Offline with Jon Favreau - Trump’s Epstein Nightmare, Jubilee’s Fascist Debate, and the Movie Twitter Wrote

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Living through a deadly plague as we watched the country descend into political violence on our screens might've left us with some...unresolved issues. Director Ari Aster sits down with Jon to break down his new dark comedy, “Eddington,” which depicts the violent unraveling of a small town as it faces pandemic, polarization, and AI proliferation. But first! MSNBC’s Brandy Zadrozny joins Offline to unpack the latest in MAGA’s cannibalizing Epstein conspiracy, debate the merits of online debate (we're looking at you, Jubilee), and wade through Elon’s latest unhinged innovation: a horny anime chatbot that flirts with children.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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That's 15% off oneskin.co with code offline. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Give your skin the scientifically proven gentle care it deserves with OneSkin. I just feel like we're living through an experiment. We're living out an experiment, we're living out an experiment

that has already failed so badly and nobody at the levers seems interested in slowing things down. It's only being accelerated. And so I just don't trust the track that we're on. Like I don't, I mean, I'm horrified by the track that we're on. I'm John Favreau.

I'm a music director. I'm a music producer. I'm a music producer. I'm a music producer. I'm a music producer. I'm a music producer. I'm a music producer. I'm a Favreau and you just heard from today's guest, director Ari Aster. So Ari stopped by our studio yesterday to talk about his new film, Eddington, which, Cards on the Table, is one of my favorite movies of the year. It is very funny, very dark, kind of insane, incredibly offline. He's actually described it as quote the movie Twitter wrote. It's set in a small town during

the summer of 2020 and it's basically about people losing their minds after being glued to their screens during the most tumultuous year of our lives. And yet, like I said, it is very funny. I laughed throughout most of the movie. So, we talk about the movie, but for those of you who haven't seen the movie, first, go see it. Second, we talk a lot about social media, the political moment we're in, the specter of political violence, what scares him about AI, and whether we can ever get back to having shared reality in this country. We'll get to that conversation in a moment, but before we do, Brandy Zdrosny, welcome to the pod.

Thanks for having me. It's great to have you on. We want to have you on for a while. For people who don't know you, could you introduce yourself and just tell us what you do? Sure. I am a senior enterprise reporter for MSNBC, and my beat is hard to pin down. It's politics, it's basically like the weirdos,

the fringe of a society that just happened to be in power now, so, you know, that's basically it. The people you were reporting on who started in the comment sections now are in the White House. That's the journey. Unbelievable. So it's been a minute since we've talked news on this show, but there happen to be

a few stories worth mentioning, so I wanted to have you on to talk about them. The first is obviously the continued drama around Jeffrey Epstein. We got Mike Johnson literally shutting down the House for the summer so that he doesn't have to hold a vote on a binding resolution to release more Epstein files. We got Pam Bondi looking to interview convicted Epstein co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, which she apparently didn't have any interest in doing before announcing she wouldn't be releasing any more info. And then we have Donald Trump, who is so angry and desperate to change the subject that he's playing a remastered version of all his greatest hits. Here he is in the Oval Office yesterday.

The leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him? This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever even imagined, even in other countries. You've seen some pretty rough countries.

This man has seen some pretty rough countries, but you've never seen anything like it. Never seen anything like it. Never seen anything like it. Everything you could think of. Everything you could think of. Every word. It's every word you could think of. So, yeah, I know your job is wading through the internet's right-wing fever swamps.

This scandal has now lasted more than two weeks, which is basically a lifetime in today's information environment. Where are the MAGA influencers and the MAGA base at this point? Are they still pissed at the White House? Are they buying the Obama pivot? Are they losing interest altogether? Yeah, there's like different tiers of MAGA. And so like you have the MAGA influencers and the MAGA producers and the peddlers.

And then you have the consumers, the MAGA consumers who watch all the podcasts and, you know, listen to the president all the time and go to the rallies and the audience. And they are on two totally separate wavelengths. You know, after this, after the initial memo came out, all the influencers were like turning point USA was having their summit. So they were sort of inundated with actual people that they had to see to their face and had to answer for it. And you could really truly see in a way that I've never seen before, like the fear in Charlie Kirk's eyes during that summit. He was just like,

so tell me why you're mad. And really gave people the mic for a long moment. Same thing with Bannon. Bannon was trying to whip up a frenzy there. But then after that moment, after they let them air their grievances, I talked with many of these people. And so back home, as it were, they were kind of hoping that, like, now onto the next thing, because it's always been onto the next thing. But the MAGA faithful, I think they're tired. They're absolutely exhausted.

Marjorie Taylor Greene had this great tweet the other day where I was like, Marjorie Taylor Greene gets it. Because she said, you know, you cannot keep promising dangling these, you know, things in front of your MAGA base. And it's been since 2016, since Lock Her Up, since Lock Up Fauci, since Drain the Swamp, since We're Going to Get the Biden Crime Family, etc. It's just one after another. And now, he's gotten everybody out. There's no one there to stop him from doing what he wants to do. Where is the stake? And they're not giving

it up. The influencers would very much like to move on. They were kind of hoping they could with the Wall Street Journal story the other day. They thought this was going to be a rallying moment. And even still, the base is like, oh, we're not stupid. Where are the files? It's very sticky. And I notice now that a lot of the influencers are sort of jumping on this Obama treasonous conspiracy story and Fox is running with it and all this kind of stuff. But even that, like I realize, my guess as to why the Trump administration is doing it is they're just like, we got to up the ante to actually have more headlines that are different

than the ones we've been getting on Epstein. And just saying like, John Brennan and Jim Clapper and this and that, that's not going to do it. We got to go Obama. We got to go treason. And we got to go a conspiracy that's so hard to understand that you don't even actually look into it. All the things. But promising that Obama's going to get arrested and go to jail and all this kind of stuff, that to me is like in the same category of promising the Epstein stuff. Like it might get them through a couple days of this

and change some headlines, but eventually everyone's gonna be like, okay, you told us there's gonna be Epstein files, there's no Epstein files. You told us that Obama was part of a treasonous conspiracy and you're gonna arrest him and nothing came of that. Who knows what the DOJ will do, but like it's gonna get fucking laughed out of every courtroom

in the country. So I just, it seems like they are constantly trying to get themselves to the next day and not really thinking how this might sort of erode trust in them among the people who are their biggest supporters in the long run. You get it, right? Because again, they've always been sort of able to do this. This is the one time I don't think it's going to work. What is that, like a kick-dog hollers? It's very, you know, it's a little bit delicious to see them squirm just a little bit as a reporter who has followed all of these lies over the years

to finally get stuck in their own conspiracy theory is really fun. I don't know where it goes. The stuff with Obama getting locked up, the Russian collusion hoax, I don't understand it. I don't understand. I've read all of these. I've read the things. I've read the DNI reports. It's nonsensical. And like the conspiracy consumers, they come to totally incorrect conclusions, but they can read.

They're not like making things up. They're reading real things and coming to assumptions that are wrong. Like they're connecting the dots in a way that's not right. But they're not stupid. And this sort of thing where now Johnson's saying like, oh, we're just going to leave rather than force a vote. Like it really is. And again, Trump's like, I have kids that nonsensical explanation of, oh, he's really bad. He did all the things. Like what does that mean? Like there's a lot of just consternation among the base online and in these forums that are just there like Trust is quickly fleeting from for this you had a piece about The Epstein drama for MSNBC where you wrote whatever the Epstein files end up being as a journalist I want them

But I also know what happens when a big messy cache of information gets dropped into the middle of a post-fact attention Economy, and I'm not excited. I'm nervous How come? when a big messy cache of information gets dropped into the middle of a post-fact attention economy and I'm not excited, I'm nervous. How come? Yeah. Here's just to make it very clear, I want to see everything in the Epstein files. I want every single piece. I want to turn every page. It is a real crime that happened and real people that seemingly looked the other way during that crime, whether we're talking about Acosta or his famous friends. So I want to see them. But I think, and I don't think Trump listens to the show, so we're probably fine.

But I think it would be the best thing that he could do to get all of these people off his back is to release the Epstein files in whatever way that he could do. It would be like that is the thing that he could do. And then the people that love him, who love him, that are seeing these files or going through these things, they probably would come to incorrect conclusions based on that other narrative that they tell themselves. That Democrats are bad, there is a cabal, child pedophilia is real, and Donald Trump is the savior.

Look, he released these files. He could probably, I don't know what's in the files, because I know how fervent his supporters are about him and how much they love him and the mental gymnastics they do to keep that narrative going. I sort of think that barring something explosive in these files, they would forgive him or explain away anything that was in these files. So like that is what he should do. But that's also the thing that scares me because like we've seen so many examples of this with the Twitter files, with WikiLeaks especially where like you get

this big tranche of information, of data, and then people go through it. And those actual data dumps have probably been the sources of the longest running conspiracy theories and the most dangerous conspiracy theories to real people from QAnon to Pizzagate. And so I just don't want it. I would like to be able to gatekeep it in some way. But it turns out that nobody's getting it. So I guess I'm fine.

I think it's such a good point because full transparency does not quell the conspiracies as we have seen, right? We're seeing this with, you know, Tulsi Gabbard dumps a bunch of evidence and documents and blah, blah, blah, and says it's a big conspiracy and unfortunately I read through everything. And it's like you read through it and it's not damning. And it's not like they made stuff up.

They actually put it up. If you don't have the context, you can think a whole bunch of different things. And that's probably the case with the Epstein files, like you said, barring some explosive allegation. But I do think Trump's problem is either there is some explosive allegation about him in there, or there is nothing, and they're worried about saying that there is nothing, or releasing information that doesn't shed any new light or create any new scandals, and then people saying, well, what else are you hiding? You know, it's like you can never satiate the hunger of the conspiracy theorists.

No, absolutely not. It's a real pickle. I feel I truly like feel for them. Like, what do you do in this moment? And again, I think part of it is, again, the way that the way that Trump during his first term surrounded himself with like fairly competent sycophants who, like after a short amount of time, decided, oh, no, that's not for me, and exited. Now, it's just less competent, probably sycophants, but who are ultra among the base, who will do literally whatever he says.

And so, there's no reason that I can think of or that he's made clear that these files should not be released, except he said it might implicate people unfairly that are in the files. So, like, ugh. I hate it. It's like totally— I know. I know.

I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but like, it raises questions. Right. Yeah, if you don't buy into the conspiracy, he has really made it extremely hard to maintain that position. He's not done himself any favors. Offline is brought to you by Naked Wines. Ever feel lost in the wine aisle? Unsure of what to choose?

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for just $39.99 with shipping included. That's $100 off your first six bottles at nakedwines.com slash offline and use the code and password offline for six bottles of wine for $39.99 Speaking of right-wing fever swamps our pal Mehdi Hassan waited into one on the YouTube channel Jubilee when he debated 20 far-right conservatives, that's what they were called, but at least one of them self-identified as a fascist during the debate. The clips in the debate have all gone viral. The self-identified fascist lost his job and then went on a

media tour and raised a bunch of money. Jubilee has been getting criticism for giving fascists a platform and of course a discourse has ensued Here is one of the clips from the debate Quite frankly if Trump is anti-constitution good and I think he should go further So this is this is wonderfully revealing of the modern conservative mindset. So I appreciate you spelling it out. So Openly just checking. Do you support the second amendment? I do. Okay, surprise. I was shocked to hear that.

I'm saying that Donald Trump is defying the first amendment, the fourth amendment, the fifth amendment, the 14th amendment. He's thinking of defying the 12th and 22nd amendments. You're saying you don't care about the constitution, but actually you do, because you quite like the second amendment. You just don't like the bits that you disagree with.

Can I just be clear on that? Yeah, absolutely. I'm more than willing to amend it and include the second amendment. Whenever it's in your favor? Yeah, absolutely. So can Democrats do the same when they're in office? No, absolutely not. So you don't believe in democracy?

No, I don't. Absolutely not. What do you believe in? Autocracy. You're a little bit more than a far-right Republican. Hey, what can I say? I think you say I'm a fascist. Yeah, I am. What can I say? I think you say I'm a fascist.

Yeah, I am. You made the great suggestion to cover this one, which finally got me to watch most of it. I had been holding it off. Wow, wow, wow, wow. What are your thoughts on this whole thing? Oh boy. It's hard.

I think we have like this, we've had this conversation in the media for a long time about platforming people, right, like who we platform and why. There is a part of me that subscribes to the argument that we're post that period, like we are beyond platforming people, like I am no longer a gatekeeper for anybody on a cable news network, You know, I mean, the internet does the internet thing. But I think it's, and in some way, I like a world in which people have to see that and the outwardness of that and people who are necessarily not in the fever swamps of like the Gropers online and don't see the Nazi content on X have to

come face to face with the idea that people are proud and out about that. But what are we doing? What is this debate show? What is the point of it? I did a little dive into Jubilee generally, and the whole point of it is supposed to be something like feel good, like radical empathy. Like there's a semaphore podcast that had a jubilee and the whole premise of it was that could this bring us together? And it was just like what? What are we doing? It's fine. I mean I'm glad to see this guy seen for what he is and have to come out and say it. But it's just a weird form of entertainment.

It feels very Jerry Springer to me, and I don't love that. Yeah, I have had the same sort of tension on this. I've gone back and forth. First I was like, this is ridiculous. Before the Metty debate, I've watched a couple others. And my first reaction was, this is so stupid. And then I watched one, I watched the one that Sam Cedar did. And I was like, you know what, this is actually pretty good because I had seen like the ones where it's just a right-wing person and then debating 20

liberals or progressives or whatever. And I thought that Sam did a pretty good job. And I'm like, maybe this can be useful. And then I heard about the Medi-One. I'm like, this is fucking awful. And then I watched it and it was also fucking awful. I do, I agree with you with you that it's good for people to know that those views are out there. And it's also, I think, important for us to make arguments that refute those views of the world, which are unfortunately real and have gained traction

among some faction of the Republican Party and particularly younger people. I don't know how representative it is, right? You need more quantitative data than just 20 random people who could have been, some of them are influencers, who knows how they got them, who knows how they came there. I don't think it's a good representation of like how many people believe that shit, but if it's out there, I think it's important to develop arguments that refute it,

because I don't worry about like many convincing anyone in that room, but if someone tunes into that shit, are they going to be swayed by it? And even if Jubilee were to not exist tomorrow, if someone stumbled into those arguments on the internet, are they going to be convinced by them slowly, maybe even a little bit, which is still hugely problematic. And so I want to make sure we refute them. That said, I totally agree that if we're going to do a debate show, it seems, and the purpose of a debate show is to either bring us together or not bring us together, but at least, you know, hash out important issues

and air disagreements. Probably could get a different format with different participants. And not just have a fascist on, talking about why he's a fascist, and then you hit the button, and then the next person comes on, like a couple minutes later.

I don't know that that's the most valuable use of everyone's time. It really, but like do you remember the Jerry Springer show? Like where you have like the KKK people come on with like the Black Power people and he'd be like, and it was like framed as some sort of like social experiment. Like no it's not, no it's not, no it's not, no it's not. You just wanted to like make people people mad and make watchers. It's rage bait. That is what it is. We should call it what it is, and that's fine.

I do think Pete Buttigieg did an episode that was interesting, and I think that you can't. Maybe they just went too far with this, because apparently they have some sort of harm clause at Jubilee, where they don't platform people who risk harm. But I'm not quite sure what that harm is. But I hate it. But I have in the last day, I've been asking the teenagers in my life and they love it. They love this show. Yeah. Well, that is, I mean, again, as long as it exists, I do think probably people like Mehdi

who are very good at debating should probably go on it. Agree. Because otherwise, the people that you get are going to be subpar, and then they're going to debate the crazies. And then when the teenagers watch it, they could be persuaded. And look, I do think there is a, you know, you've got people like Curtis Yarvin, right? He's that like far-right thinker who also doesn't really care for democracy, is making that argument.

I could see debates where you have him debating someone else and it's a long-form thing. It's like a two-hour podcast or whatever you put out there. It's the format and the people that they're bringing on from on the right that is the problem to me. And you see them recycled throughout some of the, so these are like wannabe influencers whose ideas have not catapulted them to fame yet. One would assume by seeing their debate performances

is because their ideas are bad or they're bad at expressing those ideas. Like they're no Betty Hassan, you know? And so like this is why there are 20 of them, because they're just not famous enough. But they keep being on the show hoping, like, this guy who's identified as a fascist, Connor, hoping that he will now. Now, he's, tonight, he's, like, co-hosting or guest-hosting this far-right podcast. So, he's on his way, baby. I know. I looked at his Twitter feed, and he's gotten so much attention, and he's on all these

live streams now now and they raised $30,000 for him. It's fucking terrible. All right I want to cover one other story with you before we jump to the Ari Aster interview last week Elon Musk gave the Grok AI chatbot formerly known as Mecha Hitler a very horny makeover As part of a new feature that XAI is calling companions Grok users can now interact with a flirty version of the AI named Annie, which The Verge best described as, quote, a busty young anime woman with blonde pigtails, blue eyes, thigh-high fishnets, and a skimpy gothic Lolita minidress.

Victoria Song, who wrote that line for The Verge, spent 24 hours interacting with Annie and found that the chatbot is essentially programmed to flirt, engaging in, quote, spicy stories that amount to softcore porn, and that the bot has, quote, a disturbing lack of guardrails. One of those missing guardrails would be age verification. Casey Newton, a platformer, discovered this week that the Grok app in the App Store, which users can access, is rated at being safe for children as young as 12 years old. Seems bad, huh?

I don't love it. You know, I try not to be too pearl-clutching when it comes to stuff around pornography because, like, again, I'm an internet reporter and famously any technology has always seemingly been used earliest and most popularly for some sort of pornography. And so it's a tale as old as the internet, but this one, it's just so gross. It's so gross coming from Elon Musk. It's so gross coming like a week after the Hitler stuff and the Nazi sympathizing.

It's just like, wow, can he just stop? I was just thinking about what you said about a lot of teenagers like Jubilee. I mean, there is this sort of rise in chat bot companions too among young people especially. And so I do think there's a real concern here that as AI becomes more of a daily part of people's lives and younger people use it, then it's going to sort of not just reshape how young people think about you know sex and deal and interacting with chatbots that are like this one,

but just their relationships, their friendships. What do you have that concern to? Yeah, I have two sons and a daughter, and the oldest one is in his teens now. And, you know, it's very hard as a parent of a teen to, like, talk to them about sex in general, to talk to them about, you know, technology. Pornography just generally is so much different from when I was growing up, from when my husband was growing up. I mean, it's not like a penthouse anymore, you know, in a friend of a friend's. And it's not even like I, someone said that the chatbots are almost more like those 900 numbers, those 1-800-girls-girls-girls used to have.

But even those, like I've asked for people of their memories recently, and it was like a bunch of boys all together like calling the chat room and like laughing and hanging up out of like shame and embarrassment and then, you know, moving on. Like involvement with a chatbot and like interaction with a chatbot can feel so immersive. It's this way that, you know, you spend hours, you know, on your cell phone before you realize that you have. And I worry so much about all of our boys and I worry about, you know, how pornography, just regular video pornography that is so ubiquitous online and, you know, the age limits don't work on, how that's already warping their idea of like what healthy sexual relationship is with a

partner and I think it's already like so messed up. And then you get now to this point, so you're not just passively watching pornography as a young developing brain, you're like actually engaging in a type of verbal pornography with a machine, with a bot, in this way that like, there's no guardrails that I know of. I don't know what that does. It scares me, it worries me a lot.

I mean, there's no guardrails. There's also, there's no friction, right? Because you get whatever you want. And in real life, you go out and you talk to people that you're interested in, whether they're friends, whether it's a relationship, and you have to figure out, it's clumsy and confusing and it's hard for young people. And so, why would you do that if you can just stay home,

be on your screen, and have this companion that's going to tell you everything you want and give you everything you want? Yeah, how do you figure out, like, what a girl likes, what a woman wants? How, you know, I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't seem good to me. I was talking to my husband about it this morning and I was like, I have played around with chat GPT. I have a really great fact checking thing that I run through chat GPT that I love. But for writing and stuff, I don't use it for writing and research, only for many reasons, but primarily because I gave it a go one time and literally for a week I was like, I feel

like a yearning to use ChatGPT where I don't need it. Like that's, and that is the same one-to-one for me. I'm like, oh no, we're going to lose our IQ with ChatGPT for work and our, I don't know what's going to happen with our children and their like sexual health and relationships. But it just seems really bad. I find it incredibly useful for search and for research kind of stuff. But as soon as it starts, I find myself thanking it because it's just like,

you're like, thank you for that. And I was like, why am I thanking that? And then it starts, the more you thank it and personalize it, then it starts personalizing it back to you, and once it got to that, I was like, I don't wanna. But we've also lived, you know, half our lives without any of this stuff, for most of our lives without any of this stuff. And I worry about, I do worry about our kids. I just saw, Common Sense Media says that 72% of teens

have used AI companions at least once. So that is, yeah, that's something that we're gonna have to figure out. And I think we will. I do think we will. I think the kids are all right generally. I think that they will be all right. I do not think it will be the end of the world,

but I don't like it, and I don't fucking trust Elon Musk. No. With my child. Nope. With my brain. Like, I just, I would never. Yeah, yeah. Well, he hasn't done a good job with himself, so I don't know why he'd do a good job with all of us. Brandi, thank you a ton for joining.

Next time we'll talk about some more hopeful topics, which are hard to come by when it comes to the internet and social media, but we'll figure it out. Hopefully we can do this again soon. It was really great talking to you. It was great to be here. Thanks so much. All right. In a moment you're going to hear my conversation with Ari Aster, but before we jump to break, some quick housekeeping. If you haven't heard already, Vote Save America has launched a brand new pilot program to recruit candidates in Arizona, North Carolina, and

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h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-tealth.com slash off and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Ari Aster, welcome to Offline. Thanks for having me. So I started this show in the middle of the pandemic because I felt like living through a deadly plague in our homes, on our screens, with limited social contact,

in the midst of a presidential campaign that ended in a violent insurrection, might have left us with some unresolved issues that we're all still working through. You have made a movie, one of the first, I think, that really feels, sounds, looks like a movie about living through the miserable insanity of that time period. And yet, I was just telling you, I laughed a lot. I laughed through most of it.

Good. Why did you want to tell a story about those years? Well, I mean, I started writing it at the time. I started, you know, the film is set in late May, early June, 2020, and that's when I kind of sat down to, yeah, to try to grapple with it, you know? I was mostly just feeling, you know,

a lot of fear and anxiety and dread, and I wanted to understand it better. You know, I think that's kind of the only way to get past what you're afraid of, what you're feeling. And all I know is that dread has only kind of increased and like risen in me. So, you know, making the film didn't conquer it. But I also think it's because what happened in 2020,

we haven't metabolized it because we're still living in it. I also think it's because what happened in 2020, we haven't metabolized it because we're still living in it. And so, I don't know. I've been really hungry for work that's about this moment because I don't understand what's happening. And if I see something that reflects my experience in any way, I feel less alone. And so that's... And it's a period that made us feel quite alone.

Yeah, well, I think that's part of what's happened with this new digital connected world, is it's created these new forms of solitude. Yeah. Like, I'm lonely in a way that I've never felt before. Right. Even though I always think that these devices, our screens, give us the illusion of connection. Yeah. You know? But we're in our heads.

But we're in our heads. We're deeper in our heads than ever. How did you experience the pandemic? Like, when you were thinking about this, were you just on your screen all the time? Were you largely alone? Like, what were you feeling at that moment? I was feeling, well, I was like just kind of living on the internet, living on Twitter. I wasn't tweeting, but I was scrolling and I was retweeting and I knew that I was being agitated but it wasn't really until I got off Twitter that I realized just how agitated I was.

When did you get off Twitter? I got off Twitter around the time Bo came out. Where I was just like, you know what, I better, I think I better unplug here. But, because I was working on Bo at that time, Because I was working on Bo at that time, I kind of rushed to get as much of that time on paper and kind of create an archive of that time as I could before moving back to Bo,

just so I had something really solid to come back to. And I recognized at the moment, I mean, I don't know if this is right, but the feeling was, everything is changing so quickly and there's no way to get your hand around whatever this world is that we're living in, unless I did just decide, you know,

I'm gonna make this film about one week, and that way, no matter what changes, I can always come back to that week. And so I'll make a period piece. And so a big part of that process at that moment was I wanna take a lot of screenshots. And I created a few different burner accounts or profiles on Twitter.

And I got myself into different algorithms. Um, and, uh... Were they sort of divided by politics? Like, did you go down a right wing and a left wing, and then just... Yeah. And then, like, you know, like, the Nazi... I was gonna say, was it...

Like, wing. Was it not surprising but shocking to you once you sort of refined your scrolling to different accounts and different algorithms? I don't want to say it was like totally shocking because I understood, you know, what was happening, but I was really disturbed by just how hard it was to get out of those algorithms. And I really tried. I tried to sort of reset things on all of them and see, like, okay, now what would it mean to kind of get myself out of this quicksand and, you know, only to land in some other quicksand. And I found that I couldn't. And I mean, I was

already worried, but that only pushed that further. The movie's fascinating because each of these characters in the film is sort of in their own algorithmic bubble. And so they're together, but they're on their phones. Yeah. And because they're on their phones, because they're all getting different information, it sort of sharpens the divide between them. And I just thought it was, and of course it's set in a small town in New Mexico, fictional town, and I was just struck by how you were able to really capture the sort of physical, social disconnect

we have with other people because we are so in our phones all the time and everyone's reality is different. Yeah. Yeah, that was the idea was to make a film about a community that was no community at all, right? Like it's people who are living in, same spaces, but on different planes. And yeah, people who are living in different realities, who just are completely unreachable to each other. And I felt it was important to kind of treat all of these people as people who are gripped by like a real, like yearning and conviction,

and they all can feel very clearly that something is really wrong. And so they're activated in that sense, but they just all disagree on what that thing is or what the source of that thing is. Yeah. And so they're all kind of, you know, they're all kind of living in a sort of stasis in this system that's based entirely on feedback. And they're all very self-aware, but then they're not self-aware,

and they all know history, right? But there's too much history. So they're all using history to shore up what their beliefs are, which, you know, clash violently. History and feedback, which is, I think that's an important part of all this, right? Which is all of these characters, and this happens,

just this is the way we live now, is when you want feedback for beliefs that you have, for ways that you might act, whatever else it may be, you either put up a video or you tweet or you say that and you look for that kind of affirmation. And I do think that that ends up really shaping and influencing how we interact with other people in real life and what we actually, and the actions that we take. Is this why you said this is a, I heard you say that this is the film that Twitter wrote?

Yeah, in a sense, that's where it started. And so, you know, I kind of wrote the first draft very, very quickly, went off to make Boa's Afraid, and then when I was in post-production on Boa, on Boa, Boa's Af is afraid I started rewriting it and then I flew back out to New Mexico. I'm from New Mexico. It's the region that I know best, you know, the southwest, but specifically New Mexico. And so I went back out, drove around the state, went to different counties to talk to different sheriffs, went to small towns to talk to, you know, mayors, police chiefs,

public officials. I went to Pueblos, talked to people there. And I was just trying to get as broad a picture of the, of, you know, I guess the political climate of the state, but also the emotional climate of the state, and especially among people who are, who are in roles of like service, right? And I found that that was huge, that really helped the movie get away from me, because the film is satire,

but it was very important to me that the film be empathic, and that I see myself in all of these characters in the film. Yeah. I'm very interested in, you did this online research where you have these different accounts and you're taking screenshots, and then you did this very offline research where you go to New Mexico and travel around the state

and talk to people. What was the difference between what you heard from people on the ground there about pandemic era politics, sort of the overall climate, versus some of the stuff that you saw on Twitter and your digital research? Well, you know, all the digital stuff is affected by the fact that most people are not fully anonymous online, but there's a cruelty and like a nastiness about everything I was gathering online. And a smugness and a dismissiveness of anything

that might conflict with what you believe or what you feel. And I found that meeting a lot of these people, a lot of whom had real feuds in their public lives. You know, I guess, for instance, one sheriff who I found particularly interesting, and I flew back out with Joaquin so that he could meet him and Joaquin's character is kind of modeled on this guy.

Not completely, but like his wardrobe, for instance. You know, it's how that guy dressed. And he showed up to consult on a few shooting days. But that sheriff had a really interesting feud with the mayor of the biggest town in his county. Was it over COVID restrictions? Well, you know, they were both kind of on the, he was conservative, the mayor was more libertarian,

and yeah, it was about, it was about, you know, mask mandates, and, but it was about a lot of stuff. It was about, you know, mask mandates, and, but it was about a lot of stuff. It was really complicated, and a lot of it was like personal, but you felt that in the way they talked about things, whereas, you know, everything kind of,

the line between personal and partisan, like, you know, blurred. But that mayor was really interesting because he had only recently become mayor. And before he was mayor, he tried to go to a town hall meeting. I forget what his complaint was, but he wanted to speak. And he had a gun in his holster, and they told him, you can't be in here with a gun. And so they asked him to leave. And so then he ran for mayor on the platform of,

if I become mayor, you won't be able to come to town hall without a gun. And he won. And so, anyway, a lot of interesting, funny anecdotes, but I found it really interesting who I found among all these people sympathetic or compelling, especially given my own politics, because I am on the left. But you know, at the time, Biden was president, the governor of New Mexico is a Democrat who's a figure of controversy. Yeah. And I found that a lot of the, for instance, like the mayors who were Democrats, you know,

and were feeling kind of like, you know, they were satisfied with the status quo and they were very dismissive of anything that anybody else was feeling that contradicted their talking points. So I actually found talking to them kind of boring. And then I found talking to the more, the people who were more on the right, a lot of whom, you know, like a lot of what they believed, like, you know, ran very counter to my convictions.

I found them, at the time, I found a lot of those people more interesting, more compelling, and they were really— Ingenuine in their belief. They were really upset about things that were happening or that they believed were happening, and they were desperate to talk about it, and they felt ignored or condescended to. And it just helped to talk to all these people and get this picture.

And, you know, part of the project of the film was like, okay, I want to like turn a mirror on myself and I want to question... I... Is there a way to question ourselves and at the same time try to find the humanity and the people that we see as standing against us or the people that we abhor.

You know? And that, you know, and so. I mean, looking back on it, I think. Because we're all, so I was just gonna say, because we're all subject to the same forces. You know, that's why that was important. Yeah, anyway. I mean, the pandemic, sort of in a way

that you couldn't have scripted, I think was almost designed to inflame the divisions that already existed in this country, political divisions, in a million different ways. One of them, I think, is just geographic, right? Which I think you get at in the film, which is what densely populated areas needed to do for restrictions might not have made sense for very rural areas like the setting of

Eddington, it's like a rural area. And you can kind of see that in the beginning of the movie too, right? So, there's like four people in the store and then there's like people standing outside in line, but they're all like spaced out and it's outside. It the store, and then there's like people standing outside in line, but they're all like spaced out and it's outside. It's like, and you start to, like, you do start to think, okay, well, how would that have landed with someone

who lives in like a town that's a couple hundred people where they're outside all the time? Like it does, it's interesting looking back now. Like I think one of the reasons I found myself laughing so much during the movie is because some of the satire of sort of the left, whether it was COVID restrictions, the social justice, it's like, oh, that's how we acted back then.

And we have changed a little bit now. It was very, I thought that. Now, what have you made of the reaction to the film's political satire? Well, I knew that the film would be polarizing because it's about polarization and it's about how polarized we are. I would say that, you know, I've heard like some critiques that I find to be sort of bad faith takedowns. Like I think the argument that the film is centrist is like, is a bad faith reading.

Yeah, I don't get that. And I do hope my politics kind of come through by the end. But you know, part of what was important to me is that the film also kind of be inscrutable. And you know, just in order to be interesting, honestly. I mean, you know, if I was going to make just like another ideological screed, like a, you know, a film that was just strictly partisan in its politics, then I would have only reached the choir that I was preaching to. And I, again, I have very clear politics, but that felt way too narrow. I wanted to talk about like the environment

that we're living in. And a key to the film, maybe the key, is that there's a data center being built outside of the town. Yeah, in AI. We begin with that, we end with that. That's a bit of a spoiler, but it's, that for me is what the film is really about.

And it's about a bunch of people who are at each other's throats and who are warring on ideological grounds that in some ways are, you know, like, you know, have been complicated by personal conflict. Meanwhile, like above them, there's a big, there's hovering above them is a big problem that they're not seeing, that they're missing,

and that is changing them. And so it's a film that is, you know, in one way about a bunch of people navigating a crisis, you know, COVID, while another crisis incubates. And they are essentially a bunch of like burgeoning cyborgs, right? Well, but something bigger is coming. You know, they're burgeoning, right?

It's like, they are being changed, but we can't even fathom the change that's coming. And I think that even with the change that we've gone through over the last decade or so with social media, like one of the more pernicious effects of this technology is I think it sort of blinds us to the fact that it changes us because no one wants to readily admit that our minds are being shaped by fucking algorithms. Yeah.

And so it's just sort of, it's become one of, it's a difficult problem to solve because a lot of people are like, well, other people are crazy conspiracists, but not me. It's like, well, we're all subject to the same algorithmic feeds. And so... Meanwhile, I'm finding it harder and harder to even think. Like, I find thinking to be more difficult, and we're outsourcing our thought to this new, you know, like more and more people are going to

Yeah to chat GPT and you know to you know to to learn about themselves, you know or to like Yeah, I read something about you know, just how many people are relying on These like, you know language models to like to like serve as their therapists Yeah, their friend their assistant their pal their their lover. I mean, it's like, it's getting... Someone is marrying one, right? Yeah. This is now. Like, I don't, I mean, it's... No.

So, when I, before I saw the movie, I just saw some of the, like, it was described as divisive, divisive movie, you know, in politics. And I was like, great, pandemic era divisive political movie, I'm in. Let's, let's check it out. And then, as I told you, I was like, great, pandemic era divisive political movie, I'm in. Let's check it out. And then, as I told you, I was like, watch the whole thing. And I went to the premiere with my brother, who's an actor. And afterwards, I was like, we were both laughing, we both loved it. And he's like, I don't get why it was, they're calling it divisive. And I was like, I get why, because it skewers sort of the left, definitely skewers the right, but the people who review movies

and critique movies that are in this world tend to be on the left side of the spectrum. So I imagine that it's going to rankle some people, even though it's, you know, it's satire and some of it's exaggerated for effect, but it's also, I don't know, I didn't take it as too exaggerated with some of the things I've seen online. No. I mean, look, and like I said, I see myself in all these characters, especially with those kids, you know, who in some ways, you know, they're callow or, you know, I would say,

one of those kids who joins the BLM movement for, you know, like not very impressive reasons, right? He wants to meet a girl, yeah. He wants to meet a girl. And so, you know, he is cynical. That character is cynical. And then you have other characters who I think are not there for cynical reasons.

And they might not see themselves as well as they could, but for me, it was important to pull back as far as I could and just take as sociological a stance as I could and get as much of the landscape as possible. And I wish that I could have covered like, you know, every corner of Of the culture at that moment without you know sacrificing Narrative coherency or you know, of course telling us, you know without neglecting to tell a story But I I did as much of it as I could without having the cacophony that I was like trying to like represent like just

Just drown out any you know, yeah sense yeah sense you know the project was can I find a way to like to describe the the incoherent miasma and have it still be coherent Offline is brought to you by Mint Mobile. You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. While you're planning beach trips, barbecues and three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. That's why you should make the switch to Mint Mobile. With Mint, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money.

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I do wonder if, and I ask this partly because of the focus on technology and Twitter and social media, which is, I think, going back to those kids, we have a bunch of kids in the film who, you know, they start sort of a BLM movement in the middle of this town where there's nothing happening at all. But like, it comes from this place of genuine concern and wanting to do something, right? And so it's like, and I don't think you did this in the film, but it's like we don't want to impugn their motivations, right? Because they are really just shocked by the

injustice as we all were. But there's something about social media and this age that turns like genuine concern into this need for performative politics. And I think that it's, I do wonder if it's the performative aspect of politics now that has fucked things up so badly on both sides, certainly. But I do think on the left, like I know this, that when I speak to, I can speak to organizers who spend their time like knocking on doors for candidates who are on the far left, on the center,

and they all probably have more in common and can get more done together and have like more nuanced conversations that are more persuasive with voters than people who spend most of their time online. Yeah. From the left to the center. Because I just think that there's something, when you actually have to sit down and talk to someone

and persuade someone, there's like a different set of tools that you use than if you are trying to take the video, get likes on the internet. Yeah, and just harangue people. You know, that's not, that doesn't work. And the film does satirize, you know, performative activism. And I hope it doesn't, you know, performative activism. And I hope it doesn't, you know, like,

I thought, you know, the BLM movement, like I was amazed at like the power and momentum of what they were able to achieve, you know. I mean, you know, the film is about things going viral. You know, the thing is about a virus coming into town. Yeah. It's, and so I was interested in virality in that sense. Is that a word, virality?

Yeah. Okay. And so, was interested in virality in that sense. Is that a word, virality? Yeah. Okay. And so, and you know, I also growing up in New Mexico, being in New Mexico at that time, seeing how BLM was being kind of responded to there because it is a state with very few black people. And so I was also interested in how people were like, kind of

grappling with this thing that for them was more abstract. Yeah. And co-opting it when that's the case, right? Cause like I live in New York, but I, but, and I, and I spent some time in New York during lockdown, I spent most of my time in New York during lockdown, but I was in, I was in New Mexico for a few months.

And I just saw that it meant different things in those two places. Yes. And just, you know, talking about, you know, how things are metabolized. It was metabolized differently in New Mexico. Yeah. And so I also found it interesting and challenging

to tell this story from the point of view And so I also found it interesting and challenging to tell this story from the point of view of a white kind of conservative libertarian guy who doesn't consider himself racist, who suddenly is confronted by this thing and has to defend himself against it. And to basically put him in situations where things are revealed to us and to himself about who he really is.

That was just more interesting to me than... And this dynamic that you see, which is like a white, more conservative type person and a white liberal arguing about race. You know, and then there's the, you have a character who's a black police officer and, I mean, one of the pivotal scenes for me is the young white girl who's joined BLM is like yelling at the black police officer about like his oppression and like why he is with the cops and he needs to join them and it's just it's it's a lot it's a little bit ring

like i've seen it online i've seen it too and she's interesting to me because she is coming from from a place of actual conviction and sincerity again she's interesting to me because she is coming from a place of actual conviction and sincerity. Again, she's like, she doesn't see herself as well as she could. Yes. But, you know, but she... But same is true for all of us, right? Yeah. You call this movie a Western, but the guns are phones. There are also real guns, without

giving too much away, quite a bit of violence towards the end. How were you thinking about the specter of political violence when you wrote this? Because you wrote it before January 6th. Yeah. Well, yeah, I wrote it before January 6th, but the rhetoric was already promising violence. Like, you don't, you can't, you can't use, like, the kind of dehumanizing language that's being constantly pushed without the risk of violence. I mean, I think that's kind of the point. And at the time that I was writing this, things had reached a boiling point.

I felt something in the air that I had not felt before. It did feel like that in this June, July, summer of 2020. I just, yeah, it just felt like, yeah, violence is really coming. I don't know how it's gonna manifest and maybe, I pray it doesn't, but, and again, that feeling has only grown in me. I'm really worried, I'm really scared.

This is, you know, this is not a movie that is made from like some detached perch, you know? Like I... No, it feels very, I mean, it's fascinating because there's the satire, but also underlying all of it is this like unsettling feeling that that most of it could happen. Yeah. There is an element of the film that is,

the film is about a bunch of paranoid people, and I did want the movie itself to become paranoid. So it does, by the end, it's gripped by this sort of manic worldview that and so you know, it should kind of spiral out. Yes. Well, it does feel like a day on Twitter at this point, you know, I mean, it's just in real life.

The AI data center, we're talking about AI, what is your biggest concern about the AI future that we're headed into? Like, the top of my list, and I bring this up because of the top of my list, is sort of, it's going to accelerate some of the trends that you capture in this film, which is the loss of shared reality, isolation, loneliness, which I feel like is sort of under discussed or at least lower on the list than job displacement,

apocalypse, all that kind of stuff, robots kill us all. But what do you think? What are you worried about? What does Douglas Rushkoff call it? It's like a non-specific amplifier, right? Yeah. And so it's like, let's just look at where we are. Do we want to strap jet packs to that? Yes. amplifier, right?

We're living out an experiment that has already failed so badly and nobody seems, nobody at the levers seems interested in slowing things down. It's only being accelerated. And so I just don't, I don't trust the track that we're on. Like I don't, I mean, I'm horrified by the track that we're on. So the idea of... The idea of like kind of like... Stepping on the gas. Basically saying like, here's the road, like just self drive now. Like, you know, like we've set this up for you.

Now just like let it rip. I, you know, I find it to be crazy. And I like hearing all of these kind of like, you know, utopian ideas and it's like, yeah, but it could be this. So it's like, well, the people who are ushering this thing in are making sure to kind of warn us. Like, you know, these engineers, they're all saying like, okay, this could be the end.

Like this could be really, really bad, but don't say we didn't tell you. Now that we've told you. Yeah, we put it at 10, 20%. Yeah, exactly. We gave you it. And we put ceilings, you know, but also part of that is we're putting ceilings on it to make you more comfortable with what this thing is.

So you still feel superior to it, but I find it to be really frightening. And I've said this before, but a big part of the research that's going into this, there's this thing called alignment research, which is people who are working with these AI and they're interacting with them and they're making sure that they align with human values.

So I just ask the question, like, what are human values? And whose? Well, exactly. Whose values are we talking about? This is, to me, sort of the fundamental problem with, like, the Silicon Valley tech utopia view of the world, which is they have so dismissed the role of like human emotion and subjectivity and they really do think that the machines will solve our problems and that there's always something that we can like hack our way out of.

And, you know, I've been on the politics and government side and when I was there it was always, and then that was when people like Silicon Valley. But, you know, their view of government was like oh well if we just got some technology there it would fix everything. It's just like these people are just like slow and bureaucratic and getting in their own way and if we just invent something we can figure it

out but it's like you can't ever replace the need to figure out what the values are which is a subjective enterprise which is why we try to have democracy so that everyone gets a say in that, right? Yeah. I agree with you. Last question, I heard you say you're thinking about maybe some kind of sequel to Eddington. I won't ask too much, but if you were to write a movie about this era that we're in right now, this period, which in some ways we're continuing what happened in the pandemic,

but I do think there's been a shift, but maybe you disagree, so tell me. What is interesting to you about sort of where we are right now? I mean, what is interesting? I don't know. What do you think has changed from pandemic? I know what's terrifying about where we are right now.

I wouldn't want to even expound on it. I think this is just like a deeply ugly moment. And if I did do that sequel, it would be set right now. And I probably won't. I probably won't get the chance to. My last two movies, I was kind of taking whatever goodwill I had and just, who knows how much is left at this point. But I will say, because it's hard to get people to talk about the pandemic, talk and not just

the health part of it, but the how we lived part of it, people do not want to go back to this. And I've been trying to convince, I'm like, hey, I saw Eddington, you got to see Eddington. I'm like, it's pandemic era. Like I said to my wife, I'm like, it's pandemic era politics. And she's like, oh, I don't want to do pandemic. I'm like, no, no, no, you'll love it. It's very funny. It is hard to get people to like go back into that. But I think it's actually, I found it almost like cathartic, little therapeutic to go back to it.

I think we're living in an age of total obscenity. And so I wanted the movie to be kind of obscene too. I wish it were more obscene because I was, you know, things have only gotten worse and now I feel like the film is almost like, it's tamer than I would even want it to be. Like if I could have broken up the movie with like Pornhub ads where you have to wait five seconds

before you can skip, you know? I would have done that. Yeah. That's good. That's what it's missing. You know what? That's a perfect place to leave this. The sequel will have Pornhub ads. Ari Aster, thank you so much for joining Offline.

The movie is Eddington. Everyone, go see it. You will laugh. If you like this show, if you listen to Pods Dave America, it is a good intersection of the cultural, technological, and political moments that we were in in the pandemic and many times we are still in today. So thanks for the movie and thanks for coming by. Thank you. ["Circle of Life"] Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau.

It's produced by Emma Illich-Frank. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. Our engineer is Peter Geyser. Audio support from Kyle Seglen. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks 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.