Offline with Jon Favreau - Elon Wellness Check, The Anti-Doge Revolt, and Some Actual Good News

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Twenty-one DOGE staffers resigned this week, citing the agency’s meddling in the federal government. Meanwhile, top DOGE Elon Musk was brandishing a chainsaw onstage at CPAC. And closer to home, a new armed-driver app purports to be “Uber with guns.” Jon and Max sift through it all, translate Musk’s claim that, “I am become meme,” and debate whether he intends to train Grok on the private data he’s stolen. But it’s not all bad news! AI is warpspeeding disease research, and has even discovered an antibiotic that seems to be effective against drug-resistant bacteria. And LA Public schools are doing their own version of the Offline Challenge, with a new cellphone ban being rolled out in classrooms across the district.

Offline is brought to you by Factor. Ready to optimize your nutrition this year? Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes, so you can fuel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active busy lifestyle. Lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto meals. Based on a randomized controlled clinical trial with Factor Keto, results will vary depending on diet and exercise.

With 40 options across 8 dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. Choose from preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, or Keto. Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfasts, grab-and-go snacks, and more add-ons. Reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust and convenience that can't be beat. Love Factor of years ago, even before they were a sponsor of this podcast, I've tried Factor and it's really great. You can pick out, there's new meals to pick out each week. They're really tasty, takes almost no time to heat them in. It's like you're having a fresh meal

every time you eat a Factor meal. Really good, great variety, enjoy it very much. Eat smart with Factor, get started at factormeals.com slash factorpodcast and use code factorpodcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code factorpodcast at factormeals.com slash factorpodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. I did tweet Peter's piece at him and I said, Elon, here's some fan mail from some Trump voters.

You are truly not going to be happy until SEAL Team Six is rappelling onto the roof of this building. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. Hope you brought some good Doge puns today. Well, the news cycle, Jon, has really been gone to the Doge. With Elon and Trump these days, it's the tail, Jon, wagging the Doge. No, if this goes on long enough that we see Doge Days of Summer headlines, I am going to start ramming Cybertrucks off the roads.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I am waiting for a Doge Days are over title. Aren't we fucking all? Aren't we all? Yeah. Okay. So we have a lot. We're going to talk about that.

We have a lot of news to cover this week. We're going to spend the whole show going through it all. And don't worry, we actually have some good news for you all today, including a new rule that bans phones in classrooms in LA public schools, and an objectively positive story about artificial intelligence. I am really excited to talk about that, to get into that one.

But first, Doge. Doge. On Tuesday afternoon, 21 staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency resigned, citing Doge's ongoing work to dramatically reshape the federal government, nice way to put it. In a letter first reported by the Associated Press, the staffers wrote, quote,

"'We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize American sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize Doge's actions.'" According to NPR, the 21 staffers appear to have joined the United States digital service, the technology unit that was renamed United States Doge service before the Trump administration.

So this is not Elon's crew. It's not like Big Ball's resigned. Right. But these are still existing tech people who are refusing to help Big Balls. Yeah, and there's still people who worked in senior positions at major tech companies before taking presumably a pay cut to come use their talents to help make government work better. And they were so worried about what they saw that now they've quit their jobs. What do you make of all this? I am really glad that we are talking

about this like I understand why this is not grabbing as much attention as Doge like dismantling all of our institutions but the seizure and privacy violations of Americans data I think the consequences of it could be really big and could take years to play out. I mean, they are in IRS records, social security records that implicates medical information, bank account numbers. There was a GSA tech worker who resigned when the Tesla flunky who got appointed as the

head of the agency asked, you may have seen this for permission to not just view, but to personally download Americans private data and information to his computer and would not explain why he wanted to do that. It's every, I mean, people don't like that. I don't like that. Let me tell you. Well, I was, and I was asking, you know, I wonder how feelings about privacy are now.

And I was wondering if there's a generational shift because young people, and we heard a little bit about this anecdotally around the TikTok thing, where young people were like, oh, I'll give the Chinese government my data. Who cares? Life's an open book now. But there's still like 70% of people who are really worried about how the government is using their personal data. This was from 2023, this abuse survey in 2023.

I would love to someone to pull it again now in 2025 after the headlines of the last month. We're talking about data that goes way beyond even the pretty severe privacy violations that you get from a Facebook or a TikTok. And I agree that this is the kind of thing where I think it's not going to be, it understandably will not be immediately obvious to people. It's like, well, I sent that information off to the IRS anyway. So why do I care if this is like getting flown around by like the big balls doge crew? So like for the purposes of helping people understand why this is really scary, that information

is now out in a way that it was protected. It was behind systems, behind all these firewalls. It's no longer anymore. There are a million ways that bad actors could exploit that information. There's blackmail and targeted harassment are the ones that I worry the most about, which is already something we see this administration doing of critics, political opponents, reporters, Democrats, businesses are especially vulnerable to this, especially media companies, because of the amount of the information they have to give the

government. There's also a huge black market for exactly this kind of data. And like, think about the fact that a company like Facebook spends millions and millions of dollars trying to get personal information on you that is much less valuable than this. And the fact that hostile governments spend billions of dollars on hacking programs meant to get again just one one hundredth of the data that's streaming across fucking big balls as gaming laptop on any given day now. And if he is not going to sell it to them, the fact that

it's all these kids were using unsecured machines to access your data means going to be easier for bad actors to get it. I am I was talking to elected Democrat who said that when they did a town hall in a very rural part of their state. They were asking people sort of like, what do you think of the last month? And, you know, people liked the general idea of government efficiency, no surprise there, that shows up in the polls.

They were very worried about cuts to retirement programs, cuts to healthcare, and what kept coming up is they're very worried about their personal data and personal information. Really? Yeah. Wow. I mean, it makes sense because I think traditionally conservatives from long ago, you know, you worried about government having too much of your information. They worried about privacy, right? Like that is- Government overreach. Yeah. That's not what I mean. And now, you know, I'm sure it's across the political spectrum, but

you know, people who are generally in in redder areas, probably a little worried about that. Hearing about this crew that does not have their benches. Let me ask you this about these, all of these resigning tech workers. I like resigning in the face of something that you consider to be unconscionable is incredibly brave and courageous. Are we sure it's the most effective method for slowing down Elon's desire to turn the federal government just with personal money pinata? I think it's very I think it's um Like job by job. Yeah, like it depends on where the job is, right?

So I think in this case, you know, of course Elon responded to this by saying like oh these were all obama holdovers And they're they weren't you know, they're just partisan Democrats and I would have fired them anyway if they didn't resign. That was sort of his whole, um, and look, they are, they, like I said, they, a lot of them came from senior positions at Google, at tech companies, and so they were working to make government more efficient, the purpose, the sensible purpose of Doge, um, but if they all leave, but make a big stink and try to tell everyone, hey, it's dangerous what's going on here.

I do think that's useful. I think when you get to, you know, FBI agents who are suddenly worried about Dan Bongino and Cash Patel, I think I would rather them stay in their positions. Same thing with justice department lawyers, same thing with people in the defense department and the CIA, like the sort of intelligence law enforcement services, I think I would rather the deep state

stay where it is. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, who knows what happens if it's just a bunch of maggot sheds. Right, and I think it's worth remembering there's nothing Trump would love more than for every civic minded federal worker

To resign and I take your point about Resigning especially in large numbers as a way to call attention to say like this is so outrageous I was willing to leave my job that does kind of presume that there's an outside Institution that is going to read that outrage and then check the Trump administration Congress has made very clear. It's not going to read that outrage and then check the Trump administration. Congress has made very clear it's not going to do that. I think if we get to a situation where control of the house flips in a couple of years, then that starts to make a lot more sense. But something I would say, if anyone is listening who is considering

resigning is that, you know, nothing succeeds like malicious compliance. It was truly one of the great art forms of our time. You know, the word sabotage, I don't know if you know this comes from the French word for wooden shoes. I mean, wooden shoes that workers would put into textile machines in order to slow them down. So just think about what kind of wooden shoes you have at your desk. Which is what I always say.

Again, we're only advocating things that are completely legal here on offline. Civil disobedience is civil. We're having fun. Come on. So Wired has a great story, a very terrifying story about the privacy concerns. And this was about the Trump administration, how the Trump administration may be using new software to monitor employees. Yeah. So one government employee, a researcher with the Army Corps of Engineers, told Wired that after filing a charge against the Trump administration for violating his union's collective bargaining agreement, he began receiving anonymous emails that included personal information like his nickname, travel details, and the color of the notebook he typically uses

that he believes were gathered off of his work laptop. What did you make of this report and do you think there's merit to these concerns here? So a point that Austin made is that you don't necessarily need to surveil every single employee. You can kind of, is it like scaring people kind of the point? You know, you can't, there's 3 million federal employees. You can't monitor all of them, but you spy on a few, use what you find to hurt them. And then that scares everyone else into kind of compliance because I don't know if they're watching my machine.

Um, there was a detail in the Washington Post that a bunch of IT workers told this post reporter that they, that they, all of their systems went down for two hours, came back on and they think that it's because Doge was installing spyware on all of their systems. Um, I do think that we are going to see them use this to intimidate federal workers who they see as not compliant, which was a big objection from Trump the last time around, is that the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, would not execute on his extremely illegal orders or to justify

purges. Like, did you see this NSA chat log leak thing? So this is, there was a chat log, quote unquote, leak, boy, I wonder where they got it, from a, some sort of a chat that was being used by workers at the NSA, CIA, and the defense intelligence agency, the DIA. And this has been a big thing in conservative media. Now all they did was discuss trans issues and make fun of Ben Shapiro, both of which are wonderful pastimes. That's our bread and butter.

That's right. That's what we do here. But Tulsi Gabbard was like, this is DEI infiltration, promised that she was going to do purges and she's already fired 100 people. Right. Yeah. So if they are looking to purge people from, let's say the intelligence agencies, this is a way to send a signal.

If you don't give us the, you know, do what we want you to do and act as Trump's personal security agency, we're spying and you will find an excuse. Yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty clear they've decided we want to eliminate everyone in the federal workforce again, which is 2 million plus employees, right? Who's not completely loyal. How do we do that?

Very cumbersome to just go and interview people, right? So like you scoop up all their data. There's talk of using AI to kind of go through like, you know, words that are that they flag that this person is disloyal because they used the word diversity once in an email. I mean, it sounds silly, but like that's actually what's happening right now. Right. Yeah.

So of course, of course this is what they want. All everyone's access to everyone's personal data. Right. And to blackmail people, because they'll, they'll find something that somebody doesn't want out and they'll say, we're going to go leak this to the fucking national review unless you do what we want. I brought this up briefly on Pots of America,

but it feels very relevant to offline and talk to you guys about it too. Um, on the focus group podcast this week, uh, Kara Swisher told Sarah Longwell that she believes Elon Musk is hoovering up data at the federal government because he's run out of publicly available data to feed into his LLM and that he intends to train Grok or whatever stupid AI system he creates next on the private data he's stolen. How plausible do you find that theory? Come on, why are you asking me this? It is okay look we're all trying to figure out what's going on here. It's reasonable to throw out theories. It's a little Silicon Valley brain I feel to look at the expanse of the American federal government. A set of overlapping

institutions built over 200 years and say well of course the greatest thing of value here that one might want to extract is a data set to feed into your bullshit LLM. I don't think that's going on here. And anyway, Elon has fucking... I do wonder why, so the federal employees, we know why that he wants their data, right? Because he wants to fire them. Why is it, why are they all looking for access to like the treasury stuff, IRS know medical information. I was like I was saying this is there's an entire

Economy around people's personal data. It's what the biggest companies in the world are built around as in trafficking and personal data This is personal data that the Facebook's of the world have never even dreamed of getting their hands on Foreign governments want to get their hands on this data now. I don't know what their specific plan is It might just be we know this is really valuable. We have access to it today. So let's put it on this data. Now, I don't know what their specific plan is. It might just be, we know this is really valuable, we have access to it today, so let's put it on a fucking thumb drive. Right, yeah, that's true. I guess that's my, I'm agreeing with that too.

And then like, maybe we can give it to an AI, maybe we can feed it to AI, maybe we just have it, maybe we sell it on the black market. I don't know, you might as well keep it. Just pop it in a CSV. Right, right. I just, I like, what is training Grok on all of our phone numbers gonna do to make grok better and Needs to be better if we're gonna talk about this later, but grok is grok is really turning on Elon

I know I was gonna say Elon has got bigger problems with grok Which is that it continues to just own his ass every single day So, I don't know giving it all of over socials is gonna be the thing that stops it from constantly shitting on him. He also could be motivated by what having near total control over the federal government could do for his many ventures that depend on contracts and regulatory approval from the same federal government.

This story did not get as much attention as I think it should. I totally agree. Wall Street Journal reported that a major ad conglomerate was told by top executives at X, including our pal, Linda Yakarino. The Yak Attack. Yak Attack. Yak Attack on our institutions. So the execs at this ad conglomerate were told by Yak Attack

and other lawyers at X that they needed to spend more to advertise on X quote, or else big coincidence, the ad conglomerate just announced a big merger that could still be blocked by the Trump administration. Doesn't really seem on the level, huh? Yeah, and it just to really underscore this. So it's a company called Interpublic Group. by the Trump administration. Right. Doesn't really seem on the level, huh? Yeah. And it just to really underscore this. So it's a company called Interpublic Group.

They represent a bunch of other companies that do advertising. This threat was made back in December, right? When they were talking about this $13 billion merger. And right around the same time that Yak Attack made this implicit threat that we're going to torpedo your $13 billion merger unless your clients come back to us. Representative Jim Jordan came out and threatened to block the merger because he considered an antitrust violation that they were not advertising more with conservative news agencies.

And sure enough, as best we can tell the advertisers did come back. So it worked. Um, and one thing that I would just like, it's not just about like, Oh, they're getting some more money out of Walmart to advertise on Twitter, like coercing companies to give using the power of the state to coerce companies to give Elon Musk money. That's scary. That's authoritarianism.

That is what that is. And if you, I know it's easy to think like well it's just big companies they're just spending a little bit on Twitter what does this really matter like what about when that power gets targeted at individuals right at media companies the labor unions like hey Microsoft move all your offices to a red state you know or else or we're gonna come after you with a regulatory powers they're like hey United auto workers stop trying to unionize Tesla plants or we're going to come after you with a regulatory power. So like, hey, United auto workers, stop trying to unionize Tesla plants or we're going to close your chapters at Toyota.

Like, I think this is a really scary line that has been crossed here. Yeah, and we will look, and we know that Elon was like, they were suing the advertisers because they thought that like free speeches, you must advertise on my platform. Right, right, right. You have to give me money.

It's collusion that you're all deciding not to advertise and this is, I don't know what fucking legal theory they came up with for this. So now it's like, oh, well now we have the power of the state, so now we can just use that. No, Elon is full, I mean, it's just so not surprising. He's out there last week, two weeks, been saying like every judge that rules against them

should be impeached. I know. And then like how can we have judges block the will of the people? I mean it's just like it sounds so fucking close to just what you'd hear from a demagogue authoritarian it's like it's right there. It's I mean and also 60 minutes reporters should be jailed because they reported on Doge in a way that I don't like. No, this is very literally and very explicitly the playbook for like, I don't know what a better phrase for it, early onset authoritarianism. Like this is what it looks like when you are like

a third of the way down the trance. I'm like, this is all part of signals that they are sending not just to Twitter advertisers, but to businesses more widely. We are going to make it illegal to do business in a way that does not personally enrich us, which is some like real tin pot dictatorship. Watching the Post headline today, Elon Musk's business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding. Of course. And that's, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlinks now, getting looked

at for a contract to do the broadband that the Inflation Reduction Act had invested in that, of course, didn't actually connect anyone. Guess who's bringing in to replace all those FAA jobs? Oh, right. SpaceX. SpaceX. Right. You've got the institutions and then you replace it with... Your cronies. That's right. With your cronies who maybe they do the job maybe they don't but that's not the

point the point is that you're enriching yourself off of that. Offline is brought to you by Delete Me. Data brokers make a profit off your data. Your data is a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details. This can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, harassment, and unwanted spam calls. But now you can protect your privacy. That's why we recommend DeleteMe. DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data brokers. Sign up and provide DeleteMe with exactly what information you want deleted, and their experts take it from there. DeleteMe sends you regular

personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it, and what they removed. DeleteMe isn't just a one-time service. DeleteMe is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet. To put it simply, DeleteMe does all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from data broker websites. This is really important.

I've had this done before. Oftentimes you have to do it multiple times because it keeps popping back up, but you really don't want your information out there. And you'd be surprised how much of your information is out there and your family's information. So Delete Me is really great for this. Take control of your data and keep your private life private

by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20% off your Delete Me plan by texting offline to 64,000. Text offline to 64000. That's offline to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details.

So whatever Elon's up to, which is, you know, multiple choice. You can pick them all. All of the above. They're all, it could be, it could be all the above. It could be all the above for sure. It feels like all of this may be going to his head. That's not all that's going to his head. At the very least, seems like he's really going through something.

He does. Last week he appeared on stage at CPAC wearing oversized sunglasses, a gold chain, and a dark MAGA hat all while wielding a chainsaw. Then he sat down for an interview with Newsmax and said this. I am become meme. Yeah, pretty much.

Pretty much. I'm just living the meme. I mean, it's like there's living the dream and there's living the meme and it's pretty much what's happening, you know. Oh, pretty much. I'm great, pretty much. He's so funny.

I think he has become manic episode. If you have to say you are a meme, you are not a meme. That's how that works. He also screams about like legalizing comedy. I know, I know. Just the laziest applause. Someone just printed, helpfully printed the transcript of the Elon interview at CPAC, which is even funnier to read it

because there's a lot of like, oh, legalized comedy. He seemed very like he was having some kind of an episode. I think a couple of possibilities. It's been reported that he does a lot of drugs, right? It sure has been. But also it did have the energy of someone who was like, this is the new clique that I'm trying to fit in with.

All these freaks at CPAC. And so I need to be funny, but I'm like an awkward person. And so I'm going to try... He seemed like he was trying really hard to be cool. To fit something. That was sort of... I mean, this is his story from the beginning, like truly going back decades, has been trying

to buy his way into certain kinds of status, acceptance. This was a lot of him getting involved in Tesla, was it's like, he wants to be the cool Iron Man guy from the future. And he- The Iron Man thing is real. He wants to be seen as Tony Stark. Right. But he's not an engineer.

He's not an inventor. So it was all just trying to use money and pull whatever levers to try to get there. But you can't buy your way in to being cool. Definitionally. By the way, we really used to have a better class of right wing attention trolls in this country. I don't know what happened. Who's better?

Oh, remember like Milo Giannopoulos? Oh yeah. Remember Weave? I mean, horrible people, monsters, but at least they treated our attention as something that was worth stealing on the merits with the most horrible things you've ever heard. Yeah. Like they triggered us in a really effective way.

Right. As opposed to Elon is just trying to like buy his way into a position of influence so he can destroy institutions in a way that we will have to pay attention to him. I mean, it really does seem like he is having a like Kanye style slow motion like full break. Yeah, I feel like we're in the middle of it. And who knows? He was at the he was at the cabinet meeting today. We're recording this on Wednesday.

It was a Trump's cabinet meeting and he was at the cabinet meeting today, we were recording this on Wednesday, it was a Trump's cabinet meeting and he was the first one to speak, he had his tech support t-shirt on and his dark MAGA hat and he was talking about mistakes that they make and we're gonna correct them, he's like, we accidentally stopped Ebola protection

for a minute, he's like, but then we realized it, we put it back, we put it back. Wow, what a great guy. What a great guy. So do you feel like the public is gonna turn on on Elon or is turning on him? Or does it matter? I think yes. Yes, yes, yes. That's all the answers. So the polling all shows that his approval ratings are under water. They have been falling.

But we haven't had any... We've got some focus groups now. So Puck and Eshlon did some focus groups on Elon. Peter Hamby, our friend Peter Hamby wrote about this. And it said, hello, I'm gonna read from the piece. It says, despite the abundance of public polling about the administration since Trump took office, we haven't seen many focus groups,

which lend useful textures that polls don't capture. Polls, for instance, don't tell you that Musk is a quote, weird nerd, which is how Adam, a Trump voting hockey fan from Macomb County, Michigan, described the billionaire last week. Or that he's a quote, complete tool, as Michael from Milwaukee put it. Or scary, Taisha in Toledo. Or selfish, DeAndre, also from Milwaukee, and just looking to enrich himself.

Perhaps Eric, a real estate appraiser from Pittsburgh, put it most poignantly, quote, extremely radical, scary, I just shudder that Trump has given him carte blanche. I mean, if you are a Trump voter, either a diehard or just like Trump curious voter, and you voted for him to some extent, I know this is not everyone, but a significant share because you like the

Trump show because he's funny. He's charismatic to you. You kind of like when he's on TV, you like the things that he says. And instead you get this guy who is off putting, who is like desperate, who is like really the opposite of the energy that Trump brings. I could see how like, I don't like that. That's your approach to politics, that's what your priorities are,

but I think you would feel like you were being robbed of what you signed up for. Well, it's interesting when I listened to that, to Sarah's episode with Kara, they had done, it was some focus groups talking about Elon, but it was, the focus groups seemed like they were conducted in the period before Trump took office and like late December. Really?

Yeah. And so, uh, at least some of them, some of the, some of the, some of the close at the beginning, some of them were pot. And so those, some of those people were positive. They were Trump voters, Biden, the Trump voters. Right. So those people were positive about Elon in the sense that they were saying, well, he is really smart in business.

He's a genius. And it makes me feel comfortable that someone that smart is going to be in the government because they all are for government efficiency. Right. Even a lot of Democrats are. People think that the federal government spends, you know, too much of their money wasted on things, too much inefficiency, slow, all that kind of shit. A lot of, some of it is true.

I've worked in the federal government. Um, even then there was some concern like, well, he is really rich and he's got his own companies and his own thing. And like, is he going to be looking out for us? I think that every single thing he has done, like I think Elon had some good will from people, Trump voters and others. And I think every single thing he has done since Trump took office has just like depleted that good will.

It has really burnished that. It does feel like, I don't know if it's going to matter, but it does feel like a notable data point that a number of federal agencies, not all of them, but a couple of them, felt comfortable telling all of their employees, don't answer this like, doge, justify your job email. I don't know how or when that ever adds up to anything, given that the only remaining check on our unelected leader, Elon Musk is the elected leader, Donald Trump.

I mean, I, I've been thinking about this a lot, obviously. Sure. Um, I think with Trump, Trump's message is, you know, the establishment, the institutions, everything's broken. They're all elites. They're all after you. And I'm a, you know, I'm a class trader and I'm for you and it's for the people and it's America and the people.

Elon's message is all the elites are bad and the institution and stuff like that. But like, you know what? I'm the genius and the machines are gonna fix everything. We're gonna have the robots. They're gonna take care of it all. People don't really matter to Elon that much. He talks about like the will of the people, but he's on a people guy.

And I think he plays into people's pre-existing concerns about big tech and the tech industry, which is concerns that these people want to automate away all of the rest of our jobs, that they don't care about our privacy, or they're cavalier about our personal information, and they are, the reason that we started this podcast, like we are addicted to our screens, they are trying to extract our attention from us and monetize it, like he's feeding into all that,

and I don't think you get a lot of support for the techno authoritarian vision of the future in the way that you might get support from the traditional MAGA style populism. As bullshit as that is too. And Trump in the past has specifically tried to exploit and use to his advantage skepticism of Silicon Valley and like you're saying everything that he has tried to sell to I don't think he cares about what his non saying, everything that he has tried to sell to, I don't think he cares about what his non-supporters think, but what he's tried to sell to his supporters

of who he is and what he's bringing them is being pretty significantly undermined by Elon Musk. I don't know if he doesn't see it, doesn't care, cares more about the like billionaire tax cuts that he's pursuing, but I think the degree to which he is not responsive to the way the people around him are hurting his image with his supporters in the way that he was in his first term is so worrying to me.

I'm, I'm almost a little nostalgic for first term Trump and like a sick perverse way, because like at least he would play this constant game of like shaking the bag of rats to try to get everyone in his team to fight each other. of like shaking the bag of rats to try to get everyone and his team to fight each other. I think that once you have been investigated by federal government, state governments, charged criminally, nearly assassinated twice, that you were like, I'm not going to really care

or believe bad polls at this point. I mean, Joe Biden didn't believe his polls when it was his own pollsters and everyone in the party telling him, like you're in a bubble in the White House. So I actually don't think Trump, I don't think if there's any- Getting through to him.

Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think the question is, and Trump's never gonna have to run again, right? He's never running another campaign, whether he tries to remain as president or not. That is a different question. We know he's not gonna run another campaign, so what does he give a shit? I think it's the question is, do Republican politicians who do have to run again finally

get like, okay, Elon Musk, which is, you know, some of these agency heads are Republican politicians or were, and you're starting to see members of Congress. Lisa Murkowski had a very strong statement about Elon Musk. Tom Tillis, not a strong statement, but was like, he's got to be a little careful here. Right. You know, you're getting some of that in Congress. Yeah. So that I would, I would look at that more than I would look at Trump stuff.

Yeah. Offline is brought to you by Haya. Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise. Filled with two teaspoons of sugar, unhealthy chemicals, and other gummy additives, growing kids should never eat. That's why Haya created a super-powered chewable vitamin. Haya fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diets to provide the full-body nourishment our kids need with the yummy taste they love. Formulated with the help of pediatricians and nutritional experts, Haya is pressed with

a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies, then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and minerals to help support immune system, energy, brain function, mood, concentration, teeth, bones, and more. It's non-GMO, vegan, dairy-free, allergy-free, gelatin-free, nut-free, and everything else you can imagine. Haya is designed for kids 2 and up and sent straight to your door so parents have one less thing to worry about. Charlie takes Hiya vitamins.

He loves them. My son, 4 years old, and he's taken them for a few years. We don't want him to have too many sweets. We do want him to have vitamins because he basically only eats spaghetti, pasta, you know, mac and cheese. That's his full diet, so you need to give him some vitamins. And he does like these, even though they don't have all the sugar that other vitamins have. Are you tired of battling with your kids

to eat their greens? I am. Haya also now has kids daily greens and super foods, a chocolate flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids packed with 55 plus whole food ingredients to support brain power, development and digestion. Just scoop, shake and sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. We've worked out a special deal with HIA for their best-selling

children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal you must go to hiehealth.com slash off. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to hieh-h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-t-h.com slash off and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Turns out that his, uh, his Elon's quest to become meme may actually be getting in the way of other things in his life, like running Tesla. Yeah. Where his reduced presence has began stirring dissatisfaction within the company, according to the New York Times, which reports that some investors are beginning to doubt Musk's leadership.

No shit. What do you think happens at Tesla if Elon keeps going? So I have said many times in here that Tesla's stock is dramatically overvalued. And that not just in the sense that like, I dislike Tesla or like it's a feelings thing but like stock prices are pegged to earnings every industry has a standard price to earnings ratio Tesla's is seven or eight times what it should be based on the auto industry price to earning ratio and that matters because that inflation is where Elon gets all of his wealth yeah because most of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock so that's where it gets a

lot of his power Tesla's stock price most of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock. So that's where it gets a lot of his power. Tesla's stock price has been sliding for a couple of years now. And everyone has been kind of waiting for the day when reality catches up and the mystique finally falls away and Tesla stock price collapses down to what its actual price turning ratio says should be, which would eliminate most or an enormous amount of Elon Musk's wealth. And it looked like we were headed in that direction. And then the election happened. The stock price exploded because people were pricing in just a corruption premium that

he is going to end, you know, you see how they got there. Obviously he is doing a lot of corruption for his businesses, but it is sliding back again and really fast. It's been a 37% drop since the election. Wow. 8% on one day and Tuesday. It's really bad when your stock loses 8% of its value in a day when you're the unelected strongman, desperate of the country in which that company resides. It's really hard to fuck up that much.

Partly this is bad numbers. Um, I don't know if you saw this, but Tesla's sales have in Europe just over the past year. I mean, that's not considered good business. I don't know if you saw this, Sounds like he could use the offline challenge for focus. I don't know if I'm going to say Elon Musk come on offline. I don't know if I'm ready to go there, but if he wants to follow along with the offline challenge, it might be the most important thing that we ever do. His brand is extremely toxic, which is hurting him, especially in Europe and I think also in the United States. And also he is just like clearly mentally not there.

Yeah. Right now. How do you feel? Like I don't want to root for Tesla to do poorly in a weird way, right? Because like I wouldn't- I'm very happy to root for that. Well, I don't want Elon Musk to get richer. I want Elon Musk to fail.

Right. Because I don't like Elon Musk. I don't know if anyone has sensed that from this podcast. But like we need electric cars. We need electric car companies. It's true. It's true. Like I don't want to lose the focus of like we that electric cars are good. Right now I would give anyone advice who's thinking of buying an electric car

to not buy it to buy a Rivian buy something. There's plenty of great electric cars now. You don't have to. Tesla's not the only one out there. But like, boy, do I wish, you know, Elon could walk away from Tesla permanently and there'd be someone else running it. That is true. I mean, the thing is, is that as an electric car company, Tesla has been failing for a few years now, its share of the market has been dropping really precipitously. Now it started from a high of like 55% of the market, which is huge, but it is

shrinking because we're getting a lot more entrance, there's a lot more competition, they keep promising they're going to come up with, it's going to be a cheaper model, there's going to be a self-driving model and they keep not doing it, but yes, I agree if you could replace Elon Musk's Tesla with a different Tesla that made the same car. We need as many electric cars as we can get. Of course. Absolutely.

It's a net good for the world by a huge margin if we're making more good electric cars. I agree with that. But also don't buy a Tesla right now. But if you have one, I don't think you have to sell it. No. Necessarily. No. I think that's okay. I'm not egging your car.

Drive it off a cliff. I might. Cybertruck, I have to look as Gantz if you've got a Cybertruck, I'm sorry. Those things are fucking hideous. They're so ugly. Hideous. And it's also like.

And that's not a, I don't like Elon opinion. If I don't care who, I don't care where that came from. If I didn't know it was a Tesla Cybertruck, I think it was hidden. I do, it's also so closely associated with him. It's like you might as well just brought right I love Elon on the side of it, right? Yeah. Yeah also turning on Elon X Can't keep his house in order last week. He posts some crazy lie about

President Zelensky gets corrected by his own community notes feature President Zelensky gets corrected by his own community notes feature and then tweets he's working to quote fix community notes because it's quote increasingly being gamed by governments and legacy media. I love this. The deep state. Crock is turning on him. The community notes are turning on him. But really like he thinks that anything that is reported by any media that is not, like, blue-checked fans of his, or like Tucker Carlson or Trump regime media, is just not, is not fact.

Is illegal. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't get too worked up about the community notes thing, largely because if you're going to Twitter for news and information that you expect to be accurate, like whatever's going on with community notes is just the start of your concerns. But it is very funny to me that Elon Musk, who so deeply craves just approval and validation, I guess, because his dad didn't love him, like that kind of seems to be the consensus of a lot of the biographers here, is going on these week

long benders, ripping out the wiring of our most important institutions just to try to get us to pay attention to them and applause them. Now, getting jeered and owned by the very platform he bought himself for $44 billion. That's kind of funny. Oh yeah. He bought a $44 billion Hallmark card to himself and opened it up and it said, fuck you. That's kind of funny. Oh yeah. He bought a $44 billion Hallmark card to himself and opened it up and it said, fuck you. That's funny.

I don't know. Still a good purchase for him. If all you want is attention, which is what he wants. Well, we've talked about this before, but you know, he wants recognition. He's getting attention. Getting attention from us.

Look, he seems to like just the straight up attention. I agree that he wants recognition as well. And the fact that it is driven from this like deep emotional insecurity need, I think as part of what brings out this authoritarian impulse that anyone who criticizes him, especially if it's prominent, is so threatening to him psychologically that he kind of has to see it as a malicious lie

that must be illegal and that reporter must be jailed. And I know it feels simplistic to boil it down to like his emotional issues from his childhood, but that really does seem to be a lot of what's going on here. Yeah, I would like to get the video footage of those focus groups and the people calling them a complete fool and just like somehow

just get him to make, force him to watch it. Like it's on the screen of the next CPAC he goes to or whatever. If I know any one person who is not actively in the Trump administration with a proven track record of getting Elon Musk to look at things on the internet, sitting right here in front of me. Yeah.

Well. I think, and you know Sarah Longwell, we can make this happen. I mean, I did tweet Peter's piece at him, and I said, Elon, here's some fan mail from some Trump voters. You are truly not going to be happy until Steel Team Six is rappelling onto the roof of this building. And I love your courage, but I am going to be wearing a helmet to work every day.

Like I said, I think that Trump is already planning on sending them to extricate Bolsonaro. Maybe it will stop by here on the way back. Maybe, perhaps. Who knows? All right. Promised you all a couple of good pieces of good news. Before we get there, we got one more ridiculous piece of news that we have to talk about. We didn't have time last week. We have to talk about that. So last week, a new ride share app, no problem there.

It launched and it's called Protector. What differentiates Protector from Uber and Lyft is that its drivers are armed. The app's profile in the app store reads, with the click of a button Protector users can schedule veteran and former law enforcement, private security personnel to serve as personal protection when needed or in the words of one of the apps founders protector is uber with guns silicon valley brain like I know that is a

fucking story line right out of so many articles about this I read to the end waiting for like it's a bit right it's all a performance art joke is it not I mean maybe it is I know I think unfortunately I, it's a bit, right? It's all a performance art joke. Is it not? I mean, maybe it is. I never thought about that. I know, I think, unfortunately I think it's real. Cause I saw the founder tweeting about it. And then people were like, they've got ads.

And like, Erin Levy from, from box, founder of box was like, you just created a hundred thousand jobs. This is amazing. I'm like, well, what are we, what's happening? A hundred thousand jobs. But then you see that you're like, oh, this is why Elon Musk, this is why. This is the ecosystem it produces.

This is the mindset. Like, oh, well, obviously, there's a bunch of people with guns sitting around who don't have jobs, and there's cars, and there's people who are worried about their security. Boom! I mean, $1,000,000 idea. Ironically, as we just mentioned,

SEAL Team Six is after you. You could probably use a protector. Don't think that wasn't going through my head when I was reading the prompt. Don't think that wasn't going through my head. Look, John, I can't tell you how many times I've been on my way to LAX in an Uber, cruising down the 405 and thought, you know, this traffic is annoying. If only it also came with the risk of an accidental firearm discharge is really what we need. So I should say, I believe this is not just

for an armed driver, but an armed escort generally. Like a lot of the use case they're selling is someone to walk around with you. But like- Because you want that person to be sort of a temporary hire. You've never met before. Some guy.

When someone with a gun follows you around ostensibly to protect you, you don't really want to know that person. You want to just look at the passing, how many stars? Oh, oh, oh, that's good. You know, 3.7, whatever, that's fine. And so I keep wondering that part

of the pitch meeting specifically, it's like, you know what consumers want? They really want an app that lets you press a button to have a weird stranger with a gun charge up to your front door saying, John, John, anyone for John? Anyone for John? Like, Hey, VC investor, you know, going to the mall, what if you took that experience, everything you liked about it, and then added in the bank

shootout from Heath? One of the, did you watch any of the ads? No. One of the ads brags that a former Navy SEAL sniper is one of their rentaguns and like this Christ Yeah, that's what I want Give me the trained killer who's so fucked up from whatever he did in Afghanistan that he has to slim for hourly rentagoon work That's the guy I want safeties off while he's marching me through the outwater farmers market. It's like hey, um Do you like the music? Do you want no music? Do you want a silencer, no silencer?

Semi-automatic. Yeah, just tell me what your preferences are. I got some mints and I got some extra clips in the back. A little USB? Yeah, that's what we're doing here. Did you see the videos marketing this around Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare? No.

Oh yeah, they have this whole campaign that is like, what if Brian Thompson had had Protector? And they staged it. They staged a video. Did they get someone to play Luigi? Yes, they don't, absolutely. They staged it, except it's one of their goons there to karate chop Luigi Mangione into submission.

One of them also shows it like, just in this video, shooting Luigi Mangione in the stomach, which is like, okay, so if fantasizing about answering violence, violence, $700 a pop. If you want to have a guy like follow you out of the gym with a gun, I guess. Well, you know, we might get to the point where that's necessary. I just said we're just we we're dipping our toes in it. This is early onset authoritarianism. I know, right.

Well, I mean, this is actually a, I promise I won't take us down this tangent, but like privatization of security is a huge thing in countries where the rule of law is disintegrating because you can't trust the police because there's corruption. So you hire your own security, which then feeds into this vicious cycle. Anyway. You're right, I did not want to go there. Okay, sorry, sorry. But thank you for pointing it out.

You're welcome. I thought we had some fun jokes and I thought, you know what we need is something really upsetting. I have to say, Emily listened to, I think it was the Pods of America yesterday or something. She caught up on some of the pods. Okay, nice.

Busy, busy mom, right? She caught up on the pods and she was like, she texted me and she was like, I was just listening to the pod and now I don't know how you sleep at night. I mean you don't, that's part of the premise of the podcast. That's not happening. I really felt, I was like, she sees me now.

She gets it. She's like, now you come home and she's like, this is, the news is really bad. I'm's like, this is, the news is really bad. I'm like, yeah, no, the news is really bad. I know we're going to get to folk, but like, do you find yourself like lying in bed, kind of spinning up about the news? Not with all the Xanax, no.

Right. I don't, I don't actually. I'm doing it. That's great. It is no joke, taking a lot of like therapy, our challenges, thinking about like other stuff. I do, I have been able to turn it off now at night. Yeah, because otherwise, I know that's when it's really dangerous is because that's when

you start like really spinning up and that's when I know we'll get into it. Like I find it really valuable to be able to turn that off. It did take a Benzie for the first time last week and it works. It's really effective. I find that it's things I don't foresee getting upset about that upset me the most. Like the UN vote over Russia invading Ukraine. I, you know, I would not think that that would upset me, but I think because I didn't anticipate it,

like I really spun out for a day over it. So I, yes, that kind of thing would normally spin me out. On Sunday night, I was like, okay, going to bed. I wake up tomorrow and think about the show, Pod Save America, right? And I'm on a text chain with Tim Miller and some others, our friend Tim Miller from The Bullwork, and Tim was like, oh fuck, Bongino at Deputy FBI, you know?

And I was like, no, no. And then my other text chain, someone was like, oh damn, Bongino, and you know, and Tommy was like, as he sat on Pod Save America this week, he's like, this is the kind of thing where you think if we were going to be an autocracy, like how would this be different? And all of a sudden I was like, this is the kind of thing where you think like if we were going to be an autocracy, like, how would this be different? Right. And that and all of a sudden I was like, am I going to spin?

And I was I was thinking about sitting at my laptop and like looking up Dan Bongino things he says and I was like, you know what? Same. No. Mm hmm. I'm like, don't don't put the phone down. Yeah, I can talk about Dan budget. I'm gonna talk about him on Pudsey American tomorrow. I'm gonna read all the stories tomorrow. I don't need to do that to myself tonight What value is that to do that to myself tonight like tweet about it talk commiserate with everyone freak out about it Like there's just it's bad. I'm not saying that doesn't mean it's very bad I'm just saying like I don't that's not healthy for me right now to deal with that I had it's so funny

You say that I had literally the exact same arc with the exact same piece of information where I was texting with someone about it And I was going to look up information about him in order to express back to someone who already agreed with me about why this was so bad. And I was like, why? Why do we need to do this? And I'd like, this is not just something that is specific to us because we work in media.

I feel like I get questions from people all the time where it's like, I feel like it's my obligation as a citizen to keep up on the news and like read all the news articles because I have to be engaged. And it's like, yes, that is true to an extent, but turning it off is like really, really important. It is. It is.

Offline is brought to you by Mint Mobile. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money too. After years of overpaying for wireless, Crooked staffer Nina finally got fed up from crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks that actually cost more in the long run and switched to Mint Mobile. Nina is now saving $40 a month since ditching her old wireless plan.

The service is so reliable and affordable, she even convinced her mom to make the switch to Mint Mobile. Nina convincing her mom to switch phone plans is very on brand for her. Very on brand. Nina is someone who tries to get her seatmates on airplanes to register to vote and then knock on doors. Yes, that's right. We've knocked on doors with Nina.

Sometimes the Republicans. It's very funny to watch. Say bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw-dropping monthly bills, and unexpected overages. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at $15 a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at

mintmobile.com slash offline. That's mintmobile.com slash offline. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, five gigGB plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Speaking of turning it off, what a segue. Here's the good news. Last Tuesday, February 18th, a district-wide cell phone ban went into effect in the Los Angeles Unified School District,

the country's second largest school district. Going forward, all students are prohibited from using cell phones, not just in classrooms, but for the duration of school hours. Amazing. While the ban is still relatively new, the news among parents in Los Angeles is that it's going well.

Also, there's an LAist story that I'm going to. Here's the headline. LA USD's really, really annoying cell phone ban may be working. All right, thanks, Taylor. The students are like, you know what? I guess the dean of students said there are about 70 phones that were confiscated outside of the classrooms. But a lot of people were just complying,

and the kids that they were caught, they said, oh, my fault, won't do it again. And then they handed over the phones. It was very peaceful. Amazing. And I know that's... A peaceful transfer of power. But so far, it's going well.

No complaints, no one freaking out, No one knows no student revolts. Everyone's just doing it. We have always said everybody wants this, including the kids, including the kids. What they don't want is to be the one kid without their phone because that's hard. You're isolated. Everybody, this shows up in surveys and not just us making it up. The kids want to be an environment where the phones are taken away collectively, we can all do it together.

It's kind of an argument for having the state, the distance of a state to be able to collectively organize on behalf of the greater good. So I think we're going to have the state so it can take all of our phones. You know what? Basically, that's what Elon's doing anyway. That's the one thing that he's not taking is our phones. Our info just on our phones. That's right.

Yeah, right. I think we're going to learn a lot from the way they're doing this specifically. I don't know if you saw this, they're doing a 50-50 split between schools. Of some schools it's an honor system. They just tell the kids you can't have your phone out. And at some schools they're saying it's these timed magnetic pouches where the kid keeps the pouch. You put the phone in the pouch, it's timed, it's sealed,

and then at the end of the school day it opens back up. I think that's going to be very interesting. We'll learn what works, people are comfortable with not comfortable with, I think the fact that everybody seems to be bringing a like, let's try this. We're excited for it attitude is going to make it really useful for learning lessons and what works. I feel like the, over time, the honor system will win out because

people get so used to not having it. Oh, I see. You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. Then you stop thinking about it. It becomes a habit, right? Which is what we want. Yeah. It's gonna really undercut this week's focus challenge, which is timed magnetic LA school system pouches. No, not really. Although I wish I had done that. Honestly? As I say that, why didn't I do that?

Damn it. I do think that his success in LA will cascade too. I hope so. I mean, it's the second biggest history. Yes. One other piece of good news, the BBC reported last week that a complex problem that took microbiologists a decade to get to the bottom of has been solved in just two days

by a new artificial intelligence tool. We have been talking a lot about all the scary uses of AI. One really exciting potential use of AI is around biomedical research, new cures, treatments, everything in sort of the health world. Could be very, very exciting. Why don't you talk to us? Okay, so this story that you talked about has to do with a really big problem, superbug diseases, which are immune to antibiotics. And when you talk to people about like the four or five problems we face, like as a species, like this is up there with climate change. So this team at Imperial college, London spent decades trying to identify this

very specific, particular thing, the mechanism that makes those superbugs immune, it's not a cure, it's just understanding the process of it. They got an answer. And then as this test, before they published that answer, they separately asked Google's medical AIs to a called co-scientist to try to figure it out, offer up some hypotheses. Two days later, it spat out the same answer.

They spent decades trying to get to, as well as several other hypotheses that they said have been proven so promising, they're already pursuing them. The lead scientist told the BBC that when he heard the news, he was out shopping with a friend and he told a friend, leave me alone for an hour because I have to go digest this.

And he said, this will change science, definitely. Wow. That's cool. Can I give you the bigger story? I think this is so amazing. So, okay, why is this a big deal? It's part of a larger story of AI being used to discover new medicines, right? New drugs.

Let me give you an example of how drug discovery normally works without AI. One of the most common methods, a lab will literally collect dirt samples from around the world, shipped in from all over the world. They search the dirt manually for bacteria, isolate the bacteria that manually analyzes DNA for specific sequences in the genes that suggest it could be useful as an antibiotic. Then they turn those into antibiotic samples which they test in a petri dish alongside various diseases to see if it kills the disease. It's very labor-intensive. This lab that the New Yorker reporter is also a doctor named Dr. Kullar who was writing

about AI and medicine. This big lab that he visited is huge, tests about 100 compounds a month this way. But the number of hypothetical possible compounds that scientists want to test is 10 to the 60th power, which is more than the number of atoms in the solar system. So we are doing drug discovery by that meme of infinite monkeys typing and infinite typewriters until they generate the works of Shakespeare.

And it's a losing battle. Super bugs are getting more and more resistant. Drug discovery is slowing. It takes 10 to- R.F.K. Jr. is the Health and Human Services Secretary. That's not helpful. This is observable phenomenon where the amount of investment it takes to develop a new drug

doubles every nine years because it's like you can only do so much brute force. So, okay, AI opens up a completely new way to do drug discovery. You train AI on huge existing databases of known drug compounds. If there's just an enormous number, then give it a disease you're trying to combat. It will generate entirely new drug formulas at the molecular level that might do it. So instead of literally scratching the dirt, hoping to coincidentally discover one compound in 10 billion kajillion that might cure the disease, AI can just dream one up out of nothing. And so far those compounds have a much higher success rate than the testing

things in the dirt method. Can I give you two examples of this working already? Because I think this, I know we're going on, I just think this is so cool. things in the dirt method. Can I give you two examples of this working already? Because I think this, I know we're going, I just think this is so cool. So one lab was trying to find a drug to treat something called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. Remember, drug development can take a decade. Of that it's four years just to discover the treatment. This lab used AI. They got one in 18 months. The AI spat out 79 possible treatments. They tested them.

One of them worked. Wow. Just like that. Another one lab trying to find a new antibiotic for E. Coli. This is huge. Because E. Coli is everywhere.

Their AI spat out again, right away, a hundred compounds that could work. Half of them succeeded. Normally the success rate is like one in a billion. Holy shit. A lot of those were similar to existing antibiotics. One was totally new. And you know what it turns out? That it defeats super bugs that were thought

to be totally immune to antibiotics. That is wonderful. Just like that. Isn't that cool? I love AI. Now, honestly, every time I open up like Gmail or message on Apple and it does that shitty little suggest tech service, I'm like, you could be doing something

so much more useful right now. You're wasting your time with this. Well, I mean, go discover a cure for cancer. Obviously, I was joking. I love AI, but like it's what we said since the beginning of these AI conversations, which is like everything else, like every other technology, it is a tool.

Tools can be used for good, tools can be used for bad. Social media, tool. Good, bad. Mostly bad now. A tool with tools on it. Right. Great place to stop. All right. In a minute, we're going to check back in on the offline challenge, but before we do some quick housekeeping, we got a new episode of Inside 2025 out. Dan and I chat with our former White House colleague Jen Psaki to break down how modern presidents have used the press to their advantage, what it takes to control the narrative, and whether Democrats are up to the task of leading

us through this uncharted territory. It's all about presidential communications. Communications directors, message strategy, comm strategy, press strategy. Jen and Dan both have some really great ideas. To listen to this exclusive ad free episode, subscribe to Friends of the Pod at cricket.com slash friends or directly from the Pod Save America feed on Apple podcasts. You can get started with a free seven day trial. All right, let's check back in on the offline challenge

for which we are testing different ways to improve our focus so we can be more present, more in control of our attention. This last week, you and I spent time reading every day, 20 minutes of reading with no other distractions, as well as working on old pen and paper puzzles. What did you think? How'd the games go for you?

I thought the games were kind of fun. Like if nothing else, it's a really good alternative to being on my phone in the mornings. They are, I'm going to be honest, a little boring. It turns out our digital ecosystem is very entertaining and stimulating in a way that like no offense to the Sudoku writers, but like you're just not matching it. But I understand that's part of the mental muscle building here. And I did find over time, I was having a better time at staying focused for 20 minutes in the games. Did you keep up on them?

Did not like the games. Okay. Okay. Fair. That's fair enough. I'll say the reading part, loved. Yeah. The readings.

And like I, it's last night I did it again. I've been reading for more than 20 minutes a day. And put my phone somewhere else. I did put like a timer on my phone just so I know, because I didn't want to like keep looking at my phone to look at the time. So I put the timer on, put the phone somewhere else. I did put like a timer on my phone just so I know, because I didn't want to like keep looking at my phone to look at the time. So I put the timer on, put the phone somewhere else, had no other electronics around me

and had like just a real book, not on a Kindle. And absolutely loved it, loved every day doing it, looked forward to it every day. The games I was like, oh, when am I going to do my 20 minutes for these fucking games? And then I was sitting there with the games and I'm like, come on.

This is a me problem. But I'm like, I have the mind where I'm like, come on. It just, that this is a me problem, but I'm like, I have the mind where it's like, I need to be productive all the time. And even if I'm, when we were doing the walks that I really liked too, and I wasn't listening to anything on the walks, that was still like, letting my mind wander. And so I'm accomplishing something,

the reading, I was accomplishing something. I'm like, this game, I'm not accomplishing anything. It's 20 minutes I could be using doing other things. You figured out where the seven goes. Come on. That's not important. Yeah, but the reading stuff I really liked. Reading, I have to be honest with you. I think I'm going to need to put more work into this one,

which is absolutely pathetic. Look, I loved it. The nights when it was working for me, I would blaze through like 20, 30, 40 pages, have a great time doing it, and would blaze through like 20, 30, 40 pages, have a great time doing it and would feel much better the next morning and the entire next day, like feel more focused, really felt the effects of it. But some nights I would spend half an hour just staring at the same

paragraph, like getting mad about Trump or whatever. And like, I want to keep working on this because I did find myself getting better at it over time. I've been trying to do a little bit more reading over the last couple of months and it really does build on itself. I do think about how I used to be able to spend a 12-hour flight plowing through one novel in one sitting and that feels absolutely unattainable now. But I believe that with practice I can get back there and that it is incredibly productive

to do it. I will say I have been reading Abundance, Eric Thompson's book that's coming out soon. And I did find myself, because I think it's a great book, everyone should read it when it comes out, and it's very exciting to me as I was reading it, but it started making me think about all the like, political messaging around it and this and that. So I would, I'd find myself stopping and thinking about politics, implications, other things. And I was like, oh no, no, wait,

you're supposed to be reading. So like that, it was a good muscle. It's a good thing to do for your brain. I've been doing specifically novels for exactly that reason. See, I should have done some little, I may do that next time. I'm reading My Brain Femme, which I know is I'm 10 years late on. I've been doing specifically novels for exactly that reason. I'm reading My Brilliant Friend, which I know I'm 10 years late on. A book that I just read before this that might be of interest to listeners is Profit Song,

this book that came out two years ago by Paula and shit won the main Booker Prize. It's kind of a political parable that takes place in Ireland but it's about the changes that come in daily life with an authoritarian government coming to power which I know sounds depressing but it was like it was helpful to kind of think through it and it just silver linings yeah how are your pickups I have not looked at my pickups I am I'm up a little bit 63 a day last week up to 70 a day this week and I think maybe this is true for both of us. I have fully stopped tracking my sleep. Oh yeah, no that's not.

The Fitbit that I was wearing to sleep, I kept waking up in the middle of the night and finding that in my sleep, I had taken it off and stuffed it inside of a pillowcase. It was like, I need to listen to what I am telling myself. I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. And I will say we're finally tied on the paintings.

Ooh, I'm at 259. Really, oh, so you're up? Well, that's daily, oh, last week's average, yeah, 257. Okay, so you're about, you're holding, but do you feel better? You sound like you feel, I really feel much more focused. Yes, because my, the pickups is, it's an interesting metric that we're using,

but like, I think for focus, if you're not in a focus period and you're just checking your phone, I'm gonna pick up my phone a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm realizing that when I have, for either the challenges that we've done or just other things, like when I need to focus,

I'm not picking up my phone a lot. Yep, I find the same. I find that when I'm need to focus, I'm not picking up my phone a lot. Yep, I find the same. I find that when I am with friends, I feel much more present. Something that I had noticed in the past that I've really hated is I would be, especially if it was like one-on-one, like I was grabbing a drink with a friend,

I would feel like 30 or 40 minutes in, I would start to feel this twitch of like, I kind of want to check my phone. I kind of want to say, I felt my phone vibrate, push alert, is it a news like, I kind of want to check my phone. I kind of want to say, Oh, I felt my phone vibrates push alert. Is it a news alert? I kind of want to check it. And I feel that poll a lot less. I have a much easier time being present and I have a much easier time, like

turning off the Trump show in my own mind, which is, you know, to your point, not to say that I'm not freaked out. Pretty far down the curve of how freaked out that you can be, but I have a much easier time not thinking about it when I don't want to think about it, which I think makes it feel much easier to, to cope. Yes. And to like engage in it when I need to engage in it and not get that burned out, hopeless feeling.

100%. Um, so this next week is our final challenge, right? Yes. What are we doing? Okay. I am really excited about this one. It's very simple. No phone in the bedroom.

Phone spends the night downstairs. And this is to do, this is huge. It's to do two things. One is you don't look at your screen before bed, which disrupts your sleep. The other is you don't have it on your nightstand, which I swear also disrupts your sleep. I think you just know that it's there and you want to look at it.

Also means you, when you wake up in the morning, you don't look at it. I know this sounds small. I'm excited for this. I have been doing this since December. I started. Oh, okay. And we're doing these challenges together. I listen, I could not wait.

I knew it was on the calendar and I was like, well, I can either survive to the challenge and get a head start, or I can follow the rules. Um, it was hard at first. I swear to you, it changed my life. It genuinely changed my life. I have had this problem for years that I sometimes struggle with feeling like really foggy for a couple of days a week. Do you know this feeling?

That's like mentally slow. I don't feel as articulate as I want to be. Like I can't focus. I feel less creative and I was trying everything like really, I was like cutting out booze. I was exercising more, changing the time. It's not something I did lightly. Let me tell you, changing my diet.

I was even doing this thing for a while where I'd wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do is have a phone call with somebody because I found that that worked. Now I think the reason that worked is I wasn't looking at my phone because I was talking into it.

I did this. Just put the phone downstairs and I swear to you, in like two weeks, 90% solved. And I barely felt the resistance. Do you have a clock on your nightstand? So do you know what time it is? I do. I got a little plug-in analog clock. weeks, 90% solved. I got a little plugin, analog clock. There's one off of Amazon that looks kind of pretty.

All right everyone, that's our show. 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. Dilan 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. Music Music

Music Music