And so, Megan, one thing that's been interesting, the stock market reaction to this has been pretty muted. Now, in theory, you know, if you have things that have a lot of effect on monetary policy that cause really inappropriate monetary policy to be made, that should have a lot of effect on stock prices, on bond yields. The market has kind of shrugged this off in the way that it shrugs off a lot of things that have happened in this first year of the second Trump administration. Yeah, I mean, this has always been the enduring mystery, also the first Trump term, where markets were extremely sanguine about the president's kind of wilder stylings. And when I would ask people about this, I would get the same answer that I have heard now, which is, he doesn't really mean it. He's not going to do the worst stuff. And like this, that's true, even though, obviously that was a very bad theory of the second Trump administration, right? They thought he didn't really mean it.

Right. I mean, the tariffs have been very real. Yeah. No, he meant it. Very. Slightly less real than they appeared on one day in April, but still very real. Yes. Yet entirely sincere, right? This was not something that he was just kind of jawboning about. And I think that what's happened here is a signal that Donald Trump is quite serious for reasons that allude me. This is totally moronic on a signal. any number of levels. First of all, because Marketts will take it badly if he actually really goes for the gusto. But second, because an independent Fed, yes, it prevents politicians from doing what Richard Nixon did in the 70s and pressuring the Fed to inflate ahead of an election, which then led to inflation. But the thing is that the inflation doesn't take that long to arrive. There's really a narrow window where you can get away with that, and it's right before an election. because if you do it, say, a year or so in advance, the inflation's going to show up.

It does take a few months for that to work its way through the system, but it's not that many months. And people, as Joe Biden discovered, really hate inflation. They hate it with the white-hot passion of a thousand sons. And so if he managed to get inflation, if he managed to get looser monetary policy, it would not redound to his political benefit or that of his party or that of his agenda or anything. else. It would make voters extremely mad. And what an independent Fed does is allow the president to say, gosh, I really wish I could give you lower interest rates, but ah, out of my hands. And by interfering with this, he's not just risking the Fed's independence, scaring markets, and doing all this bad

institutional work. He's actually making life harder on himself. And I cannot wrap my brain around how he and Bill Pulte, who is the head of the FHA. The Federal Housing Finance Administration. It's this sion of a homebuilding family, and not the favorite one, by the way. Like the Pultes, there's a whole bunch of Pultes. And this one got kind of pushed out of the Pulte homebuilding business and ended up having to figure out something out. So he became this Trumpy guy and is now, you know, running the FHFA, but then also like coming up with ways like, hey, you know, maybe we can accuse Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud. he's the one who brought the giant poster to the president for the 50-year mortgage showing, you know, FDR invented the 30-year mortgage.

You can invent the 50-year mortgage and everyone will remember you and actually got the president to float this. Everyone hated the idea. But he's this moron. He is full of extremely bad ideas. Ben, one thing that was remarkable about this was, you know, I mean, Powell could have put out a written statement. It was interesting that it was this direct-to-camera video. And there's been this, you know, new resistance love for Jay Powell that's like, you know, finally someone in one of the institutions is standing up to Trump.

Now, Powell has various structural advantages that puts him in a better position to defend himself than a lot of people in Washington. So I think that's part of what's happening here. But it's interesting that he decided that, you know, he was going to be on video doing this. It did seem like a very crafty PR move, you know, to come out and make that little direct-to-video thing, even though he wasn't mic properly. So there was like some weird back noise in his. There was like some phlegm, but maybe they should have done another take. But I did think that, you know, I had to hand it to whatever law firm he has that was like, let's get in front of this and go on the internet and get all those things. It's Williams and Connolly.

Williams and Connolly is his personal law firm, although this statement was released through the Fed. So, I mean, I don't know what role the lawyers had. I guess I don't entirely understand why even to like put myself in the mind space of the Trump. administration. He's leaving in three months or four months or whatever it is. And this is only going to make it impossible to appoint Don Jr. to the Fed or whatever the fuck a day they want to do. And I don't really understand why it's worth having this fight at this point in this, because it's just going to make it harder for them to appoint, you know, to do whatever they want to do. And I'm curious to know what you guys think about that. Well, I mean, I do know what their dumbass logic is. I mean, it's stupid. But the, so first of all, is, you know, the Fed chair doesn't make monetary policy. The Federal Open Market Committee makes monetary policy.

It's all seven members of the Federal Reserve Board and a rotating cast of five presidents of the regional federal reserve banks. So if you want, you know, one percent interest rates or whatever it is that the president, you know, wants in his heart of hearts, it's not good enough to replace the chair. You have to get a majority on the committee to go along and do that. So either you need to make lots of appointments or you need to appoint a chair who has credibility and is able to move the committee along with him. And so it's, you know, they don't just want a new chair. They want Powell to vacate his seat on the committee on the Federal Reserve Board so that they can make so that they can control more of the seats, make more of their own appointments into those seats. And then at some point, once you have a majority on the board, in theory, you could try to dismiss some of the regional Fed Bank presidents. I haven't seen them make any moves yet in that direction.

But they seem to have thought that basically if you apply this pressure on Powell, he'll decide that this is more trouble than it's worth. And, you know, maybe he'll even leave early. But that he definitely wouldn't stick around in his board seat for two more years after his chair. chairmanship is done. Now, in fact, I think Powell is, you know, Powell's a guy who's, you know, been through the capstone of his career and, you know, lives in Chevy Chase and would probably like to go back to the private sector. But he cares a lot about defending the independence of the Federal Reserve and preventing the wrecking of the value of the, you know, the credibility of the Fed that it will fight inflation that took decades to build. And so when he's attacked like this,

it actually makes him more likely to stay sick around. But there's, Trump's instinct is always, you know, aggressive, aggressive, aggressive. And if you intimidate people, that's how you'll get what you want. He's not always strategic about thinking about that. And I think that when Bill Pulte came to him with this, you know, Jay Powell's been a pain in your ass, let's see if we can get him indicted, I think that's very appealing to Trump, even though, you know, Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson knows this is idiotic and tried to stop this, but it appears that there was an end run around him that caused this to get done anyway. But I mean, that that's what Trump's instinct here. It's always raised, never fold. And he just didn't see that it was going to backfire

in this particular instance. And I think the other thing is, you know, the, the, expectation is that he's going to appoint Kevin Hassett, who's one of his top economic advisors to head the Fed. And Hassett is this kind of hacky Republican economist guy who's been around Washington for decades and has, you know, gotten in good with the Trump people because he's more willing to say stupid shit than Greg Mankew or some of the other people who could be in these jobs. And so the expectation was Hassett was going to get that appointment. Now I think Hassett is going to be seen as too much in the president's pocket. And he may not get any new Fed chair appointed, so they'll have less influence over what the Fed does. So what happens if they don't, if they can't get someone appointed? I mean, who's the interim chair?

So people have been discussing this. Apparently, there's a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel from the 1970s, which says that the president may designate a member of the Federal Reserve Board to act as chair when the chairmanship is vacant. And the chairmanship was actually vacant for a brief period in 1978. And Jimmy Carter did this. And so in theory, President Trump could designate one of his preferred members of the board, probably Steve Myron, who was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, was just recently appointed to a very brief. vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. So actually, Steve Myron's term is up in like three weeks. But if they don't appoint someone new into the seat, Steve Myron is sitting and he can stay in that seat indefinitely. So in theory, they could make him the chair. There's two other Trump appointees

on the board, Mickey Bowman and Christopher Waller, who I'd say are more widely respected than Steve Myron, who I would think would be, you know, more appropriate chairs who have more independence from the president. And I think that would be, you know, those would be adequate choices. But, you know, even if Myron has made the chair and even if Myron wants to, you know, to do the president's bidding on certain things. It's still, again, you know, he doesn't get to make policy himself. He has to bring the board along with him. So I don't, you know, the, I don't think even the president getting to choose the chair doesn't give him control over the Fed.

Yeah, I would like to just make two points. And number one is that sometimes you need an emergency pod. I mean, really, doing it. Okay, this was an emergence. If someone subpoenas us for central air records, like toward an indictment, Well, consult with our attorneys. I mean, usually the legal advice is say nothing, and actually an emergency pod would be a mistake. But I'm open to the idea that you could have a specific set of circumstances where that's the right thing to do with the agency. Well, I mean, it's also, it is interesting that he did this, right, that he goes on on video for a few reasons. Number one, it was incredibly strategic. It goes on CNBC. It's good, you know, it's good publicity for this and turns it into a bigger fight than it might have been otherwise. But number two, I think it tells you that his attorneys have very carefully vetted any potential liabilities. and concluded that there aren't any.

Because when you do fear that you are going to go into court, you do not want to have said anything that might cause problems. So I'm going to assume that they've looked through this. He retained Williams and Connolly well before this incident, clearly in preparation for something like this. But I still, you know, at the end of the day, I really don't even understand what Trump wants to get out of this. How much does he think he can lower interest rates?

The VETA actually has quite limited powers over longer-term interest rates, right? It can affect short-term rates, but if the markets think there's going to be wild inflation, they're going to charge to offset the risk of that inflation for any kind of longer loans, like a mortgage or even a car loan. And so I just think this is, it's kind of an example of just really like kindergarten-level thinking about policy. What is? It's low-rate's good, high-rate's bad. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And I think that it's doing immense destruction, but unlike the tariffs where I think the tariffs are doing immense destruction and in fact causing problems for American manufacturing and all of these other things, I can at least work out a theory of what it's trying to do. I think that theory is incorrect. You mean the tariffs? You can understand the theory. Here I don't even know what the argument is other than literally just low interest rates good, high interest rates bad. It's incoherent, especially because, I mean, the use. usual reason you would cut interest rates is that there's weakness in the economy, that, you know, we're worried about the labor market, we think there's going to be layoffs,

we need to support business investment for that reason. That's why we're cutting interest rates. And that's also why we don't worry it would be inflationary because, you know, we think people are going to be losing their jobs, they're not going to be out there spending. And when you look at the members of the Federal Reserve Board that have been more inclined toward cutting rates a bit more in the current environment, when you look at Waller and Bowman and what they've been saying, it is exactly that. It's that, you know, we're worried about the labor market, we think that businesses are stuck and can't figure out whether to, you know, whether to lay off or not, and that's going to change. And we need to support the labor market with lower

rates. It's the opposite of what the president himself says about the economy, which is that the economy's great and that affordability is a Democrat hoax and everything's wonderful. And, you know, the economy's never been better. If that were really true, then you should raise interest rates because the economy might overheat. So of course what Trump is saying about this is incoherent. But I think that, you know, I don't think he's ever had a coherent theory of this. He just, He likes low interest rates because he has experience borrowing money to build buildings, and it's cheaper to do that when interest rates are lower. Well, and if you want to make the argument that you're trying to expand, because the job market is a little messed up. Yes.

It's the unemployment rate is pretty good, but it seems a bit frozen where people are not leaving jobs, people are not hiring, everyone's just kind of squatting in place trying to figure out what's going to happen. But one of the main reasons that is advanced for why that is happening is, of course, AI. It is that there is technology that's going to come and replace labor, so don't hire people that you'll have to fire later. And on the flip side, don't leave a job where you have a long-time connection to the firm and will be one of the last people laid off and go to a new job where you'll be one of the first. But here's the thing. You lower interest rates. You make it easier to borrow money to do capital investment. What kind of capital investment are companies likely to do?

AI. One of the things they're going to invest in is more AI. Right. I'm not sure that you're even going to see the short-term boost he's looking for. I mean, and those are the things that, you know, if you're going to have an argument about should the federal funds rate be 3 and 1% or 4%, there's a perfectly live argument that you can have where you can make a sensible case on either side. The problem is when the president comes around and says interest rates should be 1%. Like that's the absurd thing that he seems to actually want out of the Fed that would cause inflation to spiral. And I think, you know, to go back to the beginning of this, it's not that he's not serious about this.

It's that there's a real question about whether he can get what he wants. And I think that is a live question. I think it's not clear that he can get what he wants, and maybe that's what saved us here. And, you know, Jay Powell is a key part of that. I want to turn and talk about Minnesota. We've been following this fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of an ICE agent last week in Minneapolis. And this situation has been sort of this classic scissor where you have Democrats calling for criminal charges while Republicans look at the video of the shooting and say the agent's actions were obviously justified that he was about to be run over. And I don't think it follows from the scissor observation that the truth is.

unknowable, which is the way that some people have been talking about this on social media. I mean, I know I look at this video and I think the officer was obviously in the wrong. But I think the difference now people look at it stems maybe not so much from literally different interpretations of what's on the video, but different views of like who was in the wrong for being there in the first place and who had the obligation not to escalate. I mean, you know, Republicans see a woman who is out here looking for trouble and found it. And what Democrats see and what I see when I look at this is a government agent and a government agency. They were out there intentionally fomenting these kinds of standsoffs, in part literally for

social media content. I mean, one of the most galling things about this is this officer going around holding his fucking iPhone in his hand, videotaping what he's doing, and then like calling her a bitch after he shoots her. And it's clear that this is for this social media campaign that ICE is doing, where they want all this on the ground footage of these ICE raids because I guess they think it's an important political message or because they think it's an effective message that causes people not to try to come to the United States immediately or to leave. But it's like there was that South Park earlier this year about like Christy Nome and Pete Hegseth doing their jobs really is just like social media operations and trying to get as much content as they can. And there's like there's actual

literal truth to that that like, you know, ended up with a woman dead in this situation, which is just, you know, it's absolutely galling to me. I think that's right. And I also, I, my personal take on this as someone who's thought a fair amount about policing is that it's not really a helpful frame to ask, like, who deserve to be there. She had a First Amendment right to be there, and as much as I despise the ice raids, the ice raids are legal, as far as I can tell. Some of the individual tactics may not be, but it is legal to round up and deport people who are here illegally. Regardless of the wisdom, the cruelty, the morality of it, it is legal. And so I think that is what people are seeing. But I think you should be able to get beyond

that question, because officers on a bad mission that should never have been. ordered, can legitimately find themselves in a position where they fear for their life, and they have to fire in self-defense, even if they shouldn't have been there in the first place. And on the flip side, officers on a very good mission, the best mission, to, you know, save children from a terrible sniper situation or something. You can have individual bad cops who are either bad decision makers or just bad people. If you give hundreds of thousands of people, badges and guns, some of them will be bad. They will be power-hungry monsters or something close to it. And the particulars of the situation matter more than who was supposed to be there. And if we talk about

law enforcement that way, we just go down a very dark path, which is where what we did do in 2020, I think, really counterproductively. My take is actually, having said that, pretty close to yours, Josh, which is that I don't know why he fired at her, but I do not see. any reason to believe that he actually sincerely thought his life was in danger. I have watched all of the videos, back front side, slow motion, real time. And I'm sorry, we negotiate encounters like this in parking lots all the time. And one thing that I asked some of my conservative friends who said, who are on the side of ice here, is I said, like, look, I just strip out the cop.

And imagine this is a guy in a hoodie in a parking lot. and you have all the other same facts, do you think that that guy had a right to fire in self-defense because he feared for his life? And I think the answer is just obviously no, that no one would say, yes, obviously you had to kill that woman. And while people will then say, but that's different, it's actually the law of self-defense

and the laws about the rules about when officers are allowed to discharge their weapons or use lethal force, they're actually quite similar. And the rule is, do you have an imminent, a fear that there is, imminent risk of death or injury to yourself or someone else. It is not like, should you have been there? Should she have been resisting arrest? Any of those other questions are irrelevant to the question of did he at that moment think that he was preventing death or grievous bodily harm

to himself or someone else in the vicinity? And I can't get there. I just can't. Ben? I mean, I find it like incredibly useless when we all, whenever anything like this ever happens and we all go on social media and look at her stupid videos and are like, oh, I know what happened. And like, I try to avoid them because of that because like, I have no idea what the fuck happened. I saw these two videos. One of them is incredibly hard to see and the other one is, but what really pissed me off? Because like, is that the administration didn't take time to do an investigation. They waited 90 minutes to then say she's a communist who deserves it. A domestic terrorist. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. And like, it just, it just means that, you know, even if the guy,

I did even let's like give grant all the premises that maybe the guy was hit on a little bit, like, whatever you want. You tend to disservice even that cop. Because like there is just no way that short of a 9-11 commission sort of situation here, I'm ever going to trust whatever these investigators decide to happen. Yeah. Because the federal investigators. They didn't even bother to do any look. And then you see this thing, right, we're like, since they are not going to do a fucking investigation, you have no choice but to then go and look at, well, I guess I'm going to go and. scroll and look at all the videos and see then what I feel like Josh was just pointing out,

which is that when you watch these videos out of Minnesota, and not just the ones where Rishi dies, but just ones where they're casually beating people up at Target. And it looks awful. I mean, these people look like thugs just casually. With their faces covered. Yeah, it's just disgusting. And I mean, like, I'm sure that, you know, that's not every interaction.

It's anecdotal. We're only seeing the bad ones. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Who cares? But, like, the fact is, you watch them in order, it's just as somebody who always sides with these, with law enforcement

normally, I found myself having a really hard time even like justifying any of this when you watch it. And it's just so, maybe it's a system problem, maybe it's a lot of bad apples, maybe it's whatever it is. But this is going to be so obviously unpopular.

And if they're doing it and they want to be filmed doing it, then that is the most self-destructive thing anyone in history has ever done. This is a bomb. I mean, the other thing is that like if you're in a job where the government gives you a gun and puts you in situations where you might be expected to use deadly force, you have a moral obligation to be competent at the job. And so, you know, when I look at those videos, you know, I actually, I find it plausible that in the split second, the officer was concerned that he was going to be run over. And in the important context, this guy was in fact dragged from a car by another suspect who they had very good reason to try to arrest some time ago. I can believe that when he fired the first shot that he was worried about that.

Now, he fired two additional shots through the side window. I don't see I could possibly justify that. But the other thing is that, like, he never should have walked in front of the car. He never should have put himself in that position where he was at risk of being run over. And furthermore, he shouldn't have been filming with his phone, which presumably was taking up a significant amount of attention and making it more difficult for him to keep himself safe. And so, you know, even if in that moment, you know, he was at. actually afraid that he was going to get run over. I view that as his own fault for putting himself in a position where that was that risk and that if he was better at his job, that never would have

happened. Now, I don't know how that interacts with the legal standard in a court if he's charged and maybe they'll charge him in Minnesota and we'll find out. But that's part of what's offensive to me about this, is the fly-by-night, low-training nature. They're hiring all these people who are not well-qualified. They're not training them well. And that's part of why this situation is happening. And I view that there's real moral culpability in that if you're an idiot who walks in front of the car and puts yourself in this situation and you get put in a position where you fear for your life. That's your fault as far as I can tell. I mean, this looks like it seems to have been Officer Jonathan Ross, who's actually been working with Border Patrol and ICE for 10 years. So I don't

think it's, they just hired some rando off the street here. But I will say that a plausible... But then he's still an idiot, even if he should know better at this point. But a plausible reading of what is that he was so busy looking at his phone that he didn't realize the car was moving. Yeah. And that he was then surprised he had, because he had, in fact, been dragged by another car. He then sort of shot her, but he'd already drawn his weapon at that point. And it's just, what are you doing, my dude? Yeah.

And, I guess, like, why can't we just have a grand jury look into it, right? Well, I think we might. They just hadn't come out and said he deserved it or whatever. I think there may well be a state prosecution by Minnesota authorities. I think we might go. It will be removed to federal court. But won't that just be taken federalized? It'll be removed to federal courts, but they can still prosecute in federal court.

The state prosecutors can appear in federal court and do the prosecution there. This, I mean, this just should have a serious investigation and it should have. Yeah. Because look, maybe there's context I don't know. There's also, I mean, the politics of this where it's basically, you know, Republicans seem so confidently to believe that this is a winning issue for them that, you know, like Americans hate these, you know, mouthy, lesbians as much as they do and, you know, see this footage and side with them. And I think it's partly that we've had several years of, you know, Republicans positioning themselves tough on crime, tough on immigration. It's a winning issue every time. And Democrats have walked into a lot of

traps on this and the Biden administration's immigration policy was a political disaster. And so I think their instinct is that they can just, you know, anything like this that happens, they can press their advantage on it and it's a winning issue politically. And I don't, you know, I think they're mistaken about that in this specific set of facts here. I don't think that immigration has got a winning issue for Democrats, but I think this is, you know, I don't, I'm not afraid that when Democrats complain about this, they're walking into a political trap. But, you know, we're starting to see some early polling suggesting that the public is very much not on ISIS side in this. And I think that we're seeing what it looks like for the Trump administration to go too far in a way that even backfires politically. So at least that's what I, what I hope we're seeing.

Well, I mean, it's also that whatever problem you have looks better than the problem you don't. When you've got an uncontrolled border, you become willing to do things to control. that border in the same way that when crimes spun out of control in the 70s and 80s and early 90s, people became willing to do draconian things to reduce it. But when that problem abates, you start focusing on other problems. Like, what about law enforcement overreach? And I think that's where we now are in part because the overreach is so theatric and so beyond what people wanted at any point. I mean, it's your right as an American to tell some fucking law enforcement agent to suck your dick when they ask for your person.

paper. And like, the fact is that there's thousands of, thousands of these videos now of them beating them up for that. And like everyone at some level does understand, like, look, when the masked man asked for my papers and I tell him to, like, suck my tick, like, if he then beats you

to a pulp and drops you off a town, like two towns away, well, that was that person, what is this? You know, Germany? In America, that's one of our core rights. Why don't we take a quick break here? We're going to come back and unfortunately talk about Jasmine Crockett.

This is Central Air. I encourage you. Go to Centralair Podcast. Sign up, become a member there with us on Substack. You'll find out when we're doing Substack live conversations. We're going to do another one of those

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Pie's delicious. Before you leave D.C., Ben, you will eat pie. Yeah. Anyway, we'll be ready. back with Central Air with some pie. So Texas is a red state, but it's not that red. Democrats came within two and a half points of winning a Senate race there in 2018. And there might be a good opportunity for Democrats again this year because Republicans might nominate a really off-putting

candidate, which is the state attorney general, Ken Paxton. But unfortunately, Democrats have their own candidate recruitment problem. I wrote a few months back complaining about James Talarico, who is this choir boy state representative from Austin, who has the usual set of doctrinaire liberal policy positions, but dresses them up in scripture. And this strikes me as an ill-advised way to run in Texas. And I wrote a piece saying, Democrats should somebody nominate somebody else who's more moderate, who's more customized to Texas electorate, more likely to win over some Trump voters, because that's what you need to win a statewide race in Texas. This is not the right guy. Total Monkees' Palm moment, where you wish for something and you get it good and hard.

Tala Rico is now running a primary against Jasmine Crockett, who is a congresswoman whose specialty is throwing out red meat for the MSNBC audience, which makes her a prodigious national fundraiser. You may remember her. She's the one who called Marjorie Taylor Green a bleach blonde, bad-built butch body, whatever that means. Totally thrills liberals. Literally, I was on Fire Island.

Not 48 hours after that moment in that hearing with Marjorie Taylor Green and Jasmine Crockett, this gay shows up to the bar in a bleach blonde, bad-built, butch-body T-shirt, or maybe tank top. I was like, where did you get that? And he printed it himself, which is how he had it in this 48-hour turnaround. So people love this. Gay liberals in New York, for example, love this, which is not the same as, you know, who votes in a general election in Texas. But so anyway, now Jasmine Crockett is running and it would be a way worse candidate than James Talarico. And there's a problem because people get real mad if you say anything negative about Jasmine Crockett. And it's become a problem on Democratic Party.

And to talk about that, we have Steve Morris here with us this week. Steve's a political journalist, you may have seen his videos for the recount. Now he's writing the long run, which is a newsletter about Democratic Party politics that focuses on Democratic governors. You can find that on Substack. Hey, Steve, thanks for joining us. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. So Bowen Yang, recently of Saturday Night Live and Matt Rogers, his co-host on a podcast, it's mostly not about politics, but sometimes they talk about politics. They told their listeners not to bother giving money to Jasmine Crockett, who can't win an election in Texas. And that was really poorly received by some of the people who heard that.

Yeah. I mean, essentially what we saw was just Bonin, Matt on their podcast, opining about politics in a way that seemed to be, as you said, very poorly received. I would start with the premise that what they mentioned about Crockett was simply that she was not going to win in Texas. And I think a pretty crucial detail of it all is that they explicitly compared her to Gavin Newsom. They said that she was too well-defined. And as I think we'll get into, the fact that they invoked Newsom, I think, is a pretty crucial thing.

But it was all the things considered a pretty anodyne comment about the electability of Jasmine Crockett in Texas. But it was not received as such, as you said. Yeah. I mean, so, for example, there was this post on TikTok by Hope Giselle, who's a black trans activist, describes herself as organizer, author, DEICOM specialist, and public speaker. and posts this in response to them saying, you know, don't waste your money, sending it to Jasmine Crockett,

she can't win this election. And it racked up 160,000 likes on TikTok. It's always a twink with a gaping rosebud in a microphone that has so much to say. But since we are being funny, since the Boyswood podcast decided to turn a black woman's Senate run into a punchline, let me return the favor. Because it's actually insane.

And I'm not talking about quirky insane, not internet cute insane, but structurally violent insane, that Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang thought that it was appropriate to sit on a microphone and tell black people or people in general not to financially support a black woman who is running for office. And so again, 160,000 likes for that. And then this sort of groveling apology from Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers about how, you know, they have the utmost respect and admiration for Jasmine Crockett and they should have, you know,

thought more about saying this and they'll be more mindful next time. But it's this very, like, this feels very 2018. Like, if you're someone who sits out of the core of like, of Democratic Party politics, this just looks insane with, you know, argument, you know, like she's a black woman, therefore you can't criticize her, that that still carries currency today, but it really does in a way that may actually affect who the party nominates in one of the Senate races it has to try to compete in if it's going to try to take the majority back in the Senate. How does this still have currency today? I mean, from my perspective, I think it's worth noting the difference between people on the internet and actual Democratic voters, which is

something we've been reminded of over and over again. I don't know. I'm just going to put my cards on the table. I've never listened to this podcast. I don't really have any loyalty to these two comedians personally. But I think Crockett for whatever reason, and I think there are some fair reasons that certain people are defensive about, you know, people who are certain demographics in public life, the way they're treated, the fact that Donald Trump frequently uses low IQ as a moniker around black female politicians. I think all of that is a fair thing to be defensive about. But again, the thing I just keep returning to is they explicitly said the exact same language about Gavin Newsome.

Who's a white guy? It just continues. Yeah, it just, it's baffling to me that there's some attempt to turn this into something bigger than it is. Can I just ask, like, what, what is keeping Rosebud? Oh, God. Are we actually going to ignore this for a second and pretend that 110,000 people on TikTok actually know what that term means?

I've been trying to figure it out for the last month. Ben, I am one of the more innocent. I've been married for 15 years. I lead a really bad, I know what that means. I know what both words mean individually, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to take from... Josh, I think you're going to have to take this one. I would advise listeners, if they don't know what that means,

don't Google it. You're not going to be happy with what comes up. But it's, you know, it's a statement about the... It's a statement about the condition of their assholes. And, you know, like, it's gross. But the other thing I would say about it is this insane thing to me where it's like, you know, you can't say that a black woman is a bad candidate.

That's racist. That's structural. violent. But you can go and talk about gay men as like, you know, like having like their body, bodily structural integrity has been ruined by how much they've gotten fucked and that that's like an okay thing. And it reflects the way Jasmine Crockett herself behaves. I mean, she called the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, Hot Wheels, because he's in a wheelchair. And then she went on TV and lied and said that she said it because he was busing migrants up north, even though she'd been liking Facebook comments calling him that back in 2021 before he ever put any migrants on a bus.

she accused Republicans of taking money from Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, this was money from other people named Jeffrey Epstein, not the Jeffrey Epstein. And then when she was asked about it, she was like, well, I said they took money from a Jeffrey Epstein, not from the Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, Jasmine Crockett talks so much shit. She is such a loud mouth who just like throws around insults that are neither smart nor strategic, which just makes it especially galling to me that her supporters have been like, you know, how dare you talk about her like this? Like the way she talks about other people is insane and is a general election problem in Texas. But there's this like this demand with all this, you know, decorum and respect for her that then is seated to where you have this, you know, you have to grovel because these people are so afraid of being called racist if they criticize her. And yet, you know, she can talk whatever shit she wants.

It's not just racism that this is, that this is a problem in democratic politics with or that democratic politics has a problem with like in 2016. I was writing that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate who was wooden on stage and generally charmless and lacking in charisma, even though I actually think she would have been a better president than Donald Trump, I voted for her. But she was objectively not a very good candidate. Her speaking style sounded hectoring. She didn't have any way to project passion other than just raising her voice, which gave her a kind of landlady shouting up the stairs vibe.

and when I said this, which was also by the true way, completely true of Andrew Cuomo, exactly the same problems. If you watch his Democratic convention speech, I looked at him and I said, he's also not going to be president because the only way he knows how to communicate is to raise his voice louder and louder until you're like, please stop yelling at me, dude. I'm going to go, you know, I'll pay my rent. I'll pay my rent. And when I said this, immediately I was swarmed with people who accused me of being sexist. And I was like, well, as a professional woman, I feel like I'm okay with women having greater professional opportunities. But it was just a way of deflecting that they had nominated a bad candidate for reasons that had nothing to do with her gender except insofar as she had been married to Bill Clinton, which enabled her to amass a quite large power structure within the Democratic Party. because Bill Clinton is, in fact, an immensely talented politician. And people just, it was constant deflection,

and that deflection enabled them to nominate bad candidates. We saw this over and over again is any time you would question Kamala Harris is the same story. She's a bad candidate. She's never won a competitive race. She almost lost to a Republican in the state of California. And the fact that no one could say that because of identity politics stuff, put the Democratic Party in a terrible place.

And it keeps somehow, despite the manifest problems with this strategy, somehow like they're desperate to keep going back to that place. And I do not understand it. Democrats, explain me, please. I mean, I guess like, I would just say that maybe there's a difference between the obvious human reality that there are sexist and racist tropes that go on here and that people are oversensitive to them sometimes. especially in the dawning of the social media age when everyone was suddenly being inundated and acting like a moron. But I think there's like a tangible difference, right, at some point a decade later, when it's being used so specifically and not just like people are having a cognitive reaction to this, to one where they are deliberately utilizing it with intentionality to act as a weapon, which is what's going on in the Jasma Cawka case, as opposed to in 2016, when people who had spent so long, like thinking of Hillary Clinton is someone who gets. you know, the victim of sexism from, from the right, which was a cardinal belief in the Democratic Party, that now this is just, it's purely cynical and weaponized. And I just think that that's like an important difference. One one of them is a venial sin and one is a mortal sin, right? Like. Right. No, no. My point is not. I basically agree with you that like Democrats actually thought this might be a productive way to talk. But it was cynical in 2016 to some extent. It was definitely cynical in 2020 and 2020 and 2024.

to some extent. But my question is now that you have seen the results of this, like, why are these guys apologizing for making an incredibly anodyne observation about a candidate who is too far left for the state of Texas? Why did that happen? I don't get it. Steve, what do you, what do you make of that? Why did they apologize? The thing about Crockett, I think, to me, is that it's not so much that her platform, her policy platform, is her liability. It's, she subscribes this very small, specific type of insular, reflexively partisan analysis. Like, you go back to look at how she was talking about Joe Biden after the disastrous debate in 2024.

You know, I was going back and looking at it yesterday. She was saying that he was overprepared for the debate. She was blaming the media for the coverage of it. She was saying she wouldn't campaign for any nominee besides Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. You know, there is no way to arrive at the conclusion that the fault of that debate was anyone other than Joe Biden, unless you are approaching the world. in a way that is of a very specific social media poisoned, reflexively partisan analysis.

So that to me is her biggest liability in Texas, set aside any ideology or anything. As to why they apologize, I think they were doing what a lot of people who get nasty comments on Instagram or Twitter do. I don't, I mean, from a pure PR perspective, it feels like they've left themselves in this position where they're not going to be forgiven by the hardcore objectors

and they're not really getting any credibility for standing on their original positions. So I feel like it's a little bit more small worlds for them. When Megan and Ben talk about the cynical deployment of identity as a weapon in Democratic politics, I think that's real. But I also think there is a very sincere obsession with identity characteristics of candidates and Democrats believing that this is the key to figuring out who's the right person to nominate and elect. And by the way, sometimes this points to white men, like that, you know, there was this idea when Kamala Harris needed a running mate that it needed to be a white guy who could quote unquote code talk to rural white voter. and that Tim Walls was the like the skeleton key for unlocking rural white voters, which was obviously insane. But I think that was a, I think that was a sincere belief. I think they thought that if she picked Gretchen Whitmer, it was going to be a problem to have two women on a ticket and the Walls was a better candidate because he was a man. And I think some of the Gavin Newsom stuff is there's a sense that because he's a white guy that he can get away with certain pugilism that he wouldn't if he were, you know, otherwise different. I think that Democrats, to some extent, see their own Donald Trump figure in Gavin Newsom. I again think that's ill-advised, but I think it is quite sincere. I think that they actually, you know,

despite the fact that it keeps blowing up in their face when they make these identity-driven decisions about who to nominate. I think that there's a lot of people in the party are really stuck in this paradigm where they think the electorate in general is as obsessed as they are with race and sex and that that's what they're looking to when they're making decisions about candidates. And I don't know what would disabuse them with that. Well, I mean, do you think that do you, when you say that it's an earnest belief, I guess, do you think that it's an earnest belief in the sense that they actually believe it on its merits or that they believe they need to appeal to the morons.

No, I, like, the Tim Walt thing, they need, they were like, oh, we need to appeal to some dipshits and find some white. Oh, they earnestly believe he would appeal to the people they think are dipshits. That's the earnest belief. But then on the other way of doing it is that sometimes a lot of these people are then saying doing the opposite, which isn't saying that they think that the left part of the party is, is morons in the same sense. But they're like, oh, well, we have to make sure the blacks don't get mad.

Let's make sure we have to have, you know, we're nice about. about Jasmine Crockett or whatever, in a sense that it's not their actual belief. It's a cynical, oh, oh, for an electable reason. We need to be practical and do this for coalition building. No, I think what's happened there is, you know, there's been this extrapolation from the correct observation that, you know, black women are a, like, extremely loyal democratic voting group, substantially more so even than black men, and that that's, you know, essential to the party's coalition. There's been an extrapolation from that to this idea that some Democrats subscribe to, that like being a black female Democrat is a source of inherent moral authority and that basically they can use these candidates as almost in a Jesus-like way.

I mean, you see this with Stacey Abrams especially who in between Stacey Abrams's two losing campaigns for governor of Georgia. She was cast on Star Trek as president of Earth. And she chose to appear in this cameo role, which I don't think helped her as a candidate for governor of Georgia in 2022. too, but like, this is the way that a lot of Democrats think about Stacey Abrams, and it's in significant part because of her race and sex. And you saw it with, you know, the, the adulation to Fannie Willis, even as she was really fucking up that, you know, that, that prosecutorial effort in Atlanta, you get this sort of, you know, this worship aspect from some Democrats, and it causes really dysfunctional thinking about these candidates because then it makes it

impossible to assess, you know, are they actually doing a good job? A bunch of Democrats of one statewide races in Georgia in the last few. years. You have two Senate candidates. Joe Biden won Georgia. Stacey Abrams has never won a statewide election in Georgia, but she's somehow treated as the savior of the party there. And so I think there is an element of that where there's, you know, this observation that, you know, that black women are electorally essential, which they are, leads to this, you know, this inability to think correctly about some of them when they are candidates. Now, of course, you know, you have black women who have done a great job of running on, you know, difficult

political geographies, Lauren Underwood, for example, Janelle Bynum, you have members of Congress who go and win in swing districts or even Republican-leaning districts because they build a campaign that is aimed at that voter base. Jasmine Crockett is not doing that. But as we're seeing here, you can't talk honestly about that because of this sort of like hero worship thing that she is benefiting from. On that, Josh, I do think, like, I personally have the view that a lot of this is far more earnest than a lot of people think. That's just generally my view about the way people talk on social media generally. But I do think that the selective nature in which people across the Democratic Party pledge their fealty to the elevation of black women is like a real example of cynicism. Like a lot of the people who are out there in the trenches for Jasmine Crockett right now would not have the same reaction to Nina Turner or Barbara Lee or Cory Bush.

And a lot of the progressives who are fans of Nina Turner, Barbara Lee or Cory Bush are not out there defending Jasmine Crockett or Chantelle Brown. Or certainly Lauren Underwood or the more moderate. Lauren Underwood, certainly. Like, that I think is just plainly cynical. Nobody, nobody honestly has an across-the-board view that your immutable characteristics are a qualification in and of themselves. Let's take a quick break. And then I want to come back.

And Steve and I are going to ask Ben and Megan some questions about whether straight people are okay because we have some concerns. This is central air. Finally this week, before we go, I want to talk about straight people because finally. Finally, some representation, some attention. I'm worried about straight people. And I was a guest on the fifth column podcast last week, and I tried to talk about this with the three straight guys who host that podcast. And the conversation is amusing. I encourage people to listen to it is a little less successful than I had hoped it might be in terms of actually trying to help the straights get more self-actualized.

But basically the reason I've been having this feeling is I feel like there's this proliferation of media like for men about how awful women are or for women about how awful men are. The thing that really set me off last week, it was a Sted Herndon from Vox resurfacing this British Vogue essay from last year titled, Are Boyfriends Embarrassing now? And it was women talking about how like, you know, they don't want to show their boyfriends on Instagram because it's embarrassing to have a boyfriend, that that looks Republican-coded. is literally what one of them says. And he interviews the author of this piece, who's still like very proud of this piece and describing this as a very real phenomenon. And it feels like every month

there's new terminology for this in the press. There was a New York Times essay about heterophatilism among women who, you know, realize they're straight and can't do anything about it and how awful that is because then they have to, you know,

try to find a man to love. You had this New York Magazine article saying that women are quiet quitting their marriages. They're not getting divorced, they're just sitting there and hating their husbands. And then on the flip side, especially in conservative media, you have all of this, you know, misogynistic content for men who just hate women. But the new thing, I mean, misogyny is obviously very old.

But, you know, it's not just like speaking degradingly about women, but basically rejecting them. This idea that, you know, it's not even worth trying to find a woman to fall in love with or even to have sex with. This is the, you know, the in-cells, obviously. He had Nick Fuentes on Tucker Carlson saying that, you know, he can't be with a woman because women are awful. He also said that having sex with a woman is gay, which I'm still trying to wrap my head around. And, you know, obviously, Nick Fuentes is an extreme example and I think, you know, quite possibly actually gay. But there's definitely this very real phenomenon where you have men who cannot form relationships with women, but who, you know, openly refer to themselves as incels and don't appear to be embarrassed to admit that they are incapable of attracting a woman to love and be interested. interested in them. And it just feels to me like gay people have to go through this process of accepting

our sexuality and realizing that we are who we are and that that's okay and then going out and figuring out how to build our lives with our chosen families based around, you know, the attractions that we feel that we're not going to be able to change. And I feel like straight people could benefit from going through that exercise. A lot of them could because, you know, they are what they are. They're not going to be able to change it. I mean, you guys have a parade in a whole month. Well, maybe you guys need a month. You know, like people always used to be like, huh, when's straight pride? And it's always like, you know, like the society's built from you. But I now kind of feel like straight people are downtrodden enough that maybe they, I mean, it's not like that they need to like, you know, have visibility.

We all see straight. But like, you know, that, you know, to accept yourselves and love yourselves and say it's okay to be straight. And I'm going to find love and build a happy life in spite of the fact that I'm straight. You know, like that's, you know, that maybe requires a little bit more intentionality than we're seeing from straight people. I just want to thank you, Josh, for being a good ally. But now I think you need to. I appreciate that. think you need to step back and realize that allyship consists of listening.

Okay. Well, speak to me, Megan. Tell me what I'm missing. I don't think you're missing much. I mean, I would say this, that I think any kind of relationship has, let us go back to first principles. And I'm going to say something super controversial here, but I think evolution has equipped men and women with some somewhat different tendencies that are related to their biological

reproductive functions. And that those tendencies even go beyond whether you menstruate once a month. And I think that that creates some unique challenges for relationships, right? There are, I mean, the famous example, right, is that men often want sex more than women do. They're more interested in having it more frequently and that this becomes a point of contention. You see this kind of played out in homosexual communities where lesbians, like, get a U-Haul on the second date. and then their fears about bed death. And then on the other side, I would say gay men seem to be having a lot more casual sex than the average woman, right?

These are challenges. Is that the case? Is that a thing that's happening? I don't know, Josh. You tell me. Yes, that's a thing that's happening. You're right. It's a thing that's happening.

But there are also unique strengths there, right, that having the compliment. I'm not saying one kind of relationship is better than another. I'm just saying you have to acknowledge that you are because you are in a heterosexual relationship and it's okay to be heterosexual. Biology, like, God and nature have equipped you with a special gift. Embrace it. Recognize that men are going on average on some tendencies be different from you. And like in some ways, the funny thing is like my husband's actually need her that. I am, but in general, your husband's not going to be as neat as you. He's not going to be as anxious about the baby as you. Nothing that you do. No amount of screaming. No amount of like going to your

friends and bitching about it. No amount of complaining is going to make him be a woman. And you know what? That's great because you don't want to date a woman. You want to date a guy. And similarly for men, no, I mean, again, I'm a little weird because my husband and I traded comic books on our first date. But most women are maybe not going to be as interested in all the things you're interested in. They're not going to want to do exactly what you want to do all the time. Life is hard and full of choices. But it is great to have someone who has different strengths from you. And I will say on the anxiety front with our dogs, it's absolutely good that my first instinct when anything happens to the dog is like, they're dying emergency vet.

And my husband's instinct is, yeah, it's probably fine. And that those things embrace the fact that you're different. Instead of trying to make your husband into a pseudo version of you, which is something like this is the complaint that I see over and over and over again is that like why doesn't my husband care about keeping the house at exactly the same level of neatness as I do? Well, because he doesn't. Like it's just he doesn't care as much. He's never going to care. He may try to make it needer for you. He's not going to care.

And he's not going to have exactly the same feelings as you because you know what? he's a separate human being. And separate human beings, and this is something that I think gay couples get that straight couples often don't, other human beings have different desires from you. And it's not the patriarchy necessarily. It might just be that they're another human being. Like, learn to work with it. And don't go and complain to your friends about it or complain to New York Times Magazine about it. Because that's not actually solving any of your problems. It's just making you feel heard for a moment at the expense often of your relationship. And the last thing I would say is this.

So the people who write those essays are selected for being unusually willing to violate their relationship. I have never written anything negative about my husband other than, like, very amusing things, right? That, like, he likes to, when I plan meals, I have to order, like, nine pounds of meat because my husband eats a lot more meat than I do. And he will just any amount of meat I order, he will eat. I write stuff like that. I do not ever write about anything inside my marriage that has. been a challenge because we have that the relationship is sacred. It is the most important thing in my life, and I'm not going to violate it. The people who go and do that are on average worse partners and not very

good at relationshiping. And that's what they're selected for, is their willingness to hurt their partner. And do not take that person as a model. People like that are on average going to have worse relationships than people who keep their mouths shut and just quietly enjoy the fact. that they really like their spouse or their boyfriend or their partner. Ben, why are straight people being such sad sex? I don't know how real any of this is, right? A lot of these people are just neurotic liners who happen to be overrepresented in the media. But the thing that I find so interesting is that you said, Josh, is, you know,

that there's people who are so proud to talk about how they're insults and that they're not ashamed of it. And this is a little hard for me to grab my mind around because, I mean, what a dry-deck idiot. You know, if somebody told me that they were an in-cell, I would be like, Vergh, smuck. Like, there's, there's like a high school part of me that would even come out and be so suspicious. I would lie. I would lie and say, I was fucking people every day, two towns over. And I just think that there's a permission structure being created here, right, that allows people to engage in their worst tendencies, which is fear of rejection and not pushing through to, you know, make the accommodations that Megan is talking about in a relationship, right? There's that famous joke about how the Dave Fipal joke about how if men could fuck women in cardboard boxes, they wouldn't have homes.

You know, like the centering idea of like sexual selection and all of this is that your desire to be with people and to get into these relationships makes you better. You know, it makes you clean up and take a shave and have a home and try to make yourself presentable. And if you allow yourself to think that it doesn't really matter and that every. everyone will just make a statue to you because you're an insult who watches pornography all the time and can pat yourself on the back about it. Then, like, you're not forced to make those sort of combinations that people have to make to have a life with someone else. And then one day, you're old and gray and you look and life is over and rest in peace. I mean, it seems like a part of a broader trend of people turning their flaws into identity characteristics instead of trying to fix them where it's like, you know, it used to be that, you know, if you were socially awkward, that was, you know, considered a detriment and maybe even something you try to work on. But then, you know, 10 plus years

ago was, no, was like, no, oh, I'm an introvert. And here's a listicle of all the things that make me wonderful because I'm an introvert. And then it became, oh, no, I've diagnosed myself with autism or ADHD. And this is, you know, this is actually like a core part of my identity. The insult thing sort of seems like that. And that, you know, instead of, you know, it's like, I can't get a woman to fuck me. And instead of that being, you know, something that I need to work on, and, you know, maybe I, you know, more personable or nicer or more attractive. And there are things I can do on those regards, it's no. It's like society did this to me and this is part of my identity. And there's been this broader loss of shame around a large number of these things. But it seems to be showing up

in particular the failure to go out and have sex partners and form relationships. And I think in terms of, is this just some people on the internet? I mean, we are seeing in survey data that, you know, Gen Z seems to be having more trouble. They're not having as much sex. They're not getting in relationships as much. They're more likely to say that it's not important to get married or have children. Like, I think that, you know, I think we are seeing this at the population level. It's not just some loud people on the internet. I do think that, like, it's sad that they don't have, I don't know if these Gen Z will ever have the fun one-night stand culture of us millennials, you know, who understood that you, everyone goes to the American apparel and then has sex with casual sex.

I mean, it does seem to be alive and well among gay men as far as I can tell. Oh, well, sure. I mean, you guys, but you guys, you can't keep her hands off each other, can you? But, I mean, I was on a date, like 10 years ago or something in New York, and this chick, it says to me, you know, I think that one of the problems that we all have in dating in New York is that there's so many people that we all have a hard time accepting the person in front of us because there's an imaginary person who would be perfect. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And then we slept together because that was how people spoke? Because you were perfect. And then, you know, never side to other again. No, but I then think like, how much is that a corrupting influence of people's mind where they say to themselves, there is an imaginary person in this universe that I, and theoretically only one swipe away from or whatever it is. And because of that, it's an impossible standard that I'm measuring everyone else against.

And then eventually I look and go, oh, now I'm too late, too old. I gave up. I also think, and this will sound a little cruel, that it breaks your sense of the standard against which to measure yourself. Right. One of the experiences of dating is finding out whether you're a seven or a nine or a four and getting a sense. of like what is the realistic level of, for example, personal attractiveness, you are likely to attract in the dating market. And I'm happy to report to you as someone who's now crossed my 50th birthday that that's just an increasingly less important thing as you age because like no one

keeps it forever. But you just kind of figure that out. And that I was lucky enough to marry a fabulously handsome man who I did not deserve. But I mean, that doesn't happen to a lot of people. I don't want to set up false expectations for most people. Most people, you've got to figure out roughly how attractive you are and you're going to marry someone who is roughly as attractive as you. And that's okay because it turns out that like you really like that person and you're going to be in love and it's going to be great. But that when you're on the internet, right, and men are accepting invitations to casual hookups, right? This, I think, gives women, they don't have the process where they're saying no to most of the men. and they're accepting only the most attractive men,

and then those men sleep with them once. And then they're like, why are men terrible? It's like, no, no, no, no. You need to go into real life, look around, see what the people you see are dating. What do they look like? They're roughly as attractive as each other, right? And then see, like, how attractive am I really?

Who am I going to date? And that's the process. And it's not happening because all of the ladies are responding to, like, the top 10 or 20% of men on Tinder. On Ben's point about the largeness of the pool, like working against dating prospects, I think that's a real thing. And it's another example, I think, of gay people getting a bit of benefit in the modern dating landscape because our pools are just so much smaller. You don't have that same psychological dynamic going on of there's always something better around the corner because there's just way smaller number of people in the pool. and like the same with the male loneliness crisis, I think.

Like you said, Josh, I think it's, it is just a different landscape for gay people who can access sex and, and, and physical spaces in a way that straight people can't. Now, I am, I'm very split on this because nothing annoys me more than like straight people adopting gay lingo and like Timitay Chalameh referring to Kylie Generous as partner will never not make people in my eyes. But I think maybe taking a few pointers from gay people might be good for straight people. Well, the right pointers, though, because I don't know if you find this, Steve, but I find when I talk to straight men about this, you know, one of the negative side effects of the decline in homophobia is that if you try to talk to straight men about, you know, the apparent sexual difficulties that have arisen for straight people, all they want to talk to me about is how fantastic it would be to be gay because they would get laid so much. Like literally, this was just directly where the fifth column guys went. It's like, bro, it's like, you know, you can, if you're gay, like, I heard that you can just like fire up grinder and go pick up someone to have. have sex with, you know, like on the way to the next thing you're going. And when you talk up there, Steve, about, you know, like the paradox of choice not being an issue because you have fewer choices, I think it's, you know, sometimes for gay men, it's, you know, you don't worry about what's around the corner because you can have sex with this guy and then later have sex with the guy

who's around the corner. Like, you know, why choose? And I think straight men increasingly look at that with envy because they're no longer as disgusted by the idea of gay sex as they might have been 30 years ago. But it's unpredictable. I mean, I kept having to say to the fifth column guys, It's like, you know, you can talk about how nice it would be to be gay. It's like talking about how nice it would be to be tall. I mean, that might be right, but so what? I mean, you're not going to get taller, and they're not going to be gay. And so they need to focus on figuring out how to be happy as straight men.

But I find very often they just want to talk about, you know, like, you guys have it so good. It's so good what you guys have here. And it's, you know, like being envious of us is understandable, but is not productive. A funny little anecdote that is someone conventional. to this for the listeners is Josh once invited me to a Christmas party down a decade ago. And I was very thrilled to like be friends with Josh Brown. And was invited and went to it. And, you know, it's filled with all these very, very attractive strapping gay men.

And I'm the only straight man there except there's one straight woman there who is Josh's friend from my school. Was this a setup? I mean, I mean, they did hook up. No, I don't think it was. I mean, we did hook up and then take, but it was literally like the two straights noticed each other amid the sea of like strapping gays. And then dated for all. It became sort of like it led to, you know, Josh Nye's friendship accelerating because suddenly I was like dating this friend of his. But it was one of the funnier moments of like even when there's people who both Julie and I have like have like.

have like some screwed up relationship where we're only friends with gays. Then in the room, when there's all the only gays, there's still like a notice of each other and going, oh, hello. And the radar clicks. See, that's an example of a straight person adopting gay culture because there's nothing more gay than finding the only other person in the room who's like you and then immediately hooking up. Yeah. Let's leave it there. I want to thank Steve Morris from the long run. Ben and Megan, as always, thank you for being here. Central Air is created by me, Josh Barrow, and Sarah Fay.

We are a production of Very Serious Media. Jennifer Swaddock mixed the episode. Our theme music is by Joshua Mosier. Thanks for listening, and stay cool out there.