Offline with Jon Favreau - How to Survive the 2024 Election, Tech Predictions for the Decade, and the Best Life Advice

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Jon and Max are back and ready to answer your mailbag questions! But first, a post mortem on the Offline Challenge: best practices that remain, where their screen time stands now, and why on earth Jon logged 17 hours in one day. The two discuss parenting the Internet Generation, their tech predictions for 2033, and how to stay sane in the run up to the 2024 election. Then they dive into their favorite media scandals, the best career advice they received, and whether Kim Jong Un listens to Joe Rogan. 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.

do the job you want to do and not the job you want to tell people you do. And that question, it's great advice. And it really like threw me for a loop because I realized and have been constantly realizing since how often I will go to like privilege a job or privilege a career. And like, I talk to people all the time to do this without realizing it because I think it will like sound prestigious and it will be fun to like brag to people about it. And when you really think about like, what's the job that's going to make me happy while I am doing it, those eight hours a day are going to feel fulfilling. It's like, it's often a really different job or a really different career and it can be hard. David Axelrod has put that advice

in a slightly different way that I always think about, which is think about what you want to do. Don't think about what you want to be. Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah. Because the B takes you to a place where it's like perception and what you're telling people and stuff like that. What you do is what drives you. What is the identity that I want to have. Yeah. Welcome to Offline. Hey, Max. Hey, buddy. Welcome back. We are both back from vacation. We are. Tanned, rested, and ready to pod. And I'm still fighting off a little jet lag.

Oh, no. So we figured we'd answer some of your questions this week. You guys sent some great questions. Thank you to everyone who sent questions. But first up, we have some Offline Challenge-related questions. Remember the Offline Challenge? Should we remind people about? Yeah.

So we were both horribly addicted to our smartphones, spending like four to five to six hours a day on our phones. And so spent like a month or two going through every week trying different little hacks, tricks, apps to break our addiction to our smartphone and try to like take our brains back. That's right. That's a good, that's a good description as any. So Bubbles Becky asks, did you guys regress on your offline habits? And did Max ever learn his way around LA? Mainly Morgan asked, screen time updates would love to know if and how you've kept it up. And Lauren Weiler said, asked, did John get a phone while he was in Morocco or did he take a phone break and just use Wi-Fi? Lauren, I really appreciate your confidence in me. But no, no, I definitely had my phone the entire time in Morocco.

I was in Morocco for a wedding. For those of you who don't follow me on social media. I have to say, I am actually glad that we're talking about this now when we both came back from vacation. I did not expect how hard it was going to be to stick to being rigorous about my smartphone on vacation, but it's really tough. I found it to be tough.

I blew it. Because I just looked at my screen and it's fucking horrifying. Okay, let's hear it. All all right so here's what here's how it went here's how it went for me i'm just gonna first i'm gonna break out like my vacation and because there was different numbers there were different times where i was better or worse on stuff so i was in maine for about a week and a half but crucially the week and a half overlapping with the republican correct debate in which you were, I would say, extremely online. Yes, I was.

And so Emily's parents live in Maine. It's a place called Biddeford Pool. And so we were there for a week and a half. And then my parents came. So it was just like a lot of family time, a lot of hanging with Charlie. It was like fantastic. It was beautiful weather. But that first week, like you you said it was the republican debate and i said to everyone here before i left that i would join the discord to do that partly because

dan and tommy could not do the discord because they were getting ready to record the show oh sure that night and love it was like off offline love it just took a real vacation um what is that like i know so up until the debate i was on social media like very plugged in watch the debate, I was on social media, like very plugged in, watched the debate. Emily and I ended up watching the debates in bed and then watched the Tucker Trump interview after the debate. Back to back. The Barbenheimer of shitty Republican discourse. And at that point, it was midnight East Coast time. I'm like, what a romantic night just sitting in bed watching Tucker and Donald Trump.

What a vacation. But then the next day, I took Twitter off my phone. Okay. And I was like, I'm done with that. And then I think from that point until I went to Morocco, I was really good. In Morocco, I was good. But the days that I traveled, the big travel days, not good.

Yeah, the travel days are tough. Because you're stressed. The only thing in front of you is your phone. So if you look at this whole thing on my phone, actually the first week of vacation. Let's hear the numbers. The average was two hours and 42 minutes a day, which is not terrible. That was when was like very online for there's a lot of media stuff sure

and just you know it wasn't too bad oh i also set i forgot i set app limits an hour for twitter and an hour for instagram and did you observe them yeah pretty much yeah because if you look at my most used it's really not it's not in there while am proud of you, an hour per day on each of those apps is so much time. It goes by fast. Which is the Charles Barkley ad, I am not a role model. I usually

hit both of them when I wake up in the morning because I'm up before anyone. You are. You are up before literally anybody. Even on the East Coast, I got up at 4.30 in the morning and I drove to the Dunkin Donuts in Saco, Maine by myself at five in the morning. And then I saw the sunset, the sunrise when I came back and it was beautiful. Did you know one of the big advances in technology, okay, seeing the sunset on your way back, wow, big advance in technology is that you can now make coffee at home. It's not the same. I don't

do it as well. And I brought Dunkin' Donuts too, but it's just not the same as going. Okay, all right. And I got to bring Charlie Munchkins back, which he was very excited about. That's fun. What's his favorite kind? His favorite kind is the glazed,

just like plain glazed. Yeah, that's the classic. And he likes some powdered donuts too. Yeah, really good. So Thursday, August 31st. I know this is the day that we traveled to Morocco. This is Tommy's birthday. We were all joking about him spending the day in we traveled to Morocco. This is Tommy's birthday. We were all joking about him spending the day in the Delta Lounge.

Eight hours and 53 minutes that day. Come on. How is that possible? On your phone? How? But. What were you doing? Here's Twitter.

You only have one life to live, man. 42 minutes on Twitter. So what were you spending the time on? This is why it's not as bad. I was everyone okay okay we were all texting we were all trying to keep in touch with each other that's the the methadone of twitter addiction is the group text is a group text and then also um emily did not end up going to morocco at the last minute because she's five and a half months pregnant was like and she's like laying out all her outfits for the wedding and she's like i don't think i can spend four nights in the desert like i think this is like it's i don't think and charlie's starting

charlie started preschool on wednesday she's like and then we're gonna like for him it's tough and we're leaving him here with we're really gonna be in maine with my parents and her parents right she's like i just i don't think i can do it and i totally understood and i'm glad she missed it having having gone i'm glad she didn't go really i gone, I'm glad she didn't go. Really? It was exhausting. Debatched. Not that debatched. It's just like the time zones and you're in a, you know, it was a lot. But so we had a text chain that she asked to be kept on.

Okay. Just to stay up on what's going on. Of the VTORs and a couple of our other friends, couples. And so there was a lot of texting. Right. So then the rest of the days weren't too bad, except then my day back which was tuesday the 5th 17 hours no that's not possible that doesn't it's 17 hours how did you do that five five something most of it was spotify what were you what can what can i was on the plane so i was i was like listening on the plane to all these different

podcasts oh and then just had the screen up the whole time? You know why? Why? I know why this happened. You know your phone locks, like the screen locks automatically? Sure. I gave a toast at the wedding, and I was very worried that the screen, that I'd lose my place. And so I turned off screen lock before the wedding, but I never turned it back on.

So this is sort of a technicality. And the Chinese hackers are going to get you like no problem. I know I turned it back on when I got home, but that was not. So that's it really isn't as bad as it seems at first. I hope not. But I think that crucially. Okay. The I stuck to the Twitter and Instagram time limits.

Well, so how are you feeling? This is what it's all about is just like, are you feeling more connected to the Twitter and Instagram time limits. Well, so how are you feeling? This is what it's all about is just like, are you feeling more connected to the outside world? Do you feel like you have more control over your time? Yes. Well, that was my very long story about this. And I'll, sorry for all the explanations. But what I realized is,

because I was also alone in Morocco, alone in our hotel room that like, I thought I was in Morocco. And, but this, the person who got married is my best childhood friend from home. And he's also,

we went to college together. We were in DC together, LA together. So as much as it was, his wedding was like everyone I knew from my life. That's nice. And who I hadn't seen in a while.

So I got to like, I was texting and hanging out with my high school friends. I was meeting them, my college friends. But so it was just like sure i felt extremely connected to everyone okay and i also feel like your phone was pulling you away no the phone helped me okay like meet them places and okay and so i'm gonna meet you here i'm gonna meet you there and then like talk about the experiences we just had and there was like a group whatsapp chain of

everyone in the entire wedding that was like going back and forth and talking about the wedding and sharing pictures. Who had the best bits and jokes on the WhatsApp wedding text thread? Because it's high risk, high reward. You know, I think I did some pretty good things on there. Okay, okay. I think I did. Good. You got some good thumbs up emoji responses.

Good crying, laughing emojis. I always try to hit, I want to get one comment that's going to get a lot of thumbs up and then just out. Just Costanza out. Don't risk it. Go out on a high note. Everybody remembers the one joke that was good. Yeah that's a well and also like the bride side lot of like super smart funny people

on her side. So it was real. It was competitive. I will say it was competitive. I love that. Yeah which we like. Alright tell me about your vacation. Tell me about your phone time. So my average per week down from four and a half hours per week before we started the challenge. And then at the culmination of the challenge, I was down to like 90 minutes a week, which felt amazing. I'm back up now to between about two hours and two and a half hours a week.

I've been kind of following it for a while, which is like better, but I still feel like I'm backsliding. The one thing that I have kept from the challenges is grayscale on my phone. I like really cannot recommend this enough. If you do one thing, if you make one change to your phone, put it on grayscale, you will spend so much less time on it. It's so effective. It does, it's fine on you. It makes it really boring. It makes it, it's great. Yeah, it's's perfect it's also a nice conversation starter like people see your phone and they're like why is your phone in black and white and then you get to be really smug and superior about being off of your phone which is really good it's tough just with it's tough with the pictures because i'm just like i have a kid and i like especially when i was gone from charlie i wanted

to like look at pictures of him and emily was sending me pictures and that grayscale's tough for that so that was one of so i I've been backsliding a little bit spending more time on Twitter than I want to but I'm at least not posting but I'm reading it more than I want to I'm going to try to deal with that I'm still off TikTok 100% I haven't opened it like six months the backsliding I did during the vacation where I added another hour up to like three and a half which I feel bad about because I wanted to be on my vacation. I could feel myself spending more time on my phone than I wanted to.

I turned color on because it was in Montana. It was a glacier, which is beautiful. And I wanted to take pictures of it. And then I was just like tired and like giving myself like a little treat and being like, you know what? You can, you're on vacation, spend more time on your phone.

It's fine. And the thing that i am remembering is that if you backslide for even a week which i did and i was like could excuse it because i was on this trip i was like whatever it doesn't matter i'm like tired i'm back at the hotel is that i'm still feeling the effects like a hangover like a week later yeah i tried to watch this like french film that I've been wanting to watch forever a couple nights ago. And it was really good, but I could feel my attention span, like really drifting.

I deposit like 40, like every 45 minutes to look at my phone for a few minutes just because I had this one week off. And it was really reminding me that like, there's no permanent fix, that I'm just going to be fighting phone addiction forever. And I'm glad I'm doing it because it's absolutely worth it.

But it's like, I don't know if there comes a moment where it's just like gone out of your life. I don't think there is. I mean, that was sort of my conclusion I came to over the break because it's just, it's such a part of our lives that all you can do is i think try to i think about what um katherine price talked to us about which is like it's not how she doesn't do necessarily like hours of screen time but like how you use the phone and i and i know at the time seemed like oh maybe that's an excuse you know but i do think there is something different about connecting with people in your life with your phone versus scrolling on Twitter. Yeah. Which, honestly, like I've been much better at and I did not miss.

Yeah. We've talked about this before. I have shifted a lot of time on my phone from Twitter, Instagram, things that make you feel like you're socially connected. I absolutely do not to the group chat. And it's just it's a way better. It's way better. Okay. Should we move on to. Yeah it's just, it's a way better. It's way better. Okay. Should we move on to?

Yeah, let's do it. All right. So this is for you from Jenna. How are you, and this is a really hard one. How are you anticipating navigating social media phones, et cetera, with Charlie and with Baby F, which is your forthcoming child's name, as they get older? I have a 10 and 13 year old and neither have phones. Even the 10 year old is becoming an outlier in this as most of the kids in that age group now have

phones. I've seen even six, seven, eight year olds walking around with them. Terrifying. Jenna, thank you for this question and thank you for painting a nightmare vision of the future. Baby F's future. I honestly hadn't thought,

I've been trying to get through like screen time, TV time at this age and I haven't really thought about, until you asked that question, Jenna, I hadn't thought about phones when it becomes phone time and I actually haven't talked

with Emily yet about this. So I'm sure she'd appreciate this is a great way to start the discussion on a public podcast without her. This is how to yeah that's that's that's life married to a podcaster baby you signed up for this you knew what you were getting into um i think it's hard because like i don't i wouldn't want him either of my children to be complete outliers and i think there's like such peer pressure that you don't want

to have it could be the only kid at school who doesn't have a phone like i don't at least for us i don't think that's yeah that's tenable i think it's like talking to your kids about the phones and and sort of like sitting with them and uh you know maybe when charlie's at the right age i'll talk to him about the offline challenge what we did all this, a lot of the stuff we've talked about. Like I sort of plan to do that, you know. And I actually have found that so far when he's watching TV, what I try to avoid is like both of us, Emily and I both try to avoid is like leaving Charlie alone with the screen for too long. Because if we're with him and he's watching something, then I find that sometimes having a discussion about what he's watching can really be helpful. And, you know, like social

activity too, instead of a like you and the screen. Right. And look, I grew up, I mean, we had no restrictions on television when we were kids, my brother and I, we watched a ton of television. And like everything from cartoons to the educational stuff on PBS, you know, all the square one and all that. If anyone remembers, if anyone's old enough. And it was education. Like I learned a lot of my vocabulary from the television and now charlie is like learning words and phrases and sentences and i'm like i didn't he just started preschool wednesday like i didn't teach him that where'd he get that and he got it from some educational television show so like i think there's benefits of it and i think transferring that to the phone

stuff is just going to be like what we're just talking about. We live in the world, we live, the phones are going to be part of our lives. And I think the key is to figure out how to best use the phone so that you can balance the benefits of connecting with people with all the risks and dangers that we have talked about throughout the show. I don't have kids, but I'm planning to at some point. And this one really terrifies me because nobody has figured it out this generation of adolescents now are the first ones to grow up with phone addiction and the stories that I hear from friends with kids that age are it's like they really can't pay attention to anything like they have no ability to focus because it's just like they have TikTok in front of them all the time obviously the like way that social norms develop for kids when they're spending so much time online,

especially through the pandemic, as it's much meaner, much crueler, there's much more bullying. And I was talking to a friend of mine who works for a tech company, and they just did this big survey of how kids are using tech now when they go to college. And something that had not occurred to me, but made a lot of sense when he was telling me about it, is that a lot of kids now who go from high school to college, they don't make friends in college and they don't go out because it's so easy for them to stay connected to their high school friends. And he was talking to college professors where they were like,

yeah, the campus dies every night at 5 p.m. because everybody goes back to their dorm to socialize with their friends from high school because it's scary when you go to college and make friends for the first time. And imagine if you just didn't have to do it, didn't have to try, you would never develop that skill. And I like, I feel like the next 10 years are just going to be this process of discovering all of these ways that it's going to be like really hard to grow up phone addicted. That is wild because, and just thinking about the wedding I was at, Josh and I went to college together and we were roommates when we got to college my friend from my

school and then we were like 45 minutes from home at our college and we did see some of our high school friends a lot yeah but it was and it because it was comfortable and like being it wasn't until we were like really forced to go like go out in the world and make friends and have our own activities and stuff like that that we met like all of our college friends and if we were like really forced to go out in the world and make friends and have our own activities and stuff like that, that we met like all of our college friends. And if we had like phones at the time. You never would have done it.

It would just the, it would have been so much easier. Right. Yeah. To avoid that. So that is a real, that is a challenge. Yeah. That's why I, when I have kids, we're moving to a survivalist compound in Montana. That's what I was doing out there. It was scoping out sites and we're,

it's gonna be like that M. Night Shyamalan movie, The Village. We're all going to dress like it's the 19th century. We're not going to tell them what's really going on. And you know what? It's going to rule. They're going to be so healthy. I will say the happiest I was was when we were in Maine. There was just like, because there's so much to do outside. Yeah. Like Charlie really took to that. And we were like down on the beach looking for sea glass and like running around. And so there was much less screen time for all of us than when he's just home during the day because there's just so much to do. So I do think the outdoors is like helpful there. Being active.

And I have found that one of the best ways for myself to break my phone addiction is to just go out in the world, go for hikes, go for bike rides. Yeah, that's huge here's a question from kcat16 uh what is the non-social app you're most embarrassed about using regularly and a somewhat related question from denise vine eight left twitter months ago now too much time on pet finder now we have three dogs help denise denise you know what that is someone after my own heart that the level of addiction to the phone is so great adopting pets now you have a home full of animals because you're on Pet Finder too much. Fantastic. It made me think of early in the pandemic

how much time I would spend opening up Wirecutter every single day just looking for random bullshit to buy just to have like an activity and like getting deeply knowledgeable about the best like air purifiers and like paper towels. I really, I applaud Denise,

you caring for these animals, but based on the way you have phrased your question, ending it with the word help, I think maybe you ended up with more dogs than you wanted to. And I would really urge you to consider number one, deleting the app. And number two,

to go back to our friend Catherine Price and the advice that she gave to us that if you are addicted to an app or to your phone, don't just think about the app. Think about what need, emotional need or like impulse you were trying to fill with that app. And I'm not going to try to diagnose what's going on with Denise over the microphone. We're not at that level of podcasting yet. But I would say think about what you're looking to fill with dogs and maybe see if there's something else to fill it with.

Well, that's a good segue to my answer to my non-social app that I'm most embarrassed about using, which is the Weather Channel app. And here's the thing. Some of this is very – This is such an old guy answer. Well, it's also very like context related because I i don't when i'm just when i'm in la there's no weather to look there's not a lot of weather to look at and so i thought but i am a you know i am a new englander by birth and you know live there for many years and so there was a lot and when i went back and we were in maine and and part of the reason you know we

were there when we were is Emily's dad turned 70. We had a big 70th birthday party for him. And Emily's mother-in-law and me are both weather-obsessed people. And we were very worried that it was going to rain. And so I was just checking it all the time. All the time. And I realized, why am I checking the weather app? I am checking the weather app because I want to have some sense of control over what happens.

And I think that if I know that the weather is going to be bad, I guess we could have moved the party. There was some conversation about moving the party indoors. But I was like, for some reason, I was checking it so many times a day. But that's not going to help. So the weather's not going to change that much. The weather's not going to change that much. Like the ideal thing would have been to look two days before, figure out if it's going to rain and then have a backup plan, you know, inside. That's it.

That's all you need. You don't need it all the time. It is a way to try to get control where you can't actually get control. I do feel like it's one of the like great indicators of a type A personality because I am always shocked when I meet someone and they don't know exactly what the weather is going to do for the next 72 hours. And it's like, how could you not know? How are you just going out into the world and you don't know what the sky is going to do? Come on. I'm looking at radars.

Oh, yeah. I'm looking at. Oh, yeah. I'm like. R.I.P. dark sky. This is a system that's just going to pass. And I can tell that it's going to pass. You've got weather takes.

And then when I knew that I was going to Morocco alone, and you know how I am with flying, I looked at the turbulence forecast, which is a website, turbulenceforecast.com. Really? Which I've been checking for a long time. Is it reliable? It is reliable, but then they're offering personalized forecasts. It's a service market to one person and i was like i'm gonna try that for morocco because i was very like nervous about flying and there was all the hurricanes in the atlantic and so i wanted to know and this guy emailed me

who was very very helpful peter and um send me personal turbulence send me the turbulence thing and then he said and i just want to ask is is this Jon Favreau, the actor? Wow. Also, tough beat. Like it happens all the time. Did you tell him like, no, but I am a Jon Favreau? And he said, he's like, I've heard of you too. But he was very honest.

He was like, look, because of the weather system, it's going to be pretty. He's like, from Newfoundland to just south of Iceland, it's going to be really bad. And he goes, if they climb to 41,000 feet, you might be. So he's giving me details. And sure enough, I was fine, even though the flight was quite bad. Interesting. Because I sort of knew it was happening. So this actually sounds like it would be a really helpful service for people who maybe have some anxiety around flying, as more and more people do because of the big break we all took during the pandemic.

Right. And again, it's a control thing. It's like if I know the information, I can feel better. It's being in small planes with no Wi-Fi and no one I know that's just like, here I am by myself, not hearing anything from anyone. That doesn't seem like such a bad habit. Although it's making me wonder, man, could you imagine if Meta started a weather app? It would just be pushing you the scariest weather everywhere in the world every seven minutes. Yes.

Well, you, I mean, you know, you Google turbulence and it's like, there's 50 million articles about climate change is making turbulence worse. And it's only going to get worse as climate change gets worse. Is that true? Could be true, but like. It's catnip, catnip for the John Brain. So is yours wire cutter? I don't spend so much time on it anymore. But similarly, mine is Zillow.

I love to browse houses. I love it. I love to look at them. I love to... Even cities I have no intention of moving to, cities I've never been to. You know what's fun? Find the housing market someplace

that's like really, really cheap. Texas, right around the border with Mexico in the eastern part of Texas. Great, incredible houses. Steals. Absolute steals. And they're fun to look at. Yeah, there was a period where Emily was showing me places in Cincinnati. She's like, when her parents are still living in Cincinnati,

she's like, we could move to Cincinnati and get quite a house. I used to love looking. This is a like years long habit with me. I used to love looking in the like Rocky Mountain region because it's beautiful and I really love it. But every, speaking of the evils of the tech industry, every fucking tech guy moved to like Bozeman or Jackson or bought eight houses there. And now you can't get anything. It's not even fun to browse Zillow in those parts of the country anymore. Yeah, I've heard stories too

where the people who are working in those resort towns can't even afford to live there because all the rich people have bought up all the houses. And so they're commuting two hours to work. Oh yeah, yeah. It's two, three hours commute. It's the only people who they can hire

in a lot of these places are the kids of people who live there. So if you go to like a restaurant in these places, it's all these like stone 16 and 17 year olds. And inevitably

and also understandably, they all like stop showing up to work after two or three weeks. So a lot of these places, like all the restaurants are shutting down randomly. It's a real problem.

I don't think that, anyway, I don't think Zillow is too embarrassing. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. All right.

So Tara S. asks, any suggestions for a relatively healthy and low blood pressure way for consuming political content during the 2024 election beside the pod, which we all love?

Thank you, Tara. Thank you. Michaela V. Adams. I spent so much time wondering. I think it's Michael Ava Dams. How can you stay informed while also trying to be offline? Thanks for the amazing. Thank you, Michaela.

You're welcome, Michael Ava Dams. Michael Ava. You want to take this one first? So I have three tips. Okay. And this is all assuming that like look if you're listening to the show we're all news junkies nobody's throwing their smartphone in the river no one's deleting twitter even though like you should but we're

just like let's be honest i'm like gonna meet you where you are number one and i have been doing this recommend it really highly only connect to check up on the news once per day i have picked times to check the news down. Look at that. Okay, okay. I love it. And it like, you don't need to know the news the moment it breaks.

You don't need to know. You are going to be fine. This is wild to consider this, but there was a time when you found out about the news once per day in the morning, it was printed out on the shittiest piece of paper anyone has ever had. You'd get ink smeared on your hands.

Oh, it was disgusting. It's garbage. And it was all old by the time we got there. And you know what? People were fine. It was fine. Tip number two, if possible, and this is hard, but I really recommend it,

get the news first from a non-social app outlet like a podcast or going to nytimes.com, whatever, and then go to social media second. We all know you're still going to openTimes.com whatever and then go to social media second we all know you're still gonna open Twitter but just if you read the news article first you will process it much more rashly than if you read the like shitty fucking takes and number three don't post do not post yourself and you will really find and then we're big evangelists for this and even though I know it's not super intuitive that social media affects you

so much less if you are not yourself posting on it. This is very true. This is very true. I could help learn that one better. I don't post a ton, but since I got back, I've posted a little too much.

Did I need to post today that someone wrote a puck article about how Jeff Rowe was a genius. And then four weeks later, Ron DeSantis is like maybe going to fire him. Like, what do I care about Jeff Rowe? Did I need to post that? No, I did not.

But I did. How did it feel? It's just like posting. You post it, you feel like, ah, got it, yeah, post. You get your little zap. And then like 10 minutes later, you're just like,

eh, that was stupid. I know, it feels, it's like it's eating junk food. It's it. It feels good, but then you feel bad about it afterwards. I think those are great pieces of advice. I would also say when I'm using Twitter now, I've said this before on this pod, Twitter lists. Like make yourself a list of a couple different people that you want to follow especially for news right like i have a just news

list of people who i just want to get the news from right and they're not going to post a lot of takes they're not going to post a lot of opinions they're just going to give me the news and i go to that and i'm not going to share with everyone that list it's not public because i don't want you fucking criticizing the people that i pick to follow news wow okay oh we got so we got some controversial we got some controversial, we got Tucker up in there. How many members of the all-in pod are on this Twitter list? All the besties.

Okay, okay. All the besties. Gotta get those jam-out takes. Gotta get the besties. But anyway, so the Twitter list is good. And then, but I agree, like go to a news site first. Go to like the New York Times,

Washington Post, Politico, CNN, NBC, the Atlanta, those are all places that I. Even if you literally just read the headlines. Yeah. Oh, the other one is just be intentional about what you're looking for. Yeah, right. When don't just go scrolling for news. Think to yourself, like, what do I want to get from the news?

And what am I looking for before you go check it? There's so many news stories that I find out about Twitter that make me so upset. I'm so angry about it. And then I'm like, I never would have found out about this or cared if not for social media. And relative to the things on like actual top of like news homepage is not that important. For example, I was in Morocco, very unplugged from the news. And again, my phone time was up there, but I had no idea what was going on in the country and I was very happy.

I said this to Dan Pfeiffer on Pods of America. He was trying to text me and Tommy the Wall Street Journal poll about, you know, Trump and Biden tied and stuff like that and neither of us were responding.

He just kept like sending cross tabs and stuff. And I was like, I just looked at my phone. I was like, I got to put this away. I got to do this later. And nothing bad happened, right? You took a break and it's fine. We were sitting around and Tommy's phone. I was like, I got to put this away. I got to do this later. And nothing bad happened, right?

You took a break and it's fine. We were sitting around and Tommy's like, he's like, this is so, he starts laughing. I'm like, what are you laughing? He's like, have you heard what's happening with Burning Man? I'm like, what is happening with Burning Man? I missed the whole Burning Man thing. The whole Burning Man discourse.

The Burning Man one, at first, I think it was kind of a fun one where it's just, it's like the escape llamas all over again. It's just like a fun thing that we're all laughing about. It's low stakes. But then it did very quickly become like a capital D discourse. And then people went from like dunking on the burners, which I like, look, we both know

people go to Burning Man. I'm not like whatever, but it just like, it's funny. Come on. But it went very quickly to like people like literally hoping for their deaths and people getting like really mad about it and it's a little bit like the submarine discourse right yeah it was submarine just like if so why are all these why did all the discourse end up with like people wanting someone to die yeah well it's just it's all every discourse has to identify a good person and especially a bad person and then you have to

have the maximal take about how much you hate the bad person and it's like just laugh at them for getting stuck in the mud you know like chill it was funny because in one of the wedding toasts someone made a burning man joke in the toast okay and i was just like but it was funny because because i wasn't so connected to the discourse it was the first time i was like oh that's an that's an interesting joke like is that you know it landed with enough people because everyone's very online but it was i was like oh, that's an interesting joke. I'm like, is that, you know, it landed with enough people because everyone's very online. But it was, I was like, oh, okay, that's what happens

when you do a discourse joke in real life. Right, yeah, yeah. Okay, BigTom52, how do we depolarize our country and depopularize right-wing conspiracy politics? Well, BigTom52, if we can answer that question here, we should not be doing offline.

We should be doing something, we should like. Should we start a stopwatch and see how quickly we can answer solving for all of politics? Just 31 minutes into the pod. Let's go for the absolute hardest possible question. Anyway, for a bonus episode where we answer Big Tom 52's question, check out. No, look, I don't know. I think it is.

The shortest thing I'll say about this is that it comes down to, I think, a lack of trust that we have in society right now. We can talk about why it happened, but like the lack of faith in institutions has now turned into like a lack of faith in each other. And I think like rebuilding community offline, rebuilding bonds with people offline, arguing and debating about politics offline is not going to solve everything. And I'm not going to pretend that before the internet politics was wonderful. But it's something you can do.

It's something you can do. And one of the people at the wedding, one of the bridesmaids was like a very conservative person. Like not conservative, like works in conservative. Really? Yeah. Like professionally. Like hat has like a lot of ties.

Okay. And we had the longest discussion at one of the dinners that was like, we disagreed quite a bit. Yeah. But like we didn't go crazy. Okay. And we didn't like flip the table over or anything like that. Yeah. And I was like, I haven't had a debate or a discussion with someone in person who doesn't think at all like I do.

Yeah. In a long time. It's hard. I usually just avoid them because it's just so easy to, for it to go off the rails. It is, but it's just like, I think that, you know, doing it online is never going to work. Yeah. So I will not, I think it's a great answer. I will not try to offer a like solution, but just as the one thing I can add, having spent a long time, like writing and reporting on the rise of whatever you want to call it, populist sentiment popular authoritarianism like right-wing extremism to like whatever is the movement that

is spreading worldwide that it's like at its most basic level there's a supply problem and a demand problem that's driving it and the demand is it's many things but if there is one thing at the core it is a reaction against perceived social change and social change that people dislike and the reasons that people dislike it are complicated, the circumstances in which they do or don't. But it always comes down to like, my community is changing in ways that feel out of control and I don't like that. And I want someone to like do whatever it will take to rein in the people I don't like and to control it. And the demand problem, or the supply problem rather, is political parties increasingly cannot or will not cordon off extremism in the way that they used to, which is traditionally one of the most important roles that political parties have

played. And for, again, complicated reasons, democracies worldwide, they just can't do it anymore. And those guardrails have really weakened and fallen away. So I don't think social media is driving either problem, but both of them is making it way worse for sure. Right, because to your point about cultures changing and society changing faster than people think it should, you want something to be done about those people. Right.

When you are around those people and living with those people and working with those people and they're your neighbors. You don't feel that way. You don't feel that way. Some people do. Again, it's not like a panacea here but like you are less likely to feel that way right mary kate mcglogg asks favorite media scandal other than

trump obviously of 2023 what do you think so i don't know if this counts as a media scandal but i just had a great fucking time when my boy pergozen had his big march to Moscow that was just just a great ass time in the internet if you are a big foreign policy nerd and you just want to like geek out with the other foreign policy nerds it's also like I'm so sorry to the Russian Federation extremely funny how fucked up your country is like and I put together a Twitter list on that one that was such a big thing on the weekend I was like okay I need my Ukraine war experts right here. Who was on the list? Again, I don't even, it's on my phone somewhere.

I don't even know. I just, I was the perfect cross section of like. It was just you, Ben, and Tommy. That's all. Okay, perfect, perfect. Just want to make sure I got my boys on there. You joined the discourse, the discord rather. It just like really engaged both the like parts of my brain that love to think critically about this

and was also fun to joke about. I mean, he crossed the Rubicon and then uncrossed it. That's wild. And then... Supposedly. We'll see. He's going to show up at a convention in Vegas. I bet there's a Discord around that.

Okay, that's good. I just liked the Fox Dominion stuff. Yeah, that was fun. The text. It's fun when they just liked the Fox Dominion stuff. Yeah, that was fun. The text. It's fun when they deserve it. And the Tucker leaving. The whole saga was, I mean, it was enraging to confirm what we had all believed, what was happening behind the scenes at Fox, but it was also just fun.

It's been a big year for Just Desserts. And it's really nice to see that. It's really nice to see. And when it's people who deserve it, too. This is not like someone getting canceled because they did a bad post this is like really bad people who are bad for the world getting confronted with that and getting a comeuppance it's great and i will say there was a lot of debate around like will tucker be as powerful off fox as he was when he was on fox. I'm like, I think, I think we, we know now that he has lost a lot of juice.

Yeah. Although a lot of that I think is also because he left Fox and then decided to partner with the biggest jackass on the shittiest platform in human history. Yeah. And like, like if they're content with saying like, Oh, I just did an interview that got like 300 million billion views. Like great.

Good for you. Yeah. Your view counts off, but you tell yourself whatever makes you feel better. All right. Twisting and Shouting asks, I love these handles. If threads doesn't take off and Twitter continues to spiral, is this overall format doomed? The more I think about it and the more I look at the numbers, I think yes. Do you think that...

We've been on Twitter Death Watch for a long time now. And I can't tell if it's actually going to go or it's just going to be in this sort of liminal state where it's just sort of shitty to use and not fun, but we're still on it because we need a place to look at the news. I think it will continue to creep along until or unless there is a big shock and elon musk other holdings that like something bad happens with tesla in china or like the tesla stock price drops and he can no longer afford the um interest on the loan for buying twitter and then i think it'll go bankrupt but i think even before he bought it the the usership and the

user base on this app was declining relative to other apps. It was already declining. And I think that it's so much of that energy and audience was going to TikTok and YouTube. Even if the Elon thing hadn't happened, I think that inevitably, even though I think microblogging has a lot of value, I think that audience was going to go to the video services, which is, I think, bad for the world. What do you think is going on with threads? What? Who? I don't remember I just said come on there's no it's not working this is this is a I still think that their biggest mistake was not coming out of the gate with a desktop version yeah because I think I

would have used it a lot more if I could be sitting at my laptop, which is where I am most of the day because I'm at work. I think it's a good point. And I think a lot of that was meta hubris because they make the Instagram desktop service deliberately difficult to use because they want to push you to the mobile app. And of course, this was all I like, Instagram subservice. So I think they thought they could get away with the same thing and it didn't work. Jenna asks, if you had your druthers on a bill that would address what we all see as some of the systemic issues in these social media conglomerates, what would be your must-haves for inclusion? This is a perfect Max question. Okay, so I have three. The first and I think the biggest one, because this is the one that when I was talking to people for the book about like if you could change anything about social media, what would it be? What would be the thing at the top of your wish list?

They would all say turn off some or any of the engagement maximizing features. Like turn off the counter that shows you the visible number of likes beneath the post. Turn off reshares. And of course, like turn off the algorithm if you can and even if you can't get the algorithm turned off completely because i think it would be really hard to do with any legislation like turn it off for some topics which is a thing that some lawmakers have called for before and i think it's like something that we could get is like any video that has a kid in it don't the algorithm doesn't promote that any post that references kids

or references something sensitive, like just have the algorithm not promote that. I think that is something that would be hard to execute, but we know technologically it's capable. The companies are capable

because they've done it occasionally. So just be a matter of just like forcing them to institutionalize that. Number two, I think legal liability for medical misinformation. It's just like, it's such a clear case where it's like, you can really demonstrate the harm very clearly. It's very easy to draw the line for what sort of content is allowed and not allowed. It's harder to do that for violent extremism. And there's like, there are some cases now around trying to

get legal liability for violent extremism that was promoted by the algorithms. And it's just hard to prove like what counts as extremist content. Although again, the platforms have done this for jihadism and pro ISIS content. They like really went scorched earth on a few years ago and it was very effective. And they just choose not to do that with other forms of extremism because of course the big one is right-wing white nationalism. And that is very closely associated with one of our two big political parties. So they, like, don't want to piss them off. I know, isn't that fun? Which is another issue.

Yeah. You think so? We don't have time to get into right now. And then number three, I would say just limit the ability of kids to access the services. That was my big one. Yeah. And I don't know how you legislate that in a way that is doable, right? Because, I mean, you know, there's ways to get around.

Like, are you putting your birth date, right? Like, I don't know if the mechanism is doable for that. I mean, some of the platforms are much better at it than others. So you could force the platforms to kind of... Yeah, or you just create a fine-based system and then these companies can afford pretty steep fines. So you calibrate the fine so that you assume there's going to be some amount of leakage

and then you just call it a tax. But you say if they're so egregious about it like the way youtube is that you're going to get hit with really big fines pippi ph hooray 12 pip pip pip in pip hip hooray oh pip pip hooray maybe that's what pip who who are a okay spaces in your names folks it helps us out. We don't know how to read here. What do you think will be the next big tech in 10 years? I feel like the answer here is AI, but am I missing something? I mean, it seems like that is the, it will probably be something AI associated because that's where so much of the investment is going.

So like whatever AI actually delivers us in terms of capabilities. I think we just, we don't know. Before the big social media boom in the early 2010s, you never would have guessed and no one had any idea it was going to be social media. I think whatever it is, it's important to remember that it's not going to be decided by where does the technology go? And it's not going to be decided by what are consumers most interested. It's going to be decided as these always have been in these Silicon Valley cycles by what is the silicon valley financing model select for and that is going to be the things that attract the highest market valuation as quickly as possible so that the investors can dump a small amount of money in it

and then make a big profit very quickly by sending the company public and with social media apps that meant companies that could get a lot of users on free to use websites. That's been the model for a while. Maybe it will continue to be, maybe it will be something else. So John, this is from Riley. Four favs. if you hadn't done political speech writing as a career what would you have done great question i think the only other two sort of more um mundane answers and one maybe more interesting one okay uh i was either going to go to law school and be a lawyer yeah yeah or i had thought about journalism. Really?

What would you have covered? I don't know. But I loved, I was like, it's like the opinions editor for my college newspaper. Really? I was editor in the high school newspaper. Okay. So I really liked, but I was sort of like veering towards politics there, which made sense. But the other, the completely different direction would have been music.

Because I played piano and then I did some music theory in college and I don't know when I practiced for this wedding and we played there and it was like so much fun to do. I was like if I could have figured out like how to sing or really get in this like being

like doing like performance with music would have been really fun. Do you ever picture what your life might've been like? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like, what do you,

what do you think is the thing that you might have ended up doing if you'd gone down that path and like it had worked out? Yeah. I think it would have been like just performing in hotels. Just, no, I think it would have been more like, like pop music,

rock kind of stuff. Like I would have been like, maybe I would have been a band. Maybe I would have. That would have been cool. Yeah. I think you could have been like the touring piano player for our girl Taylor Swift. Perhaps. Perhaps that might have been it.

But there's like a glimpse into another life. You know, it was a glimpse into another life there. And I love music so much. Like when you fantasize about it, what's the song you picture yourself playing? I don't know. You really? You don't know. You really? You don't think about that? I have not gone that far.

You don't kind of sit around and imagine it? I have a pretty eclectic taste in music. I have quite a range. Okay. What's your favorite thing to play now? I mean, I've just been, well, because we played for this wedding, we played the first dance for the couple

when they wanted us to play your song from Elton John. And Elton John and Billy Joel when I was a kid were both sort of like my entree into pop music. And so I have like both of their full collection of songbooks and know a lot of their stuff and I love it because

it's very piano heavy and piano first. It's really cool. You should come on the show sometime and play some Billy Joel. Yeah, perfect perfect can i give you my answer yeah i would have wanted i don't know if i would have been would have wanted to work in movies and if i could pick any job in movies it would be designing opening title sequences really because you get so specific i love it so much control over it it's because it's like it's this one narrow specific thing. And there is like there's really never been any art form like this where you're supposed to express story and emotion and all of this stuff. But you don't have any of the traditional tools of like character or narrative.

You're conveying it all through music, design and typeface. Like not even text because the text and the word is like produced by whatever but you're trying to like design that in a way that will convey something like give you a feeling of what the story is going to be i think it's really cool and you're trying to grab people right you're trying to pull them in yeah yeah beginning yeah beginnings are very important if you like next time you watch a movie that has like a good opening title sequence like just kind of like sit and appreciate it and it's like it's a really cool very specific kind of craft that goes into it i just think what they do is so awesome uh here's a great question from uh x tina small okay i'm guessing that's christina

small okay any advice for a 24 year know we were going to hit this one. Oh, you know what? Emma wanted us to include this because she said, you got to think about the Gen Zers out there. You got to think about the Gen Zers. Thank you, Emma. Don't know where your life or career is going. Do you have an answer for this? My answer, which may sound trite and cliche, but I think sometimes there's wisdom and, you know, things, advice that's trite and cliche. I, for a long time, thought that I was supposed to go to law school because that was like the path. And like I was supposed to figure out how to be successful. And being successful was like, oh, well, law school is a good path because you can then be a lawyer and then you'll make enough money there and blah, blah, blah.

And I really, I like fell into political speech writing. And the way I fell into it is I was an intern in John Kerry's Senate office because we had like an internship in D.C. program at Holy Cross. And I interned for David Wade, who was his communications director and speechwriter. And I did all kinds of shit work in that internship, right? Like I was like, you know, going through his Rolodex and entering it into his BlackBerry, all of his contacts, you know, it was just like a five day project, you know?

And then one day he was like, do you wanna, he was asking me do you want to, he was asking me to read constituent mail and like edit the constituent letters. And he was like, you know, John Kerry's going to do an op-ed

for Martin Luther King Day in the Boston Herald. Do you want to like tonight go home and like take a first cut at a draft? And it was, and I thought about it like I look back on it today

because it's the kind of thing where it was like at the time internships were unpaid and yeah also that was a lot of extra work to go home after a full day of an internship and to like i stayed up to like three in the morning writing that but i was so passionate about it and i thought it was so fun and then looking back i realized like if you the things that you find that are so fun to do, that drive you, that you're passionate about, like they're a lot of the times they're not going to be like, they're not going to pay you a bunch of money at first. But if you can figure out ways to

get that in your life, even like a little bit, then it might set you on a path where that can then become your career. And I do think that a lot of it requires just like putting in the time and doing the grunt work and being willing to be like, be the person who's like, yeah, I'll stay late. I'll do this. And, you know, I think, look, there's a line where that becomes like abusive to employees to do that and interns. But I think it's gone a little bit in the other direction now where it's like you've really just got to put your time in. And you've got to be willing to do some shit work to get where you want to go. And it's tough and some of it's unfair, but it's reality and it can really pay off. It's funny. I actually had a very similar experience

of identifying the job that I wanted to do, not being able to get someone to pay me to do it. And I had this like very shitty aggregation job at the Atlantic was one of my first jobs in media that I like hated. It was grunt work. It paid terribly. And I really wanted to write about international issues

for the website. And they were like, nobody will read about international issues on the internet. Like, obviously, we're not going to hire you for that. It was it was like very like 2009 2010. It was like people want to read about politics, tech and food on the internet. That's it. And so I would do like the day job all day and like put in a full day and then go home. I would write about international issues for them for free. And I was like, just let me write it. And if you like, you like it, you can publish it. And again, it's like, I feel weird giving that advice, because I don't want there to be like a world where people have

to work two jobs. And it's like, obviously, only limited some people can do that. But that honestly almost stopped me from giving the advice, because like, I know how people can take it. And there's also like a certain privilege that some people can have where you're like, well, you know, I mean, I, when I was on the Carrie campaign, I was getting like $24,000 a year living in a $700 a month basement apartment in Capitol Hill that had like rats in it. It's like you had roommates at least. And like my parents aren't like super wealthy,

but they were like able to at least subsidize me enough so that I wasn't like starving. But like, you know, not everyone has that. So like I completely recognize that. But if you are in a position where you can figure out how to spend the extra time during the day doing what you love, it is the best chance you have to get to that. So let me tell you advice that I got, I think literally when I was also 24, that has really stuck with me and I've tried to live by ever since, which is to do the job you want to do and not the job you want to tell people you do. And that question, it's great advice. And it really like threw me for a loop because I realized

and have been constantly realizing since how often I will go to like privilege a job or privilege a career. And like I talk to people all the time to do this without realizing it because I think it will like sound prestigious and it will be fun to like brag to people about it. And when you really think about like, what's the job that's going to make me happy while I am doing it? Those eight hours a day are going to feel fulfilling. It's like, it's often a really different job or really different career. And it can be hard. And my sister was like, she and I talked a lot about this because she worked in policy in DC for a long time. And she would call me up all the time and she would be like, I'm realizing that this is the job I want to tell people I do. And the job I

actually want to do is be a nurse, which she just went to nursing school for. David Axelrod has put that advice in a slightly different way that I always think about, which is think about what you want to do. Don't think about what you want to be. Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah. Because the B takes you to a place where it's like perception and what you're telling people and stuff like that. What you do is what drives you. What is the identity that I want to have versus, yeah. Okay, a few more quick questions. This isn't so much a question, but with the Timothy-Kylie thing.

I don't know. I don't know who those people are. I don't know what happened between Timothy and Kylie. And you know what? I wish them both the best. I wish them both Godspeed. And Taylor Swift. I guess everything with Taylor Swift.

Can you do an episode on parasocial relationships and how the internet is making everyone think they actually know celebrities? Yes, we have been talking about this for several weeks now, if not months. Yeah. If anyone out there has good ideas for guests to talk to about parasocial relationships,

we haven't landed on anyone yet. But if you guys have a good idea of people we should talk to, we've been wanting to do that episode. Yeah. I would love to. It's something that shapes so much of how our media works now. I would love to have a deeper understanding of what role it's playing. Which episode of Offline has been the most insightful, impactful, and why? That's from AWH96. Honestly, the one where I came on almost exactly a year ago to the day had a big effect on my life because I ended up coming to Crooked Media, moving to Los Angeles partly because of that. So that was a big one for me. I have two down here. I said the first one is Max's episode, obviously.

Wow. Thanks, buddy. And then the second one is for personally impactful. Sure. When I had Dr. Bob Waldinger on about his book, The Good Life Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness. This is the 84 years study for Harvard study. Please read the book. Listen to the episode if you want,

but also like actually read the book. It's about how close relationships are. This turns out that is the most impactful on what your happiness long term what kind of close relationships you have and i think personally for me it has like shaped my world view not just and how i like on the things we talk about on offline and social media and connecting and all that kind of you know the offline challenge and all that but just like how i think about life now and i've recommended it to a bunch of people and everyone who's right is like oh my god this

is great so everyone read that book. And then finally, Jenna asked, do either of you have an offline dream guest? I have an answer for this. So I'm drawing on my past as a foreign reporter here. There's a certain international political figure who has not confirmed that they are very online, but I really think everything we know about them suggests that they are super plugged on to the internet and that it shapes a lot of their politics and a lot of the decisions

that I think would make for a fascinating guest. Putin? Even better. He seems pretty online. Kim Jong-un. That is better. You think Kim Jong-un

is super online? I think he is so plugged in. He's our age. He's super millennial. He grew up partly in Switzerland under this assumed name. And everything we've heard about his childhood, he's loved international stuff. He was really into sports. I think he's not only online.

I think he's a podcast guy. And I just think talking to him about what is, how is, I mean, I'm not going to chum it up. Do you think he's more of a Joe Rogan all-in fan? I think he's probably, he probably listens to some Joe Rogan, yeah. Even if he just got it on in the background while he's testing nuclear warheads, you know, just as a like kind of distraction

to keep him company while he's launching the mass North Korean games every year. That is such a good answer. I don't even, I was going to say Bo Burnham. Okay, that's good. I've been trying to get Bo Burnham on because I thought,

and I like listened to that album again. The show was fantastic on Netflix, Inside, that he did during the, it was basically what, when I was thinking

about Offline, what like crystallized that I want to launch a podcast about being too online is watching that special. Bo Burnham, Kim Jong-un, come on Offline. Let us know.

Yeah, reach out. Have your people reach out. All right, everyone. That's our mailbag episode. We will be back next week. And thanks for listening. All right, cheers. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon 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.

Midwesterners, get your malort out. Love It or Leave It is coming to Chicago on September 21st and Madison on September 22nd with wonderful guests like Brandon Johnson, Shea Coulee, Peter Sagal, Alice Waterland, Jillian Flynn, Ben Wickler, and more. Tickets are going fast. Head to crooked.com slash events to get yours today. Non-Midwesterners, pour your malort in the toilet.

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