Factually! with Adam Conover - The Texas Primary and the Pope Hates A.I. with Erin Ryan and Andra Whipple

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

(In addition to your regularly planned episode of Factually, we’re bringing you a Friday news roundup where we check in on the week’s biggest stories as well as some that need amplification.) This week, Adam is joined by political writer and podcaster Erin Ryan and comedian Andra Whipple to discuss the Texas primary, the Pope dunking on A.I., and the new trend book publishers have of updating old references in books to appeal to “the kids.” How very “skibidi 6-7” of them.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hello and welcome back to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. It's Friday, so we're breaking down the news with a smart person and a funny person. And as usual, the funny person is smart and the smart person is funny. And I am neither. Welcome, I want to welcome this week. Aaron Gloria Ryan. Welcome.

Hi. Thank you. You're the host of Hysteria on Crooked Media. Anything else that, I've known you for many years. I know, God. I was describing how I knew you to somebody that I worked with. I was like, I'm going on Adam's podcast. And they were like, how do you know him?

And I was like, well, sit down. I have a substack now. I sometimes do stuff for MS now, like written stuff, just to keep the byline up. But for the most part, I'm like a mom, a lot. So I have my job and then my other job that sucks. And, you know, now I here I am. And let me say where we first met, which was on the failed reboot of Best Week Ever on VH1, not the original. And not the Paul of Tompkins version.

No. The third version, nobody remembers that I was mostly cut out from. You had my back in the writer's room, though. I did have your back in the writers. The cast of that show, when I tell people who was in the cast, they were like, are you kidding me? How was this not the, can we swear? Yeah, you can swear. Are you fucking kidding me?

This is how did this show not succeed? And it's like, well, I don't really want to go into it. But no, it was like Michael Che, Ali Wong, you, Michelle Boutot, Pete Lee. Like, there were all of these really, really talented people in the cast. and they were wasted. Like they just were not used to their potential at all. Because the executives of VH1 hated all of us. They would be like,

not funny. Like, why'd you fucking hire me? It was very frustrating. Well, all those people are dead, and so is VH1. Also, we have Andra Whipple, who Andra has written for me for many, many years. You wrote on Adam Ruins Everything. You write videos for my YouTube channel with me.

And what else do you do in your life? Nothing. I'm a competitive trivia champion, Adam. Oh, yeah, you're right, you are. I write other stuff. I write movies and I write TV. Great. And I do competitive trivia.

Very competitive. Yeah, it's really serious. And honestly, I won't show up because I'm frightened by it. All right, well, let's get into the news. The biggest story of the week is that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of Republican primary for Senate over John Cornyn, despite he won by 30 points. Yes.

It's fucking crazy. 64% of the vote in the primary went to Ken Paxton over a sitting U.S. Senator. Wow. Like I follow politics. I know enough to know that's a crazy ass number. Why, like how did they get to 30 points over? Honestly, there's a part of me that's like, was there fraud?

I mean, I'm based on nothing because those numbers are crazy. Also, John Cornyn was not unpopular in Texas. He pretty much like towed the line. He did the MAGA thing. There was a couple times when he broke up. How many terms do you serve? If he's on his third, second or third. I mean, if you're that, you're only a third term senator if you are perennially popular in the state.

Right. And prior to being in the Senate, he was the attorney general. So he had the job that Ken Paxton currently has before Ken Paxton, like, dethroned this sitting U.S. senator. There's speculation about what the difference was, but you can't downplay the fact that Donald Trump intervened in the race of. just days before the primary. This race was like the most expensive Republican primary ever cost $100 million.

And a lot of people, a lot of that money came from like Republican establishment sources trying to keep Paxton from winning. And so, yeah, it's pretty crazy. The differences seem to be that the Trump endorsement, yes, but the other two differences seem to be that Paxton is like one of the country's biggest culture warriors, right, on a legal level. Yeah.

And then B, or two, I forget which I said first, he is incredibly corrupt, right? Oh, my God. The dude had three felony charges. He's had two extramarital affairs that we know of on his wife who was at one point a sitting state senator in the state of Texas who had to sit in on his impeachment trial when he was being tried for doing something like corrupt to get his mistress a job. Yeah. Isn't it a divorce for biblical reasons? She was getting a divorce for biblical reasons. Which is like, plagues, Job?

Like, what do you mean? She wants to kill him and she was like, thou shalt not, though. It's like, it was crazy. And they tried to have their divorce sealed. And when that's not standard practice in Texas, like, he's so shady. His three felonies had something to do with, like, more corrupt behavior. He, like, got in trouble from whistleblowers in the AG's office. So people that were there because they're like, yeah, I'm on board.

I want to work for Ken Peck. And we're like, wait, wait a second, this guy's, this guy's. His own people turned against him. Yes, his own people turned against him. He is just like the shadiest motherfucker. And then the thing that's craziest to me is I watch this, if you watch Ken Paxson or you've ever seen him speak, he is like, if Texas is a lone star state, right? We're going to go on a celestial bodies theme.

Ken Paxon is a black hole of charisma. Like nothing about him is compelling in his victory speech. He looks kind of like a wax replica in photos. He looks like he's wearing somebody's skin. Like he looks like a skin is on a bones that don't belong to the original skin. Like he is, yeah, he's a real, and we can say he's ugly if we don't like him. Right, I think that's true. Right.

Right. He's ugly inside and out. He's ugly inside and out. And I feel like somewhere there's like a beautiful portrait of him. Like they switched places, you know. He like, he also, you know, in his victory speech, if you watch it, he goes into this like woke madlib or like this culture warrior mad. ad lib type fugue state where he's like, my opponent is all about the woke ideology and he's a

vegan and he believes that God has six genders. It's so like it's and he stumbles over his words. And it's like this is like a prefab speech that you give if you're like somebody who only like traffics in culture war nonsense. Yeah. Well, it's very Trump. It's like it's like stumbling over it just sort of like regurgitating the like the verbs that feel the most, like, effectual.

Right. Presumably, John Cornyn would have occasionally said the word woke on the campaign trail, right? He would have been like, well, I too hate trans children or whatever. I assume he would have done a little bit of that. Yeah. So to lose by 30 points. It's crazy. It was such an expensive loss.

And right after it happened, the NRSC, the National Republican Senate Committee or campaign or whatever, they started scrubbing all their anti-Paxon stuff from their role. website because of course they're there to like support the candidacy of their guy. So it's awkward that their guy lost. So now they have to support Ken Paxson. It is, it is a huge mess. The drama in the Texas Republican Party is something that's kind of like been under the surface for I think a national audience.

But it's going to come out as this race unfolds. Was there some kind of organic ground? You know, like if you can imagine a similar race in, I don't know, if people are trying to unseat Chuck Schumer. right? I could be like, well, you've got, you know, a decade of activists having specific problems with Chuck Schumer that they want to get over the finish line and like, okay, they're going to coalesce power and, you know, get people on their side and then and then knock doors and, you know, assemble this sort of like inco-hate rage into a focused political movement. Was there anything like that against Cornyn? I mean, was there against Cornyn? Yeah. I think not that I'm aware of.

That's the confusing part. Like the amount of money that was spent on advertising. Cornon's advertising spends like dwarfed what Paxton spent. It's just, it's confused. And that's part of the reason why I'm like, and how did he lose by 30 points after all of that? Yeah, it's just anti-establishment in general. Yeah, I think it's a combination of two things that are like mutually exclusive, but that Trump fans in Texas are holding in their heads at the same time, which is that like loyalty to Trump matters more than anything else. and also fuck the establishment, but also Trump is the establishment,

but also fuck the establishment because now John Cornyn is the establishment. So they're able, I don't know. Like, I don't want to speculate on their mentality, but I do think that there's like a kind of a fight going on between two wolves in their head. I wonder if part of it too is it often seems like the Republicans, if their candidate is corrupt and has done portable things, they like that. Like there really is a thing in the Republican Party where like bad is good.

Right. Like just if you are in, if you, like now if Trump shot a guy on Fifth Avenue, his points would go up. Like they just like, I mean, my favorite from this long list of things Paxton did was he stole a pen that's worth a thousand dollars. Yeah. So that was, that we didn't. It shows he doesn't give a fuck. Like he doesn't give a fuck. It's just like, oh, I'll take that.

He's just shoving it in his. pockets. Yeah. We did a video, we have a video series called this fucking guy that's like a part of hysteria type, the hysteria universe and it's like researched and like I go read everything I can about somebody and pick out the stupidest things and put it together into like a op research bio type thing. And the story of the pen thing is the funniest thing that I found about him, which is that he had gone through a metal detector to get into like a courthouse, right? And the person who had gone before him had left his pen in one of those little bowls. And Ken was just like, you're like, I'll take this.

Like, it's a $1,000 pen. Like it is a one. But he didn't know that. He just was sort of like, there's a pen. I love a pen. Wow, what a great pen. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.

He's a rich fuck. He probably knows. He knows the brand of pen. I mean, it's like you see a Rolex. You know what a Rolex is worth? Yeah, it was a thousand dollars. You only have a $1,000 pen if you like want people to know you have a thousand dollar pen. So presumably it's like, they sell those shits at the airport, you know, at the fancy pen store.

What a fucking nerd accessory, though, that like, it's a pen. Like, get a watch. You get a necklace. Like, my God. Okay, I probably would buy a thousand dollar. You buy a thousand dollar pen? If I was really into pens, I would, no, I would buy like a $200 pen. You'd buy six more chains.

And I'd be like, okay, I'm taking all this shit off. Are there people that are really into pens? There have to be people that are really independent. Oh, 100% that are. And like, for a small group of people, like, it's like Rolex guys but nerdier and like maybe a little bit older. There's like a thing about like high-end fountain pens. Mont Blanc is the company.

If you see a Montblanc store, that's sort of like the Louis Vuitton of pens where it's sort of like the luxury brand, but it's not actually that nice, but it's like a status symbol kind of thing. It's the sort of like Nouveau-Riche thing. Yeah, exactly. And these people are not writing anything down.

It's just like I bought a thing that was worth $1,000 because it cost $1,000, which is the same thing that watches. This is what men do is buy stuff that's functional. It just makes you imagine. for $1,000, you could get such a weird hat. You could get such a weird hat. And everyone would know, they'd be like,

that guy has the weirdest $1,000 hat. You'd be on the news. Like, they would be doing shit about that hat for days, but a pen, it's like weenie. And you know what Paxton would steal that hat too? You'd walk out of that courthouse being like, look what I got. Right.

I didn't walk in with this and I don't give a fuck. But then it'd be even more peacocky, because like if you know I have the cool hat, And then I don't have it anymore. Yeah. That, yeah. That really, that shows, that's dominance. Yeah, that is dominance.

That is a sign of it. That's like wearing, that's like wearing someone's skin. Mm-hmm. I don't know. The cool hat becomes a part of you because, like, that's a lot of money to spend on a hat. Yeah. I just love a list that goes, a list including securities fraud, bribery and abusive office, a state attorney general, firing whistleblowers, stealing a thousand dollar pen,

marital infidelity and mortgage fraud. It's just like. The other funny thing is like. on that list, there's like, there's like, and also his opponent was not without scandal. And then underneath it is just like, people didn't like this thing he said or whatever. It's just like, that's not the same kind of scandal. He said something mildly disapproving of one thing Trump did one time, basically. And it's like, yeah, no, now it's.

And, you know, as AG, Cornyn was like one of, he was like helping consolidate power. So in a way, Cornyn was defeated by the monster that he built. Because, like, the Texas AG's office is, like, it is a laboratory for, like, anti-democratic, far-right lunacy. Yeah. And part of that is because Greg Abbott was the AG. John Cornyn was the AG. Like, they made that office into what it is. And so Paxton couldn't Paxton if Cornyn hadn't corned.

Wow. And just tell us, like, policy-wise, like, what has Paxton done? That's horrible. Pax, policy-wise? I mean, as Texas-A-Gern-A-Gern. like just what, you know. So one thing that stands out to me is like he's very pro-life, but actually the way that children are treated in the state of Texas is abysmal, specifically in the foster care system.

It's his job to like help ensure that the laws are followed in the foster care system. And there's been a lot of like investigative journalism that exposes the fact that actually it's, they're not. Bad things are happening to these kids. Bad things are happening. And at the same time, Paxton is one of those like far right cultural. warriors that are like human trafficking, human trafficking, child trafficking. And it's like...

Protect the children. Yeah. But it's happening. It is happening under your watch and you're not doing shit about it. Like, real child trafficking is happening. Not this imaginary like sound of freedom nonsense that they imagine is happening in their heroic larping. It's real.

And he's not doing anything to help it. But that, that to me is just, I think, among the worst things that he's done. So how are we feeling about like the blue Texas, Texas flipping blue? Because I literally tune out, like, political news from Texas. Like, the Jasmine Crockett, Tala Rico thing, I literally, I'm like, I don't give a fuck. I'm getting texts about, I'm getting texts from Jasmine Crockett, like, months ago going support me as a living in California. And I'm like, I don't care. I've been hearing this for like 15 years.

Like, uh, the Texas Democrats are always raising money across the country for these races that go nowhere. And like, I'd like to see it happen one time or close to one time. before I'm even going to like theoretically give a fuck. But I mean, what do you think as someone who follows it more closely? I'm in the same boat as you because I think my heart's been broken too many times by Texas where it's like, oh, we're going to beat. Oh, Beto O'Rourke. Oh, we're going to. Oh, my God.

The Beto O'Rourke years. Yeah. We're not going to. I think that he's like I've interviewed him before. He's really nice. And I think I agree with him on a lot of policy stuff. Not everything, but there aren't very many politicians. I agree with everything on.

But it's just. You get your hopes up. And I also think that Texas has this thing culturally. A lot of places have this, but Texas especially, that if there is a sense that there's like meddling happening from the coastal elites, they're like, oh, yeah, well, fuck you. Like, they're not, they're more concerned with proving their Texanness than they are advocating for their own best interests. So I think that it sometimes backfires when there's too much national attention on races in Texas. So we can, we can ignore all of those texts we get for fundraising and feel good about it. I would say you can give them money, but don't, if you're a celebrity, like, don't, unless you're, like, Matthew McConaughey, unless you were, like, from Texas. Unless you have the hat that proves that. Yeah. Then don't, don't go there. Don't give speed.

Like, do it, do it on the low. Like, don't draw attention to yourself as you're, like, helping support this race. Teller Rico is an interesting candidate because he's basically, like, a Sunday school teacher. Like, he gives, he's so, like, this family, you know, family man. And he's, like, got a sparkling clean record. And he's a. state senator and he's got this kind of like gentle earnestness about him. He looks like he's going to break out into four-part harmony.

Like he's just, he's the tenor. Yeah, he's not the beatbox guy. No. No. That's too coastal. No, I'm talking about he's singing about Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, definitely.

But he's, you know, he's, some polling has him tied or a little bit ahead of Paxton. If Cornyn were running against him, Cornyn would have probably beaten him handily. but there's enough, like, distaste in Texas among, like, moderates of people who don't vote in the Republican primary to be like, you know what, this Paxton guy pretty ungodly, you know? Yeah, I mean, he must be a hate object for Texas Democrats of whom there are plenty, right? Just like there are plenty of Republicans in California, like they must fucking hate the guy and be mobilized against him. But at the same time, he won by 30 points. Right. Among primary voters.

That's, like, an important caveat. Of course. but still, it's like just the size of the victory is so large that it makes you go, what the fuck anything could be possible here. Yeah. And that's why I'm not trying to make predictions. I'm like, look, polling says this, but like, who knows if that, who knows if people responding to polls are lying?

Who knows who's going to show up on election day? Who knows what's going to happen if, like, you know, Tala Rico is going to have something bad come out about him or if Paxton's going to have something even worse come out about him, like, or something, I don't know. We don't know. Yeah. But so far his attack line against Tala Rico is he's a vegan when he's not actually. vegan. So,

we're off to a substantive start. Didn't they say, isn't it, isn't it Tala Friko? Tala Friko. Which is, honestly, that's an incredible nickname I would love to have. Tala Friko. If that person was, if you were my friend, I would call him that. Right. That's like, it's kind of a fun one.

Yeah, it is. I would run ads being like, yeah, I'm Tala Frico. Yo, what's up Tala Friko! It's like, that's what you hear at the high school reunion, right? Yeah, yeah. Yo, chug, chug, chug. Which doesn't seem to align with. with his actual, like, presentation at all, right? No, that's why it's funny.

Yeah. Yeah, that's why it's, it's like when a really conservative person dresses up in the craziest Halloween costume we've ever seen and there's like side boop, you're like, what? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, yeah. So he's not really a telefreco. I wish he was.

I wish he was like going full in the other direction, like, you know, human disco ball. Yeah, that would be cool. But instead, he just ate a turkey leg on camera and was like, ah, eat me. And it's just kind of like, oh, this is already so dumb. I don't want to deal with this. But potentially a litmus test for like when we get to November and we see the thing, we can see whether or not like is a normal guy, can a normal guy win over a crazy guy in Texas? Yeah.

I think that's an important question and not up to me to answer. We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. Stay tuned. Well, just speaking of like out of state national meddling in local elections, I want to talk really quick just one more time about the LA mayor's race. because first of all, I don't understand why Democrats in California or just anybody in California is not able to understand that like Spencer Pratt's entire candidacy is funded by national

MAGA movement people. Like it's like literally 80% of all this funding is coming from outside of like the city of Los Angeles and a substantial portion from outside California entirely. And still all the press reporting and a lot of just the local political conversation is like, oh wow, people are really mad. They really seem to like this guy when it's being fueled by people who are not,

they do not live here. They're just like literally trolling Californians. Yeah, we already have enough rich people involved. Like, we don't need any more. Yeah. Well, the reason I bring this up is because a new poll came out today

that actually shows that Nithiaraman is only one point behind Karen Bass and is ahead of Spencer Pratt by a couple points, which is like a positive development because maybe if that holds, and this is supposedly the biggest most reputable

poll that is done in, like, Los Angeles County, uh, that means that Pratt would be kept out of the general and we could not hear about this guy for another five fucking months. So it would be so nice to talk about buses for six months. Like, I just really want to talk about buses and trains. Okay, well, buses are actually controlled by the county

which is not underneath the mayor, so. But we talk about trains? Can we talk about trains? Yes. No, that's also the county. God damn it. I mean, the LADOT does run a small bus system, uh, you know, know, called the dash bus, but which is kind of cute. Dot Dash. It's like, more's good.

But, no, yes, it would be nice to talk about actual civic issues and, like, what the police budget should be and homelessness, et cetera, like they have. Hot holes. Yeah. Hot holes. Street lights. Road repair. Street lights.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I think that the fact that Spencer Pratt has so much backing from MAGA is just a testament to how after probably a generation of them trying to make inroads into celebrity culture in Hollywood, they still only have. fucking shitty celebrities. Like if they had a better celebrity in L.A. to run for mayor, they would have run him, you know, or her.

But probably him, for being honest. So yeah, Spencer, he's the best thing. Well, they would have had to burn down that person's house first. Yes. You know what I mean? Like that, I think that's really the only in road he has is like the stress around the fires and the sense of lost anxiety. I think he's actually the perfect candidate for them because he's literally Donald Trump

too, right? The fact that he is a failed reality star with no qualifications is what they like about him. And he's running exactly the Trump playbook again where all the coverage is like, whoa, this is so crazy. He's totally unqualified yet people like him. Could he really do it? Like it's that to a T. And so that is where the excitement is coming from. And I feel myself playing the exact same role.

I'm like, surely no one will take that seriously as I was in 2015 and 2016. Like it's eerie. Yeah, but the could he really do it? It's not like, it's not as exciting and interesting anymore because it's like, yeah, we know he can't. Yeah. We know and that fucking blows. I think that so many people are so traumatized by 2016

and by how like completely surprised they felt by the result that I don't know if that is a repeatable experiment. And I think that the fact that Spencer Pratt has all of this media, a lot of it is like clip armed or whatever. I feel like that, and he's everywhere, people are talking about him. I think that might sound off alarm bells for a lot of voters who normally would sit out in a mayoral election. They might be like, you know what, I got to get my ballot in.

This guy's everywhere. Like, people are talking about him every day. So, I mean, that's my hope. But, you know, we'll see. Well, the question is whether that's going to happen before or after the primary. Like, it has been growing over the past couple weeks. And people are going, oh, no, this is bad. We got to stop it.

But, like, when he actually, if he actually does come in second in the primary, that's when people really go, oh, fuck. Oh, wow. And then it'll be all anybody is talking about in the city for five months. Yeah, we're all going to have to become Karen Bassheads, bass heads, bass. Which we already had to do that with the Rick Caruso thing. And I'm like, I had to Basshead so hard. I'm tired. Yeah, I mean, what, especially Rick Caruso, we've now talked about this longer than I meant to because it's been a lot. L.A. Merrill all the time on factually lately.

But, like, Rick Caruso, for those who don't remember, ran four years ago, spent like $100 million of his own money and lost to Karen Bass. And compared to Spencer Pratt, I'm like, man, I would have taken Caruso, actually. You know, like he's, he's a nice older guy. He wears beautiful suits. Best tailoring I've ever seen on a candidate for any office. Guy looks great. Honestly, I'm wearing rings now.

He's got some similar. I'm like, yeah, Rick's looking good. And so am I. We got that in common. I don't agree with a lot of his policies, but like the fact that he lost, he spent $100 million, basically running as a Ronald Reagan Democrat,

or a Ronald Reagan Republican. Like, I just want to, you know, we want to have a nice city here. And Spencer Pratt is surging without spending that money. He must be so pissed off. It would have been terrible to have him as mayor, though, because Rick Caruso has made it

so that you cannot eat at the Cheesecake Factory without paying for parking. It used to be when you went to the Glendale Galleria that you could get a validation for the entirety of your stay at the Cheesecake Factory, which might be long, but you're spending the money at the, I'm not going for cheap.

You know who does validate though? Barnes & Noble. No, but the thing is they validate, but they don't validate for long enough. After two hours, there's like a hard cutoff and you have to pay. Can we get more local than this than talking about how to validate

at the Rick Caruso Mall The Galleria, Navaricana. But then you have to walk seven minutes and I always get lost. You have to walk. You live in LA. You need to learn how to walk so we can have better trains. We have to move on. We have to move on.

Okay. Am I Catholic now? That's our next topic. Pope Leo 14 wrote a letter. An encyclical. It's like a long Catholic document. Basically wrote a long anti-AI letter called and you really can, when someone's writing in Latin about artificial.

intelligence, you really take it seriously because it feels like you're in, um, uh, oh, what was the, a canticle for Libelitz. Do you guys ever read a canticle for Libelitz? No, I did not read a canticle for Libel. It's a science fiction novel about a bunch of Catholic priests in the far future after a post-apocalyptic explosion. Anyway, um, it's called Magnifica humanitas or unsafeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.

And it warns that AI companies are totally ignoring the value of human beings in humanity and stands up for people against the dehumanizing onslaught of greedy capitalists. This is like, I mean, when you thought Pope Francis was like a nice liberal Pope, this is like next level. Yeah, pour that down my fucking gullet. I love that. Well, Pope, you know, we're really lucky there is so many pictures of him holding a baseball bat because he is a baseball fan. Yeah. So, like, putting that next to the like anti-AI thing is like, I just.

Because it's nice and wholesome or because he could hit you with him? to imagine, I re-contextualized the bat pictures with the AI message and imagine him going into a data center with that sucker and just like knocking the shit out of some invidia chip. Okay, honestly, though, the Pope probably has some form of like diplomatic immunity, right? The Pope should come here. Yeah, the Pope has diplomatic immunity. Yeah. Why isn't the Pope doing that?

I don't want, I don't want just a song, Magnifica, whatever. I want him to get his bat and I want him to come and I want to knock this shit out. Property damage. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's going to confirm. Popery damage. Popery damage.

He could, we could even, you know what? I feel like arson would be faster. Oh, arson pope. I mean, if he could go from woke pope to arson pope, I think that'd be so killer. Yeah. Like dark pope. Dark Pope. I mean, I think we got to go back.

I think like Martin Luther was wrong, you know? Like the Protestant Reformation was incorrect. You didn't believe in the 95 feces? I mean, I was raised a Protestantist. I was raised a congregationalist, which is a very, you know, wimpy kind of east coast. It's very like founding fathers. flavor of Protestantism. So you go to church, you go on Easter.

It's not a big deal. So saltine flavored. Yeah, it's very saltine flavored. Very, very white. Nice little white church, you know. But nobody in the congregational church is like, you know, speaking out against AI. You know, I was raised Catholic and I went to a Catholic university and I left the church because. But something that I'm seeing lately is that like a turn back to Catholicism.

a power struggle of like what that means. So you have like your J.D. Vance's who are like your know-it-all convert, adult convert tradcasts, which are just the worst, the worst, who are just like, no, actually, I know all about what the Pope, what the church means. And then you have like cradle Catholics and you have people like Pope Francis or Pope Leo. And it's a really interesting power struggle. I think that it's, Leo is not afraid to like stick his neck out and to like intervene in American affairs. He's the first American Pope. So it's a first American pope. So it's a really interesting. It's like cool to see him being like, yeah, you know what, this is fucked up.

I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like that. Yeah, I mean, when he came out the gate like a year ago and he just tweeted, J.D. Vance is wrong about something J.D. Vance said. I forget what J.D. was popping off about. It was about your duty to care for your neighbor. And J.D. Vance was like, actually there's, actually there's this like, in cyclical knowledge of like, you take care of the people closest to first.

And then you care for them most and then you care for people less as they're further and further from you. And the Pope was like, what are you talking about? That's not how it is. Love all your neighbors as yourself. Don't arrange them into concentric circles based on how little you care about them. Yeah. But then for you to convert to Catholicism, which is, by the way, one of the weirdest things a person could do. It's so weird.

To be a born-again Catholic. It's so weird. You have to go to classes. You have to have a big old ceremony. You got to do like first communion and confession. It's very infantilizing. Yeah. And to go to a Catholic service and to be like, this is what I want to do a lot more of.

specifically a lot of Catholicism, the ceremony kind of sucks. The churches are nice, but like, you know, not something you want to be in on. Like born again. And it's also, you know, we have a long, long tradition of like born again Protestantism, born again Baptists, that kind of thing. But like born again Catholicism. The music is a lot better when you're a born again Christian, though. Like Christian rock really hits.

What? Contra. That is the worst take. No, no. I know that I said you're supposed to come in here with spicy takes. I did send an email saying, please come in with takes. But this is, no one can believe that you know. No, I believe it's, okay.

DC Talk is better than Handel. I'm not saying it's better than regular rock. What I'm saying is it's, it's like the like worship music music is like very much designed to prey on like the parts of your brain that like need community and want to feel good. Like singing with other people is like really powerful. And so like I mean, I don't know. I grew up in Ohio. like I went to like a nice church where we were like people were allowed to be gay and that was like a big deal. But then when I went to my friend's church where people were not allowed to be gay, but they all, they had they had guitars and they were singing together.

I was like, oh God, I was in the liturgical choir at my university, my Catholic university and we went on tour in Italy and like saying for the dead Pope. Was he dead at the time? He was not dead. He was alive. Because they keep him in mummies. He was on death's door. He was, he was frail. And the.

music that we were singing was, it was awesome. It was like early Italian, like 12-part harmonies. Somebody's never been to a Vespers and it shows. No, I was the president of my high school choir. I know how good choral music is. And I agree with Aaron, like the old Christian music. Give me some Bach, right? Give me some, like the old shit is really good.

But what I was getting to is imagine you convert to Catholicism and then you say something about Catholicism. And the Pope of your new religion says, you are wrong. First, that's devastating. This kicks off a war of words between J.D. Vance and the Pope, which is famously, we've been talking about this for months. You know, J.D. Vance told the Pope that he shouldn't opine so much on matters of religion, yada, yada.

The Pope made such a compelling argument about AI in this encyclical that J.D. Vance admitted the Pope is correct. Like, yeah, he was, J.D. Vance said that. The Pope has a good point. Can you believe that? That's how powerful this argument was. I mean, J.D. Vance is insufferable. Do we think he read it?

Do we think he read it? Inseparable. To convert to Catholicism and be like, okay, Pope, I'll give you that one. All right, all right. I'll give you. Yeah, you got that one, Leo. The encyclical, I was looking,

I was like reading, it's very long, as you might imagine. But, like, if you just scroll through it on like the Catholic Churches website. Which is a funny thing to say. But it's beautiful. Like it's beautiful and it has real political analysis.

Like I'm just going to read some random sentences. He says, entrusting an algorithm in practice with the power to select who is worthy or not without anyone bearing responsibility for that judgment is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities. In this process, political responsibility is also lost not just empathy towards those excluded, which can, after all, be simulated. the exclusion of the vulnerable becomes cloaked in the veneer of neutrality

and objectivity against which it becomes difficult to raise objections. I mean, like, and I, that's like one of like 10 things I highlighted. Yeah, that's not just beautifully written. It's not just morally correct. It's also like genuine, like, political analysis of like the problems.

I couldn't put any better what the problems with AI politically are. I mean, the thing is like, I'm not going to go back to being a. Catholic. I will go back to, I'll go to Quakerism at most. But Catholicism is like, it, the, the actual tenets of the church are like kind of woke, like kind of, like anti-war. Like, anti-war, the pro-life thing, whatever. But like, it's anti-war. It's like pro-human dignity. It's pro-like caring for the vulnerable. And at its best, that's what it, that's how it would play out. That's

not how it's actually played out. If you've ever gone to the Vatican, like it is covered in gold. Oh, it's very creepy. Yeah, it is like giant and full of golden sculptures And it's like, I don't feel like blessed are the poor This is kind of Yeah, it's very hoardy Like they also have all the, like they got bad sculptures there They got shit that's like you should have thrown that away But they stole it from a guy and they got to keep it

Yeah, right because They should have thrown it away There's some of them are bad What God, wait, just like Ken Paxton they're stealing stuff They're stealing it from all the other culture They stole it from Egypt, they sold it from wherever They stole it from all over the world You got a pen room in there

I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, if the the Pope picks up the bat, though, I will convert. I will convert. If the Pope knocks over an AI data center with his own two hands, I will become. This is my blood, which will be given up for you. Yeah. That's how you can get my soul. Pope.

I mean, this is stuff that appeals to me, you know, I have the experience of I also left the church that I was, you know, raised in, which was, again, not nearly as big a deal church as Catholicism. But, like, you know, when my parents visit, I went to like a congregational service. for Christmas last year. And there are plenty of points where I was like, you know what, I really love this piece. I love this song. I love this message.

There is part of it that speaks to me. It is my culture. And like there are some wonderful values embedded in here. And it is just strange to see those come up over and over again from the guy running their religion. I mean, he literally named himself Pope Leo, was it 13 or was it an earlier one, was like a, he was like the union pope. He was like the labor movement workers rights pope.

and this pope was like, yeah, we're doing that again. I'm like making a specific connection of myself to that pope. I mean, is there a better, like fuck the Dalai Lama who gives us shit, you know? Like, this is better. Yeah, it's better. He makes people who should be uncomfortable and comfortable. Yes. Okay, let's move on to the fun one.

The third one's always a fun one in a way. There was an article in The New York Times about how the publishers are. are trying to like re-engage Gen Z readers by swapping out cultural references in published works for newer ones. Under, you're very mad at this. I am mad. Can you tell us what this is? Okay. There are two problems with this.

Number one, let things die. Let things die. Let books die. If people don't like them anymore because in Judy Bloom, she wears a sanitary belt instead of a sticky pad, let it die, right? Is that what is, are they doing specifically Judy Bloom type books? Yeah, they're taking books. They're taking books for kids and they're trying to, like, they're trying to update. They'll do things like, like one of them, they're also making them less specific.

Like one of the example. The mouse on the motorcycle is the mouse on a segue. Right. One of the examples is like someone. That's dated itself. That's like, that's millennial. Sorry. Someone puts a song and it like a thing in a tape deck and then starts, you know, does their thing.

Right. And in the example, they're like just, they just say play the song instead of put it in the tape deck or whatever. And I'm like, just specificity is important in writing. Yeah. Right. As an author, sure, you can choose to write things more evergreen and I support that and I salute you. And honestly, like, people don't, authors, a lot of authors are underpaid in the long

run, like, get your bag, whatever. But I think as a cultural moment, it is, it is overwhelmingly this indicator that we as a culture have stopped making new shit. Yeah. Right? This is happening in TV. It's happening in movies. It's happening now in books. It's like, it's everybody's just like, what if we just keep shoving the same old vomit down kids' throats? Like, let them have their own fucking new books. Like, Captain Underpants would have never existed if we had just tried to make everybody read the Great Gatsby and nothing else. Now it's got to be Captain Thong. You see what these kids are wearing?

You see what these kids are wearing? Captain Commando. Yeah. There you go. No, but also the pleasure of reading an old thing is seeing how life used to be. When I was a kid, I read those Ramona books. Remember those books? Oh, yeah.

And those were set in like the 50s because they were written in the 50s. And it's all about riding your little red bike down to the dump to get an old can for dad to spend. bit as tobacco into or whatever the fuck. And I was like, all right, life used to be crazy. But, you know, I relate to Ramona. Like, that's the appeal. It's a different world. Everybody, yeah, the humans have always been humans.

Like, if you, imagine if we had been doing this with like Laura Ingalls Wilder, right? If they had just been slowly updating all of the little house on the prairies, right? And now it's like Little House and the Burbs. Like, oh, don't give them ideas. Oh, my God. Little House and the Burbs honestly would slap, though. But that's a remake. That's a remake.

We would be fully going, like, fully redoing it. Yeah. But I think that, like, if we're just slowly, also we're in a time period where, like, historical record, I feel like is getting worse because we're not, like, we're, like, we let so much record keeping go to the internet and so much is, like, just, just getting lost. And it makes me feel very frustrated that, like, we would lose, like, the initial historical context of what was in a book or what, like, what, like, because that's, that's a record. That's a record. And it's, like, it's further in shitification. It's further just, like, what if we make things. slop in hopes that it appeals to a new audience so that we don't have to invest in in making more

things new, making new kinds of art. Do you think it interferes with the old version of the book? Like, will it be harder to find the old version? Yeah. The old version is gone. Oh, they're not even selling it anymore. Right. You have to like, you would find it at like a like a used bookstore or whatever, which are

also going out of business, right? Yeah. So like it's like, it's gone. It also makes these books so weird because like, okay, like a number of years, like 15 years ago, I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, which like was the first self-help book. It's very cheesy and silly. It also has a lot of good advice. I actually found it to be a helpful book, right?

But that book was written in like 1928. It was like before the public domain cut off, right? So what his family did to retain copyright or maybe the publisher or whatever, they kept updating the book. But the copy that I got at like a thrift shop or whatever was like from 1986. So the beginning of the book is like, gee Willickers, if you want to know how to be a great salesman, you know, when you're taking your bottle collection on the road, like a man loves the sound of his own name, right?

And that's a fun to read. He's a fun writer. But then it gets to a part where it was like, here's an example. Tony was trying to sell calculators. It takes you out of it a little bit. Yeah. But I'm reading this in like, you know, 2010.

And I'm like, what is this fucking mystery meet book? Yeah. Stay in one time period. You know, I think the thing that worries me about this in addition to everything that you mentioned is I wonder why they're doing this. And is it because they don't want to make anything new? Or is it because they've done research that shows that people don't want to engage with content that they can't immediately and directly relate to. And that to me is a reflection of like a failure of empathy that's happening culture-wide. Like the way that people reject, I mean, the bean soup theory, which I'm sure you've seen online, where it's like someone posted a video about how to make a specific bean soup in one of the,

the comments was, what if I don't like beans? And it's like, not everything is for you. You can look at things and appreciate things if they're not about you, if they're not for you. But we live in a world where like everybody's algorithm is constantly doing things that are like, is this for you? This might be for you. This is for you. This is for you. When they encounter something that challenges the fact that everything is for them, they're like, they reject it. Right. And the primary antidote for that as a culture that we have for thousands of years is literature. Literature is what gives you the opportunity to go and live in someone else's life for a while and see what it's like and experience and consider empathy.

Like literature is literally like an empathy muscle builder. And so if we're going to if we're going to take away parts of that and try and try and make it more solo cystic. Right. It's like, well, what the fuck are we doing? Yeah. It just, I worry. This gives me the hebi-jeebies and I hate it.

I also think, I just think it's wrongheaded. I think it is condescending on the part of the people making the changes. is their assumption about what, oh, they won't like this because it's out of date. Don't they understand that the dominant aesthetic form and desire of Gen Z people, in my observation, is nostalgia for a time that they did not live in. Like that seemed when they really pop for something, like the TikToks that really hit for them are the ones about like, look at these people from 1995 and no one has phones, right? They're all watching friends. They're all fascinated by old forms of media because guess what? The world sucks a little bit more now or they feel that something has been taken from them.

Right. And they want to go back and experience it. And sure, every generation does that to some extent. You know, like everybody had, you know, friends in high school who are our age who, you know, were into classic rock or whatever. There's always some amount of stuff hanging around. But I have really noticed this as like a specific thing that people under 30 and especially under 25 are into right now.

So maybe they would like to read the book that said in the 90s, it would be interesting to them. Right. Don't presume to know what Gen Z wants. Gen Z will decide for themselves. And if that means that some books don't live on in the pantheon of great literature forever, whatever, the next generation might find it or might not.

Let's make more books so that we have like, it doesn't matter. Like just books. We just need more books. As you were talking, though, You know, it's really funny. You're like, Gen Z, don't decide what Gen Z will like. I have a friend whose name is Jenny Zegreno, very funny comic, and she's Gen Z. And the way people use Gen Z in a sentence, they really do sound like they're just talking about my friend Jenny.

Because we don't say like that about millennial. We're not like, don't make decisions for millennial, but we do that about Gen Z. It's just really funny to me. Thank you guys so much. That's the show. Aaron, where can people find you? Well, my podcast drops every Thursday. were dark this week, but hysteria every Thursday morning.

And then every other Sunday we drop anew this fucking guy. And who's the fucking guy coming up? We just had a Barry Weiss one go up. That was fun. We just did Lindsey Graham. We've got Jared Kushner coming up. I'm working on Chief Justice, John Roberts, and Ronald Reagan. Those are the up.

I got to go to the Barry Weiss one. I'm really Weiss-pilled right now. The Barry Weiss one is up. So that's a lot of fun. Hell yeah. We've got clips of her terrible. Little sister. Do you talk about the bust of herself at her own university?

Yeah, it was 3D printed by... It was 3D. It was 3D printed at an anti-woke university. And all the professors, it's unaccredited, okay? And all the professors there were like canceled for like getting mad about black people at their respective colleges. Yeah, it's like Neil Gaiman teaching you like a sex studies class. Yeah, it's really, it's really silly. It's really silly.

But there is a bust of her that is like, that's not very well. That is someone much prettier than Barry Weiss. She's like, well, it's the same as when she had to go change his 60 Minutes story. She's like, guys, this bus is not accurate. Could we make me a little hotter, please? That's what Trump wants. And Andro, where can people find you? I mean, probably looking for that hot bust of Barry Weiss.

Yeah. No, I mean, I have a substack. I have an Instagram that's private. But if you're not a porn bot, I might let you follow me. That's why I made it private because too many porn bots are following me. And porn is fine, but not bot-wise. Well, thank you guys so much for being here. If you guys want to support the show, of course, patreon.com slash Adam Conover.

We'll see you next week for more show. Thanks for being here. That was a HeadGum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast, That Was Us, now on HeadGum. Each episode, we're going to go into a deep dive from our show, This Is Us.

That's right. We're going to go episode by episode. we're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit. Are we going to laugh? A lot.

A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.