Factually! with Adam Conover - Hollywood's Toxic Underbelly with Maureen Ryan

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

The entertainment industry is frequently called out for posturing as politically enlightened and progressive, yet beneath this veneer lies a troubling history of toxic, racist, and emotionally abusive working environments. This conduct would be deemed unacceptable in other sectors, so why does Hollywood often turn a blind eye? More crucially, what measures can be taken to address it? In this episode, Adam is joined by author and journalist Maureen Ryan to discuss the cycle of abuse and accountability, and the best course for remedying the ugly underbelly of show business. Find Maureen's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAboutHeadgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creatingpremium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy toachieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to ourshows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgumSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing things they know that I don't know and that you might not know. This week, we got to talk about Hollywood. You know, the entertainment industry is often rightly criticized for acting like it's better than the rest of America? As though everyone who makes TV and movies is politically enlightened, empathetic, and sensitive, that we've eradicated the evils of discrimination and bigotry and are just waiting for everyone else to catch up. It's an image of ourselves that matches the fictional realities we present on screen,

in which evil is defeated, good-hearted people come together to do the right thing, and heroism is rewarded. Well, the truth is that just like the plots of our movies, Hollywood's narrative of itself as a place of decent, thoughtful liberalism is fake at best and a lie at worst. In reality, Hollywood is a really fucked up place. First of all, I'm a member of two unions, both of which are on strike right now, because the people who make those movies and TV shows can't afford to make a living in the city where they're made. But even beyond the economic

struggles, the working environment in Hollywood is often toxic and racist and emotionally abusive, full of some of the worst behavior you can imagine. Behavior that would not fly in another industry, but is overlooked here in the name of creativity, a tourism, or just plain not giving a shit. I mean, think about this. We are six years into hashtag me too, a movement that famously began with women finally telling the stories of the sexual abuse of the mega producer, Harvey Weinstein, who is now in prison. Yes. But for every Weinstein who was punished, there have been countless cases where after a cursory investigation, nothing happened, leaving abusers free to continue harming people and victims unprotected. And you know what? When this kind of exploitation in Hollywood has been around for a century, we have to ask, is the industry even capable of self-correction? even capable of self-correction? And if Hollywood, an industry that claims to stand up for and care about the rights of women and other marginalized people, can't do it, well, what hope does any

other industry have? Well, on the show today to discuss this cycle of abuse, recrimination, and nothing being done, we have an incredible guest on the show. Her name is Maureen Ryan. She's a longtime entertainment reporter, and her most recent book is called Burn It Down, Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood. This is a searing interview, and I know you're going to love it. But before we get to it, I just want to remind you that if you want to support this show, you can do so on Patreon. Just five bucks a month gives you every episode ad-free and a bunch of other community features as well. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. And if you want to see me do some standup comedy,

head to Adam Conover.net to see all my tickets and tour dates coming up soon. I'm heading to Providence, Rhode Island and St. Louis, Missouri. And now let's get to my interview with Maureen Ryan. Maureen, thank you so much for being on the show with us. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. So I just want to start by, you know, a lot of times when I'm talking about, uh, you know, bullshit in Hollywood, right? People say, why should any of the rest of us give a shit? Is there bullshit in Hollywood? There's a little bit of shit going on right now. Not familiar. You could walk me through it. That'd be great. Well, I just got done marching out in front of the Netflix building for three hours. So, uh, you know, there's, there's a lot of shit going down. I'm taking care of,

you wrote a book about, uh, you know, a whole other set of malfeasance in Hollywood about abuse, harassment, toxic workplaces. And just tell us why do you think this is a topic that we should all care about? Because some people say, oh, those privileged Hollywood people, why should we give a shit if they're yelling and screaming and throwing food at each other? Yeah, I that's a great point. And honestly, I wanted to correct so many misconceptions about the industry. And I feel like I'm a kindred spirit with some of your work in that I want to set the record straight.

I want people to understand what it's really like. And what's interesting to me, and I'll set the stage a little bit by saying the difference between this 2007-2008 strike and now in terms of people yelling about privileged industry people and why don't they just shut up and be rich, that has just radically altered. It's not as much of a factor at all. People who say that are just out of touch. Absolutely. And when people do say things like that, my sense is just anecdotally, they're more open to the conversation or the idea that people in Hollywood, I make the analogy in my book, the difference between someone working in an Amazon warehouse and working in a low level or even medium level job at an Amazon show, if you think those things are materially different,

I personally don't agree. I mean, yes, obviously there are differences in the tasks, but the precariousness of the job, the pay, the low pay, the worrying about bills, the overwork, the long hours, like it's very, it's not all that dissimilar. What a lot of people don't realize is a TV or film set is in many ways like a factory floor. It's a factory floor. It's a factory floor. It's an intense physical environment. And you've got people who are paid often California minimum wage running around 16 hours a day in dangerous, unsafe environment being abused by their superiors. And it's very similar to the conditions in the warehouses. Except that, you know, how many warehouses expect you to show up 16 hours a day, you know, maybe five days a week.

And if you happen to fall asleep on the way home and get in a car crash, that's just your lack of responsibility. You know, it's basically everything's put on the worker. And that's definitely reflective of many workplaces outside the industry. But that's the thing. I think I wanted to correct the record to some degree because I helped perpetuate the bad ideas or the incorrect or incomplete pictures that were out there. People are having a great time. They're making something creative. And even if they disagree, they disagree in a healthy manner that makes the work better.

And essentially people are all trying, if not always succeeding, they're all trying to create healthy workplaces where basic standards of human decency are respected. I thought that. The thing is, and this is a battle I have with myself constantly, as a human being, if you decide one day, I will never give anyone or any sector of the world the benefit of the doubt ever again, then you have to live in an incredibly dark headspace. So on the one hand, I'm not necessarily like, I should never have given anyone the benefit of the doubt. But what Hollywood has really cleverly done, or I should say people with people with meaningful power in Hollywood have done for years is create this glamour or create this image. And a lot of people are invested in keeping that image going for many reasons, including many people who can't speak out because opportunities are scarce. It's a precarious industry.

But there's this whole idea, this whole construction around the industry of it being cool, fun, glamorous, lucrative. It's not. And part of the reason I wanted to write the book is I want to put it in the historical record. I want people to understand we are now six years on from Me Too, three years on from yet another racial reckoning in the industry, which it will probably mostly ignore again. what has really changed except cosmetic performative stuff. Yeah. Of course, I don't even say that in a mean way, like performative stuff happens. Like it's an industry of performers and creators and storytellers.

So a lot of that's to be expected and not necessarily a bad thing, but I think that there's an element of the performative change that makes me basically nuts. I can't, I can't do it. I can't participate in the myth building anymore about how this industry that puts itself out there is being better than the rest of society. And I want to have the caveat up front, there are great people in this industry, people who I take a bullet for, who are really, really, really out there literally in the streets fighting for their co-workers and colleagues. But I wanted to destroy this image, help destroy, be one of the people putting a beat down on this image that it's better than other industries. It's better than other segments of society. It's not. In many ways, it's worse because the systems of keeping

people silent and keeping them afraid and keeping them exploited are even more powerful, I would argue, on a Hollywood set than if I walk into my local grocery store. Well, what you're doing is so valuable because, I mean, look, Hollywood is an industry built on fakeness. That's the whole point. It's about making a beautiful front appearance, a front facade, while the back is all fucked up. And by the way, having been making a beautiful front, you know, appearance, a front facade. Yeah. And whereas the back while the back is all fucked up. And I, by the way, having been on a TV set, I know this when you when you're watching television or a film and you see a beautiful actress who's all made up and she's gorgeous and she looks so wealthy and fit and stuff like that,

you have to realize that that's just the frame you're looking at. If you were to zoom out very slightly, you'd see that there are safety pins holding her dress together in the back that they put there because the dress doesn't really fit. And they just sort of pinned it up real quick. You'd see that there's a water bottle by her feet because she's dehydrated. And you'd see like the lights are making her sweat and they dabbed it away the moment before. She's been on her feet for 12 hours and she's being paid less than she was 20 years ago. Sorry, go ahead. And the rings under her eyes because she hasn't slept. I mean, you talk about – I mean, I'll give some straight up examples. I was on the set of The X-Files in the 90s and the hours that those people worked, it's just bananas.

Yeah. And the actors talk about this all the time. And I really get wound up when people are like, well, you're privileged. Actors are workers also. Yeah. Directors are workers. Everyone you see, if you widen out that view and look at the whole set, everyone there is a worker. And frankly, not only is Hollywood not necessarily morally and financially and all these other ways better than the rest of the world. In some ways, it's worse because people are being paid less. Nearly 90% of the SAG-AFTRA members cannot make the cutoff

to receive the union's healthcare. And that cutoff is the whopping sum of $26,000 a year. Something's incredibly wrong. And I mean, I won't get into it because sometimes people just zone out at numbers. But just the Writers Guild of America has done a similar thing. The median writer's income, any way you slice those data sets, people are making less than they did. And this conforms to anecdotally what i'm sure you know and that i've heard now for years the streaming revolution oh well hollywood's better and more enlightened than the rest of the world and now they've got tech so it's going to be even more enlightened and even

more data-driven and smart and and super cutting edge and this that and the other no it kind of hollowed up not at all it was left to the middle class in the industry yeah and this idea when people say oh you're also privileged well they're falling for the fakeness they're falling for yeah that's what you think because you watch the oscars the oscars is fake everyone gets those they rent those dresses for one day you know those are provided by the studio and then they go back to their apartments. And the same is true of, you know, when everyone is getting up on stage and saying, oh, we really care about, you know,

treating each other well and everybody's rights and all that sort of thing. Or, you know, you could look at, frankly, the Me Too movement in Hollywood is exactly the same way. I mean, of course it's performative. This is an industry of performativeness. That's literally what it is. It's not even,

I'm not even criticizing it for that reason. It's just literally an industry that is about creating a beautiful appearance. And of course there's an ugly truth underneath and you're uncovering that ugly truth. And that is incredible. So what are some of the ugliest truths that you covered in the book like what

what what shocked you the most to find i'm going to adam i'm going to shout the word that everyone in hollywood wants to pretend doesn't exist racism hi racism is in hollywood i'm sorry but i'm going to shout oh my god to shout it from the rooftops. And you know this because you know the industry so well. Look, words do matter. People doing performative things to position themselves as allies, especially if they have power, money, connections, access, opportunities, jobs, projects, the top people doing things that are somewhat performative. I don't, I'm not going to sit here and diss it because it, it sets the tone for the dialogue and sets, sets the kind of the worldview that other people will aspire to. Because if you're

super successful and connected, people want to aspire to kind of like what you are and what you stand for. So I'm not dissing it completely, but the systems by which people are disempowered from talking about, I don't know. I mean, I'm just going to come out and say, I don't like the word microaggressions. You know what I mean? Like, I just don't know that it's that micro. I don't, I don't know that it's micro. These are macroaggressions sometimes. It's macro. And it's, you know, the fact is, and that's why, you know, people, why would you write a whole chapter on Sleepy Hollow? What is Sleepy Hollow? Wasn't that a movie with Johnny Depp? And let's not even talk about Johnny Depp because, like, my migraine is bad enough.

But, you know, the Sleepy Hollow TV show, like, why dredge all that up? Wasn't it just some kind of cult show that, like, went off the air years ago? I'm dredging all of it up to show something that i really really wanted to show and i needed 16 000 words to show which you know again this goes back to the reason why i write a book i work for wonderful publications they will not let me write 16 000 words on a show that you know premiered 10 years ago like unless it's you know like something you know what i mean like that many words is not typically what a magazine is going to give you what happened on this show well you know the power structures were largely white

largely male and this applies to the fox studio the fox network the people who are on the top at the top echelons of the creative team mostly white mostly male and so you had a show which actually did the thing that hollywood says it wants to do the cast was incredibly inclusive you had um nicole bahari is the you know co-lead and orlando jones in the cast you had for a while there john cho um anjanoo ellis was in the cast for a while like you know incredibly diverse array of actors who are all in my view especially that first season at the top of their games the storytelling was fun it was kind of a horror genre smash-up kind of thing but with crime solving of course

yeah and um it had ichabod crane revived from the grave which is just you know on the face of it incredibly you know bonkers and weird but it worked every so often you know that when professionals come together to do something that on paper sounds terrible it works yeah and this worked it's like again i don't know that people got up in the morning decided to do a racism like i'm gonna do like so what's on the list today i get to get this but you know um when you have a black woman as the leader of your show and within three seasons she's gone yeah despite an acclaimed performance and then i get a call and i won't say the nature of the call on this but i got a call from someone associated with the show who wanted to stay off the record and trash that black actress. And so I tried to draw parallels to, as Orlando Jones says in that chapter, and it's just lived rent-free in my head since you said this to me.

The system was designed for this outcome. And that's when you don't give the communities that you say you care about meaningful power and meaningful voices and meaningful autonomy within the process, it's going to create absolute nightmare scenarios. create absolute nightmare scenarios because i think what can be hurtful about the performative nature of it is i have talked to so many people from historically excluded communities who were made to like do a dance of i'm happy to be here constantly while enduring an environment that made them feel less than and belittled and insulted and degraded. So that is a thing. And so do we think that racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sex, misogyny, assault, disrespect, do we think those things are gone now? That was my kind of primal scream of rage a couple years ago when I began the book writing process because I was like, I don't know if it will do any good. I don't know if it will change

anything, but I need folks to understand. And I'm literally going to take a book that's 400 pages long and, you know, not hit them with it, but, you know, make them think I might, but like, maybe I just need some, I need a bigger, um, a bigger cudgel to, to, to usegel to use to get people to understand. I know that you want to go into your magical thinking mode industry in certain segments of the audience. But people with power in the industry, I need you to understand something that no one will tell you. Because if you have power, very few people want to tell you the actual ugly truth about certain situations. I need you to understand if you have meaningful power and sway in the industry, it ain't fixed. Yeah. And it's something that the myth that it is fixed is like so pervasive that you literally have people who think that just talking about inclusivity, diversity in the industry.

People talk about it as though, oh, yeah, it's all done. We did it. We did it. In fact, it was, if anything, like a moment. It was almost a fad for, hey, let's cast people of color. Let's get people of color in the writer's room. Let's not actually empower them. Thank you.

Let's not actually give them the license? Let's not actually give them, you know, the license to create the show they want to create. Let's not actually create a positive environment. Let's just tick off the box because that's what we're being asked to do right now, starting in 2020. And then, you know, say it's fixed and move on. And already we're seeing that wave recede. We're starting to see people say,

oh yeah, I don't care about that anymore. Almost vociferously. Yeah, didn't we're seeing that wave recede. We're starting to see people say, oh, yeah, I don't care about that anymore. Yeah, didn't we already do that? Didn't we? Like, I literally, an executive, I'll never forget this. This was some time ago. But someone reported to me that a very high-level executive was in a meeting and said, and this, you know, again, this was maybe six, seven years ago, but I believe it. Are we still doing diversity? Yep.

Like it's not skinny jeans, dude. It's not a – you know what I mean? You've actually even started to see people say – this is something I've seen in the industry press about, oh, there were too many bets on these small shows that were too niche and too artsy and too yada, yada, yada. Too weird, yeah. Yeah, and too weird over the streaming revolutionada yada yada weird yeah and and yeah and too weird um over the streaming revolution that they put put too much money into those shows they're talking about shows created by women and people of color when they say that that that's the subtext and and that is that is like a coded way of saying hold on a second those shows are not popular

enough let's not do those anymore let's go back to the white guy shows i can tell that's what they're thinking because i have, because I'm a white guy and I get to have those conversations with them behind closed doors. And I get to hear what people actually say sometimes. And that's what they're actually saying. And what they would love to do more than anything is just clone Taylor Sheridan or make an AI of him. Taylor Sheridan is the creator of Yellowstone. And you know, God bless. If you like Yellowstone, whatever. I'm like, I like a lot of stuff that other people don't like. So go nuts.

Like what you like. Yeah. But the paradigm that the industry potentates want is don't make things that are weird, meaning made by someone who does not reflect the worldview of the largely white executive ranks and still majority male executive ranks. Weird is not their worldview and there are studies that show white men think that there is like if you ask them if the numbers show that they are uh least convinced that there are problems within the workplace along the lines of you know racism sex, and so forth. They tend to believe workplaces are equitable.

So you take this cadre of the top layer of executives, and they all reinforce their own opinions. And so what they've been doing is throwing money at Taylor Sheridan because he's their avatar of perfection. He created a show that's financially successful. He's a avatar of perfection. He created a show that's financially successful. He's a white man. He does this performance of writing all the scripts himself, which I don't know how that would work because he has multiple shows going. And I just that's the whole thing.

But they really just want still they still really just want the solo male auteur. They still really just want the solo male auteur. That is their paradigm. Cause first of all, even though, um, you know, it's funny to me that they want that because they were able to get away with, Oh,

the streaming revolution is here. We're going to give women of color shows. We're going to give, um, white women, queer women, uh, shows maybe,

maybe one or two people with disabilities. Um, you know, people of color will get shows, maybe one or two people with disabilities, people of color will get shows. But those shows will typically run, what, 12 episodes? And they paid everyone a ton less. It was just such a cheap source of work. There's a great example of this in talk shows, which is the kind of comedy that I do. The shows that are on every night are the white guys on NBC CBS ABC but the shows that now they've there there are some amazing women and women of color who are working in that space Amber Ruffin Sam Jay people like that what are their shows their shows are

six or eight episodes every couple months as opposed to every single night and they're also on streaming so they're being paid a fraction of... I mean, Amber Ruffin does her show in the same studio as Seth Meyers, but she doesn't... Because she's on streaming, her writers don't have the same workplace protections, the same salaries. It's one of the issues that The Strike is about,

is that very thing. But it's... Oh, Z-Way is another example of this, by the way, who's a wonderful talk show host. They do these short orders, right? None of them are being given the opportunity to go on television every night. You can say that's all

because the streaming business has changed. But when you look at that pattern, three women of color, right, who have a very different deal from the white male comedy late night stars of 10 years ago, it's impossible not to notice that pattern. Absolutely.

And I feel, I don't know, maybe we can turn this into a confessional and you can tell me if you absolved me or not. But, you know, I've been in these trenches writing about the issues with the industry's lack of inclusion, meaningful inclusion for 20 years. You know, I've been out, I've been pounding the pavement on this and like, you know, I did stories on the stats in late night i mean i'm old enough to remember when john stewart came out and people were like there's just been repeated waves of pieces of like why are there no women writers who are the and i'll never forget like look i i have a lot of respect for what john stewart's accomplished but at one point during his feelings were obviously hurt and he was like well we have

women in all these other departments. And that was, you know, for someone who skewers politicians, that was a political answer. You're answering a different question than the one that was asked. How many women are on your writing staff? And why is it usually zero or one? And so, so I was, I've been in the trenches for 20 years, writing about these things and talking about how they show up on screen in the content that we watch and how these attitudes are propagated by the very content that the people you keep hiring keep making. And so the industry did begin to kind of crack open the gates a bit. But it dawned on me, even as i was writing this book adam honestly like i had to pivot i was like am i doing an assessment or am i doing an obituary like i

like i did it was very because the the gates cracked open people began climbing a ladder not the usual suspects people did get some chances but the latter collapsed under everyone. Yeah. Everyone. But it's going to affect more harshly the people who barely had a perch to begin with. Yeah. Well, you talked about the auteur theory, about how that's what the executives want. They want the white male auteur. And let me tell you something.

As somebody who went from being a sketch comedy writer at a website, a member of a staff to show running my own show, I felt as soon as I stepped into that role, I felt people start treating me differently. I felt I started people. The executives were even a little bit like afraid of me in a way. Oh, is Adam OK with it? You know, et cetera. You know, everyone on the staff was like, oh, you know, should things be this way way or that way and i sort of just felt like a little crown had been put upon my head right as as the show king and it was impossible not to realize part of that is because i i resemble the white male television host and show creator that everyone is used to dealing with, right? Like I sort of fit the role that everybody wants. And it's not so easy for other people. And that to me feels connected to the auteur theory, right? That like, if you have this concept of an auteur, of a great director or showrunner or writer, who's, you know, creating the work all by themselves, that person sort of inhabits this role that gives them a lot of latitude

that allows them to behave very badly. I'm curious if you agree with that and if you have any examples of that problem. Oh, absolutely. The thing that's dangerous about the crown going on your head is when you forget that it's there. One of the many dangerous things. And, you know, there are actually some

good things about the past models of TV. Episode orders were longer. There were more chances to have an apprenticeship route. Like, you know, I certainly have done my share of exposing what was wrong with certain aspects of having that much power. But I called it, you know, in one article in 2020, you know, the Sun King phenomenon. If you achieve showrunner status, I mean, I wrote about a man named Peter Lenkoff. People will bow down to you. Yeah. Peter Lenkoff, when he had three shows on CBS, the combined budget of those shows, and I'm being very conservative, in one year, he controlled budgets amounting to a quarter of a billion dollars. Wow.

And if you talk about other people, like we can talk about a number of creators who have their names on a number of shows, that makes you untouchable. Yeah. And the thing about the dry, and I'm going to be general here because, again, Orion does not want to get sued. People can know that somebody is a problem for years and years and years. But it's like this force field surrounds them. And this still happens. Yeah.

Because after my book came like after every big story I do and then after my book came out came out hey you should do something on this person and i'm gonna tell you there's some names that were dropped and i kind of know how those people roll do i want to spend two years in litigation hell i do not personally at this moment in time you know about stories that you can't tell because the amount of work and the amount of legal not necessarily you're not necessarily, you're not necessarily afraid. You're just like, this would be, it would fucking take a while. I'd need to like, I would get a letter from a lawyer. I need to write a letter back. And, and that's like just extra work because of all of the, the, the, the, the armies that these people have at their

disposals. Armies. Thank you for using that word because that's absolutely what it is. And you know, I I've had to tap out a little bit of some of the discussions around some of the high profile people that, you know, I keep being told that they're canceled while they get endorsement deals, multimillion dollar film and TV contracts, tour comedy, like all these people. I'm like, who? Who are you talking about now? There are people who now I kind of know this whole industry that is making a fortune off of trying to stop the truth being illuminated. Like there's a lot of people that, you know, where is my gift basket from the Beverly Hills Legal Association? Because honestly, so many people have made a fortune off of, I mean, look, I mean, I'm- Right, Mo Ryan's calling, and then they call the lawyers and PR people, and they say, hold on a second,

your story's going to come out. You better pay us a couple million dollars to protect you. That's the industry you're talking about. And Adam, I can tell you exactly how it goes down now. It's like a dance that I know way too well. I dropped the email to somebody's reps, to them directly, to CAA, to WME. Hey, I had questions for your client. Here are the questions.

No one's getting back to me. Can you get back to me? Within three days, I might hear back from a PR person. I also usually hear back from a lawyer and you know, the people I've talked to over the years who actually were willing to talk to me directly, you know, you got to give them props for that. They at least answered the questions or at least attempted to, but usually what happens is the machine goes into high gear. These big representation firms, you know, everyone in the industry has a lawyer, you're the guy who does the woman who does your industry contract typically doesn't do like litigation or the work that would be involved in if something was going to happen in the press. But I know very well the stable of lawyers and PR people and spin people and so forth that come into play. And it's all about dragging out the process, dragging it out and making it so painful and so scary that you'll drop it. And every reporter I know, I don't get this much anymore.

It's a legit question for a civilian to ask why didn't people out harvey before yeah friends they tried you understand me like do you understand that like look at ronan farrow's reporting on the kind of black ops firms that weinstein was employing right they tried and and they were threatened and they and they were beaten and they, and they were beaten. And they, yeah. And the thing is, uh, Kim masters, you know, there's so many people who can all let us talked about. Like he went on Ryan Ronan Farrow's podcast to talk about like what he was

trying to do for the New Yorker years ago and a Weinstein piece. And it got like, I have been there so many times. There are times you spend days, days going round and round about a sentence, one sentence in a book or in an article. And look, I get why. I do get why it's contentious because people have differing views of situations. And oh, my gosh, if you want to just have your head melted, your whole brain melted, ask five people in a difficult Hollywood situation what happened in that situation.

You will get five sometimes radically different answers. And so that's why I look for, frankly, you know, you referred earlier to the things that I know that I haven't reported on yet. that I haven't reported on yet. I'm very focused on the idea that the stories that should be told are that that need to be told. I should have literally the consent of the people who are involved and who are affected. I don't. I tell people when I work with them for stories, this will be stressful. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't want to create extra stress for you. So I'm going to be within ethical limits as transparent and accountable to you as I can be and keep you posted because people are really nervous. But there are contentious processes. But what I typically do is I go for,

I select the situations where I'm like, I think I'm on pretty firm ground here. I think I know what happened. And with some things in the book, and that was really the sifting process for my book. What are some situations that will illuminate a larger trend in the industry that needs to be illuminated more or illuminated at all? Like the way IP is holding back inclusive creator rosters. So what do i have that i have enough information about this to make some assertions and then you know what can i get through legal what do i have enough because sometimes lawyers say well you need more like i would have to re-report redo um it's very time consuming and laborious so i really tried to go for situations where I definitely felt as a, not just as a reporter,

but as a human being, this feels not just important, not just illuminating of larger, broader trends, but I, I just feel like as a reporter and human being, this is appalling and more people need to know about it. This is challenging and more people need to know about it.

And what's really funny, if you want to get into the comedy of it all, just to segue for a moment, sometimes I am dealing with folks' lawyers. And this has happened across a number of stories. So don't think that I'm just subtweeting one person. People will send me through their lawyers their answers to questions. It's always really funny to me what they don't answer. If I send you 30 questions and you pick nine, you pick 11 of them. I'm like, okay, interesting. one of them like okay interesting yeah um yeah if you ever perhaps review legal documents in high profile cases my my rule of thumb now is when someone says i don't recall that yeah you sure about that i think i know what that really means so anyway sometimes i'll get people's answers back from their lawyers and this goes straight back to some of my earliest me too reporting i'm like your lawyer let you say this your lawyer reviewed did you did the lawyer see this because i'm like what what do you you think this makes you look better i mean adam when i write my memoir the title of it should be I Have Questions. I have so many questions.

Well, I have a lot more questions for you, and I want to ask you specific questions about some of the workplaces you covered, including Saturday Night Live. But we've got to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Mo Ryan. Okay, we're back with Mo Ryan. okay we're back with mo ryan uh mo you covered in your book uh a workplace that a lot of us in comedy think a lot about uh saturday night live uh very intense famously intense workplace i have a lot of friends who work there have gone through that place um heard a lot of stories myself uh what did your coverage turn up well i i would i actually love to get your because you you know that world better than i do and like look as a reporter i know i know where my source areas are richest like if you're

like if some if some shit is going down in a one-hour drama in the scripted american space i probably know if i don't know someone who works on that show i know five people who know someone who does you know what i mean yeah comedy has always been a little bit more of a reach for me i have done coverage of um comedy workplaces um but i mean props to the comedy world for taking something that's meant to be fun and making it somehow even more toxic because the shit that the shit that goes down and i'm talking you know and I've read coverage to improv, stand up club, comedy, touring, comedy, sketch comedy on TV, wherever I it's just, there's just a lot of appalling stuff that goes on there where it's a wild West world and people treat each other very bad, especially look, the comedy club space is like unregulated is the wrong word for it. It's complete chaos at all times.

I mean, you're talking about people doing – they're drunk. They're doing comedy in essentially glorified bars with microphones. Of course it's that chaotic. But when you get to television, you expect there to be a certain higher level of professionalism. You do expect something, yeah. And like you're talking to someone who saw Steve Carell and colbert on stage when they were cast members at second city i probably one of the apex experiences of my life was robin williams was um in chicago touring my sister and i caught uh the second city show i did we had no concept this

would happen but for the improv segment at the end of the second city show robin williams came out and did improv with the main stage cast which like literally i'm telling you my the whole front of my body hurt for days because i was laughing so hard never laughed that hard so hard so hard in my life so i like i i've had many friends in the chicago improv comedy world who like graduated to you know big time tv and whatnot so i get i do kind of understand the world some you do want there to be an element of risk taking of um you know transgression a lot of a lot of comedy is transgression right like what are the rules and how are we gonna make fun of them or goof on the people who make them and that sort of thing but i i, I wanted to get your feedback on

something actually. People who go through the SNL system don't want to talk. They really don't want to talk to reporters. It was like pulling teeth to get sources for that chapter. For a while, my, my main sources really were just going to be the legal documents in the case filed by a woman named Jane Doe, not her real name, who was in the orbit of SNL as 18 as a high schooler and who alleged that she was assaulted by a cast member Horatio Sands. And so I read all the documents in that case and I talked to Jane Doe extensively.

And by the way, really funny. Like she's a fully fledged human being. You know, she's got layers. She's got depth. You get to know people when you're interviewing them. And she told me at one point, I don't want to sign an NDA. And then by another route, the case is no longer active. And I did become aware and i put in the

book she didn't sign an nda so that's interesting to me um she hung in there when a lot of people wouldn't and that's and i understand why people wouldn't take on snl because it's so powerful but do you have the sense that like the the the code of silence around the show and things that occur there that are not good, it's this weird dichotomy. You'll get Nora Dunn talking about it in an interview about how bad the workplace can be. You'll get people talking in the books about SNL about how bad it could be. like to talk to a reporter straight up for like the kind of book that I did, people who were in that orbit now or actively kind of working in that world did not want to talk. And I, my reasoning is, and I wonder if you agree, Lorne Michaels is not just the very, very powerful, you know, sun King of Saturday night live through Broadway video,

his company, he has relationships with important talent agencies with important management agencies with, he has, you know, Broadway video, his company. If you look at the roster of shows that Broadway video has produced,

most SNL alums that go on to fame and fortune in TV films, stand up all the rest, they still have a connection to either Broadway Video or Michael's firm or one of the management or talent firms that he has close ties with. So the code of silence goes so deep. And so a lot of people don't want to talk about it. And actually, some of my sources reached out to some of the alumni again people who aren't even there and they didn't want to talk to me for the purposes

and again i get it but like other reporters have found this too it's just it's kind of bad when it's the code of silence is that it's a look it's it's a it's a company shop you's it's a it's a company shop. You know, it's it's an entire system that that group runs that Lauren runs. He's at the top. And, you know, I have friends who entered into that system and it's just sort of like, OK, that's where they're going to spend the rest of their careers. You know, they're going to bounce around from Lauren thing to Lauren thing. And it's very much you're lucky to be here. If you misstep, you'll be out on your ass. And you'll be dead to us as a company. And as you say, how many entities in the sketch comedy space or in the comedy space or in the creative sort of comedy, all the tentacles of that world, how many places allow you to earn even something close to a living? Yeah.

Almost none. Yeah. how many places allow you to earn even something close to a living yeah almost none you've got snl you know for a while you had like mad tv as you know you were part of the whole boom of like you know online comedy and and sort of like that and that's still a thing but um no it isn't it's it's dead i mean like so it's like college humor and funny or die don't exist anymore um frankly everybody used to work college humor works here at headcom now we're making yeah it's like i was my my point being and i think that we're in agreement on this is that there are these little niches that allow people here and there temporarily to earn a little bit of money or to like make some coin but if you want if you if you want somewhat long-term, somewhat less precarious job prospects and you enter into the Broadway video Lorne Michaels world, SNL world, you better keep your head down and not make any waves. Look, fundamentally in places like that, you serve at the pleasure of the king, you know, and that's what it comes down to. I know folks who do very well in that environment and to a certain extent, more power to them if you can survive that.

I also have people who – I know people who have bounced out of that environment through no fault of their own. Wonderful comedians who just didn't have the – whatever the thing that they wanted and were they wanted and, you know, were thrown out on their ass. And I, and, you know, I think that's really harmful and hurtful. And a lot of that is cultural stuff. It's what are you willing to withstand? What are you willing to look past? What are you willing to, to be okay with? And also don't you find, I think I understand the edge that a late night comedy writer's room has. But this applies to actually many writers rooms. A lot of the teasing, if you want to call it, a lot of it is it's essentially like testing boundaries.

Like what I'm going to make you see how bad I can make you feel before you do anything. And see how bad I can make you feel before you do anything. I think that I'm going to disagree with you a little bit because people talk about that sort of culture, like a toxic culture as being somehow necessary for comedy. Oh, everyone's always making fun of each other and stuff like that. There's good versions and bad versions of that. There's writers rooms where people are very positive and people are teasing each other, but it's loving. very positive and people are teasing each other, but it's loving. And then there's environments where people are knifing each other in the ribs because someone else did it to them in a meeting earlier.

And they're, they're perpetrating this sort of toxic person, like a thing onto each other. A form of bullying that is a power play. That's what can occur too. And I think, I think, I mean, I'm just gonna say it in comedy spaces the people who get promoted this is a general thing in the industry people don't get training to be managers at all i didn't i i again went from being again writing on a website to show running my own show. And I thank God that I turned out to be a people who work under me when I'm in that position. I know a lot of people who are thrust

into that position and they lose their minds and they start they start treating people like shit because they're under so much pressure. They don't know how to handle it. And they're letting the pressure and the shit roll downstream. And they're not able to, you know, be mindful of, you know, that the other the people working with them are also human beings. And as you say, especially if they come from certain categories, but it can happen to anyone, the crown is on their head, the crown of power. And there is absolutely – some people will do absolutely anything to not just get their own crown of power but be near somebody else's. They think that that will give them some kind of protection or some kind of juice. And I do think people are put into positions that

contain an absolute ton of stress. But I don't think that anything goes just to bring it back to SNL, anything goes should be minors attending official after parties and consuming alcohol. Minors, minors who were fans of the show and then were reached out to by cast members on the show and then invited to the parties where they got alcohol. And then one five. Yeah.

And that's, you know, like this is all a matter of public record, by the way, this is all a matter of public record. Look for, you know, the matter of Jane Doe versus NBC universal, universal lauren michaels and horatio sands read all the documents and then

you know before you do that actually call your therapist and book multiple appointments because um again this is all on the record um you know i i reached out to nbc with many many questions and not just in the snl case but with the goldbergs with the muppets program past the muppets i know mo ryan what what hold on what did gonzo do gonzo you'd expect it to be animal but really it was actually who knew there we go i wanted one solid joke in this very serious episode about harassment and abuse and you delivered thank you very much marie that was beautiful well thank you and now i'll bring it down again um i i for for the book i frequently reached out to studios to say, not just with specific questions about SNL, about the Goldbergs, about the Muppets, a couple of different Muppet shows, actually.

I wanted to know not just what did you do about these situations at the time? What are you doing now? Like I gave them actually an out or legitimately and truly i wanted to know these things what are you doing now to place meaningful safeguards on people's workplace behaviors and to create meaningful channels through which people can report on toward things that are happening to them and none of them wanted wanted to comment. For the most part, it was like, we are not going to comment this, that, and the other. Well, I think it matters that Lorne Michaels has his power for so long. He's heading into, in a couple of years,

it'll be 50 years of SNL, right? So it's not hard to figure this stuff out. You can go on the EEOC website, Equal Opportunity Commission, the government website, a 2016 study, whether we're talking Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the halls of power and politicians, or Washington, or any other workplace, they listed in this report, what are the factors that lead to a harassment prone environment? When you have someone who is considered a rainmaker, and that no one places meaningful limits on them. Yeah, it's like in Hollywood, the difference if it works like that in banking, it's like that little, okay, I get it. I don't think that if

I walk into my local grocery store, the district manager is going to say, unless this store manager is screaming at people and making them feel terrible, we can't sell produce. Like that's not a thing. about someone getting power, taking it out on others, bullying people, intentionally making them feel like shit just to see what they'll do as if they're in some kind of lab experiment or unintentionally just being a massive jerk. That's all coded under this umbrella of creativity. But it's not necessary. I realized this very early on when I was- It's necessary for me so I can access my art, Adam. Excuse me. When I was getting started in comedy or in my early years, I had friends who started writing for the various late night shows in New York.

And I remember talking to one. And I was like, how's it going? And he was – you know, it was for one of the biggest late night talk shows of the time. He said, oh, God, I have to wake up at 5 a.m. every day. I have to write jokes. And everyone's always screaming. I work like 14 hours a day. It's hell. And then, and this by the way, was a light, funny, fun show. Okay. Then I talked to a different friend who worked for the most acclaimed late night show on television. They won Emmys every single year. This was widely regarded the top of the form. And I was like, how's it going with you?

And he's like, oh, it's pretty good. We get off five most days, pretty relaxed. And I realized like the culture, you do not need that culture that of a show that runs on fear, that runs on abuse, where people are cruel to each other, where everyone is constantly afraid that they're going to get screamed at or fired. Or, you know, oh, we all we all do all nighters once a week we all wake up so early we all grind so hard we all like scream at each other if the jokes don't work like that doesn't produce anything like fucking the whiplash mindset of you need to be abused to make creativity is a lie and uh but a lot of people have bought it oh it does produce something it it does that what everything you just It does produce something. It does that. Everything you just described does produce something.

It produces a system that protects sociopaths. Thank you. It reinforces this narrative. And so much of what we're talking about is a narrative. It's a meta narrative. It reinforces the narrative that, well, creative people have to be broken or abusive or this or that. And my whole thing is like creative people can be whatever they want. Yeah. Hurting people at work, bullying physically, mentally, psychologically assaulting people at work. Nah, man. Like, look, if you,

if you like, there are paid professionals you can deal with. You can go to a bartender, you can go to other kinds of professionals. Like if there are certain, you know, there are paid professionals you can deal with. You can go to a bartender, you can go to other kinds of professionals. Like if there are certain, you know, needs you need to scratch, like do your thing as long as everyone's consenting and ideally being compensated extremely well. No, taking things out on the least powerful, especially that's what sets me off. And it's so many times I've wanted to quit this work. I'm always, you know, leaving my home office and muttering to my husband, don't get fired, man. He's not in this industry at all, which, you know, thank everything for that. Don't get fired. Also, I'm going to go work at Target. I can't do this anymore. A couple college professors or people who work with young people have reached out to me and said, this is going to be on the syllabus.

And I'm like, sorry, I swore a lot. It's who I am. But they're like, I want my students to know what they're getting into. And that is a huge thing for me. It's a huge, huge thing. I've got a 21-year-old son. And it's not just, oh, I'm the father of daughters. It's not just that.

I want everybody. Everybody. I don't care. You know, Hollywood is ageist. I don't want people over 60 under 20. Like I don't want anyone to be hurt or abused, but a true thing is, and I can say this because I literally, I set foot on the X-Files set 30 years ago. I've been doing this a long time. People who are new to the industry, especially if they're young, go into it with such enthusiasm, with stars in their eyes and so many dreams. And I want people to have dreams. I want people to want to create, but I don't want them to walk into a snake pit not knowing it's a snake pit because everyone's told them this is a beautiful garden filled with only beautiful flowers that smell wonderful it's like so i i just don't want

the light to go out in people's eyes adam you know like that's that's the part of it that absolutely kills me is that and i've talked to people who are veterans of the industry for 20 years who are like i'm out i'm gonna go back to whatever you know this other profession i was doing before i can't i i'll never forget one woman saying to me and she was someone who had a lot of experience in the late night realms and the comedy realms she was like well i have this offer have you heard anything about this person because a lot of people come to me for like a private consult i'm like sometimes i do i'm like don't do it um other times i'm like i don't i don't know anything about that person um she's like, I don't know, Mo. I don him on the Fox lot in his tiny little

cramped office. The sweetest guy with the, you know, that Virginia draw. I've known Vince forever and ever. And I would never buy the argument that, well, if the art was good enough,

it was worth it. Yeah. Cause he's a nice, cause he's a nice person and his art is good. Is that, is that what you're well no i'm just saying i think vince has darkness i also think vince has bad days i think everybody in the industry has bad days i lose my temper with like this is not what we're talking about

here like what we're talking about is put the darkness on the page that's fine or find appropriate channels by which you are working through your don't do it to people in your environment don't do it to people who work with you and how many but how many movies and tv shows have that behind the scenes narrative of like oh it's funny that these people are so terrible to each other and i've laughed at it like i'm not saying I'm better than all this, but like, the cigar chomping studio executive, who is essentially like, you know, what do we what do we think of the phrase casting couch? What are we thinking about that these days, you know, these dynamics are so unexamined. And that was what I hoped to do was like, kind of like, let's, let's actually pry off the cover off of things that as i say multiple times throughout the book i was propagandized this way too i'm not outside of the machine i was some i was sometimes the person unknowingly helping promote the careers of people that later i was like oh boy i really wish i hadn't done that you know so okay how can we all proceed in a better fashion this is exactly

what I was good wait you're you're about to say my final question to you I want to ask the question I got the script ahead of time on this little piece of paper it was like what it's like hard to do anything here so yeah what what can we what can be done about this because as you say a lot of people at the top think there isn't a problem they think that everything is fine and you know what? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that's human nature because everybody wants to believe they're a good person. Everyone wants to believe that they're trying.

I certainly believe that I try when I'm running a show to do my best. I also think I probably have room for improvement that I hope people are alerting me to. I try to be self-critical, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But how the fuck do we actually make sure that that that people are not being you know fundamentally abused in the workplace what steps do you recommend that that people put in place you know i don't know it's interesting

there's a woman i um referred to many times in my book melinda shu uh she's going by melinda shu now but she's also known as melinda shu taylor uh came up writing for lost medium wrote for many shows you've heard of uh was doing a bunch of cw shows for a while and still uh still you know when the strike goes is is over um she will be continuing to create at least i hope so um So she has a course that she has designed, a two-day course that is literally called It's Not Rocket Science, because it's not rocket science. Yeah. I actually think we need to start with meaningful channels by which people can speak up about problems before they become gigantic, decades-long nightmare situations. And I, last year, reached out multiple times

to an entity called the Hollywood Commission who has said multiple times, starting two and a half years ago, that they were going to put online a reporting portal, which to me is the gold standard of what should exist in the industry in a robustly supported manner, a reporting portal for abuse and misconduct that is independent of all the studios and allows people degrees of shielding their identity in different ways or even withdrawing their input if they feel like they no longer want to proceed. So there's systems on college campuses that have been put forward. Other firms like Zappos and so forth have made available to their employees independent reporting systems like this.

Again, not rocket science. If you ask an HR professional, a lot of them know about these things. There are ways to create reporting systems and portals that allow for judicious and thorough investigations that are, again, not controlled by the studios whose vested interest is not having their dirty laundry come out so the hollywood commission began saying that this would go online last last year it's still not online yeah and i i would like it's when the book promo dies down i hope myself or another reporter reaches out to them again and says you know the hollywood commission was formed in the wake of me too it has kathleen kennedy of lucasfilm on the board uh for a time um anita hill was the the like

leading parts of the organization yeah so i i believe again we talked about intent earlier sometimes people don't intend i believe the intent was there to change the industry there has not been a portal unveiled as far as I'm aware for reporting misconduct. So we have to start there. We also have to start training people in a more wholesale fashion, putting meaningful safeguards on their behavior, giving them meaningful support for the work they do.

And I do think that there have been half measures towards this by some studios, as you know, because you're associated with the Writers Guild of America. The Writers Guild has showrunner training. I do think that that helps. But these companies, you are all, you know, the people out there on the strike, on picket lines, they're all fighting for not a lot in terms of what these big multinational corporations make what i also argue another thing that these big multinational corporations to spend money on is vetting meaningfully training supporting and placing realistic guardrails on the behavior

of anyone you put in a leader leadership position the dp um you know the head of the costume department they should they should put those guardrails in place but the people at the top don't care right like like we could do we could do reporting and training and have mechanisms you know all day long but until the person at the top says well actually uh what's the problem and everything looks fine to me god Keep sweeping it under the rug. What effect is that going to have if the white guy at the top doesn't give a shit? I have an answer for that. Please.

Yeah. I don't think that they mind giving a shit in press releases. And then actually, what do they do? They don't. They're still playing people of color less. They're still, you know, allowing nightmare toxic situations and abusive situations to fester. But what can, what I think is, man, I've come across this so many times and it's both,

it's an incredibly powerful paradigm, but I wish it didn't have to happen this way. But when people come together to, to system, they can and they have. Lucas Till came to me. He was starring in MacGyver. And you know what he would always say to me, Mo, I'm just a dumb actor. And I'm like, boy, Lucas, I've met some dumb actors. He actually said to me in our very first conversation, I don't care if I never work again. I cannot take the work environment that my colleagues are being put through. And then I came out with that work environment was doing to him. And another myth that I hope that the book starts to explode is, of course, I'm ambitious.

You're ambitious. People are ambitious. I don't think that that's a bad word but this idea that people in hollywood are only out for themselves don't care about anyone else is a lie because i've seen them come together three years ago when the pandemic was raging um a bunch of showrunners what came together and i'm not going to say which studio but the studio wanted to like whack the pay of assistants who were still working by the way and support staff.

And the bunch of showrunners were like, absolutely not. And they banded together behind the scenes and that didn't happen. So people, individuals can of course change the world. Absolutely. I do think Jane Doe blew my mind because in 50 years of snl yeah the way that she blew the whistle was unbelievable and it still has it i'm honored to be able to say in my book i get words from this woman who was stalwart and steadfast in ways that i can't even dream of but i do think what happens a lot and what the what the companies want you to not think about, they want to pit people against each other, right? Like they want it to be a death match.

They want it to be a Mad Max Thunderdome situation at all times in every situation. But time and again, whether it's through going to the media or joining together in guilds, one thing I like to say is that Hollywood is both a cautionary tale and an inspirational paradigm. So the reason it's a cautionary tale is because of all the dynamics we laid out and all the, you know, bullshit excuses that have been offered for terrible behavior and why it should be allowed,

blah, blah, blah. We all know the drill on that, but the reason it's inspiring is because you know, your history of the guilds, and I'm not going to give that whole history here because we've got to wrap up.

But 190, 80, 70 years ago, various sectors of the industry said they're going to try real hard to exploit us. Yeah. And we can't prevent all of that probably, but we can prevent a lot of it.

And I mean, I actually get a kick out of reading about well there was a fist fight outside the disney lot in 1945 and like you know what i mean like people threw down literally for their unions and for each other and so i find that history really interesting because my profession journalism we didn't unionize enough and look what happened to us yeah now people are kind of backfilling and unionizing more but it's kind of like the the fox was already in the hen house sorry and so the reason that hollywood is actually inspiring especially at this particular moment is that as

a body as two different guilds and iatse% of folks voted to authorize a potential strike last year. Yep. People, when they come together and just draw a line in the sand, all of these things that were impossible for the studios to do, oh, we could never offer health. We could never contribute to pensions. We could never offer residuals. That's off the table all these every single thing that the guilds fought for over 90 80 100 years a lot of it happened all these things that the studios could not do because we'll be bankrupted we will never function again and we're we're doing that

again we're make we're coming together to make them change and i can't thank you enough for for covering this and for covering all these brave people who are speaking out against these abuses and helping it more helping that change be more possible uh the name of the book is burn it down it was a little bit more pessimistic of a title than the very optimistic view you just gave um because what you described building but you know maybe you got to burn something down in order to build a new reality first how about that see i did get into that last third of the book which i should have called build it up but i was like i wanted to get your attention well the name of the book is burn it down you can get a copy at factuallypod.com books

um uh mo where else can people find you on social media i have my own website where if you want to find a lot of my past work, not all of which is horribly depressing, only a significant percentage, moryan.com, M-O-R-Y-A-N.com. I'm moryan66 on Instagram, where you will get my rage moments and also pictures of my garden and my cats. So it's a really fun mix if you're into that. And I am still on the health site known as,

I'm not going to say the new name. I'm on Twitter as Mo Ryan, M-O-R-Y-A-N. And there's more of me on my link tree and whatnot, but like that's enough to get started. You're good to go. Mo, thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you for having me so much.

Well, thank you once again to Maureen Ryan for coming on the show. I hope that interview made you as angry as it did for me. If you want to pick up a copy of her book, you can get it at factuallypod.com slash books. And if you want to support this show, you can do so at patreon.com slash Adam Conover. I especially want to thank everybody who supports us

at the $15 a month level. You are the heroes of the show. I'm going to read some of your names off now. I want to thank John McAvee, Scott Kaler, Algie Williams, Doug Arley, Sean McBeef, Samuel Aaron Foster, Quinn M. Enochs, Alferia, and James Sinclair. Thank you so much. That URL, once again, patreon.com slash adamconover. I also want to thank our producers, Sam Rodman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at HeadGum

for making this show possible. If you want to come see me do some stand-up comedy, head to adamconover.net for my tickets and tour dates. If you listen to this show in audio format, a reminder, you can get every episode on video on YouTube. If you listen primarily on YouTube, subscribe to us in your favorite podcast player. It would really help us out, especially if you give us a rating on your favorite podcast provider like Apple, Google, or Spotify. Once again, we will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening.

We'll see you next time on Factually.