Offline with Jon Favreau - Could Blowing Up Google Save The Internet? Plus MAGA's Birth Obsession and Your Questions Answered

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Google’s antitrust trial is all gas no breaks this week, with the Justice Department asking a federal judge to break up the $1.81 trillion dollar company. Jon and Max discuss all the possible outcomes, and why Google’s products have stagnated the more they’ve come to dominate the internet. Then, new research finds that people who deactivated Facebook or Instagram before the 2020 presidential election became significantly happier and less anxious. The guys break down the study's unsurprising results, then set their sights on dual right wing fever swamps: the online charge to overthrow the Supreme Court and the pronatalist movement championed by Elon Musk and an army of tradwives. Finally, what is Cluely, the undetectable AI designed to help you cheat, and is it really as harmless as spell check or calculators? Max and Jon round out the episode by answering listener questions—what historical event does Max wish he could’ve spied on via Signal chat? And when was the last time Jon touched grass?For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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I'm journalist James King, and in my new audiobook, Global Tech Wars, from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times, I'm unpacking what China's rapid technological ascent across cutting-edge industries like artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and surveillance technology means for the future. Find Global Tech Wars at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks, audible Spotify, and wherever audiobooks are sold. Julia went with some friends to a Lutheran service and the pastor at one point called up all the kids for the children's liturgy and he kept saying,

God bless and keep you safe, especially on the internet. And literally every time he would address a kid, he would say, look at this beautiful child, God bless you and keep you safe, especially on the internet. Come on offline. I think he's a listener. Julia should have grabbed them. I'm John Favreau.

I'm Max Fisher. Max, we've got some news to cover that's both somewhat promising and typically dystopian, but after that we're gonna answer some of your questions listeners, which we haven't done in a while. And they had some crazy ones. Crazy ones. Which I do say as a compliment. But I know those questions are gonna help us end in a high note. They are. That was our goal. But first we got a new study about the impact of deleting social media. That's a rose. Yeah.

MAG is online reaction to Trump's latest loss at the Supreme Court. Definite thorn. It's a thorn. And our first topic, the government's legal fight against big tech, which seems like a bud. I would say that that is the, that's the pot of water in which we're putting the roses. If I can extend this metaphor in wild new directions. And why not?

It's our show. This time we're talking about Google, which has had a rough couple of weeks in court. Last Thursday, the internet search giant lost its third antitrust case in 18 months. Huge. When a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the company operated in the legal monopoly in the digital advertising market,

that result joins a 2023 epic ruling that found Google violated antitrust laws by maintaining a monopoly over app distribution on Android devices. And August 2024's ruling that found Google had broken antitrust laws to build a search monopoly. On Monday, that ruling led the Justice Department to ask a federal judge to break up the $1.81 trillion company with the recommendation that the company sell Chrome its popular search web browser

That judge now has roughly three weeks to issue their ruling and determine the fate of one of the Internet's most important companies We've touched on some of these rulings before Now with a third antitrust loss and the Justice Department actively asking a judge to break up the company Do we think Google's fucked? So I genuinely think, this is going to sound contrary, and I really mean it, I think this is a big opportunity for Google. I think it could be really good for them. Like we can get a little bit into what these rulings mean for Google

and therefore for the internet and therefore for everybody listening to this, because like you said, Google lost these cases, where now it's like the equivalent of the sentencing. Damages, yeah. Yeah, damages. But I think this could be good for Google in a way because their business as the DOJ showed in these trials has come to center on monopolistic exploitation

of consumers over the years. That's the core of their business now. And because of this, if the enforcement mechanisms are any good, which it seems very likely they're going to be, basically what we've heard from the judges so far, Google is going to have to go back to centering their business on making products for people that will attract consumers on the merit or improving existing products, which they used to be really, really good at. That's how they got to this place. Like, let me list some names and some dates for you. Google Search launched in 1997, Gmail launched in 2004 and is now the mail app that everybody uses. Google Maps in 2005. I maintain the best invention ever on the

internet. Google Maps is amazing. Google Docs we use for the show 2006. Google Translate also 2006. Android 2008. Waymo 2010. What do you notice about those dates? It's all in the 2000s. It's like 20 years ago. They made all these amazing products, conquered the internet business, conquered our attention,

and now turn that into a monopoly. And I think that if they no longer have access to those monopolistic enforcement tools they can use to force us onto their services, they're going to have to make good ones, which I think they can do well. Let's hope so. What are they at?

So there's, I think there's three broad sort of fixes they're asking for here. And one is to prevent them from making deals where Google is the default search engine on a host of devices like our iPhones. Yep. They're asking Google to stop paying Apple and Samsung to make Google the default on phones, to sell Chrome because Chrome uses default Google search, to stop making Google apps mandatory on Android phones, and for Google to give out all of its search data to other rival search companies for the next 10 years.

Now, what do you think about that part? That's the one that Google is trying to fight the hardest, apparently. And they're saying there are privacy concerns, national security concerns. Of course, this is coming from Google, so it's hard to know. But as I was reading through some of the different remedies that the judge is considering, I'm like, that is a, that's a big one.

I know. And the judge has been talking about it a lot too. And he keeps bringing it up in a way that suggests that he is maybe going to enforce it or some version of it. So the idea behind it is both that the word, the term of art is fruits, that, that's just the like, the thing that Google got through its monopoly was all of this data, so therefore because it's ill-gotten, they have to share it with other companies out of fairness. The idea is also that they need to do this in order to level the playing field so that it's possible

for other companies to launch competing search companies. Because even if they take all these steps to remove Google as the search on your web browser, like Chrome and on your phones and everything. They still control, everybody has a habit of using Google search all the time and Google has all of this data that allows them to target their ads and their searches. So you have to, the idea, what DOJ is saying is Google has to share that data with other companies, give everyone who's starting from zero today or, bang, where you're starting from pretty close to zero, access to that data so that they can launch a search tool that is competitive

and can actually win over some consumers. And the argument from DOJ here is if you don't share the data, then Google is always going to have a massive advantage on any competitor because they have all the data. And then, so which is why people use, then the search is better because they have more data. So if someone's starting from scratch and they don't have the data, like maybe they're going to build like Google was, you know, a couple decades ago, but they're never going

to get to the size of Google or they're never going to be able to compete with Google because Google has all the data. Now one argument I noticed that they're using, that Google's using against that is what about OpenA app? What about ChatGPT? Right. And that is, has now a pretty healthy, effective search function and they don't have all of Google's data. And so isn't the market competitive and isn't chat GPT evidence that the market is competitive? Right. And initially, under Biden, the DOJ was pushing for Google to also divest from any AI tools

that could function as search. And the Trump DOJ dropped that. It's the only major thing that they've dropped from this case, but the idea is that they still want Google to be able to compete in search. But I think it's worth taking a step back and asking why do we care about this? What does this actually mean for the internet and search and for consumers? I like having Chrome on my phone. Right, I used to write.

If tomorrow they were like, well, it's not gonna be the default, I'd be like, well, I'll make it my default. I would too, exactly. I would not set Bing, no disrespect to Microsoft, as the default search, like, I like Chrome, I'm going to continue to use Chrome, at the same time, as you and I have discussed many times

and as everybody has noticed, search sucks. Now, it gets worse every day, the results are less helpful, you have to dig further back, there are more and more ads, that's why the results are so much worse. There's this mandatory AI junk at the top. And that is really bad. I know. Gemini sucks.

It's Gemini is their AI function that now pops up every time. Yes. Those who don't know, I don't know why it would be their monopoly. But you search Gemini comes up at the top. Yeah, no chat GPT. I use it now. It's much better for search, I think. Really?

Are you using the deep research tool that Lovett talked about last week? I haven't had any occasion to do deep research. Okay. I do, Max, I do my own research. You do, that's right. I don't use artificial intelligence, like, you know, like Lovett is, you know, he's just,

all his takes are research by ChatGPT. Not me, not me. That's right, yeah, you get yours from men's securities. I'm going line by line through the New York Times, the Washington Post, everywhere else, and I'm just compiling it all, and York Times, the Washington Post, everywhere else, and I'm just compiling it all and then, you know, using what's between my ears here.

That's our... I'm in the National Archives looking at the raw data, mostly. Microfiche? Microfiche? Does anyone listening know what microfiche is? Oh man, that's really, that's one for the elder millennials right there.

Microfiche and watching Transformers and so many other cartoons. So the idea, what DOJ wants to do all this, is not like, DOJ is not just functioning as like a traffic cop here, and that's kind of how Google wants to pay them, is like, oh, you're just trying to wrap us on the knuckles because you didn't like the way that we conduct a business.

The goal of all of this is to create a regulated market that will function in a way that provides everybody with better search, whether that's Google or somebody else. And because Google has this monopoly on search right now, because you and I have this habit that we've developed with it, and because it's, you know, the default on all of these tools, Google doesn't have to make search better to make everybody use it. And also, even if someone designed a better search tool,

you know, someone at Microsoft had a great idea, someone had a startup that they could launch that would be much better search, they would never be able to capture the market because Google has all of these illegal monopolistic behaviors like bribing Apple and Samsung to make their search default that makes it impossible for those companies to rig in.

So the way that all of these pieces of all these remedies are supposed to fit together is that if someone has an idea for a better search function, whether that person works at Google or at a competitor, they will be incentivized to actually try that and to bring that to market because you're gonna have to capture consumers' attention that way. What kind of impact do you think the sale

of Google Chrome would have? So it's no longer the default browser, which it also seems like that's the one point where Google seems more willing to give. But selling it completely, just spinning it off, what kind of impact do you think that would have on the internet in our use cases?

I think that it makes sense to look at that in conjunction with the other big Google antitrust case, which is their that in our use cases. I think that it makes sense to look at that in conjunction with the other big Google antitrust case, which is their ad tech sales, which is something that you and I don't interact with much as consumers. It might seem opaque to most people, but it's a little more technical. Basically, the entire web publishing economy

runs through Google. If you have any sort of website that is supported by ads, whether you're a major news company or you're just someone who runs recipes on your personal blog spot, the ads that are there are purchased or sold through Google's exchange and they're installed on the website through Google. So because they control every part of that business, they control all of the ads, so they're able to squeeze and extort a lot from consumers on that. But what this has to do with Chrome is the fact that Google has so many parts of their business now that are just kind of like passive income.

They're just kind of like a vending machine that spits out money regularly. And I think the key thing is that by selling those off, probably Chrome doesn't change very much. I think it would basically be the same app, probably with the same people working on it. But Google as a whole, by losing this ad tech monopoly and by losing this browser that gets them a search monopoly

would have to start, like I was saying earlier, developing new things. Making other shit, yeah. Which again, I would love for them to do. Like I am rooting for Google to continue succeeding and making cool stuff. Like I see the Waymo cars around and it's like, hey, Google is good at making stuff

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view important disclosures at acorns.com slash offline. We touched on this briefly last week when we were talking about Facebook's antitrust trial, but what have you made of the Trump administration continuing these antitrust cases from the Biden administration? Are they doing the right thing for the right reasons or the wrong reasons or how much does that even matter?

I have to be honest. I'm actually not totally sure why. I don't have a theory of the case for why Trump is continuing to allow his DOJ and FTC to push so hard on the Biden-era antitrust stuff because I thought he was going to do the opposite. I really thought this was going to be another area of Trump corruption where he was going to come in, cut deals with all of these companies.

When all of these tech CEOs were up there at the fucking dais with him at the inauguration, including Google CEO, yes, he doesn't get a lot of flak for it, although he should because he was up there at the fucking dais with him at the inauguration including Google CEO. Yes, he doesn't get a lot of flak for it, although he should because he was up there. I thought, I know what's going to happen. They're going to cut these deals where they're going to, you know, become MAGA culture warriors and they're going to skew the algorithms. They're going to pay them off somehow. And then in exchange, he is going to kill the trials because that's just like what Trump does, right? It's all just about short-term exploitation and then the fact that he did this authoritarian takeover of the FTC Right where he fired illegally the two Democratic commissioners on it. I was like it's over

he's gonna kill all these trials as soon as he can get the payout and he hasn't and I'm actually curious if you have a read for why that is because I am at a little bit of a loss I'm going with right thing for wrong reasons. Okay, and Wrong reason is I think we talked about this During the campaign. Maybe we did on PSA. I can't remember anymore. But remember Trump was interviewed about Google antitrust case and he was like well, I don't like them because every time I Every time I go on Google, there's bad and you search for me, there's bad stories about me.

So he thinks that the search function is biased against him, which we can laugh about, but it is part of the bigger case against big tech from the right, which is that it's all a bunch of libs in Silicon Valley working on these and they censor conservative opinions and they're fucking with the algorithms so that all the lib opinions come up and all the best ... I think it's possible that at least in Trump's mind, this is just going after big tech. And then I think Andrew Wheeler, who's the FTC commissioner of the Trump pick, is just an antitrust hawk

and has been for a while. Like on the merits. Right, on the merits. So it could be a combination. I do think it is really important when you were trying to analyze Trump's decision-making not to underrate that he's stupid. And I'm not saying that to be rude, although I'm very happy to be rude to Trump, but I do think that it's like, it's a weird thing where like, mainstream media, which

I know I tend to be like a knee jerk defender of like, they can't call Trump stupid because of journalistic norms. But he is like we're seeing that with tariffs, where it's like he's imposing these tariffs because he doesn't understand what a trade deficit is. It's like a really important part of understanding the whole of what he's doing. Stupid, misinformed, misinformed because he and his staff are ensconced in a right-wing bubble full of misinformation. And very resistant to changing his mind.

I was just going to say, and set in his ways at nearly 80 years old. Which is right, a very common thing for men of his age. And I think that that is why a lot of these tech guys thought what they were gonna be able to do is they thought that like, okay, Trump term one, like you were saying, we were MAGA enemy number one, we were cultural enemy, and we're just gonna go all in for Trump,

and then he's gonna see that we're on his side, we're helping him, and he's gonna quit pro-colos, but he just never got out of his head, big tech is against me. So even though they're no longer against him, in fact, they're really putting their thumbs on the scale on his behalf, he just can't break himself from that. There's also, did you see this Mike Davis quote about the antitrust trials? I saw the one, I read the one he said about Zuckerberg taking his pants down in the Oval

office. That was last week, right? Is there another one? He's got another, there's no pants on this one, thankfully. Yeah, everybody has their clothes on in this one. So this is Mike Davis, who is a very Trump aligned lawyer and advisor. He's a lunatic.

And is also a lunatic, that's true. I felt that was implied. One of the more dangerous legal lunatics in the Trump orbit. Yes, absolutely. So he was asked about, this was about the meta antitrust trials, but what he is describing, I think extends to all.

And someone was asking him, a politico, why is it that Trump is not intervening in this meta trial, given how much meta is doing for Trump? And Mike Davis said, quote, why would the president give away all of his negotiation power before the trial? Why wouldn't he wait until after the trial when you can get a massive verdict against Facebook

and then you have the negotiating power if you do it before the trial, that's not the art of the deal. Now he might just be making this up off of the top of his head. It may just be that Trump is not engaged in this. Maybe he doesn't understand the trials, but he is at least trying to incept into Trump

the idea that you do sell out corruptly, but you wait until later. Which is not ethical advice, but certainly good advice probably. Yeah, right. Although it's- Good advice to a corrupt authoritarian. Right, although once we get to the point where a judge issues the remedies,

I don't know if it's in Trump's hands anymore. Yeah, it's probably not. Although I also thought- But maybe he doesn't know that. We thought the TikTok ban wasn't a letter of the law too, and a Supreme Court decision and an act of Congress, but we're past it all now. All right, in other news, a new study published in the National Bureau

of Economic Research found that people who deactivated Facebook or Instagram in the six weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election were notably happier and less anxious than a control group who did not. The study also found that the effect of deleting Facebook was most pronounced in people over the age of 35 and the effect of deleting Instagram was most pronounced in women under the age of 25. First blush, you read this conclusion, you're like, no shit. Of course, right, yes. But why do you think this is significant?

Or do you think it's significant? I do, I mean, it's confirmation of things that we both suspected and have known for other research. What makes this study new and different is first, it's the scale of it is unprecedented. This is part of a huge years long study into the consequences of deactivating Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 election.

We had Josh Tucker on like a year and a half ago to talk about the first tranches of that research coming out. This is one of the last pieces of it. They also have access to internal metadata, which is the first time that's happened. So we know not just on a huge scale of thousands of views we haven't before, but we're able to track the activity on the platform

corresponding with real-world behavior so it's just much stronger conclusion. This scale of what they found I think is really striking. It's not enormous scale it's not life-changing but this is also a six-week deactivation is really short. Yeah. If you are a lifelong user. I mean, for me it would be a couple lifetimes, but yes, no, I understand. I mean, we'll never know, but. But it's a very, it's a brief break. It's a really brief break.

So I would keep that in mind. But one of the things they found is that the improvement in well-being for people who took that little break from Facebook and Instagram was equivalent to one-fifth the effect of going to therapy. Not just the effect of going to therapy for a few weeks, but of being in therapy generally. Wow. Yeah, and it's much cheaper than that. And I also found, I thought this was really interesting, the wellbeing improvement was

higher for Republicans than for Democrats. I saw that. Which I thought was a really striking confirmation that the platform is more distorting and more impactful if you are right wing. Yeah. And probably makes you angrier and more afraid. Right. Yes. At least in the lead up to the 2020 election.

Who knows who knows where we are now? No, they all seem fine. They all seem really chill and fine. So I think this stat also really floored me. So for people age 18 to 24, the psychological improvement for taking a break from social media was equivalent to one-sixth of the total nationwide increase in psychological distress for that age group between 2008 and 2022.

Oh my gosh. Yes. So the implication of that is that the total rise in anxiety among young people over the last 15 years, one sixth of that is equivalent to just a few weeks on social media apps. And you were just, you were never going to find stronger confirmation of the like Jonathan height theory that it's the phones that are making kids anxious. When I first heard about the study, I think I said to you guys that,

my first reaction was like, oh, six weeks before the 2020 election, like, is there a bad part of this? Which is that people aren't as informed because we're like leading up to election. And then I was like prepping for the pod last time. I'm like, wait a minute, you idiot. People can just get their news

from any of the other news sources that aren't social media. Yes. Right, which is, because we have seen after the 2024 election, the people who, Kamala Harris did best with people who paid attention to the news and consumed both traditional and digital media. Yes, absolutely. Met legacy media outlets, new media outlets, right?

And Trump won slightly among people who got most of their news from social media and people who didn't pay attention to much news at all. He won by the largest margin of all the different groups. So there was actually a recent paper from this same study, actually looked into exactly this and found that people who deactivated social media were slightly less up on the news,

but they were also less misinformed and they were less prone to believe misinformation and conspiracies. It did not reduce their overall rate of real world political participation, whether that was attending an event, voting, and it made them slightly less likely to vote for Trump. That's all great news. Yes, I know. It's all right. And something else I thought was really interesting in this study, they were able to track what people did with their extra time from quitting Facebook and Instagram.

They stayed on their phone. Unfortunately, they did like fill that with other screen time. I would have thought they would have replaced Facebook and Instagram with other social media apps. They didn't. They mostly had the choice to, but they just didn't. Yes, they used their web browser instead, was by far the thing they were likely as to replace it with. Very distantly followed by YouTube and then Twitter. And then way, way down the list was TikTok, which

they barely switched to at all. I thought was interesting. Like people aren't switching from like Marlboro's to Camel's. They're just quitting smoking outright, which I think is further confirmation that if you give people even the slightest break from these apps, they want to stay off of them. Or is TikTok camels or is TikTok Marlboro's? There's a good argument there. Which cigarette is Chaohongshu, the little red book app, which I have been going crazy on. I'm doing, I'm doing, the show is doing really good numbers over there.

I got to sign up. Ben going crazy on. I'm doing, the show is doing really good numbers over there. I gotta sign up. I gotta sign up. I gotta sign up. I gotta sign up. Offline is brought to you by Aura Frames, ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family.

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Very scary. I briefly mentioned this on Pod Save America, but masks are really just coming off. The guy who runs the Federalist said that the president is obligated to ignore the Supreme Court and quote, put it in its place. That's psychopath stuff. Yep, MAGA pundit Jesse Kelly said the court should be dissolved and anyone who tries to enforce their rulings should be arrested. My God. I know.

And this stuff also filters up to the electeds. A Republican congressman tweeted that Trump should be like Bukele, the self-described world's coolest dictator of El Salvador and fire any judges that don't rule his way. He said it's time to clean house here too. Another Republican congressman tweeted about the Supreme Court's ruling against Trump, quote, let them enforce it then. And a Trump White House official posted on Truth Social

that the court has been, quote, the Supreme Court, including, he specified, the three Trump appointees has been, quote, infected with a parasitic ideology. As a White House staffer. Wow. The White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, yes. Oh my God. Not great, huh?

Yeah, you can really see, just like you were saying, you can really see the interplay between the people in power and the shit posters online. Like I think it's important, like this, you see one individual post and you're like, this is shit posting, this is someone who's just like mad at the Supreme Court or is a psychopath or both. And it just, but like, these are overt calls

for authoritarianism and something I feel like I have been trying to emphasize since like 2016, when you first started this global pull towards like elected strong man populism is that dictatorship has a real popular base. Like we want to think of it in our minds as something that happens to us. Yeah, it's like taken by force and the people don't want it. Exactly, right? You wake up one morning and there are tanks in the street and the president declared themselves

ruler for life and canceled all the elections. But the way that it works is that there's, it's always a minority, but there is a real, legitimate, popular base imploring the leader to take these autocratic steps to dismantle the most basic elements of our democracy and rule of law. Social media obviously gives a big platform and voice for these people. And there are people who are clearly in power who are looking for that. And I think it's the role of the internet here is helping to connect those two. This nut job who is, you said it was a White House liaison to DHS. Right. That person on their own, they were already going to be a psychopath. What they have now is

the opportunity to broadcast both to hear from the far right online MAGA craziest who want a Trump dictatorship to hear that and then to echo back to them, we're here, we're in power, and you know, so keep sounding off. And they kind of have this interplay back and forth to create this sense of a consensus. And I think never before has the federal government, the White House, been influenced and their policy making shaped by like an online fever swarm. Right? Like it's just going right up to the electeds. And we have shit posters in charge, the president, a vice president, Elon Musk, and now they're swimming in this

and they're seeing the crazies, but the crazies to them probably seem like, oh, this is what people want. And this is what we're getting now. I also like thinking about this whole, the disappearing to El Salvador and how the Trump administration is treating the Abrego Garcia case, which they are using social media, the right-wing media, Fox, everything,

to just try this man in the court of public opinion. Right. And, which is the internet now. Right. And it's, to me, it mirrored during the campaign, or just before the campaign, Trump trying to plead his innocence of all the crimes that he was charged with in the court of public opinion. So it really, at some point the Trump strategy was like, forget about the courtroom, forget

about the jurors, forget about what the judge says, forget about them convicting him, giving him a sentence in the Manhattan case, all the other ones. What we're just going to do is we're going to try this in the court of public opinion, and we have this propaganda machine, and we have the social media, and we're just going to either convince people he's innocent, or just sow enough doubt about him. And now they're doing the same thing. Now that they're in power, they're like, the courts, forget the courts, forget juries, forget due process, forget all this stuff. What we're going to do is just make this a case about this guy is an MS-13 gang member

who's violent. We're going to tell you he is and we're going to have all this, you know, whatever, evidence that we're not offering up in court. Right? Because if it was real, they would offer it up in court. Government's doing none of that. Hasn't offered any of this evidence about Abrigo Garcia in court. And the judges have asked, and they said, no, we don't have anything.

They don't even want to. So then they just talk about it on air. And then they make it true. And I think when they when they say MS-13, I don't even think they really mean MS-13. I think what they mean is look at this guy, look at the color of his skin. Yeah. You don't want him in your neighborhood. If you are one of our true believers.

And I think you're right about wanting the court of his skin. Yeah. You don't want him in your neighborhood if you are, you know, one of our true believers. And I think you're right about wanting the court of public opinion. I think it's not just like a calm strategy and not just a political strategy. I think that there is a real belief at the core of MAGAism. And you see this in all popular authoritarian movements that the only legitimate source of power is the leader and his supporters. Yep. That's it.

And so when they, even when they think about the court of public opinion, it's a jury that only includes Trump supporters, because those are the only legitimate voices in American society or people who already agree with us. And I think something that is one of the many things that is scary about this moment is that Trump's popular base is really shrinking right now because he decided to blow up the national and to some extent global economy for basically no good reason, which has made him less popular, which means the people who are sticking with him are the people who are not there because they're concerned about inflation or the price of groceries. It's the people who were there because they want the racism, they want the police state,

they want the authoritarianism. So I think their belief, even though there's not like a legal theory behind this and there's no like court strategy behind this. It's a governing strategy. It's a governing strategy. And I think it's a sincerely felt ideology among the MAGA far right, both in power and online,

that the only source of power that matters is the support of true real Americans, which means our supporters, which means people who are mad. So I think that's why they're only speaking to them. It's self-fulfill, it's like a perpetuating feedback loop here. Right, and I think part of what's dangerous

about the like frog boiling of it is I think to some extent, at least initially when Trump says like, rulings that go against us are illegitimate, judges who go against us aren't real judges and they should be impeached. You know, does he mean that literally or is he just saying, you know, I don't consider them to be real Americans because they go against me? Well, I don't know.

It might just be like he likes to throw stuff like that out. But when that gets bounced back and forth in this feedback loop between him, his supporters online and a lot of the people in his government who were term one supporters, people who were like 23 year old young Republicans during his first term and are now, you know, 28 year olds in positions of like somewhat power, that gets magnified into, no, we actually need to remove judges who don't side with us, which is something that has, I think it's like close to majority support among Republican voters. It's not high, but it could be high enough.

And it's every time you have a cycle like this, people hear more about it. You know, they start to, they see it online and they hear Trump say something. Then they hear someone in Trump's orbit say something, and then, you know, some far right member of Congress says something, then a Fox News host says something, and if you are a supporter who might be otherwise like, well, you like democracy, and you think we should have the rule of law,

it starts to feel like, well, this is the social consensus of my cohort. And they always find a, but what about what Democrats did, right? And so there's a, you know, I saw Maxwell Frost talking to one of the dumbest Fox hosts on the network, which is something, Will Kane. I was so curious how you're going to end that sentence.

I was like, there's so many ways this could end. Will Kane is now, he's a rising star in stupid Fox hosts. I have to be honest with you, I'm not that familiar with his work. He's got this daytime show now. Okay, so he's the next secretary of defense. He's the next secretary of defense. And he's yelling at Maxwell Frost about how...

So he has this whole exchange with Maxwell Frost where he's like... Maxwell Frost is like, oh, next it could be citizens because Trump wants to do home ground citizens. And well, he goes, where did he say that? Am I just gonna take your word for that? He's like, well, he said it in the Oval. He said it in a cabinet meeting. He said it at the events.

He's like, well, you're saying that. He's like, no, what are you, he's like, well, look for that clip, but I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, no, that's literally, like it's been said everywhere. No, Will Cain said that he didn't say it. So Democrats made it up,

except also he did say it because we're gonna do it. And then he came back from break and he was like, oh, here's the clip. He goes, but he's talking about the worst of the worst criminals. And he said, and by the way, Maxwell Frost, you had this quote from when the Supreme Court ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution

and you said, the court is illegitimate. So Democrats say the court is illegitimate like you. So why can't we say the court is illegitimate? And of course the difference is Democrats are like, we will abide by Supreme Court rulings and the right is like, let's dissolve the court, right? But they always find that's what helps their supporters. Well, it's like, I don't know if I like this, but fucking Democrats do the same thing.

If they get the power, they'll do the same thing. And they already did it and everything is fine. So of course we have to do it too. We're not doing it, but if we were doing it, it would be good. And also Democrats did it first, and by the way, we're doing it. It's fucking awful. But it is, it is part, I think, of this like back and forth exchange that like call and response between the people in power and the online far right, even though any one of these people is kind of inconsequential and meaningless of themselves.

And also just to like, because we don't want to freak people out too much for every one post from a, you know, whoever federalist nutjob that does end up getting echoed by someone in power, there are a hundred that don't. So like Sean Davis is not in charge of the country. He wants us to believe that he is, but he's throwing out crazy stuff all day, every day, that never goes anywhere.

And those two Republican congressmen I just mentioned are backbenchers that you've never heard of. That said, you know, JD Vance wrote a long essay last week about how due process is getting in the way of all the deportations and then the president himself has said that and Stephen Miller is certainly saying that. So that is scary. On the other hand, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, welcome to the resistance. They were part of the seven to rule.

Yes, yeah. But it is, it's something to watch. It's something to watch. I mean, I think that the, to trade it in this segment on a like somewhat more optimistic beat, and that's very relative, I don't want to get people's hopes up too much. I appreciate you trying.

All of these are trial balloons. They're all tests. And they don't even know how sincere it is. Trump doesn't know what he's saying half of the time. He just throws it out. And, you know, Vance says it partly because he means it and partly just because he's trying to get through the next news cycle to dunk on,

I probably you specifically. Probably me, probably me. And that, what that means is that because each one is a trial balloon, that each one is responsive to feedback in terms of popular backlash, protests, Democrats throwing their asses. There are pundits who haven't gone down the rabbit hole yet.

That's right, the handful that are left, like pushing back on it, Supreme Court justices, which is to say that it's not foregone that we are absolutely headed in this direction. But it is, you know. But it's important for people to speak up Because that matters right that does matter that that that has an impact on this whole feedback loop as well That's right, and we're almost through his term anyway, right? Yeah

We're very much around in the band on the topic of right-wing internet fever swamps We're gonna talk about the pro-natalist movement On Monday the New York Times reported that the White House has been soliciting policy ideas from far-right voices in the pro-natalist movement. On Monday, the New York Times reported that the White House has been soliciting policy ideas from far-right voices in the pro-natalist movement to encourage Americans to have more children. Among the policies proposed include a well-intentioned $5,000 baby bonus for every American mother after delivering a child, a misguided Fulbright scholarship reserve for married people only. So we're going to do a quota of Fulbright scholarships now

that only go to married people. So weird. And there's a proposal for a series of government programs to educate women on their menstrual cycles. Are you going to the government menstruation classes? Yeah, well, I don't know. It's hard to sign up. It's like, I don't know if they have room for me.

It's crazy because it's just sex education, which is part of public education, but they manage to make it creepy. Oh, they do everything else. That's right. What is going on with the pro-natalist movement here? I've sort of been, it's like in my periphery, and then, you know, Elon Musk is having all the kids,

and JD Vance did the Childless Cat Ladies thing during the campaign, and then you're like, yes, supporting people who have children in this country who can't necessarily afford to have children is a good thing. Good thing to do. Right, we like that. When children are born, supporting them, daycare, universal pre-K, healthcare, that's all great stuff.

Pro-natalist movement though, at least on the right has been much creepier. Yes, so the right wing pro-natalist movement, which is the thing that just kind of appeared very suddenly, but does, like you're saying, pull on all of these strands. It's kind of similar to QAnon, not in the extremists of its beliefs, but similar in the sense that it was a lot

of different tribes and ideas that were kind of all stewing online at the same time and all came together and converged on this one set of ideas. You've got the white nationalists who have always loved to talk about how white families need to have more babies, homeschooling evangelicals who think that women should not work and should in fact be educating and raising and having children, both of those have been around forever. You've also got the newer elements, online manosphere of young men who feel lonely and think the solution to that is to forcibly reimpose this idealized, imagined past of traditional gender norms.

And then more recently, thanks to Instagram and TikTok in large part, it seems, this is extended into tradwife culture, which I'm sure we've all seen the videos, which has then itself grown into part of this larger, like, making America healthy again. Woo-woo, like, organic food, but also women stay at home and raise your seven kids, who, by the way, are all white. And then there's also this, like, tech weirdo, which is the Elon Musk and also kind of the JD Vance thing, like, biohacker movement that's kind of back themselves into eugenics.

Like the idea is that we're so rich and successful that we have a responsibility to procreate our genes as much as possible for the betterment of humanity, which is, yeah, Austin is sighing. I agree with you, Austin. Which is how you get like Elon Musk wanting his legion of Elon Musk babies who he does not raise and wanting to create financial arrangements with his wives that they have to raise all of his kids. Yeah, this was the part of the Elon Musk

Wall Street Journal story about having all his Legion. And buried in there are a few nuggets that suggests it's not just about his concern for the falling birth rate. Because what he's very concerned about is, well, there's that, but it's also, he's very concerned that the, according to one source in the Wall Street Journal story,

that the third world birth rate is rising, but in Europe and the United States, it's falling, right? So it's a specific, and that he believes because he's so intelligent, right? That he must pass his genes on to as many people as possible. So the smart people in the rich countries need to be having more children. We need to, quote unquote, we need to outbreed them

is just the oldest racial supremacist trope. It exists in every country, every society for every group, and it is weird and creepy and bad. And I think it is a big part of the backbone of this. And then he's got some weird thing in that piece where he doesn't want any of the women who have his children to, that he wants them all to have C-sections

because he thinks vaginal births will shrink the brain. Where did he get that? Clearly that is science. I think if you also, if you look at where all of these policies are pointing, and some of them are in isolation, good things to do, like baby bonuses, otherwise known as the child tax credit. Right, yeah, we love that.

Great, but if you look at the totality of the picture, these are not actually policies that improve birth rates or that increase birth rates. What they are policies that do in totality, not every one of them does in isolation, is reinforce traditional gender hierarchies and traditional gender, quote unquote, traditional gender roles

where women don't work and instead their role is to produce lots of babies. There's also a theory that I find very compelling. This is behind a lot of the Trump economics stuff is with like the reason. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like you hear- The trade stuff.

The trade stuff, the tariffs, right. And you hear them talk about it as this like imagined nostalgia for the fifties where they always say like, men had manufacturing jobs, which is like very masculinity coded. And also you could support a family on a single income. Well, they're referring referring to husbands, they're referring to men. And Matthew Glacius also had a really good post where he like went through this and he

showed if you like, look at what the Trump economic stuff is doing, you devalue the dollar, you suppress consumption, you raise low skilled immigration Trump economic stuff is doing, you devalue the dollar, you suppress consumption, you raise low skilled immigration, which is disproportionately men, you shut down trade, which favors the service economy in the US because we export a lot of services, which disproportionately employs women. So what do you get? You get everybody is poorer, but women especially are poor relative to men. And the idea is to just reinforce women being dependent on men for

their livelihoods so that they are having babies. I will tell you, in Trump 1.0, when the Handmaid's Tale first came out and part of the resistance was like people dressed up as handmaids and protesting, I always rolled my eyes a little bit and I was like, because I watched The Handmaid's Tale, and I'm like, feels very different than what Trump is doing. Like, he's very bad. Obviously what's happening in the movie is much worse.

But it doesn't feel as theocratic, right? Right. Aren't we taking this a little far? Now, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. Now that the final season has started, and I'm like, okay, yeah, no, we're very, it's getting close. That is in fact what they're talking about,

and especially the evangelical of it all, and the men in control of women of it all. Well, hopefully one of the draft executive orders that has been suggested to the White House would bestow a national medal of motherhood to mothers with six or more children. I saw that. So that's something to shoot for, ladies.

I mean, if you have six kids, that's impressive. And I will give you a medal that will not be white supremacist coded, so you don't have to take the Trump medal. How about that? But also some of the best mothers around, maybe just have one child. Maybe one child that they're raising by themselves. You can have... Maybe a mother's raising two children by herself. That would be pretty great.

Maybe a dad's doing it. I do think this is fundamentally what this whole issue is about, is are women going to be in control of how many kids they have or not? think this is fundamentally what this whole issue is about, is are women going to be in control of how many kids they have or not? I think that's what that is, the whole thing is do they get to be in charge of having kids at all and how many they have? And I think that all of these, the trade policies, the tariffs, the quote unquote, promatalism is all meant to try to compel women to have more kids than they would if they had total choice and autonomy.

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Fatty 15 is on a mission to optimize your C15 levels to help you live healthier and longer. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com slash offline and using code OFFLINE at checkout. One last pretty dystopian, sort of funny item to talk about. The launch of Clueli, which bills itself as, quote, an undetectable AI powered assistant built for virtual meetings, sales calls, and more. What's that all about?

Well, their manifesto starts like this, quote, we want you to cheat on everything. We built Clueli so you never have to think alone again. It sees your screen, hears your audio, and feeds you answers in real time. Yes, the world will call it cheating, but so is the calculator. So is spell check.

So is Google. No, it's not. So start cheating because when everyone does, no one is. That's the manifesto. Apparently this thing just gives you responses in real time, like on your screen as you're doing virtual meetings. In their use case section, it gives an example of a response on screen that says, quote,

that makes sense. Just focus on showing you understand their concern. You might say, I completely understand that sticking to a budget is important. Pause here and let them respond. Max should we start podcasting with Clueli? Pause here and let Max respond. Be sure should we start podcasting with Clueli? Pause here and let Max respond. Be sure to nod if you agree with his point. John, that makes sense.

I'm focusing on showing you I understand your concerns. Look, once we start outsourcing everyday interpersonal interactions to the machines, like it's kind of over for us as a species. Like we haven't talked about this before, but the recent tech thing that I hate the most by far I'm not saying it's the most damaging but the one I hate the most are the auto prompt responses on Gmail and now iMessage Yeah, I hate that. I'm a human being I decide how I interact with people like yeah sounds good Yes, I see those little sounds good buttons

And I'm like, oh, there is a time when the operation machine becomes so odious that you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels. That's kind of my vibe. That's who you are. Yeah. So the good news here is that there has been a lot of online backlash to this. If you look at what people are saying about it, it's not like I can't wait to get clueless

and use it for my friend encounters or like friend hangs. Everybody's making fun of it, partly because they advertise it with someone using it on a first date, which is just so dehumanizing. Look, you call your Uber, but the Uber driver has the gun, remember that one? That's right.

So then you've got your own private security, your armed Uber driver, he drives you to the restaurant. With his gun. Then you've got your Clueless, so you don't have to worry about conversation, you can just enjoy your drinks. It's really like, you know, Wally, when they're in those chairs

and it's like everything is automated for them. Like someone saw that and was like, oh shit, let's do that. This is life. Yeah, let's do the big chairs where we don't talk to each other. But no, there is still some fight left in the human spirit because people saw this and they were like, this is horrible

and I don't want it and I hate it. And I say good for them. Good for them. Dunk on Cluelessly. All right, before we get to listener questions, some quick housekeeping. New episode of Polar Coaster just dropped. Dan's joined by top Democratic pollster, Molly Murphy,

a president of Impact Research. They're diving into the data behind the headlines. Is Trump actually feeling the heat from the economic turmoil? Should Democrats be talking about immigration? Don't miss out on this exclusive series available only to friends of the pod. Head to krikken.com slash friends to join today and for the month of April, enjoy a 30 day free trial to the friends of the pod community, but hurry.

It's our friend soon. Uh, all right. On Monday, we reached out to, uh, the friends of the pod discord community and asked for listener questions. Ideally lighter, less intense listener questions, because everything you just heard. News has been rough. Who can blame us?

So we got a lot of great responses and our producer, Emma, pulled a couple for us to walk through. Ready to get started? Yes. This is from Handel with Claire. It's great. I love that. This is a great question.

I love this one. Is there a moment in history or world events when you wish you could have been there and accidentally added to the Signal Chat? It's a great question. What emojis do you think the participants would have used? So the cool answer to this would be like backstage at Woodstock or something, but my honest to God answer, and I am ashamed to say this popped into my head immediately, was the 1986 Reykjavik

summit between Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. Wait, hear me out, hear me out. They agreed in principle to total nuclear disarmament, global nuclear disarmament, but the talks broke down over a strategic defense initiative, otherwise known as Star Wars Missile Defense. Do you think that the emojis would have been the like, like the fire kind of explosion emoji? It would have been rocket explosion,

and then the like X arms, like no, no, no. I would have been in there with just a little eyes emoji and some of the proposals and a little prayer hands emoji. And I think that gets us over the line to global nuclear disarmament. That's pretty good. So I feel pretty good about that. I don't have, I-

Really? I'm gonna give you the first one that popped into my mind, which is again, it's not cool. It's very dorky and it's also not that far in the past. January 6th, afterwards, I would like to be on the Signal Group chat with all the Republican leaders talking about it.

That's a good answer. McConnell and fucking what's his name? Kevin McCarthy. Yes. And what they were saying. I couldn't pick whether it was them or White House staffers who did not testify at the hearings but were around Trump and stayed loyal to Trump. Members of Congress would be good.

What's Ted Cruz saying? What's Steve Bannon saying? What's they're saying to Donald, you know, pretend Donald Trump's on the signal because we're just pretending this, whatever. I would just love to know what was actually said there. Do you think Josh Hawley is doing a little oops emoji? Do you think he's doing the little, the big eyes pleading face emoji? Is there like a, like a Mike Pence face with like a red X next to it?

Well, so I should have asked you this when the Signal thing first happened. Like, you've been in the room for some big, like, high-level political. Is it like the Signal chat? Is it that stupid? No. Okay. I mean, absolutely not. Okay. That's good to hear. I mean, keep in mind I was not involved, like, Rhodes and Tommy could talk more about like national security stuff,

but there was, there's no humor. There was no bragging about X, Y, or Z Oh, sure. around any of the national security operations. I was there for all the like economic crisis stuff, but it was pretty dry and pretty like, we gotta figure this out. Okay.

And everyone was, and again, back then, back then, but like no one was on their phones messaging about anything. It was all done. It was all email. Oh, sure. And it was White House email. And you had a separate Gmail account that was not your personal Gmail,

because if you use that someday someone could just look through it. But you had like a separate Gmail account the White House counsel would say like, well, if you're abroad and you're away from your, you can use this, but make sure anytime you use this, you forward every single email from it back to a White House email so it could be captured

for the Records Act. And it went without saying that if it was sensitive information, you would just not email it. You pick up the fucking phone. Right, you actually talk to them. Well, the reason I ask is that I was just reading a book about the blundering into World War I, and I have to tell you, it really reads like the signal chats.

Really? Yes. Oh, yeah. The Kaiser is in there and he sounds like Pete Hegseth. That would have been a good answer. All right. Heidi wants to know, I'm curious what New York Times games John and Max play and do they have a specific order?

They complete them every day. Heidi is Wordle, Mini connections, and Strands, first thing in the morning. Alternatively, if you were to be trans-substantiated, like Jesus, what would be your wine and bread? God bless. To ask those two questions in tandem, God bless our listeners.

I mean, I'll let you do the New York Times games one, because I don't play any New York Times games. I actually do not play any of the New York Times games either. I do, I have an online game that I play with friends that's very similar where it's like very simple. It's just once a day. It's this little map and you just like move these little piece. But we've been playing, it's about 30 of us,

we've been playing since 2020. That's great. Yeah, it's based on diplomacy, which is a board game that people may know. That's fun. It's very nerdy, which I love. I would be Sauvignon Blanc. Okay. And a popover.

A popover? Okay, that's cute, yeah. It's just a great kinda, it's a great little pre-dinner roll. A popover is delicious, yeah. Maybe a nice sourdough, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe, maybe like a salt bagel.

Okay. Is that? Sure, everything. Does that think that fits? With a schmear. Imagine that going up for communion and it's just a swig of Sauvignon Blanc and a salt bagel. That does sound nice. Love that. Happy Easter, everyone. That was an honor of Pope Francis.

I don't have a transubstantiation answer because I don't feel that I should, but I do have an Easter story that is related to offline. So I did not go to Easter services. I slept in, which was great. It rocked. But Julia went with some friends to a Lutheran service and the pastor at one point called up all the kids for the children's liturgy. And he kept saying, God bless and keep you safe, especially on the internet.

And literally every time he would address a kid, he would say, look at this beautiful child, God bless you and keep you safe, especially on the internet. Come on offline. I think he's a listener. Julia should have grabbed them. Yes.

Love to talk to you about this. Segways very well into our next question. This is from John. And it says, John, I'm probably teaching middle schoolers next year. I need a more convincing argument for them than, quote, we looked in the mirror and are horrified at what we see. We're trying to make you better than us in getting them off their phones in class. John sounds like maybe he's got some questions about himself.

Yeah, I agree with John that that would not be the most convincing argument or necessarily appropriate for middle schoolers. I thought about this one for all because it's because it's one that I'm thinking about too. And I think that the best argument is, you know, with kids, you don't want to tell them like, you cannot or you can tell them this, but I don't think it's as effective. You cannot do this. It's bad. X is bad for you. You got to stay away. Like you can do some of that with some really dangerous things, but you want to kind of hold those in reserve because I think it wears out after a while. Like I would just say, look, when you guys are here for a certain amount of time every day and when you're out of here,

do whatever you want, be on your phones. When you're here, you are going to be happier, you're going to have better friendships, you're going to be thinking better, you're going to do better on your tests, better on all the stuff you need to do in school if you're actually present. And it doesn't mean you can't talk, it doesn't mean you can't have communication with your friends, it just means that your brain can really only focus on a couple things at a time. And if you got the phone, then that's one that's, you're going to be distracted. And you know what? It's going to make you feel more tired and more anxious at the end of the day. And we have the science to know that.

This is a pretty good appeal. What do you think? Honestly, that's actually pretty good. I feel like we should actually... At this point, kids are throwing things at me at the front of the classroom. I don't know if you're winning popularity, but I mean, you know, print it out and make it the cigarette label That's actually pretty good. I feel like we should actually- At this point, kids are throwing things at me at the front of the classroom. I don't know if you're winning popularity, but I mean, print it out and make it the cigarette label to put on your Facebook login. I think it's pretty effective.

I did not have as good of an answer. I just thought that because we know that kids actually do want to be off of their phones, it's a collective action problem. You just tell them that everybody wants to be off your phone, so you should be off so that everyone else feels like they can be off. But I like the idea of emphasizing what you're giving up. Yeah, and what you're getting and what you're getting right, you know, yeah Maybe you replace it with like in person socializing time. You say like yeah, that's a good idea. It's to chit chat Yeah, we're gonna do five minutes where you can yeah, so then you don't need to you wait. That's right. That's the phone Harper Harper MD asks are the outdoor walks still happening?

Any other touching grass, getting outside, enjoying animals moments? I love that, encourage us to touch grass. I gotta say, the outdoor walks for me are still happening. That's great. But the AirPods are in and I'm probably listening to a political podcast. Are you doing that because you need to keep up

or just because otherwise you're kind of spinning in your head? Either, cause I need to keep up. Because I'm trying to, everything's about jamming all the content in, in all the hours that I'm awake. It's a lot to keep up with. So I would, I would like to go with that. Although, you know, I took a walk this weekend,

two long walks with Teddy, because he's at the age where I can just put him in the stroller and he's not saying anything and he'll just walk. And put my phone on top of the stroller in case like someone needed me, but had it away from me. And then just didn't have anything in my ears and was just walking around. And it was lovely. Yeah.

I know it's the kind of thing that I forget to do. I put in the podcast because my thoughts are spinning around. I just want to listen to this whatever bullshit. But if I don't do it. Tune into episodes of Pod Save America. That's right. That was not a piece. I know, I know, I know.

But I do find that if I force myself to do the walk without the headphones for the first five minutes, I'm antsy, I don't, my mind is jumping around, I really want that distraction, but you hit, like it really doesn't take that long, you hit minute six and it's great. I'm looking around and I feel better when I arrive too, wherever I'm going.

Yes, but it's, I'm glad you said that because everyone should know that when you try this, it's not magic when suddenly like right away, you don't have it in because you will go through that period of like, ah, this isn't great, I thought this was supposed to be nice. No, it sucks at first, but then it feels great. Yes, and you do get there, I think, pretty quickly.

But I have definitely been not as much on my walk since I came back from the trip. I think I've just been like discompopulated from the general. And I really noticed the difference. Reintegration is tough. It's tough, yeah, coming back to the world. Turns out it's real shitty out here. Oh yeah. Those are all the questions. Look, it's real shitty out here. Oh yeah.

Those are all the questions. Look, we also asked you guys for some fun light stories just so we could end on a real high note. I just picked out a couple that I thought were nice headlines. Let's hear them. Jules TBC sent us a headline. Doesn't search for missing two year old in Arizona desert.

You might say, that doesn't sound so great. Buford the dog was the real hero. The dog found the two year old in the desert. You might say, that doesn't sound so great. Buford the dog was the real hero. The dog found the two-year-old in the desert. We love dogs. We love kids who were found. Great story. And this is some upworthy shit. I know. Remember that we're back in like 2000, what was that five, six? Oh, no later. Later? It felt like that. Yes, it was like Obama's election like right around then. Yeah. Man, remember when we thought the worst thing on the internet was that the upworthy headlines were too optimistic and progressive and it was like Obama's election like right around then. Yeah. Man, remember when we thought the worst thing on the internet was that the Upworthy headlines

were too optimistic and progressive and it was slightly annoying. What I wouldn't give. Yes. We got another one from Harper that said, "'This might be too politics, "'but at least I have been very energized "'but what's going on in my local level,

"'all the people that are doing the work to educate people "'and bring them in is really energizing for me.'" That's great. I want to bring that one up because there are, I feel like we've talked about, we talk about so much bad news because there's a lot of bad news to talk about and everyone should know about it. And I feel like too many people still aren't paying attention

or at least sufficiently alarmed. But we saw another series of rallies this last weekend around the country. There were the hands-off rallies a couple weeks before that. And you're just starting to see the energy and the organizing pop up. And I think that's wonderful. And I think when we mentioned, when I mentioned somewhere, maybe it was on this pod, that I hadn't known that the hands-off rallies were happening, people were not happy with

me because they said if I had been on Blue Sky More, I would have known. Maybe that's true. I hear you, Blue Sky folks, I hear you. And I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. It's a lot to post on too. I'm not leaving Twitter because I need to be on Twitter because a lot of assholes there and I need to be watching them.

Because they're all yelling at you. Yes, they're all yelling at me, but I really am checking Blue Sky a lot. Wow, I feel this is the most open you've been to Blue Sky yet, I feel. I'll be'll be a speeder was this thing that brought you around was that hearing that the protests are getting more. I try to check blue sky like a couple times a week. I just find it's it's just laziness but like posting what I post on Twitter and then posting it to blue sky and then and then remembering to post there it's

just an added step that's tricky but getting there you get in there I'm not opposed to it. One thing that is tied to this that has started to sell me on Blue Sky a little bit is there is this whole thread of things that are happening in the country that are like positive political reactions, like protests is a really big one. Like Chris Van Hollengoid, El Salvador, the big Cory Booker, occupation of the Senate.

You don't hear about these things on Twitter. And my friends who were like very high information and really up on the news, but are big Twitter addicts, literally don't know that they're happening and are like shocked when I tell them about it. But they do get a lot more attention on Blue Sky. They do. And then the last one, I don't know if this is uplifting,

but it's funny as hell. Derek Guy, you know, the fashion guy on Twitter, the men's wear guy. So this is real. He tweeted, I got in an argument with a couple of people on here a few days ago. I told one guy I'm Asian. I told the other guy I'm white. I told them both to meet me outside the store.

And they did. He tricked two people into getting into a fight outside a Uniqlo. Of course it's a Uniqlo. That is amazing. That's amazing. I don't even know if it's true, if I believe it. I believe it.

It's great either way. It's great either way. You got people, the people who are attacking you on Twitter, you send them to a real life spot and then you just let them go at it? You know what it makes, when I see Derek Guy, I think we finally got one. We finally got a truly online super poster

whose politics are good instead of bad. Also, that is like next level posting, that you have achieved some sort of, I mean, you should get the, I know they're just doing a mother's medal, but maybe they should do a poster medal too, and Derek gets it for that. Give him the mother's medal too.

All right that's our show for today for this week. We'll see you next week. Have a good one everyone. As always if you have comments, questions or guest ideas email us at offline at crooked.com and if you're as opinionated as we are please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad-free episodes of Offline in Podsave America, exclusive content, and more, join our friends at the pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you like

watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and the other ones for original content, community events, and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Segland. Dallon Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Adrian Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. you