Offline with Jon Favreau - How Taylor Swift Conquered the Internet, Plus: Xtra Xtra the Bird is Dead

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard, hosts of The Ringer’s “Every Single Album” podcast join Offline to talk about queen of pop — and queen of the internet — Taylor Swift. They break down how the one-time anti-hero has navigated the Internet Age to build one of the most successful music careers of all time and a fanbase that follows her on- and off-line. The three weigh streaming vs. touring as business models for musicians, question whether Taylor’s obsessive internet lurking is an asset, and share predictions for the last leg of the Eras tour. Then, Max returns to Offline’s tech roundup to unpack Elon’s ill-advised Twitter rebrand and Ron DeSantis’ cruel summer.Special thanks to Margaret for providing Jon and Max with their new Forget Me Knits. Learn more at forgetmeknit.com 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 don't think most people who walk in the stadium know that there are four people in the history of music who've won the Grammy for album of the year three times. And it's Frank Sinatra, it's Stevie Wonder, it's Paul Simon, and it's Taylor Swift. And when you say that to some people, they're like, well, she's not in that category. And I i go the fuck she isn't like go listen to the music and i think she does have all of these on ramps whether you're into pop music i think midnights is perfect for that whether you're into sad dad rock i think evermore and folklore are great for that whether you're into country she's got the albums to bring you on board that way and red as nora talks about is this wonderful mishmash of all things. Yeah, it's funny. When I first met Emily and the first time I heard All Too Well, she played it for me. And she's like, I just want you to know that she is a much

better writer and this song is a much better written song than any speech you've ever written with Brassafine. And I listened and I was like, it's a pretty good point. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guests today are Nora Princiati and Nathan Hubbard, hosts of The Ringer's Every Single Album podcast.

If you like Taylor Swift, you will love this episode. And even if you're not a Swifty, which I definitely am, even more than my producers ever imagined, I think you'll enjoy our conversation about how one of the most famous people in the world is also one of the most online, and how Taylor has navigated the internet era to build one of the most successful music careers of all time, and a fan base that follows her on and offline. What's fascinating about Taylor is that even as the internet divides us into smaller and smaller subcultures, she just keeps getting bigger. Her North American Heirs Tour is on pace to be the highest grossing tour of all time,

earning a mind-numbing $1 billion in sales, which she fuels with special guests, announcements, and surprise songs that show up on social media and keep excited fans guessing. And that's just the tour. She's also mastered the way artists communicate with fans online and helped shape the music industry's transition into the streaming era, standing up for the rights of artists to own their own music. Nora and Nathan's Ringer podcast about Taylor Swift is one of my favorites. Nathan has been a songwriter, the CEO of Ticketmaster a decade ago, and he even worked at Twitter. Nora is a sports and entertainment journalist who's currently working on a book about Britney, Taylor, Rihanna, and the women who defined pop music in the 2000s. The three of us shared a fun conversation about Taylor's

unprecedented cultural footprint. We talked about the business model of streaming versus touring, how Taylor's obsessive internet lurking is one of her greatest assets, and all the ways Taylor Swift is an integral part of the history of the internet. We might have also made some predictions about the last few nights of the Heiress Tour here in Los Angeles. As always, if you have comments, questions, or episode ideas, please email us at offline at crooked.com. And after the break, Max returns. We're talking about Elon's ill-advised Twitter rebrand and Ron DeSantis' flailing presidential campaign.

Here's Nora and Nathan. Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard, welcome to Offline. Yay! Thank you so much for having us. Well, I've been a huge fan of your pod for a long time now. And I wanted to talk to you guys on this show for two reasons. One, I'm also a huge fan of Taylor Swift. And two, the theme of this show is that the internet has broken a lot of brains,

industries, our politics, our culture. But I have come to think that one extremely online person who has ultimately navigated this extremely online era in a wildly successful and mostly healthy way. Donald Trump. Oh, no. That's not what we're here to talk about? I mean, sort of, I guess. Logging off. Him, too.

Is Taylor Swift. That goes for her music, her business, her fame, and most importantly, I think the community of fans that she's built. So I'm dying to know what the two of you think about all that, but I want to start with a simpler question for both of you. How did you both become fans? And more specifically, what was the journey that led you from being fans to hosting a podcast about Taylor Swift.

Nora, let me start with you. So my experience of becoming someone who would loudly and proudly articulate themselves as a Taylor Swift fan was basically like growing up and deciding to not be insecure. Because one thing that is very hard for me to square in my own personal history and self-identity is that I have all of these memories of listening to bootleg YouTube recordings of I Heart Question Mark and the super, super, super early songs that never even made the album and loving them and being so into them. And also, if asked, I probably wouldn't have said to someone, I am a huge Taylor Swift fan until like red.

So I was simultaneously like deeply in it for a while, but then also just wouldn't shout it from the rooftops. But I got over it. And then I think retroactively was more and more of a fan because I was making up for a little bit of lost time. But that was around like 2012 was probably when I got super, super into, you know, going to the shows and thinking of her as my favorite artist. And it has grown since then. Yes. Nathan, what about you?

I mean, mine is much more boring. Like I was CEO of Ticketmaster. Flex. And her dad was calling me incessantly telling me that his daughter was opening for concerts in our venues and everything was screwed up and just telling us repeatedly all these things

that were wrong with the experience. But he knew sure as Sunday that she was going to be a star. And it was impossible to ignore Taylor Swift because he was just relentless in pushing for the best possible fan experience. And the more that I sort of listened and got to know a little bit more about the artist, the more I became a fan. And I have two late teenage daughters, which sort of those two things came together in a confluence of massive waves to turn me into a fan. And we should say for people so that you don't get attacked. You were CEO of Ticketmaster like a decade ago, right? Taylor Swift's father wasn't calling you like a month ago about this. No, no, no. Drag him. Very this very very long time ago very long time ago i i've not been there for 10 years that is funny nor that

you said that red was the uh the first album where you're really a big fan because that's what happened to me too because i met emily in like my wife in uh in 2011 and she was a big taylor swift fan red came out right after we started dating. I was like, and I went from being like, you know what? I like Taylor Swift. I like this album to then, you know, Love Story was played at our wedding and folklore dropped the night that Charlie was born, our son, like while Emily was in labor. And now I'm going on the road to show. So it is a funny little journey. But Nora, the most common question I get from people who aren't hardcore Swifties is, what's

all the fuss about? Why has this one artist inspired a level of enthusiasm and excitement that borders on mania? So look, she's such an interesting interesting person she's had such an interesting layered career that i think there's a temptation to talk about the business strategy and the relationship with fans online the relationship with fans in person all of the sort of um extracurricular elements of it the core reason is that she's really can i swear yeah she's really fucking good she is one of the best songwriters the world has ever known she has an unbelievable knack for melody she has a way

of bringing specificity into these like huge big tent pop songs that make them feel so intimate and so bespoke, but they're also just capable of being the biggest song in the world. So she's one of one. She's one of one as an artist. She's one of one as a musician. She's one of one as a storyteller. But it's also been this phenomenon that's built over the course of, as I'm sure we're going to talk about, time when the world has really changed and the way that people interact with artists has really changed and the way that fan communities exist together online has really changed. And that's part of it too.

And sort of one of the interesting things about watching this tour is that Nathan's favorite thing to say is that, like, the dudes have gone all in on Taylor this summer. Because it's true. Because J.J. Watt went to a concert or something. John Cena is showing up at a Taylor Swift show. It's over. Flava Flava is my favorite.

So that's part of it, too, is just that the way that our world has changed has been reflected in how her career has built and built and built and then built and built and built some more. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like the Heiress tour is like a new peak for Taylor mania. The New Yorker ran a piece about the tour being an enormous exception to all the takes about the death of the monoculture. The idea that thanks in part to the Internet, we're no longer all consuming the same cultural moments at the same time or in the same way. And that's making us all feel disconnected, adrift, isolated. Nathan, how do you think Taylor was able to create a rare monocultural experience that makes just about everyone who's part of it feel pretty good. Yeah, I think it's changed even since you and I saw each other at the show in Vegas. I mean, for me, there were a lot of moms and daughters at that show. And when we go in LA this week,

we're going to see a lot of guys. And I don't put that on Taylor necessarily, but I do think it started with the, not illusion, but reality of lack of supply and massive demand. And that created such a FOMO moment, I think, for everyone that as she sort of eased into the summer and we started to see some of these high profile like celebrity men showing up at the show, Taylor Swift has always been a thing that's been scary for guys because she just absolutely fillets her ex-boyfriends

in her early work, right? And so that became something that just made it hard for some men to access. And then she dropped Folklore, it sounds like while your wife was in labor, which was an album made by all of the dad rock heroes, Bon Iver and The National. And it just became this on-ramp for more people to get access to this music. And I think it all culminated this summer with first the on-sale just public for you know it's a massive amount

of demand and then i i really do believe that through the course of the summer it just became safe for guys to be like oh is this cool this is cool like we're such fucking lemmings really say wait this is can is this something we can actually go oh this is cool wow okay great i'm in and that's what happened this summer it's so funny that you bring both of those things up because I've been wondering this myself, like anecdotally from all my guy friends who are now saying, you know, I like Taylor Swift. I'll go to a concert. I feel like some of it started with folklore and then some of it was just this era's tour. And so like, I always wonder, like, how much is the music itself, as Nora pointed out, that she's just that fucking good? And the way that her music has evolved, as we saw in Folklore and Evermore. And how much is just, wow, everyone's doing it.

You know, J.J. Watt and Flava Flava are at the tour. I don't think most people who walk in the stadium know that there are four people in the history of music who've won the Grammy for album of the year three times. And it's Frank Sinatra, it's Stevie Wonder, it's Paul Simon, and it's Taylor Swift. And when you say that to some people, they're like, well, she's not in that category. And I go, the fuck she isn't. Go listen to the music. And I think she does have all of these on-ramps, whether you're into pop music. I think Midnight's is perfect for that. Whether you're into Sad Dad Rock, I think Evermore and Folklore are great for that. Whether you're into country, she's got the albums to bring you on board that way. And Red, as Nora talks about, is this wonderful mishmash of all things. So my guess

is half that stadium is there for the, for the show and the cultural moment. And that, and that I think the streaming numbers, when you step out to 30,000 feet and look at this year in which her catalog halfway through this year has streamed more than all of last year. I think you've got actually a lot of discovery that's happening this year. Uh, yeah, it's funny when, um when i first met emily and the first time i heard all too well um she played it for me and she's like i just want you to know that um she

is a much better writer and this song is a much better written song than any speech you've ever written with brad and i listened and i was like it's has a pretty good point. A pretty good point. We talked about... Does she? It's a great song. So much of her success is about her relationship with her fans, which seems more intimate,

certainly more interactive than most other artists who've reached her level of fame. I think Beyonce's fans are equally, if not more devoted, but she doesn't seem to be in constant conversation with her fans like Taylor is. Nora, how much of that do you think is a result of her being extremely online? So I figured we would talk about this and I was thinking about it a lot. is she is a denizen of the internet for sure and that's played a huge role

but i actually think she's not as it's not that she's not as online as she seems like she is because she is she is tailer gang probably right now but i think the phenomenon of of like swiftiedom it lives on the internet but it actually is what it is. And it is how big it is because she has managed to use the internet to scale a fan experience that she actually makes much more personal than something that happens online. Because I think the experience of being a hardcore Swifty, the touchstones have to do with the possibility of maybe getting invited to a secret session.

She's creating the illusion of personal engagement. And using the internet to scale it, right? Whereas we were talking about this, and I was sort of forming the thought, and I think I've formed it a little bit more now, but we were talking about this and I was sort of forming the thought and I think I've formed it a little bit more now, but we were talking on a recent show about the difference between a Taylor Swift crowd and a Harry Styles crowd.

And the more I thought about it, One Direction was an internet phenomenon. And I think the relationship with the fans reflects that because there is something to it. And I think that has carried over to Harry a little bit where there is, even though there's like this obsessive devotion there's a little bit of this like i voted for you on the x factor and i retweeted you and i brought you into this world and i can take you out from it that is very like loving but it's also very sort of um it just has

a little bit of this like equal footing thing. Yeah. I mean, also like the, the, the syntax of online language that we use, like I want Harry Styles to run me over with his car, like the run me over with your car.

We don't have that. If we don't have one direction, it like that is a one-to-one internet fandom basically. Whereas I think Taylor, it is a little bit different where it's your, you're in all of these online spaces and you're going on TikTok to figure out what the secret songs are because she is so good at using the internet to make it seem like you are in person with her. And I don't quite know how important that distinction is, but I think her brilliance is that she uses, she creates personal experiences that translate

to being something people can experience online. Nathan, what do you think? I feel like all of the best artists, the biggest artists, the biggest brands, they think about themselves as brands. They think about themselves as direct-to-consumer brands. And Bono is that way. Jay-Z is that way. Madonna is that way. Taylor Swift is this way. She is, I think, and I say this a lot on our pod, I think she's the best

CEO in the music business. But she is also the first of all of those to be natively online. And I think it matters. I think she understands intuitively the language that her fans speak. And as Nora says, every single person who calls themselves a Swifty and is messing around in the deep dark corners of the internet lives with the possible chance that they're going to get a like on their profile because she goes and does that. There is just like Powerball. There's a,

there's a fucking chance that you're going gonna get the numbers and win a billion dollars it happens you can see the faces of people who do it and that's what's happening here i mean i find it fascinating that she also wants us to know how online she is and she does this thing where she like routinely breaks the fourth wall with fans like she's asked on social media to put delicate on the set list for the tour and she does it she uh kicks off the evermore section of her first show by uh telling the crowd that she loves the album despite what she sees on tiktok do you think it's like what nor why do you think it's important for her to let us know that she's watching and listening and scrolling?

Because it's a one to one relationship, right? Like Nathan loves to say that she is a non scalable resource. But just the idea that it might happen, that scales to everyone who makes a Taylor Swift TikTok or, you know, was on Tumblr back in the day. Or even one thing we should acknowledge is that I think often we associate the earliest days of online Taylor with being a Tumblr phenomenon. This is my space Taylor erasure. I don't remember that at all. Because wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, it is chaotic.

It is right. It came right when she was just starting to get a little bit of traction in her first deals and moving to Nashville. So it's like half. Still had the twang. Half I got to play this little concert and it was so exciting because I met this executive and she's starting to talk about the career. But then she's also just making weird in jokes with kids at her school. Everyone should look it up. It's deeply weird and amazing and beautiful. Do you think she's scrolling through all these feeds herself? Is she staying up late on TikTok or is this her team? No, 100% she is online. After every show, she's looking at the feedback. In her down moments, she's on her phone going through doing

this herself. And that's how... By the way, that's what every good CEO does. They listen to their customer base. They go in and they have their finger on the pulse of what's happening. I also think it's important to remember, if we were to say in the history of the internet, what are the top 10 most person being dragged moments online? Taylor Swift is one of them. She experienced a ton of blowback through the Kim and Kanye stuff. And I think that that moment really shaped her, not just because it gave us reputation, thank you, but also because it's shaped the way that even this last album that she put out, the Speak Now Taylor's version, she changed the lyric on one song that was in response to a lot of the things that she heard

from the fan base online. The Lana Del Rey, Snow on the Beach, more Lana Del Rey song that she put out, that was in response to listening to a bunch of people online. So if anything, you would think that maybe she over-rotates on what the fan base is saying, but she seems to have really good taste and be able to distinguish between what is meaningful and what's the fan base going to appreciate and where she may be overreacting. She has great judgment on what she hears online. I find it very interesting that, Nathan, you point out that she's had some tough times on the internet. She's been dragged quite a bit.

A lot of celebrities respond to that by sort of backing off. Maybe they get offline. They don't use social media anymore. Or they sort of like retreat and into like a she sort of like went the other direction she feels like she is she tried to sort of like redeem herself reshape her public image by getting even deeper online which i find very interesting and i also wonder like does she sleep ever? She's writing songs. She's on tour. And now she's like checking TikToks.

Like, what is going on? No. She's also like directing a movie apparently right now. It is unbelievable what this woman's schedule must look like. No, she doesn't. She doesn't. I mean, look, I look at her onlineness now as an evolution. Like she went away, by the way. Right.

She did kind of walk off. She totally disappeared and she knew that she needed to go away. But she then, you know, at that moment in time, the primary vehicle for fan communication wasn't TikTok. It is today. And I think she's responded to the always on short bits of content piece in a bunch of ways. That she released all those really short videos introducing each song for Midnight's as basically the promotional vehicle for what was coming. She just participates in different ways now, I think, understanding that she has to show up more. She has to stay present to be on people's

radar screen. It's reflected in what she does online. It's also reflected in the content that she puts out. Folklore, quickly followed by Long Pond Sessions, quickly followed by Evermore, quickly followed by Fearless, then Red, suddenly we get Midnight. So she really has changed'll go after people they think have wronged her. Obviously, right around the re-release of Dear John, she felt the need to go on stage and ask everyone to be nice to John Mayer. Some fans were also upset about her brief relationship with Mattie Healy because he said some shitty things. Nora, why do you think people get so invested in the personal life of someone that they've never met? Is it because the Internet and social media like make you think you know that person? Is it just a side effect of creating that close relationship with fans as Taylor has done? Both. Both of those things, I think, are the major reasons.

One, yes, the internet is a space that creates mobs. And I am a member of the mob, but we, the Swifty community, should acknowledge that we are a bit of a mob. And then she just drives it into, puts it into overdrive. Right. Not not explicitly intentionally, but what we are what we're talking about here, I think, like most broadly, is that she has scaled intimacy with her fan base through the songs, through the hyper specificspecific Easter egging in the liner notes back in the day, through just seeding these, I'm going to share with you these tiny gut-wrenching details of my personal life and kind of make them ours in some way because we all listen to the songs together and we all share it together. And it it's this like emotionally potent experience especially when you're growing up

with it especially when you're young especially when you connect your own life and your own experiences to it that we all forget that we don't actually know her and feel so strongly about it that the the easiest outlet for that is to you know gather the cavalry if somebody said something rude i mean like this is this is not the most destructive version of it but i remember when when me came out and it was getting some criticism there was the girl who tweeted just because you guys want to be assholes about taylor iron man dies in endgame and just like completely spoiled the movie for thousands and thousands and thousands of people and that's just what happens right like that's the existence of fandom online and look that's a hysterical

example and i love thinking about it but it does get a lot more destructive than that I hope she I hope she does more like I thought it was actually a pretty big deal that she said you know hey guys don't cyber bully John Mayer because she doesn't usually talk to the fan base that way and I think a lot of artists don't because it it's a little scary

like what if the mob turns on you right right but usually we've only heard her sort of marshal that resource to say, I don't like Scooter Braun. They did this to me and I'm trying to reclaim my art. And I think, look, I think someone like Scooter, a private equity fund, like that is a worthy adversary. And I personally do not have an issue with her saying i am in a dispute with these people and if you feel that i have given you something over time and want to be on my side this is how to do it but sometimes that becomes

punching down um again i don't think in that case but i think it's capable of becoming that. So if she continues to be more and more aware of when everyone is going to go crazy and do all of that stuff and tries to take some responsibility for it, I think that would be a massively positive force for the way that artists interact with their fans. So I hope she does it more. And I liked that she did it then.

I think you can't look at what she said about John Mayer without looking at what happened to Jake Gyllenhaal coming out of the 10 Minute All Too Well version that she released where the fan base took a step back and said, I don't want to be a part of this. And unlike the BTS fandom, which does its own thing, unlike the Beehive, which Beyonce's fan base, which does their own thing, Taylor really is the general of this. And what she showed on that stage in Minneapolis when she told them to back off, they followed. I mean, there has not been a lot of John Mayer stuff online.

And so she does have control of this thing, which is a very powerful weapon if used properly. Nora, you mentioned something about how she shares a lot, right? And she shares a lot about her personal life. That's always been true, right? All our songs are famously about, you know, ex-boyfriends and enemies and friends. But I feel like she's become even more self-reflective and maybe self-critical in recent years. I mean, obviously, Antihero's all about that. That's her biggest hit off Midnight's. But it was

interesting one of the most honest things i've heard a a famous person say about fame is when she introduced mirrorball at her first show and she said uh she's talking about the song and she said i was trying to think of an eloquent way to say that i love you and i need your attention all the time having experienced the wrath of the internet and been dragged in the past like why do you think she has chosen to be so open and vulnerable when she's been burned so many times in the past like she continues to be even more open and vulnerable i would say so one i don't think that she can help it she's a sheriff it's just who she is. And it's how I mean, she does care about the work, I think, truly above all else. And that is the way that she processes the things that happen to

her. One of the takes that I hold nearest and dearest to my heart over the last few years of stuff that she's put out is that this idea she has concocted about how she's less and less autobiographical and she is, you know, mining movies and books and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is lovingly Taylor, absolute hogwash. And all of these songs are about her. Or even if it's it's writing herself into a character, it's like, OK, I see what you're doing there. So I think it's just, it has certainly helped her. It certainly was something that got her a lot of press and a lot of attention, especially early, to be playing the Easter egg games. And it's something that's remained really, really fun for us to put on our clown masks and go crazy about to this day. But I really think on a core level, she has to pour her heart out into song and the songs

are public and therefore it becomes part of the public domain. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is about clearly about her. It's autobiographical. All these lyrics are a lot of the stuff she says. I also wonder, Nathan, if it's about finding a way to connect with people who are experiencing sort of the same feelings and letting them know it's OK. I mean, this idea of, you know, I need your attention all the time. That is sort of the overriding theme of the internet age, all right, is that everyone wants to post,

they want the retweets, they want the shares because they need the attention. And I think I took that as her saying like, yeah, even someone like me, who's this successful, I need your attention all the time. And Nora and I have had a good argument about this, which is to say, does she actually mean it? Or is she being sort of tongue in cheek? And I think she really means it. She says, I'm reading the lyric now, this is the first time I've felt the need to confess. And I swear, I'm only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care. And I really believe that that's true. I think she has always known that she's sort of moving the pieces and she's felt this sort of control that upon, I think,

probably lots of therapy and reflection, she gets that that's what she does. Now, what's remarkable for me is that a woman who is probably the most famous person on the planet at the moment, pretty close, certainly top three or five, still is able to write songs that feel relatable to 18-year-old girls. And that is, I think, the unique power of her songwriting and why I do think that she's like she is one of the great American songwriters, not just of this generation, but of any. I want to ask you guys about Taylor's impact on the music industry. So her rise to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world coincides with the beginning of the streaming era. She picks early fights with Apple and Spotify over the way artists are paid.

She takes on Scooter Braun in part to take a stand for the rights of artists to own their own work, also especially important in the streaming era. She takes on Ticketmaster, gets them dragged before Congress. Nathan, how much of what Taylor has done do you think will open the door for other Taylors? And how much is just what you can get done when you're that big of a star? I think it has had a very, very meaningful and long-lasting impact on the business. And in the recorded music business, it has reignited the fight that, frankly, Prince was carrying for quite a long time, which is that artists should own their master recordings and the deals in frontline record label making now. Very few artists today are signing away their master recording rights.

They're doing deals where the company that helps market and that pays to help get that music made gets a royalty for a period of time. But in almost all cases now, the ownership of that art is reverting back to the artist. And that is something different than when she wrote the public letter saying that this should happen. Now, she's not the only reason why that's happening. There's been a bunch of... The internet has made distribution cheaper. It's made marketing cheaper. So there's a whole bunch of reasons why I think the record label can't command such a price for their support. But she has been a big part of changing that. She also has obviously been a big part of changing the way that artists get paid from streaming services. And so I think it has

not just been a public-facing thing. It's been something that she cares deeply about. And I can just tell you from my vantage point, doing a bunch of stuff in the music business, it's had a lasting impact on the foundational economics of, if not touring yet, certainly recorded music. Nor do you think that the way the music industry is now, the way we find music, the way music's shared, do you think it will be easier or harder for sort of the next Taylor Swift to become the next Taylor Swift? I don't know that I think there is a next Taylor Swift. Because for all of the things that she's been on the leading edge of, she has been so smart about the choices she's made about how she's conducted her business at this very specific moment in time when the economics of the industry changed completely, the way that people experience

fandom has changed completely. But she's like an analog person. There's a part of her that is a very, very analog person. And there are so many stories about as she was coming up, I mean, people in radio or sponsors getting handwritten thank you notes and personal phone calls. And I think it is in some ways easy to underrate just because she is so big and she has been such an online phenomenon in so many different ways that she has done a lot of the sort of painstaking work of building a career in a very one-to-one personal way. I think that extends to some of the stuff with the fan base, like through the secret sessions and Taylor Swift baked me cookies and sent them because she read on Tumblr that I was going through a hard time or whatever it is. There's dozens of those stories. It extends musically a little bit to, you know, 1989,

which felt like such a peak. One of the things that's craziest about this summer is Taylor Swift like had this period of quote unquote overexposure almost that precipitated a lot of the disappearance before reputation. And I had fully internalized that as like, this is Taylor's empirical dominance era and she's on top of the world and now we're doing something else. And then she has just like completely blown it out of the water and is bigger by, you know, many times over than she was at that moment, which is just wild to consider.

But the music she was making at that time, which is still some of her most sort of mainstream work, was not referential sonically to what was going on in music at the time. Like she just has, she's just always been an individual. I don't think she's replicable so I think she's changed a lot of the dynamics of how the business works I think she and Harry Styles and for better for worse Mattie Healy in the 1975 is another one that Nathan and I've talked about a lot I think now they have created an impact that I think artists will definitely continue to copy in how they tour and try to create these moments every night at a show that work online, that work on TikTok, that make it an event for people who aren't there to still go see. Did Maddie eat raw meat did harry styles say something goofy and what were the surprise songs you know pick your poison um but in general i just i don't i

don't think we will have a next taylor swift is i guess how i would answer that yeah the math just makes it really hard the internet is working like the The promise of Spotify was to create this nichification of music where every person could find their own fingerprint. And that's happening. There are lots. There's a burgeoning middle class, John, of artists. And I think it's just hard for us to all get around one because people's tastes are subtly different. And to the point that you made at the outset, this feels like sort of a monocultural, hey, we got a lot of divisions between us as human beings. It feels great to go with 70,000 other people who you don't know into one place where we're all sort of chemically wired to be together and celebrate one thing euphorically together. And that's a big part of what we see here. Will that happen? Well,

I don't know. You tell me. We just got a third indictment. It's probably not helping people feel all connected to one another, is it? No, no. This is one of the only things. This summer we had the Heiress Tour, Barbie in Oppenheimer. There's just so few experiences like that that people can talk about and be happy about without devolving into chaos all the time. You mentioned the touring though. Do you think touring will continue to be the primary way that musicians make money now? And how does that affect the kind of music that gets made? Who makes it? How they get people to hear it? How has that dynamic changed? So there were two really big sort of earthquake moments in the music business in the 2000s. The first was Napster, which cut out the economic foundation of recorded music. And what happened at that time was artists' income, if you drew the pie chart of their revenue, went from probably 80% recorded music and 20% touring. Suddenly they lost 80% of their revenue because nobody was

paying for music anymore. And what artists started to figure out was they looked at the secondary market and said, man, people are spending a lot of money on tickets that I'm not getting in my pocket. There's a lot more demand for touring than I'm giving them in terms of supply. And instead of touring every four or five years, what if I went out every two years? What if I went as a country artist or Dave Matthews band out every summer? And it turned out that there was a ton of pent-up demand for these experiences, again, because I think we're chemically wired to be together. And so artists' revenue flipped from 80-20 music touring to 80-20 touring music.

Then in COVID, they lost that revenue for two years as the world shut down. And so artists started to say, what else is there out there for me? It looks like athletes and actors and YouTubers and TikTokers are fully monetizing their brand online. They're backing products. They're creating new consumer brands. Maybe I now have permission to do that. And so touring will still be a huge, more than 50% of artists' income. But I do think there's this new pie piece in that chart of consumer brands, how artists make money through the digital space that is going to grow dramatically coming out of COVID as artists feel like they've got permission to be direct-to-consumer brands. All right. I need to ask this one because

it's me as we head into another terrifying election. Do you think Taylor's political involvement and willingness to speak out about politics will grow, recede, or stay about the same as it is now? Whoever wants to take it. I think it's going to grow. I mean, I think she just... Yeah. But the really only post that she's made outside of, hey, thanks, Seattle. Hey, thanks, Chicago. Hey, thanks, Santa Clara, was I just voted in Nashville. And you need to register early and often to be able to do this. There is a notable absence of touring happening in the fall of 2024. She'll be back in America, presumably having toured Europe.

So I think she knows she has a platform. And she has used it this summer to launch at least one album. We'll see, John, if she launches 1989 this week. But I think it's a platform that she does not take lightly and intends to use. Nora, what do you think? I think that's right. I think if anything, she will do it more. I might have gone with stay the same.

Less, I think, is out of the question. I don't think you put the toothpaste back in the tube on that. And I think it was something she clearly felt very strongly about engaging with for the first time and regretted that she hadn't done it sooner. I also want to I push back a little bit sometimes when I hear, you know, she doesn't speak out often enough, which is just to say that that she is a special communicator. And I think less important than hearing from her all the time about this stuff or whatever it is that people want to hear from her more on is just that when she picks her spots she really goes for it i mean you know i would very much like to be excluded from this

narrative that's that obviously was not something that we got from her in a political context but when she's trying to oh kanye is a presidential candidate i mean yeah right right just gonna ignore that um when when she is trying to just ether through a message and get it across and have a final word she's very very very good, very good at that. So the reason that I certainly hope she does, she continues to make that a part of her public set of stances or whatever you want to call it, is not just that, you know, I would personally like it. And it's not just that I think it's impactful because she has millions and millions and gajillions of people who pay attention to what she does. It is that when she wants to articulate a message well, she can do that with such precision. You know, like we are all in some way, shape or form writers here. She is so good at it.

So it's a real, to me, it is about quality rather than quantity. And for as great as it is for her to say, like, please go vote. My hope is that we will continue to get some very specific messaging from her going forward. I completely agree with that as someone who cares a lot about politics. And look, I think it's tricky for her because I think now her fan base is probably a lot more liberal and partisan towards the left than it ever was when she started out. And especially I would imagine that those fans are the most vocal, especially the most vocal online. And so she gets a lot of pressure to speak out all the time. But I look, she's a very persuasive songwriter. I think she's also very persuasive in what she says.

And she picks her she picks her moments. And she knows, I think, that her audience is not just people who may already agree with her politics, but people who not like hardcore Trump fans, but people who may be on the fence, people who may not be involved politically. And figuring out how to move those people and get those people to vote takes a lot more subtle approach and fewer public comments, I think, than many online liberals would want. Yeah. I think her ability to bring straight males into the fandom this summer is an indication that she's able to onboard people subtly and in ways that are not as overt. She's going after those Joe Rogan listeners.

I got to end by asking you guys a few quickfire predictions about the end of the American leg of the Heiress Tour here in Los Angeles. We got five shows left. That's 10 surprise songs, but there's like dozens she hasn't played yet. Any guesses, hopes? I'm going to get new romantics

because it's Nora's favorite song and it's gonna make her so angry um i can't wait my two favorite 1989 songs new romantics and i know places are both still on the board and i just know it's happening i just absolutely know it's happening and i'm gonna be begrudgingly happy for nathan but seething on the inside on some level i don't think she's played king of my heart which i would love to hear acoustic also like where do we think bon Iver is coming are we gonna are we gonna hear are we gonna hear are we gonna hear cornelia street i think we're gonna get a few surprises in los angeles to say the least i think cornelia street is off the board. You think so?

We didn't get it in New York. You think it's a Joe thing? I think it cuts too deep. Is that the same as New Year's Day? Do we think that's why we haven't heard New Year's Day yet? Well, I think we haven't heard New Year's Day for the same reason we might not hear Christmas Tree Farm. She's staying out of the seasonal stuff in the summer.

Emily keeps saying that we will get Christmas tree farm at the last show. That's what's going to happen. If you do, it's incredible. I keep getting in arguments with people online about how I want her to play Macavity from Cats, which I don't think she's actually going

to do. It's just funny. It is very funny. Do we think there'll be any additional tour dates in the US? Do you think she's actually going to do. It's just funny. It is very funny. Do we think there'll be any additional tour dates in the US? Do you think she's... I saw some rumors. Yeah, there's a lot of rumors. I don't see it. I don't see the time for it. And I think at some point here, she's going to get back into the studio in a more serious way. I also think that she's entitled to have a life. She is now newly single and being on the road is not super conducive to having a functional relationship with another human being. So I will be surprised if there is more. I think she is a theater nerd and she knows that the best thing

to do is to leave them wanting more. Yeah. And we think 1989 is coming soon. I think it's coming very soon. Wow. Very, very soon. Exciting stuff. Nathan and Nora, thank you so much for doing this. This was really fun. think it's coming very soon. Wow. Very, very soon. Exciting stuff. Nathan and Nora, thank you so much for doing this. This was really fun. Appreciate it. Thanks, John.

Very fun for us as well. All right. Max is here. I'm back after a couple weeks of posting some X's, reading some X's, re-Xing. Just zzzzzing. What are we calling it? I don't know what to call it. I'm calling it fucking Twitter. Anyway, that's what we're about to talk about.

The two of us have been talking about the slow death of Twitter for a while now. But now the bird is finally dead. R.I.P. The app is still alive, but the bird is dead. I really didn't think that was how it was going to go. I really thought the service would stop working, and the one part of it that is really effective, the branding, he decided to just voluntarily kill. Elon Musk

has rebranded the social media platform as X. That's the official name, that's the logo, the bird's gone. He started this process a couple months ago because he wants to turn twitter into what he calls a super app here's what he tweeted or whatever the fuck you call it now quote in the months to come we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct

your entire financial world the twitter name does not make sense in that context obviously so we must bid adieu to the bird. 17 years of brand identity down the toilet. What do you think, Max? Why did he do this? So I've heard a few different theories for why he did this. And I think that they could all coexist. I mean, one that you hear is that, like, naming his company X has been his, like, weird, creepy. Yeah, for, like, 30 years yeah it's 1999 or something yeah

right trademarked it and then x.com became which wild it became like PayPal yeah well that was so that's like how he made his fortune was the PayPal mob initially was the PayPal mafia he had this payment company he insisted on the HR guy at PayPal was uh David Sachs now he now that's that's his claim to fame you mentioned that HR guy at PayPal what a jobs. Now that's his claim to fame. Could you imagine the HR guy at PayPal? What a job. Now he's doing Twitter spaces with Ron DeSantis. He's being the HR guy at Auschwitz. Now he's a general in the Ukraine war.

In the meme army. Yeah, right. So he was so insistent when he was one of the co-founders of PayPal through this company that PayPal acquired that he wanted to call it X and he was doing this weird, like trying to like edge out the PayPal name. First, he renamed it to PayPal X or X PayPal. And then he was like changing the corporate structure. And this is actually how he got ousted from PayPal

because the board was like, what are you doing? The PayPal name is so valuable. It's become a verb. It's in the common vernacular. That was a big part of why he got kicked out of his own company. So there's some like weird like you know this is his rosebud sled as he wants to be in charge of a company called x is like probably something there there's the super app argument which we should talk about because i think there's some interesting things there about

like why so many companies in the u.S. have tried to do a super app which is really common overseas but doesn't exist in America and why Twitter is the worst possible company to attempt this and the third that I actually feel like I've not seen as much but I give a lot of credence to is this is all maneuvering for bankruptcy like something that we have talked about a lot is that like Twitter's finances are bad and getting worse all the time. Musk has been caught on tape saying that he thinks that Twitter could have to file for bankruptcy. And I think that if that happens, one thing that this will set him up for is he can go to his creditors because he's going to have to renegotiate the $14 billion that he owes them in the bankruptcy

hearings and say, well, as it happens, one of Twitter's most valuable assets, its intellectual property behind its name and its branding, which is really valuable, exists in this kind of separate company. So why don't you, my creditors, take this and we'll say that that's worth, you know, 4 billion, 5 billion, whatever. You mean Twitter or what Twitter used to be? Just the name. The name. Yeah. Which has happened before in some bankruptcy hearings. There's a magazine, I can't remember which, that sold its name off. And then what happens to X in that situation? So the idea is if he does this, which to be clear, I'm just speculating.

Yeah, that's great. Why not? You know what? That's what Elon's doing too. Then X would still exist as we know it. But one of the assets he would sell off to his creditors is he would say, I can no longer use the Twitter name, which he doesn't want to do anyway because i'm giving that over to like whatever you know set of bankers i owe all this money to are you saying that we could buy twitter

we honestly we could buy we could rebrand offline as twitter um so first of all he's whatever reason he's like really insistent on like extinguishing every last vestige of the bird. Extinguishing? Yeah, right. Oh my God. They like an excellent pun. They renamed all the conference rooms immediately.

They like took down all the logos, including the sign. They took the Twitter bird down from the sign outside the San Francisco headquarters. And then he put up an X on the roof, giant down from the sign outside the San Francisco headquarters, and then he put up an X on the roof, a giant flashing X, which then the city was like, no, you have to take that down because it's bothering everyone. You can't just put up a giant flashing X.

But let's talk about the Super app because he apparently has been enamored with and used WeChat in China as a comparison. And the idea behind a Super app is it's payments. It's maybe it's ride sharing. Maybe it's like your Postmates. Maybe it's you can do everything. You can sell stuff.

Commerce. Commerce, video. You can do it all. You don't have to leave the app. You can do everything. My thought about that is like, okay, I trust that it's obviously working overseas in various places, but like, isn't that what our phone is now? Like, is it really, all this is, is just like breaking down the friction between like going between apps?

Yeah, right. That's what we're trying to do with the super app? Because I have a phone. I think that's actually, that's a really good way to put why super apps have not taken off in the United States the way they have abroad. Because Elon Musk is not the first Silicon Valley tech guy to say, what if we did a WeChat? Because obviously that would be like, wouldn't it be great to be dominant at eight different markets at once? Hey, do you guys notice what's going on in China?

Yeah, tech guys famously never heard of China. There's a lot of country on the other side of the world. Right. They all go to China once and they're like, I have discovered WeChat, something that exists for one and a half billion people. And like a lot of tech companies

actually have been trying to do a version of this for years. Like Uber obviously is now getting into meal delivery. Like Facebook and Apple both have payments. And a lot of tech companies have tried to get into banking,

tried to get into payments, and then they end up shutting those down or they've tried to get into like different services to tack on to their apps. And the reason that is really hard to launch that in the United States, but easier in other countries, is that like when you're launching a super app in like Kenya, because like Temtem, one of the big ones, it's like popular in a lot of African countries, a big super app. You are launching

that in like 2018. And there are not a lot of dominant players already in things like ride sharing food delivery e-commerce right so it's easy for you to say like i'm going to launch one company take over all these markets that don't really exist yet on smartphones if you try to launch that united states you're saying i'm going to take on like seven different giant companies and like dominate the market like twitter's not going to dominate the market in ride sharing it It's already dominated. Or payments. Right.

You can't just buy your way into that. So this is what always they're like, we'll do a WeChat. And it's like, well, it turns out we already have all those services on our phones, like you were saying. So we don't really need a super app. And also you would have to knock out

these hugely profitable companies. And Twitter's definitely not going to do this because you know what? Twitter doesn't have anything of money. You need a of and you know what else you need if you're going to be someone's super app that they rely on for everything and put all their information on as if like uh trust trust and it doesn't have any trust and like the user needs to trust the experience enjoy the experience which means that they either have to like or not care about the owner, which is not the situation we find ourselves in with X, is it?

I mean, can you imagine going onto the misinformation and hate speech app and being like, time to pay my electric bill. Time to do some banking on you. Why is lawyer is a Jew trending? Let me call a ride. Let me call a ride. Get some food delivered on here and it just hate speech shows up to your door instead. Jesus Christ. And one thing that I thought really underscored the fact that I think even Musk must know deep down that he's not going to do this is that when he bought Twitter, they had someone who was leading this initiative to try to do payments on the app, which is really hard to do in the US because of all the regulation. And one of the many people he fired was the person leading the initiative to bring payments to Twitter.

So I think that this is just like bullshit branding to try to justify what he wanted to do anyway for his own combination of like juvenile reasons and just like whatever economic stuff he's trying to navigate. That's my theory one thing i really have enjoyed about this new twitter era x era is um is like the periodic x's from um linda yaccarino the new new ceo i really great life decision linda i know i i and then she's she's like the most corporate babble speak kind of stuff everyone's right like so she on this one she just waited and she's like you're going to have like the most connectivity of all time and it's going to be powered by ai and everyone's in the experience is going to be awesome and it's like

what what do you say i'm so curious how many people said no to that job before he found someone like desperate enough for the pay bump that i'm sure will last like 18 months before this company goes down in flames like what, what a terrible CEO job. You're destroying your own company. You're not in charge of anything because you have this weird edgelord meme guy running everything and you have to do these humiliating exes about how you're taking over the payments business. It's a terrible job.

I mean, she'll be fine. Don't feel sorry for Linda. I'm not pouring anything out for Linda Iaccarino. Okay. Speaking of right wing edgelords, here's a here's a few recent headlines about ron desantis's campaign rolling stone desantis donors want him to stop blowing money on fucking memes uh daily beast ron desantis's campaigns nazi video is what being too online looks like yeah that's a that's a apt,

straightforward description of what happened in American politics. So the reference there, in case you missed it, in case you were not that online, was to a video that the DeSantis campaign briefly retweeted that ends with soldiers marching towards a spinning Nazi symbol that has DeSantis' face on it. Turns out it was made by the campaign's speechwriter, Nate Hockman, who was fired as a result. Hockman was at the National Review before that, has been called a, quote, rising star in the intellectual right, and has said, this was his quote, that he likes hanging out in, quote, the goo of the fever swamp of young right-wing internet circles. Sounds like a cool guy.

Sounds like, he sounds like Target brand Stephen Miller. So did you watch the video? Yeah. What'd you think? I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. It's like weird guy at the computer, whatever that edgelord meme faces. It's a lot of like deep 4chan references.

Deep 4chan. Something that I thought was actually really interesting about this moment as a like marker of where we are in American politics, where we are in like online politics and the relationship between those two things is that it is a like deep like 4chan like online Pepe the Frog Guy references, which is a big thing that like Trump's campaign did. They really spoke to that aspect of the internet, but it worked much better for them. And I think that's interesting. A couple of like, one is that like, I think this is a real recognition that a big part of the Republican

coalition now is like 4chan shit poster, far right, like Nazis. Well, I certainly think it may be the most engaged section of the Republican Party. And I mean, I think it's still it's maybe even more dangerous because these are the people who are they get the attention of the media types, the activists. This is fueling a lot of the organizing enthusiasm, unfortunately. Right. But I think that the difference is because Trump was such a big, is such a big, unfortunately, personality.

In 16, when they did this and they had the Pepe the Frog bullshit and, you know, even now he's like retruth and QAnon stuff. Yeah. That doesn't become like the headline of the campaign every day because the main part of the campaign is Trump because he's such a big personality. He's out there. He's saying whatever. Right. of the campaign is Trump because he's such a big personality he's out there he's saying whatever right and even in 16 like his tweets ended up on like mainstream media channels right so like CNN is talking about the tweets and they're talking about Trump but it's more about Trump's message than about what's happening online because DeSantis is such a like fucking stiff uh who's

just boring and dry and wooden right the machinations of his campaign become the headlines, which is this. I remember in 2016, though, I remember a lot of days when the news cycle was dominated by Trump or Trump Jr. retweeting some Pepe the Frog Nazi. Do you remember the meme they put out of Hillary Clinton with all the stars of David? Oh, yeah, that was a...

I think that the difference is the way that... I mean, number one, I think that the online far right came to Trump. Yeah. Whereas what DeSantis is trying to do is to cultivate the online far right. And I think that's part of the trouble that he's gotten in is he's like picked out a faction of the online far right, the Groypers. I hate that I know that. Wow.

Which is this faction that they hate the alt-right because they think the alt-right are a bunch of their words cucks because they associate with jews oh i did not know that yeah it's this guy nick fuentes who is like his whole thing is like talking points usa he considers to be like a bunch of centrist shills because they have jews and they really hate that jesus but like part of what got them in trouble is they like have the nazi stuff but they don't actually have the energy of the online far right behind them and i also think that just the like place of the online far right has changed over the last seven years where in 2016 i think they represented unfortunately a lot more people it was a much bigger movement and they like energy that they like what was then the gamergate coalition

basically in 2016. Like I think that brought a lot of energy to the Trump campaign. And now the online far right is much more siloed. It's much more extreme. And it's like much more fractious, which is like what happens when you become part of the establishment as they definitely did during the Trump era. era yeah i also think that if we're just talking about the difference between trump and desantis as politicians the the normie maga voters yeah which is now like the i call them normies because they're like the mainstream of the republican party now unfortunately like these are demographics for this group as like boomers who watch fox that true. And they want to hear about immigration,

crime, the swamp, crooked Dems, like all the ultra-nationalist America first bullshit, right? And that's Trump's main message still on his discipline days. And I think the DeSantis campaign is designed, like you said, to try to appeal to the Nate

Hockman's of the world right and that group of people in the Republican Party is you know college educated online extremely online and they're picking at every culture war fight that's out there they know all about it and there's a lot of the energy in the party is there, but the numbers and voters aren't there yet. And so I think that's why Trump speaks to more of the Republican Party than DeSantis does. I think that's absolutely true. I think it's also a sign of how much the influence of the online far right in 2016 and 2017 was a creation of the social platforms. Because they were really big on Twitter and especially on Facebook.

And then finally years later, when those platforms started to crack down on them, guess what? Suddenly they don't have anything like the cultural influence that they used to have. And I do also feel like something I hear from people I know who track the online far right is that the January 6th prosecutions

have had an incredible chilling effect on the people who would be leaders of these groups because they really are terrified now of going to jail. Whereas in 2016, 17, and especially in 2020, obviously, they thought like the wind is at our backs. We've got the zeitgeist. We have the mandate of heaven and we can do whatever we wanted.

Yeah. Well, that's a good thing. I think it is. Some people have compared DeSantis' campaign being too online to Elizabeth Warren's campaign being too online in 2019, 2020. What do you think about that? I mean, it feels a little unfair

because she was too online in the sense of like... Also, no Nazi videos from Elizabeth Warren. Right. She wasn't hanging out with groipers and talking about how much she loved the like far right influencers. It was just like two.

But I do think it's an apt comparison in like speaking to when you base your understanding of your own party's politics on what you see on Twitter and what you see online

you end up with a very skewed perspective. Which I think is what happened to both of them. And the reason it's skewed is because the online, very engaged crowd is more college educated. They consume more news.

They are mostly news junkies like us. And in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, that's just a fraction of the electorate in each party. And so in Elizabeth Warren's case, it's like most voters are unfortunately not making up their minds on who to vote for based on your plans and policies. Based on page 37 of a 300 page PDF. Yeah. And look, I didn't, you know, I, I loved Elizabeth Warren and I made the mistake of thinking, yeah, everyone, everyone in the party is gonna love these plans you know but it's just that's and in desantis's case it's like not everyone knows

the ins and outs of these fucking esoteric culture wars that he's talking about he's on tv talking about suing bud light you know and like most even most republican voters were like suing bud light i know and then in the new york times sienna poll for the republican primary that just came out like they gave Republican voters an option. Do you want a candidate that will fight woke ideology or one who closes the borders and fights crime? They wanted law and order and crime stuff and immigration stuff. They didn't care about the woke ideology as much. Do you feel like this kind of online world, online discourses have become less influential over time?

Or do you think it was kind of always irrelevant? I think in the last year or so, it's started to, it's become less influential. I agree too. I'm not totally sure why that is. Like online controversies don't seem like as much of a thing right now. It's much more interesting, right? Yeah. Also, everybody online is too busy fighting about Barbie and Oppenheimer right now to

care about the future government of the country. I also think it's just everything's become more decentralized. Right. Like because mainly because of what Elon's done to Twitter. And so that's falling apart and no one knows what's going on with threads. And so it's just a much more decentralized online world right now. Like Facebook really used to be the center of online American politics, which I think people like you and I, it was easy for us to miss because we weren't in the Facebook demographic, but it is really not anymore the way it used to be both because it's user base in the United States is declining. And also just because they are trying to push so hard away from political

content, which usually just leads to more misinformation on the platform, but does make it less relevant to politics day to day. And you know what then? Good news there too. Just more good news for all of you guys. So before we go, we just want to say thank you to Margaret. Thanks to Margaret.

One of our offline listeners who sent us these fantastic forget me knits. And these are forget me knits. You put this on your phone, and it reminds you that you're on your fucking phone too much. So it's a little cloth band that has colors and patterns. If you're not watching the video, it has patterns woven into it. It looks really cool,

and it's just wide enough to go over the notifications on your phone. I've had it on my phone a bunch, and it is actually really helpful. It makes you think for a second because you have to slide it off your phone to check it. It blocks the notifications. It makes me use my phone less. And when you touch it,

there's a little bit of an electric charge. That's just yours. That's just yours. We did put a car battery on your Forget Me Now. So thank you, Margaret, for... What's the website for Forget Me Knits? I'm looking for what's the what's the website oh yeah I was looking for that here

it's forgetmenit.com forgetmenit.com forgetmenit.com so check it out alright Max well I'll talk to you next week

thanks for thanks for joining at the end here happy exing fuck Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor.

Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vassilis Fotopoulos sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Amelia Montooth, and Sandy Gerard for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Rachel Gajewski, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Thank you.