Offline with Jon Favreau - Max Returns! AI Bubbles, Info Silos, and 67

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

What happens when the AI bubble bursts, how did Meta get away with it yet again, and…is Elon “Bubba”? Max Fisher pays Offline a visit to take stock of the year in memes, conspiracy theories, and information siloes. He and Jon meet the ghosts of twitter fights past and future, compare notes on staying off their phones, and chat about what they’re watching right now…besides Zohran and Trump flirting.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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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To listen early and ad free on Apple Podcasts, subscribe now at Bloomberg.com backslash podcast offer. Welcome to Offline. I'm John Favreau, and with me today is a special treat. Hey, buddy. Special post- Thanksgiving treat is Max Fisher. Listen, it's thanks. Thanksgiving. You want to be cozy. You want to be back with your pals. We got a sweater on. We got

some turkey out. How are you doing up there, Max? Up there. I'm guessing. I'm in Los Angeles. So anything New Englandish is, yeah. I don't. Well, as of this recording, our new mayor, Zoranman Domini, has just had a meeting with Trump where he was apparently appointed the new vice president. So I guess things are going well. And so we had a meeting right before this. So I've been seeing everyone tweet about it. And you know how I have watched it. When there's people tweeting. and slacking excitedly and I am just supposed to be in a fucking meeting and I can't watch anything and I don't know what's going on it's like the worst fomo I'm about to do a YouTube rapid response

reaction thing after this with John and Tommy so I'm just going in cold you haven't seen it yet I know I heard it went great and I saw some of the I saw the quotes but that's yeah oh my god we should honestly we should if we have a minute at the end we should watch one of the clips because it would be really fun to see you react live on camera I also think it's very funny that people are going to be listening to this the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And so by the time you're listening to this, they could be bitter foes again. No, I don't think so.

I think this one is going to stick. I think by Monday, yeah, we're going to be nationalizing Kroger. Well, we're going to take some of your questions. We thought that we'd bring Max in, since he's the nicer one to answer a bunch of listener questions. and, you know, and get some of Max's genius, too. No, I appreciate that you've been occasionally, mostly pleasing, but occasionally upsetting the listeners in my absence. You've been keeping the Max spirit alive.

Just why I keep everyone on their toes, you know? That's right, yeah. All right, the first question is from Blema. What do you guys make of meta winning its antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission? Do they, as the judge said, no longer have a monopoly on social? media. I just have to say, when I saw this story, I was like, I thought of you, Max. And I was like, Max has got to talk about this on our episode. I asked the judge to hold back on the ruling until we were going to do this recording. And he was very helpful with that. So look, you know that I am

absolutely fan girl number one for Biden-era FTC chair of Lenacom. This was kind of her, one of her big projects, not just this case specifically, but a lot of the big antitrust cases against big tech companies. And this was a very big swing that she took or that like is kind of her strategy for antitrust more broadly, which is not to challenge the meta merger with Instagram and WhatsApp, which they were calling to be broken up on the grounds of breaking merger rules, but by the much higher bar and much harder legal standard of declaring it a monopoly. And that was a thing that she wanted to do and a lot of people the FTC wanted to do because they wanted to kind of build up this big precedent for anti-monopoly ruling so that they

could then go after other companies. They sought as this great tool, which makes a lot of sense for kind of stopping the power of big business. But as you alluded to, it's not really clear that Facebook or the meta rather has a monopoly on, as the FTC claimed, all personal social networking. As we are aware, there are other companies that do social media out there in the world. And it was pretty easy for meta, which broke a zillion laws in the way that it acquired WhatsApp and Instagram to nonetheless say, well, we're not a monopoly because TikTok exists. And unfortunately, that was persuasive. And the FTC actually got a big warning that that was going to be persuasive almost a year ago in a ruling from a summary judgment that said, like, you guys should be careful because you're on really

thin ice with this legal strategy. And as it turns out, unfortunately, they kind of shot their shot here and missed on the basis of that, which is too bad. It's a real bummer. But also, do you think it says anything about the broader strategy of trying to do this through the courts and not legislation or government regulation that would be more permanent? I think that's a good point. I think the specific thing of breaking up meta and these companies, I think it made sense to do that through regulations, through the courts, through something like the FTC, but this larger goal that led the FTC to pursue this much tougher anti-monopoly strategy of like breaking up the power of big tech, I think you're absolutely right that that is something that makes more sense to do

legislatively. Yeah, I'm thinking about that just going forward on AI companies, because, Like are we going to just wait until they're all super big and then say, you know, we got to break them up when it feels like it's too late. Like it always felt to me, even when like Elizabeth Warren was talking about it in the 2020 campaign, it always felt to me that like the size of the social media companies while too big and like you said, clearly meta, you know, did quite a bit to acquire Instagram and the rest that are unsavory, if not illegal. the real problem with them and the real harm they are causing does not necessarily have to do with their size. Totally. Right. And the real problem with them, as you're saying, is their influence over our minds and our economy and our political system, which is not per se illegal. So it was kind of like this weird backing into it to find something illegal that they did in order to reduce their power. Whereas, in fact, what we want to do is we want to change the amount of power these companies are allowed to have, which is a legislative problem. Yes. Yes. but Congress will get right on that, I'm sure. Yeah, no, I'm sure we're going to see some action on that very soon. Speaking of AI, we've got a few questions about that.

Ryan Old asks, is AI a bubble? What's your take on whether it's a bubble or not? You know what I'm going to say. It is the most telegraphed bubble burst in human history. Really? I did not know that. In like in 2007, it's not like we had notes being put out by Bank of America in Goldman Sachs every four days saying, by the way, stocks are going to go down because the bubble is going to burst. Like, we didn't have, like before the dot com burst, like, yes, there were some people

saying like, hey, this seems like a bubble. But the fact that we all know that it's a bubble that it's going to burst, and that's not just like takesters like us who don't like these companies saying that. These are financial analysts who are saying that. Even the AI companies themselves, if you kind of read between the lines of what they say, they kind of acknowledge that it is a bubble that is going to burst, at least in the sense that even if you buy their big, claims for AI, they believe there can only be one winner out of all of these different companies, which means all the other companies are going to have to fail, so that by definition is a bubble that is going to burst. But we're also in this weird place right now where

the bubble is not actually the AI companies. The bubble is the data center and chip companies that do like the infrastructure that goes to the AI. So part of the weird market logic here is you can believe AI is bullshit, but still believe that tech companies are going to continue spending on data centers and chips, which it seems like they probably are, which is how we're in this weird place where we all know this is going to burst eventually. But we also, you know, a rational analyst can look at this and say they're probably going to build more data centers. So it makes sense to keep riding this to the top, even knowing that it's going to explode eventually. And, you know, I know Navidia released earnings this week. And everyone

was like, oh, well, there's good enough revenue there. They're making money. But that sort of speaks to the issue. And these AI companies are taken in revenue as well. But with the amount of investment that has happened so far and the amount of just debt that's being taken out, it just seems like, I'm trying to figure out a revenue stream or an amount of revenue that's going to like ever make them truly profitable. Because, you know, you have a ton of people around the world paying for chat GPT and LOMs. You can sell sort of like business versions. They're souped up for more money, you know, enterprise versions.

And then, but then it's like there's got to be some, it seems like they're all betting on some big leap forward that's going to like open up all these other uses for AI and all these other possibilities that then and then they figure, oh, well then that'll create a whole bunch of other companies and businesses and then the problem will solve itself. It seems like that's, like, you know, I realize that's not the most sophisticated explanation, but it really feels like that's what they're all betting on. No, totally. And I saw some analysts put something out that said that in order for the industry as a whole to become profitable,

they would need every single smartphone user in America to start paying $150 a month for access to AI. Or if you had, or it was like every Netflix customer had to be spending more than that. It's like, it's crazy numbers. But the rational irrational irrationality about a bubble is they can all know that they're never going to hit that number, but they're in an arms race against each other now. So they're all trying to outspend one another knowing that they're never – I mean, someone did the math and found that just the amount of on the book's depreciation for the AI infrastructure that has already been built is going to be something like half a trillion dollars a year, like way more than they could ever make in revenue to the point where it's like basically mathematically impossible. for them to make a profit. Look, I think this country is really cooking. The economy right now is built on data centers and private prisons.

The two things that are really booming right now, everything else. Probably want to look elsewhere. I know. Yeah, it's that in health care, basically. Right, health care. If you're getting a little older and you need to be wheeled into a nursing home with your AI center, then you're doing great. But that's pretty much it. I should also point out that the AI bubble bursting is like the might be the better scenario than the AI bubble not bursting and then the robots taking over everything, which we haven't talked about in a while, but I feel like I have become, in the interviews I've done since you've left and everything I've read, I've become much more anxious about that possibility than I was before.

I have been listening and it's, yeah, it had the same effect of me. I hadn't quite thought of it that way that in order for the bubble to not catastrophically burst, we're going to have to become the Matrix, basically, those are the two options we have at this point. I do think that financially, economically, the bubble bursting at this point would not actually be so catastrophic for people. It would be bad if you work in tech, but for the rest of us, we'd be basically okay, because it's not like 2007 where what was so catastrophic about the housing market collapsing was, first of all, we all live in housing. And there were all of this weird debt intertwined that brought all of these banks down. And now most of it is financed off of the spending from these huge tech companies that are plowing trillions into it. So, you know, if meta goes down, I don't think we're going too sad.

There's a scenario for you. I don't know if you saw the news. This is another question that Trump is like threatening an executive order to curb states laws regulating AI. They tried to get this through the bill, the tax. out bill in the summer. I think it was like pulled out last minute. It was like one of the minor wins we talked about. But now Trump is like really wanting to do this through an EO. And I just thought today that actually, oddly enough, House Republican leaders, Senate Republican leaders too, are urging him to hold off on this. And I don't know if that's because they just want to do it through legislation

or because, you know, I saw Marjorie Taylor Green, our new, welcome to the resistance. opposed against, you know, opposing this idea to, like, curb state's powers and even, like, Ron DeSantis is against it and other Republicans. It seems like it's an interesting issue that may be splitting their base, but I don't know what you think about that. I mean, the kind of the standard read on this is that he wants the stock market number to keep going up. And as you mentioned, that's AI data centers at this point, is what's keeping that number up. My theory, and this is just like a pet theory, has always been that. Trump loves nothing more than to be like the strong man twisting the arms of big companies to extort them, especially the AI companies to extort concessions from them. Regulation is his point of leverage for that. If the states are regulating AI companies, that dilutes his power and his ability to bully these companies and to say, you know, everything goes through me. If you want something, then you have to promise another fake trillion dollar investment or whatever. There's another reason, too, which is more ideological. He said,

And I don't know if this is other people telling him this or what he really believes. Who knows? But he was in an event this week and said it would be a, quote, disaster for 50 states to regulate AI, quote, because then you would have one woke state. And Ted Cruz has been saying this, too, that like if we allow blue states to regulate AI, we're going to have a bunch of woke AI models. That's true, yeah, because you would have to defer to the California regulations. Clearly, this is what Elon is worried about, building, you know, grok. and grocopedia and all the rest of it. And it really is pretty disturbing to me

that the people in power right now want to have influence over the creation of these models because I do think they can fuck with them enough to make them, you know, sound like MAGA. Sure. I mean, J.D. Vance just texted Bezos. I'm sure you saw this to say, you better put a right winger in charge of political reporting at the Washington Post.

So, yeah, of course they're going to, I mean, this, again, it goes to they want leverage over these companies specifically. But yes, I think it's also the case that they want to be able to tell them what to do ideologically. I always try to just give myself a mental test. Like, imagine that the, you know, tables returned, the, you know, the shoe was on the other foot, whatever. It would make some sense to me why you would want federal standards for something like AI rather than kind of a weird patchwork of states. But of course, we know that we're not going to get real federal regulations while Trump is in power. Yes. No. And I think we talked about this a long time ago. And I do. I understand the desire for sort of like one standard regulation or one standard law regulation, whatever it may be. But, you know, in this environment with Trump as president, it feels like I don't trust the people in power to do this. And so you kind of want it to go to the states at least for a little while. But at some point, if we don't want. want this to be a complete disaster. We're not going to be able to avoid having to have some

kind of legislation around this. I mean, politically, it's great to have a wedge issue to divide the Republican caucus, especially because AI and data centers are so unpopular nationally. It's something to call attention to that and to call attention to the split between, you know, the fact that Ron DeSantis is to Trump's left on this is crazy. Greedy from Discord. I love these names. But I read it earlier. I didn't know what it meant, but now hearing you say it, I get it. Same.

Max, do you have a favorite piece of art, be it book, movie TV show song, it doesn't have to be good art, that reflects your anxiety about AI and how it's being handled, what the impact of AI on society

your life might be. And then they give an example of a song that was quite disturbing the video. It's a crazy song. Automation, tell the automation, get to talk of a flagrant

when a son of a power's the father you join in a hundred to a thousand imposters. What is a difference? If people want to Google it, It's called Things Will Get Much Worse from Here by Kill Bill X. Ray X. Hatsune Miku, which it's on my workout playlist. So it's a lot. It comes at you. There's just a lot of high century. It does, it feels like things are getting worse. Just that's so it's, you know, it's titled, titled Appley. Appropriately. Anyway, what do you think? Do you have a favorite piece?

I, for me, it's got to be that episode of the studio where Ice Cube comes out and starts chanting, Fuck AI over the The Cool Aid Man movie. And he's right. We don't need any AI in our Kool-Aid man movie. That's a great episode. It's incredible. I was thinking about this. I actually don't know if my anxiety level around AI is super high relative to kind of everything else, even just everything else in technology and the stuff that we talk about. I am for sure anxious about many aspects of it.

The things that I'm most anxious about would not make for a great movie. It's, you know, people getting dumber, media literacy, like kids not learning how to read. does it make for a great movie? I guess Eddington gets pretty close to it. What about you? Well, the next question is from Amphastaff about asking, is there any good movie or TV shows you've seen lately? And this person mentions Pluribus on Apple. Have you started Pluribus? I have. It's beautiful to look at. What do you look like you? This is a show. It's about AI. About AI. It took me like two episodes to sort of figure that out. I guess we can talk about it for those who

have seen it. So, spoiler, spoilers, spoilers. This is a very big, there's a very big thing that happens in the first episode. Oh, no, I don't want to spoiler for Emma. Okay, Emma's here too. And everyone at the, okay, sorry, Delon. It's like the premise of this show. You know. So, in Plurbus, it basically

there's, you know, there's like an apocalyptic event that happens, and basically everyone who survives minus 11 people are part of this, like, the same collective consciousness. It's like they're like a hive mind and it's them versus, you know, the protagonist is this woman Carol that we fall around.

And it, the reason it's like AI, because it feels, it basically reflects one of my biggest fears of AI, which is a world where you can get everything you need. Totally. But have never been unhappier because they are trying to convince her to join them in this collective hive mind and they are willing to give her everything. thing. They don't want to kill her. They want to keep her alive. They want to give her anything she needs, answer any questions she has. They don't lie. They give her all the information. But why do you want that over free will? Totally. Yes. It really nails the voice of AI and chat GPT, where it's both obsequious, but also like creepy and it feels kind of terrifying. Like the Borg is coming for you, but also like you're saying, wants to give you everything that you want. But of course, as human beings, that is not

actually what we want and actually what we're after. I'm very curious to see where they take this kind of metaphor about the relationship between human beings and AI, but I agree it really nails the feeling of being surrounded by AI content and it being not human, it being this like uncanny valley like it feels wrong, even as you know. And there are other characters in the show, not just the main character, Ray Suhart, but these other characters who are also still human and they love it. And she's looking at them like, what's wrong with you? They're using the chatbots and the LLMs all the time. And they're like, it's great.

They're giving me everything I want. And they give great advice and they're cool and they're very nice to me. They're using Grock as their therapist. Yeah. You know, actually hearing you talk about it does make me more. I was a little cool in the first few episodes, but hearing you talk about it makes me more excited to watch the new one that just came out. It's my biggest concern about AI because this to me is the concern that I'd have in the best case scenario for AI,

which is that it doesn't take over the world or unleash. bio weapons or all the really scary stuff but all the financial incentives are to keep you on the platform just like social media platforms and so it's never going to not be um obsequious and and flattering all the time and it's going to suck people into this world where it's so much easier and friendlier to talk with your lLM all day than to actually go have friction points in your relationship with other people. It's a great case for the power of using art or mass entertainment to make these really salient points because like you and I can, and I'm sure we'll continue to shout into microphones about like using LLMs might feel good, but it's eroding your humanity. But to put it into like you're

saying a show like this where they say, okay, let's take it to the farthest possible degree of the quote unquote best version of this. And I'm going to show you how dehumanizing that is. And then you can kind of feel it inside in a way that, I mean, I'm sure, you know, we're transforming people's emotions through the show, but that, you know, is really effective when you kind of experience that version of it through another character. For sure. Offline is brought to you by Naked Wines. Has anyone ever gifted you a really nice bottle of wine?

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And use the code and password offline for six bottles of wine for $39.99. Question for you from Holicity on Discord. people are sick of being surveilled, tracked, and manipulated via their algorithms. This is a daunting issue that lingers in the minds of every voter, but I don't hear any candidates or current party members discussing this in earnest. Elizabeth Warren or Rokana nebulously mentioned privacy on occasion, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent message that voters can relate to. What do you think of this issue?

If you think this could be a winning issue, who is the candidate whisperer who can elevate this topic into future campaigns? Podcasters, pundits, the DNC, someone else. Boy, Helicity, you've come to the right place. So I'm kind of hoping you're going to disagree with me on this. I actually feel like privacy got raised a bunch as an issue like 15 years ago, and we spent a lot of time talking about it. And the kind of consensus public opinion reaction was to be like, you know what, we really don't care. We like the gadgets or we don't care if we're losing our privacy.

And there are reasons I might be sympathetic to that, reasons I'm not sympathetic to it, but it's just to say that, you know, it's good that Holicity care. about that and it's good that people are thoughtful about privacy. But when I think about the things that are effective or could be effective at kind of rallying people against the power of big tech, I think that it's stuff like, you know, harms to kids, radicalization, extremism, maybe more so than privacy, which I think it's very easy to make those concessions to, and I do it too, make these little tradeoffs day to day and be like, you know what, it's fine if the Russians, you know, see what I'm watching on Netflix. So I agree on privacy. I do think that in our current political environment with ICE doing what they're doing

and the Department of Homeland Security and, you know, all of the stories about the contracts with the Pegasus-like company where they're going to try to surveil our phones. So I do think there's potential for a bigger backlash than we have seen on privacy issues recently. I think what jumped out at me in Holicity's question that to me makes it about more than just privacy is manipulated

via their algorithms. So I sort of took that to be it's not just privacy but just... That's true. Maybe I'm just interpreting this as the question that I want us to answer. But I do think that there is a space for a candidate who just

runs like hell against big tech and not just in the big tech is too big lena conway but these people and the machines in our pockets are robbing us of the things that make us most human and you know our free will our time on this earth the relationships we have with people that are sometimes clumsy and painful but ultimately the most fulfilling thing we do while we're here. And I also think that is a feeling and an issue that cuts very deeply across political lines. And it is a concern from religious folks. It's a concern from some MAGA folks you've heard. It's definitely a concern among us and progressives and many liberals. And I think that a movement, and I don't necessarily have the

policy agenda for this movement, but I do think that key to a 2028 candidates, overall message and narrative about the country has to include this issue. Because I think it's not a tech issue. I think it is an issue about how we are living right now and what it means to be alive in 2025, 2025, 28 then, and what it means to make sure we leave something better for our kids in a way that I do think would resonate with a lot of people. it's actually it's hard to think of the last time there was a company or an industry that was this nationally reviled and that people hated this much i really can't think of i cigarettes not even yeah like oil companies sort of had their moment back in the back in the day but not as much you're cigarette companies i don't know if anyone like ran against cigarette companies as much i guess back in the 90s there was some yeah uh you know clinton did something on tobacco companies um but like i think this is right

And I don't think that the way other candidates have run against Silicon Valley or big tech has been where people are. Like, I know that Warren did this in 20, but I don't quite think that message about like breaking up monopolies is the whole story by any means. Right. Yeah. Hers was a much more macroeconomic message. And I think what you're talking about is much more about, you know, these companies are in our homes. Yes. You know, they're talking with our kids.

Yeah, in our classrooms, with our, you know, our elderly parents. Do you feel like there's anyone out there who you hear kind of speaking to this? No. No. No, I mean, no, I should, I interviewed James Talrico on this program last week. And I think, you know, he comes at it from a faith perspective, but I thought in a really smart way. I think Ro, Kana has been talking about this in a smart way. I think Pete of all the potential 2028ers, I know he's been.

I'm thinking a lot about AI and the effects of AI, not just on the economy, but like on the way we live. So those are three people that come to mind, but I have not heard many others. Yeah, I feel like even the best versions of this that I've heard is much more about corporate power and oligarchs, which for sure has resonance with people, but it doesn't have quite the same human level appeal and sense of human level danger that I think you're speaking to. Yes.

took this question because it's about our buddy Elon who we haven't talked about in forever Elon Musk made an appearance at the Saudi Investment Forum and was at the White House dinner for MBS Teddy Schlafer at the New York Times recently wrote that Musk is dipping his toes back into politics what do you make of his return and what do you think of the new Tesla pay package trillion dollars for Elon I think that's deserved so the oh no I mean so the pay package thing is obviously this is part of a long-standing issue where I think you can look at Elon and you can say this guy is a fuck-up and he's crazy

and this is a conversation we obviously had a lot of year ago and yet how is he still kind of so fetid in Silicon Valley how does he still have his job and I think part of what's going on here is that he has stacked the corporate board with loyalists but I think there's a deeper thing here that there's what Elon wants you to think his job is and then there's what his job actually is

Like, Elon wants you to think that his job is being the mad scientist. He's Tony Stark, yeah. Right. He's Tony Stark. He's Iron Man. He's going to take us to Mars, blah, blah, blah. That's not actually what his job is. His job is to keep Tesla's stock price up.

That's it. His job is that number and that little line. And Tesla continues to be wildly overvalued. It's nearly twice what it was right before Trump got elected in 2024. So, you know, maybe that will be something that burst. along with the wider tech bubble because it's all part of the same money chasing this rising set of tech stocks

but is just to say that if you're looking at how clearly crazy and toxic he is and then looking at the fact that he just got 10 quadrillion dollars from the Tesla board that's kind of what squares that circle. As for his return to politics, look, anything that has him fighting with Trump

I think is good news. Although actually, he's so unpopular. Yeah. Although Teddy's story was all about how like it was sort of this like a couple. It was a story about a couple that was like trying to find their way back to each other and make up. It was like, you know, they referred to Charlie Kirk's funeral. They caught a moment together and then he comes to the White House and Trump like pats him on the belly or something. It was very weird. Have you ever heard Elon go by the nickname Bubba? What do we think? Have we ever

heard that? I'm just asking. I'm just asking questions if Elon might be referred to occasionally as Baba, for example, in various emails. It would answer a lot of questions, wouldn't it? It would answer a lot of questions. Yeah. There was something at the end of this story that it was just like about Elon Musk's relationship with J.D. Vance and how that is still quite close. And how there's an expectation that he might be all in for J.D. in 2028. And I do think now when I hear about tech oligarchs who run large platforms saying that they're going to back a candidate, I used to think, oh, God, they have so much money that they're going to spend. And that's probably still the case. But now I think, oh, there's a huge propaganda machine that comes with that.

That is totally true. Now, I don't, like, two people, Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, I don't know if you've noticed. Neither of them has the most charismatic personality. Right. But I could see that. I know. And there's still this like wider tech, alt-right Peter Thiel world kind of like around J.D. Vance that clearly sees themselves as the palace and waiting for after Trump. And part of me finds that almost kind of reassuring because these people are also incredibly unpopular, that it's like, okay, let's run it and see how few states you get. But there's also part of me that's terrified of that because, you know, he's the vice president. they're, you know, they're already fucking around with the election system and, you know, who knows how many more votes we're going to have.

I know. And I, my first instinct is, God, I hope it happens. Like I, you know, and then I think, I think of two other times I felt like this. Yep. I'll start with the obvious one, which is Donald Trump, right? Hillary Clinton will win in a land side. Right. And that was, he's such a buffoon and he's so offensive, right?

Which is, I mean, and man, maybe it's easier in retrospect. to understand why buffoon and offensive is not a deal breaker for the voting public. But the other time was in 2012, when we were looking at the Republican primary and from the White House when I was working with Obama, and we were all like, God, it would be awesome if it was Mitt Romney. Because we want to make this a choice about standing up for the middle class and fighting economic inequality and making sure that everyone has a chance against sort of the Republican. version of this, which is trickle-down economics, privatizing Medicare. And it was like, Mitt Romney is the perfect foil for this.

In that way, I do think J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, the tech oligarchs, Elon, from what we were just talking about, what they are trying to do to the country and get away with, I do think it could be a really good foil. And I also think that they're humorless fucks. So I think that helps as well. I think it's a great outcome if we still have. real democracy in 2028, which huge caveat, huge. It's a significant asterisk. But I'm feeling a

little less terrified about that than I have been after this is the last couple of weeks after the election. Me too. Not because I think that they've suddenly become good guys or they don't have all of these plans, but because they seem to think that they need to run normal electoral politics now. And their response to the elections was about we have to go out there and try to sell our economic message instead of saying, you know, let's cancel the next round of elections or let's put, you know, ice and more streets. I have a lot of fear that as they become more and popular and get more cornered, that they will become more dangerous and lash out in ways that are unpredictable and quite scary. But that said, the fear I had on top of that before was

and most people are not going to care and maybe still support them. And I, you know, I, have less of that fear now. I do think that the opposition is real and also where it was, if not higher than in the first term and since. So I do think that's a reason for hope. Just looking at the history of authoritarian regimes and the regimes that tend to fall are where the authoritarian is not that popular. He's not polling at Putin levels or, and I realize, that the polls there aren't really trustworthy. But you know what I'm saying? Like there's, there's some authoritarian that were like genuinely popular. And I don't think that Trump is in that category at all. And the thing about any strongman or would be strong man is that at the end of the

day, he's just one guy in an office. That's all he is. The only reason he has power at all is because there are all of these other people around him who treat him as having power. And I go through the same thought experiment all the time about if they get too unpopular, they're just going to say, well, we just have to totally clamp it down because otherwise we're going to get run out. But there is also a point where the wider system that holds him up is just going to say, you know what, maybe we're not. I mean, this happened in 2020, where there were a lot of people who said we're not going to execute on your order to, what was the order that he gave Millie? I can't remember what it was. But the shoot the protesters in the legs?

Yeah, where he basically tried to do a coup in 2020. And there were a lot of people who around him who just said, no, we're not going to do that. Yeah, this time around. But we'll find out. Yeah, I was going to say, this time I'm wearing, Stephen Miller is not letting go of power. He is holding onto that ring. It's gripping it. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace.

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Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash offline to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com slash offline. Discord, ask how aware of you of your own information silo? I think it's probably human nature to think of our experiences as universal, but I'm reminded each week on terminally online, the extent to which I have no idea what's going on in some corners of the internet, despite having mortifying screen time numbers myself. It's a great question. There was a similar question about if we follow conservative outlets and influencers on our personal social media accounts, I feel like we could both probably take those together. What do you think? Are you, are you

cognizant of your information silo? I am, but it's my job to be. The answer that I was going to give to both of these listeners who asked, like you said, kind of similar questions, is that I think it's okay to be in an information silo. You already have a job. You don't

need to make your job following all these people who you don't agree with and trying to get a wide range of views outside of things that you agree with and trying to reach out of, you know, your information sphere. You just want to make sure that the information in your sphere is good because that is literally the reason that media exists as an industry is that's our job. Our job is to go out and sort through the information, find the good, find the bad,

you know, contextualize it, help make sense of it for you. So people put this, I think, burden on themselves sometimes that they say, well, you know, filter bubbles are bad and they are, information silos are bad. So it's my job to go out and basically be my own one-person media organization collecting all the information and learning. everything. I don't think you need to put that pressure on yourself. I see it as my job to not have an information silo or to get out of my information silo at the time. So for me personally, I am trying to every day figure out in politics. Agree on terminally online. I walk in there all the time and I'm like, what are you kids talking about? I have not, this is a viral meme. I don't know. I haven't seen it at all.

I have no idea any of the people that you're talking about. So that happens frequently. But in politics, I need to know like everyone from what's going on in Nick Fuentes land to the MAGA establishment, to the never Trumpers, to the lefties, to the DSA, to the annoying, the annoying, the annoying, like, I need to know it all. And I don't always succeed at figuring out, knowing every story, but I at least try. And that's not just to, like, enrich my mind and make sure that I'm, like, hearing from all sides. It's, I think it's just, I kind of need to do it to analyze politics to the best of my ability, yeah. I've always felt that if there's something that it's not a topic that I'm covering that's kind of where it's not my job, it's fine for me to just pick a media organization or a voice that I trust and just

kind of outsource it to them. And if it's something that is within my job, whether it's something I'm covering, it's my beat, whatever, that at that point, the standard I kind of use for myself is I need to know it well enough that if I read the big newspaper article about it, I should be able to know every paragraph like is this framing quite right is this true is this the whole picture that that's the kind of like standard that you need to set for yourself but normie's absolutely you don't need to take that burden on yourself yeah fanor asks max will there be a follow-up to the chaos machine what do you think i don't john you know there's nothing i hate more than writing because you share that with me i honestly i don't think that the world needs it and i i mean that in like a good way

Like six years ago when I was going to do the book, and maybe you felt this way when you started offline, part of the impetus was it felt like people were not aware of this problem. People were not taking seriously the idea that big tech and social media could kind of like have this influence over all of us in our politics. So it felt like it made sense for me to go spend like three years locked in a room so I could reemerge with this book that like made the case for people. And today, anything that I would say is already being said by people with a platform. form 10,000 times the size of mine because I feel like so much of this has become so accepted in the mainstream. I mean, like these movies that we're talking about, it's like, you know, popular TV shows are making the case. Like the Pope. The Pope, we got the Pope. Sounds like an episode of Affline. Bob, thank you for listening. Great to have you on the team.

Anytime you want to come on, Leo. I know. He was even talking about the value of seeing movies in a movie theater instead of streaming it at home. I was like, get out of my brain, Pope. woke offline pope I know really is no he's waiting for you to do another round of the offline movie club then he's going to come on

then you've got it for sure yeah I could see a chaos machine about AI though like artificial intelligence you just you go and you do the whole all the great reporting you did it met at other places

just go do it at open AI and anthropic I could see that we might need you in five years maybe even sooner just think about it I'll ask my my Grock therapist in five years

I'm surprised to do it in the book and see what it says. But thank you. That's kind of you to say. Josh from Discord asks, how is your screen time holding up? I'm doing okay. John, I'm sure you're also, yeah. I'm in the low fours now. Okay.

That's great. Consistently. Yeah. That's great. So I think when we started the whole thing, I was in fives, high fives, even sick. Emma's going. And now it's like consistently, consistently. consistently low force what do you think got you down I'm more aware of when I'm scrolling

why am I scrolling what am I doing this for is this the best use of my time is this what I really want what am I looking for that I think I'm finding on my phone right now and sometimes it's I want to just read something and then I'm like okay well it's not like I put the screen down but it's like maybe I'll go read a whole article instead of scrolling through social media. And then I'm much more cognizant when I'm home between, you know, when I get home from the office and after the kids go to bed, like, okay, I got a, you know, I have the phone in case somewhere in the house and Emily needs to text me or someone else. But like for social media, like that's a way. That's the danger zone. I find that. And if I wake up in the middle

of the night, I like wake up and you're up for like 15 minutes and you can't sleep. Like that's when And that's when the numbers pop up by like 100% as those weeks. So I find that a lot of it is just like if I get better sleep and do the things I need to do in order to get better sleep, the screen time numbers go down. Same. And I've actually been better at sleep. I have not been waking up as much. Really? That's great. Yeah. How'd you do it? I don't know. It just sort of solved itself. I feel a little more peace, I guess. Amazing. That's incredible. With all that's going on, it's bizarre. Like, I don't feel at peace about the world. I still think everything's horrible. It's not swirling as much anymore because I'm like, you know what?

That's just, that's not useful to me. It's not useful to the world. I do feel like the last few months, especially. Maybe it's just because I spent so much time. You say swirling about just what's going to happen. I didn't make peace with it. I still think it's just as bad now as I thought it was going to be or feared it was going to be and it could well get worse. And I'm still like, you know, I'm taking down a lot of ice videos every single day and they are really upsetting and I think they're just going to get worse.

But I do feel like, I don't know, it's not that I'm ready to live in this world, but I just like, I understand that we're here now. And I understand, like, I feel like I can at least face up to it on an individual level, which I don't know if you saw one battle after another, the new Paul Thomas Anderson. But that's, it's incredible. It speaks to this moment. Better than any movie I've ever seen speaks to a specific moment politically. I really got to go see that. It's really good. K-chan 1197 wants.

per our screen time conversation asks us, my New Year's resolution is to get my screen time down to four to five hours, and he tips on getting started. I mean, you just had some pretty good ones, I thought. And I think the best one is the one that you hit on, which is catch yourself scrolling and saying, what's the thing that I'm feeling that is making me want to scroll? Is it my anxious, am I upset about something?

Am I just bored? And then try to think about what's a better way to address that feeling? Because scrolling on your phone is not actually going to fix it, even though it feels good to do it in that moment. And then on a more practical level, you know, put your phone in the other room at night to the extent that you can. I find helps a lot because you will get better sleep. You'll be less anxious.

You look at your phone less. And having a paperback with you is nice. You find yourself looking at your phone and you think, maybe just pick up, read three pages of the paperback. I think all those are great. I would also say like after you've been scrolling for a while, really note to yourself how you feel after that. Totally. And think about that feeling next time you want to keep.

keep doing it because I do think that sometimes you're like you know what I just felt sort of shitty after doing that but totally you then move on to the next thing and you don't really you don't really dwell on it and I think it's good to dwell on that actually yeah you smoke the whole pack for yourself yes exactly offline is brought you by into cloud you want fun without the sloppiness a vibe without the Venmo apology notes Indicloud is what going out feels like when you actually grow up. Indicloud is your online dispensary for actual good times. Gummies, flour, pre-rolls, and more.

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And that's why I like them. You know, sometimes you just want a little, just a little chill, just a little bit of chill at the end of the day. That's all. You want a vibe shape. It's not for me socially. I'm not going out and doing that because I'll just shut down. No. All this talking that you hear all the time, you wouldn't get that for me.

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Gogginator asks, what was your favorite conspiracy theory of 2025? I got one. Okay. Let's hear it. The Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. Well, what is a conspiracy theory? Have you talked about the drink name that you all had at a CrookedCon? Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey Epstein didn't take. Tequila himself? Incredible. Amazing. Absolute work of art. Didn't know about it until I got to the party, by the way, when I was, then I thought it was great. Yeah, no. I've actually come around on this one, too. I always rolled my eyes at it.

And the last couple of months, I was like, wow, maybe Trump did fucking have him killed. I roll my eyes at every conspiracy theory. I really just, it's really hard to get me to believe a conspiracy theory. I still don't really know if I believe this one. But of all of them over the last year, this is the one where I'm like, I wouldn't be shocked to learn this at this point. I'd be surprised, but I wouldn't be shocked. I know. It's starting, there's more and more circumstantial,

not evidence, I think, directly for it, but it's like it feels more in line with the things that he is doing around this case. And the, like, incredible preferential treatment that I always forget how to pronounce her name, Gisleine Maxwell. Gillane. Geline, thank you.

That she's getting, like, weighted on hand and foot in prison now. I'm like, okay, I don't, maybe there is something weird going on here. In the video that doesn't really show that, I mean, it's just a... I know. I went frame by frame through that video a couple months ago.

It's been a weird time. That's your personal Zepruder tape? Yeah, that's my Ziprooter tape. It's weird. It's weird, man. I started thinking about mine. I was like, what's my favorite from this last year? And then I started to get really stressed out, and I couldn't figure out why.

And then I was like, oh, I'm trying to hold the entirety of 2025 in my head, which is a terrible thing to ask somebody to do. Yeah, that's tough. So the thing that I came up with was actually from just like three days ago. Did you see this The Ovan thing? with when Theo Vaughan went on Rogan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he went on, Theo Von went on Rogan, and you know it's going to get good when the boys are chatting.

He started talking about how, you know, he was talking to someone at some building, and the guy said, I'm building 10 floors for a talent agency and 10 floors for the CIA. And Theo Von is saying, the CIA is everywhere. Right in Central City, all that, yeah. I know, it's right. And someone figured out like, no, that's the CAA, Theo, the CAA.

Which is, he's talking about the CAA building in Century City. So that's a famous building plus the C. And even saying CAA, I mean, I understand it. Like, right? It's very close, but it's so funny. It's so funny that like, if you know Century City too, it's just like, and here's CAA and here's a and here's a, here's a CAA on the building. Here's a Langley outpost. I had another one that I really enjoyed that I've I just happened upon when I was looking around

so Trump a few months ago said that this is going to sound familiar at first he said that the 2020 election was rigged via mail-in voting and that no countries have mail-in voting because it's so corrupt and it's so easy to steal elections that way doesn't sound new right except someone asked him his source in that and he said Vladimir Putin told me He said, that's how I know mail-in vooting is work, because it's, and if it's just like, we're really streamlining the Kremlin disinformation pipeline at this point. It's like, we're not doing any of this fucking around with Facebook beams anymore. Putin is just calling Trump directly to give him the disinformation.

It's great. I know. It makes me think back to like, 2016 and 17. It's like, is Trump a Russian agent or what do they have on him? The answer is, the answer is like, it depends on your definition of Russian agent, because it's just Putin tells him something and he believes it that. I don't know how much of a secret that is, you know, that much of a plot that is. And then he acts on it.

Yeah, it is just kind of like if there's no cover up, is it still a scandal anymore? No, he just tells him what he wants them to say to the American people and he'll do that. That's crazy. Luke Broge asks, as a young person, what does 6-7 and 41 tell us about younger generations in the internet? Max, I just want to say that I. I saw this question, and so I used the opportunity last night to figure out what six, seven, and 41 mean. And as I was like 10 minutes into it, like watching some fucking explainer, I was like, this is so sad and dark for me that I am like preparing for a show by learning about this unbelievably popular and now past its prime, incredibly viral thing. that the young kids are doing.

It made me so deeply embarrassed and ashamed that that's when I went to bed last night. I was like, stop, stop it, just go to bed. That's where you're getting better sleep. Yes, that is why I'm getting better sleep. Jessica, you're so ashamed of your research. Why didn't you just ask your kids? They don't know yet. Definitely not.

Charlie's too young. So what did you conclude? I'm glad that I did read about it, look it for a little bit because I might have done the typical John and Max, like, let's stand on our lawn and yell at the kids to get off our line. And instead, I was like, you said something in the notes of the doc that I thought the same thing, which was, we all had like inside jokes with our group of friends as kids that were completely inane and didn't mean anything.

And no one outside that group would understand anything we were talking about. It was not funny to them. And because there was no social media back then, it stayed within that group. And maybe the out group was just like other kids in the class. And that was it. And it was fun to have that, like, inside. Now, you're socializing and interacting with every other kid in the world. And so when something becomes an inside joke, it's an inside joke for an entire generation.

And that's why it's everywhere, right? Like, it's just, it's a, it's different. Yeah. We mourn the loss of the monoculture, but here it is. It's six, seven. That's, and that also sort of brought me, and I'm like, you know what? Good. It's a cool thing.

I can imagine you're sitting around. You see the opportunity because someone has six and you're like, oh, great. I can do it. I can make the joke. My friends are going to laugh. Great. Love it. Harmless. Wonderful. I know. I feel the same way. I can't get upset about this one. Question from the Discord. What the hell are you up to, Curley? Guessing that was for you? That's me. That is actually my alt on the Discord is at Curley. It's very nice to ask and very nice you to put this in here and give me a little promo window. So it feels silly and is a little annoying to be secretive about this because, There's no actual reason it needs to be a secret. I'm working on something that is going to launch in January, and we just like, we want to give it a little pop when it launches. I will say, if I can be even more annoying about it and do a little teaser bullshit.

Please do. Very nice to indulge me in this. So what I will say is I'm launching it in partnership with someone who has been on offline. Oh. It's been on the show. Has his own little media startup who I'm working with. Is it Ross Douthith? It's Ross Douthith.

That's right. Yeah. It's Christmas. Okay. And we've been thinking a lot about, like, what people want from the media right now. Like, how do we actually reach people in this environment? Like, the kind of stuff that you and I talk a lot about. And, like, how do we meet people where they are and bring them high information, journalism, and news?

This will be by far the most produced and resource-intensive thing I've worked on, which is a little bit terrifying. but we will be blowing up the inboxes of Emma and Austin soon enough to... I love this. Hopefully, I'm so excited for you, man. Oh, thanks, man. That's so nice you to say. I appreciate that. Also, you're married.

That's the other thing that you're up to. That's right. You and Julia are married? I don't have my ring on, but people get the idea. There are people listening, I just held up my fingers, which I've been doing. There's nothing there. I'm like, are you married? I thought, just saw you guys the other weekend.

We tried, you know. started out well but we get it no yeah yeah we got to which i believe is still the first and only crooked marriage yes yeah that is true so unless you count uh love it and pundit oh right yeah well oh i guess yeah it's good yeah well love it's about to have the second so let let's share okay okay that'll be the yeah we beat them to it that's the important thing is that we yeah i'm really excited about that i want to i i i can't wait to hear more about it and obviously obviously you'll come back on to talk about it. I can't wait.

That's very kind of you. Cacti and Cats on Discord. What's the likelihood of favs getting into a Twitter fight over the holiday break? Great question. I think your last big one was over, wasn't like, Vance over last Thanksgiving? Yeah. Oh, was it over the Thanksgiving? I can't remember.

It was over the holidays. If there is a news lull, I feel like the chances are pretty high that I will not get into a Twitter fight. Like, I can sometimes feel when there's. you know, there's conflict in the air on the internet's on Twitter and people are yelling about stuff. It's usually like, you know, either, I mean, sometimes, of course, the vice president reaches out and calls me a dipshit and so that things go from there. But sometimes there's like an intra-left sort of anxiety or conflict brewing that I could see myself getting pulled into sometimes, unfortunately. But things seem calm out there. And I would like to not get in

a fight, a Twitter fight over the holiday break. I would like to avoid that. If you were going to get in a Twitter fight with someone in the top levels of the Trump administration, who would be your first choice and your last choice? Love to get in a fight with Stephen Miller. Yes, that would be. You guys have had a couple back and forth. A couple back and forths. I find him maybe the most loathsome figure in the Trump administration and dangerous. I agree.

Though J.D. Vance is close. It's close. I also, anyone in the Department of Homeland Security is on my shit. list as well. So anyone from there, the spokesperson there, Trisha McLaughlin and Cristino, all of them. They're just horrible people. I want to see you get into it with Greg Bovino. And you know what I especially want to see? I want to see Favs versus Lumer. That's the one that's at the top of my sheet. You and Laura Lumer, because she's back on Twitter now. Oh, no thank you. No thank you. Okay. Okay, fair enough. But I, yeah. Okay. All right.

Last question. Favorite Thanksgiving dish? You know, normally I'm a big salty guy. So I want to say, stuffing, but the truth is Thanksgiving, it's desserts. I love the sweets of Thanksgiving. There's so great. Some cranberry, get some good, some gourds in there, some cumpins, some sweet potatoes that nice, like, it's really like desserts with a little savory tart twist to it. Oh, it's fantastic. Oh, wow. Stuffing. My mom's stuffing, which is, my grandmother used to make it, and now my mom makes it. It's, and it's, and it's a walnut stuffing. So there's, yeah. And it's got these little sort of, um, cookies like cake bread cookies that are in there crumbled in there as well uh crackers i don't even know you like it's like hard to get my mother's like she's she's always having a hard time getting them anymore i think she's to like import them from massachusetts um but anyway i'm looking forward to the stuffing by now i'm hopefully having stuffing and turkey sandwiches because

it's saturday but um are you guys sticking around where you are we are going up to massachusetts to uh do it with julia's family nice and uh i feel like that's the perfect use case for suburban in Massachusetts. It is a nice Thanksgiving. You know, you drive around, you go to the grocery store, you go for a little walk outside, a little chill in the air. I'm jealous. It's nice. It makes you miss LA a little bit, you know, and it's like warm over the winter holidays. It's always kind of fun. I like being in the Northeast for the fall. Like we had a wedding in Maine and it was like a beautiful late September day and I was just like walking around Maine and the leaves were changing. I was like, okay, this is what I miss. This is what I miss a season. It's nice. Yeah. It was

really nice moving here at like the start of the fall and I'd really enjoying it but also knowing that there's a giant anvil over my head just waiting to fall because I have not done a winter up here since I was like 22 and I barely survived it get ready brother um max thank you so much for joining thanks for having me good talking you pal and uh have a have a great rest of your holiday have a good holiday in December and then we'll uh we'll see you when you got something to soon announce I'll be back All right, take care. Two quick housekeeping notes.

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always, if you have comments, questions, or guest ideas, email us at offline at crooked.com, and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad-free episodes of offline and Podsave America, exclusive content, and more, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with John Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Cricket Media on Instagram, TikTok, and the other ones for original content, community events, and more. Offline is a

written and hosted by me, John Favreau. It's produced by Emma Illick-Frank. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jerich Centeno is our sound editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seiglin. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. to Dilan Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.